‘Honest people don’t hide their deeds.’
It was gone two before Nina finally crawled into bed. Or rather she collapsed on the sofa in Paul and Chloe’s front room and pulled a chenille throw around her, which had chocolate smeared on it. Nina prayed that it was chocolate.
It was barely six when she was rudely, and abruptly, jolted awake by her nieces jumping on her. Nothing that Nina said (‘I’m telling Santa Claus to put both of you on the naughty list’) could convince them to go back to bed.
‘Santa Claus doesn’t even exist,’ eight-year-old Rosie said witheringly. ‘And even if he did, Christmas is ages away. We’ve loads of time to get on the good list.’
Meanwhile little Ellie, never one for respecting people’s personal space boundaries, shoved her face into Nina’s. ‘You look weird without your make-up on. I don’t like it.’
There was nothing else Nina could do but get up, put on something called Paw Patrol, aim cereal in the direction of two bowls then go back to the sofa, bookended by a niece each. Neither of them would stop talking, even though Nina begged them to shut up.
Paul and a grey-looking Chloe didn’t come downstairs until eight o’clock. It had been the longest two hours of Nina’s life.
‘Thanks for the lie-in, sis,’ Paul grinned. ‘You’ll have to wait a bit for a shower. There’s no hot water left.’
‘I hate you,’ Nina said with great feeling, as she slumped across the kitchen island. ‘Also, I feel like I’ve been in a car crash.’
‘Yeah, yeah. This is what being a parent feels like every day,’ Chloe said, as she poured coffee into a mug so large that it could have doubled up as a soup tureen.
Considering how rotten she felt, she might just as well have got good and drunk, Nina thought to herself a couple of hours later as she entered the living hell that was a soft-play centre.
Everything was neon and fluorescent as far as the eye could see while what seemed like hundreds of little girls, all of them dressed in Disney Princess outfits, ran around shrieking. Their ear-splitting screams competed with a constant soundtrack of tinny pop music, which sounded like it was sung by a group of chipmunks who’d been huffing helium.
And the smell! Fried food, TCP and a base note of vomit. ‘They puke all the time,’ explained the morose teenager on a vigil to make sure that no one wet themselves in the ball pit.
It can hardly get much worse than this, Nina reasoned, and promptly jinxed herself because in a waft of Chanel No 5 and bad energy, her mother appeared at her side.
There wasn’t really much that Alison O’Kelly could complain about this morning. Nina was here, present, mostly conscious, and was being a team player and a good aunt. But this was Nina’s mother; she could always find something to complain about.
‘Oh, Nina, you might have made more of an effort,’ she said by way of a greeting. ‘It’s a birthday party.’
Because she was sleep deprived and also planned to spend a large part of the day having needles stabbed into her skin, Nina had dressed for comfort. She was wearing dungarees from her favourite purveyor of retro denim, Freddies of Pinewood, a vintage silk, dark green and white, polka-dot blouse with a pussy-cat bow and her hair was pinned up and mostly tucked out of sight in a headscarf. Nina liked to think that she was rocking a Rosie The Riveter vibe and besides, she had a full face of make-up, and all the other mums and dads were in jumpers and jeans.
Still, she wasn’t going to rise to the bait. ‘You look nice, Mum,’ she said, nodding at Alison’s floral-wrap dress and her immaculately coiffed hair.
Her mother was not to be swayed. ‘And you’re not even staying for lunch. Poor little Ellie was broken-hearted when she found out.’
Poor little Ellie, in full Little Mermaid regalia, was running round after her friends with a cupcake in one hand and a fistful of Wotsits in the other, while screaming at the very top of her vocal register.
‘Well, she seems to have made a full recovery,’ Nina pointed out but her mother hadn’t finished.
‘I suppose we’re just too boring and suburban for you,’ she continued and Nina had never been so pleased to hear the ping of an incoming text message.
‘Sorry,’ she said, though she wasn’t the least bit sorry. ‘I need to look at this. It could be about my tattoo appointment.’
It probably wasn’t as it was far too early for either Claude or Marianne to be up and compos mentis enough to operate a touchscreen. When Nina pulled her phone out of the bib pocket of her dungarees, it was Noah’s name she saw and her heart did a strange fluttering thing like she was going into dfib.
Sorry I didn’t reply to your text last night. I fell asleep on the job! Did you know the trains aren’t running due to engineering works? Have car, do you want a lift?
Bumping into Dan last night had proved to Nina that she’d been right not to settle for a boy from Worcester Park. That it had been necessary to change everything about her life so she wouldn’t end up with a boy from Worcester Park. Noah was a boy from Worcester Park too but …
God, yes please! Get me out of here! Am in soft-play centre in Ewell, I think it must be called Hell On Earth.
