Page 22 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

He jerked his head sideways, negating my opinion, but then I was very used to men doing that too.

‘Not always. I am not altogether the vision of combined manliness and emotional intelligence that you see before you right now. Sometimes I can be very, very stupid indeed. Incidentally, Eddie and Annie? He didn’t really behave like a man in the throes of an affair the other night, did he? ’

I stopped chewing. ‘Are you trying to hint to me that you had an affair? Is this the subtlety I’ve heard so much about but rarely seen demonstrated in the male – particularly when Fraser is about?’

Flynn finished his sandwich and put the plate down. ‘Er, no. I think you might be hearing my attempt to change the subject and conflating two very different things.’

‘But why change the subject? You know all about the club, all about what happened to us, why are you so coy about your own love life?’

He got up, brushing crumbs off his lap onto the – beautiful and very obviously expensively restored – oak floorboards. ‘I’m not coy. I just don’t think any of it is relevant, that’s all.’

I wondered what he’d do if I asked. But I wouldn’t ask, couldn’t ask.

I’d been trained out of trying to get sensible answers a long time ago: parents who pretended not to hear anything unless it was my brother asking if he could have fifty quid to go out with his mates, and a brother who seemed to believe I’d been put on this earth purely for his amusement.

No wonder I let myself get used by people like Dex.

No wonder I made shallow, casual friends like Demi, who had really only included me in her life because I was convenient and available.

I wondered why it had taken me so long to come to these conclusions, and then realised that I hadn’t come to them by myself, the Heartbreak Club had prodded me in that general direction.

‘Annie and Eddie,’ Flynn went on, pulling me back into the moment.

He probably thought I’d been quiet for too long.

Maybe he even thought I’d been wondering about him.

‘She clearly adores him and he really seems to love her too. I must admit all that “little lady” stuff made me want to sit him down in front of some feminist literature, but if it works for them…’

‘I suppose…’ I said slowly, running with his desire to change the subject, ‘that it’s possible to have an affair and still be in love with your wife?’

‘They don’t have children, do they?’

‘No. Annie skates over that subject a bit, which makes me gather that they both wanted them but it never happened.’

‘So maybe he’s got a secret family somewhere? Maybe he met someone else to do the “children” thing with? And he’s leading a double life but this is the first time that Annie has had suspicions?’

I stared at Flynn. ‘That’s an odd conclusion to come to.’

‘Too much daytime TV.’ He waved airily. ‘Anyway, now I’ve met him, somehow I can’t quite see Eddie as a babe-magnet. He even looks like an administration manager in the pork products industry.’

‘Someone might find that absolutely riveting. Plus, women go for all types of men. Dexter is a case in point.’

Flynn sighed. ‘I cannot believe you found that attractive. He looks like the stereotype of a drunken street fighter. Not at all the sort of man I would have thought you’d go for.’

I stood up now and instantly got stabbed in the feet by the pain of a thousand small cuts. ‘Ow.’ I hobbled a few steps.

‘Are you going to be all right tomorrow? For Operation Follow Eddie?’

The topic had changed again. I was getting used to this from Flynn.

‘Try and stop me, I’m looking forward to it.

Well, no, not looking forward, that sounds awful, as though I’m really gleeful about catching him out; I’m only happy that we might be able to get some answers for Annie.

Even getting some photos of him with another woman might help her throw him out. Or confront him, at least.’

‘Do you think she will?’ Flynn didn’t seem keen to return to talking about my taste in men, for which I was grateful. ‘I think she’ll keep quiet and just live with it. She seems to be so besotted with him, she’d forgive him anything.’

‘But at least she’d know what he was up to,’ I said, toddling slowly across to the kitchen with my plate. ‘So she would be in a position of power. It’s the not knowing that’s eating her up. If she decides never to mention it to him, at least she knows what he’s up to.’

‘It will be out of our hands anyway.’ Flynn had come into the kitchen behind me. ‘Up to her what she does with the information we get. You go and sit down again, I’ll tidy this up, you need to rest your feet.’

His concern made that unaccustomed sensation creep over me again.

The same sort of ‘something bursting inside’ that I’d experienced when the club made me feel included; the feeling that had reduced me to tears when they’d all turned out to make sure I was all right when they knew Dexter had appeared.

As though something gentle was hatching under my heart. With it came the tears again.

