‘Maybe I should put an ad on Craigslist.’ Johnny sighed. ‘Or perhaps I should call the last bitter divorcee I got set up with though she’s bound to be even more bitter now because I promised I’d call her and I never did. I’m probably on her hit list along with her ex-husband and all the other men who have done her wrong. Maybe she’ll forgive me though. And maybe she’ll have changed her perfume too. It was very cloying. Really caught at the back of my throat and made my eyes water so …’
‘Just stop! Please stop!’ Verity covered her face. It was best not to look at Johnny. He was beautiful in his suffering and she was a notorious soft touch. She’d bought Strumpet for fifty quid from a bloke in a pub after he’d told her that Strumpet was a she and the runt of the litter and that her mother had rejected her. The vet later told Verity that Strumpet was most definitely a he and the fattest runt he’d ever seen in all his thirty years of vetting.
‘Of course once I’ve been on a second date with her, she’s sure to think that we should have a third date,’ Johnny said with a sniff. ‘And it would be rude to refuse. It would hurt her feelings, which have already been brutalised by her ex-husband.’
‘I’ll think about it!’ Verity yelped. ‘Oh God, I’ll think about it. I’m not promising anything more than that, but enough already with this emotional blackmail!’ It was as if Johnny had been taking lessons from her sisters.
Johnny straightened up and rewarded Verity with a smile that was more devastating than any of his previous smiles. It made her feel quite light-headed. ‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ he said and Verity suspected that she’d been totally played. It was a very Wickham move and she’d be on her guard from now on.
As soon as Verity left the restaurant with Johnny’s number in her phone, his business card in her purse, her cheek still tingling from the brush of his lips when he’d said goodbye and a good half of her gargantuan lasagne in a takeaway carton, she texted Merry.
I bumped into that Johnny again. Where are you?
The reply came back so quickly that Verity hadn’t even tucked her phone away.
OMG! Am in your flat, eating your snacks.
Hurry home!
Merry had left the flat and Verity’s snacks and was waiting for her sister on one of the benches in the courtyard, which was free of hoodies for once. ‘I showed them a picture I had on my phone of what smoking weed does to the human brain and they made their excuses and left,’ Merry informed her when Verity asked what had happened to them.
Merry was a medical researcher at University College Hospital and had all manner of disgusting yet strangely fascinating photos of dissections and diseased body parts on her phone, which she liked to whip out at inappropriate moments.
‘So, Johnny then …’ Merry prompted as they walked into the shop. ‘Tell me everything and don’t skimp on the details.’
So, Verity told her everything, though the one part she left out was the realisation she’d had after Johnny had insisted on paying the whole bill and not going Dutch, that they’d been sitting there together, talking, for well over an hour and she hadn’t minded at all (not after she’d got over her initial shock) or felt in any way antsy. No point in giving Merry false hope that Verity was just waiting for the right man to come along.
Besides, Johnny had made it perfectly clear where Verity stood, just in case she was getting ideas. ‘Just so we’re on the same page,’ he’d said as he held the door open for her as they left the restaurant. ‘If you do agree to appear in public with me as a fake one-off girlfriend, and I really hope you do, please don’t start thinking that this might lead to anything more serious.’
For one second, Verity had thought he was joking because it was such an arrogant thing to say. Yes, Johnny might be ridiculously easy on the eye but Verity resented the assumption that she was likely to swoon at his feet without too much encouragement.
‘I don’t think there’s any danger of that,’ she had said, her tone both hurt and offended, though both hurt and offence were lost on Johnny.
‘I’m sure you’re a wonderful woman, but I’m not going to fall in love with you,’ he added as if Verity was harbouring fantasies that he might just do that exact thing. ‘I’m already in love. I don’t need the added complication.’
‘In love with this unknown woman that he can’t be with although he really wants to,’ she told Merry. ‘Which now that I think about it, seems odd. Shady, even. What, in this day and age, can possibly be keeping them apart? Has she taken a restraining order out against him? Is he some kind of grade A stalker?’
