Page 23 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘Yes, well.’ Wren swallowed hard. ‘Now I’m honest and alone.’
Across the bar, the Monday night men, who were back to dominoes again, laughed at something and we all bristled, even though I was fairly sure they couldn’t hear us.
Flynn came over bearing a bowl of crisps and pulled up the chair which had carefully been left spare. ‘It must have been hard for Jordan too,’ he said as though he’d been part of the entire conversation. ‘Mentally exhausting job and trying to fit in a real life.’
Wren smiled at him. ‘I’ve come to that conclusion, yes. Nobody’s fault, not really. Mine, more than hers, if I’m honest.’
Margot looked around the table and her expression was fierce. ‘I don’t think I should have to tell anyone that all conversations here – everything we doas part of the club,’ and this was added with extra spin, directed towards Fraser, Wren and me, ‘is confidential? It goes no further than this table?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said.
Flynn nudged my shoulder.
‘That goes without saying,’ Wren put in.
‘I don’t know who I’d tell.’ Annie’s soft voice came across the table. ‘Eddie is…’
‘I’m a virgin,’ said Fraser, surprising no one, but stopping Annie in her tracks. ‘And if that gets out, I’m dead, so, yeah. No further than this.’
‘So, we can say anything here?’ Margot went on. ‘I needn’t remind you all that I am trained in law, so should anything happen to become public gossip, I would sue for slander, and possibly defamation.’
We all mumbled acceptance. I really didn’t think anyone had enough dirt on anyone else to be a real danger, but I did take her point. Some of this was personal. It hurt. We were making ourselves vulnerable – I’d already had my turnearlier, spilling my life story to Flynn, and that had been hard enough. Now we were basically laying our faults and fears bare in front of people we didn’t know that well, and that was scary.
I admired them all for it.
Margot took a deep breath, but then paradoxically whispered, ‘It was sex. It was all about sex.’
I saw Fraser open his mouth, but the under-table kicker must have been at work once more, because he closed it again, went slightly pink and nodded wisely, although what he was wiseaboutI wasn’t entirely sure.
‘It wasn’t so bad when we were younger,’ Margot went on, still in the peculiar whisper as though she were afraid that the glasses racked on the wall behind the bar might be listening in. ‘I could do it then. But as we were together longer and longer, I found I… couldn’t.’
The whole table had gone quiet now. Fraser appeared to be holding his breath. Even the dominoes team were reduced to clacking tiles and clinking glasses.
‘I knew Bruce wanted to… more often, but I had to bring myself to do it, and as we got busier and busier I began to find it – yes, almostrepulsive. Oh, not Bruce, no, he’s a very handsome man,’ Margot put in hastily, with evident pride. ‘Very successful. A perfect husband in many ways. But not…’ she lowered her voice still further, ‘…in that way.’
‘Was it kinky sex?’ Annie asked in a more normal tone of voice, and slightly surprisingly. ‘Did he like it all fancy in the bedroom? Stockings and suspenders and fantasies about watching you with other men?’
All the rest of us, who had seen Eddie and knew him to be a slightly overweight, balding and possibly prissily concerned with detail middle manager, busily rewrote our mental images.
‘Oh, not that Eddie ever goes in for that stuff,’ she went on,and we all silently scrubbed our visions of Eddie in suspenders, wielding a whip. ‘But he’s told me about some of his workmates. Well! You wouldn’tbelievewhat goes on! My Eddie is strictly twice a week, lights out, thankfully.’ And then, obviously remembering her fears, ‘At least, that’s what I thought,’ she added sadly. ‘I might be wrong, of course.’
‘Er.’ Margot was off balance. I suspected she had shared our musings over Eddie’s predilections. ‘No, no, nothing like that. Very… straightforward. Bruce is a man of simple tastes.’ Now she looked down at the table. ‘I just couldn’t comply with any of them. We hadn’t had… intimacy for three years. I loved him very much, of course, and he was exceptionally talented in… in the bedroom when we were younger. But I began to feel taken advantage of, a little as though we were going through the motions and I just lost the urge. It came as a blow to poor Bruce, of course. He suggested counselling. I refused. That’s when he asked for the divorce.’
More silence. Beside me, Flynn shifted his chair slightly.
‘Had you seen a doctor?’ Annie again. Her soft Yorkshire burr made the words feel sympathetic, not as accusatory as they might have done. ‘They can do wonders, there are creams and all sorts.’
‘I amnotbeing medicalised into having sex with my husband!’ Margot snapped, more loudly than she obviously intended, because the silence extended across the room and the dominoes fell dormant again. ‘It’s not a medical problem,’ she went on, voice lowered again. ‘I simply don’t want sex. That was the deal-breaker, as far as Bruce was concerned. Sex or divorce. I chose divorce.’
Now Margot’s face crumpled. It seemed as though saying the words had drained her of the unemotional sternness that kept her skin taut. ‘It’s dreadful.’ She fumbled in her handbag and drew out a packet of tissues. ‘Truly dreadful. I lovehim, of course I do, but I couldn’t love him as he wanted. I thought we were all right, we were planning for our anniversary, and then…’ she trailed off, words lost to sniffing.
‘It’s all right.’ Wren slipped a consolatory arm around Margot’s shoulders. ‘We understand.’
I thought of Dex and some of his more extreme sexual requests – the arguments that had resulted when I wouldn’t go along with whatever porn-inspired ideas he’d come up with, the feelings that I was letting him down that he played on. Then, my assertions that I wasn’t a performing seal or blow-up doll for him to act out his fantasies on. I gave a little shudder.
Beside me, Flynn shifted again. I wondered if he knew what I was thinking. Some of this had come out in my teary collapse, but not all. Not by any means all. Maybe he could imagine the rest.
‘I drink…dranktoo much,’ I said, feeling I should offer something. ‘I made stupid decisions and Dexter was one of them. There’s a lot of boring backstory, but that is the crux. Too much wine, trying to make myself feel better and only managing to make myself feel worse. And I feel a bit of a fraud being part of this club, because the only person who’s broken my heart is me. I brought it all on myself by getting with a chauvinistic thug like Dexter.’
