Page 39 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
‘It’s an interactive group activity.’ Peter addressed all his remarks to Noah, whose lips were twitching like he was trying really hard not to laugh. ‘You’ll join up with the other guests booked for the same session and I’ll split you into two teams. All this information was on your confirmation email, you know.’
Nina stuck her tongue out at Peter when he strode on ahead down a long, dark tunnel and Noah’s lips twitched again. ‘I live for an interactive group activity,’ he said, though his smile dimmed when he saw the other ‘guests’.
Twenty boys ranging in age from ten to fifteen were gathered to celebrate twelve-year-old Sunil’s birthday. They knew this because Peter gave Sunil a special glowing badge to pin on his tabard, while Sunil stared at the floor as if he was in his own special hell. Nina could empathise.
Then there was a long talk about the rules of laser tag, prefaced with the predictable joke: Rule number one, you don’t talk about laser tag. As far as Nina could tell, because Peter had a very droney voice and so she’d tuned out quite early on, the aim was to laser tag the hell out of the opposing team. Why it took ten minutes to tell them that, she didn’t know.
‘After this is over, I’m going to need a cocktail bigger than my head,’ she whispered to Noah, who was listening intently to the rules and studying a map of Ye Olde Medieval Village in a leaflet he’d picked up in the foyer.
‘I must admit that being in close proximity to so many adolescent boys is giving me unpleasant flashbacks to my schooldays,’ he whispered back and Nina felt the familiar flash of guilt, which was why she’d agreed to go on that first non-date in the first place. ‘Let’s make that a cocktail each.’
‘We could still bail …’ Nina started to say until Peter glared at her.
‘Why are you talking?’ he demanded. ‘If you’re talking then you can’t be listening to the very important things I’m saying about Health and Safety, can you?’
‘Sir! Yes, sir!’ Nina said and when she clicked her heels and saluted some of the boys laughed and Peter looked at her like he wished he were allowed to shoot real guns at people and not just laser tag guns.
He got his revenge two minutes later when he divided them into teams. He picked off the nine youngest and smallest boys and told Noah and Nina to join that team, helmed by a spotty, nervous-looking Ye Olde Laser Tag employee called Jamie, while he took the older and bigger boys off with him to talk tactics. ‘I have never lost a game of laser tag yet,’ they heard him say loudly as he led his troops into the bowels of the building. ‘We’re going to slaughter them and it’s not going to be pretty.’
‘Gin cocktail, bigger than my head,’ Nina chanted her mantra. ‘Gin cocktail, bigger than my head.’
‘So, yeah, I think defence is, like, our best form of attack,’ Jamie said, scratching at a particularly painful-looking spot on his chin, so Nina longed to perform an intervention on him. ‘I’d pick a hiding place, hope they don’t find you and if they do, pray that it’s quick.’ He looked around furtively. ‘Peter is an absolute beast.’
This rousing pep talk was met with groans. ‘So unfair,’ Sunil muttered. ‘I didn’t want to invite all my brother’s friends and my cousins but Mum said I had to and now they’re going to gang up on me like they usually do but with laser guns and on my birthday.’
‘Sucks, man.’
‘Your brother’s a dick, innit.’
‘When we going to Nando’s then?’
‘Gin cocktail, bigger than my head,’ Nina chanted again and Noah smiled sympathetically and Nina thought he might be coming round to her point of view but then he stepped forward.
‘Come on, guys!’ he said jauntily, which earned him ten evil looks. Eleven if you counted Jamie too. ‘Are you going to admit defeat that easily?’
‘Yes.’ And ‘What’s even the point?’ was the general consensus. Nina wondered aloud where Sunil’s parents were and why they were letting their son’s birthday party get derailed along with his dreams.
Apparently they were in a nearby Nando’s where Sunil and his guests would reassemble, and were under the mistaken belief that Sunil’s older brother, Sanjay, would look after him.
‘I don’t need looking after and anyway I hate him,’ Sunil said woefully. ‘This is, like, the worst birthday ever.’
‘No! We can still turn things round,’ Noah said, crouching down so he was on Sunil’s level rather than looming over him. ‘We’ve just got to have a plan and I am the man with the plan.’
Nina edged away as Noah started talking about ‘an element of surprise’, ‘pincer-like formations’ and ‘attacking them on the flanks’. Maybe if she kept edging away, she’d eventually find herself back at the entrance and could flee. Except, she was on a date, or a non-date, whatever, and Noah appeared to be in his element and wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon.
He now had all the kids and Jamie gathered round him in a semi-circle, looking much cheerier than they had done, as they formulated their battle strategy.
‘The only thing is that we need to use someone as bait,’ Noah was saying regretfully. ‘So I’m afraid they’re going to have a pretty short game. Any volunteers?’
Nina practically mowed down her pint-sized laser- gun-toting compadres in her rush to step into Noah’s eyeline and put her hand up. ‘I’ll do it!’ she yelped. ‘Got to be a team player!’
‘Peter is going to be so mad,’ Jamie said gleefully. ‘I can’t wait to see defeat written all over him.’
‘And he’s definitely going to launch his attack from the church?’ Noah queried.
‘Always. If we win, he’ll put me on loo-cleaning duties for the rest of the year but it will be worth it,’ Jamie gloated. Nina hoped, really hoped, that Noah knew what he was doing and that he could rescue Sunil’s birthday from disaster and let Jamie take revenge on his despotic co-worker. But Peter had worked here for years and Noah had only been here for fifteen minutes, even if they were some of the longest fifteen minutes of Nina’s life.
‘Right, troops, let’s march out.’ Noah wasreallygetting into character, but as Nina walked past him (no way was she marching) he winked at her.
