‘If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.’
Despite all her protests that he could drop her off at the first tube station they came to, Noah didn’t just drive her back into London, but all the way to Marianne and Claude’s place in Kentish Town.
En route he introduced her to the This American Life podcast and when Nina asked him what he’d meant about falling asleep on the job the night before, he handed her his phone when they were stopped at traffic lights.
‘My sister took that when she came home,’ he explained. ‘Before she woke me up and told me off for being so slack in my babysitting duties.’
In the picture Noah was slumped on a sofa with a baby curled against the crook of his neck and a toddler draped across his chest. All of them fast asleep, with their mouths wide open, same peaceful expression on their three faces.
‘Definitely one for the family Christmas card this year,’ Nina snorted, as she tried to hold back the urge to tilt her head and make ‘aw’ noises because the whole scene was unbearably cute. Nina didn’t do unbearably cute or ever wonder whether the particular man she was seeing at any one time would make good dad material.
Except she couldn’t help but think that Noah would be an excellent dad and then stopped herself right there and purposely asked Noah a question about the podcast (‘this Ira Glass – I’m pretty sure he’s a character in a J. D. Salinger novel, right?’) so she wouldn’t start asking him if he’d thought about having kids and did he have a preference for boys or girls and had he picked out any names?
All too soon, even though it had taken them well over an hour, Noah was pulling into the little street off Kentish Town Road where Marianne had her vintage dress shop and Claude had his tattoo parlour upstairs and they lived in the flat on the top floor.
Nina had stayed in text contact with Claude throughout their journey and he was just walking up the road with a carrier bag bulging promisingly with sugary snacks to keep her going through her inking.
She tapped on the window as she took off her seatbelt. ‘That’s Claude,’ she said to Noah. ‘He’s going to be hurting me with needles for the next few hours.’
‘I suppose there are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon,’ Noah said wryly.
‘Come and say hello,’ Nina said because she wanted Noah to meet someone that she loved and for it not to be a totally traumatising experience for him.
Claude might look terrifying with his jet-black quiff and sideburns and the tattoos that completely covered every inch of skin visible from the cuffs of his leather jacket right up to his neck, but he was a sweetheart, an absolute teddy bear, and of course he insisted on inviting Noah in when he heard that they’d driven all the way from Surrey without stopping for a coffee.
‘Marianne’s been baking, which to be fair isn’t always the incentive it sounds …’
‘She often forgets to put in a crucial ingredient,’ Nina agreed pantingly as they trooped past the tattoo parlour and carried on up the stairs. ‘One time she made these Nigella Lawson Snickers muffins and forgot to add sugar.’
‘You still managed to eat three of them!’ Marianne reminded her from the top of the stairs where she was waiting for them.
‘Well, a lot of Snickers bars had to die to make those muffins,’ Nina said as she finally made it to the top and Christ, she was unfit. Noah wasn’t even breathing hard as she pulled him forward. ‘This is Noah. He gave me a lift from Surrey.’
Marianne gave Noah a quick once over. He was wearing non-ripped, non-skinny jeans, a sensible navy-blue jumper, though this one had a little hint of purple in the ribbing, and a friendly smile. He couldn’t look more basic but Marianne’s smile was equally friendly. ‘Lovely to meet you, Noah. Bet you’re gasping for a cuppa?’
‘I’d love one,’ Noah agreed as Marianne ushered him into the flat. There was a lot to take in, from the tiny hall made tinier by the flamingo-print wallpaper and fairy lights to the living room which was crammed with a mid-century three-piece suite reupholstered in leopard print, a tiki-inspired bamboo mini-bar, and floor-to-ceiling shelves which housed Claude’s collection of vinyl records. On every surface there was something to look at, whether it was a lamp in the shape of a pineapple, Marianne’s prized collection of Elvis Presley figurines or a plastic hula girl who did a dance when you pressed her belly button.
Noah stood in the centre of the room, even though Marianne had told him to take a seat, and did a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn so he could take in everything. ‘I love the maximalist approach,’ he said at last. ‘Reminds me of this vintage shop I went to once in Palm Springs.’
‘I love Palm Springs!’ Marianne called out from the little kitchen just off the lounge. ‘Last year Claude and I went to the Viva Las Vegas convention then did a week in Palm Springs. Great vintage shops. Nearly bankrupted myself.’
‘Nearly bankrupted me too,’ Nina remembered, plonking her overnight bag down. ‘She came back with all these dresses she’d handpicked for me.’
