Page 13 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

‘You don’t know him!’ The presumed insult to my intelligence stung.

‘He could be quite… He sometimes…’ The indignation drained away and left me with the backwash comprising acceptance and a surprising feeling of culpability.

‘No, you’re right. He was rubbish. I’d been single a long time and I didn’t really feel up to a long selection procedure. ’

‘You were acquiring a boyfriend, not a street dog,’ Flynn observed mildly.

‘My friend, Demi, was a bit obsessed with baby things. She was pregnant with her second and Alfie was only nine months old, and everything was a bit heavy going for her, so we sort of drifted apart and I just wanted… someone.’

Flynn wasn’t looking at me. He seemed, from the direction his face was pointing, to be watching the dark lines of roadway, creased by tyre marks in the heavy frost. ‘Where did you meet him?’ he asked, as though making conversation was painful.

‘In a bar.’

‘Ah.’

‘What?’

Flynn sighed. ‘Alcohol does not make the wisest choices, Fee. I think you know that.’

‘Bit rich coming from a guy who’s earning his daily crust selling the stuff to anyone who’ll buy,’ I said snippily.

Then, as the annoyance at his presumption drained away, I sighed.

‘I know. I really do. There isn’t anything else, that’s all.

My life looks – empty.’ I tried not to over rev the engine; my car could be surprisingly noisy in the dark of the night.

‘I’m not good at friends,’ I said finally to the black windscreen.

‘And yet, here you are, driving out at this ridiculous hour to try to help Annie? That sounds like friendship to me.’

I didn’t say anything. I steered us to Fraser’s, where he was waiting at the end of the road, his rolled-up towel under his arm. ‘Thought you weren’t coming,’ he said, falling into the back seat. ‘I hoped you weren’t coming. Fuck me, I can hardly walk today.’

‘It’s all in a good cause, Fraze,’ said Flynn, surprisingly matey.

Fraser sniffed and lolled his head against the seat back on the journey.

The gym was, once more, lit up like a landed spaceship.

Fraser reluctantly peeled himself out of my car and limped to the reception desk, where Minnie was already waiting for him, wearing flesh-coloured leggings which made her look distressingly as though she were naked from the waist down.

Fraser looked back over his shoulder, like a child being sent on an outward bound course, and Flynn gave him a cheery wave as Minnie led him off into the bowels of the building.

The two men were back on the static bikes, pedalling away in silent unison.

‘Why don’t you have friends?’ Flynn had brought sandwiches.

Sandwiches! At seven in the morning! I hadn’t even had time to make the flask of coffee.

He pushed a foil-wrapped parcel at me and the prospect of food took away any annoyance I was working up for his resumption of our previous conversation.

‘I do have friends!’ There was Annie and Margot and Wren and if the total needed adding to, I was even prepared to feel warmly towards Fraser. ‘I just don’t have a lot of time, with work and… work.’

The glasses wriggled. I presumed his eyebrows were creeping up his forehead again.

‘What about family?’

‘I have a family too.’ I unwrapped the foil.

Cheese and ham with a token bit of salad, carefully wrapped in kitchen roll, not too offensive for this time in the morning.

I hadn’t had anything to eat last night either, had I?

I tried to remember the contents of my fridge, which mostly seemed to be small bottles. ‘Do you?’

‘Neat reversal.’ For a moment we both chewed, staring out through the show-off windows at the motivated individuals inside the gym.

‘I didn’t spring fully formed from the loins of a wine bar,’ he said, and then, as though seizing gratefully on a chance not to talk about his family and letting his sandwich drop onto his lap, ‘Is that Eddie?’

‘Is what Eddie?’ A piece of lettuce had slithered from my sandwich onto my leg and I was trying to retrieve it when Flynn’s hand came onto my wrist.

‘Over there!’

I jerked my head up. The Skoda had been in the same place as we’d seen him park yesterday when we arrived, as neatly centred in the space as before, so we’d assumed Eddie was busily doing whatever it was he did in there.

Now, here he was, jauntily coming out of the reception area, waving his cheery farewell to the young man with the lanyard and carrying his holdall.

Flynn and I both ducked, which caused considerable sandwich dispersal.

‘He must have been early today! Annie said he was always regular as clockwork,’ I hissed in a whisper, although I didn’t know why, as Eddie was half a car park away and couldn’t have heard us.

