Page 33 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

Most of the big stuff had to wait until I was out of hospital.

Flynn wanted me moved to a private rehab unit – he showed me the pictures.

It was a lovely old country house with grounds, where I could be wheeled happily about in the sunshine and have daily physiotherapy in the large pool or totter around the well-padded rooms with their careful artwork.

Like a ninety-year-old in a care home. Looked after, but out of the way.

I refused to go. Flynn clearly thought I was mad, but he didn’t push the point.

He smiled ruefully and said, ‘I suppose you’re going to want to come home then?

’ We moved into my flat, the wine bar being basically rubble and unsafe floors, and he paid to have a temporary stairlift fitted up the fishy stairs.

‘Two weeks! It’s only been two weeks!’ Flynn said, slightly exasperated, when I refused the stairlift as well and insisted on making my slow and painful way up to the flat on my own legs.

‘If I don’t do it, I’ll never do it,’ I puffed, having to go up like an elderly lady with gammy hips, one step at a time.

Plus, I couldn’t use my left arm to hold on to the handrail, so I lurched around with my good hand.

It took twenty minutes to get to the first floor and Flynn had made two cups of tea and a sandwich by the time I got there.

‘Well, I’m glad you did. The club are meeting here tonight, and Fraser, apparently, has News.

’ Flynn was the only person who could look me in the eye when I smiled.

Everyone else averted their gaze and sort of shuddered, but that was fine, I was used to it.

My entire adolescence had been like that, growing up with my brother.

Things would improve. Things were improving.

My parents had even come to visit me in hospital once. ‘I want to know what that is.’

‘I don’t know whether to be optimistic or overcome with dread.’ I hauled myself over the threshold and stood panting inside the door, hanging on to the new, reinforced door frame that Flynn had had fitted to go with the new door he’d put on, after Dexter had battered his way through the old one.

The club had visited me, separately and together, almost every day.

Eddie had, apparently, managed to get the car out on several occasions and Annie had come bearing pots of chrysanthemums and copies of Woman’s Weekly and made small talk about her neighbours, while Eddie and I had tried to avoid one another’s eye and winced every time Doncaster was mentioned in her passing conversation.

Margot and Wren were planning a trip up to the Scottish cabin together for a romantic break.

Their happiness was a joy to see and helped my recovery quite a lot.

Fraser was – well, Fraser. But he had never turned up without a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk – most of which he’d eat himself during the visit, but the thought was there – and had happily told me that I looked like shit and his stitches were healing faster than mine.

Flynn very carefully didn’t say anything as I collapsed now, slowly but gasping, onto the sofa. He brought one of the cups of tea over and placed it neatly on a side table I’d never seen before.

‘You… made up the sofa,’ I said, trying to keep my breathing even and not sound as though I’d exhausted myself coming up the stairs.

‘Yes. It’s nice to have somewhere to sit.

’ Flynn wouldn’t look at me, which made me feel worse than I had after my ascent of the staircase.

I knew I was a bit sweaty and the whole ‘hospital ambience’ was sticking to me as closely as my hastily donned jumper, but was I really so dreadful to look at?

‘I’ve been turning it back into a bed at night, don’t worry.

I did buy a new mattress though; that one you’d been sleeping on had a big dip in the middle. ’

‘Yes, I know.’ He still sounded – odd. ‘Flynn, what’s up?

’ I decided to face it head on. ‘If you’re having second thoughts about…

’ I waved a hand, because I couldn’t bring myself to say the words you, us, this place, our relationship, ‘…things, please tell me.’ Mentally I’d resigned myself to losing him already.

He was too nice, too decent, too, well, rich for someone like me.

And now I didn’t even have looks to fall back on, with my scarred face and my dragging walk.

I didn’t deserve Flynn on any level, and I’d stiffened my backbone and worked on my ‘sympathetic, hurt yet stoic’ expression, for when he told me, all the time I’d been in the hospital.

Flynn almost jumped. ‘What? No! Oh, I’m so sorry, Fee, I never wanted you to think that!’ The glasses got a shove up his nose and he sat down beside me, making me rock as his weight caused the sofa bed to lurch dramatically to one side.

