Page 18 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

Except for Flynn. I left the bar and went back to my flat, leaving him to sort out something with the computer.

Flynn was the outlier. He didn’t seem to have been particularly cut up about not having a great Valentine’s Day.

He was part of the club more by default and by always being there.

So why was he there? I did, for one brief and skin-tightening moment of horror, wonder whether he’d been recruited by Dex to keep an eye on me, to make sure I wasn’t seeing anyone else, but I quickly dismissed that idea.

Flynn simply wasn’t a Dexter sort of person.

He didn’t have enough tattoos, for a start, and he only swore occasionally, like when he dropped a full bottle on the tiled floor.

He didn’t leer, he didn’t letch. He wasn’t like Dexter.

And then, as I put the key in the lock and let myself into the tiny flat and smelled the damp and the washing drying on the radiators, I thought, I must have been desperate…

So, when Monday rolled around and I saw the group making their way in ones and twos into the bar, I felt I had to say something.

‘Look.’ I waited until we’d all sat down. ‘I’ve had a revelation.’

‘Go on.’ Margot settled her bag on the floor.

She’d been remarkably quiet on the group chat this week, I thought.

The rest of us – minus Annie of course – had all been busily plotting our Thursday, when finding out where Eddie was going had been our entire topic of conversation.

Annie was on the other group chat, offering Wren recipes for home-made chicken goujons and talking about curtains.

I had been quietly gleeful that I was in any group chats at all.

‘I’ve realised that it’s all low self-esteem,’ I said to the expectant faces.

‘What is?’ Fraser had taken the bowl of peanuts that Flynn had brought over and was shovelling them into his mouth with an open palm.

‘Bloody starving,’ he said. ‘Minnie’s all about the protein and the macros and that.

She gave me a list, and you know something?

Starbars weren’t on there at all.’ He chewed frantically for a moment.

‘I’m supposed to eat steak,’ he said mournfully.

‘Steak! I can’t afford steak. Can’t afford much meat at all.

I’ve even started looking at our Leah’s rabbit in a funny way. ’

‘I only went for Dexter because I have such low self-esteem.’ I interrupted the frenetic mastication.

‘Well, that was obvious to anyone with a pulse,’ Margot said rather brusquely. ‘Nobody with any sense of discernment goes for that kind of man.’

I stared at her. ‘Well, you could have told me!’

Wren patted my arm. ‘Margot doesn’t mean to be rude,’ she said gently. ‘Do you, Margot?’

To my surprise, Margot dipped her head and fussed with her bag, avoiding my eye. ‘No, no I don’t, I’m sorry, Fee,’ she said, and I nearly fell off my chair with astonishment. Margot? Apologising? Was this a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

Then I looked over at Fraser gobbling peanuts and spraying half-eaten ones across the table, and had a word with myself.

‘I forget that others haven’t had the extensive therapy that I’ve been fortunate enough to undergo,’ Margot went on. ‘Self-knowledge is so valuable.’ She sounded much more like herself now.

‘And we’ve all had moments like that, haven’t we?

’ Wren went on. ‘After all, it took me a lot of self-analysis to realise that Jordan and I were two very different people and just weren’t suited to one another.

’ She gave a rueful little smile. ‘That I’m probably a bit too high-maintenance for someone like her. ’

‘You are not high-maintenance.’ Margot continued to surprise me.

‘You simply have good standards. I’ve realised – through the therapy that I mentioned – how important it is for us women to have high standards.

I have come to realise that, throughout my life, I have sought out men who have been emotionally unavailable, perhaps to protect myself.

Even Bruce – otherwise wonderful though he was – couldn’t invest emotionally.

That lack of emotional investment meant that I never wanted to be vulnerable with him, hence the death of my desire for intimacy.

I have decided from now on I shall only seek out men who are capable of empathy and who have reached a well-developed stage of emotional literacy.

Keep your high standards, Wren, we should never compromise. ’

Now it was Wren’s turn to contemplate the flooring in the bar. ‘Thank you,’ she said, almost as though she didn’t want to be heard.

