Page 20 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

I almost didn’t react to my name, I was so frozen with fear. But I jerked my head up to see Flynn standing in the side entry to the wine bar, wearing a striped dressing gown, incongruous in this terror-filled night.

‘Come here, come to me. Quickly!’

Dexter was almost on me now. He’d hesitated in the street, scanning for people, scanning for vehicles. He’d retained enough of his faculties, clearly, to not want witnesses. When he saw Flynn, he roared.

‘That’s the bastard, isn’t it?’

As quick as a ghost, Flynn wrapped a gowned arm around me and scooped me into the passageway around the back of the wine bar, slamming and locking the gate behind us.

‘Is that Dexter?’

I wanted to quip that, no, I had a veritable army of insanely jealous men on Class A drugs who spent their leisure time being surly at me, but I couldn’t speak. Literally could not get a word out. I just nodded.

‘Okay. Okay, it’s all right, I’ve got you.

’ Flynn hugged me tight against him. The shivers started and we heard the sound of Dexter trying to climb over the gate and get into the yard.

‘Come on, inside. The police are, hopefully, on their way, but it might take them a while. The police are coming!’ he finished by shouting at the lumpen shapes that were Dexter’s knuckles, gripping the top of the gate.

A car swept into the end of the road, headlights fierce, and Dexter dropped back to earth, swearing copiously.

‘I… I can’t…’ was all I could get out, shuddering like an earthquake zone.

Feet, running. Lights. A loud shout and the sound of something heavy falling, then voices. Voices I recognised.

‘Flynn? We’re here, it’s us.’

Wren. Wren was speaking from the other side of the bolted gate, sounding calm and assured.

‘You sit there. Okay?’ Flynn guided me to the little chairs we’d sat on before and carefully placed me so all I had to do was bend my legs, then he went over and unlocked the gate.

I could see through and out into the street beyond, where Dexter was flat on his face on the road’s surface, being sat on firmly by Fraser.

Margot appeared to be reading him the riot act.

Fraser saw me looking and gave me an enormous grin and a thumbs up. Dexter tried to wriggle underneath him, but Fraser pushed on the back of his head until he went quiet. Wren came into the yard.

‘Fee! Are you all right?’

I wanted to say that yes, of course I was. But my feet were bleeding, I was cold in my pyjamas and the wooden surface of this seat was damp. I tried to speak, but all I could get out was a kind of half-swallowed howl.

‘She’s here, Margot, she’s all right,’ Wren called back over her shoulder, peeling off her jacket and putting it around me.

Margot glanced up, nodded and then went back to speaking to Dexter, who had gone very still.

Flynn was out there too now, with his stripy dressing gown flapping, and looking a little bit like an escaped patient from an institution.

I saw him bend close to Dexter’s head and show him something on his phone screen, holding it out at arm’s length, strangely confrontational.

He was speaking but I couldn’t hear what he said, though it was clearly something that made Dexter strain under Fraser’s incapacitating solidity, then freeze as though he’d just been given bad news.

Flynn tucked his phone away, nodded once and came back into the yard. ‘The police will be here shortly,’ he said.

‘Take Fee inside,’ Margot said. ‘We’re in control out here.’

‘I got him!’ Fraser added cheerily, as though he were reclining on a sun lounger rather than my ex-boyfriend. ‘You’ll be all right now, Feebs.’

‘Your poor feet.’ Wren looked down at my bleeding soles. ‘We’d better get those cleaned up.’

I couldn’t stand either. It was ridiculous.

I wanted to say how ridiculous it was, but the words wouldn’t come; they were smothered by the tears that had started falling, prevented from forming by my mouth twisting around the sobs.

Wren put her arm around me and Flynn took my hand and between them they managed to lead me in through the side door and into the wine bar, where Flynn fetched two chairs down off a table and sat down beside me.

‘I’m going to help Margot,’ Wren said, looking from me to Flynn and back again. ‘Look after her, Flynn.’

‘Absolutely,’ he said, pushing up the sleeves of the dressing gown and keeping hold of my hand. His presence so close and warm was reassuring, and now I was indoors I felt safer and the tears began to dry up, leaving me hiccupping and still in possession of a mouth that wouldn’t cooperate.

‘Would you like a brandy?’ Flynn asked, staring around the bottles on their racks. ‘Supposed to be good for shock.’

I thought about it. Alcohol, warming me, scaffolding me from the inside. Fake courage. I shook my head. ‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea,’ I managed to get out and Flynn laughed, an odd bark of a laugh.

‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Fee, I’m going to leave you here a moment and put the kettle on upstairs. Will you be all right? Margot, Wren and Fraser are there outside and acting as a human shield so that piece of filth can’t get up and come after you again.’

‘I’ll be fine.’ I nearly said that I had no ‘worse’ to descend to, so this was going to be as good as it got for a while.

‘Okay.’ Flynn dithered. ‘I don’t want to leave you.’

‘I need tea.’ My voice sounded a bit more normal now. ‘And probably some Dettol or something.’

We looked at the trail of bloody footprints on the tiled floor, where I’d walked in from outside.

‘Tea and Dettol, yep.’ Flynn moved to the door again. ‘Actually, not sure I’ve got any Dettol. Not really much call for it in the barkeeping trade. I might have some antiseptic cream or something, will that do?’

‘That,’ I said, my voice gaining in strength with every word, ‘will do nicely.’