‘But I begin to fancy you don’t like me.’
Though Nina was very fond of saying ‘I can sleep when I’m dead’ every time any of her friends, especially Verity who was evangelical about eight hours of shut-eye, remonstrated with her about burning the candle at both ends, there was a lot to be said for an early night.
She’d been in bed by an unprecedented half past ten and woke up the next morning before her alarm. It was quite a revelation that getting showered, dressed and made-up could be done in a leisurely fashion, and when Verity finally came home from staying the night at Johnny’s, she did a double-take to see Nina sitting in the kitchen, lingering over toast and jam and her first cup of coffee of the day.
‘Morning, Very!’ Nina picked up the cafetière. ‘Do you want a cup?’
Verity goggled at her. ‘What is going on here?’ she asked in a bewildered fashion. ‘Did you stay out all night?’
‘I beg your pardon!’ Nina gasped, like she was affronted at the notion that the only reason she was up was because she hadn’t gone to bed. ‘The very idea! Not like you, you dirty stop-out!’
It was Verity’s turn to gasp in outrage. ‘I’m not a dirty stop-out. I’m in a loving, committed relationship, thank you very much.’
Half an hour later when Posy arrived for work, Nina took great delight in opening the shop door for her with much ceremony and a chirpy, ‘Posy! You’re five minutes late! No need to worry though, I’ve already signed for a couple of deliveries and done the till float.’
Posy put a hand to her forehead and pretended to swoon. ‘Oh God, I must be hallucinating. Are you really Nina?’
Nina nodded. ‘I’m a new, improved Nina who had an early night.’
‘I always knew this day would come,’ Posy said with a grin, nudging Nina. ‘If you continue to be new and improved, I might have to promote you to deputy manager, then you could open the shop every day and I could have a bit of a lie-in.’
‘I’m pretty sure that come tomorrow, I’ll revert back to Nina version one,’ Nina decided and then Posy pretended to cry and it set a jokey mood for the morning, which was just as well, because the day was grey and drizzly, yet again, and the shop was very quiet. Nina hoped that it was just because of the weather and not because they’d run out of customers. Verity still seemed to have a lot of orders coming in through the website and Posy insisted that it was just a lull and ‘things will pick up nearer to Valentine’s Day.’
But Valentine’s Day was only a week away and Nina couldn’t see that people would want to buy more romantic fiction if they had the real thing. And if they were single, why buy a romantic novel as a special Valentine’s Day treat, when it would only remind you of the fact that no one loved you?
Anyway, Valentine’s Day or not, the shop had become awfully quiet now that Christmas was long gone.
When they’d reopened as Happy Ever After last summer, they’d planned all sorts of exciting things. Author events, blogger evenings, a book-of-the-month club, but as yet none of these exciting things had happened.
No one even bothered to update the shop’s Twitter or Instagram feeds any more. Sam, Posy’s sixteen-year-old brother, and Little Sophie, their Saturday girl, had promised to take responsibility for them, but their good intentions had lasted a maximum of two weeks. Nina wouldn’t have minded taking them over, or the Instagram at least, so she could take pictures of the new releases, but no one seemed to know the login details for each account. When Nina had asked Sam, he’d gone full teenage strop on her, so she suspected that he couldn’t actually remember what the passwords were.
Still, there was something to be said for a slow morning. Nina painted her nails then read a very sexy workplace romance called Billionaire In The Boardroom, Gigolo In The Bedroom in between texting back and forth with her friend Marianne about her new-found resolve to stop taking a chance on losers and really focus on finding her own true love, so despite the lack of customers, the morning sped by.
As the shop was quiet and she had actually started work early that morning, Nina reasoned that no one would mind if she was a little late back from lunch. She had planned to grab a quick bite with lovely Annika, girlfriend of lovely Stefan who ran the Swedish deli on Rochester Street, but Annika and Stefan had had a massive argument, which sounded far from lovely, so Nina had to listen to an entire repeat of said massive argument and then offer advice.