Flynn had finished serving the men at the far end – it was poker night again tonight – and came floating over with a peanut top-up. ‘What are we talking about?’ he said, pulling up his usual chair.

‘Fee’s self-esteem.’ Fraser sprayed peanuts liberally across the table. Annie handed him a wet wipe.

‘And Eddie,’ I put in hastily, before I could receive more words of wisdom on the subject of my lack of inner resilience. ‘We’re thinking about where he might be going on Thursday.’

There was a gulping kind of silence and I realised that we had been thinking about that, but only on the group chat that Annie wasn’t involved in. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice, or she put this down to me simply saying the first thing I thought of to distract everyone.

‘He still hasn’t said anything to me.’ She put the wet wipes back in her bag. ‘Not a word. I was a bit naughty actually…’

I felt my face freeze. I wondered if anyone else had had the ‘stockings and suspenders’ image again.

‘What did you do?’ Margot had regained her composure. Over on my side of the table, Flynn and Fraser were fighting a silent war for possession of the peanuts.

‘I said that it might be nice if he took a day off soon.’ Annie’s expression was one of sad mischief.

‘Now the weather’s getting better. I said we could go for a drive to the beach, Scarborough or Whitby.

Eat some chips and walk along the seafront.

We used to do that a lot, when we were dating,’ she added, now even more sadly.

‘And what did he say?’

Annie sighed. ‘He said they were really busy at work with some big orders, and he wouldn’t be able to take any time off before the summer.

’ She sighed again. ‘I was so tempted to tell him that I knew he’d booked a day off and ask him if it was meant to be a surprise for me.

’ A suspicion of tears gleamed at the corners of her eyes. ‘But I was too afraid of the answer.’

‘Oh.’

I opened my mouth to mention that I’d tried to find out who owned the house we’d seen him go into the other week, then remembered that Annie knew nothing about any of that, so I shouldn’t be telling her that searching the electoral register hadn’t got me any results and that unless I paid money, the Land Registry wasn’t going to let me have anything either.

All I had found out was that other similar houses on that road had recently sold for upwards of a million quid.

I didn’t think that finding out that Eddie was seeing someone with that kind of money would help her at all.

‘I know you said he’s joined a gym and lost weight,’ Wren carefully asked Annie, ‘but apart from that – I mean, if you join a gym you should lose weight…’ We all avoided looking at Fraser, whose weight-loss programme looked set to be ambushed by ten tonnes of KP’s finest. ‘Are there any other signs that he’s having an affair?

Because he could be doing something else with his mysterious days off.

Maybe he’s joined a club? I mean, we’re here…

where does Eddie think you are tonight? I’m presuming you haven’t told him you’ve joined a club for people disappointed in love? ’

‘He thinks I’m learning Portuguese.’ Annie sounded rather proud of herself. ‘Lessons once a week, on a Monday.’

‘Isn’t he going to wonder when you can’t speak Portuguese?’ Fraser took time off from his munching to ask. ‘Like, if you ends up on holiday in Tenerife and you can’t speak the language? What?’ He added, as we all stared at him.

‘They speak Spanish in Tenerife.’ Flynn grappled for another handful of peanuts.

‘Do they? Oh well, you’ll probably be all right then.’

Everyone else ignored him.

‘Like I said, he’s bought himself some new clothes too,’ Annie added. ‘Nothing fancy, but it always used to take me threatening to throw his old stuff in the bin to get Eddie to buy new trousers.’

‘But if he’s lost weight,’ I said, ‘he will need new clothes, won’t he?’

Everyone made ‘that’s right’ noises.

‘And then there’s the phone calls and the emails.

’ Annie almost seemed upset at my, perfectly reasonable I thought, observation.

‘If it was just the gym and the clothes, I’d think he was on a health kick.

We see so much of it on TV, telling you not to eat this and not to eat that and I know he worries about his health.

But he’s been getting these phone calls, usually in the morning…

’ Her face crumpled under her ‘sensible’ haircut.