‘Hardly. His unknown woman is dying,’ Merry stated matter of factly. ‘She has a tragic terminal illness and she’s determined to do the decent thing and keep Johnny at bay so he can have some semblance of a normal life after she’s snuffed it. I mean, obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ Verity echoed with heavy sarcasm. Though she pretended that she only read literary fiction, Verity knew very well that Merry had a secret weakness for the sort of florid, overblown romances that even Posy would declare too saccharine for her tastes. ‘Anyway, whatever the story is with his unknown woman, it doesn’t really matter. I’m not his type. Believe me, that was perfectly clear.’
They were sitting on the sofa, taking it in turns to dip their spoons into a tub of peanut butter ice cream, though Verity’s heart or stomach wasn’t really in it. As it was she felt as if she was minutes away from giving birth to the food baby that had rounded out her belly and was making her feel winded. Now, Merry swivelled round so she could stare at her sister.
‘Why are you not his type? Did he actually say that? That’s kind of harsh.’
‘No, but he didn’t have to.’ Verity put down her spoon. ‘He’s gorgeous, Merry. Even if I did want a boyfriend, which I don’t, I so don’t, he is way out of my league and …’
She couldn’t say any more than that because Merry clapped her hand over Verity’s mouth. ‘Wrong!’ Merry shouted. ‘Everyone thinks we’re twins and I’m generally considered a knockout so that makes you a knockout too. We could have anyone we wanted. Anyone!’
‘Did you forget to check your ego at the door?’ Verity snapped, pushing Merry’s hand down. Though it was true that Merry and Verity’s resemblance to each other went beyond a sisterly similarity. It hadn’t helped that they’d been in the same year at school as there was only eleven months between them. Apparently Mrs Love had got quite tipsy at a church social and, as she cheerfully confessed to her horrified daughters sixteen years later, ‘I didn’t think I could get pregnant if I was breastfeeding.’
Still, it didn’t really matter where Verity stood on some arbitrary scale of attractiveness. ‘Like I said, I’m not on the market. I’m too busy officially mourning the end of my short but intense relationship with Peter Hardy. And I only agreed to consider this thing with Johnny because he put me on the spot. I’m not actually going to go through with it. I am done with fake boyfriends. They’re almost as much work as having a real boyfriend. There’s a reason why lying is included in the ten commandments,’ she added rather piously. ‘Because it’s wrong.’
‘Thou shalt not lie isn’t one of the ten commandments,’ Merry said loftily. ‘Any fool knows that.’
‘It might not say “Thou shalt not lie” but it does say “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”, which is pretty much the same thing, which you would know if you weren’t an absolutely rubbish vicar’s daughter.’ Verity tilted her head and gave Merry a smarmy smile, which she knew drove her sister teeth-grittingly, fist-clenchingly mad. It was the way of sisters the world over.
And maybe that was why, to get her revenge, when Verity popped to the loo, she came back into the living room to find that Merry was wearing an equally smarmy smile and holding Verity’s phone. ‘I decided that one shouldn’t waste a perfectly decent fake boyfriend so I texted Johnny and invited him to the opening of the tearooms next Saturday. He’s already texted back to say yes. Seems very keen. It’s all right, Very, n
o need to thank me.’
6
‘She was in no humour for conversation with anyone but himself; and to him she had hardly courage to speak.’
Verity was going to wait seventy-two hours, then text Johnny to say that she’d changed her mind.
Everyone knew that there was a standard three-day cooling-off period after agreeing to a date. Even Nina said so.
But just as the seventy-two-hour window was approaching and Verity was spending a lot of her time mentally composing the apologetic text she’d send Johnny (‘I have been diagnosed with a rare tropical disease and am quarantined until further notice’) he rang her.
What normal person would actually ring someone they’d arranged a date with? There was a reason why text messages had been invented.
Besides, it was common knowledge that Verity only answered the phone to her immediate family. Except Johnny didn’t know her well enough to be aware of that fact and, hopeful that perhaps he was having second thoughts, Verity really felt she had no choice but to answer the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi Verity. How are you?’
‘Um fine. What do you … I mean, how are you?’