Because Noah might be a boy from Worcester Park but he’d left the first chance he’d got, too. He’d had adventures. He’d lived and not a half-life either. Also, he was offering to rescue Nina like the proverbial white knight on a dashing steed.
Noah texted her back immediately. Can you send me a location pin?
I totally would if I knew how to.
He texted her the instructions, which she followed as her mother carped on in the background, ‘So rude to spend all of Ellie’s party on the phone.’
‘I think it’s time to cut the cake,’ Nina said as she saw Chloe approach the buffet area with a huge box. ‘We don’t want to miss that!’
Then Nina rushed past her mother and not even Alison could fault the way she persuaded the manager to turn off the smoke alarms long enough for them to light the candles on the cake and for Ellie to blow them out. Then Nina led the crowd in a rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ and handed out pieces of cake to grubby-handed children and their very hungover mums.
Another ping from her bib pocket. Another text from Noah. I’m two minutes away. Meet you out front.
Oh God! If Nina hadn’t been distracted by her mother bitching in her ear, she would have told Noah to meet her around the corner because they still hadn’t had the conversation about Paul destroying Noah’s life.
What if Noah decided to come into the soft-play centre to find her? It didn’t even bear thinking about.
It took Nina one minute and forty-seven seconds to say a hurried goodbye to anyone within shouting distance, hug Ellie, grab her overnight bag and not react to her mother saying, ‘You’re leaving? Already? But you only just got here.’
There was a car pulling into an empty parking space a few metres away as Nina escaped from the soft-play purgatory. She tilted her head to make sure that yes, the driver had red hair and put up her hand to forestall Noah, but he was already getting out of the car.
‘STAY WHERE YOU ARE!’ she yelled at Noah who waved at her, a broad smile on his face like he was pleased to see her. ‘STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE! DON’T MOVE!’
She was screeching like a hellbeast but it worked because although Noah frowned, he didn’t take another step forward so there was little chance of him having an awkward, hideous, world-shattering reunion with Paul who – to Nina’s horror – was outside too with Rosie, who was having a mid-level meltdown that Ellie was getting all the attention.
Noah was near enough to call out, ‘What’s the panic? I’ve come to take you away from all of this!’
Nina flapped her hands at him: she was pretty sure that Paul was obscured by a blackboard for the moment but surely that wouldn’t last. He was squatting down, Rosie balanced precariously on his knee, and he had eyes only for his eldest daughter, thank the Lord.
However, there was no way to avoid saying goodbye to them even with Noah within spitting distance. As Rosie hurled herself at Nina, Paul straightened up and Noah was still by the car and Paul had his back to him and Nina might just get away with this …
‘Paul,’ Nina hissed, yanking him towards the doors of the play centre. ‘You’re missing your youngest daughter’s birthday party and Mum is furious with you.’
‘Oh Jesus!’
There was nothing more guaranteed to make Paul disappear. He was gone in the blink of an eye, dragging a protesting Rosie with him, and Nina was left to walk over to Noah who was holding the passenger door open for her.
‘Hey. Sorry about that,’ she said nervously, as she climbed into the car.
Noah walked over to the driver’s side and got in.
‘That’s OK. In a hurry to get away, were you?’ he asked as he started the car.
‘Yep. It turns out that soft-play centres are even worse than Ye Olde Laser Tag Experience.’
Noah laughed as he caught Nina’s eye. ‘Well, I’ll give you a moment to regroup then.’
She couldn’t quite believe that she’d got away with it. Noah hadn’t seen Paul, Paul hadn’t seen Noah. The Day of Reckoning was still yet to come, though any more close calls and Nina might have died from a heart attack before she had to confess everything.
They drove off in silence and it wasn’t until they were on the A3 that Nina broke the ice. ‘I didn’t know you had a car,’ she said because she didn’t know how to say any of the other things she needed to say.
‘I belong to a car hire club,’ Noah said as he changed lanes.
‘Oh, right.’ Again, Nina wished that she had got drunk last night so right now she’d be hungover and numb of all feeling. Or better yet, still drunk.
She stared out of the window, pulled a despairing face at the houses and gardens that passed by. Maybe The Day of Reckoning was today and it was time to come clean. This thing with Noah; the two non-dates and now the rescuing her from the horrors of soft play was turning from a thing into a something but how could it be anything when Nina was hiding this secret from him? And yes, it might mean that Noah would want nothing more to do with her, but that was his call. His right to make that decision …
‘Are you ready for adult conversation yet?’ Noah asked.
