‘I could come into the shop and pester you with queries, which you could help me with in a charming way,’ Marianne suggested. ‘Then he could report back that you’re an excellent employee.’
‘Might be worth a shot,’ Nina thought, then held her glass up. ‘Talking of shots, I think it’s your round, Claude.’
Two more vodka tonics and Nina’s whole world was in lovely soft focus. They trooped into the little backroom of the pub to see a band play whiny moperock, and they sounded like every other whiny moperock band that Nina had had the misfortune of seeing in and around the backrooms of Camden pubs.
This particular bunch of moperockers, The Noble Rots, were clients of Claude, so Nina made enthusiastic noises (‘I thought you were very good! So much emotional depth!’) when they came to find Claude after their set.
They were with a little entourage, which consisted of a taciturn, dumpy roadie, an even more taciturn guy (who steered clear of Nina and Marianne like he might get girl cooties) who was their manager and two Japanese girls who didn’t say a word but stared at the four boys in the band in a creepy way that would have Noah suing for copyright. The girls had come all the way from Osaka to see The Noble Rots play second on the bill at The Dublin Castle. Nina couldn’t help but think that it was a terrible waste of airfare.
With pickings that slim, it wasn’t surprising that all four members of The Noble Rots made a beeline for Nina, after it had been quickly established that Marianne was with Claude. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Marianne had advised the singer when he asked what starsign she was. ‘I’ve been with Claude for eleven years and you really don’t want to get on the wrong side of a man who regularly applies needles to your skin.’
After vowing that she was quitting HookUpp, it was extremely pleasing to have four able, real-life men jostling each other out of the way to get closer to Nina as they headed towards Camden High Street to get something to eat.
Nina had been spurned so many times by men like Steven, 31, writer, that she’d forgotten that she was actually considered to be quite attractive, pretty even. Or as Noel, The Noble Rots’ singer, purred in her ear, ‘You look like a nineteen fifties pin-up girl. I’d love you to be my Miss February.’
It was quite a good line but Nina didn’t do lead singers. Far too much ego. She didn’t do drummers either. Everyone knew that drummers suffered from haemorrhoids and it was impossible to put a sexy spin on haemorrhoids.
Which left the bassist and the guitarist, one on each arm. The bassist, Nick, had dirty blond hair and a dirty smile to match and bought Nina a bag of chips. The guitarist, Rob, didn’t buy Nina anything, but stared at her broodingly as she lasciviously licked ketchup off a chip.
Oh, be still her heart! Nina did have a weakness for men who stared at her broodingly. This was why you needed to meet men in a real-world setting rather than an app. So you could lock eyes with a stranger on a street, feel that tingle in your fingers and toes, get that good, lowdown ache in your belly. There wasn’t an app in the world that could make you feel like that.
‘So, you’re coming home with me,’ he said.
Nina also had an undeniable attraction for men who took charge. However …
‘I’m not coming home with you,’ Nina said firmly because Rob was going to have to work much harder than just staring broodingly and saying things in a purry, authoritative voice. Also there was the third-date rule and this didn’t even count as a first date. Despite the tingling, Nina couldn’t be certain that Rob was her soulmate, so she’d have to take him out for a couple of test runs. Though surely if he were her Heathcliff, wouldn’t she know as soon as they’d first clapped eyes on each other? Maybe this was a slow-simmer kind of deal. ‘But you can walk me to the bus stop.’
‘I suppose I could,’ Rob agreed and he walked Nina to the number 168 bus stop and leaned in closer and closer until she could smell leather and cigarettes and lager, a heady combination of scents as far as Nina was concerned, and then he was kissing her.
There was nothing brooding about Rob’s kisses. They were a little sloppy but eager, enthusiastic and her MAC Ruby Woo lipstick’s famous staying power wasn’t able to survive the onslaught.
‘I’ll message you,’ Rob said when they came up for air and the LED board above the bus stop promised that a 168 was only two minutes away.
They swapped numbers, had another brief snog, then Nina boarded her bus.