Usually when her women friends were fighting with their significant others, Nina would argue that passion made a relationship stronger as long as the reason for the fight didn’t involve cheating or skidmarks, but Annika wasn’t convinced.
‘He cares more about his smokehouse than he cares about me,’ she said sadly of the little wooden shed in the backyard of the deli where Stefan cured his own salmon.
So, Nina was late back from lunch. Only by fifteen minutes, which was nothing. She’d been back from lunch much later than that before. Much, much later.
Unfortunately the sun had come out since Nina had left the shop and when she returned, Happy Ever After was full of customers, as if the romance novel-reading public only ventured outside for blue skies.
‘Sorry!’ Nina said in a jaunty voice as she approached the counter where Posy was manning the till and a very reluctant Verity had been press-ganged into helping. ‘I got held up.’
‘There’s a reason why it’s called a lunch hour,’ Posy snapped in a very un-Posy-like manner. ‘That’s because it’s only meant to last sixty minutes.’
‘I said I was sorry. Keep your hair on,’ Nina said, nudging Posy out of the way with her hip, so she could serve the next customer. ‘Hello! Shall I take those from you?’
‘I’m going back to the office now,’ Verity announced in martyred tones, because she hated interacting with the general public in any way, shape or form. She’d only answer the phone under extreme duress, whereas Nina was happy to answer the phone every time it rang and chat to every customer, which even Posy got a bit bored with, so Verity and Posy could just get over themselves.
Her timekeeping might be a little free-form but Nina was excellent at customer service. She said as much to Posy, who was now taking the books that Nina rang up, and bagging them along with a complimentary Happy Ever After bookmark, but Posy just muttered darkly that she already missed the new and improved Nina.
The queue seemed never ending but it did end eventually, and Nina could take off her coat, stash her bag under the counter and come face to face with …
‘Not you again! How long have you been standing there?’ Nina demanded of Noah, who was indeed standing at the other end of the counter in his stupid suit with his stupid handheld device. No doubt he’d been writing copious notes about the amount of backchat Nina gave to Posy and was recommending that she be fired immediately.
‘Quite a while actually,’ Noah replied mildly. ‘You see, I wasn’t back late from lunch.’
Nina gave him a hard stare – she didn’t appreciate his sarcasm. Not one little bit. He had a clever, kind-looking face but when he smiled blandly at Nina, as he was doing now, it just stoked the flames of her dislike.
‘Noah’s here for the afternoon,’ Posy said. ‘Which you’d have known if you’d got back from lunch in time.’
‘God, Posy, will you let it go?’ Nina groaned and Noah made another mark on his iPad, which Nina was going to spill a hot drink on first chance she got, and Posy sniffed and said that she had work to do and that she wasn’t to be disturbed, and disappeared into the back office.
She even shut the door so Nina couldn’t eavesdrop on her and Verity, which meant they were sure to be talking about her. She glanced around the main room of the shop then craned her neck to see what was going on in the anterooms on her right and her left. The browsers had thinned out. The shop was almost empty again. Just like the old days when they’d been Bookends and the only thing stopping them from closing down was the fact that Lavinia had a private income to keep the shop afloat. Nina sighed.
Back then, she had half-expected to be made redundant. And now, if these last few weeks of not many customers in the shop was the new normal or the new old normal, was she going to live in fear of losing her job again? She’d been the last member of staff to be taken on, after all, and everyone knew that the last one through the door was the first to pick up their P45 when cuts were being made. Even though Verity refused to serve any customers, she was the only staff member who knew how the stock system worked. And Posy had been left the shop by Lavinia because she was practically family (her father had been the shop manager and her mother had run the tearooms until they’d been killed in a motorway crash), and anyway, she could hardly sack herself.
Tom was only part-time and refused to wear the official Happy Ever After staff T-shirt, but he had a way with their older customer base that defied belief. Also, Nina could imagine that if Posy did fire him, Tom would just tell Posy very crossly that he wasn’t fired and that would be the end of it.