‘I think so.’ Nina took a deep breath. ‘Look, I have to—’
‘It’s just, I wonder if you feel the same way about Worcester Park,’ Noah blurted out. ‘That being back home – not that it feels like home any more – makes me feel like I’m twelve again.’ When Nina glanced at him, his cheeks were red and blotchy. ‘As if everything I’ve accomplished since I left that school, all the things I’ve learned, the new experiences, friends, places, are all gone and I’m back to being a speccy, spotty, swotty nerd who couldn’t do anything right. This morning I popped in to see my parents and just walking down our street gave me this absolute sense memory. The same feeling of wanting to be sick that I got each morning when I was walking to school. Y’know, Sundays were the worst, knowing that the weekend was almost over and soon it would be Monday …’
‘But I thought you said you’d learned to compartmentalise,’ Nina said a little desperately because she couldn’t bear to listen to another word. She even reached over to put a hand on Noah’s arm to comfort him, but mostly to stop him.
She knew then that she could never tell him that it was her brother who’d made those Sunday nights, the anticipation of Monday morning, so hellish.
If she did, it would ruin everything. Instead of seeing Nina, Noah would look at her and only see her brother. Not Paul as he was now; kind, caring, the loveliest father, but as he’d been back then. A thug in a Kappa tracksuit, as Paul himself had said.
‘I realise that there are some things I can’t lock away,’ Noah said. ‘Not now I’m back.’
‘But it does no good living in the past,’ Nina argued in the same desperate voice. Noah had shared something with her and though she couldn’t tell him the truth, she wanted to share something personal and painful too. ‘Last night, at All Bar One, I bumped into my ex. The ex.’
‘Oh.’ Noah caught her eye again as he changed lanes. ‘Your childhood sweetheart?’
‘One and the same, Dan Moffat,’ Nina said without thinking.
‘Dan Moffat? I think the name dimly rings a bell,’ Noah said but he didn’t say any more than that and there was no telltale flush to his face any more, so at least Dan hadn’t made Noah’s life a misery too.
‘We started going out when I was fifteen. He was my first boyfriend,’ Nina said. ‘I was obsessed with getting a boyfriend.’ Oh God, she had hardly changed at all. ‘I was so basic back then. I wanted to look like everyone else, wear the same clothes, hang out at the same places.’
‘But most people want to fit in when they’re teenagers,’ Noah pointed out. ‘It’s safer that way.’
‘Sometimes safe is just another word for boring. Everything about me was boring. Like, all the women in my family were married by the time they were twenty and that was the sum total of my ambition too. So, I went out with Dan and he was perfectly nice and we got engaged on my eighteenth birthday and the wedding date was set, caterers booked, and that was when I read Wuthering Heights and realised that I was just sleepwalking. Treading water and it was time that I learned to swim, jump off the really high diving board. You know what I mean?’
‘Mostly.’ Noah dared to nudge Nina and now he was smiling again. ‘Although you’re starting to lose me a little with all the swimming metaphors.’
Nina smiled. ‘OK, I’ll skip the bit about learning how to do butterfly after years of a sedate breaststroke.’ Her expression grew more serious, not least because she couldn’t tell him that the reason for her epiphany was Paul’s accident. ‘Anyway, I decided I was done with living the life that my mother had planned out for me. So, I quit my job at my aunt’s hair salon so I could work in a place in town that would be more cutting edge and well, I broke up with Dan. Though it was only two weeks before our wedding, so technically it counts as jilting him. That was ten years ago and my mother still hasn’t forgiven me.’
‘Wow,’ Noah said. ‘You’d think she’d have let it drop by now.’
‘It wasn’t just the jilting,’ Nina said. ‘Everything I did to reclaim myself was a personal affront to her, from dyeing my hair to eating carbs – she’d had me on the Atkins diet since I was twelve.’
‘When my parents found out that I wasn’t vegan any more – my dad discovered a Ginster’s pasty wrapper in my laundry bag when I was home from university – we had a week of family mediation sessions so I could think about what I’d done,’ Noah offered.
‘I’d rather have a week of mediation than ten years of my mother’s passive-aggressive sniping,’ Nina said. Then she thought about it. ‘Actually it’s not even passive-aggressive. It’s aggressive-aggressive.’ But they were getting sidetracked. ‘What I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter who we used to be, what’s important is the people that we choose to be now,’ she said with great force and feeling.
Noah caught her eye again in the windscreen mirror, his expression serious but not sad any longer. ‘Amen to that.’