‘Oh, blimey, sorry! I didn’t mean to… but you’re still in shock, I should think. Do the feet hurt?’

‘No,’ I said, trying not to cry but failing. ‘It’s not that. It’s you being nice to me. People being nice to me.’

Flynn hunted around until he found some kitchen roll and handed me a couple of pieces. ‘People must have been nice to you before, though? You’ve not gone through life being totally reviled.’

‘Of course not.’ I spluttered a snotty laugh.

‘But it’s always been an impersonal niceness, if you see what I mean.

Teachers were nice, my grandma was nice.

Maybe nice is the wrong word, maybe it’s considerate that I’m trying to say.

Nobody has ever really considered my feelings about anything before you and the club. I’m a bit overwhelmed.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Then it’s precisely time that you were out of that situation,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you found the club. Or they found you. Or we all found each other.’

‘Me too.’ I snorted.

We stood for a moment or two longer. Me leaning against the door of the fridge, holding tissue, Flynn standing with one hand on the open cupboard door.

From outside came the sound of cars parking, people chatting, the little town going about its business and it all felt a very long way away, suddenly.

Flynn dropped his head and his glasses slid down his nose to make him look like a short-sighted Cousin Itt. ‘I’m glad I found you.’

He reached out a hand and awkwardly patted the top of my arm, as though it were a small dog. Then he whirled away again to head downstairs to ready the bar for opening and left me standing open mouthed.

Well. Flynn. Flynn.

Just like that, I realised I was very, very fond of him.

I’d been confused into thinking he was simply one of the club by the fact that he was so different to the other men I’d known.

It had never crossed my mind that he could be – more.

Slowly I inched my way downstairs after him, having to negotiate some of the steeper sections on my behind to avoid having to put all my weight onto one raw foot.

‘Flynn?’ He wasn’t in the bar. He wasn’t in the office either.

I found him in the toilets, rubbing a brush under a rim in a manner for which the word desultory was hardly inconsequential enough.

When he heard me come in, he straightened away from the bowl, rubber gloves flapping and the toilet brush dripping off-puttingly from one hand.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You must be recovering. I hoped I might have a little bit longer to compose myself before I had to face you.’

‘You said…’

‘Yes, Fee, I’m well aware of what I said.’ He went to push his glasses further up his nose, realised he was wearing rubber gloves, and performed a movement with his upper arm to sweep them into the correct position. The brush dripped again.

‘Did you mean…?’ I couldn’t seem to get a complete sentence out.

Now Flynn came in close. ‘Well, I thought in terms of heavy hints, I was doing a pretty good job.’

‘But Dexter…’ No, it was no good. I’d got all the beginnings going on but the endings were eluding me.

‘Dexter has been well and truly warned off.’

We were standing almost nose to nose in the toilet cubicle. Half of me wanted Flynn to put his arms around me and kiss me, but the half that was very aware of the rubber gloves and brush element was keeping a wary distance.

‘He won’t stay warned off.’

‘He will.’ Flynn sounded so definite that I knew it was more than wishful thinking.

‘How do you know?’ I looked at him hopefully. I so wanted it to be true, that Dex would leave me alone for evermore, that Flynn and I might have a something, whatever this feeling of potential might lead to.

Flynn looked down again and his glasses slid to the end of his nose once more. ‘Do you think that you and I… I mean, could you ever… Do you…?’

I moved in close. Closer still, until we were touching. Raised my head until I could look into his black eyes and feel his breath on my cheek. ‘I think we could,’ I said.

As his mouth moved into a lazy smile, I kissed it off him. After a moment of fumbling, the gloves and toilet brush crashed to the floor and his hands were in my hair, holding me steady as he kissed me back until we were breathless and potential was colliding firmly with actuality.

Eventually we drew apart and I took in a huge lungful of the scent of domestic toilet cleaner, which was filling the air. ‘Well,’ I said.

‘Not just well but pretty bloody amazingly fine, I’d say.’ Flynn shook his hair back. ‘And maybe now we should talk.’

Talking had not been the verb that I’d had in mind, not with him looking so dishevelled and sexily overheated, but I’d go with it. ‘What about?’

‘Let’s go and sit in the bar. Would you like a glass of wine?’ He was watching me.

‘No thanks. I want to know what we’re talking about.’