Page 75 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
‘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 she 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.
