Page 28 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
Dexter. Drunk, by the sound of it, or coked up, shouting on the threshold and hitting the door with a fist. I froze. My phone was across the room on the side by the TV, where I’d left it so I didn’t keep getting disturbed by the messages buzzing back and forth from the group. If I got up to fetch it, he’d hear me.
I hoped downstairs were calling the police again, but the silence from the flat below made me think they might not be there. So I just sat, again, with the covers pulled to my neck, and listened.
Dexter wasn’t being as outright loud as last time. Less of the yelling and more direct force. I could see the door shuddering as he thumped against it. The whole of the rest of the world seemed to have gone silent, as though there were only me and Dexter stillalive, and the door was cracking around the hinges and the lock with the force he was putting into his attack.
Eventually I called out. I was afraid that the door wouldn’t withstand too much more of his concentrated attention, and he obviously knew I was here, when last time he’d turned up he’d not known I was in. ‘What do you want, Dexter?’
It wasn’t enough. It didn’t encompass all the things Ireallywanted to say to him, like how dare he keep turning up when he’d been the one to end things, and why did he think I’d still be waiting for him? Because hadn’t I always waited before? Hadn’t I always let him in before? He was only repeating his usual behaviour – he’d left me alone long enough for me to have felt punished and desperate and now he was coming back to reclaim his property. He’d done it before and I could hardly blame him for thinking that I’d behave as I’d always done; it wasmethat had changed, after all.
At least he’d stopped whacking the door.
‘I needs to use the bathroom.’ A wheedling, whining tone. It was drugs, then. Drunk, Dexter was overtly aggressive. On coke, he thought he was God’s gift and could talk his way into and out of anything. ‘Aw, let me in, babe! I just wants to talk to you, to see you!’
‘We’re over, Dex.’ I tried to keep calm, although my heart was beating fast enough to make me feel sick. I crept out of the bed, trying not to make any sound – if he thought I was coming to unlock the door, he’d make even more noise. ‘You finished with me, remember? You were going back to Leeds to someone called Henty?’ Who, if I remembered the swift, final conversation in front ofOur Flag Means Death, had bigger tits than me and was always up for sex.
What onearthhad I ever seen in Dexter? Apart from my rock-bottom self-esteem telling me that any man wasbetter than none, and his lazy entitled behaviour feeling familiar. A sudden crash of realisation on the back of my neck felt like a bucket of cold water. I’d been dating mybrother, or someone so much like him that they could have been mental twins.
‘You and me, babe, it’s always you and me!’ Dexter was still on with the persuasive tone. It probably meant that Henty, whoever she was, had thrown him out and he’d run out of friends to sofa-surf with.
‘No, no it isn’t,’ I said, seizing my phone. What should I do? Ring the police? They’d come, but it might take a while. Dexter could smash the flat up in the time it would take them to get here. He could, a little thought entered my head reluctantly, like a mouse tiptoeing through a cat show, kill me.
The last message had been from the Heartbreak Club’s group chat, so I pressed reply.
Dexter is outside my door. I think he’s going to smash it down.
As though to reinforce my fears, Dex resumed his onslaught on the door. It was cheap and badly hung, there was a street door to the entryway that was supposed to be kept locked at all times, but the flat above mine was empty and being redecorated, so the necessity of tradesmen coming in and out meant that the lock had been disabled by the landlord. It had never mattered before, in this quiet little North Yorkshire backwater, where the worst you could expect was a few teenagers sitting in the passage furtively vaping and a shout of ‘get out of it, you little buggers!’ was enough to send them scampering home.
We hadn’t expected to have to keep out a Dexter. The door hadn’t been constructed to keep out a Dexter. It hadn’t, truthfully, been constructed to keep out more than the most cursory attempt at burglary. It locked, but the wood was old and the hinges didn’tseem to have been replaced since the rooms had been storage for the chemist’s shop the building had once been. The rent was so cheap that I’d always supposed that the doors weren’t the required fireproof ones that rental properties were legally supposed to have. Nobody complained because nobody could afford to move.
Fireproofness had never been tested. Dexter-proofness was being tested to the max right now, as he redoubled his attack. The wood splintered around the hinges.
My phone pinged.
Are you all right? Are you safe?
That was Wren.
I answered honestly, my fingers shaking.
I don’t know.
I tried reason. ‘Go away, Dex. Come back tomorrow, we can talk about this later.’
I should have known. Drug binges and Dexter were not amenable to sensible suggestions or being talked down. He was fired up and I had rejected him, as he saw it, by not opening the door. I’d never said no to Dexter before, mostly because I hadn’t dared, and my lack of self-assertion had led him to believe that I was a pushover.
‘I told you,darling, I needs the bathroom!’
And here we were. Middle of the night silence everywhere, and a man breaking down my door.
With my heart pounding so fast that my stomach ricocheted with every beat, I dialled 999.
‘What’syour emergency?’
‘My boyfriend – myex-boyfriend is trying…’
The door exploded into splinters and Dexter reached over me and took the phone. ‘It’s fine, a misunderstanding, that’s all,’ he said and disconnected the call. The door lay in shattered ruins around the flat, giving the lie to his words. I could only hope that they’d try and trace my call, but Dex had sounded so cool, so reasonable, and if it was a busy night then I might have to wait until everywhere else went quiet before I got some passing officers coming by to check up on me.
Looking at Dexter, it might be too late by then. In fact, the next three minutes might be too late, judging by the way he was bunching his muscles and staring around the flat as though in search of some ‘other man’ that he was no doubt convinced was behind my not letting him in. That I had someone else, in his mind, would be the only possible reason for my not welcoming him back with open arms. No woman could function without a man, in Dexter’s eyes.
