Page 49 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
More movement. Margot, with her linen shirt and wide-legged linen trousers ripped and wrenched around her body like a hurricane in Boden, was dragging herself across the floor towards Fraser and his attempts to rouse Wren.
‘Wren!’ That shout got through my cotton-wool hearing. It was a cry of pure anguished desolation. ‘Wren!’ Margot crawled over the smashed chairs, reaching out. She grabbed a handful of Fraser and tried to pull herself past him.
‘Don’t move.’ Flynn had found me now. I was distantly aware that he was wiping my face with something soft, but, like sound, touch was coming in at one remove. ‘Lie very still.’
I wanted to say that I couldn’t do anything else right now, what with having half a table on top of me, but there wasn’t enough breath in my lungs for me to speak with. I was having to concentrate on using what air came in simply to keep me ticking over.
‘Leave her,’ Fraser said to Margot, almost grappling with her to prevent her from lifting Wren up. ‘I don’t think she’s still with us.’
‘No!’ This was a howl, a cry so desperate that I found I was fighting the vagueness that threatened to overcome me to keep watching. ‘No, Wren, come on, you can’t die like this! What happened, does anyone know what happened?’ Margot was on her feet now, spinning around, alternating between trying to get past Fraser and also trying to catch the eye of anyone else who was upright.
The bar had been largely empty. Just the Heartbreak Club, the poker players and the two men who’d had the hurried glass of wine. But they’d gone before all this happened, hadn’t they? Had they? My mind was full of the blackness still. Who was here? What was going on?
More alarms, which turned into sirens andblue flashing lights accompanying them. ‘Help is coming,’ Flynn said gently. ‘Hang in there.’
He sounded very concerned and I wasn’t sure why. I was fine, only breathless, and that was no surprise given the dust and the smoke and the fact that everything to which feeling was returning hurt and ached.
‘Bastards! Bastards. I wonder if they were… where they came from. Trying to get to Dad…? Stupid! Stupid! I should have – I dunno, what could I have done here, better security measures?’ Flynn was talking to himself, or it could have been to me but I wasn’t up to answering. ‘I should have been on my guard. Dad was right about needing security protection. At least they’ll be on camera, they won’t get far. Just have to lock down the footage.’ He was speaking fast, in a half whisper. It sounded as though he was trying to distract himself from what was going on right now by trying to work out what had happened.
His eyes were all I could see, black as night, and there was a cut across the bridge of his nose where his glasses must have been. They were gone now. Everything recognisable was gone. When I could focus past Flynn’s face, I could see that the windows had blown out, leaving huge blank spaces, and the bar was a tangle of splintered wood and upended bottles like some weird barricade fromMad Max. The wine bar, previously so orderly and cosy, now looked like a post-apocalyptic speakeasy.
Flynn dabbed at my face again. ‘Shit! Shit. It won’t stop bleeding.’
I couldn’t feel myself bleeding, everything was numb, apart from the sharp pain in my cheek and the ache of my ribs. I managed to stretch out a hand, feeble and floppy, and touch the side of his face where he was bleeding too.
‘Wha’?’ I said again.
‘Those two who came in for a glass of wine, they had a bag.I… Stupid! Stupid… I didn’t think twice about it. They must have left it on the floor and set a timer, then made a dash for it. I never thought I’d be important enough to try to take out,’ Flynn said, with a brave attempt at a humorous tone.
Over in the middle of the floor, Wren moaned. Margot fell down on her knees so quickly that it looked as though she was collapsing. ‘Oh my God. Oh, Wren, my love, are you all right?’
Fraser slumped to the floor again to allow Margot to wrap her arms around Wren. I knew I should be thinking something about this vignette playing out in front of me, but my brain was too scrambled. When Wren began to sob, and Margot sat on the floor, drawing her close, stroking her hair gently and murmuring to her, all I could think was, ‘Oh.’
‘Bugger me,’ Fraser said. ‘You two as well? I feel left out. Anyone round here want a shag?’
‘Not just now, thanks.’ A paramedic, his uniform all highlights from the blue lights outside, stepped in through the wreckage. ‘But maybe later, you never know your luck.’
More uniformed people were coming in now, police and fire as well as the ambulance crews; the wine bar was more full of people than I’d ever seen it before. A shame, I thought dreamily, that all the bottles had broken or we could have made a fortune.
Flynn was gently moved to one side. ‘She’s…’ he began.
‘Yep, we can see.’ Calm faces, without blood, loomed in front of me. ‘Hello, love, can you tell me your name?’
‘’S’ Fee.’
‘Right then, Fee, my love, I think we’re going to have to carry you out. Wait there a moment.’
Others were swirling around Wren and Margot down on the floor. A policeman drew Flynn to one side and I saw them move to the far end of what was left of the bar. Fraser was being helped to his feet again by the paramedic who hadbeen first in. Two people in dark firefighter uniforms were discussing something over near the door. I kept seeing things in brief flashes between blinks, as though each scene were separately staged. Tattered clothing. The shimmer of glass. A random playing card, the ace of spades, sliding bent-cornered along the bar. The top row of bottles, untouched.
Iwantedto think about what Flynn said had happened. Had someone been sent to blow up the bar because of who his father was? I supposed that famous rich people must live under a constant level of threat and Flynn would be included in that, but it did seem rather extreme – or maybe that was why his father insisted on high security and all the latest gadgets. Was that what I wanted? To live with Flynn, all the time knowing that someone might, at any point, try to get to his father through him? But these thoughts, too, came through treacle, felt unimportant.
‘We just need to get this bleeding stopped,’ said the paramedic, beckoning over a colleague. I had no idea why everyone kept on about bleeding.Everyonewas bleeding, Flynn still had blood sliding down the side of his face, I could see him occasionally swiping at it with his hand as he spoke to the police. Fraser’s hair was matted with blood. Only Margot and Wren seemed to have escaped the sanguinary effects, but they were both looking battered and confused, sitting on the floor with their arms around each other while another paramedic tried to talk to them.
‘Are you allergic to anything that you know of?’ the paramedic asked me, so randomly that I almost laughed but didn’t have the breath. His tone was calm and measured, as though we were meeting at a party, rather than in these circumstances.
‘Guinea… pigs,’ I forced out, remembering coming out in a rash after having tea with a schoolfriend and playing with her pets. Mum had sent me straight to my room when I got home in case I had something infectious, because she didn’t want my brother to catch it. I’d itched all night, but it had gone, eventually.
‘We’ll try not to expose you to any, then.’ There was a mask coming down over my face but I pushed it away with the floppy hand. The other arm didn’t seem to be attached to me any more; at least, it wasn’t obeying commands. ‘Where… Flynn…?’
