Page 2 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘Demi, we’re over. I wouldn’t have him back if he had his willy replaced with diamonds.’
She winced. ‘Ow.’
‘Yes, not the best metaphor, now I come to think of it. But youknow what I mean.’ I remembered that poster, strobing into my head in the wine bar, and the idea that had come with it. ‘I’m going to join a club. To help me get over him.’
Demi twisted her lips. Her filler needed redoing, I noticed, and she’d compensated by using a brighter shade of lipstick which didn’t suit her. It also strobed through my head, reigniting the headache which had only just begun to respond to paracetamol. ‘Hm.’ She looked at me sideways. ‘You two break up more regularly than a well-used Lego set.’ Demi had children, so I forgave this simile. ‘You always say you’re going to get over him, but you always take him back.’
‘Not this time.’
‘You always say that, too.’ Demi seized her headset. ‘He’s an utter waste of space; he’s a criminal thug and I still have no idea why you ever got together in the first place.’ She smiled, a somewhat impersonal smile. ‘I’m only telling you this because I’m your friend, remember.’
Rub it in, why don’t you,I thought, clenching my jaw without meaning to. Dexter had, at the very least, stuck around, presumably for reasons of his own. I remembered my resolution that this time…this time, I’d grab the tattered edges of what little self-esteem I had and pull it tight around me. ‘This is a support group. For disappointed Valentines.’ I pulled on my headset. I needed to be on top of the calls this morning or I’d be put on performance management, I’d been warned.
But this time I’d find my inner strength.This timeI wouldn’t turn into that weak and helpless woman, scared and overridden and shouted down until I backtracked and apologised and made promises that I knew would be impossible to keep. Iwouldn’t.
Resolution was all very well but selling household insurance down the phone to unwilling customers gave it a good testing. After an eight-hour shift of unanswered telephones,shouting, one engagement in conversation with an elderly lady who thought I was calling about her cat, and the return of the headache, I was on the point of just going home and going to bed.
‘Have a lovely evening,’ Demi chirruped, flipping off her headset and picking up her bag. ‘Let me know when Dexter comes round. I promise not to sayI told you sowhen you take him back. Honestly.’
I found I was narrowing my eyes as I trailed out after her, lurching slightly in my mismatched shoes. Demi’s certainty that I’d have Dexter reinstalled by Tuesday morning at the latest gave my resolve a poke in the conscience.
I just needed some help. Some support. Which was why I was back in the wine bar. It was surprisingly quiet, and the same barman who had offered to help me home on Saturday night was still polishing glasses. They might even be the same glasses.
‘What can I get you?’ He put the cloth down and then recognised me. ‘Ah. It’s you. Are you wanting that Valentines group thing? They’re over there.’ He pointed with the stem of the wine glass. ‘Can I get you anything? Orange juice?’
The light was reflecting off his little round spectacles, so I couldn’t see his eyes, which meant I didn’t know whether he was being sarcastic or not.
‘I’ll have a large Sauvignon Blanc, thank you.’ I pulled out my phone and tried to find a card that might have some money on it. ‘And where are they?’
‘Table in the corner. Three others, so far. Funny that, I’d have thought the place would be rammed with people wanting to badmouth the opposite sex.’ He put the glass of wine down on the counter and my mouth watered. ‘It does seem to be a popular sport.’
That was way too cynical a comment for a Monday night, so I didn’t answer him.
‘Potential Disappointed Valentines’ Club member?’ As I reached the table, one of the women stood up. She was tall, blonde, with impeccable make-up and very blue eyes, which reminded me distressingly of my old head teacher at school. Her manner was similar too, very direct, and her delivery was clipped, as though she bit the words off longer sentences. ‘I’m Margot. Welcome to our first meeting. The club was my idea.’
The other two women looked up at me; both had varying degrees of hopelessness behind their eyes. I suspected that I, too, radiated despondency – in fact, I knew I did. It was, after all, how Dexter had hooked me. Well, no more. I set my mouth into lines of ‘stiff upper lip’. But then, a club for disappointed anything was hardly going to be made up of smiling people full of outgoing enthusiasm, was it? The clue was in the name. I gave my lip permission to sag, just a little.
‘I’m Annie,’ said the greying-haired lady in the beaded top. She looked nervous, as though wine bars weren’t really her thing, and was twirling a tall glass in which a single slice of lime bobbed amid bubbles.
‘And I’m Wren.’ This person was younger than me, mid-twenties, perhaps. Pretty, soft-voiced and nursing a cocktail which made me jealous. Then I looked around me, remembered that daiquiris had propelled me to this in the first place, and decided that sticking with wine was probably less likely to make me behave unwisely. Margot did not appear to have a drink at all. I went and sat down on the seat furthest from her.
‘I’m Phoebe,’ I said, trying not to wince at the sound of my own name. My parents, I’d always thought, hadn’t bothered with much of a discussion; they’d let the name book fall open and stuck a pin in it. ‘Sorry, yes, I know it’s a dreadful name. I’m usually just called Fee.’
The two women nearest me chorused adownbeat ‘Hello’. Margot eyeballed me sternly with a look that made me want to hang my head and mutter about the dog eating my homework.
‘Phoebe is a lovely name,’ she said, definitively, as though my view of my own name was completely wrong. ‘Classical. If I’d had children, Phoebe would be at the top of the list for names. For girls, obviously.’
She obviously hadn’t had to spell it out for everyone. My background was not ‘classical’ and I’d worked hard to leave it behind. Well, I’dtriedto leave it behind by educating myself through reading, although evidently quite a lot of it still tiptoed in my shadow.
At the table by the window, two men incongruously playing dominoes clacked away. Their conversation sounded a lot more lively and fun than the one I was currently enduring and I wondered whether I could suddenly discover that I was no longer a disappointed valentine but had a previously undiscovered passion for table games and Cinzano.
No. I was here to make good my decision to never take Dexter back. While the domino players looked fun, it would be a ‘cloth cap and Norman Wisdom’ type of fun and I wasn’t quite ready for Christmas cracker jokes and guffawing yet.
At my table, everyone looked at their glasses. Nobody seemed to know what to say, so I drank my wine in short, jerky sips. Wren wasn’t drinking her cocktail, I noticed, just twisting the glass between her fingers. Annie was staring into hers, glumly watching the lime slice bob up and down amid the bubbles. They all looked less thwarted in love and more as though they’d received a life sentence.
Margot turned her wrist and looked at her watch. I hadn’t seen anyone wear an actual watch for years. ‘Well, as it’s eight thirty-five, I think we should start now,’ she said, in a ‘chairing the meeting’ voice. ‘Anyone else will have to fit in around us.’
Now all four of us looked over at the rest of the bar. Even for a Monday night it was quiet. Outside the windows, the Yorkshire night was drawing in against the glass as though wanting some comfort from the light within. The men playing dominoes sat in their corner, as though this were the pub it had once been before rebranding and a desire to take the small town upmarket had seen its dark-painted interior and sticky floor replaced with pale wood and parquet. The pub clientele had all moved up the road to the still-sticky and convivial Black Horse, and the wine bar was mostly frequented by tourists. And me. But, in late February, the tourist season hadn’t yet started. So tonight it was occupied solely by disappointed women, two old guys who couldn’t be bothered to hike up the steep hill, and the barman, who seemed to be the only person who worked here.
