Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

by Annie Darling

  ‘One for the road?’ Noah suggested with a smile. ‘I will if you will. And you can tell me more about those tattoos while we do.’

  Nina could never turn down one for the road. ‘Oh, go on then, twist my arm.’ She did twist her own arm then, so Noah could see her tattoo, Cathy and Heathcliff, leaning against the gnarled tree. ‘Wuthering Heights is my favourite novel.’ Was she going to? She barely knew him. But Noah was leaning forward, his eyes intent on Nina, his expression bright and alert, as if everything she said was endlessly fascinating. Nina couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her like that. She was pretty sure that it had probably been one of the last times she’d seen Lavinia, so yes, she was going to share the secret of what made her tick.

  ‘In fact, Wuthering Heights has been my inspiration for the last ten years of my life. It’s why I quit Hair (and Nails) By Mandy, why I left Worcester Park, why I do most of the things I do.’

  ‘Why’s that then?’ Noah asked.

  ‘Passion. Cathy and Heathcliff were ruled by their passions. They didn’t settle for safe or mediocre.’

  Noah didn’t respond at first but took a sip of his drink. ‘I’m all for following one’s passions, but I have to say that there are happier books to be inspired by.’ He shrank back a little as Nina stiffened. ‘I mean, things didn’t turn out so well for Cathy and Heathcliff, did they?’

  ‘Of course they didn’t and I know that Cathy and Heathcliff were both high maintenance and that if you knew them in real life, they’d absolutely do your head in, but if I’ve learned anything from Wuthering Heights it’s that a life without passion is a life half-lived,’ Nina said with all the passion that she could muster, which was quite a lot of passion.

  ‘So, you’re passionate about working at Happy Ever After then?’ Noah asked reasonably enough.

  ‘Well …’ Nina dithered slightly. ‘I like working there. A lot. Like, really a lot,’ she insisted, picking up her glass and glaring at it. ‘God, these cocktails are like a truth serum. I’m happy enough, I just thought that at nearly thirty I’d be happier.’

  ‘I hear you,’ Noah said with great feeling. ‘I really don’t want to be that guy who quotes U2 …’

  ‘Please, don’t be that guy,’ Nina said but Noah shook his head. He wasn’t to be deterred.

  ‘I’ve literally been halfway round the world and I still don’t know what I’m looking for. Sometimes I wish I’d followed my childhood dreams and become a fighter pilot.’ He tapped a finger to the corner of his eye. ‘I’d probably fail the sight test.’

  ‘I did wonder,’ Nina said as delicately as she could for someone who’d drunk five whisky-based cocktails. ‘’Cause at school you wore really thick glasses.’

  She froze, face hidden by her whisky glass. Would he pick up on her slip? Thankfully, it seemed five whisky-based cocktails were enough to make Noah a little fuzzy around the edges too.

  ‘Contact lenses. Bifocal contact lenses. But could you even imagine how horrific military training might be? At least at school, I got to go home each afternoon.’ Noah swatted his own words away as if he couldn’t bear to dwell on them. ‘What about you? What did you really want to grow up to be when you were a kid?’

  Nina couldn’t help the shudder that rippled through her. ‘Honestly? I wanted to be married by the time I was twenty because that’s what my mum and my gran and my great-gran all did, like it was this grand family tradition.’ She shuddered again at the thought of her lucky escape. ‘But I loved art. Maybe even more than I loved reading. I had such a crush on my GCSE art teacher.’

  ‘I didn’t do art,’ Noah said. ‘I got special permission to take an extra maths class instead.’

  ‘You freak,’ Nina said without thinking but Noah laughed.

  ‘Haven’t got one artistic bone in my body. Maybe half a bone.’ He held up his little finger. ‘Half of this bone here. So, this art teacher, was she a goth? All the ones at my school wore way too much black.’

  Ms Casson had been a bit of a goth. She had long black hair and wore long floaty black dresses and to stop her students throwing paint and X-Acto knives at each other, she’d kept them enthralled with tales of art college. But more than that, she’d seen something different in Nina, even though Nina had dressed the same and acted the same and behaved the same as all the other girls in her year. Ms Casson had told Nina that she had real talent and that she should stay on to do her A-levels, maybe even go to art college, but by then Nina was already working Saturdays in Hair (and Nails) By Mandy and going steady with Dan Moffat from the year above who’d already left Orange Hill and was studying engineering at the local college, and her future was set.

