Noah held up a hand to silence her. ‘You know, I did wonder if he was your brother. I mean, you do have the same surname and I was sure I saw him outside the soft-play centre when I picked you up the other week, but I told myself I was being silly. If he had been your brother, you’d have mentioned it, but you didn’t so I thought it was just an unhappy coincidence.’
‘I wanted to tell you,’ Nina offered weakly, all of her cold and clammy now that the awful truth had come out when everything had been so perfect. ‘I meant to tell you.’
‘And my grandmother, you remember her, a regular visitor at your aunt’s salon? She was insistent that the girl who used to work there who did her colour was Paul O’Kelly’s sister but I decided that couldn’t be true because she’s always getting things muddled and anyway, Nina would have told me. Just like she would have told me that she’d gone to Orange Hill,’ Noah said. ‘Because you did, didn’t you? You knew me back then.’ His eyes bored into her and Nina dropped her gaze to her feet. ‘When did you figure it out?’
There was an edge to his voice now too: the dullness starting to crack under the sheer weight of Noah’s anger. Not just anger; when she dared a fleeting glance up at Noah’s face she could see hurt, betrayal, confusion all play across his features. ‘After the quiz, when you were walking me to the bus stop,’ she admitted and she shivered because she felt as if she’d been entombed in ice. ‘But … but …’
‘But you never thought to mention it? It just slipped your mind, did it?’
‘I didn’t want to drag up the past, when I knew it was so painful for you.’ Nina held her hand out towards Noah but he took a step back. ‘You don’t know how I’ve tortured myself over this …’ Nina began and Noah smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.
‘Torture? Like the way your brother,’ he spat the word out like it tasted rotten in his mouth, ‘would punch me, hit me, throw things at me, spit at me, the names he would call me … God, I think his words hurt the most.’
‘Don’t!’ Nina clapped her hands over her ears because she couldn’t bear to listen to the catalogue of Paul’s crimes and then she closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the ugly expression on Noah’s face.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Nina, am I upsetting you?’ Noah snapped and when Nina forced herself to open her eyes, his expression was grim, resolute, uncompromising. ‘He’s a monster.’
‘He’s my brother,’ Nina said helplessly. ‘That doesn’t mean that he gets a free pass for what he did to you, and he and I weren’t close then, God, we barely tolerated each other, but it was years ago. He was the person in the accident that I told you about and he nearly died, and it made him take stock of everything, of who he was and how he’d behaved. And now he has Chloe and the niecelets.’ The tears were prickling, soon they’d be streaming down her face.
This was meant to be different. Noah was different to all her others. And last night, she’d even imagined that he was the one; that rare mix of passion and staying power. Not even imagined, but had been sure of it in a way that Nina was rarely sure about anything.
And now?
Everything, them, the us they could have been was dust and ashes and it was all her fault, but there had to be a way, something she could say, to turn this round. To make Noah see that the past was nothing to do with their future. ‘He’s not the same person he was when we were at school. He’s changed and only for the good and he knows that what he did was wrong. He wants the opportunity to say sorry, to make it up to you,’ she said, her words distorted by the sob that was rising up in her throat.
‘There is nothing he could say or do to make it up to me. Nothing,’ Noah said. He put his hand to his temples. ‘You should have told me! Instead you’ve deceived me. Lied to me. So many lies! You even brushed away the very simple fact that we were at school together.’
‘I never meant to lie,’ Nina cried. ‘How was I to know that you and I were going to become something? That I’d have feelings for you?’
She broke off so Noah could say that he had feelings for her too but he didn’t and judging from the tight cast to his face, any feelings that he did have for her weren’t good ones. Still, she was determined to soldier on.
‘I’ve felt terrible about not telling you, felt so guilty and ashamed about what Paul did to you when we were at school … it was why I agreed to go on that first non-date. Because I felt so sorry for you and I wanted, in some small way, to make it up to you.’ It wasn’t what she meant to say but Nina could hardly think. Her head seemed to be stuffed with cotton wool.