‘Yeah, but you get mates’ rates. Noah, how do you take your tea? And I made peanut-butter cookies and yes, I did put sugar in them.’ Marianne made a shooing motion with her hands. ‘Go on, sit down! Not you, Nina, take your coffee and go down to the torture chamber. Claude wants to get started straight away.’
‘Sorry,’ Nina said to Noah, who was seated in one of the bucket armchairs and didn’t look too perturbed about Nina abandoning him. Marianne was six foot in heels, with blue-black hair styled in waves and a short fringe under which her impeccably arched brows gave her an imperious look. She was wearing Sunday casual, which consisted of a pair of black cigarette pants and a tight black sweater and the whole effect was quite intimidating. ‘She’s not as scary as she looks,’ Nina added, because Marianne’s heart was solid gold. She was a nurturer, a mother hen, and had got Nina through break-ups, evictions, firings: so many crises.
Still, she couldn’t help but worry about leaving Noah up there as she arranged herself face-down on Claude’s padded black table. But then Claude popped out from behind a screen wielding his tattoo gun and said, ‘Let’s make sure we’re both happy with the design and then I’ll get you sterilised,’ and Nina remembered why she was there and how much it was going to hurt.
Noah would just have to fend for himself; Nina could only worry about herself.
The first ten minutes were always the worst. The first shock of the first punch of the first needle into her flesh. Then another one. And another one. Like some sharp-toothed bloodsucking insect chowing down. Nina hung her head and tried to breathe around the pain because she knew that she just had to get through the initial agony and acclimatise, while her inner voice declared quite loudly that there was no way she could endure another ten seconds of this, let alone ten minutes, never mind hours.
‘You all right, Nina?’ Claude asked.
‘Don’t talk to me!’ she snapped back. ‘Oh God, why do I let you do this to me?’
Claude, wisely, refrained from reminding Nina that she’d asked him to inflict this torture on her, was even paying him for the privilege.
The pain, the stabby stab stab, made her want to scream. How could she have forgotten how much this bloody hurt? Chloe had said that she’d repressed the memory of how pushing out a tiny human being from her vagina had caused her unimaginable agony. If she hadn’t repressed it, then no way would she ever have had a second child. Chloe had also said that getting Ellie and Rosie’s names tattooed in two hearts on her ankle had hurt much worse than giving birth to them.
‘If you ever have kids, Nina, after having all those tattoos, you’ll pop them out like you’re shelling peas,’ Chloe had once said to her in all seriousness and the thought of Chloe’s earnest face as she’d said it made Nina smile and if she could smile, then she’d broken through the pain barrier.
It still hurt like a hundred fire ants were eating into her skin but it was a bearable hurt. ‘Sorry for being mean,’ she said to Claude, untucking her head from where it had been buried in the crook of her shoulder.
‘Don’t mention it,’ Claude said easily as he adjusted the angle of Nina’s other arm, the one he was working on, which was resting on the pull-out padded flap of his tattoo chair. ‘So, how’s life been treating you?’
As Nina told Claude about her Ye Olde Laser Tag adventures, she could just make out the low-level hum of conversation from the flat upstairs and wondered how Noah and Marianne were getting on. Though both of them were the type to get on with anyone – Marianne was particularly beloved of elderly gentlemen in supermarket queues – Nina hoped that Noah wasn’t digging for information on her and that Marianne wasn’t spilling any of her secrets. More than anyone, Marianne knew where all Nina’s bodies were buried and just how many corpses were piled up in her dating graveyard.
There was the sound of footsteps and Nina tensed up in expectation of Noah popping his head round the door to say goodbye, so that Claude’s tattoo gun almost bounced off her arm.
‘Easy, tiger,’ he murmured as the footsteps carried on past the open door of the studio and they could hear Marianne’s voice. ‘It would be amazing if you could give me some advice as an impartial observer. ’Cause some of my customers want the stock displayed in decades, others in sizes, but I think it looks better to divide it by colour and …’
Her voice drifted off and Nina couldn’t believe that she’d asked Noah to give her free business advice but then, knowing Marianne, she could believe it only too easily.
It was another hour before they trooped back upstairs, this time stopping at the tattoo parlour and coming inside. ‘How you doing, Nina?’ Marianne asked in a concerned voice. ‘Ready for some sugar?’
‘Yes, please,’ Nina said because once her energy levels began to dip, the pain started edging towards unbearable again. ‘Did you get me some full-fat Lucozade?’
‘’Course we did,’ Marianne said. ‘And Noah, another cup of tea or do you fancy something stronger?’
