Nina couldn’t help the shudder that rippled through her. ‘Honestly? I wanted to be married by the time I was twenty because that’s what my mum and my gran and my great-gran all did, like it was this grand family tradition.’ She shuddered again at the thought of her lucky escape. ‘But I loved art. Maybe even more than I loved reading. I had such a crush on my GCSE art teacher.’
‘I didn’t do art,’ Noah said. ‘I got special permission to take an extra maths class instead.’
‘You freak,’ Nina said without thinking but Noah laughed.
‘Haven’t got one artistic bone in my body. Maybe half a bone.’ He held up his little finger. ‘Half of this bone here. So, this art teacher, was she a goth? All the ones at my school wore way too much black.’
Ms Casson had been a bit of a goth. She had long black hair and wore long floaty black dresses and to stop her students throwing paint and X-Acto knives at each other, she’d kept them enthralled with tales of art college. But more than that, she’d seen something different in Nina, even though Nina had dressed the same and acted the same and behaved the same as all the other girls in her year. Ms Casson had told Nina that she had real talent and that she should stay on to do her A-levels, maybe even go to art college, but by then Nina was already working Saturdays in Hair (and Nails) By Mandy and going steady with Dan Moffat from the year above who’d already left Orange Hill and was studying engineering at the local college, and her future was set.
‘Yeah, she was a bit of a goth,’ Nina said to Noah. ‘But she’d gone to the Royal College of Art and she painted when she wasn’t teaching. One time she had an exhibition in a gallery up in town and our class went and that made me think that I’d love to be an artist. To create things that made people feel something. That’s quite an amazing thing to do, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ Noah agreed. ‘There’s no reason you couldn’t go to art class now. Life drawing or something?’
‘Everyone in the class would be so much better than me,’ Nina stated with absolute certainty. Also, there was nothing more tragic than someone constantly harking back to their school glory days. ‘I haven’t picked up a paintbrush in years. Wouldn’t have the first clue what to do with a stick of charcoal. Anyway, I get to do my window displays at the shop and I’ve designed all of my own tattoos so I still get to be creative.’ Nina caught their server’s eye. ‘Shall we get the bill then?’
Noah must have got the message that Nina wasn’t up for any more self-improvement because he changed the topic to the company he was working with that week. They had a room you could only reach by rope ladder, called The Birdhouse, designed to encourage ‘blue sky’ thinking. And another room painted yellow called The Egg but no one could remember why.
‘Maybe it’s where they hatch new ideas,’ Nina suggested with a smile because somehow Noah had managed to turn the non-date around again. ‘Or crack a few yolks.’
Noah groaned as if he was in pain. ‘Egg puns? I expected better from a chick like you.’
The bill arrived on a saucer that was placed in the dead centre of the table because this was a modern establishment that had no truck with outmoded conventions of dating. Much like Nina herself. She reached for the bill, about to suggest they go Dutch, but Noah’s reflexes were much quicker.
‘My treat,’ he said firmly, barely glancing down at the total.
‘We’ll go halves,’ Nina said just as firmly. ‘You’ll be bankrupt with the amount of cocktails we’ve just drunk.’
Noah clutched the bill to his chest. ‘Hardly. Look, I asked you out, so I get the bill. That’s how it works. It’s common courtesy.’
Nina had been to this rodeo before. Quite a few times. You let the man get the bill and he expected something by way of return. There had even been a few charmers that Nina had met on HookUpp, who’d demanded that Nina reimburse them for the one measly drink they’d bought her after she’d messaged them to say that it had been lovely to meet up but she didn’t want to take it any further.
‘I always pay my way,’ she said tightly. ‘My look might be 1950s but my outlook certainly isn’t.’
‘This is my way of thanking you for a lovely evening,’ Noah said, as he produced his credit card. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you put in the tip?’
Nina grudgingly agreed and put in a generous cash tip for their server and when she and Noah staggered outside, almost knocked sideways by the sudden cold wind that greeted them, she touched his arm hesitantly.
‘I did, actually. Have a lovely evening,’ she said, because it had hardly been the ordeal she’d expected. In fact, she’d enjoyed herself for a good seventy-five per cent of the non-date. Which reminded her that she still hadn’t mentioned the non-date status of the time they’d spent together. It seemed churlish to bring it up now when Noah had just paid for their meal. She’d send him her tried and tested ‘great to meet up’ message in a couple of days.
‘Me too,’ Noah said with a note of surprise as if he hadn’t been expecting to. ‘So, did you want to maybe arr—?’
‘How are you getting home?’ Nina quickly asked because it sounded a lot like Noah wanted to lock down a second date. ‘I’m going to jump on a bus at Charing Cross Road. Great thing about living in the centre of town – most buses pretty much take you from door to door.’
‘But it’s quite late. You’re not getting an Uber?’ Her plan to distract Noah had worked.
‘My dad’s a cabbie. The guilt I feel when I get an Uber outweighs the convenience,’ Nina said. By now, they’d emerged from the tiny alley where the burger joint was situated onto Dean Street.
‘Oh dear, maybe I should stop taking so many Ubers.’ Noah took Nina’s arm as they crossed the road, but then removed his hand from her elbow as soon as they reached the safety of the pavement. ‘I’ll see you onto the bus, shall I?’
‘You don’t need to do that,’ Nina said a little desperately because Noah was intent on being a perfect gentleman, the perfect first date, and yet Nina was already planning how she’d bin him off.
‘I don’t need to but I want to,’ Noah insisted as they went down the narrow alley next to The Pillars Of Hercules pub on Greek Street. ‘There could be all sorts of ne’er-do-wells lurking between here and the bus stop.’
‘You quite good in hand-to-hand combat, then?’ Nina asked and for about the fifteenth time that night, she instantly and inwardly berated herself. If Noah had been any good in a fight, then his school days would have been very different.
‘I am quite good in hand-to-hand combat these days. I have a black belt in Krav Maga …’
‘You’ve got a black belt inwhat?’