Page 73 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
Noah’s gaze flickered over her dismissively. ‘It wasn’t even as if last night could make up for this. It wasn’tthatgood,’ he said as he hammered the final nails into the coffin of what they could have been. ‘Get your bags packed, we’re going back to London. I had a whole day planned for us, but not now, not with you.’
Then he got up and walked out of the room as if he couldn’t bear to look at her, which was fine with Nina because she couldn’t bear for him to see her cry.
‘He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, but because he’s more myself than I am.’
The journey home was five long, awkward hours, maybe the most awkward hours of Nina’s life. Noah had said only nine words to her during the entire journey. ‘Do you want to stop at the next services?’ he’d asked somewhere around Leicester and though Nina could have done with a visit to the Ladies, she said only two words to him, ‘No, thanks,’ because she didn’t want to prolong the agony. She’d just have to clench her pelvic floor muscles the rest of the way to London.
Her head pounded with all the thoughts crowding her mind.
Her throat ached with all the words she wanted to say.
Nina went from hot to cold as she thought about the night before, tangled up in each other, and then the bitter morning after.
She felt terrible and from the tense lines of Noah’s face in profile, when she dared to steal a glance at him, he wasn’t feeling much better himself.
However awful the trip home, Nina was aware that this was the last time that she’d spend with Noah and already, even though he was sitting next to her and changing gears very aggressively, she missed him.
And then, though it seemed like no time at all and also as if several decades had passed, Noah pulled into Rochester Street.
‘No need to turn into the mews,’ Nina insisted in a voice so croaky from unshed tears and not speaking that it sounded as if she had a forty-a-day fag habit. ‘You’ll never be able to turn the car around again.’
Noah unclipped his seatbelt. ‘I’ll get your bag,’ he offered tersely.
‘It’s all right. I can manage,’ Nina rasped brightly, reaching round to grab the bag off the back seat and nearly decapitating Noah in the process. ‘Sorry! And thanks for yesterday. I’ll see you around, OK?’
For a second, not even a second, their eyes met and immediately, Nina could feel the hot sting of tears. Noah opened his mouth to say something but she couldn’t take hearing another cruel but well deserved jibe from the lips that had kissed her so sweetly. She quickly slammed the door and scurried for the mews, for the sanctuary that was Happy Ever After though it was hard to scurry when her legs felt as heavy as sand bags.
It was Saturday afternoon and the sun was shining so the shop was heaving with customers. The queue to pay snaked all the way across the main room so Nina had to fight her way through a crowd of book-lovers to get to the door that led to the stairs without being spotted by …
‘Nina! What are you doing here? I didn’t expect to see you until Monday,’ Posy shouted from behind the till. ‘What’s wrong? You look very puffy-faced. Have you been crying? Don’t tell me that you and Noah have broken up already. Oh, Nina! I was hoping this wouldn’t happen.’
Everyone waiting in the queue swivelled round to eyeball Nina with expressions that were sympathetic, curious, kind.
But Nina didn’t want their kindness. If anyone were even a little bit nice to her, she’d start sobbing. So she shrugged. ‘You know me, Posy,’ she croaked. ‘Breaking men’s hearts is my speciality.’
‘Poor Noah,’ Posy said sadly. ‘Sebastian is going to be so cross with you.’
Sebastian Thorndyke would rue the day he was ever born if he decided to give Nina ANY grief at all about what she’d done to poor Noah.
Verity, who was bagging up books and had obviously been drafted in to help in the shop against her will, from the woebegone look on her face, shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Poor Noah,’ she added her voice to the chorus, then gave Nina a swift and assessing once over. ‘I don’t think Noah is the only one suffering. You look awful. Are you sure you’re OK?’
Nina was not OK. Nina didn’t think she was going to be OK ever again. ‘I’m fine,’ she assured Verity. ‘Hate to break it you, Very, but this is what I look like without make-up on.’
Verity narrowed her eyes. ‘I’ve seen you without make-up on and you didn’t look like you’d been to hell and back like you do right now.’
‘Way to make a girl feel special,’ Nina said in the same carefree tone that took every ounce of acting ability that she possessed. ‘Now, I don’t know what you’re doing serving on the till but would you like me to take over, Very? Your left eyelid is twitching.’
Verity’s left eyelid was indeed twitching, which meant she was a couple of customers away from a meltdown. ‘Oh, would you? It’s just that Tom’s at lunch and Little Sophie had to go to Sainsbury’s to get some things for Mattie.’
It was the very last thing Nina wanted to do: having to put her gameface on and be sociable. But then the very,verylast thing she wanted to do was go upstairs to be on her own with her tangled, head-hurting thoughts.
‘Sure, yeah, I wouldn’t have offered otherwise,’ she said, coming forward to relieve Verity of her customer-serving duties.
And for the next three hours, Nina smiled and commented on people’s book selections and generally acted as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
Eventually it was seven o’clock. The door shut behind the last customer. Then it was seven thirty and the cashing up had been done, the floor had been swept, books left higgledy-piggledy on tables and sofas and counters had been reshelved and Tom, Posy and Little Sophie were heading out the door too.
‘I’m staying over at Johnny’s tonight,’ Verity informed Nina as they trooped up the stairs to their flat. ‘I’m so sorry that your weekend with Noah ended so badly. Have you got any other plans for tonight?’
