‘Heathcliff,’ Nina mumbled.
‘No, not Heathcliff, it’s me, Merry!’ and a hand on Nina’s chin turned her head back to the person standing over her. Nina blinked sleep-encrusted, swollen eyes as she stared up at Merry, or Mercy as she’d been christened, one of Verity’s many sisters. Mercy was a medical researcher at nearby University College Hospital and their go-to person whenever they were feeling poorly. ‘Let’s be having this.’ The thermometer was yanked out of Nina’s mouth. ‘Just nudging thirty-nine degrees. Are you achy?’
‘So achy. Hot. Then cold. Everything hurts,’ Nina realised. ‘Oh God, this is just like when Emily Brontë caught a chill, which turned into tuberculosis and then she died.’
‘It’s not TB. I keep telling you, you have the flu. You’re not going to die,’ Merry said comfortingly. ‘Although actually, flu isn’t to be taken lightly, people can die from the flu,’ she added not so comfortingly.
‘Morland, I absolutely forbid you from entering this disease-ridden hovel. Go downstairs this instant,’ commanded the tall, dark figure at the living-room door, who wasn’t Heathcliff, but Sebastian Thorndyke. ‘I’m not having you dying on me.’
‘For God’s sakes, Sebastian,’ Posy hissed, but she took a couple of cautious steps back. ‘I wish you’d think before you speak.’
‘Well, of course Tattoo Girl isn’t going to die,’ Sebastian said witheringly. ‘You’re far too robust to be snuffed out by the flu. Though, quite frankly, a light dose of the flu is just desserts for what you’ve done to poor Noah. He’s trying to put a brave face on it, but he’s devastated.’
Nina hadn’t thought it was possible to feel any more rotten but her visitors were doing a good job of proving her wrong. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She wanted to ask after Noah, demand to know what he’d said about her, though it couldn’t be anything good, but the effort was too much and all she could manage was a feeble cough that hurt like hell.
‘Well, Nina is devastated too and she absolutely isn’t going to die,’ Verity said firmly, but she didn’t move from the door so she could take Nina’s hand or mop her exceedingly sweaty brow. ‘And I’m sure people who die of the flu have underlying medical conditions or are very old. Do you think she should see a doctor, Merry?’
‘Nothing a doctor can do for her,’ Merry said cheerfully and in an odd sort of way, it was also quite comforting to have everyone talk about Nina as if she wasn’t a very present, hot and sweaty lump on the sofa. ‘Flu’s a virus so she can’t take antibiotics. Just paracetamol or ibuprofen to lower her temperature and plenty of liquids to stop her from getting dehydrated.’
‘Poor Nina,’ Posy cooed from the door. ‘We’ll make sure you have plenty of Lemsip. And I’m sure we can scrounge up some chicken soup from somewhere for you.’
‘Such a pity that you and Noah only lasted three dates,’ Verity noted sorrowfully. ‘I bet he’d be the kind of boyfriend you’d really want around you when you had the flu.’
‘He thinks I’m a horrible person.’ Nina couldn’t raise her voice above a creaky whisper. ‘Because I am. No one will ever love me.’
‘Oh, Nina! That’s not true,’ Posy gasped. ‘We all love you.’
There was a rousing chorus of agreement from Verity and Mercy though Sebastian protested that ‘love is pushing it, especially as you’ve just broken Noah’s heart, ooof,’ this from an elbow in the side from Posy, ‘however, generally I think you’re a cracking girl.’ Then Tom’s distant voice called up the stairs, ‘Is anyone but me going to do any work today? Posy! There’s a delivery.’
‘All right, all right,’ Posy snapped. ‘I’d better go. You too, Very. Text us if you need anything, Nina.’
‘Yes, feel better soon,’ Verity said earnestly but she was already backing away and Sebastian was long gone, which left only Mercy who proudly produced a battered box of ibuprofen from her handbag.
‘Two of these bad boys, every six hours.’ She frowned. ‘You should try and eat. It’s not a good idea to take tablets on an empty stomach.’
