Page 38 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

Fraser straightened importantly. ‘I’m moving out,’ he said. ‘Minnie and her bloke helped me get one of the new places in the old warehouse behind the library. That one they’ve turned into flats.’

He was clearly almost bursting with pride about this.

‘I thought that was sheltered accommodation for the elderly?’ Margot dropped in, in her usual brusque way.

‘There’s flats for people like me, too.’ Fraser didn’t sound upset at all.

‘As long as we helps out the old folks now and again – bit of shopping, put up some shelves an’ all – we gets cheap accommodation.

And, you know, the neighbours aren’t going to be playing grunge rock full volume ’til four in the morning like at Mum’s. ’

‘That sounds great,’ I said, pulling down the back of my T-shirt. ‘That’s really good, Fraser.’

He beamed at me. ‘Some of those girls who comes in to do personal care are a bit tasty too,’ he said. ‘Might get to chat them up as well.’

‘Aaaand we’re back to our usual standard.’ Flynn put the kettle on. ‘It will have to be tea, I’m afraid, we’re a bit short on the chardonnay, what with most of my stock being locked away behind an exploded building which we’re not allowed to go into.’

Margot smiled and pulled a bottle out of her handbag. ‘I brought supplies,’ she said. ‘I thought we could have a drink because Wren and I are off to Scotland on Thursday, so we won’t be able to make next week’s meeting.’

Flynn brought through my mismatched collection of drinking glasses and a cup of tea for me. ‘Can’t drink on the medication,’ I explained, somewhat sourly, watching them pour themselves big glasses of what looked like a really classy wine. ‘Besides, drinking is overrated. Look what it led me to.’

‘Have the police made any progress in locking up your ex?’ Margot peered at me over her glass.

I thought of the phones that had been hidden under my floor. ‘There’s been a bit of a development.’

‘We’re hopeful,’ Flynn said. ‘If he gets let off, we move up to Defcon Terrified and Australia.’

‘If you need any legal help, I would be prepared to step in on the case,’ Margot said. ‘It’s about time I got back to practising – I had to take time off around the divorce, but now that’s all sorted, there’s only the decrees to finish now.’

‘And I could use all my journalistic contacts,’ Wren added, clinking glasses with Margot. ‘If you need me. I’m an absolute expert at forensic examination of social media.’

‘And I can always punch him,’ Fraser chimed in. ‘If you needed me to. Or sit on him again. I liked that bit.’

I smiled at all of them. ‘You are very useful people to know, thank you. We’re hoping that the police will have enough to put him and his cronies away for a good long while.’

‘Well.’ Margot seemed mollified. ‘That’s good. Just – if you need us, that’s all.’

‘Thank you,’ I said again, humbled by their wanting to help me.

‘And I’m sure Annie would offer any assistance she may be able to render, too,’ Margot went on. ‘She’s so very grateful for our support in the matter of Eddie.’

We all stared at her. ‘She doesn’t know, does she?’ I asked. ‘All the following and everything?’

‘Oh, no no. Nothing like that, no, like she said when we all visited you in the hospital, she’s incredibly grateful for the support we gave her when she suspected infidelity. She really does live her entire life wrapped up in Eddie.’

‘Her choice though, surely.’

Margot frowned. ‘She used to be an accountant, you know. Quite high-powered, apparently, but she gave it up because Eddie needed someone at home to organise him.’

We all inwardly digested the thought of Eddie, king of the pork products and the garden so regimented that the plants almost marched in step, needing organising.

‘Houses take a lot of looking after,’ Wren said reasonably. ‘And if they were expecting to have children, perhaps it made sense. They have been married a long time, after all.’

‘Plus, she makes a cracking hot pot,’ put in Fraser, whose concern with accountancy was clearly subordinate to his stomach.

The meeting broke up shortly afterwards, once everyone had finished their wine and reassured themselves that my recovery was ongoing.

I had been nearest the blast, the others had been cushioned from the worst of the impact by furniture and the solidity of Fraser.

It would, I thought, take more than a bomb to take down Fraser, who seemed to have the physical fragility of a combine harvester.

Flynn went across the road to sort out something to do with site security with a man in a very bright orange jacket who stood staring up at the scaffolding.

I watched them from the window, leaning against the frame so that my legs didn’t let me down again, and felt that awful sense of hopelessness come back over me.

What was I going to do? I couldn’t spend the rest of my life reliant on Flynn.

He would come to resent it, however much he said he wouldn’t, and I really could not spend the next sixty or more years sitting down and reading, could I?

Oh, I might manage the odd bar shift or some office work, and there was always the call centre again, as long as I didn’t mind being humiliated on a daily basis, even though having the use of only one arm was going to hamper me somewhat.

There was Flynn, all dark and lovely and willing to try to make a life with me – I had to be able to contribute somehow.

I couldn’t forever be the ‘back-room girl’, despite my ferocious amount of training in that direction during my growing up.

Then I thought how happy my parents would be if I had to go home.

If Flynn got tired of me and replaced me with a fully working model, someone who could run up hills hand in hand with him – I had a vision of some advertisement-worthy couple chasing each other breathlessly to the top of a mountain and standing there with the wind in their hair and a look of ridiculously outdoors-inspired joy on their faces.

No. I had to do something. I stared around the flat.

It was tidier since Flynn had moved in, so there wasn’t a lot of inspiration, apart from the huge gap in my bathroom floor where we’d ripped up the floorboards.

Hole in the floor, books piled up against the far wall because I hadn’t got around to a bookcase.

The Monday Night Heartbreak Club, all behind me…

I had the faintest glimmerings of an idea.