Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

‘Praise be!’

Noah was forgotten as the two ladies hurried to the counter and Nina produced the small pile of books she’d weeded out for them.

Janet had spent forty years working in Patient Services for the NHS and yet still had an appetite for medical romances that featured chisel-jawed surgeons and sassy nurses, whereas Hilda loved ‘clean’ Christian romance novels, which seemed to feature an awful lot of mail-order brides, not that Nina liked to judge.

As Noah did his usual observing, Nina good-naturedly answered the two ladies’ questions about her tattoos, stuck out her tongue piercing and waggled it while they shrieked in delight, and admitted that she had yet to accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and Saviour. Then she finally rang up their purchases so they could leave and Tom could emerge from his self-imposed exile.

It was an average afternoon that followed, despite Posy and Verity being MIA. Nina worked on her window display, Tom rearranged the new-releases shelves and in between, they took it in turns to serve any customers who ventured in on what had become a blustery, wet day and all the while, Noah took notes. Nina marvelled at how quickly she’d got used to his presence, like a reality TV show contestant forgetting that there were cameras filming their every move. That was probably why she treated Tom to an interpretative dance to ‘My Funny Valentine’ when he said that the big heart in the centre of her window display was wonky.

Posy and Verity didn’t get back from their trade show until Nina was flipping the shop sign from open to closed. They barrelled through the door, nearly knocking Nina down in the process, both of them pursed of lip and red of cheek in a way that had nothing to do with the chilly evening air.

‘Pub!’ Posy growled, flinging her handbag at the sofa, and didn’t even make it a hopeful question like Nina did. ‘Pub. I need so much alcohol.’ She turned to Verity, who’d shrugged out of her coat and had thrown it on the sofa opposite, an act which went against Verity’s whole brand ethos. ‘You’ve driven me to drink!’

‘Well, I need a lot more alcohol than you do,’ Verity snapped back. ‘Honestly, someone should send you to tote-bag rehab.’

‘How many new tote bags did you order, Pose?’ Nina asked with a grin. Ever since they’d first started planning the transformation of Bookends into Happy Ever After, Posy had been obsessed with tote bags. They currently had five exclusive designs on sale and Verity had banned Nina and Tom from saying anything in Posy’s hearing that might work well as a cute literary slogan on a tote bag. ‘I was thinking only the other day that the first line from Shirley Conran’s Lace – you know, “Which one of you bitches is my mother?” – would look amazing on a tote bag.’

Posy failed to take the bait. ‘Never mind tote bags. I can’t even buy a book of stamps because Very refuses to hand over the shop credit card. Even though it’s my shop, so really it’s my credit card.’

‘Yes, and it will be your bankruptcy hearing that we’ll all have to attend,’ Verity snapped. ‘Pub! For the love of God, let’s go to the pub so I can drink my body weight in cheap red wine and repress all the traumas of the day.’

‘It wasn’t that bad,’ Posy grumbled. ‘Traumas! I find that very offensive.’

Usually Posy and Verity were such good friends that Nina felt like the third wheel. Still, it wasn’t nice to see them bickering.

‘Pub,’ Nina echoed. ‘And it’s quiz night so if you two must argue, which I wish you wouldn’t, then you can argue in a productive way. Tom? You coming? Or are your footnotes beckoning?’

Tom had been cashing up while all the tote bag sturm und drang had been going on. He had looked quite chipper when Nina mentioned that it was quiz night but his face fell at the mention of the f-word.

‘I really shouldn’t. My bibliography needs tweaking.’ He looked at Nina imploringly. ‘Tell me to go home and tweak my bibliography.’

‘Don’t be so dull, Tom! And you know we need you in case any boring sci-fi questions come up. I’ll be furious if you try and bail on us,’ Nina said because she and Tom both knew that he wanted nothing more than to ditch his bibliography and get quizzing, but he had to pretend that it was Nina’s bullying that put his bottom on a bar stool and not his own free will. ‘Right, come on, people. I’m not getting any younger and there’s a bottle of Pinot Noir and a bag of pork scratchings with my name on them.’

There was a flurry of activity. Posy and Verity retrieving bags and coats from where they’d been flung in temper, Tom switching off the printer and turning out the lights in the back office, while Nina put the cover over Bertha and patted her goodnight.

‘Pub!’

‘Pub!’

‘Pub!’

It was like the word ‘pub’ had ceased to have any real meaning, it had been uttered so many times.

They all turned to Posy because it was her turn to say it. ‘Pub!’ she said obligingly. Then, ‘You’ll come too won’t you, Noah?’

