Page 41 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club

‘Plus, any bod’s going to spot you following them in a crowd,’ Fraser said. ‘You wobble.’

My insides were burning with the acid of uncertainty. But I had to do it, I had to put myself out there and ask for their help. It didn’t come naturally to me, and almost made me feel sick with the necessity of it, but I had to try.

I took a deep breath. ‘I can’t do it on my own,’ I said. ‘I know that. But – I thought, with your help, all of you…’ I tailed off. Everyone was looking at me blankly.

‘What, like driving you around?’ Fraser asked.

‘No, no, I mean – you all have your strengths. You all have things that could be helpful.’ I turned to Margot and Wren, side by side and holding hands on the sofa.

‘Margot, you’ve got legal knowledge. Wren, you said that you’re the queen of investigative social media.

Flynn is posh and has that confident thing that can get him in anywhere, and I could coordinate, do the background research work.

Fraser, you could be the muscle.’ The sick feeling had turned to a kind of burning urgency now.

This was my hope for the future and I knew I could do it.

I was just going to need some help. ‘Annie, you are perfect for blending in with a crowd if we need to follow someone.’ This was understating the case; Annie, with her short greying hair and cardigans, would be almost invisible in any gathering, other than that of a drug-fuelled all-night rave.

‘And we might need you for forensic accounting, too. What do you all think?’

There was a long silence and I didn’t dare meet anyone’s eye. I was afraid that my vulnerability, my need, would show on my face. Finally, I had to do something, and looked up at Flynn. He was still over by the window. But he was smiling.

‘That’s what all the late-night sitting up was about?’ he asked. ‘I thought you were in pain. Regretting not taking up the offer of the rehab place and you didn’t like to say.’

‘No, Flynn.’ I tried not to sound amused.

It wasn’t funny. Sometimes I had been in pain and using the books to distract me.

I should have told him. Flynn wasn’t Dex, he wouldn’t have laughed and tried to persuade me into sex.

Flynn wasn’t my brother, using my fears and insecurities against me.

I should have admitted that sometimes my legs tingled too much to let me sleep, and my arm got in the way when I tried to lie down.

‘I was reading up on what I’d need to do to set up an agency. All the exams I’d need to take.’

Everyone else seemed to be holding their breath, as though they realised that I was sorting a lot of stuff out in my head. Even Fraser had stopped crunching.

Flynn left the window and crossed the room in two strides, to wrap his arms around me. He even smelled expensive, damn him. ‘You could have said.’

I increased the hug. Some women, I mused, would have found his uncertainty unattractive.

Some women wanted men to do the manly, ‘I am in charge’ thing and never express a moment’s doubt or worry; not a second of anxiety or lack of confidence would be tolerated.

I was not them. On the contrary, Flynn’s self-doubt made me feel that we had a chance of being, if not equal, then more or less on a level playing field.

‘I’m glad,’ he said, into the slightly less bristly bit of my hair. ‘I mean, obviously I’m not glad you are sometimes in pain. I’m glad that you haven’t been regretting any of our decisions.’

‘Yeah, yeah, lovely, now can we go back a minute or two?’ Fraser tapped me on the shoulder. ‘I wants to get this straight. You wants to start a private investigation agency – with us lot?’ His face loomed into my field of vision. ‘Seriously?’

I unwound myself from Flynn, who let me go without complaint. ‘Yes.’

My heart was going at a ridiculous rate now.

I felt stupid, small. However could I have thought it was a good idea?

I opened my mouth to excuse myself, to say that it didn’t matter, it had only been an idea, an idle thought, but then Fraser’s face creased into a grin of almost planetary proportions.

‘Wicked! I can be, like, undercover at the gym! Pretending to be a personal trainer when really I’m this ace detective!’

‘Er, well…’ I started.

‘No, no, I think Fraser has a very good point.’ Margot waded in. ‘Having an ordinary day job will be perfect cover. And working with the public, Fraser will be ideally placed to pick up clients.’

‘And me,’ Wren joined in. ‘I work for the local paper. There are tonnes of people with stories that the police aren’t interested in, but who we could help out.’

‘And Eddie and I would find following people quite exciting,’ Annie said. ‘A little interest for us, in our retirement.’

‘Where do I fit in?’ Flynn didn’t sound quite as diffident as his words. ‘Am I like James Bond’s Q, the back-room boy with all the gadgets?’

‘First line defence if we need a corkscrew and cocktail shaker,’ Fraser said, still clearly very enthusiastic about the whole idea.

‘Plus, like Fee said, you’re our token posh boy for if we need to get into…

err…’ He was clearly racking his brains for the poshest place he could think of.

‘Them upper-class places.’ He had obviously given up on the specifics.

‘You and I, Flynn…’ I said, ‘you and I are the power behind the outfit. We do the research and the telephoning and the boots-on-the-ground work. Er, if you want to, that is.’

Now Flynn smiled too. His smile wasn’t quite as broad and unconsidered as Fraser’s; he still held a hint of himself back, but he looked happy.

‘I think I could get behind that,’ he said.

‘Plus, you know, I could just relax my principles a bit and get my multimillionaire dad to help us out sometimes. And knowing my way around the tech stuff could be useful.’

His phone rang at that point, and he walked off outside the door to answer it. I noticed that his walk had a lot more spring in it, and he’d straightened his shoulders to the extent that he now looked a good few centimetres taller.

‘You reckon we can make a go of it?’ Fraser asked. ‘Like, make money and stuff? Only, Minnie reckons it might be a while before our personal training business gets properly off the ground and I’m going to need cash for rent and food. Crisps are not cheap, you know?’

‘I need to do some courses,’ I said. ‘Get proper accreditation and authorisations, so people hiring us will know that we stick to the rules and we know the law. But while I’m working towards getting qualified – why not?’

Margot and Wren looked at each other. ‘Obviously I won’t be doing it for the money,’ Margot said. ‘But I do like the idea of helping people. That’s why I went into law in the first place, of course.’

‘It would help bump up the wedding fund, though,’ Wren said reasonably. ‘If we want to go to the Seychelles.’

‘We need to attract some trade.’

‘We could advertise on social media. I have contacts.’

‘It would be something to supplement the pensions.’ Annie’s eyes were shining now. I wondered if she had herself down as Miss Marple. Although I didn’t remember Miss Marple having an omnipresent husband who seemed to struggle with Getting The Car Out.

I listened to them planning. Our current lack of clients wanting our services didn’t seem to matter, as it stood.

The idea was enough. I felt another of those waves of warm belonging wash over me again.

These people, who’d been strangers not so long ago, were behind me.

I really could do it, open my own agency, pay my own bills.

I could make it. Flynn and I could make it.

Flynn came back in a few moments later. He looked cautiously optimistic, like a cat creeping in when it knows everyone has just sat down to dinner.

‘Um,’ he said. ‘That was my dad. He wanted to check a few things with me, but then we got chatting and… turns out one of his employees has had their dog go missing in slightly mysterious circumstances. I think we might have our first case.’