‘And he takes the phone out into the garden to talk. He’s got himself a new email address too – we normally share the same one, it’s only for orders and suchlike.

But the other day he was on the laptop and I saw…

I couldn’t tell what it was, but it wasn’t his usual email account.

So he’s talking to someone and emailing someone and he’s keeping it hidden from me. ’

‘Have you tried checking his mileage?’ I asked.

Five pairs of eyes swivelled my way.

‘Mileage?’ Margot said, very carefully, widening her eyes in my direction and saying as clearly as if she’d shouted in my ear, We’re not supposed to know anything about Eddie’s movements, she doesn’t know we’re following him!

I ignored them. ‘I saw it on some website or another. You make a note of his mileage in the car, then ask some casual questions about his day. If he says he was at work all day and his mileage is way out, you’ve got evidence.’

Annie looked down at her drink. ‘But that would mean I didn’t trust him,’ she said sadly.

‘But you don’t trust him!’

‘It’s not that I don’t trust him…’ Annie looked conflicted.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Part of me thinks Eddie would never – you know, have an affair.

Not my Eddie! He’s been as reliable as… as this table, for forty years, not so much as a sniff of another woman on the horizon.

All right, I know he had a bit of a “thing” for Kirsty Wark, but, let’s face it, she’s not going to throw everything over to move to Yorkshire for a pork products admin manager, is she? ’

None of us expressed any opinions as to Ms Wark’s predilection for bacon and its producers, so Annie went on.

‘He’s not the most demonstrative of men, but it’s been flowers every Valentine’s Day and he always picks me out something nice for my birthday and Christmas.

But since January, he’s been a bit, well, distant is the best way I can put it.

And, of course, like I said, he forgot Valentine’s Day, and…

’ She pulled out a tissue and dabbed at her eyes, ‘…first time in forty years,’ she muttered indistinctly from behind it.

After everyone had gone and we’d wiped the detritus of Fraser and the peanuts off the table, Flynn and I lounged behind the bar.

‘Do you think he’s having an affair? Eddie, I mean, not Fraser,’ I asked him.

Flynn made a dismissive movement and picked up some empty glasses to put back on the racking. ‘I hate to say it, but it’s hard to see what else it could be.’

‘I wonder what Annie will do?’

‘Three choices. She’ll pretend it never happened and carry on, turning a blind eye to her husband living a double life; she’ll let him know that she knows and he’ll pretend to stop seeing the other woman while living a double life and he’ll just be more careful; she’ll kick him out, get divorced and live a brilliant life solo.

She might get a dachshund and a blonde bob. Or a wine bar.’

I looked at him. ‘Does that mean you…?’

We were disturbed by a party of ten, staying apparently in one of the holiday cottages up on the moor and desperate for wine.

They kept us busy for the evening, asking questions about the locality and what there was to do on wet March evenings.

I didn’t have time to ask Flynn anything about his somewhat cryptic statement, and he was in a hurry to clean down and close up after the group had left.

I went home and showered, then lay in bed, thinking. My phone was pinging with messages from the others, arranging a timetable for following Eddie on Thursday, but, apart from indicating that I was up for it, I muted the messages.

There was only one reason that Flynn would suggest that Annie could open a wine bar. I absolutely could not see quiet, always rather sad, Annie cheerily serving Sauvignon to smartly suited businessmen or inventing cocktails to entice the hen party crowd.

He’d been cheated on. He’d run away to open a wine bar.

Flynn, who always seemed so ‘together’, so composed.

But now I came to think of it, there was a tinge of dark humour about him, as though he rode the edge of sharp pain.

Flynn, with his careful appearance, always well turned out but not showy, as though he didn’t want to be seen.

Plus his careful avoidance of even the most oblique hint of anything flirty towards me.

No reason he should find me attractive, obviously, but my main experience of men was that they couldn’t be alone with a woman for more than three minutes without making a boob joke or turning an innocent remark into an excuse for a dirty laugh. Fraser was a case in point.

Flynn was different. Now I came to think of it, he radiated hurt. I made a note to ask him about it. Then I turned over and went to sleep.