He took my hand, hot and damp as it was, and linked his fingers through mine. ‘You… you’re my friend. First and foremost, you’re my friend. Whatever else we’ve got here, if this is love or lust – or some other thing that we haven’t defined yet – at base what it comes down to is friendship.’

I looked at him and thought that love and lust weren’t too bad from where I was…

well, rather lopsidedly sitting. But he was right.

Our relationship had come from friendship, the same friendship as I had with Annie, Margot, Wren and, yes, even Fraser too.

Although I didn’t want to wrap myself around any of them and hold them close through the night, it didn’t make our friendships any less valid.

‘I’ve been so wary, after Australia,’ Flynn went on, looking down at my hand as though it were the prime exhibit in a museum of body parts. ‘It hit me hard. Being used for your money isn’t nice.’ Now he glanced up at my face, as though he expected me to understand.

‘Flynn, if you’re wanting me to sympathise, I’m sorry.

I’ve never had a bean. Nobody has ever wanted me for my money and contacts, unless they’ve fancied my brother to a lunatic level and wanted me to introduce them.

’ I took a breath. ‘Actually, anyone fancying my brother is already well on their way to lunacy and I wish them all the happiness in the world, there.’

He grinned, and it was a Flynn-grin, eyes glittering and his face relaxed.

He shook my hand lightly. ‘Don’t be bloody daft.

It’s more that you didn’t know who I was for a long time.

You got to know me, the me that’s underneath all the stuff about my dad and having a business empire and all that.

You liked me. Er’ – he looked deeply into my eyes – ‘you did like me, didn’t you?

For a while back at the beginning, it was rather hard to tell. ’

‘I thought you were a student doing bar work in the evenings,’ I confessed.

‘Oh. I don’t know whether to be flattered or horrified.

’ Another shake of my hand. ‘What I really mean is, we were friends before you knew I had a dad who is trying to be Britain’s answer to Elon Musk, without the dodgy political leanings.

It’s not all about the money for you. I never thought I’d let anyone get close to me again. And yet, here you are.’

‘I couldn’t move away if I tried.’ I gave a small smile. ‘I’d fall down the stairs, for a start.’

He laughed and his glasses slid again. ‘You’re very different, is what I mean. You turned down the rehab. It looked like an expensive hotel with specialist equipment that might have helped you back onto your feet faster, and you turned it down.’

I felt the twist inside. It had cost me a lot to turn the offer down.

Part of me had looked through the brochure and thought how wonderful it would be to feel cared for.

Food delivered to your room, top-class medical attention, a personalised exercise programme – it would have been wonderful.

But I would have felt like an embarrassment, tucked away and invisible.

Plus, my parents would have laughed themselves stupid at me getting top-notch treatment, and my brother would probably have visited just to call me horrible names and try to get me to extract money from Flynn so he could buy another car he couldn’t drive.

No. Here was where I belonged.

‘I’ve got something to show you,’ Flynn said later. ‘I’ve been trying to think how to bring it up and I can’t come up with anything tactful or non-prejudicial, so I thought I’d show you and let you make your own mind up.’

‘Mmm?’ I’d been dozing, feeling uncannily close to the granny-in-the-care-home that I’d worried I’d become if I went to the rehab facility. Something about the change of air between hospital and the flat, plus the exertion of getting up the stairs, had made me ridiculously tired.

‘It’s… I didn’t want to worry you and it’s probably nothing, but…’

I sighed. ‘Show me, Flynn.’

‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ He was fussing about with his phone, opening it and closing it again, putting it down on top of the cupboard and then picking it up.

‘As I don’t know what it is, I really can’t pass judgement.

’ I wriggled my way up to sitting properly.

My wonky leg wouldn’t push off the floor properly and I performed a strangely sideways sort of flop, using my elbow to correct myself.

Having a body that was uncooperative was taking some getting used to.

‘Okay. Here, look.’ Now he had his phone open on the app which played recordings from his security cameras. ‘I set this one up in your hallway when I came over to fit the new door, after your charming ex kicked the old one down.’

‘Oh.’ How did I feel about that? ‘You didn’t tell me you’d put cameras around the place.’ Violated? Spied on? But I’d not been back here after that night, had I? A warmth came over me when I remembered how caring Flynn had been, giving me somewhere to stay and, eventually, half of his bed.