But Nina didn’t want to eat, which was a first. She could barely force down the glasses of water and Lemsip that Posy and Verity brought her at regular intervals, both of them wearing latex gloves and surgical masks courtesy of Mercy, so they didn’t catch flu too.
Normally, Nina quite liked having a minor illness. She could lie on the sofa watching boxed sets and eating food without any nutritional value. But this was a major illness and all Nina could do was vacillate between too hot and too cold on sheets that were starting to stink a little bit.
She hardly slept and hardly stayed awake either but existed in a delirious dream state where Noah and Heathcliff had morphed into one distant, disdainful ex-lover.
Nina couldn’t even say how long she was out of action because day and night, hours and minutes, had ceased to have any meaning. She’d later find out that it was Thursday morning, the fifth day of her confinement, when she struggled her way to wakefulness only to wonder if she was still asleep because this had to be a nightmare.
Staring down at her with a pained expression was her mother.
‘Time brought resignation and a melancholy sweeter than common joy.’
‘Look at you,’ Alison O’Kelly said and Nina was surprised that she didn’t whip out a mirror so Nina could see for herself how dreadful she looked. ‘I’m not surprised you got ill when you never do your coat up and I doubt you can even remember the last time you had your five a day.’ Her mother pursed her lips. ‘Actually, it should really be ten a day.’
‘Just kill me now,’ Nina moaned and she really did wish for a sudden death because her mother was brandishing a plastic cup full of a virulent green juice at her.
‘Stop being so melodramatic and get this down you,’ her mother said. ‘It’s full of antioxidants. And I have chicken soup. I was going to heat it up in your microwave but I’ll need to clean it first. It’s filthy. Talking of which, you’ll feel much better once you’ve had a shower.’
‘I haven’t got the energy,’ Nina insisted weakly, though if she was being entirely honest, she did feel a little bit better than she had done. She mentally downgraded herself from critical to stable and responding to treatment. But she certainly didn’t want to respond to her mother’s treatment. ‘You should go, I don’t want to make you ill.’
‘I doubt you’re infectious any more and besides, last time I had the flu, you and Paul were both under five and your father was working every hour God sent and I just had to soldier on.’
Alison carried on in that vein for the time it took to choke down the disgusting green juice, which tasted like bong water.
Then on shaky legs and mainly to get away from her mother (who was now loudly questioning Nina’s taste in home décor as a thinly veiled attack of Nina’s lifestyle choices. ‘My goodness, how much do you drink exactly if you need a home bar?’), Nina made it to the bathroom. They didn’t actually have a shower but a rubber hose attachment that fitted rather ineptly to the bath taps. Nina was grateful to sit down in the tub as she washed her hair for the first time in a week. It took three shampoos to get all the sweat and dirt out and she didn’t have enough oomph to shave her legs, which were so bristly that if she brushed against any manmade fibres she’d set herself on fire.
By the time she emerged from the bathroom in clean pyjamas – a black-and-pink, satin, polka-dot set gifted to her by Marianne – her mother had her Marigolds on and was headfirst in the microwave.
‘Don’t even think about going back to bed,’ Alison said, her voice muffled. ‘I’ve stripped your sheets but that room needs to air before I make the bed again. I opened the windows but I had half a mind to call in a fumigator.’
‘What are you doing here, Mum?’ Nina asked in a voice that was creaky both from disuse and a ravaged throat. ‘Not that I’m not grateful,’ she added, which was a bare-faced lie.
‘Your friend Posy called me. Said you’d been delirious for the last few days and that sh
e was worried about you.’ Alison’s head emerged from the microwave to fix Nina with a hurt look. ‘If you’d have called me, I’d have come round immediately. You know I would.’
‘You just told me that when you had flu you kept calm and carried on so even if I had called you, you’d have probably accused me of malingering.’
Alison puffed like an angry dragon. ‘Well …’ she said once she could form words again. ‘Well, I like that. Go and sit on the sofa and I’ll bring you in some soup and then I’ll go.’