‘Tea would be great,’ Noah said and Nina raised her head, which had again been buried in the crook of her non-butchered arm to see him standing in the doorway. ‘I could go back upstairs if you’d prefer,’ he added to Nina.
‘No, you’re all right,’ she muttered, though she wasn’t exactly sure that it was all right. She’d wanted to be as comfortable as possible, so she now had bare feet, and had undone the top of her dungarees and taken off her blouse so she was lying on her front in a black vest with the red straps of her bra visible. Nina had been in far more compromising and naked positions with other men, but she was in pain so she felt especially vulnerable. More to the point, it was Noah and she was starting to realise that everything with Noah felt different. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because of their past, or their work connection, or that Noah was so not her type that he’d become her type. He was unsuitable for all the right reasons, instead of the wrong reasons. ‘Ow! Jesus! Warn me if you’re going to hit a muscle,’ she added in a snarl to Claude.
‘Stop tensing up then,’ he told her calmly.
‘You’re coming at me with a needle gun, how do you expect me not to tense up?’ Nina demanded.
‘Just grab that stool and pull it closer,’ Claude said to Noah as he completely ignored Nina’s suffering. ‘And if this one barks your head off don’t take it personally.’
‘I hate you,’ Nina told him, which just proved Claude’s point.
Then Marianne appeared with Nina’s Lucozade and the freshly baked cookies and Nina’s pain and rage subsided again. Marianne sat down with a pile of mending and Noah scooted his stool right over so he could have a ringside seat for the tattooing.
‘Did you draw that?’ he asked Nina when he saw the final sketch that Claude was working from.
‘I did,’ Nina replied and she almost gave a guilty start but stopped herself as she wasn’t allowed to make any sudden movements. ‘I used those beautiful Faber Castell pencils that I never even thanked you for because I’m an ungrateful wretch.’
‘You thanked me in the email inviting me to Ye Olde Laser Tag, which was one of the most fun nights of my life so I think we’re even,’ Noah said, pulling his stool even closer so he could have a proper look at what Claude was up to. ‘You really should think about taking a drawing class, Nina. You’ve got some serious skills, which are worth developing.’ Noah looked again at the pencil sketch Nina had done of the old, weather-beaten tree, swallows flying overhead, Cathy and Heathcliff leaning against its trunk.
Nina tucked her head back into the crook of her arm to hide the delighted smile, which she was sure made her look quite smug. ‘Maybe,’ she conceded because there was an art school in Bloomsbury, quite near the shop, and it wouldn’t hurt to see if they did any evening classes for beginners. ‘As long as the life-drawing models are quite fit.’
Noah smiled and shook his head as he often did when Nina was being impossible, then turned his attention back to the needle gun in Claude’s steady hands.
‘You’re doing it freehand,’ he noted in surprise. ‘When I got mine done, the tattooist used a stencil.’
‘I like to go freehand so I can fit the tattoo to her arm better and it makes for a more organic design,’ Claude explained.
‘And I trust Claude to know what’s going to work and what isn’t and to put his own stamp on the tattoo.’ Nina smiled mischievously. ‘I mean, I suppose he’s quite good at his job.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ Claude said. He was the most chilled person Nina had ever met. It was impossible to rile him, unless Nina had to ask him to see off a persistent and substandard admirer and then Claude could be absolutely terrifying.
‘I always wondered how tattooists develop their own style,’ Noah mused. ‘It’s not like you can practise on people, is it?’
‘You say that but my brother has a particularly crap tattoo of Bruce Springsteen on his back from when I was an apprentice,’ Claude said deadpan as Noah, Nina and even Marianne looked at him in consternation. ‘Nah! Pigskin from the butcher.’ He sighed. ‘I miss working on pigskin. Didn’t bitch half as much as my human customers do.’
‘Well, if you weren’t so heavy handed,’ Nina grumbled and she wanted to ask Claude to stop so she could stretch but she knew that if he stopped then she’d only have to get used to the needle all over again.
‘“Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same,”’ Noah read out the quote from Wuthering Heights that curled around the base of the tree trunk on Nina’s arm. ‘Ah! I didn’t get to read this properly on our first date. It was quite dimly lit and I was wearing whisky goggles.’
‘Those Old Fashioneds were lethal,’ Nina recalled.
Noah peered intently at her arm again. ‘So this quote … that’s your mission statement, is it?’