‘You felt sorry for me?’
‘Not sorry, guilty,’ Nina amended as if that made it any better.
It didn’t.
‘So, it was a pity date. Not even a date, but a non-date?’ Noah queried, but he still wasn’t shouting or swearing at her so that had to be good.
‘Well, yeah. I mean, you’re hardly my type or me yours, but that was before …’
‘Actually, now that I think about it, it’s obvious that you’re his sister. Cruelty apparently runs in the family,’ Noah said.
Nina gasped. It was a low blow, the lowest, and she deserved it – though that didn’t mean that she was going to take it either.
She opened her mouth and was all set to point out that it hadn’t just been Paul; he alone couldn’t be held responsible for the bullying – and then she realised how that sounded. She would be diminishing Noah’s pain, the fear and loathing that had characterised his adolescence, and the fact that her brother had been the chief architect of Noah’s destruction.
What was that saying? Love the sinner, hate the sin.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said and she tried to make those two words count, to mean something and everything. Noah was sitting there, his limbs arranged awkwardly, his head hanging low, as if he was broken. ‘Going on a date with you out of guilt was before I got to know you. And now …’
‘Now, I wish I’d never got to know you. In fact, I realise I didn’t know the real you until I saw your brother’s face on your phone.’ Noah gave a short, humourless chuckle. ‘You’re still the same mean-spirited girl like all the other girls at that school were. The ones who would jeer as they watched your brother beat the hell out of me.’
‘I never jeered. Not once,’ Nina protested, though the picture Noah was painting of his school days was familiar. She never jeered, but she’d definitely hurried past with her head down. ‘I’m not mean-spirited. I’m not like that at all. I was just as pleased to leave Worcester Park as you.’
‘All the evidence indicates otherwise.’ Noah’s face was ashen white. ‘I think it’s pretty mean-spirited to have been lying to me this entire time.’
‘I didn’t set out to lie to you. I didn’t lie lie, I just lied by omission. If you’d asked me if Paul was my brother, then I’d have told you the truth but you never did,’ Nina said and again, it wasn’t what she meant to say and she shook her head to try and clear the fug where her brain should be, but it just made everything throb.
‘So it’s my fault for not having better deductive reasoning? Honestly, Nina, how did you think this was going to play out?’ Noah demanded.
Nina rested the tips of her fingers on her aching forehead. ‘You were the one who asked me out,’ she mumbled.
‘You didn’t have to say yes … OK! I get it!’ Noah nodded. ‘This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?’
‘How can you think that this is what I wanted?’
‘As you don’t seem to be at all familiar with the concept of honesty, allow me to give you a few home truths. The reason that you want passion and drama is because you haven’t got what it takes to make a real relationship work. A relationship is about loving someone, it’s about kindness, being selfless sometimes – all qualities that you’re lacking.’ Noah threw his words at her as if they were poisoned darts, each one aimed straight at Nina’s heart.
For someone who insisted that he was a cold fish, in this moment, Noah was more passionate than Nina had ever se
en him – apart from the night before. And yes, this was the drama and passion that Nina craved, but it was destructive and corrosive and suddenly Nina didn’t want anything to do with drama and passion ever again.
Because Noah was half right. There was something lacking in her and she tried to disguise it with hair dye and tattoos and leopard print, but underneath it all, there wasn’t much substance, hardly any depth. Nina knew that she could be hard and abrasive, but surely she was never spiteful? There was a softer side to her and now Noah would never see it. See her. See a woman that he might fall in love with.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said yet again but she’d never meant the words as much as she meant them now.
Noah’s gaze flickered over her dismissively. ‘It wasn’t even as if last night could make up for this. It wasn’t that good,’ he said as he hammered the final nails into the coffin of what they could have been. ‘Get your bags packed, we’re going back to London. I had a whole day planned for us, but not now, not with you.’
Then he got up and walked out of the room as if he couldn’t bear to look at her, which was fine with Nina because she couldn’t bear for him to see her cry.
‘He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, but because he’s more myself than I am.’
