Page 24 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

At twenty past five on Thursday morning, we were parked at the bottom of Annie’s cul-de-sac of bungalows on the outskirts of Pickering. It was dark, and the streetlights were making all three of us look blue-toned and sickly.

‘Why are we here so early?’ Fraser whined, for about the tenth time.

‘Because we don’t know that he’ll go to the gym this morning,’ Flynn explained again, for about the eleventh time. ‘He might pretend to go early and head off somewhere else. He’s got all day, after all.’

Lights had gone on inside their house. They illuminated the carefully mown lawn, which had clearly had its first cut of the season, and a flower bed for which tended was the only word that applied.

Some unwisely early bedding plants had been put out in rows which looked as though geometrical instruments had been used in the scheme, and outlined by white-painted stones.

‘Minnie says he’s anal,’ Fraser observed, and both Flynn and I turned to the back seat in choreographed unison. ‘You know, like obsessed with order?’

‘I think she might be right,’ I said, faintly relieved. ‘Which makes this whole “having an affair” thing even weirder.’

‘You and Minnie?’ Flynn turned even further around, so that he could properly see Fraser. ‘You an item?’

‘God, no!’ Fraser shuddered. ‘She’s got a bloke.

He’d cream me. He’s ten foot tall or something, played prop for the Leeds Rhinos.

It’s a rugby team,’ he added when I frowned.

‘She’s great though, Minnie.’ He seemed to go off into a little daydream for a while.

‘She says we should start up in business together.’

Flynn almost corkscrewed himself into the seat and I swivelled back around again. ‘What sort of business?’

‘Well, it’s like, I’ve made such good progress and everything, and she wants to set up by herself as a private instructor and her bloke says he’d put up some cash, and she asked me if I’d take some qualifications and be a trainer.

For people who start out as real fat bastards and don’t know how to exercise.

To, like, encourage them and everything. ’

‘But you’ve only been going for a month,’ I said weakly.

‘Yeah, but I go every day. Nearly every day. Five days a week. And that’s dedication, Minnie says, and she reckons I could inspire other people to turn their lives around.’

Flynn and I locked eyes. Our mutual doubt was almost solid. ‘But you only went every day because we’ve been checking up on Eddie.’ Flynn sounded almost as weak as I had.

‘But I’m going to keep on! Minnie got me a year’s membership, cut price cos I’m on benefits. She’s going to train me up and I’m going to be an inspiration. She says.’ Fraser almost glowed with achievement. ‘So I’m going to go later. On the bus.’

‘Good on you.’ Flynn sounded as though he meant it. Although, to be honest, Fraser’s new sense of purpose seemed to have been the best thing that could have happened. Well, he’d stopped wearing Star Wars T-shirts, anyway.

‘Look, this might be Eddie.’ I nudged Flynn as I saw a strip of light beam out across the manicured lawn, indicating an opened door, then the light went out and a figure stepped into the dark. ‘Annie must still be asleep.’

Eddie was wearing his work clothes, but apparently over the top of ordinary things, because he looked bulkily overdressed.

He turned once to look back at the house, then walked over to the garage and, under cover of the dark and a quite frankly hugely overwrought pergola, began taking off the top layer.

Under his work suit he was wearing a polo shirt and chinos.

He opened the garage door, flipped open his boot and carefully placed his work things in there, closed it again, and then got in to reverse the car out.

Flynn, Fraser and I crouched down. We were almost opposite the house and, as Eddie had met us all now, didn’t want to be spotted by him, although we needn’t have worried.

He pulled out tidily, checked all his mirrors and, tweaking the driver’s mirror into a more central position, he drove off down the road.

‘Quick!’ said Fraser, unnecessarily. ‘We don’t want to lose him!’

Losing Eddie at six in the morning on the almost deserted roads around Pickering would have been a near impossibility. Being spotted by him was far more likely, so we had to hang back quite a way as he drove five miles under each speed limit out towards the dual carriageway that led to York.

‘Bugger me, he’s a slow bastard, isn’t he?’ Formula 1 Fraser commented.

‘Probably doesn’t want to get pulled over,’ I suggested. ‘Hard to explain to Annie how he came to get a speeding ticket miles from where he’s supposed to be.’

‘Or he’s anal,’ added Flynn, as Eddie carefully indicated, on a road deserted apart from him and us, to go straight on around a roundabout. ‘Drop back a bit, Fee, he’s going to spot us.’