  ‘Yeah, she was a bit of a goth,’ Nina said to Noah. ‘But she’d gone to the Royal College of Art and she painted when she wasn’t teaching. One time she had an exhibition in a gallery up in town and our class went and that made me think that I’d love to be an artist. To create things that made people feel something. That’s quite an amazing thing to do, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ Noah agreed. ‘There’s no reason you couldn’t go to art class now. Life drawing or something?’

  ‘Everyone in the class would be so much better than me,’ Nina stated with absolute certainty. Also, there was nothing more tragic than someone constantly harking back to their school glory days. ‘I haven’t picked up a paintbrush in years. Wouldn’t have the first clue what to do with a stick of charcoal. Anyway, I get to do my window displays at the shop and I’ve designed all of my own tattoos so I still get to be creative.’ Nina caught their server’s eye. ‘Shall we get the bill then?’

  Noah must have got the message that Nina wasn’t up for any more self-improvement because he changed the topic to the company he was working with that week. They had a room you could only reach by rope ladder, called The Birdhouse, designed to encourage ‘blue sky’ thinking. And another room painted yellow called The Egg but no one could remember why.

  ‘Maybe it’s where they hatch new ideas,’ Nina suggested with a smile because somehow Noah had managed to turn the non-date around again. ‘Or crack a few yolks.’

  Noah groaned as if he was in pain. ‘Egg puns? I expected better from a chick like you.’

  The bill arrived on a saucer that was placed in the dead centre of the table because this was a modern establishment that had no truck with outmoded conventions of dating. Much like Nina herself. She reached for the bill, about to suggest they go Dutch, but Noah’s reflexes were much quicker.

  ‘My treat,’ he said firmly, barely glancing down at the total.

  ‘We’ll go halves,’ Nina said just as firmly. ‘You’ll be bankrupt with the amount of cocktails we’ve just drunk.’

  Noah clutched the bill to his chest. ‘Hardly. Look, I asked you out, so I get the bill. That’s how it works. It’s common courtesy.’

  Nina had been to this rodeo before. Quite a few times. You let the man get the bill and he expected something by way of return. There had even been a few charmers that Nina had met on HookUpp, who’d demanded that Nina reimburse them for the one measly drink they’d bought her after she’d messaged them to say that it had been lovely to meet up but she didn’t want to take it any further.

  ‘I always pay my way,’ she said tightly. ‘My look might be 1950s but my outlook certainly isn’t.’

  ‘This is my way of thanking you for a lovely evening,’ Noah said, as he produced his credit card. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you put in the tip?’

  Nina grudgingly agreed and put in a generous cash tip for their server and when she and Noah staggered outside, almost knocked sideways by the sudden cold wind that greeted them, she touched his arm hesitantly.

  ‘I did, actually. Have a lovely evening,’ she said, because it had hardly been the ordeal she’d expected. In fact, she’d enjoyed herself for a good seventy-five per cent of the non-date. Which reminded her that she still hadn’t mentioned the non-date status of the time they’d spent together. It seemed churlish to b
ring it up now when Noah had just paid for their meal. She’d send him her tried and tested ‘great to meet up’ message in a couple of days.

  ‘Me too,’ Noah said with a note of surprise as if he hadn’t been expecting to. ‘So, did you want to maybe arr—?’

  ‘How are you getting home?’ Nina quickly asked because it sounded a lot like Noah wanted to lock down a second date. ‘I’m going to jump on a bus at Charing Cross Road. Great thing about living in the centre of town – most buses pretty much take you from door to door.’

  ‘But it’s quite late. You’re not getting an Uber?’ Her plan to distract Noah had worked.

  ‘My dad’s a cabbie. The guilt I feel when I get an Uber outweighs the convenience,’ Nina said. By now, they’d emerged from the tiny alley where the burger joint was situated onto Dean Street.

