Page 32 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘Come on.’ He put a solicitous arm around my shoulders. ‘I’ve got a spare room and I’ll tuck you up, then go over to your place and make it secure.’
I ought to have protested. I ought to have maintained that I would be fine in my own flat; Dexter had been arrested, which would give us a day or so’s grace before he started anything else, and I could put a curtain over the doorway in the meantime. But I didn’t. All my strength seemed to have ebbed away, seeping out of me with the blood that my slashed feet had left. I just wanted to be helped into a warm bed and not to think about anything for a few hours, so I let Flynn guide me upstairs as though I were an elderly invalid, and I fell into the bed he offered and unconsciousness.
Flynn let me spend the next couple of days upstairs. The flat was bigger than I’d imagined, with two bedrooms, a large living room, a storage area and a wonderful kitchen and bathroom that looked as though they’d been newly installed.
Walking was painful, so I tottered about using the furniture to bear my weight. By the time Flynn came up for lunch on Wednesday, I’d reached the point of being able to stand without seeping and I made sandwiches.
‘What do we do when he comes back?’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘Dexter. I know him, Flynn. The club showed him up.Ishowed him up. He won’t like that and he won’t rest until he’s made me suffer.’ That awful flash of thought that I’d had the night Dex had broken his way in –he’s like my brother. ‘I know men like him.’
Flynn regarded me carefully from over a toasted cheese sandwich. ‘You really do have a pretty shit family,’ he said, as though he knew exactly what I was thinking. But then, I had gone into some detail about my parents and their somewhat sideways approach to bringing up children, which mostly seemed to involve pitting them against one another and siding with the boy until the girl was a broken shadow with no conviction in herself.
‘Yes, that has occurred to me once or twice.’ I made a rueful face. ‘But it was my normal. I didn’t know any other way of being and I’m only gradually making my way out from it. I thought that’s what men arelike,’ I finished.
Flynn pointed at himself. ‘Me too?’
‘You were different. You weren’t trying to pick me up, for a start.’
‘And you thought I was gay. And, before you go down that line again, I’m not responsible for the flat. I got interior designers in.’
‘Stop it.’ He made me laugh, that’s what it was. That was why Flynn was so different to every other man I’d ever known. He didn’t mind looking silly, he didn’t mind poking fun at himself. Most other males of my acquaintance would have drowned themselves off Flamborough Head rather than reveal any weaknesses or vulnerability. Flynn didn’t seem to mind looking a bit daft now and then. ‘You are the most together man I’ve ever met. I’m having trouble adjusting.’
He jerked his head sideways, negating my opinion, but then I was very used to men doing that too. ‘Not always.I am not altogether the vision of combined manliness and emotional intelligence that you see before you right now. Sometimes I can be very, very stupid indeed. Incidentally, Eddie and Annie? He didn’t really behave like a man in the throes of an affair the other night, did he?’
I stopped chewing. ‘Are you trying to hint to me that you had an affair? Is this the subtlety I’ve heard so much about but rarely seen demonstrated in the male – particularly when Fraser is about?’
Flynn finished his sandwich and put the plate down. ‘Er, no. I think you might be hearing my attempt to change the subject and conflating two very different things.’
‘But why change the subject? You know all about the club, all about what happened to us, why are you so coy about your own love life?’
He got up, brushing crumbs off his lap onto the – beautiful and very obviously expensively restored – oak floorboards. ‘I’m not coy. I just don’t think any of it is relevant, that’s all.’
I wondered what he’d do if I asked. But I wouldn’t ask,couldn’task. I’d been trained out of trying to get sensible answers a long time ago: parents who pretended not to hear anything unless it was my brother asking if he could have fifty quid to go out with his mates, and a brother who seemed to believe I’d been put on this earth purely for his amusement.
NowonderI let myself get used by people like Dex. No wonder I made shallow, casual friends like Demi, who had really only included me in her life because I was convenient and available. I wondered why it had taken me so long to come to these conclusions, and then realised that I hadn’t come to them by myself, the Heartbreak Club had prodded me in that general direction.
‘Annie and Eddie,’ Flynn went on, pulling me back into the moment. He probably thought I’d been quiet for too long. Maybehe even thought I’d been wondering about him. ‘She clearly adores him and he really seems to love her too. I must admit all that “little lady” stuff made me want to sit him down in front of some feminist literature, but if it works for them…’
‘I suppose…’ I said slowly, running with his desire to change the subject, ‘that it’s possible to have an affair and still be in love with your wife?’
‘They don’t have children, do they?’
‘No. Annie skates over that subject a bit, which makes me gather that they both wanted them but it never happened.’
‘So maybe he’s got a secret family somewhere? Maybe he met someone else to do the “children” thing with? And he’s leading a double life but this is the first time that Annie has had suspicions?’
I stared at Flynn. ‘That’s an odd conclusion to come to.’
‘Too much daytime TV.’ He waved airily. ‘Anyway, now I’ve met him, somehow I can’t quite see Eddie as a babe-magnet. He evenlookslike an administration manager in the pork products industry.’
‘Someone might find that absolutely riveting. Plus, women go for all types of men. Dexter is a case in point.’
Flynn sighed. ‘I cannot believe you found that attractive. He looks like the stereotype of a drunken street fighter. Not at all the sort of man I would have thought you’d go for.’
I stood up now and instantly got stabbed in the feet by the pain of a thousand small cuts. ‘Ow.’ I hobbled a few steps.
