Page 47 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
Flynn took a couple of steps back. Now he was looking at me differently, head slightly to one side, as though there wassomething new about me that he’d never noticed before. ‘That would be amazing,’ he said slowly.
‘I need to… to not be someone who just gets sucked into things,’ I went on. A little flame of enthusiasm had lit from the spark of the idea and Flynn’s not shooting it down. ‘I love working in the wine bar, of course, and it was so good of you to offer me the job. But I’m doing it because it’sthere, if you see what I mean. Like the call-centre job – I only went for that because I was desperate and I saw the advert online. It wasn’t as though it was something I’ve always wanted to do. But being an investigator – I think I could begoodat that, and being good at something hasn’t happened to me that often.’
Flynn smiled. He had a slow smile that seemed to inch across his face a little at a time, starting in his eyes and then spreading down to his mouth. It was very attractive. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly again. ‘I can see that.’
‘And I think I’m born to blend into the background. There’s nothing about me that stands out; I’m so ordinary that I’m almost invisible,’ I went on.
‘I think we might still need to do some work on your self-esteem. You are very far from ordinary and invisible, Fee.’
‘Maybe,’ I said slowly, the idea crystallising in my head as I said the words, as though they were ice, helping my thoughts to set. ‘Maybe Ineedto be ordinary. It will mean that everything I’ve learned throughout my life – all the blending in and trying to be what everyone wants of me – will beuseful. After all, I could hardly follow Eddie, or anyone else really, if I had purple hair and was so beautiful that I stopped traffic, could I?’
Flynn laughed. It really did make him step out ofhisordinary bracket; it made his dark eyes glow behind his glasses and his mouth pleated upwards in a way that highlighted the generally pleasing shape of his entire face. I had another ofthose moments where I felt a sudden knowledge of inclusion in the human race. Flynn liked me. Margot, Wren, Annie and Fraser liked me. I wasn’t the apparent monster that I’d been brought up to think I was: the stupid, unsexy, ugly and unlovable person that Dexter had always yelled at me that I was, that myparentshad tried to convince me I was.
People liked me. Peoplelistenedto me.
‘I think you could do anything you set your mind to,’ Flynn said, turning to open the back door to the bar. ‘I’ve never met anyone as determined as you.’
He often complimented me in bed, and sometimes when I learned a particularly tricky cocktail recipe, but this was the first time the compliment had felt personal. It was the first time in my life that I’d ever had a moment’s pride in myself.
‘Thank you,’ I said quietly, and meant it for more than the words he’d said.
17
Monday, club night, rolled around again.
Fraser was late. He messaged to say that he was coming straight from the gym on the bus rather than grabbing a lift with Margot.
‘He’s really taking this whole “getting fit” thing seriously, isn’t he?’ Wren said, sipping her orange juice. She’d taken Annie’s usual seat, I noticed. Clearly we supposed Annie had now moved on to other things; maybe she’d really take up Portuguese evening classes. She still messaged us, though, the group chat was filled with breathless and rather strangely punctuated tales of redecoration and holiday bookings. Her emojis were prolific and not always up with current usage – she used the purple aubergine whenever she mentioned Eddie’s love of her lamb moussaka, for example, which was off-putting for those of us who’d enjoyed moussaka up to this point. But it was Annie, and she was so clearly enjoying her renewed security in her marriage that none of us liked to tell her what it meant to anyone under the age of thirty when she sent doughnut and cucumber emojis side by side.
‘Fraser was looking for a purpose,’ Margot said confidently, laying her phone on the table and squaring her handbag on the floor under her chair. ‘He was never going to find a girlfriend living the way he did, and now he at least stands a chance. He and Minnie seem really keen on starting classes for people who are total beginners, and I think he will be extremely good at it.’
Margot seemed to have softened a lot since the club started too, I thought, helping Flynn bring a couple of bowls of crisps and peanuts to the table. It seemed safe enough, with Fraser not here yet.
‘Do you think he can keep it up?’ I asked casually, clearly having caught the spirit of Annie’s unintended double entendres.
‘Fraser is showing a single-minded dedication to an idea that has, I must admit, surprised me,’ she replied. ‘I have to say that I have learned a lot from Fraser about not judging a book by its rather tatty and somewhat juvenile cover.’ She gave an unexpected smile and I noticed that she was wearing a lot less make-up than she had at our earlier meetings. Margot seemed to have loosened her stays a little. I wondered if one of the dating app men was responsible.
‘Fraser’s cute,’ Wren said, and we turned to her with such speed that whiplash was a possibility. ‘Oh, not likethat,’ she added. ‘Sorry to disappoint anyone but I’m still not attracted to men.’
Margot coughed as though this had broken a train of thought. I wondered if she had been quietly trying to set Wren up with Fraser behind the scenes. If Wren had been straight then it would have been an obvious tidy ending for our club, and Wren and Fraser could, I had to admit, have made a nice couple. Her desire to be looked after and, as she said herself, ‘treated like a princess’, would fit right in with Fraser’s still slightly outdated beliefs about women and traditional roles.
Bugger. I wondered if a purely platonic household might be possible, Fraser looking after Wren, and her washing his gym kit and cooking for him. The spectre of the big purple aubergine swam before my eyes and I shook my head.
‘I meant that he’s very simple and straightforward,’ Wren went on. ‘There’s no beating about the bush with Fraser.’
Oh God, those emojis and entendres were going to haunt me forever. Margot coughed again and I wondered whether she was thinking the same as I was.
‘He’s kind and he’s got no “side” to him,’ Wren went on. ‘What you see is what you get with Fraser and I think he will make someone a wonderful boyfriend. But not me,’ she added, dashing my slowly rising hopes for a friendly household.
Thankfully for those of us who were straining credulity at this point, Fraser himself clattered through the door carrying his rolled-up towel, as ever, which he flung on the bar as he collapsed into a chair.
‘Bugger me,’ he said succinctly. ‘Minnie’s had me lifting. Anyone got a horse they want turned over, I’m your man. Oh good, peanuts are out.’ He took a double handful scoop of the recently arrived nuts and threw them into his mouth with the eagerness of a man in a desert arriving at a waterhole.
Margot was averting her eyes.
‘Slow down, mate,’ Flynn said cheerily. ‘There’s only another five hundred bags in the storeroom and I don’t want to run out this early in the week.’
‘Sorry.’ Fraser sprayed the table with partly masticated nuts. ‘Bloody starving. Been in the gym all day with Min, filling in forms for personal trainer courses. I’m not great at the writing, what with my dyslexia, so Min has to do them for me.’ He looked around at us. ‘What we talking about, then?’