She was a little bit drunk, which meant she was also a bit more introspective than usual. Maybe that was why a little voice in her head was saying, ‘God, you’re nearly thirty and you’re still snogging at bus stops like a teenager.’ It was a very judgemental little voice. Sounded quite a lot like her mother.
‘Another boy in a band, Nina? Ugh, you’re so predictable.’
That wasn’t a judgemental little voice inside her head but a judgemental voice outside her head. Nina turned around and her heart sank even as her lips curled into a dismissive smile.
‘Gervaise,’ she said tightly, because her absolute pig of an ex-boyfriend was sitting behind her. He was with … a person of indeterminate gender wearing all black with slicked-back, bleached blonde hair, thick black pencil around each eye and a smirk. In short, Gervaise had managed to find a double, a doppelganger, a mini-me, which wasn’t surprising as he was the most egotistical person Nina had ever met. ‘Still sexually fluid, are you?’
‘Oh Nina, I’d ask if you were still hopelessly plebeian but you’ve already let me know that you are,’ Gervaise said sweetly.
Gervaise was a performance artist who Nina had met at a tattoo convention. He had come striding up to Nina in a leopard-print coat that she’d instantly coveted, told her that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and that it would never work because he could never have a meaningful relationship with someone more beautiful than himself.
Nina had been instantly smitten, flattered and keen to take up the challenge. ‘How about a meaningless relationship then?’ she’d husked and Gervaise had grinned.
‘My favourite kind of relationship.’
They’d had a heady week of going to see French films, Polish art and drinking Russian vodka, then Gervaise had told her that he was sexually fluid.
‘Eh?’ Nina had asked, pushing Gervaise away because it was the third date and they were getting hot and heavy on his futon. ‘Bisexual?’
‘Oh, Nina, you’re such an innocent,’ he’d said, which no one had ever said to Nina before. ‘I mean, that I don’t believe that my sexuality is a fixed point on a graph.’ And just as Nina was about to question him further, his eyes had lit up. ‘My God, you really do have incredible breasts,’ and the moment had been lost.
Verity had said that it sounded like Gervaise planned to cheat on her with other women and men, but Nina had dismissed that because Verity was a vicar’s daughter so really, what did she know?
Quite a lot actually. Because it turned out that their relationship mostly consisted of Gervaise being unfaithful and, as Verity had predicted, he cheated on Nina with other women, other men, and once with one each at the same time. Then they’d fight about him being unfaithful because he never bothered to hide it, then Gervaise would claim that he was bereft without Nina in his life. It had all been very dramatic but also not that much fun. In the end, Verity had threatened to set up an all-night prayer vigil if Nina didn’t kick Gervaise to the kerb once and for all, which she had finally done just over six months ago.
And now here he was, on the 168 bus, looking very pleased with himself even though the last time Nina had seen him, Gervaise swore that he’d never get over her. Also, she just knew that her red lipstick was smeared across the lower half of her face.
As she repaired the damage to her face, she heard Gervaise say to his mini-me, as she was clearly meant to, ‘She’s so provincial, parochial even.’
‘Provincial?’ Nina queried sharply, refusing to turn around. ‘That’s rich from someone born and bred in the Home Counties.’
&n
bsp; There was a sharp intake of breath from behind her. ‘Stevenage is a very depressed area. It’s practically a ghetto.’
‘Yeah, but you don’t come from Stevenage, you come from Welwyn Garden City.’ Nina pressed the bell for the next stop and clicked her compact shut, put it in her bag and stood up. She felt more confident now that her face was restored to its former glory. It was also clear that although Gervaise had treated her terribly, he still wasn’t over her, otherwise he wouldn’t feel the need to bad-mouth Nina to her replacement. Still, she wasn’t done with Gervaise yet. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ she added to said replacement, ‘his name isn’t even Gervaise. It’s Jeremy.’
She didn’t even care that Gervaise called her a ‘bitch’ as she ran down the stairs. The only thing on Nina’s mind, as she scurried down a now-deserted Rochester Street and into the Mews, was making it home safely. It was nearly midnight and who knew what might be lurking in the shadows. She held her breath as she tapped in the security code on the gate.
