Page 24 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
All eyes were on me now. Under the table, Flynn’s leg rested against mine for a second.
‘You say you drank? In the past?’ Wren’s frown made her look like the worried little brown bird I’d taken her for when we’d first met. ‘Have you given up?’
I thought of Flynn’s ‘conditions’. Of the headaches, the hangovers, the disturbed sleep and the gaps in memory. The feeling that I needed to drink just to cope with Dexter and his behaviour. Then I remembered last night’s single small bottle. ‘Nearly,’ I said. ‘I’m working on it.’
‘Still reckon Vengeance Squad is a better name,’ Fraser muttered.
‘Eddie’s booked another day off,’ Annie said quickly, as though she worried she wouldn’t get her fears out into the open if she didn’t say it now. ‘He hasn’t mentioned it to me, not a word.’
A look went around the table, all of us trying not to look at one another yet desperate to catch the eye of someone to communicate the internalah-ha!that we were clearly all thinking.
‘How did you find out?’ Margot asked eventually.
‘Nikki, she’s the person who manages their diaries, she rang me to let me know. I asked her to, after last time. I said that Eddie was getting a bit forgetful and he’d only tell me last minute when he had a day off. So I asked her to tell me next time, and she did. Oh, I pretended I already knew, of course.’ Annie’s tone was sad. Lying clearly didn’t come easily to her.
‘Will she tell him that she told you?’ Margot asked.
Wren was making notes on her phone, I could see. I hoped Annie wouldn’t guess what she was up to and just assume that Wren was callously using this time to text her friends.
‘I asked her not to. Said he was getting a bit self-conscious about his memory lapses – oh, I made him sound a right nellie! But having nursed Mum with the dementia, I know how it can start, just the odd “forgetting”. Poor Nikki, I think she thinks I’m worrying over nothing! But she knew Mum, they all knew how it was, so I think they’re putting it down to me being a little bit overcautious.’
I glanced at Margot, then Flynn. How did I ask the question? I didn’t want to make it sound obvious.
Fraser came to my rescue. ‘He’s probably going to watch the football,’ he said. ‘Is it next Wednesday he’s got off? There’s a big match on, kick-off’s at three.’
I had no idea whether this was true or not, but had to admire Fraser’s quick thinking.
‘No, it’s a week on Thursday,’ Annie said and I watched Wren tap the date into her calendar app. ‘He watches most matches on catch-up when he gets home. Nobody’s allowed to mention the scores at work!’ She laughed, but there was an undercurrent to her laughter that showed how worried she was about what Eddie was really up to.
‘Ah well,’ Fraser said. But there was a pink glow to the tips of his ears – he knew he’d been clever.
‘What about you?’ Margot suddenly rounded on Flynn, who’d been sitting there eating crisps all this time. ‘You want to be a member of our club, you didn’t have a Valentine’s Day date – why not?’
Flynn withdrew his hand from the crisp bowl, startled. ‘Me? Oh, I dunno. Like I told you, I had to work.’
That ‘headmistressy’ tone was back in Margot’s voice now. Perhaps she wanted us all to forget her moment of weakness. ‘Yes, but as you say, this place doesn’t open until six. You had all day.’
I turned to him now. The light was reflecting off his glasses and his eyes were hidden behind the bobbing white bulbs, but I could feel the stillness that had descended over him. His hands were balled in his lap and he’d pulled his shoulder away from mine. ‘I wondered about that,’ I said. ‘You could have had a daytime date.’
He shrugged. ‘Nobody I felt like asking.’
Then, to his evident great relief, the dominoes men approached the bar for refills and with some questions about hiring a space for a dominoes tournament, and Flynn had to get up and go across to them.
The Monday Night Heartbreak Club talked about holidays, then, until it was time to go home. We seemed to feel the need forgeneral chat after the emotionally charged nature of our previous conversations, and hearing Margot casually mentioning Mauritius, while Fraser debated the merits of Pontins with Annie, was the normality we wanted. I didn’t have much to add to the chat, having not had a holiday since 2014 when my parents took us all to Center Parcs and I was shouted at for not letting my brother beat me down the water slide, so I found myself letting much of the talk flow over me, while I wondered quietly about Flynn.
It felt as though he was hiding something. He was evasive, not to an offensive degree, but he’d duck and weave away from direct questions as though he didn’t want to give anything away. Why couldn’t he have found himself a date for Valentine’s Day, if he’d been that keen? He certainly didn’t seem to be heartbroken either. I glanced over at the bar, where he was serving red wine to two women. He wasn’t bad-looking, I supposed, he was socially acceptable and seemed easy enough company.
Flynn looked up suddenly from pouring the wine and caught my eye, which hadn’t been hard because I’d been staring. One eyebrow raised above his glasses’ frame, giving him that lopsided look again. Whatwasthe deal with him? Then it occurred to me that if he was lying about being the owner of this place, the more people he told the lie to, the more chance there was of the real owner getting to hear it. Unless itwasn’ta lie and he really did own the place? But that would mean financial backing, and surely someone with a sound and monied background could find a date? Women would be scrambling over themselves for a good-looking, solvent man. But Flynn didn’t have a date. Or, it appeared, anyone else.
I looked again at the dark figure, who’d stopped giving me the sarcastic glances. There was something rather lonely about him, now I came to think about it. Maybe he’d attached himself to our club to have people to talk to? After all, he’d volunteeredto sit for hours in my car while we waited for Eddie, and, by extension, Fraser. Perhaps he just wanted company.
The thought that he might quite likemewas easily dismissed. Apart from listening to me trot out the miseries of my life amid much snotty crying, and giving me a job when I was clearly desperate, he’d shown no sign of it. He hadn’t asked me out and hadn’t demonstrated any signs of attraction – there had been no attempts at groping, no thoughtless patting of my bum when I passed him behind the bar. And – I faced the idea with a burn of acid up my throat – I would have been the easiest person to get drunk and involved in a casual overnight tumble, wouldn’t I?
Flynn had done none of these things. He had, in short, been a gentleman. Or, putting it another way, he’d been a man who was kind, listened, talked to me and who had no overt interest in simply trying to get me into bed. Which was, I thought, in the quietness of my flat as I was tidying up before going to bed late that night, the definition offriend.
10
We put in another week of following Eddie, which kept to the same pattern as the previous ones. Early start, pick up Fraser, then Flynn and me sitting outside the gym in my car eating whatever we had to hand. I quite often fell asleep as soon as we parked in front of the brightly lit gym. The late nights were getting to me. Flynn didn’t seem to mind and I’d wake up, bleary and with one or two of the door-opening mechanisms embossed on my shoulder, to find that he’d undone my seat belt to aid my unconscious slump, or moved the sandwich I’d been eating from my lap.
