Page 54 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
What I could tell the police wasn’t enough, of course.
We had the security footage, we had everything I knew about Dexter and his ‘friends’. The police were grateful and tried to sound encouraging and positive, but it wasn’tenough. All I had was one fake name and the knowledge that they were connected to Dexter, who lied as easily and regularly ashe drew breath. Despite the police’s assurances that everything was being done, I knew that everyone concerned would have gone to ground and would be busy laying alibis as fast as they could. Some film, however good quality, of two people who probably wouldn’t look anything like the participants by the time they’d cut their hair, grown beards and moved to Carlisle, wasn’t going to do any good. Plus, it didn’t include Dexter, and unless his mates were prepared to drop him in it, he would get away with this.
Surprised at my jaw-clenching desire to see punishment for Dexter, I wondered why I had suddenly become so keen for retribution. I’d let him get away with everything he’d done to me so far: the criminal damage, assault, coercive control… He’d used me and mistreated me and I’d been afraid of him, but fear didn’t explain why I’d kept letting him back in. Had he really been all I thought I was worth?
I lay back on the hospital pillows, still unable to sit up unaided, and wondered about my life choices that had led me here. If I hadn’t looked Dexter’s way, if I’d never gone home with him that evening, if I’d never let him into my life – I wouldn’t be here now, looking at an existence so completely altered.
The smell of disinfectant, that awful boiled-air smell that hospitals have, made my nose itch, and with all the drips and clips, it took some effort to get my working hand up to my face to scratch it. Then I stared at my arm for a bit, because it was that or watching the clock with its oddly erratic tick, painfully marking the interminable passing of seconds while I lay here.
How long would Flynn put up with me now? I couldn’t even help in the bar if I was going to have to limp slowly everywhere and couldn’t lift a box with one hand. He seemed solid so far, but that was probably shock. What the hell was I going todo?
A few sparse tears squeezed from the corners of my eyes made me feel a little better. If this was rock-bottom, then it could havebeen a lot worse; I was still alive, all my friends were still alive. Maybe it was going to prove impossible to get Dexter to face up to what he’d done and be punished; his associates were still being hunted by the police – a scenario which gave me a frisson of pleasure – but he couldn’t stay underground for long. Dexter had so far barged his way through life feeling untouchable, actuallybeinguntouchable, apart from brief arrests and detainments, because everyone was too scared of him to give any evidence against him. Now, I realised, that it didn’t matter any more what he thought of me. I wasn’t afraid any longer. The second he put his head above the parapet, I was going to bring him down.
If he never did, of course, if he kept his distance and stayed away from me, that would be a victory of sorts too. Not as satisfying as seeing him imprisoned for what he’d tried to do, but I’d be free. Or would I? Was I going to spend the rest of my life attempting to look over my shoulder in case Dexter decided that now was the time to show me what happened to those who tried to get away?
20
Most of the big stuff had to wait until I was out of hospital. Flynn wanted me moved to a private rehab unit – he showed me the pictures. It was a lovely old country house with grounds, where I could be wheeled happily about in the sunshine and have daily physiotherapy in the large pool or totter around the well-padded rooms with their careful artwork. Like a ninety-year-old in a care home. Looked after, but out of the way.
I refused to go. Flynn clearly thought I was mad, but he didn’t push the point. He smiled ruefully and said, ‘I suppose you’re going to want to come home then?’ We moved into my flat, the wine bar being basically rubble and unsafe floors, and he paid to have a temporary stairlift fitted up the fishy stairs.
‘Two weeks! It’s only been two weeks!’ Flynn said, slightly exasperated, when I refused the stairlift as well and insisted on making my slow and painful way up to the flat on my own legs.
‘If I don’t do it, I’ll never do it,’ I puffed, having to go up like an elderly lady with gammy hips, one step at a time. Plus, I couldn’t use my left arm to hold on to the handrail, so I lurched around with my good hand. It took twenty minutes to get to the first floorand Flynn had made two cups of tea and a sandwich by the time I got there.
‘Well, I’m glad you did. The club are meeting here tonight, and Fraser, apparently, has News.’ Flynn was the only person who could look me in the eye when I smiled. Everyone else averted their gaze and sort of shuddered, but that was fine, I was used to it. My entire adolescence had been like that, growing up with my brother. Things would improve. Thingswereimproving. My parents had even come to visit me in hospital once. ‘I want to know what that is.’
‘I don’t know whether to be optimistic or overcome with dread.’ I hauled myself over the threshold and stood panting inside the door, hanging on to the new, reinforced door frame that Flynn had had fitted to go with the new door he’d put on, after Dexter had battered his way through the old one.
