Page 26 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

‘I love Annie,’ Eddie began when we’d settled ourselves at a nice corner table with a large pot of tea and Fraser was making obscene noises with the straw in his milkshake. ‘You have to understand that. Forgetting Valentine’s Day was… an aberration.’

I poured three cups and tried not to think how ridiculous it was to be drinking tea while someone confessed to… to whatever it was Eddie was confessing to. I really hoped that there wasn’t going to be anything kinky involved, it would ruin my appreciation of a good cup of Yorkshire Tea forever.

‘I’ve been distracted,’ Eddie went on.

‘By someone?’ I asked, genteelly adding a touch of milk and passing the sugar. If royalty ever had to discuss sexual profligacy, I thought, they’d do it like this.

‘No. At least, not in that way.’ Eddie took a huge breath.

‘I get medical check-ups through work,’ he went on.

‘We get private healthcare as one of the perks of management, and I got my pre-sixty MOT at the beginning of the New Year. It showed…’ He breathed heavily again.

‘It showed that I was starting to develop diabetes.’

Things suddenly began to make sense, and Eddie seemed relieved to be able to talk, because there was no stopping him now.

‘Well, I don’t want to have to inject myself and take tablets and look at everything I eat!

The nurse said that I might be able to reverse it if I lost weight and started doing exercise. So, I did.’

‘Why didn’t you just say?’ Flynn asked.

‘Look, Annie worries. She’s a worrier. She’d be forever checking that I hadn’t put sugar in my tea and she’d be weighing my supper and fretting over everything I ate.

And she’s got plans, you know, for when I retire.

How could I tell her that I might not get to retire? How could I say that I was ill?’

‘So, you…?’ I prompted.

‘I joined the gym, I started dieting. Yes, I lost weight and bought new clothes, but not because I met someone else – because I love my wife and don’t want to die!’ Eddie almost hissed the words. ‘I had to buy new clothes because my old ones didn’t fit any more.’

‘The place in York?’ I’d begun to feel a bit stupid. It was all horribly obvious, once you knew. ‘Where a woman met you?’

‘She’s a diabetes nurse. I go once a month. It’s a private diabetes clinic; they do my weight and my bloods and my sugars and run through how it’s all going. I’ve reversed the onset,’ he added proudly. ‘Just have to keep an eye on it all now.’

‘So, what’s this about?’ Flynn waved a hand at the hotel. The restaurant was filling up again, obviously some of the other meetings were having their mid-session break. ‘Taking time off. Coming to hotels. In Doncaster.’

Eddie flushed and dropped his head again.

His bald spot glowed. ‘We’re a support group.

We have… incentive meetings. Talks, medical information, that kind of thing.

They show us what can happen if diabetes gets bad – that’s today’s talk.

We discuss diet and what works best, we talk about foods that are good and foods that are bad.

’ He raised his head now. ‘Lean pork is very good, you know.’

‘But Doncaster,’ Flynn went on. ‘Why here? Surely they must have these talks closer to home? In York?’

‘Well, yes.’ Eddie’s head went down again.

‘But I worried that Annie or one of her friends might see me going in. So, I joined the support group that was a bit further away. Oh, it’s not every week or anything, I’ve only been to a couple of meetings, but it helps.

’ He looked at Fraser, who was licking the end of his straw.

‘They can be quite graphic, as you saw.’

‘How come you forgot Valentine’s?’ Fraser put in.

‘I’d found out that I’d got a condition that might, if I didn’t do something, kill me before I could get to retire.

Annie wants to go on cruises,’ Eddie said, slightly forlornly, as though Annie’s plans for his retirement were objectives that absolutely must not be thwarted.

‘I was distracted and I forgot the date.’

‘You need to tell her, Eddie.’ I bent forward over the table to bring my face closer to his.

‘Because what she’s imagining’ – I didn’t add that we’d all been imagining Eddie and a scantily clad, much younger woman and lots of frisky sex – ‘is much worse than having to monitor your diet and keep your weight down. And that’s not fair. ’

Eddie sighed. ‘I know.’ He looked at the three of us, sleep deprived and a little bit rumpled. ‘Are you really a club for heartbroken people? Did Annie honestly join something like that? It’s not the sort of thing she usually does, when she’s worried, she normally just crochets something.’

‘She was lonely,’ I said. ‘We were all lonely. She’s only got you and she thought she was losing you, so she wanted to find other people who understood how she felt.

’ Like we all did, I added silently. We’d all wanted company in our misery.

Now – I glanced at Flynn, who was drinking his tea with his hands wrapped around the cup – I felt a lot less lonely.

‘After all, you joined a group to help you. Why wouldn’t she? ’

‘Oh.’ Eddie’s head went down again. ‘I was trying to protect her,’ he said glumly. ‘It didn’t work, did it?’

‘I’m sure she’ll forgive you. When you tell her the truth.’

There was a moment’s more tea drinking. ‘I will,’ Eddie said. ‘Thank you. She ought to know.’

‘Everything will be better if you tell her,’ I went on. ‘You won’t have to sneak out of the house or take days off any more.’

‘She’s going to read all the books.’ Eddie still sounded mournful. ‘She’s going to end up knowing more about diabetes than I do. And I’ve been to these things,’ he added, looking around the hotel.

‘It might be for the best. And… can you not mention us?’

