Page 27 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘Do they? Oh well, you’ll probably be all right then.’
Everyone else ignored him.
‘Like I said, he’s bought himself some new clothes too,’ Annie added. ‘Nothing fancy, but it always used to take me threatening to throw his old stuff in the bin to get Eddie to buy new trousers.’
‘But if he’s lost weight,’ I said, ‘he will need new clothes, won’t he?’
Everyone made ‘that’s right’ noises.
‘And then there’s the phone calls and the emails.’ Annie almost seemed upset at my, perfectly reasonable I thought, observation. ‘If it wasjustthe gym and the clothes, I’d think he was on a health kick. We see so much of it on TV, telling you not to eat thisand not to eat that and I know he worries about his health. But he’s been getting these phone calls, usually in the morning…’ Her face crumpled under her ‘sensible’ haircut. ‘And he takes the phone out into the garden to talk. He’s got himself a new email address too – we normally share the same one, it’s only for Amazon orders and suchlike. But the other day he was on the laptop and I saw… I couldn’t tell what it was, but it wasn’t his usual email account. So he’s talking to someone and emailing someone and he’s keeping it hidden from me.’
‘Have you tried checking his mileage?’ I asked.
Five pairs of eyes swivelled my way.
‘Mileage?’ Margot said, very carefully, widening her eyes in my direction and saying as clearly as if she’d shouted in my ear,We’re not supposed to know anything about Eddie’s movements, she doesn’t know we’re following him!
I ignored them. ‘I saw it on some website or another. You make a note of his mileage in the car, then ask some casual questions about his day. If he says he was at work all day and his mileage is way out, you’ve got evidence.’
Annie looked down at her drink. ‘But that would mean I didn’t trust him,’ she said sadly.
‘But youdon’ttrust him!’
‘It’s not that I don’t trust him…’ Annie looked conflicted. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Part of me thinks Eddie would never – you know, have an affair. Not my Eddie! He’s been as reliable as… as this table, for forty years, not so much as a sniff of another woman on the horizon. All right, I know he had a bit of a “thing” for Kirsty Wark, but, let’s face it, she’s not going to throw everything over to move to Yorkshire for a pork products admin manager, is she?’
None of us expressed any opinions as to Ms Wark’s predilection for bacon and its producers, so Annie went on. ‘He’s not the most demonstrative of men, but it’s been flowers everyValentine’s Day and he always picks me out something nice for my birthday and Christmas. But since January, he’s been a bit, well,distantis the best way I can put it. And, of course, like I said, he forgot Valentine’s Day, and…’ She pulled out a tissue and dabbed at her eyes, ‘…first time in forty years,’ she muttered indistinctly from behind it.
After everyone had gone and we’d wiped the detritus of Fraser and the peanuts off the table, Flynn and I lounged behind the bar.
‘Doyouthink he’s having an affair? Eddie, I mean, not Fraser,’ I asked him.
Flynn made a dismissive movement and picked up some empty glasses to put back on the racking. ‘I hate to say it, but it’s hard to see what else it could be.’
‘I wonder what Annie will do?’
‘Three choices. She’ll pretend it never happened and carry on, turning a blind eye to her husband living a double life; she’ll let him know that she knows and he’ll pretend to stop seeing the other woman while living a double life and he’ll just be more careful; she’ll kick him out, get divorced and live a brilliant life solo. She might get a dachshund and a blonde bob. Or a wine bar.’
I looked at him. ‘Does that mean you…?’
We were disturbed by a party of ten, staying apparently in one of the holiday cottages up on the moor and desperate for wine. They kept us busy for the evening, asking questions about the locality and what there was to do on wet March evenings. I didn’t have time to ask Flynn anything about his somewhat cryptic statement, and he was in a hurry to clean down and close up after the group had left.
I went home and showered, then lay in bed, thinking. My phone was pinging with messages from the others, arranging atimetable for following Eddie on Thursday, but, apart from indicating that I was up for it, I muted the messages.
There was only one reason that Flynn would suggest that Annie could open a wine bar. I absolutely couldnotsee quiet, always rather sad, Annie cheerily serving Sauvignon to smartly suited businessmen or inventing cocktails to entice the hen party crowd.
He’d been cheated on. He’d run away to open a wine bar.
Flynn, who always seemed so ‘together’, so composed. But now I came to think of it, there was a tinge of dark humour about him, as though he rode the edge of sharp pain. Flynn, with his careful appearance, always well turned out but not showy, as though he didn’t want to be seen. Plus his careful avoidance of even the most oblique hint of anything flirty towards me. No reason heshouldfind me attractive, obviously, but my main experience of men was that they couldn’t be alone with a woman for more than three minutes without making a boob joke or turning an innocent remark into an excuse for a dirty laugh. Fraser was a case in point.
Flynn was different. Now I came to think of it, he radiated hurt. I made a note to ask him about it. Then I turned over and went to sleep.
11
I was dreaming. I was in a car, going over speed bumps which made everything rattle. Thump. Thump.
Then my nerves sparked me awake, kicking my brain into action like a battery connection. Or acid pouring through my body.
‘Let me IN!’