It was Nina’s turn to puff. ‘Mum …’
‘I know when I’m not welcome,’ Alison said with a martyred air. Her mother had been saying things with a martyred air for as long as Nina could remember so she didn’t feel at all guilty. In fact, she couldn’t wait for her mother to leave. Now that her flu had transitioned into a heavy cold and she was able to shuffle from one room to the next, she might as well make the most of being ill. That would involve taking to the sofa for a Netflix binge and texting down to Verity or Posy whenever she needed more coffee or cake. Nina sank gratefully on to the sofa because actually she was quite exhausted from so much activity.
She could hear Alison still banging things about and muttering under her breath in the kitchen. Nina rolled her eyes and it was then that she saw it. Placed neatly by one of the armchairs was her mother’s overnight case and Nina’s heart sank to the floor, which admittedly could do with a good vacuum.
‘Do you want toast with your soup?’ Alison called out. ‘Is it starve a cold and feed a fever or is it the other way round? I can never remember.’
‘Just the soup would be great, thanks,’ Nina called back, her voice cracking as she attempted an upper register. Her heart was plummeting again, from guilt and shame this time. Noah really had sussed her out – she was completely lacking in decency and kindness.
She felt even worse when Alison came into the room with the soup and toast, which she’d cut into triangles.
‘You know how I feel about carbs,’ she said thinly, as she placed the laden tray on the coffee table. ‘But you do need to keep your strength up.’
‘Mum, your case …’
‘Try a spoonful. It might need more seasoning,’ Alison said, not sitting down but hovering so she could whisk the soup away as soon as Nina gave her the word that it tasted a bit bland.
In fact, it smelt wonderful. The aroma found its way past Nina’s blocked sinuses although her taste buds could only tell her that the soup was hot and savoury. ‘It tastes great,’ she said enthusiastically because she hadn’t realised how hungry she was.
Alison perched on the very edge of an armchair and watched while Nina managed to eat half a bowl of the soup and a couple of toast triangles before she had to admit defeat. ‘I just don’t have much of an appetite,’ Nina said sadly. ‘That never happens.’
‘Best thing about being ill.’ Alison allowed a tiny smile in Nina’s direction. ‘You get to lose weight without even trying.’
‘Well, it beats having to go to the gym,’ Nina said and before her mother could extol the virtues of her regular Zumba classes, she ploughed on. ‘Your case … you were going to stay the night? Why would you want to do that?’
‘Because you were ill,’ Alison spelt out. Again. ‘That Posy wouldn’t have rung me if it wasn’t serious and she said your flatmate – Very, what kind of name is Very?’
‘It’s short for Verity …’
‘That she’d been on high alert for three nights on the trot and the poor girl was exhausted.’
Nina had a very vague memory of a cool, damp cloth on her hot, sweaty forehead and also of opening bleary eyes after a particularly savage coughing fit to see a shadowy figure standing by her bed with a glass of water and a bottle of Benylin.
‘I’ve been so out of it that it’s been hard to know what was real and what was a dream,’ Nina said with a pang because now that she was feeling better she remembered what had happened with Noah with painful accuracy. What they’d had together was real. Yes, it had only been three dates and a lot of hanging out and one night spent in wild, sexual abandon (that Nina would still remember when she was on her deathbed), but they meant more to her than all the other dates, all the other relationships, that had fizzled out. Even more than the five years she’d spent with Dan.
Noah had got under her skin, had found his way right to her heart and even though he was gone, he’d left his possessions strewn about her ventricle chambers. His smile, the way he said her name, the half-indulgent, half-exasperated look he’d give her when she was being a brat …
‘Nina! Nina! You’re not listening to a word I’m saying!’ Nina was forced to turn her attention back to her mother, who was giving her a look that was all exasperation.
‘Sorry, still finding it quite hard to focus,’ Nina mumbled.
‘I was just saying that this Verity girl is going to spend the night with her boyfriend. Apparently, he’s an architect and Posy is with some techy billionaire. You never told me she got married!’ Alison finished on an aggrieved note, even though there was no reason why Nina should have told Alison that her boss at ‘that bookshop’, that her mother had never expressed any interest in, was getting married.
