‘This might be my new favourite place in the world,’ Nina told Noah and he raised his glass and clinked it against the side of hers.
‘I passed this place a couple of weeks ago and I remember thinking then that it would probably be your kind of thing,’ he said, making sure to look Nina in the eye so she couldn’t mistake the intent of his words. ‘Because I’ve been thinking about you a lot these past couple of weeks.’
Nina blushed, which was starting to become a nasty habit, even though she’d had many similar compliments. Not once before had she blushed.
‘So, my awesome sales technique has been keeping you up at night?’ Never before had Nina had to try so hard to come up with cheeky banter.
Noah’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Not that your sales technique isn’t awesome but that’s not what was keeping me up all night.’ He screwed his eyes tight shut like he was in pain. ‘I mean, I haven’t been up all night thinking about you. Just …’ He shook his head. ‘Let’s look at the menu. Are you hungry?’
If this were a proper date then Nina would probably have said lasciviously, ‘I’m starving and not for food,’ but it wasn’t a proper date so she settled for a truthful, ‘I could eat.’
It was much better with their menus open so they could talk about the merits of a dirty burger versus buttermilk fried chicken and if they should get a mac and cheese on the side to share along with their rosemary-and-thyme fries and deep-fried onion rings. ‘And a side salad,’ Nina decided. ‘Just to show willing.’
‘Yeah, we should probably have something green and leafy on the table,’ Noah agreed. ‘And what do you want to drink? Another Old Fashioned or do you want to get a bottle of something?’
‘I never mix grape and grain, it makes for the worst hangovers.’ Nina shuddered at the memory of all the terrible hangovers she’d suffered. ‘I think I’ll stick to the Old Fashioneds.’
She felt more at ease now, and boiling enough to slip off her leopard-print cardigan and push up the sleeves of her matching leopard-print jumper. Noah mirrored her movements, unbuttoning the cuffs of the navy-blue (big surprise) shirt he was wearing so he could roll up his sleeves, and that was when Nina saw it: the large, elegant, black type, a series of numbers and letters marching up the soft skin of his left forearm.
‘What’s that?’ Nina demanded. ‘What’s that on your arm?’
Noah grinned. ‘It’s a tattoo, Nina,’ he said evenly. ‘Have you never seen one before?’
‘Of course I have!’ Nina held up her inked arms as proof. ‘You! You have a tattoo?’
‘I do.’ He grinned again. ‘Is there going to be a copyright problem?’
‘What? No! I just … I just can’t believe that you have a tattoo. You don’t seem the sort.’
Noah wagged a finger at her. ‘You work in a bookshop, you must know all about not judging books by their covers.’
‘True. Sorry. So,’ Nina gestured at Noah’s arm. ‘What is it?’
Noah held out his arm so Nina could have a proper look at the letters, which made no sense. In fact, they were giving Nina alarming flashbacks to GCSE maths.
‘Is that … is that algebra?’ she asked.
‘It is,’ Noah admitted cheerfully. ‘It’s my favourite equation. Bayes’ theorem.’
‘Bayes’ what ’em? Can you explain it to me in words of less than three syllables?’
‘I’m sure I could.’ Noah wrinkled his brow in thought. ‘So, Bayes’ theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event.’
‘OK,’ Nina said slowly. ‘Right.’
‘For instance, I knew that you liked vintage clothes and whatnot and I knew you ate meat because we talked about it on the train, so based on this knowledge, I picked this place for our date because it’s a retro burger joint.’ Noah tapped his tattoo with a longer finger. ‘Bayes’ theorem in practice.’
‘I’m impressed!’ Nina was. ‘If my physics teacher had bothered to explain things so clearly at school then perhaps I wouldn’t have abandoned physics at the first opportunity.’
‘My physics teacher was never the same after he had an affair with the B-stream French teacher,’ Noah said as their second round of drinks arrived.
Nina smothered a gasp of genuine shock – not Mr Clark and Mrs Usher, whose French lessons mostly involved anecdotes about what she got up to on holiday in France with Monsieur Usher? ‘Scandalous! How did you find out that juicy morsel of gossip about these two people I’ve never even met?’
