Page 45 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
It was fair to say that the feelings she had towards Noah were complicated, confusing and so until she worked them out, any Sutton-based Casanovas could do one.
In fact, as Nina changed trains at Waterloo, walking against the tide of the bridge and tunnel crowd heading into the West End from the suburbs for a big night out, she could feel dread swirling about her blood then settling in the pit of her stomach like a dodgy kebab that refused to digest.
By the time she was ushered into the All Bar One on Hill Street by a pair of bouncers, ignoring the catcalls from a gang of lads smoking outside who’d obviously never seen a woman in a figure-hugging cherry-print dress with pink hair before, Nina couldn’t wait until Sunday lunchtime when she’d head back to civilisation.
‘Blimey! Will you look at that?’ she heard a woman mutter to her friend as Nina sidled past them towards the back of the huge space where a text from Chloe promised that she was waiting on a banquette with a bottle of rosé.
You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, Nina thought to herself then she saw Chloe waving at her and pinned on a smile.
‘Ready for our girls’ night out?’ Nina asked brightly, as she took in the five other women assembled on their two banquettes. ‘Shall we see if we can find a quiet table?’
‘Oh, sorry. Girls’ Night Out has become Mums On The Razz,’ Chloe explained with an apologetic little grimace. ‘You don’t mind, do you? You can be an honorary Mum.’
‘Or token aunt! Of course I don’t mind,’ Nina said, her smile increasing in manic intensity, as she looked around at the other women and caught a little side-eye exchanged between two of them as they took in Nina’s tattooed arms as she slipped out of her leather jacket. ‘The more the merrier, right?’
Space was made on a banquette for Nina, unfortunately on the other side of the long low table that divided the two sofas so she was on the opposite side to Chloe. She smiled uneasily at the woman next to her, Kara, and was rewarded with an uneasy smile back.
Chloe’s friends had all done NCT classes together or Mummy and Me toddler playgroups or were school playground pals so mostly they talked about their children. How little Nathan was still teething and Anjali had been slow to talk but now she never shut up. As one woman complained that her three-year-old twins hadn’t got into their first-choice nursery, Nina realised that she’d been in the same year as her at Orange Hill. She stiffened. Glanced around at her drinking companions for the night and was pretty sure that another two of them had been in the year above her at Orange Hill. It wasn’t only Noah who had bad recollections about their time at secondary school.
You are more than this, Nina told herself. You live in Bloomsbury and you work in a bookshop and you have lots of interesting friends and tattoos and you’ve recently been on two non-dates with a man who isn’t like any other man you’ve ever been on a date with.
She did feel a little better to be reminded that you really could take the girl out of the London Borough of Sutton. Then she also reminded herself that it was almost forty-eight hours since she’d last seen Noah and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to send him a friendly text. Just thinking about what it would be like if he suddenly walked into All Bar One, relieved from his babysitting duties, was enough to make Nina ride out a little shiver and put a finger to her lips, which still seemed hyper-sensitive since the kissing they’d got the other night.
How are you getting on? Have you had to change a nappy yet? I’m in All Bar One with a gaggle of ‘Mums on the razz’. Do you want to swap places? Nina x
She deliberated over the ‘x’ for a little bit but after all the ‘xxx’-ing on Thursday night, it seemed rude not to. Nina pressed ‘send’, smiled vaguely at the mums on either side of her who were now discussing baby-led weaning, whatever the hell that was, and waited for Noah to reply with some anticipation.
And she waited.
And she waited.
And she waited some more.
Even if Noah had actually been changing a nappy, he had to be done now. Had nothing left to do but text Nina back but he hadn’t and she didn’t want to bethatwoman (though being back on her old stomping grounds always made her feel likethatwoman) but Noah’s text silence troubled her deeply.
Did he not like her, even though he was the one who’d asked her out on that first date? Had he only agreed to the second date to be polite? And what about the kissing? Had it really been below par? Nina bristled on her banquette. Well, she’d always had rave reviews before!
Nina stared angrily at her phone, then, just to check that she still had other options, she logged on to HookUpp, which shestillhadn’t got round to deleting. Within seconds, unlike the text function of her phone, it was beeping with matches from guys who’d seen her picture, liked what they saw and had up-swiped her.
‘Oh! Is that that dating app?’ asked Kara, unashamedly staring at Nina’s phone. ‘My younger sister is on it all the time. Says she’s been matched with some real mingers.’
‘Mingers is right,’ Nina said. ‘Look at this one. He can’t be more than twelve!’ She clicked on the message he’d just sent her.
‘Is that … is that a penis?’ Kara shrieked and covered her eyes.
‘No biggie,’ Nina said, holding up her phone. ‘Literally. It’s just a dick pic.’
There was a chorus of shrieks then Chloe said proudly, ‘I live the single-girl life vicariously through Nina. She has thebeststories. Tell them the one about the bloke that worked in the betting shop.’
Noah might not have texted her back but that was all right because Nina was wild and free. The token single girl mining her rich seam of bad dating stories (‘and that’s when he decided to rest half a pint of lager on his erect penis and that’s when I decided to make my excuses and leave’) for the horrified delight of Chloe’s friends. She could feel their smug satisfaction that they were already matched up and would never have to log into HookUpp, or worse hook up with someone from HookUpp.
Nina never minded providing the floorshow; often at work, if the shop was quiet, Posy and Verity would beg for a story from her dating repertoire, and now it broke the ice.
It didn’t take long for Chloe’s friends to realise that underneath the pink hair and the tattoos, Nina was a right laugh. And Nina realised, with a little shame, that Chloe’s friends were perfectly lovely and that when it was almost impossible to get a babysitter and you were usually in bed beforeNews at Tenbecause none of their kids would actually sleep through, then Saturday night at All Bar One in Sutton was the equivalent of a week in Las Vegas.
They’d all bonded by the time they were deep into the third bottle of rosé, Nina desperately trying to make her second and final glass last as she and Chloe’s best friend, Dawn, chatted about how Nina could optimise Happy Ever After’s social media and start racking up followers who would hopefully all want to buy romantic novels. Dawn had set up an Instagram account for her two French bulldogs, Eric and Ernie, and in the space of a year had over fifty thousand followers and companies sent her free stuff, everything from organic dog treats and cotton hoodies to flea treatments. She even had partnership deals so she was more or less getting paid to post pictures. Nina couldn’t even imagine how Posy might react if she came up with a new revenue stream for the shop – she’d probably have to have a bit of a lie-down.
‘It’s all about the hashtags,’ Dawn said. ‘And follows. I follow pretty much anyone who’s ever posted a picture of a dog on Instagram.’