Our sub-par detecting was as cheesy as the sandwiches and if he’d looked up, he’d have seen us, hunched low in the car, but he didn’t.

We watched Eddie fussily arranging his bag in the boot of the Skoda, carefully folding a rug to fit it in.

‘Which seems to fit his profile,’ I continued.

‘Oh, he has a profile now, does he?’ Flynn straightened back up and began to reassemble his sandwich.

‘I’ve got a computer. I read,’ I said shortly, shrugging sliced bread off my shoulder and hesitating over the ignition key. ‘Should we follow him?’

‘We’d better. It’s what we’re here for, after all. Fraser’s got his bus fare, he’ll be fine.’ A pause. ‘Annoyed, but fine.’

But as Eddie got into his car and started the engine, Fraser came flying out of the building, towel flapping, wearing the tightest shorts I’d ever seen and the Star Wars T-shirt. Minnie was sprinting alongside him, clearly offering advice as he came.

‘He’s going!’ He puffed, hitting the back seat. ‘Drive!’

I drove, my back door waving to Minnie until Fraser could slam it shut, like a getaway vehicle after a bank raid.

‘What did you tell Minnie?’ I asked, as we trailed Eddie’s car at a suitable distance through the quiet streets of Malton, hoping he hadn’t seen our frenzied leaving.

‘Said I’d got the runs.’ Fraser leaned forward between our seats. ‘These shorts really chafe.’

‘You need bigger ones.’ Flynn looked behind him for a second. ‘Honestly.’

‘Yeah, I know that now. Minnie says…’ Fraser stopped. ‘Can I have that sandwich?’

‘Help yourself.’ The packet went into the back and there was some noisy chomping, while the world’s slowest and most sensibly driven vehicle pursuit went on. ‘Where’s he going?’

Eddie had turned out onto the main road to York. Away from the gym, away from Drayton’s.

‘Minnie said he sometimes does a short session and then gets away by seven,’ Fraser said indistinctly, around cheese. ‘About once a month, she says.’

I met Fraser’s eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Wow. You didn’t let her know we were following him, did you?’

‘Nah.’ Luke Skywalker gained a lettuce hat. ‘We were just chatting. About making progress and all that. Minnie says I’ve got the legs of a footballer,’ he added proudly, then, in a slightly more downtrodden tone, ‘It’s all the rest of me that lets me down.’

Other cars were making their way along the dual carriageway and I had to concentrate to keep the Skoda in sight. ‘What else did she say? I don’t suppose he sometimes turns up with a gorgeous model-type on his arm?’

Fraser shook his head and more lettuce rained down upon the blameless Luke.

‘Not much. Just that Eddie’s really put his back into training; he’s lost loads of weight and he goes to the gym five mornings a week like he’s some kind of addict.

She does his assessments.’ Chew chew. ‘He’s fitter than most blokes half his age, she says.

She’s all right, is Minnie. For a masochist. She’s going to put me on the cable machine tomorrow, if the runs are under control.

’ Chew chew. ‘What the fuck is a cable machine?’

‘He’s turning in here.’ Flynn pointed ahead. We’d reached the outskirts of York, where large, expensive houses had begun to pepper the fields, surrounded by grazing horses and wildlife ponds.

‘Should I follow him?’ I hesitated over flicking on my indicator.

‘Looks like a private house. Better not.’

We drove past as slowly as possible while in a stream of traffic.

Eddie’s destination was where house building had become more serious, on a street of similar but widely spaced large, detached houses with driveways.

This one, my rapid sideways glance told me, led to an Edwardian construction of the type that I always imagined would be lived in by a pre-war doctor.

Nice gravel sweep, overhanging trees, what looked to be an extensive garden at the back.

Little wooden summerhouse to one side, all very affluent and Homes and Gardens.

The sort of place that Demi aspired to, I tried not to think bitterly.

I turned the car around in a nearby side street and we drove back, Fraser and Flynn hanging over their seats to try to get a good look as we passed the house, heading in the opposite direction.

‘There’s a porch light on, and some lights at the back,’ Flynn said. ‘Someone’s expecting him.’

‘Looks like a woman,’ Fraser had wound his window down and stuck his head out as far as it would go.

‘Standing there waiting in the porch.’ He pulled his head back in.

‘He’s bloody got a woman! In a posh house.

’ Fraser stared for a moment as we drove away, getting a last glimpse of the place.

‘Wonder how he did it?’ he asked, thoughtfully.