Page 80 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
‘Once you’re digitised then ordering stock, taking care of inventory and even doing the accounts will be so much easier. Posy and Verity will be freed up to work on promotions and events as you talked about doing when you were planning the relaunch.’
Nina couldn’t help but feel slighted because hadn’t she been the one who’d kept badgering Posy about doing more events? Then along comes Noah with his navy-blue suits and his business analytics and now Posy was nodding her head eagerly and even Verity wasn’t looking unduly alarmed at the prospect of having to leave the back office on occasion.
Nina sighed and looked to Tom for solidarity but Noah had now reached the Tom part of his report and Tom was hanging onto his every word. Big whoop. They all knew that Tom was one of the main reasons why they had so many repeat lady customers of a certain age.
‘So Tom will take over the shop Twitter account from today,’ intoned Noah. Saywhat?!
It was hard not to flail her limbs at the sheer unfairness of it all. Hadn’t Nina taken control of the shop’s social media? Grown their Instagram followers? Asked Sam repeatedly to show her how to update the shop website? She had! Now Tom was going to take the Twitter from her just because he’d apparently posted a couple of amusing tweets while Nina had been upstairs hovering between life and death.
‘Judas,’ she mouthed at Tom, who shrugged. ‘I hate you.’
‘And then we come to Nina,’ Noah said thinly and she’d been trying to avoid looking at Noah but now he had her full attention. It was hard to believe that this cold, remote man in bespoke navy-blue suiting had held her while she slept. ‘Where to even start? Maybe with her lack of professional boundaries.’
It turned out that all of Nina’s fears about what Noah had been tapping into his iPad were entirely founded. He had noted every single time that she’d given Posy and Verity backchat, or talked about their sex lives or her own sex life, read out the dirty bits in books when there was a queue waiting to pay, eaten food while she was handling the books or serving customers. The list went on and on.
Obviously, Nina was biased in her own favour but even she would have given herself the sack. She was aterribleemployee.
Nina hoped he was getting to the end of his long list of her moral and professional failings. Then they could move swiftly on to Posy sacking her and Nina going upstairs to clear her stuff out of the flat – oh God, being sacked meant being evicted too. She’d never dreamed that he would get his revenge in such a petty way though.
‘And she behaves like this because … she’s bored,’ Noah said. ‘You don’t use her talents enough. She takes it upon herself to create the most wonderful window displays,’ Noah continued and Nina looked around the room to see if he was talking about some other Nina, because he couldn’t be talking about her. ‘She’s so creative that she even designed the Happy Ever After logo but she told you her friend Claude had done it. She didn’t think you’d take the design seriously if you’d known that it was her own work.’
‘Oh, Nina!’ Posy said, sounding much crosser than when Noah had been extolling the virtues of knocking through. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
For precisely the reason that Noah had given. And Nina hadn’t even told Noah about the logo; the only person who could have mentioned it was Marianne when she’d been left alone with Noah while Nina was getting tattooed.
‘There was never a good time,’ Nina said weakly.
‘And look what Nina’s done with the shop Instagram.’ Noah held up his iPad. ‘She added two thousand followers in less than two weeks. Send her on a course so she can build on her skills, learn to code and use CMS, then she can take sole responsibility for the Happy Ever After website. You really need to start focusing on your web revenue stream anyway.’
Once again, Nina hardly knew where to look. How could it be that Noah was saying these things about her when he hated her, and with good reason too?
‘So, you’re saying that Nina shouldn’t work in the shop any more because she behaves in a completely unprofessional manner?’ Verity clarified. ‘Well, no! That doesn’t work for me. Happy Ever After would be so dull without Nina. No offence, Posy.’
‘None taken,’ Posy said. She’d been lolling back against the counter but now she hurried back to Nina’s sofa. ‘A day without Nina making completely unacceptable personal remarks is like a day without sunshine.’
‘I couldn’t get through a working day without Nina providing a bit of light relief and saving me from some of the more handsy customers,’ Tom added. ‘You can’t hide her away in the back office doing boring techy stuff.’
All this support was quite unexpected and Nina felt the tell-tale throbbing of her tear ducts because she was off her game and still getting over flu and her workmates loved her. They really loved her. And Noah …
‘I agree. The shop would descend into chaos without Nina,’ he said and now Nina noticed that he’d lost the puckered, frigid cast to his face. That he was looking at her now but would then quickly avert his eyes as if he didn’t have the courage to gaze at her for longer than a few seconds. ‘Nina has the back-cover blurb for pretty much every book in the shop memorised, along with the reading preferences for all your regular customers. She’s the only person who knows exactly the right spot to thump Bertha when she’s playing up and she can charm a queue of grumpy customers waiting to pay into actually apologising for being grumpy. Nina is the heart and soul of Happy Ever After.’
‘Oh,’ Nina said. She couldn’t say much more than that so she said it again. ‘Oh …’
‘I know this because it’s my job to analyse businesses,’ Noah said. He blinked. Then put down his iPad on the shelf behind him. There was silence, expectant, almost pregnant with promise. Noah smiled. It was a crooked, broken smile, which was a match for Nina’s crooked, broken heart. ‘It’s my job, you see, to find solutions to problems and I’ve realised that loving you is only a problem if I make it into one.’
‘What?’ Posy said. ‘What is he going on about?’
‘Shut up,’ Verity hissed at her.
‘You will never know how many times I was all set to tell you about Paul,’ Nina said with a throat that suddenly felt like she’d swallowed an elephant. Just saying her brother’s name punctured the sweet joy that had swelled inside her when Noah had said that he loved her. ‘But when we were together, it was so special that I didn’t want to do anything to break the spell. Then the longer I kept it secret, the harder it became to tell you because I knew that once the truth was out, it would ruin everything. I handled the situation terribly but it wasn’t meant maliciously. You have to believe me.’
‘I do believe you,’ Noah said and surely he wouldn’t be looking at her like that, softly and tenderly, if he still thought she was a cruel, mean-spirited witch.
‘And for what it’s worth, Paul is truly sorry, sickened even, by what he did to you at school.’
‘Well. That’s something. Look, I can’t see your brother becoming my best friend, but I’ll never be able to let go of the past, if I don’t let go of my resentment,’ Noah said. ‘I mean, there are parents who manage to forgive the people who’ve killed their children, even when they haven’t shown any remorse. And it’s not like Paul’s murdered anyone, has he?’
‘He really hasn’t and honestly, if you play it right I reckon you’ll get free plumbing for the rest of your life,’ Nina said, then her expression sobered. ‘But I don’t expect you to act like nothing had ever gone down between you two, because it did and it’s important not to brush that aside. All I’m asking is that you let him take you out for one really hideously awkward drink so he can apologise in person.’