The journey home was five long, awkward hours, maybe the most awkward hours of Nina’s life. Noah had said only nine words to her during the entire journey. ‘Do you want to stop at the next services?’ he’d asked somewhere around Leicester and though Nina could have done with a visit to the Ladies, she said only two words to him, ‘No, thanks,’ because she didn’t want to prolong the agony. She’d just have to clench her pelvic floor muscles the rest of the way to London.
Her head pounded with all the thoughts crowding her mind.
Her throat ached with all the words she wanted to say.
Nina went from hot to cold as she thought about the night before, tangled up in each other, and then the bitter morning after.
She felt terrible and from the tense lines of Noah’s face in profile, when she dared to steal a glance at him, he wasn’t feeling much better himself.
However awful the trip home, Nina was aware that this was the last time that she’d spend with Noah and already, even though he was sitting next to her and changing gears very aggressively, she missed him.
And then, though it seemed like no time at all and also as if several decades had passed, Noah pulled into Rochester Street.
‘No need to turn into the mews,’ Nina insisted in a voice so croaky from unshed tears and not speaking that it sounded as if she had a forty-a-day fag habit. ‘You’ll never be able to turn the car around again.’
Noah unclipped his seatbelt. ‘I’ll get your bag,’ he offered tersely.
‘It’s all right. I can manage,’ Nina rasped brightly, reaching round to grab the bag off the back seat and nearly decapitating Noah in the process. ‘Sorry! And thanks for yesterday. I’ll see you around, OK?’
For a second, not even a second, their eyes met and immediately, Nina could feel the hot sting of tears. Noah opened his mouth to say something but she couldn’t take hearing another cruel but well deserved jibe from the lips that had kissed her so sweetly. She quickly slammed the door and scurried for the mews, for the sanctuary that was Happy Ever After though it was hard to scurry when her legs felt as heavy as sand bags.
It was Saturday afternoon and the sun was shining so the shop was heaving with customers. The queue to pay snaked all the way across the main room so Nina had to fight her way through a crowd of book-lovers to get to the door that led to the stairs without being spotted by …
‘Nina! What are you doing here? I didn’t expect to see you until Monday,’ Posy shouted from behind the till. ‘What’s wrong? You look very puffy-faced. Have you been crying? Don’t tell me that you and Noah have broken up already. Oh, Nina! I was hoping this wouldn’t happen.’
Everyone waiting in the queue swivelled round to eyeball Nina with expressions that were sympathetic, curious, kind.
But Nina didn’t want their kindness. If anyone were even a little bit nice to her, she’d start sobbing. So she shrugged. ‘You know me, Posy,’ she croaked. ‘Breaking men’s hearts is my speciality.’
‘Poor Noah,’ Posy said sadly. ‘Sebastian is going to be so cross with you.’
Sebastian Thorndyke would rue the day he was ever born if he decided to give Nina ANY grief at all about what she’d done to poor Noah.
Verity, who was bagging up books and had obviously been drafted in to help in the shop against her will, from the woebegone look on her face, shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Poor Noah,’ she added her voice to the chorus, then gave Nina a swift and assessing once over. ‘I don’t think Noah is the only one suffering. You look awful. Are you sure you’re OK?’
Nina was not OK. Nina didn’t think she was going to be OK ever again. ‘I’m fine,’ she assured Verity. ‘Hate to break it you, Very, but this is what I look like without make-up on.’
Verity narrowed her eyes. ‘I’ve seen you without make-up on and you didn’t look like you’d been to hell and back like you do right now.’
‘Way to make a girl feel special,’ Nina said in the same carefree tone that took every ounce of acting ability that she possessed. ‘Now, I don’t know what you’re doing serving on the till but would you like me to take over, Very? Your left eyelid is twitching.’
Verity’s left eyelid was indeed twitching, which meant she was a couple of customers away from a meltdown. ‘Oh, would you? It’s just that Tom’s at lunch and Little Sophie had to go to Sainsbury’s to get some things for Mattie.’