‘But we know where he’s going – to that place in… Oh.’

Instead of turning into York to head for the house we’d seen him visit before, Eddie stayed on the main road. We all exchanged another look.

‘I hope he’s not going too far,’ Flynn said. ‘I’ve got a delivery coming at twelve.’

‘He’ll have to be back by half past five this afternoon.’ I dropped back a little way and a Mini got between us and Eddie, so we could relax. ‘He hasn’t told Annie he’s taken the day off, remember? So he has to pretend to have been at work.’

‘Oh, so that’s why he’d got his suit on! In case she woke up and saw him leaving.’ Fraser slapped his forehead. ‘Thought that was weird.’

In the most well-mannered and careful car chase ever, we pursued Eddie to the motorway and down to Doncaster where he turned off.

Fraser was asleep in the back, head lolling.

Even so, I didn’t want to raise any personal matters, so Flynn and I travelled on in silence, with Flynn looking out to watch the dawn break over the grey hills and me concentrating on the rolling tarmac ahead.

There was more traffic now as we approached the cities, more people on their way to early shifts or home from all-nighters, and the reluctant sun peered from the regular clumps of cloud to illuminate us all.

‘Where the hell is he going?’ Flynn shifted as Eddie indicated scrupulously and pulled off the motorway. The exit led to an out-of-town retail park, dominated by a large chain hotel and conference centre. ‘Even the shops aren’t open yet.’

Eddie seemed to know exactly where he was going. He parked his car, precisely centred in the space as usual, and got out. He stretched, locked the car and then set out for the hotel, looking purposeful.

I parked behind a lorry to conceal us from view and we watched as Eddie strode into the reception area. I saw him talk to the receptionist, who gave him something and then pointed to the stairs.

‘He’s checking in!’ Flynn announced so loudly that Fraser woke up with a snort. ‘It bloody is another woman! He’s meeting someone!’

‘I’m not certain,’ I said, slowly. ‘It didn’t look like a key card. To me, it looked more like a lanyard.’

‘Wha’?’ Fraser sat up and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, where he’d been noticeably drooling.

‘I don’t think he’s here to meet anyone. I think he’s here for a conference. Or a talk or some kind of get-together, anyway.’

We all stared for a moment at the corporate hotel.

It did not look like the kind of place anyone would head to for a romantic tryst, certainly.

It definitely did look like somewhere that might host a pork by-products seminar.

It looked a little as though it had been built from pork by-products as it glowed pinkly under the rising sun, rimed by the last glimmers of frost. It actually resembled a giant bacon rasher, but I didn’t like to say so. It seemed unnecessarily whimsical.

‘But why the hell take a day off to go to a work meeting? And why not tell Annie?’ Fraser scrubbed a hand through his hair now.

‘Only one way to find out.’ Flynn opened the car door and a shot of cold morning air enlivened us all. ‘We have to follow him.’

I hung back. ‘What if he recognises us?’

‘The place will be busy, we can hide in the crowd. If he does see us, we can say we’re here for… ummm… wild sex away from home.’

I looked at Fraser, who was wearing a tracksuit, had his hair on end and the remnants of his sleep-dribble on his chin. ‘What, we’re having a threesome?’

Fraser brightened. ‘I’m up for it.’ Then, catching sight of Flynn’s face, ‘Er, pretending, I mean. Not for real. Honest.’

We trotted across the car park, weaving our way between other arrivals. It was approaching eight o’clock and the hotel seemed to specialise in breakfast meetings or at least very early starters, because the reception area was busy.

‘No sign of him,’ Fraser reported, hiding unnecessarily behind a potted palm while Flynn and I scanned the area.

‘Maybe he’s having breakfast.’ I nodded towards the hotel restaurant, which was filling up with people in suits. There was a cadre of brightly dressed women too, who wafted down the stairs and across the reception area, all chattering together, and through the restaurant doors.

‘Breakfast?’ Fraser asked, hopefully. ‘Could do with a fry-up. Er, if nobody tells Minnie.’

‘He’s in there.’ I dodged out into the crowd, mingled with the colourful women for a second under cover of their shawls and capes, and back to the men. ‘Sitting by himself eating muesli, it looks like.’

‘So, not a room.’ Flynn frowned. ‘Okay. My turn.’