  ‘Oh dear, maybe I should stop taking so many Ubers.’ Noah took Nina’s arm as they crossed the road, but then removed his hand from her elbow as soon as they reached the safety of the pavement. ‘I’ll see you onto the bus, shall I?’

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ Nina said a little desperately because Noah was intent on being a perfect gentleman, the perfect first date, and yet Nina was already planning how she’d bin him off.

  ‘I don’t need to but I want to,’ Noah insisted as they went down the narrow alley next to The Pillars Of Hercules pub on Greek Street. ‘There could be all sorts of ne’er-do-wells lurking between here and the bus stop.’

  ‘You quite good in hand-to-hand combat, then?’ Nina asked and for about the fifteenth time that night, she instantly and inwardly berated herself. If Noah had been any good in a fight, then his school days would have been very different.

  ‘I am quite good in hand-to-hand combat these days. I have a black belt in Krav Maga …’

  ‘You’ve got a black belt in what?’

  ‘Krav Maga! It’s a self-defence system developed for the Israeli Defence Forces and includes everything from judo to kickboxing. It was the big thing when I lived in San Francisco,’ Noah explained.

  ‘Show me some moves then,’ she demanded as they reached the corner of Charing Cross Road. ‘Do a kicky thing.’

  Noah laughed and shook his head. ‘I have to have been on at least three dates before I pull out the kicky thing. Talking of which …’

  ‘My bus!’ Nina had never been so pleased to see a 38 bus, even though, if she let it go, another one would appear in less than five minutes. ‘I’ve got to go. Thanks for dinner.’

  She ran towards the stop but Noah easily matched her pace. ‘It was my pleasure. So, shall we do this again?’

  ‘I’ll text you,’ Nina panted because she wasn’t used to this kind of exertion and then she was at the stop just as the bus pulled in.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve swapped numbers,’ Noah said as the small crowd of people already waiting got on board. ‘Shall I call you at the shop?’

  ‘Look, I really have to go,’ Nina said. Normally she absolutely smashed it when it came to end-of-date proceedings. But this was a non-date and she didn’t know whether to kiss Noah on the cheek or hug him; either one seemed appropriate.

  In the end, as Noah leaned towards her, she settled for a mash-up of both, patting him on the cheek, then jumped on board the bus.

  ‘I had fun,’ Noah said, standing there with his hands in the pockets of his navy peacoat, his hair a riotous colour in the glow of the streetlights, a smile on his face like he really had had the best of times. ‘See you soon.’

  Nina was saved from having to reply by the bus driver shutting the door, so all she could do was wave then give Noah a thumbs up, like she was a contestant on a cheesy quiz show.

  For a girl with all the moves, Nina couldn’t remember a single one of them.

  ‘Nonsense, do you imagine he has thought as much of you as you have of him?’

  Despite the five whisky cocktails of the night before, Nina emerged from her bedroom the next morning relatively unscathed. But then she’d been home at a decent hour: no late-night carousing around the fleshpots of Soho because Noah wasn’t the carousing type and Nina knew that the heart which matched her own would beat to a drum which didn’t stop until dawn.

  ‘What is this madness? Usually you put your alarm on snooze at least three times,’ Verity wanted to know when Nina walked into the kitchen. ‘And I heard you come in last night.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, I thought I was being quiet,’ Nina said as she debated whether to make toast or to wait and see what Mattie had in the way of breakfast pastries.

  ‘You were, for you. I was just surprised you were home so early. Bad date, was it?’ Verity asked sympathetically.

  ‘Very, stop being so chatty first thing,’ Nina admonished. ‘It’s completely out of character and you’re freaking me out.’

  As distractions went, this one proved a winner. Immediately, Verity forgot about Nina’s date because she had to insist in the strongest possible terms that she wasn’t chatty first thing in the morning. ‘I was only enquiring after your emotional well-being. That’s what good friends and flatmates do,’ she said then expanded on that theme for the next half hour.

  Verity might be an extrovert who relished her own company and forbade Nina from even speaking for half an hour after work because she needed time to decompress but my God, she could ramble on. Not that Nina minded the rambling. All three of them – Nina, Posy and Verity – loved a good ramble and this morning, Verity was still pleading her non-chatty case as they went down the stairs to start the working day.