‘Oh, Lord, no!’ Eddie looked alarmed. ‘No, I don’t want her to know that you’ve been investigating me. I’ll tell her the truth tonight. I promise.’

‘Lovely.’ Fraser stood up. ‘Can we go now?’

There didn’t really seem much more to say.

Eddie clearly felt ashamed of himself for letting his wife down, and we were collectively horrified that we’d followed him to Doncaster to find out he was just trying to avoid getting ill.

Somehow a showdown in a hotel room with a naked woman clasping sheets to her chest and protesting that she didn’t know he was married would have been more satisfying.

But this was better. Definitely better. We all agreed as much on the way home, while Flynn was checking the status of his delivery and Fraser was messaging Margot to let her know the outcome.

Eddie not wanting to appear vulnerable to Annie and not wanting to let her down, while managing to let her down by forgetting her usual Valentine’s flowers, was the best possible outcome.

She wouldn’t have to decide whether to forgive a cheating husband and live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether he’d do it again. Yes. Much better.

‘So, what’s next?’ Flynn and I went up to the flat over the wine bar. He went up two steps at a time while I was still limping. ‘Do we reconcile Margot and Bruce? Find Wren someone who wants to treat her like a princess? What do we do for an encore?’

‘I think we live happily ever after, don’t we?’ I looked out of the window. At the back, the flat looked out across the little yard and over the jumble of roofs, a tangled medieval building pattern of random houses and gardens that stretched to the edge of the moors. ‘In whatever form that takes.’

Flynn came over and looked out with me. ‘I’d like it to be with you,’ he said quietly. ‘I think we can make a go of it.’

I turned around and he was right there. ‘Do you? I’m not much of a catch. I have a brother I hate and parents who think that everyone should love him as much as they do.’

He reached out almost dreamily and touched my hair. ‘I lost my mother when I was fifteen,’ he said. ‘That kind of complicates one’s thinking about family.’

I moved closer. All my skin wanted to be close to Flynn right now. ‘We can see how it goes,’ I said softly.

‘I think that sounds like a bloody good idea.’

The kiss was better than the one in the toilet.

This one involved no rubber gloves or toilet brush, which meant that Flynn had both hands free, and we made use of all our hands until we reached the point where bed seemed more appropriate.

His room was closer and we tumbled together onto the soft path indicated by sheets and duvet until we reached a common destination, out of breath but happy with the view.

‘Wow.’ Flynn still had his glasses on, which was a miracle. ‘That was… exciting.’

‘Evidently.’ I blew my hair out of my eyes. ‘I’m glad I wasn’t a disappointment.’

‘You,’ he kissed my shoulder, ‘could never be a disappointment, Fee.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to pop round and tell my parents that.’

From outside there came the sound of a large vehicle rumbling to a halt at the kerb and Flynn jumped up. ‘Hell, that’s the delivery!’

He then carried out a rather strange performance, where half of him leaped out of the bed and the other half tried to stay in, while he grasped at various things, some of them me. ‘I don’t want to leave you like this. But – the delivery…’

‘It’s fine.’ I laughed. ‘Go and sort the bottles.’

‘But it feels… wrong.’

‘We’ll have plenty more opportunities for this.’ I pushed at his hand. ‘Just go.’

Flynn stood beside the bed for a moment, gorgeously naked and sexy. ‘Work isn’t more important than you,’ he said. ‘I want you to know that.’

‘Because?’ I had to shake my hair out of my eyes now. There had been a degree of heat that had stuck it down.

‘Dad – he’s a bit of a workaholic. I know it made things difficult for Mum, and I don’t want to be like that.’

‘Flynn, your dad is a multimillionaire. You don’t get that without putting the hours in.’

Downstairs, the lorry beeped its horn.

‘I know. I just want you to know that I’m not like that. I work, yes, but other things have to be important too.’

‘Is this because of Eddie?’ I struggled myself up in the bed. The mattress was soft and wanted me to stay.

‘Kind of. I think so.’

The delivery driver leaned on the horn now.

‘Go. Get that sorted. I’ll limp slowly down and help you.’ I pushed him again.

‘I just wanted…’

‘Yes, I know.’

At my obvious insistence, Flynn pulled on his trousers and T-shirt and went off downstairs, leaving me to lie back against the pillows and make a face at myself.

Flynn’s consideration made me smile. His obvious prowess in bed wasn’t off-putting, either.

He clearly had issues with his father – well, that was to be expected; you couldn’t be the son of someone who seemed to pop up on each continent starting a new business every fortnight without there being repercussions.

Flynn worked hard. I’d seen him behind the bar, and running this place wasn’t a job for the faint-hearted either.

But he didn’t want to be his father. He wasn’t his father, about which I, at least, was glad.

His father was a craggy-faced bloke with an abrupt air, or at least that was how he came over on TV, and neither of those things appealed.

Plus, he didn’t want me to think he was a workaholic. Good.

I lay a while longer, listening to Flynn outside chatting to the delivery driver, and looked around his bedroom.

There was artwork on the walls, which made a change from my place, where the only things on the walls were the stains from dinners that Dexter had thrown.

When I realised that the artworks were probably originals and that the paint on the walls probably cost more than my monthly rent, I had to get up and go and help with the delivery.

I could take the change in standards. I would just have to take it slowly, that was all.