Page 61 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
And later, after Andrew had left with a kiss on the cheek for me and a hearty back-slapping hug for his son, Flynn and I sat together and stared out of the window at the remains of the wine bar.
‘WhatamI going to do?’ Flynn mused. ‘I suppose I could go into advising people on their businesses, but that’s a tough gig.’
‘You could write a book on cocktails?’ I suggested. ‘You’re good at those.’
All the time, I was thinking that he was still fully functioning. The real question was, what wasIgoing to do? Reluctant legs and a non-operational left arm weren’t enough for me to retire myself from the world of work forever, and besides, I couldn’t do that to Flynn. He may be the son of a multimillionaire, but I was damned if I was going to let that make a difference. What, after all, if he didn’t stick around? I needed to be able to keep myself and, so far, my forays into the world of work consisted of shop work – because I’d been living at home and my parents liked the staff discount – the call centre and working in the bar. None of those had so far enabled me to do more than bob about under the surface of life. I needed something that would make me actual money. Something where I could demonstrate that I was themethat I’d pretended to be right at the beginning. Someone who could make things happen:braveFee.
‘True. Not sure many of them are my recipes though. Or even actual recipes, come to think of it. I usually just pour several types of alcohol in together, give it a shake and a stupid name and – well, people will drink anything. Incidentally, I’m really proud of the fact that you seem to have stopped drinking.’
He threw this in over his shoulder as he turned to my inadequate kitchen to begin the hunt for somethingto cook. Andrew had offered to take us both out to dinner, but I hadn’t liked to say that I was likely to be fast asleep by half past six in the evening, some of my medication being somewhat on the sedative side. Flynn hadn’t looked keen either, and we’d jointly and silently invented a previous engagement. Any previous engagement that prevented us being taken out for a meal by someone as rich and famous as Andrew Mays-Harrison would have had to have been of the nature of a summons from the Palace, but Andrew had wisely not enquired.
‘You said I couldn’t drink if I worked for you,’ I pointed out.
‘Well, yes, but I didn’t mean you had to stop totally, only not drink when you were at work. I haven’t seen you touch anything at all for ages.’
Isowanted to say that I had no need to drink now. I wanted to say that I’d beaten my demons, that having Dexter out of my life with his demands and his high-stress lifestyle, which had dragged me along with it, had meant there was no need to drink any more. I wanted to say that I’d regained a sense of self-esteem and realised that I didn’t need the crutch of alcohol to prop me up, now that I had actual friends and a new life.
None of it would have been true. At least, it was true to an extent, and I hadn’t felt the pull towards a couple of glasses of wine that would blur the edges and make the awfulness of my life fuzzier and more bearable, recently. But even so…
‘I can’t,’ I admitted. ‘The drugs they gave me at the hospital – you can’t drink on them and I’d rather get better than drunk.’
‘Oh.’ He looked at me now, with his head on one side. ‘But you didn’t… I mean, you don’t drink when you’re working behind the bar either?’
‘Oh no.’ I pretended not to notice his slip into the past. ‘I’ve got a really strict boss. I might have had the odd one or two sometimes but between not being allowed to drink and not havingtime to drink, and then being hospitalised with nothing but weak squash and horrible water, I seem to have broken the habit. Plus, you know, the drugs make me woozy enough already.’
He smiled. Flynn had two grades of smile: one was a wide face-splitter that made his eyes crease behind the glasses and his mouth widen, the other was a softening of his expression, a kindness that came onto his face, hardly touching his features but making him look gentle and almost sad. The smile I got now was the second kind. ‘Take it slowly,’ he said, almost inaudibly. ‘There’s no rush.’
When he looked at me like that, taking in my puckered skin, the bruising that still darkened my skin all down one side of my face, the limp and useless arm and my decidedly wonky legs, but wearing such an expression of kind acceptance and almost-humour, I wanted to sweep him up and take him to bed and never let him leave.
The fact that I couldn’t – limp arm, wobbly legs, etc. – was extremely frustrating.
‘What did you think of my dad?’ Flynn asked, clearing his throat. Our mutual exchange of looks had gone on a bit too long and the temperature in here was rising. I wasn’t quite sure how sex was going to work now that I’d come out of hospital, and neither of us seemed to know how to broach the subject, so I was glad he wanted to get sensible.
‘He seems nice. A little bit… brusque, maybe? But he obviously loves you,’ I finished, trying not to sound jealous.
Flynn nodded. He put out a hand and touched the mottled side of my cheek that made it look as though I were turning into a lizard. ‘He means well,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want that life any more.’
I closed my eyes. Those gentle fingers soothed my skin, took away the ache. ‘That life of having instantaccess to loads of money, a lifestyle that most people can only dream about, and never having to worry about paying the electricity bill? That life?’
He stepped in closer. ‘It does have its advantages, I admit.’ Now he cupped his hand gently along my jaw. ‘But this life, you, friends, somethinggenuine, that is what I really want.’
I opened my eyes for a second and took in the cluttered tininess of the three rooms. ‘The stairs smell of fish,’ I said, almost dreamily.
‘I noticed that. Why?’ Now he was touching my hair, the long bit on the top, not the shaved sides which had the texture of a nailbrush.
‘I think it’s the glue they used to stick down the lino.’
‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘My dad will give me anything I want, you know. He seems a bit stuffy and a bit image-conscious, but really he just wants me happy. Actually, no, what hereallywants is me taking over the Mays-Harrison empire so he can retire to lie on a beach in Bali, reclining on his billions, but he’s not going to insist.’
I took a small step closer. Flynn smelled wonderful; he always smelled of clean, fresh clothes and the open air. I had no idea how he did it, when the rest of the flat smelled of damp plaster and frying electrical wire. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ I asked.
‘I’m trying to impress you.’
I laughed at that, but quietly, because I didn’t want to break the mood, which was becoming heavier and hotter with every second. ‘It’s working.’
‘Because you, the club – even Fraser – are the closest I’ve ever got to anything that felt real.’ Flynn was so close now that I could see myself reflected in his glasses. ‘All my life I’ve been Flynn Mays-Harrison. It’s affected how people treated me, how they saw me, how theywerewith me. You and the guys, you all treat me as though I’m one of you. You included me in the club for all theEddie-following stuff like I’m no one special, and you’ve no idea how wonderful that is when you’ve had a lifetime being my dad’s son.’
I felt the light brush of his lips against mine and didn’t murmur when he picked me up and laid me down on the sofa. There was something dark and haunted about Flynn since his father’s visit, as though he needed to do something to make himself believe that he was a real person in his own right, that he didn’t exist as an extension of his father, and if that was going to take the form of having wild – if somewhat limited, because of my only one arm and wonky legs – sex, then I was going to encourage this individualism with everything I had.
