Page 26 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
‘I’m getting cotton mouth just thinking about it,’ she said. And she didn’t realise she’d been tensing her muscles until she settled back in her seat and felt the tension leave her. ‘Was that what the skirmishing was about? Did you try to sneak a Scotch egg past your mum?’
‘I could murder a Scotch egg. I might have to go home via Tesco Express to get one,’ Noah said with the same dreamy expression as before. When he’d first rocked up at Happy Ever After in his suit and with his iPad, Nina would never have imagined that he’d have so many layers. He wasn’t wearing a suit today. There were jeans and underneath his navy-blue peacoat, a navy-blue jumper peeked out. God, he really did love a navy-blue ensemble. ‘But no, I know much better than to try and sneak any animal products past my parents. We skirmished over my lifestyle choices.’
‘You too? I never imagined we’d have so much in common,’ Nina said, and Noah laughed, and Nina didn’t think she’d seen him laugh before. The laughter was like an instant Instagram filter, wiping away the tired, tight look from his face and bringing his features to life again.
‘You mean that your parents are also very disappointed that their own flesh and blood has sold their soul out. Then they harped on about sucking on the corporate teat for a while but I tuned out,’ Noah said with an exasperated edge to his voice. ‘As soon as they start talking about “The Man”, I know what’s coming and I switch off.’
‘They’re not proud of you? But, why not? I mean, you’ve been to Oxford and Harvard,’ Nina reminded him, though Noah was hardly likely to forget.
‘Did I tell you about that at the pub?’ He looked confused and Nina found herself coughing wildly to distract him – no he hadn’t bloody well mentioned it, dammit, that had been Alison.
‘Do you need a sip of water?’ Noah sat up, patting his pockets as though a water bottle would miraculously appear. Nina managed to get control of her ‘coughing fit’, and waved a hand at him weakly.
‘I’m fine,’ she croaked.
‘It’s a bit of a coincidence that you’re from Worcester Park too,’ Noah said as she wiped her watering eyes. ‘And you’re about the same age as me.’ His brow furrowed and Nina closed her eyes in silent agony in anticipation of the next question he was definitely going to ask. ‘What school did you go to?’
‘I’ve pretty much repressed all memory of school,’ she said desperately. ‘Absolutely not the best days of my life. Whoever came up with that expression didn’t know what they were talking about.’
‘Ha, yes! To be honest, I don’t think about school that much either. It was pretty shitty for me too, but do you know what? I learned some life lessons from it and then I moved on,’ Noah said calmly as if his dark days at Orange Hill weren’t that big a deal. ‘I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I couldn’t compartmentalise.’
Was it possible that she was going to get away with dodging his question? After all, Noah didn’t seem to recognise Nina at all from their Orange Hill days, let alone realise that she was Paul’s sister: good thing they didn’t really look alike. But should Nina tell Noah about the connection? Would it be the right thing to do?
How would she even begin to bring it up?Actually my older brother Paul used to beat you up on a regular basis.Nina winced. ‘Yeah, I’ve moved on too. Thank God!’
‘It’s best to leave all that stuff in the past,’ Noah agreed. ‘And right now, all I can think about are Scotch eggs. I’m starving,’ he said plaintively, casting a baleful look at his Tupperware.
Nina stared down at the Tupperware on her own lap. She gave the container a cautious shake. Its contents felt a lot less intact than they had done before she’d run for the train. She prised open the lid to confirm her suspicions. Mattie’s peerless raspberry meringue wasn’t quite smashed to smithereens but it had certainly been broken into large lumps.
‘Will this do?’ Nina offered the box to Noah who peered inside, then an expression of sheer joy came over him, which was much more pleasing to look at than his stony face of before.
He selected a large piece of very crumbly cake and then looked around. ‘I need a plate and also a bib.’
Nina was already delving into her bag. ‘When you wear as much make-up as I do, you never go anywhere without a packet of wetwipes. I also have tissues, cotton buds and some anti-bacterial hand gel.’ She handed Noah a couple of tissues and watched as he took a happy bite of cake.
The smell wafting up from the container was heavenly: the soft, sweet cloud from the meringue and the sharp tang of the raspberries, but Nina wasn’t going to eat cake in public. Not after spending two hours with her mother, meaning all she’d be thinking about was how many calories, carbs and grams of sugar she was consuming.
Hopefully, by the time she’d got home, these feelings would pass and she could eat cake and any other thing she damn well wanted without hearing Alison carping in her ear, ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’ or ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ and her very favourite fat-shaming mantra, ‘Little pickers wear enormous knickers.’
She didn’t want to keep staring at Noah as he munched away – there was every possibility that she might start drooling, which was what happened when you denied yourself cake. And what if Noah thought she was slavering over him?
She shuddered and busied herself with her phone. There was a text from Chloe(Hope you’re OK. We left just after you once I’d told your mum not to give Ellie and Rosie complexes about their bodies. That went down well. Not! Speak soon. xxx)and a couple of messages on HookUpp from men she’d up-swiped but hadn’t HookUpped with yet before she’d sworn off it. Checking it absolutely didn’t count, because she wasn’t going to reply, unless either of them categorically stated that they were looking for the Cathy to their Heathcliff. But neither of them had. They’d just sent her dick pics.
Had any woman ever formed a meaningful relationship with a man who didn’t bother with any of the niceties, not even a ‘how are you doing?’ but went straight to sending her a photo of his tumescent yet still very unimpressive penis? Nina doubted it.
‘I can’t eat any more of this,’ Noah declared and Nina looked up from her phone to see him putting the lid on her Tupperware. ‘I want to leave room for my Scotch egg and I’m starting to go a little trippy from so much sugar.’
They were pulling into Earlsfield station, a few people waiting on the platform to board, and in a few minutes they’d be at Waterloo. Nina was just debating the merits of getting the Northern Line to Tottenham Court Road and then walking the rest of the way or whether she should get an Uber, though maybe she should delete the Uber app off her phone in solidarity with her father, when she realised that Noah had been speaking to her, because all of a sudden he reached across and gently tapped her on the knee.
‘But don’t you think it’s weird?’ he asked.
Nina blinked at him. ‘What’s weird?’
‘That we’ve never met before.’ Noah gestured at Nina with a slightly meringue-y hand. ‘We grew up in the same place, we’re about the same age and you’re not the sort of person to fade into the background.’
At the thought of her days at Orange Hill, even though those days hadn’t been the terror ride that Noah’s had been, Nina got the same twinge in her stomach that she always got. A slightly panicky, sicky feeling. She willed it away. But also Noah had just confirmed that he didn’t know that Nina had attended his school, let alone was related to his chief tormentor, and it seemed a pity to tell him now when they were getting on so well. She’d wait until they were in the shop, in a professional setting, and take him to one side to deliver the news, but for now it could wait.
‘Well, I suppose technically we lived nearer to Cheam than Worcester Park,’ she hastily amended. ‘And I didn’t look likethisback then.’
