‘They forgot everything the minute they were together again.’
When Noah arrived at Happy Ever After the next morning, Nina nodded her head vaguely in his direction as he came through the door then went back to informing Posy that she couldn’t do any book shelving until her tattoo healed.
‘I suppose I could shelve at chest level but anything higher and I have to stretch my arms and stretching my arms hurts too much,’ Nina explained.
‘Really?’ Posy asked sceptically.
‘Really,’ Verity confirmed from the office. ‘I had to help her put her bra on this morning. I’m still traumatised.’
‘Can we not talk about my personal items when there are men present!’ Nina snapped because Tom was on one of the sofas, face first in his usual breakfast panini. But Tom barely counted as a man (Nina had once sent him out to buy cranberry juice when she had a UTI) – she was more concerned about Noah, in the process of hanging up his jacket, who winked at Nina and permitted himself a small smile.
‘Sorry!’ Verity sing-songed. ‘But no heavy lifting for Nina. Honestly, Posy, her arm’s all scabby and sore.’
Nina proffered her arm at Posy who shied away from it. ‘Urgh! I don’t want to see.’ She sighed. Posy seemed to sigh a lot lately. ‘It’s a pity ’cause we do have a lot of new stock that needs shelving.’
‘I can do it,’ Tom offered, through a mouthful of panini. ‘Nina can serve. It’s all good.’
‘Anyway, I was planning to spend the morning working on the shop Instagram,’ Nina said brightly. ‘I met a woman on Saturday night who started an Instagram account for her French bulldogs and now she has over fifty thousand followers and people send her free stuff. I know we don’t want free stuff but we definitely could do with fifty thousand followers. And also, though I haven’t quite worked out how, people can click through and buy the items, which in our case would be books. Lots and lots of books.’
‘I don’t know … selling books from an Instagram post sounds amazing but it also sounds very complicated and techy,’ Posy said, her brow furrowed.
‘Just as well you’re married to someone very complicated and techy,’ Nina said as everyone, including Posy, gathered around Nina’s phone to coo over photos of Eric and Ernie. Then it was time to go about their respective businesses – Posy popping out for the monthly meeting of the Rochester Street Traders’ Association and Noah taking out his iPad and retiring to a quiet corner.
He’d only said two words to Nina: ‘Good’ and ‘morning’, but once Verity was back in the office and Tom was sorting through the delivery of new stock, he smiled at her.
‘How’s the arm? Apart from scabby and sore?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘Scabby and sore just about covers it,’ Nina whispered back. She sidled closer. ‘So, now that we’ve been on two dates and hung out, are you going to show me all the mean things you’ve been writing about us?’
‘Never!’ Noah put his iPad behind his back. ‘And I would never write mean things about you.’
Nina smiled a little coyly. ‘I should think not.’
‘Maybe some constructive criticism though,’ Noah said and Nina sidled even closer so she could pretend to punch him. She was close enough to feel the warmth of his body, which made her feel warm too. Maybe she could lure Noah into an anteroom later on, if the shop was quiet, and they could sneak a few illicit kisses.
‘What are you doing for lunch?’ she asked.
‘I have to go and meet a client.’ Noah sounded quite regretful about it. ‘Then I’m back in Soho this afternoon.’
‘Shame …’
‘What are you doing, Nina?’ Tom was suddenly on the other side of the counter with a huge pile of books in his arms and a quizzical expression on his face. ‘Are you harassing Noah?’
Nina broke away from Noah as if she’d just been scalded. ‘Of course not!’ she scoffed and put as much distance between herself and Noah as she could. ‘We were just talking about hashtags, actually. Success on Instagram is all about the hashtags.’
‘Is it?’ Tom pretended to yawn and Noah made a note on his iPad and it was business as usual, nothing to see here.
Though once Nina started on her mission to improve Happy Ever After’s Instagram page, she found it quite engrossing. Under Sam’s benign neglect, they’d only posted one picture and gained twenty-seven followers.
Mindful of Dawn’s advice, in between a desultory flow of customers, Nina followed anyone who had anything to do with book writing, book blogging and book selling, even a couple of book binders, and as many lovers of romantic fiction as she could find on Instagram, liking their posts and leaving comments. It was a massive two-hour sucking-up session but gratifyingly, it didn’t take long for Happy Ever After’s Instagram followers to swell in number.