‘I’m very well. Just checking we’re still good for Saturday. Is there anything I should be aware of?’
Briefly, Verity wondered if her father knew of any nunneries with vacancies. ‘Like what?’
‘Your text message wasn’t big with specifics. This tearoom; is it being opened by friends of yours?’
Verity shut her eyes as she realised the enormity of what Merry’s text message had wrought. That Johnny would be coming to her place of work. Her home. Meeting her colleagues, her boss, her friends. If Merry turned up, which she was sure to do, because free cake, then he’d even meet her family – or one very annoying member of it.
She found herself launching into a garbled explanation that took in a potted history of Happy Ever After, formerly Bookends. At one point, she even referenced Lady Agatha Drysdale, former Suffragette, who’d founded the shop.
The whole time Verity was willing herself to say the words ‘Look, shall we just call the whole thing off?’ but the words never came because each time she tried to reach for them, Johnny would ask her a question about whether it was all right to turn up in jeans and if he needed to bring a gift and ‘Look, we’ll just keep it really casual. Say we’re friends. What’s the harm in that?’
Oh, where to begin. Verity shut her eyes again. It seemed as if she’d had her eyes closed for the majority of their conversation. ‘Why don’t you come around at about seven, in time for the speeches? You don’t have to stay for very long.’
It was a phrase that Verity often had occasion to utter. Her sister Chatty had once even cross-stitched ‘I’M NOT GOING TO STAY FOR VERY LONG’ on a cushion for Verity’s last birthday. Her twin, Immy, had cross-stitched another of Verity’s favourite sayings, ‘I CAN’T HEAR MYSELF THINK’, on a contrasting cushion.
But now Johnny was agreeing that he didn’t have to stay for very long. ‘So I’ll see you Saturday then. I’m looking forward to it.’
I’m not, Verity thought as she ended the call and she still wasn’t looking forward to it on Saturday, which was the kind of beautiful English summer’s day that made you want to take tea on the lawn and watch a cricket match. It was perfect weather to open the tearooms with some fanfare, though secretly Verity had been hoping that it might rain so they couldn’t have guests milling about in the courtyard and the whole thing would be over quite soon. But no such luck and actually wishing for storm clouds and a torrential downpour was very mean-spirited and uncharitable when all the staff, but especially Mattie, had worked so hard in anticipation of this day.
On Saturdays Verity would usually do any tedious bits of paperwork she never got round to during the week, but this Saturday after the website orders were done, Verity presented herself in the tearoom ready to do Mattie’s bidding.
Normally Mattie seemed a little sad (she’d arrived back in London from Paris under a cloud; ‘I bet it was a man-shaped cloud too,’ Nina had said) and unflappable, but this morning she was extremely flappable.
‘I made a list,’ Mattie told Verity, her poker-straight black fringe sticking up at all angles. She held up a batter-splodged piece of paper. ‘There are too many items on it. We’ll never get everything done.’
‘We will,’ Verity promised. ‘I guarantee that in a few hours, the tearoom will be ready to reopen its doors.’
Posy’s mother used to run the tearoom, but by the time Verity had joined the staff five years ago, Posy’s mother and her father, who’d managed the shop, were no longer there and the tearoom had become a junk room, a shadow of what it had been.
Now, the sun streamed in through the windows, shadows all banished, and the tearoom was restored to all its former, mismatched glory. The wooden floor and half-panelled walls gleaming, the primrose yellow Formica counter, which had been put in in the 1950s, was groaning under the weight of a shiny new coffee maker that was the sole domain of Paloma, who Mattie had taken on because she was a trained barista and didn’t leap a foot in the air and shriek whenever it started hissing and huffing.
There was also an old-fashioned urn for tea and soon Verity would put out all the tempting treats that Mattie had been working on for weeks. Moist layer cakes stood proudly on the vintage cake stands they’d found stashed in a cupboard. Buns and scones, biscuits and brownies displayed on plates also found in the cupboard, none of them matching but all beautiful whether they were adorned with birds or flowers or polka dots.
