Page 46 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
Despite all of Nina’s misgivings, it had ended up being a great night. It would have been an even better night if she’d been able to drink more, she thought as she stood at the bar to get her round in and see if they were still serving anything in the way of bar snacks. Chloe was absolutely hammered and she needed something to mop up the alcohol before Nina could even think of getting her in a cab.
Nina had to make do with some sparkling water and a couple of bags of kettle chips and turned round to snake her way through the crowd when she knocked into a man who’d taken a sudden step right onto Nina’s foot.
‘Ow!’ she squealed as she drenched his shirt with sparkling water. ‘Watch it!’
‘You watch it!’ he snarled and turned round and knocked into a group standing behind him who told him to ‘watch it’ too.
Nina blinked, shook her head then nearly dropped what was left of her sparkling water. There were still echoes of the sixteen-year-old boy who’d first asked her out at a school disco. His hair was starting to recede, his slight frame and face now a little paunchy, and he’d acquired a certain set to his jaw like he was gritting his teeth all the time. It was clear that he didn’t recognise her so she could slip away and he’d never be any the wiser but she couldn’t stop the high-pitched ‘Dan?’ that came out of her mouth.
She saw recognition finally dawn on his face. Shock. And finally resignation. ‘Nina,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s you.’
‘One and the same,’ she agreed.
It was almost ten years since they’d broken up; ten years since Nina had given Dan a really garbled explanation as to why she was breaking things off and Dan hadn’t listened to a word she’d said. He had kept begging her to change her mind but Nina had been resolute in a way that she hadn’t been before … or since.
And of course they’d bumped into each other a few times after that until Nina had moved away from Worcester Park. It hadn’t taken long for Dan’s reproachful sadness to give way to a kind of cocky one-upmanship especially after he got engaged to a girl called Angie, then married, then the two children. Everything that he’d wanted so much.
Now, Nina and Dan moved to one side so they weren’t blocking the main route to the bar and Nina could get a proper look at him. He was only thirty-one but the disappointed, bitter air about him made him look older.
But Nina didn’t think that the years had been that kind to her either. ‘So, howareyou?’ she asked brightly, because she always wanted Dan to be well. ‘How are Angie and the kids?’
Dan’s face darkened. ‘We’ve split up.’
It was a long story that boiled down to a few unhappy facts. Angie had been seeing someone behind Dan’s back. Then she kicked him out of the house that he paid the mortgage on and he’d had to go to court to get access to his children.
‘Oh, Dan, I’m so sorry,’ Nina told him with genuine sincerity.
‘Yeah, well, you should be,’ he snapped and yes, she’d done something awful to Dan all those years ago but it was ancient history. It wasn’t even like she’d forced Dan into Angie’s arms on the rebound. There’d been two years between being dumped by Nina and Dan getting with Angie and while Nina was sorry about how she’d ended it, she was also still relieved that she had ended it. She hadn’t felt guilty about it for quite some time now.
‘Oh please. I don’t know how many more times I can apologise for breaking your heart all those years ago but itwasyears ago,’ Nina pointed out reasonably. She deserved a medal for staying calm and not raising her voice. ‘This is all water under the bridge. Come on, we both know that if we had stayed together, had gone through with it, we’d have ended up miserable.’
‘But you don’t know that, do you?’ Dan asked sadly without the belligerence or the cocky one-upmanship and a lot like the young man he’d been ten years ago. Her childhood sweetheart. Her fiancé.
Nina put her hand on his arm. ‘Yeah, I do know that,’ she said firmly.
‘Because you’re so happy now.’
It was Nina’s eternal dilemma: she wasn’t happy, but then again, she wasn’t unhappy. She was still somewhere bang in the middle but she knew one thing for sure: she’d been right to walk away from Dan all those years ago, walk away from Worcester Park and the safe, dull life that felt like it was choking her. She still had some way to go before she achieved her dreams but standing here in front of Dan made her realise how far she’d come.
‘Look, I’m really sorry that it didn’t work out with Angie,’ she said again and, as she walked off, Dan called something after her but Nina didn’t pause, she just wanted to get Chloe upright and leave.
In the few minutes that she’d been at the bar, the last bottle of rosé had caused carnage. The mums had all reached the ‘I bloody wellloveyou, you’re my best mate, you are’ stage of drunkenness and they all wanted to hug Nina and tell her that she was an amazing girl and that she needed to find a nice bloke and have kids. ‘It will be the making of you.’
Nina didn’t point out that she was already made. She was done. Apart from her not-yet-completeWuthering Heightssleeve, she was a finished product. She also hoped that she wasn’t this annoying and repetitive when she was drunk.
‘Another bottle for the road!’ Kara shouted but Nina was having none of it.
‘No more,’ she said sternly. ‘You have to be at a soft-play centre in a few hours.’
There were groans all round and Nina was able to get them all to the Ladies for last wees, then outside where it was a tedious business deciding who was sharing a cab with who. Except Chloe who wasn’t sharing a cab with anyone as she was looking so green that no driver wanted to take her.
It was inevitable that during the long, staggery walk back to her house Chloe would throw up at the side of the road. ‘There there,’ Nina said, rubbing her back in soothing circles. ‘Better out than in. No! Don’t take off your shoes. You think you want to but you really, really don’t.’
Chloe straightened up and wiped her mouth and what was left of her lipstick with the back of her hand. ‘I love you, Nina,’ she said. ‘I bloody wellloveyou.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Nina muttered, as she looped her arm round Chloe again and encouraged her to take a few tottering steps. ‘I get it. Everybody bloody loves me.’
‘Honest people don’t hide their deeds.’