He didn’t sound sarcastic, but genuinely curious, so Nina didn’t bristle. Because although it was etched into her arm for all the world to see and although they’d spoken already about what Wuthering Heights meant to her, the quote itself was something intensely personal. It wasn’t a story many people got to hear. She’d told Claude and Marianne, of course, but even Posy and Verity thought that Nina adored Wuthering Heights only for its drama and she’d never bothered to correct them.
‘I never read the book when I was at school. Probably wouldn’t have paid attention even if we had,’ she said falteringly. ‘But then someone close to me was in an accident …’ She prayed that Claude or Marianne wouldn’t chime in with ‘You mean Paul?’ but thankfully they both stayed silent. ‘He nearly died. Was on a moped and had a collision with a lorry and ended up wrapping himself round a lamppost. We didn’t know if he was going to make it, if he’d ever walk again, so we made sure that there was always one of us at his bedside.’
Nina’s voice cracked as she talked. ‘I was supposed to be getting married in less than a month and somehow, sitting vigil, listening to the monitors beep and his slow steady breathing … it actually felt like a respite from all the wedding prep. When I thought about the wedding, I got the same nauseous feeling of panic as I did when the beeping of one of the monitors in the ICU ward would occasionally become a shrieking and doctors and nurses would run in from all directions …’ She paused and gulped.
‘So, in the end I didn’t think about the wedding at all. And anyway, the seating plan was the very last of my worries,’ she remembered. ‘In the relatives’ room was a little bookcase and the only reason I picked up the copy of Wuthering Heights was because it was the one book there that wasn’t by Len Deighton or Jack Higgins. It was hard to get into to start with and then it stopped being hard and every word resonated with me. All the thoughts and feelings I didn’t have words for were there on the page. I was all set to marry my Edgar Linton, even though I didn’t love him, I didn’t even know what love was.
‘And yes, I do know that Heathcliff is like the dictionary definition of toxic but it felt as if I was saying goodbye to ever experiencing that kind of passion. I was sitting there in a hospital only too aware of how short life can be, how it can be snatched away from you in a split second, and so I called off the wedding there and then. By text message.’
‘Nina!’ Marianne gasped, putting down the sequinned dress she was mending. ‘You never said it was by text message.’
‘Well, it’s not something I’m proud of,’ Nina said, ‘but it really felt as if there was no time left to lose. I wanted to be a girl again, “half-savage, hardy and free”. When I thought about Emily Brontë and her sisters, all trapped in that parsonage, but writing with such wild abandon, I felt that I had to start living instead of just existing. Be more like Cathy, even if I ended up broken-hearted …’
‘Or dead …’ Claude pointed out with a tiny sly smile that Nina decided to let go.
‘I was going to look how I wanted to look, eat what I wanted to eat, love who I wanted to love – do things because I wanted to do them and not because that was what was expected of me. So this tattoo symbolises all that,’ she finished and dared to look at Noah from under her lashes though she’d avoided his gaze until now.
She had his undivided attention. His gaze fixed on hers, his expression thoughtful and serious though a smile softened his features when he caught Nina’s eye. ‘I get the impression that you don’t share that story with many people so thank you for sharing it with me,’ he said. ‘For trusting me.’
‘You’ve got a very trustworthy face,’ Nina said and it seemed as if they were having a moment and all of a sudden she felt stripped bare in a way that had nothing to do with her state of undress or the secrets she’d just spilled. Time to break the spell with a quip. ‘If the business analysis thing doesn’t pan out, you could always sell life insurance.’
‘It’s good to have a plan B,’ Noah agreed evenly and she couldn’t stop looking at him, at the warmth in his green eyes, his smile …
‘OK, you two, break it up,’ Claude said and it was only now that he stopped with his bloody needles that Nina realised that she hadn’t even noticed the pain for the last half hour. ‘You should have a stretch before I start doing the colour work.’
Nina slowly sat up then gingerly stretched, keeping the arm that was a work in progress pinned to her side. She glanced down to see Claude’s handiwork. ‘It’s perfect. So much better than I ever imagined,’ she said.
‘It’s all right,’ Claude decided, as Marianne stood up and stretched herself. ‘More tea?’ she asked. ‘Nina, Noah?’
‘I should probably go,’ Noah said without much enthusiasm and without moving so much as a millimetre off the stool.
‘Don’t go,’ Nina said softly.
‘If you want me to stay …’
‘Of course she wants you to stay,’ Marianne said. ‘And as you’re not being tattooed or doing the tattooing you could even join me in some alcohol, then afterwards we’re going to order a curry from The Tiffin Tin. You don’t want to miss that.’
‘Well, I’m going to drive Nina home so I won’t have any alcohol but I wouldn’t say no to more tea.’
