Page 29 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘So then,’ he said, conversationally. ‘Who’re you fucking now?’
I could hardly speak. My jaw had clenched itself but was somehow managing to chatter away against my teeth. ‘Nobody. Honestly, there’s nobody, Dexter.’ Conciliatory, as I’d learned to be when he was in one of these rages.
Behind him, the open doorway beckoned. The front door, open to the street. If I could just get out…
I could hear my phone pinging messages, but it was where Dexter had thrown it down after cutting off my police call. I didn’t dare go and pick it up.
‘So, how’ve you been?’ He leaned against the wall. If I could move him further into the flat… and if my legs would cooperate, because right now they would hardly bear my weight.
‘I thought you said you needed the bathroom?’ If he went inthere, then I could be out before he finished. But his bladder appeared to no longer be the main cause of concern.
‘Yeah, it can wait.’ He’d folded his arms and was watching me out of bloodshot eyes. ‘Came to see how you’re doing.’
‘I’m good.’ My cheeks were wobbling with my attempts to get my mouth under control. ‘How are you?’
Like a dinner party conversation. Like a polite meeting in the street, while we stood with the wreckage of my door scattered around the carpet, Dexter casual as ever and me standing in my pyjamas, exposed and horribly, dreadfully afraid.
‘Oh, you know.’ He walked further into the flat, his eyes moving from side to side, on the hunt for any evidence of another man. ‘Decided I’d give you another chance.’
As he came closer, I moved to one side. If he would only leave the doorway clear…
As he reached out to touch me, I ducked under his arm and dived for the stairs, feeling the sharp wood of the shredded door slicing into my bare feet as I went over it. Down the narrow staircase, banging my knuckles against the wall as I went, with Dexter swearing and coming behind me, until I hesitated at the bottom. Where to go? My neighbours’ doorway was dark and quiet, they weren’t there, there was no refuge with them.
I ran out into the night, pattering little bloody footprints on the pavement as Dex hurled himself through the doorway into the street.
‘Fucking slag! Don’t you try running!’
But running was all I had and I fled into the middle of the road, feeling the chill of the night biting at me through my flimsy pyjamas and the sting of gravel on my ruined feet. If he caught me – if he caught me now, I was dead and I knew it. Dexter full of cocaine wouldn’t care about how much troublehe’d be in, he’d kill me where I stood and then run. He could be clear and away before anyone found what was left of me.
‘Fee!’
I almost didn’t react to my name, I was so frozen with fear. But I jerked my head up to see Flynn standing in the side entry to the wine bar, wearing a striped dressing gown, incongruous in this terror-filled night.
‘Come here, come to me. Quickly!’
Dexter was almost on me now. He’d hesitated in the street, scanning for people, scanning for vehicles. He’d retained enough of his faculties, clearly, to not want witnesses. When he saw Flynn, he roared.
‘That’s the bastard, isn’t it?’
As quick as a ghost, Flynn wrapped a gowned arm around me and scooped me into the passageway around the back of the wine bar, slamming and locking the gate behind us.
‘Is that Dexter?’
Iwantedto quip that, no, I had a veritable army of insanely jealous men on Class A drugs who spent their leisure time being surly at me, but I couldn’t speak. Literally could not get a word out. I just nodded.
‘Okay. Okay, it’s all right, I’ve got you.’ Flynn hugged me tight against him. The shivers started and we heard the sound of Dexter trying to climb over the gate and get into the yard. ‘Come on, inside. The police are, hopefully, on their way, but it might take them a while. The police are coming!’ he finished by shouting at the lumpen shapes that were Dexter’s knuckles, gripping the top of the gate.
A car swept into the end of the road, headlights fierce, and Dexter dropped back to earth, swearing copiously.
‘I… I can’t…’ was all I could get out, shuddering like an earthquake zone.
Feet, running. Lights. A loud shout and the sound of something heavy falling, then voices. Voices I recognised.
‘Flynn? We’re here, it’s us.’
Wren. Wren was speaking from the other side of the bolted gate, sounding calm and assured.
‘You sit there. Okay?’ Flynn guided me to the little chairs we’d sat on before and carefully placed me so all I had to do was bend my legs, then he went over and unlocked the gate. I could see through and out into the street beyond, where Dexter was flat on his face on the road’s surface, being sat on firmly by Fraser. Margot appeared to be reading him the riot act.