  ‘Nina’s accused me of being too talkative!’ she informed Posy and Tom as they arrived together. ‘Me! “You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged.”’

  ‘It’s not even ten and you’re already quoting Pride and Prejudice,’ Posy protested.

  ‘I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t start quoting Austen until after lunch; this is far too early,’ Nina said, then she narrowed her eyes at Tom. ‘Far too early for you too, Tom. Did you not stop to get your breakfast panini this morning?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Tom said and his voice cracked on the last syllable as if he were under undue amounts of stress. ‘In fact, I’m only here this early to tell you that I have to start work late today.’

  Posy had been taking off her coat but she paused. ‘I think this is what Sebastian means when he says that you all take advantage of my good nature,’ she said. She assumed a stern expression. ‘No, Tom. You’re not starting late. I absolutely forbid it.’

  Nina, Verity and Tom, who all served at Posy’s pleasure, looked at her for one shocked moment then looked at each other and burst out laughing. Nina suspected that she might still be a little bit drunk because she laughed so hard that breathing became a bit of an issue. ‘Say that again, Pose,’ she wheezed. ‘And don’t forget to do the face.’

  ‘You have no respect for my authority,’ Posy grumbled. She folded her arms and settled for a baleful look this time. ‘OK, I’ll bite. Tom, why are you going to be late when you’re already here?’

  Tom held up the carrier bag he had with him. ‘Because I have to go to a place in Russell Square to get two copies of my thesis bound, at great personal expense, so I can hand it in.’

  ‘That sounds fair enough,’ Verity decided and Posy and Nina nodded.

  Nina looked at the carrier bag again. ‘Hang on a sec. You’ve finished your thesis?’ she asked. ‘You’ve checked all your references and sources? Even your bibliography?’

  ‘I have,’ Tom said and again his voice caught on the last syllable. ‘I mean, it’s no big deal.’

  ‘It’s a huge deal,’ Posy said, her voice catching too because she really was the softest of touches.

  ‘It’s, like, three whole years of your life in that bag,’ Nina said and she couldn’t imagine working on just one thing for one tenth of your entire life. Well, apart from having a full sleeve tattooed but that was hardly the same thing.

  ‘Four
years actually,’ Tom pointed out.

  ‘Four years! Well done, you!’ Verity gently punched Tom on the arm, which was hardly an appropriate way to celebrate this monumental event.

  ‘I’m going to have to hug you,’ Nina announced and though Tom tried to wriggle away, Nina quickly had him pinned against the counter so she could put her arms around him and squeeze.

  It was like nestling up to reinforced concrete. ‘Nina, please, I can feel your breasts,’ Tom moaned faintly. ‘I’m sure this counts as sexual harassment.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it doesn’t,’ Nina said but she released Tom from the prison of her embrace and tried to make a grab for his carrier bag, but this time he was too quick for her. ‘Come on! Let us have a peek! At least show us the title.’

  ‘Pfffftttt! You don’t need to see it. Really, it’s too boring for words,’ Tom demurred. He straightened up. ‘And not to be rude or anything, but unless you know anything about critical theory, with particular reference to Lacan, it will probably go right over your heads.’

  Nina felt that familiar pang at her lack of education but even Posy and Verity, with their degree apiece, flinched at the mention of critical theory.

  ‘I hope that you’re not going to be so pompous when you actually get awarded your doctorate,’ Posy snapped. Then she made a shooing motion. ‘Go! Get bound, before I change my mind!’

  Of course, even though he could be very annoying, they couldn’t let the fact that Tom had finished his four-year-long thesis pass without a celebration. Not that they knew any of Tom’s other friends, or indeed if he had any, but later that afternoon Mattie baked a cake and Posy nipped out for a couple of bottles of something sparkling and Nina made a card. It was the least they could do and everyone was so busy making a fuss of Tom that nobody asked any questions about Nina’s date the night before. Or even thought to wonder why Nina wasn’t oversharing all the gruesome details like she usually did.

  Creating a 3D card, which featured a pop-up Tom in scholar’s gown and mortarboard, in between serving customers, was a great distraction for Nina too so she didn’t have to think about last night’s date.