Before she’d come to work at Bookends, Nina had as much success in keeping her jobs as she did in keeping her boyfriends. Both employment and relationships usually lasted between three days and three months. She’d been let go from pretty much every position she’d ever had for a variety of reasons ranging from poor timekeeping and a bad attitude to daydreaming. But it wasn’t really Nina’s fault – she’d become so bored with her old profession. She’d been on her feet all day, the chemicals had played havoc with her manicure and she got into trouble if she didn’t convince her customers to buy overpriced products that they didn’t really need.
Then that miraculous moment, three years ago, when Nina had bumped into Lavinia at a David Bowie exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It had been a hot July day, Nina had been wearing a sleeveless fifties dress and had been staring at a display case featuring outfits from the Ziggy Stardust years, when someone had tapped her on the shoulder.
‘Excuse me, my dear,’ a very posh female voice had said. ‘Is that an Alice in Wonderland tattoo on your arm?’
Nina had turned round to see an elderly woman standing there, though there was nothing decrepit about the curious, warm look on her face.
‘It is,’ Nina had replied, holding her arm out so that the woman could get a better look at the intricate, inked artwork depicting the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, and the words weaving through it: ‘You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret; all the best people are.’
They’d read out the quotation in unison, both of them laughing, and then Lavinia had introduced herself and asked Nina if she could tempt her to a pot of tea and a cake. She’d offered Nina a job at Bookends about ten minutes after that.
But Lavinia was gone and so was Bookends. It was a new era of Posy and Happy Ever After, and Posy had been so convinced that becoming a ‘one-stop shop for all your romantic fiction needs’ would bring in new customers in huge numbers, but what if Posy had been wrong?
‘Don’t mind me, I am just meant to be observing, but are you all right?’
‘You what?’
Nina’s doom-laden reverie was interrupted by Noah who’d felt moved enough to put down his iPad as he gazed at her with some concern. If only she could remember where she knew him from. ‘It’s just you’ve been standing there for the last six minutes and forty-three seconds without moving. Do you suffer from low blood sugar?’
‘Hardly! Not with the amount of cakes I eat,’ Nina said honestly. She shook her head and blinked. ‘I’m fine. Don’t stare at me like that. It’s weird.’
She was a fine one to talk. She was being very weird herself. Noah obviously thought so because he muttered to himself as he picked his iPad up again and made a note. Of course he did. Nina could just imagine what he was writing about her.
Nina is a terrible employee. She has no work ethic. She doesn’t even attempt to look busy when the shop’s quiet but stands there like she’s about to go into hypoglycaemic shock. Also, I think she was dribbling.
‘Enough of this!’ Nina said, though she wasn’t sure if she was talking to Noah or putting herself on a warning. Either way, she needed to do some work. Or else, look like she was doing some work. The bell above the door tinkled as a couple of people came into the shop.
‘Hello! Welcome to Happy Ever After. Just ask if you need any help,’ Nina called out as she so often did and not just because she was being steadily and creepily observed.
Thankfully, there was a constant flow of customers for the rest of the afternoon and Nina didn’t have to pretend to look busy. She was run ragged dealing with one woman who stayed for over an hour because she was in the mood for ‘a multi-book series set in a country house a bit like The Cazalet Chronicles’ but had read everything that Nina pulled from the shelves. Or if she hadn’t read them, then she didn’t like the look of them.
In the end, Nina persuaded her to reread The Cazalet Chronicles and sent her off with all five books, as the woman had lent her copies to her sister-in-law who she hadn’t spoken to for eighteen months, since they’d had words at a family christening about some Tupperware that hadn’t been washed and returned after a barbecue.
In between it was the usual routine of ringing up and bagging books, sharing recommendations and asking customers to leave their email addresses so they could be added to the Happy Ever After mailing list and get sent a monthly newsletter. (Though that was something else that everyone had been very excited about pre-relaunch and still hadn’t happened post-relaunch.)