So, it was decided that Noah would stay.
For the last two hours of the tattooing session he asked some gentle but probing questions about how Nina and Marianne met. They told people it was at a vintage fair, ‘But really it was at a burlesque striptease class,’ Marianne admitted.
‘Not that we’re embarrassed about that,’ Nina assured Noah. ‘But it does give people the wrong idea.’
‘And neither of us could ever master twirling our pasties,’ Marianne added and Noah was so pink that it looked painful and even Claude had to set down his tattoo gun and tell them both very sternly to pack it in.
The conversation seemed to flow like the red wine that Marianne opened. It was light and easy, lots of laughing and joking, especially when the tattooing was done and Nina’s tattoo was covered up with a sterile gauze pad and clingfilm, and they’d decamped to the living room upstairs to eat their way through an Indian feast.
Even though she skewed heavily towards the bad-boy demographic and a life less ordinary, there had been times when Nina had tried to picture her one true love and she’d always come back to the same image: of this unknown man fitting in with her friends, of him sitting in Marianne and Claude’s eclectic, cluttered lounge sharing a takeaway as Nina so often did.
The three of them, Noah, Claude and Marianne, were talking about Palm Springs, how Claude and Marianne had taken a sightseeing tour on an Aerial Tramway only for Claude to realise that he was terrified of heights. Marianne was perched on a pouffe, her long legs stretched out in front of her, as she glanced over at Noah, then caught Nina’s eye and winked at her.
It occurred to Nina that as much as Posy and Verity both lamented Nina’s many and frequent dating disasters, Marianne and Claude were equally disapproving in their own way.
‘Oh no, Nina, not him!’ Marianne would invariably say if Nina introduced her to a man who’d survived the first three dates so she could loosely describe him as someone she was seeing. And Claude, who often saw fit to act like an overprotective big brother, seemed to like Noah a lot if the way he kept nodding and laughing was anything to go by.
And Nina? She liked Noah very much. So much so that ‘like’ was an entirely inadequate way to describe how she felt about him as he carefully guided her down the stairs from the top-floor flat. She’d had one glass of red wine, after five hours of being tattooed and with pain endorphins coursing through her blood, so it had gone straight to her head and her very wobbly legs.
Noah’s hand curled around her elbow, light but purposeful, as if he enjoyed touching her. As they drove back into the centre of town, Noah’s hand brushed Nina’s leg as he changed gears because she’d curved her body towards him. She wished that the journey would never end. That they’d stay cocooned in the cosy warmth of a rented car, just the two of them, the silence comfortable.
Since when had she wanted cosy? Or comfortable?
‘So, our third date, does this mean that we can officially get down to some funny business now?’ Noah suddenly drawled, his voice doing things to Nina’s nerve endings that weren’t remotely cosy or comfortable.
‘This wasn’t a third date,’ she said sternly, because it wasn’t. There were rules about these things. ‘This was hanging out.’
‘Oh, that’s a pity. I was looking forward to more kissing,’ Noah said in the same dark voice that made Nina feel quite light-headed while other parts of her felt heavy and languid.
‘Good things are worth waiting for,’ Nina said as she fluttered her lashes. She really was absolutely hammered just from one glass of Merlot.
‘Well, I look forward to it, then,’ Noah said. It was almost as if they’d skipped a few steps, and the flirty banter had been discarded in favour of deep discussions, the sharing of intimate secrets, so actually Nina was quite happy to rewind and get her flirt on. ‘By the way, I’m back at Happy Ever After this week, but don’t you think we should keep this under wraps?’
Nina was immediately stung; it hurt even more than the dull throb in her arm. Then she remembered that she didn’t even know what this was. It changed from minute to minute, hour to hour. One moment as cosy and comfortable as an old cardigan, the next charged with fraught anticipation.
So, yeah, who even know what this thing between them was. But Nina wanted to find out. As Noah pulled the car up at the entrance to Rochester Mews, she said, ‘I’m glad we get to hang out this week.’
She turned her head to smile at Noah at the exact same time that he turned his head to smile at her. Then, shockingly, because this was also new territory, he rested his hand on her knee and it was hard to remember why she wasn’t going to do anything more with him tonight. ‘I’m glad that you’re glad.’ His voice was low, his eyes heavy-lidded as he looked at Nina. ‘How about we seal the deal with a kiss?’
Nina was already unbuckling her seatbelt so she could scoot closer to Noah even if it did mean getting very intimate with the gear lever. ‘Sounds like a plan,’ she agreed huskily.