Noah quirked his eyebrow at her. ‘One Saturday I went to an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection and I saw them holding hands in the coffee shop.’ He paused to take a sip of his drink. ‘Thought it was best not to say anything.’
With a guilty start, Nina knew that if she’d seen her two teachers canoodling it would have been all around school by lunchtime the next day. Back then, even though he’d had no reason to, and who would have blamed him for lashing out, Noah had been more kind and thoughtful than any teenage boy had the right to be.
Nina rewarded that kindness and thoughtfulness with a smile. She was here, after all, because Noah deserved a good date, dammit, and Nina was a veteran of a good date. The one surefire way she knew to a man’s heart wasn’t through his stomach, though the heaving platters of food that were coming their way should see to that. Oh no, if Nina had learned anything on those thousand or so first dates that she’d been on, it was that no man could resist talking about himself.
‘Your tattoo,’ she prompted as Noah’s chicken and Nina’s burger were placed in front of them. ‘Did you study physics at Oxford?’
‘Well, I’d categorise Bayes’ theorem as more probability than physics and that’s what I studied at Oxford – probability and statistics. How do you feel about condiments?’ he added as the waiter put down a small tray groaning with mustards and ketchups.
‘Love condiments,’ Nina said. ‘One of the major food groups as far as I’m concerned. So, probability and statistics? Why did you want to do a degree in them?’
‘I like solving puzzles and I like to think that things happen for a reason rather than just sheer random luck,’ Noah said, though Nina liked to think just the opposite. That life was about fate and destiny, though there were times you could give fate a little nudge. There was nothing romantic about reason and living your life guided by probability and statistics. What with that and the exclusively navy-blue wardrobe, Nina didn’t think she’d ever met a man who was less likely to be her one true love. Still, she was here, on a non-date with Noah for altruistic reasons, so she’d give it her all.
‘How was Oxford then?’ she asked, as Noah helped himself to an onion ring.
‘It was scary,’ he said. ‘I was two years younger than everyone else because I skipped a couple of years at school, but once I settled in, it was fine. Better than fine really, because I was surrounded by people who wanted to learn. It was an uphill struggle to learn anything at my school: even in the top stream, there was always someone or something kicking off.’ He took another onion ring. ‘And Oxford wasn’t like a normal university. The porters in my college were like over-protective parents and Sebastian, of all people, decided to take me under his wing pretty quickly. Then once I realised that I was studying with people who didn’t want to beat the crap out of me, I started to make friends.’
Nina nodded along, even though every time he mentioned school, her stomach would clench and she’d have to put down her burger and take a large gulp of her drink.
She so desperately wanted to say she was sorry, apologise for what Paul had done, but it was a first date, their only date, a non-date, and it was best to keep the mood light and fun.
‘Did you go to Harvard straight after Oxford?’ she asked and hoped that the change of subject would mean no more oblique references to her brother and the horrible things he’d done to Noah.
‘Not straight after. I was still only nineteen so I decided to take a couple of years
out, do some travelling, paying my way as I went. Started off in Thailand …’
Noah had been everywhere. Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, all over South-East Asia, then Goa and India before getting on a long-haul flight to explore South America. He’d trekked through the jungle in Peru, narrowly avoided being kidnapped in Colombia, had inadvertently taken psychotropic drugs in Bolivia and had got to Rio just in time for Carnival.
‘You have had some adventures,’ Nina breathed. She was a creature of passion and spontaneity but to be honest, the furthest she’d ever travelled and the biggest adventure she’d ever had was the time she went to Mykonos for a hen weekend and had ended up in hospital with two broken ribs and a broken toe from falling off a podium in a nightclub after too many shots.
‘I was young and completely wet behind the ears, so the adventures found me, but I did discover that I was a bit of an adrenalin junkie. White-water rafting, bungee jumping, being suspended from a great height with a zipline. I never feel more alive than when I’m facing certain death, I suppose,’ Noah said with a wry smile. He pushed away the bowl of chips that he’d been dipping into. ‘Talking of certain death, if I eat anything else then I’m a goner.’