‘Yeah, bit of a whirlwind romance. Took everyone by surprise, Posy included,’ Nina said and she expected her mother to follow up with some negative observation (‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’ being an obvious contender) but her mother was too busy digesting this news.
‘I hope you’re not getting similar notions about that Noah,’ was what she did say, rather unbelievably. ‘I would not want that woman as an in-law.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Nina demanded and she winced because her headache was back with a pounding vengeance. She doubted it had much to do with the flu and everything to do with her mother who leapt to her feet to put a cool hand on Nina’s sweaty forehead.
‘Back to bed with you,’ Alison decided. ‘I’ll just go and make it up with fresh bedding. You should have said you were feeling poorly again.’
Even when she was being kind, Alison O’Kelly still found a way to sound like everything was Nina’s fault. But ten minutes later when Nina was sliding into bed, the covers cool and crisp, rather than bedraggled and damp with sweat, and Alison stood over her with a glass of water and two more ibuprofen, she was actually relieved that her mother had come round.
She had to be having a relapse, which had addled her brain again. There was no other explanation for it – because Nina couldn’t remember the last time she was glad to see her mother.
It was the sound of the door to the flat slamming shut that woke Nina a couple of hours later. She looked at the time on her phone, which was charging on her nightstand. It was gone seven. The shop would be closed now and Verity must have come upstairs.
This time when Nina got out of bed, the covers weren’t clammy and her legs did a pretty good job of holding her up as she walked towards the living room. ‘Very! I had no idea I’d been so ill. Thanks for being such a Florence Nightingale,’ she called out. ‘Was I very annoying?’
‘Quite annoying, from what I hear,’ said her mother and Nina poked her head around the living-room door to confirm that yes, Alison was still on the premises. ‘That Verity’s gone to spend the night at her boyfriend’s.’
‘And you’re still here,’ Nina pointed out in a neutral voice but it was still enough to make her mother’s lips tighten.
‘Well, I can go … I was just going. I’m not one to outstay my welcome,’ she said with that well-worn martyred air and there was nothing that Nina wanted more than for her mother to go. Then she’d be on her own. Well enough and lucid enough that all her thoughts would be of Noah and how desperately unhappy she was now that she didn’t feel like death.
‘You don’t have to go,’ she found herself saying. ‘We could have a sleepover.’
‘We’re not five, but I can stay, if you want me to. Your father can fend for himself for one night.’
�
��Great,’ Nina said and she tried to sound enthusiastic but she wasn’t sure that she succeeded because Alison’s lips tightened again. ‘Is there any more of that soup going?’
Instead of eating dinner on their laps in the front room like any normal person, Alison set the tiny table in the kitchen, where Nina and Verity usually dumped their post, keys and stray books. It was really too tiny for two people to sit around it, at right angles, bumping knees and knocking elbows.
Nina found that, again, she could hardly manage a bowl of soup and a piece of toast. Her mother was making tense conversation about her next-door neighbour, Mrs Cortes, who was well into her nineties and had met a younger man at a tea dance at the local community centre (‘He’s eighty, if he’s a day!’) and had moved him in and now Mrs Cortes’s sons were up in arms at their mother’s toy-boy lover.
To be fair, it was quite a riveting topic. ‘Do you think they’re doing it?’ Nina asked.
Her mother’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, Nina, don’t! What if she breaks a hip?’
‘Or her fancy man might have an attack of sciatica at a pivotal moment?’ Nina suggested and they both giggled.
‘Tell you what, I’ll get dinner cleared away and then I’ll give you a mani-pedi if you like,’ Alison offered. Then she paused and Nina braced herself for an implied insult or passive-aggressive dig. ‘It’s just that I don’t have any of my nail kit with me.’
Relief made Nina quite light-headed although that might have been because she’d just stood up far too quickly. ‘I’ve got everything that you could possibly need to do a mani-pedi. Even a fancy foot spa! Come and have a look.’
There were few things that Nina could do right in her mother’s eyes but Alison’s hands clasped together in sheer, wordless joy when Nina wheeled her three-tier beauty trolley into the front room. ‘All my nail supplies are on the bottom level,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and sort out the foot spa.’
Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop Page 28