‘We’re up to a hundred and twenty-three followers!’ she announced at one point during the morning.
‘If you’re going to keep refreshing the page and giving me follower updates every five minutes, then I’m going to hurl myself from the top of the rolling ladder,’ Tom snapped, but Noah smiled encouragingly.
‘I bet you’ll get even more followers once you start posting pictures,’ he said, and that was Nina’s cue to go on a picture-posting spree. She posted a picture of a stack of new releases artily propped against Lavinia’s chipped cut-glass vase that contained her favourite pink-edged white roses. She posted the Happy Ever After shop sign swinging gaily in the February breeze. She even persuaded a couple of customers to be photographed holding up their purchases and was just cajoling one of them to climb up the rolling ladder when Posy got back from her traders’ meeting.
‘We have almost two hundred followers on Instagram,’ Nina said, once the woman was back on terra firma with her books bagged and paid for. ‘One hundred and ninety-three to be exact. I was thinking, can we do a giveaway when we hit five hundred?’
Posy stared at Nina. Then she narrowed her eyes. ‘Have you doubled your dose of painkillers?’
‘I have not, though now you come to mention it my arm is throbbing like an engine,’ Nina noted. The sheer excitement of watching their Instagram numbers increase had completely taken her mind off the nagging pain of her fresh tattoo. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘You’re not normally this enthusiastic about work,’ Posy said, which was hurtful though actually now that Nina stopped to think about it, kind of true.
‘Actually Posy, I’m enthusiastic about some things,’ Nina protested. ‘Doing the window displays, for example.’
‘And calling first dibs when a new order of erotica comes in and that’s about it,’ Tom chimed in like the traitor he was. They were standing side by side at the counter and Nina did think about kicking him in the shin but she settled for an exasperated glance at Noah who shook his head like he couldn’t believe it either.
‘I’m very dedicated to my job,’ Nina insisted. ‘Look at me on the Instagram. That’s taking on new responsibilities, that is.’
‘I’ve already made a note of it,’ Noah murmured and Nina beamed at him.
‘Talking of taking on new responsibilities …’ Posy said, then stopped. ‘It’s a pity that it’s past the mid-morning bun break, this is the kind of news that would go better with buns.’
‘What is it? Are you sacking one of us?’ Tom asked, his voice getting a little shrill. ‘Have you any idea how large my student loans are?’
Even Verity felt moved to get up from her desk and stand in the doorway of the office to demand: ‘Are the council putting up the rates? Again?’
‘Oh, just spit it out, Posy,’ Nina advised because Verity and Tom would keep coming up with worst-case scenarios and Posy would keep dithering and they’d be here all day waiting for her to deliver her glum tidings. ‘It is bad news, I take it?’
‘Well, not necessarily bad news,’ Posy decided. ‘Depends on your definition of bad news, I suppose.’
‘Before next Christmas would be great.’ Nina made a big show of yawning and stretching her arms over her head. ‘Ow! For the love of God!’
Noah was at her side in an instant. He even put down his iPad. ‘Are you all right?’ He gently touched the elbow of Nina’s sore arm, caught the pained expression on her face and snatched his hand away as if Nina were coated in a fine mist of hydrochloric acid. ‘I’m only asking because you don’t appear to have a first-aid box anywhere, which I’m pretty sure is against Health and Safety reg—’
‘All the traders have agreed that we’ll do extended summer opening hours,’ Posy yelped quickly. ‘Starting from May we’ll open until seven thirty every night, nine on Thursdays and we’re opening on Sundays too. And, FYI, Noah, we do have a first-aid box, it’s under the sink in the back kitchen.’
Everyone froze. Nina was the first to recover. ‘Are we getting paid to work extra hours?’ she asked, because she knew her rights.
‘Of course!’ Posy looked wounded that Nina would think otherwise. ‘Not time and a half or anything fancy, and time off in lieu when we’re quieter and we can do the Sundays on a rota, if that’s all right. The Traders’ Association have all sorts of plans for pop-up shops and food trucks and a street festival for the August Bank Holiday weekend. Sounds like it might be quite good for business.’