‘Tell me about it.’ The waistband of her jeans felt as tight as a tourniquet. Nina had been mindlessly eating the onion rings and laughing as Noah had kept her entertained with tales of his many near-death experiences while travelling. ‘Could go another cocktail though.’
‘Me too,’ Noah agreed. Once the waiter had taken their drinks order and cleared the table, Noah, after a little prompting, brought Nina up to speed with the last ten years of his life.
After Brazil, he’d met up with a friend from Oxford who was living in San Francisco and had helped him with his tech start-up, then he’d been headhunted by Google who’d paid for him to do his MBA at Harvard. Then after six years at Google, he’d decided to go it alone.
‘I’m not a big fan of routine. I much prefer being my own boss,’ he told Nina, who, if Posy was anything to go by, didn’t think being your own boss was that great. It seemed to involve a lot of responsibility and having to fill in VAT returns every three months or so.
‘But what is it that you actually do?’ she asked as yet more Old Fashioneds arrived. ‘Apart from harassing hard-working employees with your iPad?’
‘If I were you I’d take me to a tribunal,’ Noah said again with another smile because both of them had that glow that came from a lot of good food, four whisky cocktails each and a conversation that had managed to remain almost free of any awkward moments. ‘Specifically, I work with businesses to find a solution to a particular problem, whether it’s not being able to retain staff or how to sell more romantic novels. It’s much easier as an outsider to come in and see the bigger picture.’
‘That makes sense, I suppose,’ Nina said and she was all good to go with some more questions but Noah held up a hand.
‘Anyway, that’s quite enough about me,’ he said firmly. ‘I don’t want to be that guy on a date who only talks about himself. I want to know what you’ve been doing since you left the mean streets of Worcester Park.’
Working a series of unsatisfying jobs and dating a series of unsatisfying men – compared to what Noah had packed into the fifteen years since their paths had crossed, it didn’t seem that impressive.
Oh God, what am I even doing with my life? It wasn’t a new thought. On the contrary it was a very old, much-visited thought that Nina usually had after binning or being binned off by either employer or boyfriend. And she usually had it when she was on her own, in the dead of night, unable to sleep, not in public, not when she was on a date. She really needed to find a direction in life, if only not to have more of these excruciating conversations on first dates.
‘There’s not much to tell,’ she said breezily, because now was not the time to give in to her angst. ‘Got some tattoos, a couple of piercings, endured a few hangovers – that’s about it.’
Noah was not to be put off. ‘I’m sure that’s not it,’ he said. ‘Posy said that you’d always worked in retail. What was your last job before Happy Ever After?’
Nina couldn’t help but pull a face at the thought of where she’d worked before she worked at Happy Ever After. And where she’d worked before that and so on and so on.
‘God, was it that bad?’ Noah asked in response to Nina’s facial contortions.
‘Yeah,’ Nina sighed. ‘It wasn’t retail – Posy just assumed it was and I never denied it – it was more … um, service industry, I think?’
‘My mind is racing with the possibilities …’ Noah widened his eyes. ‘Service industry could mean anything. Were you an arms dealer? Did you run an illegal drinking den? Cat burglar?’
‘I was a hairdresser!’ Nina admitted grudgingly. ‘Colourist mostly, some cutting and styling.’
‘That’s probably why your own hair looks so good,’ Noah said, with a nod at Nina whose hair was still a very sherbet pink and currently arranged in a French twist, the front section quiffed and pinned back. ‘What made you decide to swap hairdressing for bookselling?’
There was no judgement in Noah’s voice. He sounded as if he were genuinely interested to hear what had prompted Nina’s career change, and it was rather a leap: to swap her scissors and her foils for books and bookmarks.
‘Well, like I said, I left school after my GCSEs, which I aced by the way,’ she added a little defensively. ‘Then it was a done deal that I’d go and work for my aunt who has a salon in Worcester Park, Hair by Mandy – maybe you know it?’ she said, knowing full well he would.
‘My gran goes there. I think you’ll find it’s Hair and Nails by Mandy,’ Noah corrected her and Nina smiled.
