‘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 h
eard 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.’
Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop Page 21