There were general murmurs of excited agreement then Posy went off to deliver the news to Mattie and the tearoom staff. ‘Mattie is going to be a much harder sell than you lot. She’ll want to make sure that none of the food trucks will be selling anything that even resembles cake,’ she said morosely before she went.
‘I don’t really think Posy is enjoying her new-found power,’ Tom remarked. ‘Now that the novelty’s worn off.’
‘She thought it was going to be all book-launch parties and author meet-and-greets and it turns out that actually it’s filling in VAT forms,’ Verity added.
‘Not that we’ve had any book-launch parties, not since our reopening week.’ Nina managed to drag her eyes away from her phone screen and the shop’s Instagram page where they were now thundering towards two hundred and ten followers. ‘I could help with organising book launches and stuff. I’ve already followed a ton of authors on Instagram and I haven’t even got started on Twitter. And then there are editors and publicists, I should probably follow them too and then I can tweet them about what the shop’s doing. What do you think, Very?’
‘Hmmm, sounds good,’ Verity said vaguely, her gazed fixed on Noah, even though she already had a boyfriend. ‘Why are you writing down everything we’re saying? We weren’t criticising Posy. We were just commiserating about her new workload.’
Tom turned slowly. ‘We would never criticise Posy. We love Posy.’
‘I’m just observing,’ Noah said mildly. ‘I’m not here to pass judgement.’
‘Huh! Says the man who’s eavesdropping on private conversations,’ Verity said and she was getting the tight, pinched look she always got when she was steeling herself to have it out with someone.
‘Noah’s not eavesdropping,’ Nina protested, putting herself between Noah and Verity. ‘He’s just doing his job, a job Posy asked him to do. He’s working with her, with us, not against us.’
She had her back to Noah while she did a very good impersonation of a human shield so Tom and Verity couldn’t see that Noah had placed a warning hand on her shoulder blade. ‘We’re meant to be stealthy,’ he whispered, his breath tickling Nina’s ear in a way that wasn’t at all unpleasant.
‘If you say so,’ Verity muttered. ‘I don’t know how much observing you need to do though. It’s a small bookshop with three full-time employees. It shouldn’t be taking you this long, surely?’
‘And one very valuable part-time member of staff,’ Tom added urgently.
‘He’s just crossing the i’s and dotting the t’s,’ Nina insisted and this time Noah’s hand pushed her lightly to the side so he could step forward and defend himself.
‘You mean dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s,’ he corrected gently. ‘And this week is just a follow-up before I present my recommendations.’
‘Will there be recommendations about staffing levels?’ Tom asked anxiously. ‘Again, have I mentioned the size of my student loans?’
‘You have,’ Noah said and Nina didn’t know how he could maintain the same calm, even tone. She’d be getting screechy by now. ‘And like I said, I am just following up. In fact, I’m working on another project this afternoon and I really should be going.’
And then he was gone, taking his calmness and his twinkling green eyes with him, so that Nina felt strangely bereft.
Noah was back the next morning though. They exchanged cordial ‘good mornings’ and polite smiles then Noah retreated to a quiet corner of the main room to do his still-a-bit-creepy silent observer thing and Nina continued with her mission to Instagram every single object in the shop (and it was a bookshop, so there were a hell of a lot of single objects) in between serving customers and sketching a poster with her lovely new pencils to advertise their summer opening hours.
Mattie had completely embraced staying open late and was planning a special after-hours summer menu featuring cakes bursting with exotic fruit flavours and boozy ice-cream floats though Verity kept muttering darkly that they needed a special licence to serve alcohol.
‘Let’s not get bogged down in minor details like that,’ Posy had said and because Posy was quite fired up about their extended opening hours and this morning was emailing editors she knew to see if she could scrounge up some stray authors to come and do signings, Verity had let it go.
Posy also rubber-stamped Nina’s first draft of a poster and was obviously in a decision-making frame of mind because she wanted to know if Nina had any ideas for their Easter window display.
‘I was thinking of ginormous Easter eggs with books inside them,’ Nina said, though she’d been thinking no such thing as Posy had caught her by surprise.
‘I’m not entirely sure how that would work,’ Posy said tactfully. ‘I was hoping for something more along the lines of springy bright colours and lots of books.’
