Page 3 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
I wondered if he’d ever thought of installing a juke box. Then I tried to imagine Dua Lipa playing into this solemn atmosphere and almost smiled for the first time in days. Even Harry Styles would have had a job on to lift the mood in here.
‘Shall I go first?’ Margot leaned forward across the table, seemingly filled with an almost indecent desire to share her story. I wanted to sayIf you must, but didn’t, mostly because the wine was doing its work, blunting the edges of life.
‘My husband told me he wanted a divorce the day before Valentine’s,’ Margot said, matter-of-factly. ‘I’d been planning a long weekend. Val d’Isère, I thought, really terribly popular just now.’
I thought that was the name of an opera singer, so I was quite pleased when Wren said, ‘For the skiing?’ and stopped me looking like a total culture-free idiot.
‘Of course,’ Margot replied, as though there were no possible reason for anyone going anywhere unless it was to slide down mountains. ‘I was going to surprise him with it forhis birthday. His birthday is 17 February, you see,’ she added. ‘But he sat me down and told me that as far as he is concerned our marriage is over and he wants a divorce.’
She stopped speaking suddenly, as though the reality of the situation had only just dawned on her. ‘He wants a divorce,’ she said again, more softly. ‘After thirteen years.’ Those bright blue eyes clouded and she blinked rapidly.
We murmured consolation. Margot seemed to have come to an end, so Annie, the greying-haired lady, took over. Her top swung and the beads clattered against the edge of the table with a noise that made my teeth want to chew my wine glass. ‘I think my husband is having an affair,’ she said, in a monotone that made the words seem free from any emotion. ‘He forgot Valentine’s Day this year, for the first time in forty years.’
Margot cocked her head. There was an interrogative shine in her eyes now. ‘Any other signs?’ she asked.
Annie sighed. ‘Oh, the usual ones. Secret phone calls, lost weight, he’s bought himself some new clothes, taken up going to the gym. All the clichés. He’s snappy with me, short tempered, you know. He’s sixty, we’d been saving so he could retire this year, but he’s suddenly stopped talking about all the plans we’d made – it doesn’t look good.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So I’m joining this group because I think I’m going to need support when it all comes out.’
She looked around at the three of us. ‘I don’t have many friends,’ Annie went on. ‘It’s always been just me and Eddie. If I lose him…’
I swallowed hard. I’d been thinking that this group would be a bunch of women like me, who wanted to meet up every so often, drink, shout about what a bunch of bastards our exes were, sing two verses of ‘I Will Survive’and try to pick up a man at the bar. I’d not considered that real emotion might come into things.
Everyone nodded, as though committing Annie’s betrayal to memory. I wanted to skip past this bit and get to the part where we all bought another round of drinks and possibly managed a chorus of ‘Respect’, but there didn’t seem to be any hurrying anyone. Plus the lack of juke box would mean we’d have to go a cappella, which might be a little cold-blooded, even for me.
‘I mean,’ Annie added, ‘I’ve got my groups of course. French lessons, crochet club, bowls on Wednesday…’
We carried on nodding.
‘…reading to the elderly on a Friday, knit and chat alternate Tuesdays, supporting refugees – but that’s only once a month of course – collecting for the Red Cross, Daffodil club…’
Our nodding had slowed somewhat.
‘…theWI, our baking group, and organising outings for the playgroup.’
There was a pause as we all waited to see whether she’d run out of associations.
‘But I don’t have many what you could call realfriends,’ Annie went on, rather begging the question as to why she bothered with all these activities. ‘Oh, there’s Sally of course, but all she wants to do is talk about her grandchildren.’
After a slightly stunned moment of silence, when Annie failed to reveal fifteen more friends of varying realities, attention switched to Wren. Like her namesake bird, she was small and tidy and somehow… brown. Her hair, her clothes, everything was over-washed with a kind of mental sepia, forcing her into the background even though she was currently the centre of attention.
‘Jordan didn’t bother with Valentine’s Day,’ she said, looking down into her cocktail. ‘Nothing. I’d bought some chocolates, thought we’d go out for dinner, you know, that sort of thing, but I got…’ A shrug. ‘So I asked why – I mean, surely, even a voucher, would that be too much trouble?’ She took a deep breath. ‘I got “I appreciate you every day, why do you want me to do something extra just because some card shop says you have to spend money? That’s capitalism at its finest.” Or something like that. So I ended it.’
I remembered the barman expressing similar sentiments when I’d been falling over my own feet on Saturday night and glanced over at him to see if he was listening. He seemed to be sorting out money in the till and was therefore presumably not in a position to appreciate anti-capitalist rhetoric.
Wren sighed again and Margot leaned forward across the table to lay a hand on Wren’s wrist. ‘Typical bloody man,’ Margot said, in a tone so laden with vitriol that it ought to have burned a hole through the table. ‘Taking women for granted. Not wanting to spend so much as a fiver if it means inconveniencing themselves.’
‘Er,’ said Wren, looking even smaller and browner.
‘No, no, I understand how you feel.’ Margot’s conversational juggernaut was rolling forward, squashing all objection. ‘We do everything for them. We cook, we clean, we organise their lives. We’re like social secretaries, housekeepers and sex workers all rolled into one, and all we ask is a little bit of gratitude now and again. But oh no, it’s too hard for them to even go online and order a bunch of flowers once a year to say, “Thank you for all you do”. Honestly. Men!’
‘Jordan is a woman,’ Wren said quickly, obviously trying to squeeze this vital information into the conversation before Margot dug herself in any deeper.
We all looked off in different directions in the resulting silence. Over in the corner, the barman was now doing something to a gin bottle that made it look as though he was trying to earwig on our conversation. Although why he would want to listen tofour women doing Sad Face and complaining, I had no idea. He wore an all-black uniform too, shirt and trousers and a tie, which made him look like a formal ninja.
‘How about you, Fee?’ Margot was using me to distract everyone from how deeply her foot was currently in her mouth, obviously. ‘What made you want to join our group?’
Three pairs of eyes swung my way. Four, actually, because the barman was looking over now, still uncoiling a roll of plastic which had inexplicably sealed the gin into a pirate-ship-shaped parcel.
‘I dunno,’ I said, awkward at being the focus of attention. ‘My ex walked out on Valentine’s Day. I mean, he was always walking out, but he usually came back. This time…’ I shrugged. ‘This time I really don’t want him back. I know he’s not… good for me,’ I finished rather lamely.