All the while, Nina was aware of Noah, always in her eyeline. Lurking. Making notes. Not being the least bit helpful even though he could see that she was rushed off her feet, and would it kill him to put down his sodding iPad and slot a complimentary bookmark into a book, put the book in a bag and hand it to its new owner?
But, apart from dropping the f-bomb when she had to put in a new till roll (always a tricky manoeuvre), Nina had been an exemplary member of the Happy Ever After team.
Not that Noah said anything to Posy when she finally emerged from the office. He just said, ‘Well, I’ll be off, then. See you tomorrow.’
Then he couldn’t leave the shop quick enough, probably so he could collate his gazillion notes on Nina’s lacklustre work ethic. Nina waited for the door to shut behind him, then rounded on Posy. ‘Three times I asked you to help me on the till! Three times! Have you any idea how busy it’s been this afternoon?’
Posy put her hands up as if she could hold back Nina’s wrath. ‘Don’t, Nina,’ she said plaintively. ‘Very and I were going through the accounts. If I’d paused then I’d never have been able to find my place again. It will be better tomorrow. Tom said that he’s finished with his footnotes emergency and he’ll be in.’
Nina would also be having words with Tom tomorrow for abandoning her for what sounded like the flimsiest excuse ever. Just wait until he found out about Noah. Talking of which!
‘And as for that Noah! I won’t have it any more, Posy! He is literally stalking me with my employer’s permission …’
‘Come on! He’s hardly doing that.’ Posy patted Nina on the arm in what was meant to be a placating manner but simply annoyed Nina even more.
‘He is. I can’t even catch a breath without him making a note of it. I shouldn’t have to put up with this.’ Nina was on a roll now. ‘I have rights! Workers’ rights!’
‘Actually you don’t,’ said a haughty voice from the door. It was Sebastian Thorndyke, of course it was, because he always popped up when Posy was in trouble, as if he had a sixth sense that let him know when his beloved was under attack.
Nina whirled around to jab her finger at Sebastian. Normally she had a lot of time for Sebastian because he understood that passion and drama were the foundations of true love, and also he made Posy wildly happy, but today she had no time for him at all. ‘I do have rights,’ she insisted. ‘Any employment tribunal would tell you exactly the same.’
‘Oh my God, no one’s talking about employment tribunals,’ Posy said desperately. ‘Honestly, Nina, you’re completely overreacting about this.’
‘Overreacting or reacting just enough?’ Nina demanded. ‘How can you let that Noah invade my privacy with his electronic spy pad? I bet it’s against the Data Protection Act too. Like I said, I have rights.’
‘It’s all right, Morland, I’ve got this,’ Sebastian said, which was the other thing that really annoyed Nina – when he acted as if Posy was helpless without him, which she wasn’t. ‘Like I said, you don’t have that many rights because the other thing you don’t have is a contract of employment.’
Nina opened her mouth but all that came out was a shocked gasp because Sebastian, God damn him, was right. Lavinia had been lovely, the best of all the bosses, but things like contracts and job descriptions hadn’t been too much of a priority for her.
At least that made things easier for everyone. Nina opened her mouth again to what? Was she about to quit in a fit of pique? Was she really that stupid? Then the injustice, the unfairness, the Noahness, of the current situation swept over her in a wave of fury. ‘Right, fine, then I qu—’
‘Shut. Up!’ Posy snapped, her eyes flashing, because unlike Nina, Posy was slow to get angry but once she did, it was best to stand well back, preferably behind some kind of protective barrier. Though why Posy was angry with Nina was one more unfair thing in a whole week of unfair things. ‘Just shut up, Sebastian! Talking of contracts, how I wish I hadn’t signed a marriage contract! Nina, Very: pub! That’s an order.’
‘But we haven’t done the cashing up,’ Verity pointed out timidly.
‘DON’T UNDERMINE MY AUTHORITY! WE ARE GOING TO THE PUB!’