‘Though if we did Easter eggs, we could get Strumpet to pose in one of them,’ Nina persisted, because Posy’s idea was so vanilla. ‘He’d like nothing better than to sleep in a comfy egg all day if I lined the egg with fleece and bribed him with tuna bites.’
‘No, I really don’t think so,’ Posy said firmly, with just the merest hint of a flashing eye, which meant that Nina shouldn’t push her luck any further. ‘I want something spring-like and Eastery that also says, “Please buy a shedload of books from our shop.” I certainly don’t want to have to put up a sign that says “No cats were harmed in the making of this window display.”’
‘Though Strumpet slumbering in an Easter egg would be cute,’ Verity said, as she walked past them on her way to the tearooms with a sheaf of invoices in her hand.
‘See, even Very agrees with me … Oh! Oh! Oh my God! How could I have been such a fool?’ Nina exclaimed. She seized hold of her phone.
‘What have you done? Have you run out of credit?’ Posy asked in a concerned voice.
‘Strumpet! We’re sitting on a goldmine with that fat tabby and I haven’t taken even a single shot of him for our Instagram. That’s a way to grow followers right there.’
‘But he’s a cat and we sell books so I’m not really seeing the link …’
‘Instagram loves a cute pet,’ Nina said. She waved her phone wildly. ‘Look at Eric and Ernie the French bulldogs.’
‘Also, I’m pretty sure that there must be a big crossover between cat lovers and readers of romantic fiction,’ Noah piped up as if he couldn’t bear to be a casual observer any longer. ‘I have a friend who works at Buzzfeed. The hits they get on anything to do with cats …’
‘There isn’t a second to lose,’ Nina decided, turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees in her agitation.
‘What about the window display?’ Posy reminded her.
‘I’ll do something teeth-achingly sweet and spring-like,’ Nina said. ‘It will be the basic bitch of Easter window displays. But first I need to take some pictures of Strumpet and post them on Instagram.’
‘Don’t forget the hashtags,’ Noah reminded her. ‘Shall I run a quick algorithm to see what the most popular cat hashtags are?’
‘You can do that?’ Nina breathed. ‘It sounds very difficult.’
‘It’s not that difficult. Sebastian runs quick algorithms all the time,’ Posy said, because it must have been all of fifteen minutes since she last mentioned her husband.
‘Yeah, it’s quite simple,’ Noah agreed. ‘I’ll do that, while you come up with some different Strumpet scenarios.’
‘I love it when you go all “man with a plan” on me,’ Nina said happily, already envisaging Strumpet balancing precariously on a pile of novels. Or maybe Strumpet posing coquettishly on their new ‘I love big books and I cannot lie’ tote bags.
Of course, Noah had to help with the impromptu photo session because Strumpet was far too rotund and heavy for Nina to lift with her sore arm. Also, Strumpet responded so much better to the touch of a man, even better if the man was armed with some cat treats.
Nina got several shots of Strumpet lolling in gay abandon on shop merchandise and even some video of Strumpet attempting to scale the rolling ladder then getting scared and mewling piteously until Noah rescued him.
Usually Strumpet wasn’t allowed downstairs because sooner or later he’d mount an attack on the tearooms. Or more specifically mount an attack on the cakes, sandwiches and pastries people were trying to eat. But Strumpet loved being snuggled in manly arms even more than he loved stuffing his fat furry face and it seemed that he loved snuggling Noah most of all.
‘He’s the neediest cat I’ve ever met,’ Noah complained as Strumpet happily draped himself around Noah’s neck. ‘I’m used to cats who are silent and judgemental.’
‘We don’t know any cats like that,’ Nina said. She put her arms out, wincing a little as her tattoo protested. ‘Here, Strumpo, come to Auntie Nina.’
‘Is your arm still hurting?’ Noah asked, his face creased with concern. ‘Have you been remembering to put that special gunk on it?’
Noah never seemed to forget anything pertaining to Nina. Not even the pot of special gunk that Claude had given her to put on her tattoo while it was healing.
‘Yes, Dad,’ she said with a little eye roll.
