Page 4 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

‘Only, like I said, I’ve got nobody else. Nobody to talk to, there’s no one who knows what I suspect and I’d really like to be able to, you know, chat. I can’t talk to Eddie, obviously, and, well, it’s always been just me and him.’

None of us felt able to mention the crochet club, the WI or any of Annie’s other numerous hobbies and groups.

‘Oh yes!’ Wren bobbed in. ‘Me too. Now Jordan and I aren’t seeing each other any more I need a good distraction. Something to stop me moping and texting everyone in my contacts list.’

They were all looking at me again now. I looked at my empty glass.

Well, there were worse things, weren’t there, than a once-a-week chance to sit in a bar and drink wine?

If the alternative was to sit in my living room and mope?

At least here it was warm and convivial and I didn’t have to listen to the terrible karaoke coming up through the floor from the neighbours underneath and think about how I seemed to not only have missed the boat on life, but to be rowing after it in a leaky barrel.

‘I don’t mind,’ I said, sounding more grudging than I felt.

Margot and Wren didn’t seem the kind to need the acclaim of others or a relationship just to feel like acceptable members of society, and even Annie admitted to chiefly needing support to get through her husband’s infidelity.

I was the only one who wanted an excuse to get out of the house.

The incongruity, and the memory of the barman’s cynicism, made me ask, ‘But what’s it for? ’

‘For?’ Margot stared at me. Annie and Wren gave me little covert glances, as though they wondered whether I was about to launch into an agenda filled with corporate speak. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The club.’ Caught in the spotlight of so much attention I wished I’d voted to go monthly and never raised the issue of what the club might achieve.

‘Er. Sorry, but shouldn’t we be doing something?

Something…’ I rummaged around in my brain.

The condemnatory words of the barman, when he’d assumed the club would just be women sitting around badmouthing men, had sunk into my psyche and given me something to prove.

Although why I wanted to prove anything to a man whose entire career seemed to comprise polishing glassware and shelving bottles, I had no idea.

‘Something proactive? Something that might cheer us up? Rather than sitting and talking about how shit life is.’

‘Talking can be useful, you know,’ said Wren.

‘But it doesn’t change anything, does it?

’ I said, rather limply. I knew that drinking lots of wine didn’t change anything either, it just made dreadful situations easier to bear, but I wasn’t ready to give up on that aspect of the club yet.

Talking, however, I could make a case against. Talking was the thing that you did when it was already too late.

I didn’t know what actions we could take that might be more cheering than reiterating our desperate situations, but there had to be some.

I tried to remember Annie’s list of activities. ‘Maybe we could take up crochet?’

‘I suppose we…’ Margot began but was interrupted when the bar door opened and a man came bursting in at speed, as though the night had propelled him through the doorway.

‘Is this the Valentines’ Club thing?’ he panted, arriving at our table. ‘Sorry I’m late; the bus broke down on the hill. I had to walk the last bit.’

‘But… you’re a man.’ Margot stood up now and stared at him as though a human-sized beetle had appeared in front of her. ‘A man.’

The man in question, who was red-faced and puffing slightly, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yeah, and? Your poster thing didn’t say your club was just for women, did it? “Disappointed Valentines”, you said, and I’m one of them. So I reckon I can join, right?’

He and Margot eyeballed each other across the table while Annie, Wren and I tried not to meet one another’s gaze.

Everyone seemed to have forgotten my suggestion that we use the club to help ourselves, and I had the dreadful urge to laugh at how ridiculous this all was. In fact, they looked shell-shocked.

I glanced, for no reason I could come up with, over at the bar again. The barman was looking directly at me, one eyebrow raised.

Margot visibly gathered herself and her tone became ‘dinner party host soothing difficult guest’. ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘I was a little taken aback because our poster definitely said eight thirty and now’ – another glance at that slim watch – ‘it’s nearly half past nine.’

‘Eight forty-five bus,’ said the man. ‘They only goes every hour. And then it broke down and…’

‘You had to walk the last bit, yes, you said.’ Margot glanced around at Annie, Wren and me and the headteacher stare was still in evidence. ‘Well? Do we admit another member?’

I had an odd feeling then. A kind of warm burst somewhere near my stomach that spread out to cuddle round the other women as though I tried, invisibly, to draw them closer to me, and it dawned on me that this was the first time I’d felt included in so long that I couldn’t remember when it had happened before.

Demi tried to include me, of course, although her cute house and kind husband all stood in such stark contrast to my life that I always felt – although I would have died rather than told her – like the hired help whenever we were together.

Here, Margot was treating me like one of the club. I was one of the club.

I looked at the sweaty-faced man, in his Star Wars T-shirt and badly fitting jeans, and experienced a moment of fellow-feeling. ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘He’s right, you didn’t say it was just for women, Margot, and if he’s a disappointed valentine then he’s as much right to join as we have.’

Margot gave me an appraising look which I tried to block out by pretending to finish the last of my wine.

In reality, the wine had gone about ten minutes after sitting down, but in the face of nobody else reordering, I hadn’t felt I could fetch myself another drink and I couldn’t afford to buy a round.

‘What do you think?’ she asked Annie directly.

‘Oh!’ Caught clearly by surprise, Annie jumped. ‘Well, yes, I suppose, I mean… Fee is right, we didn’t say women only.’

‘Wren?’

A shrug. Wren didn’t seem to care one way or the other, although her shoulders had curled forward.

‘All right then.’ Margot sat down, leaving the man standing. ‘But we’ve finished our meeting now; you’ll have to come back next week. Same place, same time.’

‘Okay. That’s fine. Great.’ On his chest, Chewbacca and Luke Skywalker were patchy with sweat. ‘I’ll get the earlier bus. I lives over the other side of town.’

There was a moment of silence. Overhead, the trendy pendant lamps swung ominously in a draught, and one of the dominoes men cleared their table, counters clacking into their box like a death rattle.

Nobody seemed to want to be the first to move, so we all remained in stasis, like the closing scene of a bad play, waiting for the curtain to come down.

Finally, the barman came over and began wiping the table. He smelled nice when he leaned alongside me to pick up my glass and I took a furtive glance at his name badge, stark and white against the black uniform.

‘Thanks, Flynn,’ I said. For some reason I wanted to use his name, perhaps to discomfit him a little. He had a slight air of superiority that I wasn’t sure I liked, listening in on our discussion and only giving me a small glass of wine when I’d asked for a large.

He didn’t miss a beat, just wiped a cloth over the table and said, ‘You’re welcome,’ without meeting my eye.

‘Cheers, mate,’ said as-yet-unnamed man, Luke Skywalker now showing definite signs of clothing abuse.

Flynn nodded and walked off, carrying our empties. Margot seemed to gather herself. ‘Until next week, then.’ She picked up a rather nice bag which had been out of sight under the table and stalked off towards the door, followed in a slightly raggle-taggle format by Wren, Annie and then me.

‘Don’t suppose anyone can give me a lift back down the road?’ came the plaintive voice of the nameless club member, drifting through the door as it closed behind us.