It wasn’t until she was creeping through the silent shop that she felt her stomach twist in the way it did when she got a letter from her bank or her mother called. Tonight, she’d met a good-looking, brooding man who’d snogged her face off and given her his number. Even counting the unpleasant encounter with Gervaise, there should be no reason for dread and doom to have settled in the pit of her stomach.
‘You’re so predictable.’ Gervaise’s words echoed in Nina’s head as she tiptoed up the stairs, even though she was anything but. She aimed to be, in the words of Emily Brontë, ‘half-savage and hardy, and free.’
So, why did this night out feel like a hundred, a thousand other nights? She was nearing thirty and yet – that nagging voice was back again – there she was, still snogging at bus stops.
She was meant to be living fast, on the edge, convention be damned, with her very own Heathcliff by her side.
And yet here Nina was, standing in her kitchen eating peanut butter straight from the jar while her flatmate’s cat wound around her ankles, after an evening spent with friends who were all happily settled down while she was still auditioning frogs.
If this was her best life, then she wanted a refund.
‘He might as well plant an oak in a flowerpot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour.’
The next day, Tom was back. Nina could have hugged him but she didn’t because Tom would threaten to write her up in the sexual harassment book. The sexual harassment book was the stuff of Happy Ever After legend but it didn’t actually exist. Also, Tom didn’t deserve a hug.
‘I’m furious with you,’ Nina told him before he’d even had a chance to take off his coat or unwrap his breakfast panini. ‘Footnotes emergency? Yeah, right!’
‘I really did have a footnotes emergency,’ Tom said earnestly. He tended to have two settings: earnest or stern, though Nina liked Tom’s third, lesser-spotted setting, absolute piss taker, the most. ‘I realised they were formatted wrong, then when I tried to correct them, it reformatted my entire thesis and I lost all my italics. Honestly, Nina, my entire life flashed before my eyes.’
‘Still doesn’t sound much like an emergency,’ Nina grumbled. She opened her eyes particularly wide. ‘You’ll have to do a chocolate run to make it up to me and get me coffee from the tearooms whenever I’m flagging.’
‘You make me do that even when you’re not furious with me,’ Tom reminded Nina, then he held up his hand. ‘Not another word until I’ve eaten my panini.’
Tom’s five minutes with his breakfast panini were sacrosanct. Nina shot him a fond look as he stuffed bacon and egg wrapped in toasted Italian bread into his mouth. Though he couldn’t be more than thirty, even Tom’s exact age was a mystery, not helped by the fact he dressed like an elderly academic. Today he was wearing a pair of grey trousers that looked like they’d started life in the nineteen thirties, a white shirt with frayed cuffs and collars, a knitted blue tie and, dear God, no, instead of his usual tweed jacket, Tom was wearing a cardigan with leather patches on the elbows.
His dark-blonde hair was swept up in a quiff and his hazel eyes peered out at the world from behind dark-rimmed glasses, though Nina often suspected that Tom could see perfectly well without them. The whole effect was a hapless, bookish manchild who needed looking after. Certainly Tom had a huge fanbase among their customers, ‘every single one of them post-menopausal’, as Nina had remarked to Posy once, who’d promptly spat out a mouthful of tea. One of Tom’s most devoted admirers, who had to be knocking on for eighty, had once come in with a tie that she’d knitted especially for him.
Nina couldn’t see Tom’s charms herself, which was just as well. She was easily distracted as it was, without lusting after one of her co-workers.
‘So, where’s Posy and Very this morning?’ Tom asked, after he’d swallowed the last of his panini. ‘I expected one of them to pop their head around the office door to reprimand me about my poor timekeeping.’
As well as his so-called footnotes emergency, Tom had been twenty minutes late. Though the only reason Nina had been on time was that Verity had let an unfed Strumpet into her bedroom and he’d sat on her head and yowled until Nina got up to feed him.
‘They’ve gone to a trade show at Olympia to look at gifts and stationery. Posy wanted to check out ideas for next Christmas,’ Nina told Tom. ‘And Verity decided to go with her to make sure that …’
‘Posy didn’t come back with five hundred tote bags,’ Tom supplied.