‘Hardly your dad,’ he said and shuddered. ‘Please don’t say that you see me as a father figure.’
It was Nina’s turn to shudder. When Nina thought about kissing Noah, there was no way that she wanted to be thinking of her dad. A world of no.
‘Hush your mouth,’ she said huskily then she looked at the mouth in question, currently curved into a smile. Noah had a lovely mouth and a full bottom lip that Nina would quite like to nibble on if they ever got round to kissing again.
‘I will,’ Noah said. ‘If you promise that you’ll slather on that special tattoo gunk and take some painkillers if it’s hurting.’
‘I promise,’ Nina said and all this promising seemed invested with a deeper meaning than Nina remembering to keep her scabby arm gunkified.
Noah held her gaze and Nina marvelled again that when he looked at her it was as if he saw the real her, beneath the hair and the make-up, the tattoos and the piercings, and that the real her was A-OK with him. Even Strumpet squirming between the two of them couldn’t spoil the moment.
‘Excuse me, but what are you doing with my cat?’ asked a strained voice behind them because Verity was much more adept at spoiling moments.
Nina turned and to her surprise saw that the shop was busy and that a very beleaguered-looking Posy was on the till as a long line of customers waited to pay for their books.
How odd! She could have sworn that she and Noah were the only two people in the room.
‘We were taking action shots of Strumpet for the shop Instagram,’ Nina replied as Verity took custody of her cat. ‘Will I have to get his signature on a photo-release form?’
‘Or his paw print,’ Noah said and Nina giggled while Verity smiled tightly.
‘You know Strumpet’s not allowed downstairs,’ she panted because now that Strumpet was no longer getting snuggles from a man, he was trying to wriggle free of Verity’s firm grip on him. ‘I’m amazed that he didn’t dash out of the door and head straight for the chippy.’
If he couldn’t get into the tearooms, Strumpet had been known to hang around outside No Plaice Like Home on Rochester Street and once lovely Stefan had even found him trying to batter down the door of the little smokehouse in the backyard of the deli where he cured his own salmon. Except Strumpet hadn’t escaped this time so there was no need for Verity to be standing there with a sour look on her face.
‘I don’t know what you’re getting so snippy about,’ Nina said. ‘Strumpet was more than happy to be exploited in the name of publicity. Wasn’t he?’
‘He was,’ Noah agreed, but now his smile was tense because of the sudden atmosphere that had descended on the shop: even the customers still queuing shifted uncomfortably and looked down at their feet. Noah glanced at his watch. ‘I should go. I was meant to be in Soho half an hour ago.’
He quickly gathered up his belongings and was still shrugging into his navy peacoat as he hurriedly exited, a muttered goodbye cut off by the door slamming behind him.
Nina watched Noah stride across the mews, a little hurt that he didn’t look back once. Then she remembered that it was at least ten minutes since she’d last checked to see how many more Instagram followers they’d added.
‘Nina! If you’re not too busy a little help would be great,’ Posy called out pointedly when she saw Nina looking at her phone because even though she’d married a digital entrepreneur Posy still thought that anything to do with social media was just messing around in work time.
‘We’re at just over six hundred Instagram followers,’ Nina reported as she joined Posy behind the counter. ‘And over three hundred followers on Twitter now. But Noah says that Twitter has slowed down a lot lately and that I’d be much better off concentrating on our Instagram and just cross-posting to Twitter instead of …’
‘Thank you, do come again soon,’ Posy said to the customer she was serving. It sounded a lot like she was saying it through gritted teeth.
‘Please take a picture of your new books and post them on Instagram with the hashtag FoundAtHappyEverAfter,’ Nina called after the lady. ‘All one word! Y’know, I love Bertha, but if we had a computerised till and not one dated from before the Industrial Revolution then we could programme it to print messages on all the receipts, including our social media handles and hashtags.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with Bertha.’ Posy gave the temperamental contraption a loving stroke. ‘Anyway, I thought you liked old stuff.’
‘There’s vintage and then there’s just plain knackered,’ Nina pointed out and then she was pretty sure that she heard Posy mutter something under her breath.
Uncharacteristically and pleasingly, there continued to be a steady stream of customers intent on stocking up on romantic literature. For twenty unprecedented minutes, even Verity had to come on to the shop floor to do the bagging up while Posy was on the till and Nina helped people look for books.
