Page 41 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
Eddie took a deep breath but kept his eyes downcast. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you. But you mustn’t tell Annie. I’ll tell her myself, but I need to do it in my own way and my own time. I need to think how best to phrase it.’
Visions ofincrediblykinky sex swam before my eyes again for a second. Flynn nudged me and when I looked at him, he nodded towards Eddie. Clearly questioning the accused was my job today.
‘Eddie,’ I said as gently as I could manage. ‘You’ll feel better if you just tell us.’
‘All right. But not here.’ Eddie tried to raise his head. ‘I can’t face them now. Can we go downstairs?’
‘I need a milkshake,’ came Fraser’s voice from the doorway. ‘Can you buy me a milkshake?’
‘I told you we should have left him at home,’ Flynn observed.
‘I’ve had a shock.’
‘Right. Downstairs. We can have this discussion over a pot of tea,’ I said.
‘And a milkshake,’ came Fraser’s input.
‘And a milkshake for the four-year-old.’
We followed Eddie as, with footsteps that scraped the nylon carpet with their reluctance, we all trooped downstairs.
14
‘I love Annie,’ Eddie began when we’d settled ourselves at a nice corner table with a large pot of tea and Fraser was making obscene noises with the straw in his milkshake. ‘You have to understand that. Forgetting Valentine’s Day was… an aberration.’
I poured three cups and tried not to think how ridiculous it was to be drinking tea while someone confessed to… to whatever it was Eddie was confessing to. Ireallyhoped that there wasn’t going to be anything kinky involved, it would ruin my appreciation of a good cup of Yorkshire Tea forever.
‘I’ve been distracted,’ Eddie went on.
‘By someone?’ I asked, genteelly adding a touch of milk and passing the sugar. If royalty ever had to discuss sexual profligacy, I thought, they’d do it like this.
‘No. At least, not in that way.’ Eddie took a huge breath. ‘I get medical check-ups through work,’ he went on. ‘We get private healthcare as one of the perks of management, and I got my pre-sixtyMOTat the beginning of the New Year. It showed…’ He breathed heavily again. ‘It showed that I was starting to develop diabetes.’
Things suddenly began to make sense, and Eddie seemed relieved to be able to talk, because there was no stopping him now. ‘Well, I don’t want to have to inject myself and take tablets and look at everything I eat! The nurse said that I might be able to reverse it if I lost weight and started doing exercise. So, I did.’
‘Why didn’t you justsay?’ Flynn asked.
‘Look, Annie worries. She’s a worrier. She’d be forever checking that I hadn’t put sugar in my tea and she’d be weighing my supper and fretting over everything I ate. And she’s got plans, you know, for when I retire. How could I tell her that I might notgetto retire? How could I say that I was ill?’
‘So, you…?’ I prompted.
‘I joined the gym, I started dieting. Yes, I lost weight and bought new clothes, but not because I met someone else – because I love my wife and don’t want to die!’ Eddie almost hissed the words. ‘Ihadto buy new clothes because my old ones didn’t fit any more.’
‘The place in York?’ I’d begun to feel a bit stupid. It was all horribly obvious, once you knew. ‘Where a woman met you?’
‘She’s a diabetes nurse. I go once a month. It’s a private diabetes clinic; they do my weight and my bloods and my sugars and run through how it’s all going. I’ve reversed the onset,’ he added proudly. ‘Just have to keep an eye on it all now.’
‘So, what’s this about?’ Flynn waved a hand at the hotel. The restaurant was filling up again, obviously some of the other meetings were having their mid-session break. ‘Taking time off. Coming to hotels. In Doncaster.’
Eddie flushed and dropped his head again. His bald spot glowed. ‘We’re a support group. We have… incentive meetings. Talks, medical information, that kind of thing. They show us what can happen if diabetes gets bad – that’s today’s talk. We discuss diet and what works best, we talk about foods that are good and foods that are bad.’ He raised his head now. ‘Lean pork is very good, you know.’
‘ButDoncaster,’ Flynn went on. ‘Why here? Surely they must have these talks closer to home? In York?’
‘Well, yes.’ Eddie’s head went down again. ‘But I worried that Annie or one of her friends might see me going in. So, I joined the support group that was a bit further away. Oh, it’s not every week or anything, I’ve only been to a couple of meetings, but it helps.’ He looked at Fraser, who was licking the end of his straw. ‘They can be quite graphic, as you saw.’
‘How come you forgot Valentine’s?’ Fraser put in.
‘I’d found out that I’d got a condition that might, if I didn’t do something, kill me before I could get to retire. Annie wants to go on cruises,’ Eddie said, slightly forlornly, as though Annie’s plans for his retirement were objectives that absolutely mustnotbe thwarted. ‘I was distracted and I forgot the date.’