‘That was pretty much how the conversation went.’ Nina folded her arms. ‘So, you put out new stock and I’ll serve.’
‘We’ll both put out new stock until such time as a customer comes in and needs serving.’ Tom folded his arms too and looked at Nina from over his glasses, which had slid down his nose as they were wont to do.
‘You owe me. Footnotes emergency, my arse! You don’t know what it’s been like with you away! Just wait until you hear about—’
Nina was all set to bring Tom up to speed on the latest and most unwelcome development at Happy Ever After when the door opened, the bell tinkled and the latest and most unwelcome development walked into the shop, bringing in a rush of cold air in his wake.
‘—Noah,’ Nina said. Her tone was neither friendly nor unfriendly. It was as neutral as Switzerland.
‘Nina,’ Noah replied evenly. ‘Hello,’ he added to Tom as he walked past him, around to the counter and into the back office, then returned minus his coat in navy suit and with iPad held aloft. It was a bitterly cold day and Noah’s cheeks were scoured pink by the wind, his hair tousled by the breeze so he seemed to practically glow with vitality.
‘Noah?’ Tom queried, pushing his glasses back up his nose. ‘And you are?’
‘He’s just observing,’ Nina said and before Tom could say anything else, she took hold of his tie and pulled him through the first arch on the left. ‘We have some urgent stocking to do in the erotica room. You don’t need to observe this,’ she added to Noah, who raised his eyebrows at the mention of erotica.
Then, in fierce whispers, she filled Tom in on the spy in their midst. ‘A fox in the henhouse,’ as Tom put it once Nina had finished. ‘This is an absolute infringement of our civil liberties.’
‘Posy said that no one was getting sacked. Or at least she said I wasn’t getting sacked,’ Nina said helpfully. She loved Tom like a brother but on the open job market, he was eminently more employable than she was. ‘Anyway, you always tell Posy when she’s trying to make you wear the T-shirt that Waterstones would have you like a shot.’
‘I don’t want to work at Waterstones,’ Tom hissed. ‘They wouldn’t have been half so understanding about my footnotes emergency.’
They heard a distant tinkle then Noah called out, ‘I think you have a customer.’
It would have been a rare treat for Nina and Tom to have the shop to themselves. Nina loved Posy and Verity unfailingly, unquestioningly, but Tom was her wingman. Her co-pilot. Together they wo
rked the coalface of customer service; Tom charming the customers with his grave but sincere manners then Nina sealing the deal with a bit of heavy-handed persuasion. ‘Go on, treat yourself,’ she would say to any customer dithering over their selection of books. ‘Take them all. It’s nearly payday.’
But with Noah on the premises, observing, it really cramped their style. Also, Tom was working really diligently. Restocking the shelves in half the time it usually took him. Primly castigating Nina when she texted Paloma to bring her coffee, like she did every morning, because she could just as easily get it herself. Laying on the charm so thick with one customer that the poor woman went into a spontaneous hot flush. And there was Noah lurking behind the counter or peering around one side of the rolling ladder and even skulking in the Regency section to make notes on how Tom was a total boss at shifting books.
It was almost as if Tom was playing the part of an industrious and conscientious bookseller, so that anyone observing him would think that he was a model employee. Which he absolutely wasn’t. He always talked back to Posy, refused to go into the erotica room unchaperoned, tried to avoid the more enthusiastic romance novel-buying public and, most importantly of all, knew very little about any of the books they had for sale unless they were in the classics section.
Nina had expected more from Tom. ‘I’ve nurtured a viper in my bosom,’ she told Mattie when she had to walk all the way through the shop to get to the tearooms instead of texting for a delivery. ‘Who would have thought that Tom would be such a suck-up?’
‘That’s men for you,’ Mattie said darkly. Saying things darkly didn’t really suit Mattie’s gamine demeanour – she was a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. But she’d recently returned from Paris where she’d learned the art of patisserie and had her heart broken and the whole experience had left her very unenthusiastic about the male species. ‘You can’t trust a single one of them.’
Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop Page 5