It was nearly three before the shop briefly emptied out and Nina’s stomach was growling in protest at having to postpone lunch until the rush died down.
‘I’m starving!’ Nina announced. ‘Shall I do a deli run for us? I could murder a smoked-salmon and cream-cheese bagel. Are you guys in?’
‘Never mind that,’ Posy snapped. For someone who’d had a shop full of people spending money she’d spent the last couple of hours extremely snippy. ‘I want a word with you, young lady.’
Posy sounded horrifyingly like Nina’s mother, enough that Nina gave a guilty start and racked her brains as to what awful thing she might have done. ‘Is this about me giving you constant updates on our Instagram followers?’
‘No, but now that you mention it, that is beyond annoying,’ Posy said. She rested her hip against the counter and folded her arms. ‘But it’s not about that. It’s about you and Noah.’
Nina’s previous guilty start became more of a lurch. She managed to right herself because there was no way that Posy could know about her and Noah. There was hardly anything to know. It wasn’t as if Posy frequented Soho dirty burger joints or East End gin dens and as for in the shop? She and Noah had been the very definition of stealthy. ‘What about me and Noah?’ she punctuated the question with a little scoffing noise. ‘Aren’t you pleased that I’m being nice to him now?’
‘Nice? I don’t call that nice!’ Posy cried, which was puzzling. ‘You and Noah …’
‘Yeah. What is going on with you and Noah? Honestly, I didn’t know where to put myself,’ added Verity, who was still lingering at the counter even though she usually had to be prised out of the office to help in the shop.
‘I don’t know what you two are banging on about,’ Nina said, picking up a pile of books that had been dumped on one of the sofas. ‘He was helping me with the Instagram stuff. He did use to work for Google, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know that but how do you know that?’ Posy demanded. ‘What is going on between you? I mean, what’s with all the flirting? Am I right, Very?’
Verity nodded eagerly. ‘You were practically eating each other up with your eyes.’
‘Yes!’ Posy clasped her hands together in agreement. ‘Doing things with your eyes that made me go red.’
‘Everything makes you go red,’ Nina said crisply.
‘Nina!’ Posy came out from behind the counter so she could stalk towards Nina who quickly moved to the other side of the shop. ‘And how did he know that you have special gunk to put on your tattoo?’
‘I might have mentioned it in passing,’ Nina mumbled.
‘And yesterday the office door was open and I could have sworn I saw Noah putting a hand on your back,’ Verity said.
‘Oh, don’t be so Victorian,’ Nina said scathingly. ‘There could be a hundred reasons for Noah to put his hand on my back …’
‘OK, then, name three of them …’
‘The problem with you two is that because you’ve hooked up and settled down, you expect everyone else to do the same,’ Nina said, warming to her theme now. ‘But I’ve told you a million times, I don’t want to settle down. Yuck! No offence.’
‘None taken, I’m sure,’ Posy said a little huffily. ‘Anyway, Noah doesn’t want to settle down either. He’s always off travelling and ziplining through jungles and stuff. Sebastian says it’s a wonder that Noah hasn’t broken his neck yet or been kidnapped by a Bolivian drug cartel and held for ransom. Not really your type, Nina.’
‘I have adventures,’ Nina bit out.
‘Yeah, but your adventures seem to involve drinking too much vodka and copping off with those awful men you meet online,’ said Posy crushingly. Nina wouldn’t be asking her for a character reference any time soon.
‘It’s weird though because Merry swore blind that she saw you the other night in this burger place in Soho with a bloke who she said wasn’t your usual sort,’ Verity mused. She pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans. ‘She took a photo. I said I didn’t want to see it because it was an invasion of your privacy but I’ve changed my mind. I’m texting her right now.’
Nina pretended to put a book back in its rightful place but really she was clutching on to the shelf for support. ‘Your sister took a photo of me? Well, that’s an infringement of my civil liberties!’
‘Says the woman who took a photo of Johnny the night she and Posy stalked me to the restaurant where we both were and then showed it to that same sister,’ Verity said, which was neither here nor there as far as Nina was concerned. She was actually far more concerned about the ping on Verity’s phone signalling that a text message had just arrived. ‘Oh my goodness! Yes! That absolutely is you!’