It was the very last thing Nina wanted to do: having to put her gameface on and be sociable. But then the very, very last thing she wanted to do was go upstairs to be on her own with her tangled, head-hurting thoughts.
‘Sure, yeah, I wouldn’t have offered otherwise,’ she said, coming forward to relieve Verity of her customer-serving duties.
And for the next three hours, Nina smiled and commented on people’s book selections and generally acted as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
Eventually it was seven o’clock. The door shut behind the last customer. Then it was seven thirty and the cashing up had been done, the floor had been swept, books left higgledy-piggledy on tables and sofas and counters had been reshelved and Tom, Posy and Little Sophie were heading out the door too.
‘I’m staying over at Johnny’s tonight,’ Verity informed Nina as they trooped up the stairs to their flat. ‘I’m so sorry that your weekend with Noah ended so badly. Have you got any other plans for tonight?’
Nina had made a tentative arrangement earlier in the week to go to a rockabilly rave in Kings Cross with Marianne and Claude but earlier in the week was a millenium ago.
‘Of course you’ve got plans,’ Verity said without waiting for Nina to confirm. ‘You, Nina, stay in on a Saturday night? It would be like the ravens leaving the Tower. England would fall!’
It took ages for Verity to be gone. First she had to have her half-hour decompression lie-down, then she had to pack her overnight bag and ponder where she and Johnny might go for dinner, which depended on where they might go for brunch tomorrow and did Nina want to meet up with them and though Verity was an introvert, God, the girl could talk, Nina thought as she grunted in the places where Verity expected a response.
Then, at last, at last, Verity was running down the stairs because she was late and a minute later the shop door closed behind her and Nina was alone.
All those years Nina had spent wondering what love really felt like and now she knew. It felt like hell. It felt like the worst thing on earth. It felt much, much worse than anything she’d read about in Wuthering Heights. Compared to what she was experiencing on a lonely Saturday night, Cathy and Heathcliff had simply been a pair of idiots who’d needed their heads knocking together.
Nina lay in bed unable to sleep. It wasn’t even all the pain and regret s
he’d been bottling up since Noah had told her ‘This isn’t going to work’ that kept her awake. Her torment was less emotional and more physical. She was either so hot that it felt as if she was being roasted alive, sweat stinging her eyes and making her kick off the covers, or she felt so cold that her body would suddenly rattle with shudders that were a pretty close cousin to convulsions and she barely had enough energy to pull the duvet tighter around her.
Come Sunday morning, sleep deprivation was the least of her ailments. Nina had a skull-crushing headache, made worse by the coughs that wrenched her inside out. Her limbs had been stuffed with sawdust and getting from bed to hall to kitchen was as arduous as her walk across the moors two days before. Making a cup of coffee took what was left of her depleted strength so she barely had enough energy to drink it. Then the shivers started again and Nina all but crawled to the sofa because the living room was nearer than her bedroom.
Then she must have fallen asleep because she was plagued by dreams where she was lost on the moors. She could hear Noah’s voice calling her, but each time she tried to stumble towards him, she realised it was just the wind wuthering at her and that Noah was nowhere to be found. Or she’d see him in the distance but when she got closer, it wouldn’t be Noah but an old gnarled log or a slab of stone.
‘Where are you?’ dream Nina cried. ‘Don’t leave me. My heart’s broken.’
‘What is she going on about?’ asked a piercing, familiar voice.
‘I never thought that a broken heart would feel like this,’ Nina whispered to the cruel, uncaring wind.
‘It’s not a broken heart, it’s the flu,’ said the same voice and when Nina forced her eyes open, there was a face staring down at her, which was mostly obscured by a surgical mask. ‘Open your mouth!’
Nina opened her mouth, only to have a thermometer rammed in it.
‘Your bedside manner sucks,’ said a voice from the doorway and Nina turned her head, groaning around the thermometer because her neck ached, to see a cluster of people standing there. Posy, who’d just spoken, Verity and behind them, a tall, dark figure …
Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop Page 27