Page 30 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
Fraser saw me looking and gave me an enormous grin and a thumbs up. Dexter tried to wriggle underneath him, but Fraser pushed on the back of his head until he went quiet. Wren came into the yard.
‘Fee! Are you all right?’
Iwantedto say that yes, of course I was. But my feet were bleeding, I was cold in my pyjamas and the wooden surface of this seat was damp. I tried to speak, but all I could get out was a kind of half-swallowed howl.
‘She’s here, Margot, she’s all right,’ Wren called back over her shoulder, peeling off her jacket and putting it around me. Margot glanced up, nodded and then went back to speaking to Dexter, who had gone very still. Flynn was out there too now, with his stripy dressing gown flapping, and looking a little bit like an escaped patient from an institution.
I saw him bend close to Dexter’s head and show him something on his phone screen, holding it out at arm’s length, strangely confrontational. He was speaking but I couldn’t hear what he said, though it was clearly something that made Dexter strain under Fraser’s incapacitating solidity, then freeze as though he’d just beengiven bad news.
Flynn tucked his phone away, nodded once and came back into the yard. ‘The police will be here shortly,’ he said.
‘Take Fee inside,’ Margot said. ‘We’re in control out here.’
‘I got him!’ Fraser added cheerily, as though he were reclining on a sun lounger rather than my ex-boyfriend. ‘You’ll be all right now, Feebs.’
‘Your poor feet.’ Wren looked down at my bleeding soles. ‘We’d better get those cleaned up.’
I couldn’t stand either. It was ridiculous. I wanted to say how ridiculous it was, but the words wouldn’t come; they were smothered by the tears that had started falling, prevented from forming by my mouth twisting around the sobs. Wren put her arm around me and Flynn took my hand and between them they managed to lead me in through the side door and into the wine bar, where Flynn fetched two chairs down off a table and sat down beside me.
‘I’m going to help Margot,’ Wren said, looking from me to Flynn and back again. ‘Look after her, Flynn.’
‘Absolutely,’ he said, pushing up the sleeves of the dressing gown and keeping hold of my hand. His presence so close and warm was reassuring, and now I was indoors I felt safer and the tears began to dry up, leaving me hiccupping and still in possession of a mouth that wouldn’t cooperate.
‘Would you like a brandy?’ Flynn asked, staring around the bottles on their racks. ‘Supposed to be good for shock.’
I thought about it. Alcohol, warming me, scaffolding me from the inside. Fake courage. I shook my head. ‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea,’ I managed to get out and Flynn laughed, an odd bark of a laugh.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Fee, I’m going to leave you here a moment and put the kettle on upstairs. Will you be all right?Margot, Wren and Fraser are there outside and acting as a human shield so that piece of filth can’t get up and come after you again.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ I nearly said that I had no ‘worse’ to descend to, so this was going to be as good as it got for a while.
‘Okay.’ Flynn dithered. ‘I don’t want to leave you.’
‘I need tea.’ My voice sounded a bit more normal now. ‘And probably some Dettol or something.’
We looked at the trail of bloody footprints on the tiled floor, where I’d walked in from outside.
‘Tea and Dettol, yep.’ Flynn moved to the door again. ‘Actually, not sure I’ve got any Dettol. Not really much call for it in the barkeeping trade. I might have some antiseptic cream or something, will that do?’
‘That,’ I said, my voice gaining in strength with every word, ‘will do nicely.’
12
The police arrived about half an hour later, at the same time as Annie, accompanied surprisingly by Eddie.
‘This is my husband, Eddie,’ she introduced him and we all had to pretend that we’d never set eyes on him before and nod and murmur hello.
Fraser, showing an intelligence that outer appearances belied, especially outer appearances that were wearing a Bugs Bunny pyjama set and slippers, said, ‘Oh, I know you, I sees you in the mornings at the gym!’
‘Oh, yes.’ Eddie looked a little embarrassed about that. Almost as though he didn’t want anyone to know about the gym thing.
‘We came as soon as we could,’ Annie went on. ‘Eddie had to get the car out, you see.’
The police interviewed me and told me they’d arrested Dexter. However, since he hadn’t actually attacked me, all they were going to be able to get him for was threatening behaviour, and the likelihood was that he would be out and about within theweek, and did I have anywhere else to go, particularly since my front door was now missing?
‘She can come here,’ Flynn said confidently.
‘Are you sure, sir? We can’t guarantee that the individual won’t try again.’ One of the policemen looked worried at the proposition. He had no doubt met people like Dexter before. ‘His sort usually do,’ he added. ‘I’d take out an injunction, if I were you,’ he said to me.