Verity set herself to washing and drying the equally mismatched cups and saucers Posy had bought from eBay. She also made a mental note to tell Posy to stop buying stuff off eBay.
Then, Verity folded napkins. Put Prosecco to chill in the little fridge in the office kitchen, told Mattie countless times to calm down because everything would be fine and told shop customers, distracted by the tantalising smells coming from the tearoom, that they weren’t open yet even more times.
Eventually, it was six o’clock. Time to close the shop. Verity, Nina and Mattie slipped upstairs to change. Mattie was done in five minutes. Shrugging out of her jeans and top to shrug into a little black dress then an insouciant flick of eyeliner and a slick of red lipstick and she was done. ‘I must check on my buns,’ she said and slipped back downstairs.
Meanwhile Nina had already commandeered the bathroom – it took her a good hour to upgrade her daytime make-up to an evening make-up – so Verity sat cross-legged in her big velvet chair to wait. Would anyone notice if she skulked up here until everyone had gone home?
Of course they would. And they’d be cross, rightly so. And Johnny would turn up and ask after her and that wouldn’t be good, especially if Merry got to him first. The thought was enough to have Verity springing out of her chair to demand that Nina let her have the bathroom for a measly five minutes so she could have a quick shower. Then Verity pulled on a short-sleeved, knee-length navy-blue dress in a crisp cotton, which was practically identical to most of the dresses hanging up in her wardrobe, though in winter she preferred long sleeves and a cosy jersey cotton.
Because it was a special occasion and because Johnny, so Sunday supplement perfect, was about to turn up and act as if he and Verity were good friends, Verity knew that she needed to make a little more effort than securing her hair in its usual non-perky ponytail. Actually, a lot more effort. She braided a front section of hair and pinned it back, then dug out her make-up bag and was just dabbing helplessly at her face with tinted moisturiser when she became aware of Nina standing in her bedroom doorway, gawping.
‘Make-up?’ Nina queried. ‘Verity Love is putting on make-up? You must be serious about this Johnny dude. You never put on make-up for Peter Hardy, oceanographer.’
‘I’m sure I did,’ Verity said, as she decided she’d done enough dabbing and rooted around for the mascara that she’d had since 2007, giving it a good shake as it tended to go clumpy.
‘Oh God, I can hardly bear to look!’ Nina turned away as if Verity’s inept make-up application was causing her untold agony. She was back a minute later with the three-tier IKEA trolley she used to stash her huge collection of cosmetics. ‘Look, I have all these free samples of stuff,’ Nina said, pulling out a couple of bulging make-up bags. ‘I can never resist one of those “Spend fifty quid, get a twee make-up bag full of stuff you’re never going to use” deals. There’s a couple of lipsticks in here that would look so much better on you, plus mascara that won’t give you conjunctivitis.’
To Verity’s shame, Nina achieved more in five minutes with six products than Verity had been able to do in fifteen years. She still looked like herself, there’d been no wild Kardashian contouring, but a more put-together, less frowny version of herself.
‘I would never have thought of using brown mascara,’ Verity said as she slowly blinked at herself in the mirror then pursed her lips, which were now faintly glossy with lip stain because lipstick was simply too much lip and too much stick for her. She looked all right. Really all right. Like she wouldn’t look completely out of place if people saw her with Johnny. Now she understood why Nina called make-up ‘her warpaint’. She did feel a little braver. ‘And I never saw the point of blusher before. Thanks, Nina.’
‘Another six months of living together and I’ll have you pierced and tattooed,’ Nina promised, as she spritzed herself with perfume, though it sounded more like a threat.
‘Or else I’ll have you attending bible study and joining me in a prayer circle. We can sing “Kumbaya” at the end,’ Verity offered. ‘It will be fun.’
Nina’s mouth fell open. ‘Never! Not that I’m down on religion or your God but it’s just …’ Her eyes narrowed as Verity smiled serenely at her. ‘Hang on! I’ve never once seen you near a bible or heard you praying. You’re joking! I hate it when you do that, Very. You might give a girl some warning first.’
True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop Page 5