‘You must never forget the “and Nails”,’ Nina said gravely because Mandy went ballistic if any of her staff did.
‘I still can’t believe we’ve never crossed paths before,’ Noah said, shaking his head. ‘You must have done my gran’s wash and set at least once while you were there.’
Nina tried to smile breezily. ‘Maybe. But there were so many wash and sets, with so many old ladies, you know what I mean?’ Noah nodded, even as he looked slightly disappointed.
‘Anyway, I started there as a trainee and also went to college to do my NVQ. I mean, I have qualifications.’ That same defensive note crept into her voice. ‘I worked there for four years but I didn’t want to spend my whole life in Worcester Park doing the same cut and colour on the same customers week in and week out, so I got a job in town …’ Nina tailed off and shook her head.
‘How did that go down with Aunt Mandy?’ Noah asked.
‘Like a lead balloon,’ Nina said baldly. ‘I’m amazed that I wasn’t officially excommunicated. I got a job in a salon in the West End, which was a bit more happening and I moved around, worked in some quite edgy places, I did balayage, ombré, dip-dyeing, colour melding, so it wasn’t as if I was always doing the same thing.’
‘I have no idea what any of those things are,’ Noah said. ‘Ombré? Isn’t that a painting technique?’
Nina nodded but she was too far down memory lane to stop and explain how she achieved an ombré effect on someone’s hair. ‘My last salon even specialised in vintage and retro styles but I’d been doing people’s hair for the last twelve years and it just … I just … I wasn’t enjoying it and I kept getting the sack because of my attitude – there was this whole incident in my last-but-one salon where I ended up having a barney with the mother of the bride about a wedding package. I won’t bore you with all the details.’ Nina sighed again. ‘Then I met Lavinia. She owned Bookends … that’s what Happy Ever After was called before the relaunch.’
‘I know about Bookends and I knew Lavinia. She and Perry would come up to Oxford to take Sebastian out for lunch and he’d drag me along in the hope that they wouldn’t give him a telling off in front of company.’ Noah laughed. ‘It was a case of hope over expectation. I witnessed some pretty epic bollockings.’
Nina l
aughed too at the thought of Sebastian, the Rudest Man in London, getting a dressing down from his grandparents.
‘I forgot that you and Sebastian go way back,’ she said.
‘Way, way back, but we were talking about you, not me,’ Noah said quietly but in a way that made it clear that he wasn’t to be deterred from his goal of learning more about Nina’s chequered path through life. She imagined that the same quiet determination was a very effective way of dealing with Sebastian too. ‘The thing about Lavinia was, she could immediately see right through to the heart and soul of someone, couldn’t she?’
‘Oh, yes! She absolutely could. I met her by accident and after ten minutes I felt as if I’d known her forever and, more than that, she knew me. Saw a side to me that nobody else ever could.’ Nina raised her glass in a silent toast to her late mentor. ‘I miss her so much.’
‘Yeah, so do I.’ Noah raised his glass too. ‘To Lavinia. So, she saw the secret bookseller in you?’
‘Kind of. Or rather she saw my tattoos. Was very taken with them.’ It was Nina’s turn to hold her arms out for Noah’s inspection. ‘My Alice in Wonderland sleeve was complete though I’d barely got started on the Wuthering Heights design on the other arm, but she offered me a job on the spot, and I loved reading but I’d never have dreamed that I could work in a bookshop.’
‘Why not? If you love reading then it seems like the perfect job?’ Noah enquired, and Nina wanted to tell him that she wasn’t a problem to be solved, but she didn’t want to harsh their whisky-induced mellow. Besides, Noah was one of those rare people, like Lavinia, that you wanted to say stuff to. Your deep, personal, inside stuff because it seemed impossible that he’d take your words and use them against you. Or judge you for them.
‘Yes but … I’m not clever enough to work in a bookshop,’ Nina blurted out, before she lost her nerve. ‘It’s why the others don’t know that I used to be a hairdresser. They all have degrees. Like, Tom is working on his third degree and all I have are seven GCSEs and an NVQ. Listen to me! I think I’ve had too much to drink. You’d better cut me off.’
Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop Page 12