The club had visited me, separately and together, almost every day. Eddie had, apparently, managed to get the car out on several occasions and Annie had come bearing pots of chrysanthemums and copies ofWoman’s Weeklyand made small talk about her neighbours, while Eddie and I had tried to avoid one another’s eye and winced every time Doncaster was mentioned in her passing conversation. Margot and Wren were planning a trip up to the Scottish cabin together for a romantic break. Their happiness was a joy to see and helped my recovery quite a lot.
Fraser was – well, Fraser. But he had never turned up without a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk – most of which he’d eat himself during the visit, but the thought was there – and had happily told me that I looked like shit and his stitches were healing faster than mine.
Flynn very carefully didn’t say anything as I collapsed now, slowly but gasping, onto the sofa. He brought one of the cups of tea over and placed it neatly on a side table I’d neverseen before.
‘You… made up the sofa,’ I said, trying to keep my breathing even and not sound as though I’d exhausted myself coming up the stairs.
‘Yes. It’s nice to have somewhere to sit.’ Flynn wouldn’t look at me, which made me feel worse than I had after my ascent of the staircase. I knew I was a bit sweaty and the whole ‘hospital ambience’ was sticking to me as closely as my hastily donned jumper, but was I really so dreadful to look at? ‘I’ve been turning it back into a bed at night, don’t worry. I did buy a new mattress though; that one you’d been sleeping on had a big dip in the middle.’
‘Yes, I know.’ He still sounded – odd. ‘Flynn, what’s up?’ I decided to face it head on. ‘If you’re having second thoughts about…’ I waved a hand, because I couldn’t bring myself to say the wordsyou, us, this place, our relationship, ‘…things, please tell me.’ Mentally I’d resigned myself to losing him already. He was too nice, too decent, too, well,richfor someone like me. And now I didn’t even have looks to fall back on, with my scarred face and my dragging walk. I didn’t deserve Flynn on any level, and I’d stiffened my backbone and worked on my ‘sympathetic, hurt yet stoic’ expression, for when he told me, all the time I’d been in the hospital.
Flynn almost jumped. ‘What? No! Oh, I’m so sorry, Fee, I never wanted you to think that!’ The glasses got a shove up his nose and he sat down beside me, making me rock as his weight caused the sofa bed to lurch dramatically to one side.
He took my hand, hot and damp as it was, and linked his fingers through mine. ‘You… you’re myfriend. First and foremost, you’re my friend. Whatever else we’ve got here, if this is love or lust – or some other thing that we haven’t defined yet – at base what it comes down to isfriendship.’
I looked at him and thought that love and lust weren’t too bad from where I was… well, rather lopsidedly sitting. But he was right. Our relationship had come from friendship, the same friendship as I had with Annie, Margot, Wren and, yes, even Fraser too. Although I didn’t want to wrap myself around any of them and hold them close through the night, it didn’t make our friendships any less valid.
‘I’ve been so wary, after Australia,’ Flynn went on, looking down at my hand as though it were the prime exhibit in a museum of body parts. ‘It hit me hard. Being used for your money isn’t nice.’ Now he glanced up at my face, as though he expected me to understand.
‘Flynn, if you’re wanting me to sympathise, I’m sorry. I’ve never had a bean. Nobody has ever wanted me for my money and contacts, unless they’ve fancied my brother to a lunatic level and wanted me to introduce them.’ I took a breath. ‘Actually, anyone fancying my brother is already well on their way to lunacy and I wish them all the happiness in the world, there.’
He grinned, and it was a Flynn-grin, eyes glittering and his face relaxed. He shook my hand lightly. ‘Don’t be bloody daft. It’s more that you didn’t know who I was for a long time. You got to knowme, the me that’s underneath all the stuff about my dad and having a business empire and all that. You likedme. Er’ – he looked deeply into my eyes – ‘youdidlike me, didn’t you? For a while back at the beginning, it was rather hard to tell.’
‘I thought you were a student doing bar work in the evenings,’ I confessed.
‘Oh. I don’t know whether to be flattered or horrified.’ Another shake of my hand. ‘What I really mean is, we were friends before you knew I had a dad who is trying to be Britain’s answer to Elon Musk, without the dodgy political leanings. It’s not all about the money for you. I never thought I’d let anyone get close to me again. Andyet, here you are.’
‘I couldn’t move away if I tried.’ I gave a small smile. ‘I’d fall down the stairs, for a start.’