‘I bet it absolutely isn’t!’ Nina hurried closer so she could see the damning evidence for herself. ‘It doesn’t even look like me!’ she insisted, though the pink-haired woman in the photo …
‘Looks exactly like you!’ Posy cried. She snatched the phone from Verity’s hand. ‘And that looks exactly like Noah! You and Noah! Eating burgers! Drinking alcohol! You were on a date with him! How? How did this happen? When did it happen? Why did it happen? How long has this been going on? Why didn’t you tell me?’
Posy was pacing around in little circles as she spat out her endless questions. There was a very real possibility that something in Posy’s brain would short circuit. Hopefully. Because try as hard as she could (and she really was trying hard), Nina couldn’t think of any innocent reason why she and Noah would be eating dirty burgers and drinking whisky cocktails.
‘All right, all right … Posy, please stop that, you’re making me dizzy,’ Nina pleaded and when Posy came to a halt, it was time for the truth. ‘Noah and I … Yes, OK, we were on a date. But it was a non-date! And then we went on another non-date, except he didn’t know it was a non-date but then it turned into a date.’
‘WHAT?’ Posy was back to walking in circles on the spot again. ‘This is big. It’s huge.’
‘Really not that huge,’ Nina said a little desperately.
‘How would you even know if it was huge or not, you haven’t been on your third date yet, have you?’ Verity chortled. Nina absolutely did not appreciate the fact that Verity had chosen this moment to crack her first rude joke.
‘Haha! Good one, Very! High five!’ Posy crowed. ‘So, Nina, your third date’s looming then? And we all know what happens on a third date!’
How Nina wished that she’d never told Posy or Verity about the third-date rule. ‘You know, you don’t have to shag someone on a third date. It’s not the law,’ she said.
‘Oh really? Because you’ve always been pretty adamant that it is the law, unless there were extenuating circumstances,’ Posy said as Verity nodded her head vigorously in agreement.
‘Yes, you said being a vicar’s daughter was extenuating circumstances and so it would be all right if I waited until the fifth date but in the meantime, it was only polite to have a bit of oral sex,’ Verity recalled, a finger to her chin, which Nina thought was overkill.
‘I’m sure I never said that!’
‘Yeah, you did,’ Verity assured her. The pair of them were enjoying this far too much.
Nina cast a longing look at the shop door, praying that a whole coachload of customers would descend, all with urgent queries that only Nina could help them with. No such luck.
‘Oh poor Nina,’ Posy cooed, as she saw the stricken look on her friend’s face. ‘Payback is a bitch, isn’t it? But, come on, all those times that you’ve hounded us about our dating …’
‘Or lack of dating,’ Verity chimed in. ‘Or speculated about our sex lives, usually in front of customers. It’s quite nice to get our revenge.’
‘I’m sure that I’ve only ever been supportive of your relationships,’ Nina grumbled but it was very lacklustre because Posy and Verity were right. God damn them. She was the annoying friend who dragged her single friends out on the pull, even if they didn’t want to go anywhere near the pull. And when Verity had been seeing an oceanographer called Peter Hardy who’d left her alone for long periods of time while he graphed oceans, Nina had constantly speculated on how Verity was getting her sexual needs fulfilled in the long absences. ‘OK, you have five more minutes to rib me about this but then I’m cutting you off.’
‘No more ribbing, but I am curious,’ Posy admitted as she flopped onto one of the sofas. The shop was so quiet that Nina decided she might as well flop next to her. ‘I mean, Noah. I just can’t get my head around it.’
‘What do you mean, Noah?’ Nina demanded indignantly. ‘He’s lovely.’
‘Case in point. You don’t do lovely. He seems very off-brand for you,’ Posy mused. ‘You said you were looking for Heathcliff but Noah seems far too nice to be Heathcliff.’
‘Although, to be fair, your type hasn’t really been working for you,’ Verity said gently, perching on the arm of the sofa where Posy and Nina had flopped so that it started to feel a lot like an intervention. ‘Heathcliff is the worst possible romantic role model to base your search for a soulmate on – at least Darcy came good in the end. No wonder you end up with all of those so-called bad boys who end up treating you terribly. That can’t be much fun, or is it that you just like the thrill of the chase?’
