Page 76 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
In fact, it smelt wonderful. The aroma found its way past Nina’s blocked sinuses although her taste buds could only tell her that the soup was hot and savoury. ‘It tastes great,’ she said enthusiastically because she hadn’t realised how hungry she was.
Alison perched on the very edge of an armchair and watched while Nina managed to eat half a bowl of the soup and a couple of toast triangles before she had to admit defeat. ‘I just don’t have much of an appetite,’ Nina said sadly. ‘Thatneverhappens.’
‘Best thing about being ill.’ Alison allowed a tiny smile in Nina’s direction. ‘You get to lose weight without even trying.’
‘Well, it beats having to go to the gym,’ Nina said and before her mother could extol the virtues of her regular Zumba classes, she ploughed on. ‘Your case … you were going to stay the night? Why would you want to do that?’
‘Because you were ill,’ Alison spelt out. Again. ‘That Posy wouldn’t have rung me if it wasn’t serious and she said your flatmate – Very, what kind of name is Very?’
‘It’s short for Verity …’
‘That she’d been on high alert for three nights on the trot and the poor girl was exhausted.’
Nina had a very vague memory of a cool, damp cloth on her hot, sweaty forehead and also of opening bleary eyes after a particularly savage coughing fit to see a shadowy figure standing by her bed with a glass of water and a bottle of Benylin.
‘I’ve been so out of it that it’s been hard to know what was real and what was a dream,’ Nina said with a pang because now that she was feeling better she remembered what had happened with Noah with painful accuracy. What they’d had together was real. Yes, it had only been three dates and a lot of hanging out and one night spent in wild, sexual abandon (that Nina would still remember when she was on her deathbed), but they meant more to her than all the other dates, all the other relationships, that had fizzled out. Even more than the five years she’d spent with Dan.
Noah had got under her skin, had found his way right to her heart and even though he was gone, he’d left his possessions strewn about her ventricle chambers. His smile, the way he said her name, the half-indulgent, half-exasperated look he’d give her when she was being a brat …
‘Nina! Nina! You’re not listening to a word I’m saying!’ Nina was forced to turn her attention back to her mother, who was giving her a look that was all exasperation.
‘Sorry, still finding it quite hard to focus,’ Nina mumbled.
‘I was just saying that this Verity girl is going to spend the night with her boyfriend. Apparently, he’s an architect and Posy is with some techy billionaire. You never told me she got married!’ Alison finished on an aggrieved note, even though there was no reason why Nina should have told Alison that her boss at ‘that bookshop’, that her mother had never expressed any interest in, was getting married.
‘Yeah, bit of a whirlwind romance. Took everyone by surprise, Posy included,’ Nina said and she expected her mother to follow up with some negative observation (‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’ being an obvious contender) but her mother was too busy digesting this news.
‘I hope you’re not getting similar notions about that Noah,’ was what she did say, rather unbelievably. ‘I would not wantthatwoman as an in-law.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Nina demanded and she winced because her headache was back with a pounding vengeance. She doubted it had much to do with the flu and everything to do with her mother who leapt to her feet to put a cool hand on Nina’s sweaty forehead.
‘Back to bed with you,’ Alison decided. ‘I’ll just go and make it up with fresh bedding. You should have said you were feeling poorly again.’
Even when she was being kind, Alison O’Kelly still found a way to sound like everything was Nina’s fault. But ten minutes later when Nina was sliding into bed, the covers cool and crisp, rather than bedraggled and damp with sweat, and Alison stood over her with a glass of water and two more ibuprofen, she was actually relieved that her mother had come round.
She had to be having a relapse, which had addled her brain again. There was no other explanation for it – because Nina couldn’t remember the last time she was glad to see her mother.
It was the sound of the door to the flat slamming shut that woke Nina a couple of hours later. She looked at the time on her phone, which was charging on her nightstand. It was gone seven. The shop would be closed now and Verity must have come upstairs.
This time when Nina got out of bed, the covers weren’t clammy and her legs did a pretty good job of holding her up as she walked towards the living room. ‘Very! I had no idea I’d been so ill. Thanks for being such a Florence Nightingale,’ she called out. ‘Was I very annoying?’
‘Quite annoying, from what I hear,’ said her mother and Nina poked her head around the living-room door to confirm that yes, Alison was still on the premises. ‘That Verity’s gone to spend the night at her boyfriend’s.’
‘And you’re still here,’ Nina pointed out in a neutral voice but it was still enough to make her mother’s lips tighten.
‘Well, I can go … I was just going. I’m not one to outstay my welcome,’ she said with that well-worn martyred air and there was nothing that Nina wanted more than for her mother to go. Then she’d be on her own. Well enough and lucid enough that all her thoughts would be of Noah and how desperately unhappy she was now that she didn’t feel like death.
‘You don’t have to go,’ she found herself saying. ‘We could have a sleepover.’
‘We’re not five, but I can stay, if you want me to. Your father can fend for himself for one night.’
‘Great,’ Nina said and she tried to sound enthusiastic but she wasn’t sure that she succeeded because Alison’s lips tightened again. ‘Is there any more of that soup going?’
Instead of eating dinner on their laps in the front room like any normal person, Alison set the tiny table in the kitchen, where Nina and Verity usually dumped their post, keys and stray books. It was really too tiny for two people to sit around it, at right angles, bumping knees and knocking elbows.
Nina found that, again, she could hardly manage a bowl of soup and a piece of toast. Her mother was making tense conversation about her next-door neighbour, Mrs Cortes, who was well into her nineties and had met a younger man at a tea dance at the local community centre (‘He’s eighty, if he’s a day!’) and had moved him in and now Mrs Cortes’s sons were up in arms at their mother’s toy-boy lover.
To be fair, it was quite a riveting topic. ‘Do you think they’re doing it?’ Nina asked.
