Page 4 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
I saw Margot and Wren make eye contact and both raise their eyebrows.
‘Did he say why he left this time?’ This was Annie, a gentle question in her soft, Yorkshire tones.
‘Not really.’ I thought back to that night, but absolutely wasn’t going to admit that I’d declined his offer of sex and he’d decided to go back to Leeds and knock on the door of someone more available. ‘Nope. He upped and left in the middle of an episode ofOur Flag Means Death. Threw his stuff into a bag and walked out.’ I didn’t add that it was something I’d grown to expect, Dex walking out to find either his dealer or another woman, because that made me sound desperate. After all, why would I want to hang on to a man like that? WhywouldI?
I didn’t tell them about the yelling and the screaming and the accusations, about how hard I had tried to keep Dex because I thought this was what I wanted, what Ideserved.
‘Oh, Fee.’ Annie’s eyes were bright. I thoughtthis was very generous of her, given that she had an unfaithful husband. ‘That’s awful, love. Not even to give you a reason or a chance to talk.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. How did I explain the strange feeling that came so close to relief, after Dex left? The kind of relief you feel when a boil has burst, when you hope the worst is over but suspect it’s just going to build up again. My new resolve never to take him back again was just the pin I sat with in readiness. He was a boil I was determined to prick.
Thoughts about boiling his prick weren’t totally alien to my nature either.
I finished my wine and tried to catch the barman’s eye to order another. He was now pretending not to listen but standing right up at the end of the bar, as close to us as he could get. He had his dark curly hair pulled back into a small tie at the back of his neck and his glasses kept catching the light, making his eyes look like white circles of reflected light. I still couldn’t read his name badge.
‘So.’ Margot cleared her throat. ‘Looks like we’re all in this together, do you all agree? I’m getting divorced, Annie’s got suspicions, Wren has been taken for granted and Fee’s been abandoned.’ She sounded perkier now and I definitely saw her rub her hands together almost as though she were gleeful at the prospect. ‘But we can all support each other.’
‘How?’ I asked, but nobody seemed to have heard me.
Annie gave a rueful smile and Wren nodded earnestly. ‘Can we meet every week?’ Annie asked.
‘Well, Iwasthinking monthly…’ Margot began.
‘Only, like I said, I’ve got nobody else. Nobody to talk to, there’s no one who knows what I suspect and I’d really like to be able to, you know, chat. I can’t talk to Eddie, obviously, and, well, it’s always been just me and him.’
None of us felt able to mention the crochet club, the WI or any of Annie’s other numerous hobbies and groups.
‘Oh yes!’ Wren bobbed in. ‘Me too. Now Jordan and I aren’t seeing each other any more I need a good distraction. Something to stop me moping and texting everyone in my contacts list.’
They were all looking at me again now. I looked at my empty glass. Well, there were worse things, weren’t there, than a once-a-week chance to sit in a bar and drink wine? If the alternative was to sit in my living room and mope? At least here it was warm and convivial and I didn’t have to listen to the terrible karaoke coming up through the floor from the neighbours underneath and think about how I seemed to not only have missed the boat on life, but to be rowing after it in a leaky barrel. ‘I don’t mind,’ I said, sounding more grudging than I felt. Margot and Wren didn’t seem the kind to need the acclaim of others or a relationship just to feel like acceptable members of society, and even Annie admitted to chiefly needing support to get through her husband’s infidelity. I was the only one who wanted an excuse to get out of the house. The incongruity, and the memory of the barman’s cynicism, made me ask, ‘But what’s itfor?’
‘For?’ Margot stared at me. Annie and Wren gave me little covert glances, as though they wondered whether I was about to launch into an agenda filled with corporate speak. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The club.’ Caught in the spotlight of so much attention I wished I’d voted to go monthly and never raised the issue of what the club might achieve. ‘Er. Sorry, but shouldn’t we bedoingsomething? Something…’ I rummaged around in my brain. The condemnatory words of the barman, when he’d assumed the club would just be women sitting around badmouthing men, had sunk into my psyche and given me something to prove. Although why I wanted to prove anything to a man whose entire career seemed to comprise polishing glassware and shelving bottles, I had no idea. ‘Something proactive? Something that might cheer us up? Rather than sitting and talking about how shit life is.’
‘Talking can be useful, you know,’ said Wren.
‘But it doesn’t change anything, does it?’ I said, rather limply. I knew that drinking lots of wine didn’t change anything either, it just made dreadful situations easier to bear, but I wasn’t ready to give up on that aspect of the club yet. Talking, however, I could make a case against. Talking was the thing that you did when it was already too late. I didn’t know what actions we could take that might be more cheering than reiterating our desperate situations, but there had to be some. I tried to remember Annie’s list of activities. ‘Maybe we could take up crochet?’
‘I suppose we…’ Margot began but was interrupted when the bar door opened and a man came bursting in at speed, as though the night had propelled him through the doorway.
‘Is this the Valentines’ Club thing?’ he panted, arriving at our table. ‘Sorry I’m late; the bus broke down on the hill. I had to walk the last bit.’
‘But… you’re a man.’ Margot stood up now and stared at him as though a human-sized beetle had appeared in front of her. ‘Aman.’
The man in question, who was red-faced and puffing slightly, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yeah, and? Your poster thing didn’t say your club was just for women, did it? “Disappointed Valentines”, you said, and I’m one of them. So I reckon I can join, right?’
He and Margot eyeballed each other across the table while Annie, Wren and I tried not to meet one another’s gaze. Everyone seemed to have forgotten my suggestion that we use the club to help ourselves, and I had the dreadful urge to laugh at how ridiculous this all was. In fact, they looked shell-shocked.
I glanced, for no reason I could come up with, over at the baragain. The barman was looking directly at me, one eyebrow raised.
Margot visibly gathered herself and her tone became ‘dinner party host soothing difficult guest’. ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘I was a little taken aback because our poster definitely said eight thirty and now’ – another glance at that slim watch – ‘it’s nearly half past nine.’
‘Eight forty-five bus,’ said the man. ‘They only goes every hour. And then it broke down and…’
‘You had to walk the last bit, yes, you said.’ Margot glanced around at Annie, Wren and me and the headteacher stare was still in evidence. ‘Well? Do we admit another member?’
I had an odd feeling then. A kind of warm burst somewhere near my stomach that spread out to cuddle round the other women as though I tried, invisibly, to draw them closer to me, and it dawned on me that this was the first time I’d feltincludedin so long that I couldn’t remember when it had happened before.
