Page 7 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘Why the notepads, Margot?’ I asked, to break the tension. ‘Are we doing exercises?’
Fraser put his glass down. ‘I don’t do writing,’ he said. ‘I’m dyslexic, me.’
‘No, no.’ Margot waved vaguely at the pads and pens. ‘It’s for making notes, scribbling ideas. I always think a meeting looks so much morefinishedif people make notes, don’t you? Besides, Bruce’s company produces stationery products, so I’ve got literally millions of these at home and I ought to start clearing out some cupboards. I’ll write my number down on them.’ She picked up a pen. ‘So youallhave it.’
Another small pause while she wrote, and Fraser and I tried to avoid catching one another’s eyes. Thankfully, Annie and Wren chose that moment to come in together, letting a little of thenight’s chill in with them. Through the open door I could see the windows of my flat opposite. There were no sudden flickers of illumination in the kitchen or bathroom to show that someone was moving from room to room, no strobing blue indicating that the TV was on. Only that one single bulb trying to light up my whole life.
I drained my glass.
‘Wren! Annie! Over here!’ Margot called, sounding slightly imperious and making one of the old men – who were playing poker tonight, for furtive pennies – look up and say something, which made the other laugh.
There was a bustle of coats and bags and moving of chairs. Fraser sank himself down into his T-shirt neck; tonight’s featured the slogan ‘Pigs Might Fly’ accompanied by an unlikely picture of cartoon pigs smoking joints. Fraser was not giving me ‘joint-smoking’ vibes and he now seemed to be rather intimidated by the volume of women he found himself surrounded with.
Margot indicated the notepads. ‘Just a little “giveaway” for the evening,’ she said. ‘In case anyone wants to write things down – future dates, useful contacts, that sort of thing. I’ve written my number on the inside, so everyone has it.’
Annie smiled politely, but Wren thanked Margot and tucked the pad inside her tote bag. Wren, I thought, looked a little less brown tonight. She was still make-up free but wearing a bright yellow scarf tied loosely, which contrasted with her hair and made her skin glow. Annie looked ruffled. She was what Dex would have called ‘built for comfort’, well-upholstered and with the softness of limb and face that made her look older and happier than she probably was. She was dressed older too, in a pleated blouse and the kind of trousers that were advertised in Sunday supplements as ‘slacks’. I wondered about Eddie’s evident affair – had he found himself a younger, slimmerversion of his wife? Or gone completely off-piste and started seeing a dynamic organiser type? Ireallyhoped he wasn’t going to turn out to be having an affair with Margot. That kind of neatness wasn’t what I expected from life these days.
I sat somewhere between Wren and Margot in looks. Older than Wren but younger than Margot, tall but I didn’t have Margot’s imperious height. I dressed not to be noticed and had hair of the neither curly nor straight persuasion. In any given gathering I looked as though I was there to make up the numbers.
We all regarded one another glumly across the table. Except for Fraser, who had slumped even further and seemed to be trying to avoid everyone. ‘Well,’ said Margot eventually. ‘How are we all?’
‘We all’ chorused that we were fine, thanks, against all available evidence.
‘Fraser,’ Margot barked his name, making him flinch and try to slide even further under the table, ‘why don’t you tell us about yourself? What brought you to our club? Were you dumped?’
Fraser took another big mouthful of wine and shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said.
‘Did you dump her?’ Annie leaned forward, unknowingly putting one elbow in a spill of the tonic water she’d ordered.
Fraser shook his head again. All the swagger and blokey mateyness he’d shown when it had only been Margot and me was gone, as though, faced by a wall of women, he had lost all confidence. ‘I didn’t have a date for Valentine’s,’ he said. ‘Nobody wanted to go out with me.’ Then he pushed himself a little more upright in his chair and straightened his shoulders. The pigs undulated. ‘But that’s all right though, isn’t it, cos I’m a disappointed valentine too.’
Flynn came in over my shoulder, wiping up Annie’s spill. He smelled good again, and there was something rather pleasantabout the gentle press of him against me as he moved his cloth over the tabletop.
‘How many women did you ask?’ Margot arranged her face in lines of concern in front of Fraser.
He slumped even further. ‘I don’t know any women,’ he muttered. ‘There weren’t anyone to ask.’
The remaining four of us did a kind of round-the-table stare.
‘But I’m still disappointed,’ Fraser went on, his tone becoming a little more wheedling, a little more self-justifying. ‘I mean, not having anyone to shag don’t make me exactly happy with my life, know what I mean?’
The stare went round the table again, like an unclaimed bill.
‘I’m not sure,’ Margot began carefully, ‘that you are quite grasping the nature of this group, Fraser. We’re meeting as a support group for those who suffered romantic disappointment, not a generalised dissatisfaction with life as a whole.’
‘Well, that’s not right then.’ Fraser stuck out his round chin. ‘That’s trades discriminations, that is. Just because I’m disappointed all year round, it don’t make me ineligible for the club. Makes memoreeligible, if you asks me. We should change the name.’
‘Of the club?’ Margot looked taken aback.
‘Yeah. It’s not just, like, for people who’ve had a bad Valentine’s, is it? Not really. It’s for…’ He frowned, seeming to mentally grope for a definition. ‘It’s forus,’ he finished, with a lack of clarity that made his nickname of Fraze-the-Haze suddenly become obvious.
Wren cautiously raised a hand. ‘We’re all heartbroken though, aren’t we?’ she offered. ‘Maybe The Heartbreak Club?’
Fraser snorted. ‘Sounds like a country and western band.’
I thought of Dexter and felt everything inside me clamp down. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t mind dealingout a bit of heartbreak.’ Then, in a spirit of honesty, I added, ‘If I had anyone to deal it to, of course.’
Margot doodled for a moment, then looked up. ‘How about – this?’ She’d drawn the same heart that I’d seen on that very first poster, with the knife through the middle, but now it was surrounded by blocky letters spelling outThe Monday Night Heartbreak Club. ‘We can leave it to onlookers to decide whether the heartbreak is being suffered or occasioned by us. Makes us look a little less hopeless, don’t you think?’
