Page 63 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘Well.’ Margot seemed mollified. ‘That’s good. Just – if you need us, that’s all.’
‘Thank you,’ I said again, humbled by their wanting to help me.
‘And I’m sure Annie would offer any assistance she may be able to render, too,’ Margot went on. ‘She’s so very grateful for our support in the matter of Eddie.’
We all stared at her. ‘She doesn’t know, does she?’ I asked. ‘All the following and everything?’
‘Oh, no no. Nothing like that, no, like she said when we all visited you in the hospital, she’s incredibly grateful for the support we gave her when she suspected infidelity. She really does live her entire life wrapped up in Eddie.’
‘Her choice though, surely.’
Margot frowned. ‘She used to be an accountant, you know. Quite high-powered, apparently, but she gave it up because Eddie needed someone at home to organise him.’
We all inwardly digested the thought of Eddie, king of the pork products and the garden so regimented that the plants almost marched in step, needing organising.
‘Houses take a lot of looking after,’ Wren said reasonably. ‘And if they were expecting to have children, perhaps it made sense. They have been married a long time, after all.’
‘Plus, she makes a cracking hot pot,’ put in Fraser, whoseconcern with accountancy was clearly subordinate to his stomach.
The meeting broke up shortly afterwards, once everyone had finished their wine and reassured themselves that my recovery was ongoing. I had been nearest the blast, the others had been cushioned from the worst of the impact by furniture and the solidity of Fraser. It would, I thought, take more than a bomb to take down Fraser, who seemed to have the physical fragility of a combine harvester.
Flynn went across the road to sort out something to do with site security with a man in a very bright orange jacket who stood staring up at the scaffolding. I watched them from the window, leaning against the frame so that my legs didn’t let me down again, and felt that awful sense of hopelessness come back over me.
What was I going todo? I couldn’t spend the rest of my life reliant on Flynn. He would come to resent it, however much he said he wouldn’t, and I really could not spend the next sixty or more years sitting down and reading, could I? Oh, I might manage the odd bar shift or some office work, and there was always the call centre again, as long as I didn’t mind being humiliated on a daily basis, even though having the use of only one arm was going to hamper me somewhat. There was Flynn, all dark and lovely and willing to try to make a life with me – I had to be able to contribute somehow. I couldn’t forever be the ‘back-room girl’, despite my ferocious amount of training in that direction during my growing up.
Then I thought how happy my parents would be if I had to go home. If Flynn got tired of me and replaced me with a fully working model, someone who could run up hills hand in hand with him – I had a vision of some advertisement-worthy couple chasing each other breathlessly to the top ofa mountain and standing there with the wind in their hair and a look of ridiculously outdoors-inspired joy on their faces.
No. I had to do something. I stared around the flat. It was tidier since Flynn had moved in, so there wasn’t a lot of inspiration, apart from the huge gap in my bathroom floor where we’d ripped up the floorboards. Hole in the floor, books piled up against the far wall because I hadn’t got around to a bookcase. The Monday Night Heartbreak Club, all behind me…
I had the faintest glimmerings of an idea.
22
Two weeks dashed past.
Demolition work started on the wine bar and Flynn and I watched as skips arrived on the street, to the consternation of the passing public who gathered around them for a good ogle and gossip as work started.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked him, as he winced when some of the tasteful and carefully chosen artwork, thrown by a cheery man in a hard hat, slid into the skip, to be covered by a layer of brick.
‘Apart from the fact that I’m watching all my attempts at starting up my own enterprise being hurled about by men in overalls?’ He didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes on the despoiling of his empire going on in the street below. ‘Oh, and that lamp was imported from Japan!’
‘Yes. Apart from that.’ I touched his arm and he turned round.
‘It’s surprisingly okay, actually.’ He gave me a smile. It was a little tight around the edges, but it was a good attempt. ‘Of course, that’s easy for me to say, isn’t it, when I’ve got a dad who can bailme out until I find what I really want to do. What about you, Fee, how are you?’
We’d been going about life without asking any of the really important questions. Or mentioning love. After my blurting it out when I thought I might be arrested I hadn’t repeated myself and Flynn was very quiet on the subject. We had fallen into domesticity together easily enough, but sometimes I looked at Flynn and wondered what he thought. He was very self-contained and although his eyes said he loved me his mouth hadn’t followed suit. I supposed that his life as part of the Mays-Harrison empire had taught him not to blurt out his feelings in a stream of consciousness that would have made Fraser seem circumspect and thoughtful, but occasionally it might have been nice to have been given a clue as to what went on in his head.
His asking me how I was felt like a way in to a difficult conversation.
‘I’m—’
My phone rang. The speaker had got dust in it during the blast and it now rang in a way that made it sound as though it needed a good cough and some fresh air. ‘I’d better get this. You never know, it might be someone wanting to press enormous amounts of money upon me.’
‘Don’t, Dad is bad enough.’ Flynn flung himself down on the bed. He hadn’t even insisted on it being turned back into a sofa for the last few days, that was how bad things were.
‘Ms Walker? This is the police.’
Despite the fact that IknewI hadn’t done anything, my mouth still went dry and I felt my stomach squeeze. ‘Yes?’