‘Pfffffft, don’t be silly, Very. I LOVE the thrill of the chase,’ Nina said because that was what she was meant to say. It was what she always said. ‘You know me, I’m all about the passion and the drama. Without passion and drama, we might just as well be dead. And Noah, lovely though he is, definitely isn’t passion and drama.’
‘Well, I have to say, Nina, it sounds exhausting,’ Posy said with great feeling because she was married to a man who had brought a lot of passion and drama into Posy’s life. ‘What is the endgame here? Are you still going to be on HookUpp or hanging out in dive bars and dodgy pubs, when you’re in your forties, fifties …’
‘I’m not even thirty yet,’ Nina said. ‘And anyway, age ain’t nothing but a number and the endgame is that I meet my one true love. My soulmate. The one man I can never get enough of: can’t live without him, can’t live with him.’
‘That sounds exhausting too,’ Verity noted. ‘I know lots of people who are happily coupled up but I don’t know anyone who’s in that kind of relationship.’
‘Because a love like that doesn’t come around too often,’ Nina said. A love beyond all rhyme and reason. Without it, she was just going through the motions and it felt like she’d been doing that, stuck in a bad-boy holding pattern, waiting for years.
‘Well, Noah is great, so please don’t hurt him,’ Posy implored. ‘He doesn’t deserve to have his heart broken and also, Sebastian would be very cross. He thinks of Noah as an honorary younger brother.’ Posy sighed and then went all melty and misty-eyed. ‘You know, Sebastian is a lot more sensitive than most people give him credit for. And yes, he is very passionate and overly dramatic, but not all the time, thank goodness. Passion and drama can get very old very fast, Nina.’
‘Maybe what you think you want and what you actually need are two very different things,’ Verity said with all the calm logic that usually Nina valued. ‘I really like Noah, except when he’s eavesdropping on my private conversations or manhandling Strumpet. He might not be big with the passion and the drama but he could be so good for you.’
And that was the one problem with Noah – which was odd because usually when Nina was seeing someone they came with at least ninety-nine problems – who wanted to go out with someone that everyone liked? Who wasn’t a misunderstood renegade?
Even if Nina and Noah did have a proper relationship, it would still implode like all Nina’s relationships did. Not in a dramatic, passionate, china-smashing way because that wasn’t Noah’s style, which was why their break-up would be inevitable because they were absolutely incompatible. And, if Nina was really honest with herself, it wasn’t just his lack of drama and passion that was the issue.
The secret truth that Nina had been shying away from since that train journey back from Worcester Park was that Noah, for all his talk of compartmentalisation and being a cold fish, had risked life and limb on all sorts of hair-raising adventures. He never stayed in one place for too long and had been all around the world and was planning a road trip across America. Nina, on the other hand, for all her talk of living life to the full, hadn’t ventured further than the fifteen or so miles that separated Bloomsbury from Worcester Park. If you took away the vintage clothes and make-up and the extra four stone she’d put on since then, Nina suspected that she was still the same girl who nearly got married at twenty. Clinging on to the twin pillars of drama and passion was the only way Nina knew to rid herself of that girl.
As soon as Nina remembered the girl she’d been, inevitably she thought about the boy Noah had been. Creeping and cringing down the school corridors as people chanted ‘Know It All’ at him or tried to shove him headfirst into lockers or down toilets. And more often than not, it was her brother who was doing the shoving.
And when Nina remembered their school days, she was also reminded of the terrible secret she was keeping from him, which meant that she and Noah could never be anything.
It was probably best to end things now. Two non-dates in, before there was too much collateral damage and especially before Noah realised that Nina was the very last woman on earth that he wanted to have feelings for.
Verity and Posy were both looking at her, eyes wide with hope and expectation that all Nina needed were a few dates with a good man to see the error of her ways. So that she’d settle down like they had. She hated to disappoint them because she really did love them both but …
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here!’ she declared in her most careless voice. ‘Noah and I have been on two dates. We’re not even exclusive, so stop getting ideas. Yes, he’s a lovely bloke but he could never be my Heathcliff.’