As Noah stepped out from the archway where he’d been watching their antics, Nina realised she hadn’t even done the lightest bit of flirting with him yet. Somehow it just felt wrong.Still, there was always tomorrow. Obviously he wouldn’t come to the pub, as it was clear that Posy was only asking to be polite and that actually coming to the pub with them would be violating Noah’s ‘observe only and take lots of notes’ principles. God forbid, because if he did come to the pub with them, then Nina would have to engage in mild sexual banter with him or Tom would get in a strop, and sometimes Nina quite fancied a night off from mild sexual banter.

‘I’d love to. Can’t resist a pub quiz,’ Noah said enthusiastically and because she had her back to him, he was unable to observe Nina rolling her eyes and pulling faces at Posy.

‘What?’ Posy asked because she was about as subtle as a male stripper at a hen do.

‘What? What yourself?’ Nina asked innocently, but not innocently enough because there was a hurt expression on Noah’s face as he walked past her to the door. His bottom lip quivered and his brows were pulled together in a way that looked painful so Nina immediately felt like the worst kind of person.

There was nothing else for it. She was going to have to welcome Noah into the pub-quiz fold then flirt with him like she meant it. Or rather, just enough to reel him in but not enough to make Posy or Verity suspicious.

‘I hope you’re bringing your A-game,’ she said to Noah as they slipped out of the door together. ‘We play to win.’

‘Well, I hope I don’t let the side down,’ Noah said with another of his amused side-glances at Nina.

‘Death before dishonour, that’s our team motto,’ Tom said, coming up on Nina’s other side. ‘There’s this bunch of guys who work at the computer-repair place round the corner who are the worst winners …’

‘They do a victory lap of the bar, it’s really sad,’ Nina explained, her lips curling because every week, their team captain, an Australian called Big Trevor, came up to their table so he could shout ‘Losers!’ at them. ‘We can’t let them beat us.’

‘So you have a pretty good success rate, do you?’ Noah asked, as they came out of the Mews onto Rochester Street. ‘It must be working in a bookshop …’

‘What Nina means is that we can’t let them beat us again like they’ve done every week for as long as I can remember,’ Tom said sourly. ‘If every round was about romance novels and cake, we’d be undefeated.’

‘Yeah, much as it pains me to admit it, we’re going down,’ Posy said. Then she brightened. ‘But it’s the taking part that counts, isn’t it?’ She pulled open the heavy door of The Midnight Bell. ‘And it’s the drinking that counts even more.’

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‘You know that I could as soon forget you as my existence!’

The Midnight Bell was a beautifully preserved art deco pub, its wooden panelling intact, the sunburst tiling in the loos often Instagrammed, a plaque on the wall outside boasting of its Grade 2 listed status.

But it was also cosy enough that it was a second home to the Happy Ever After staff. They congregated in their usual corner of the saloon bar, annexing banquettes and stools and arguing over what to drink and how many portions of cheesy chips to order.

Tom and Noah were despatched to the bar to procure a bottle of red wine and whatever the two of them were drinking, Posy texted her younger brother Sam to come down (even though it was a school night and his all-important GCSE year) because he was their only hope in the sports round, and Verity and Nina paid their quiz subs to Clive, landlord of The Midnight Bell, who told them that he expected a good, clean game.

‘Tell that to Big Trevor,’ Nina muttered because Big Trevor had just arrived with his posse of computer-repair colleagues, all of them wearing orange T-shirts with the name of their team, The Battering RAMs, emblazoned across their chests. ‘They look like a gigantic bunch of Wotsits in those T-shirts.’

‘Now, now, young lady, let’s have a friendly quiz,’ Clive said, as he handed over the envelope with the quiz sheets in it. Opening them before Clive gave permission, at exactly seven thirty sharp when the quiz officially began, meant instant disqualification. ‘Now give me your mobile phones.’

When Clive said it was a nice, friendly quiz what he actually meant was that The Midnight Bell Thursday Night Pub Quiz was an event with so many rules and regulations that, by comparison, it made the Brexit negotiations look like a sweet little cake sale.

Tom and Noah returned with the drinks, Sam arrived with a put-upon expression on his face, which disappeared as soon as Posy said he could have a very weak shandy as long as he had a bowlful of cheesy chips to soak up the negligible amounts of alcohol.

Nina sat happily on the banquette, Sam next to her, cheesy chips in front of her, humungous glass of red wine in her hand and, for a moment, she felt that all was right in her world.

‘Is there room for me?’ Noah asked and before Nina could force herself to purr, ‘There’s always room for a little one,’ he squeezed in on her other side so Nina no longer had room to spread out.

She wriggled until Sam shifted down a little bit but she was still aware of Noah’s leg brushing against hers as he reached forward for his pint of lager. ‘Hi Sam,’ he said easily. ‘How’s the Hackintosh project coming along?’

‘You two know each other?’ Nina asked a little stiffly, because there had been a time a few months ago, before Posy got married and she and Sam moved out, when she knew everything that went on in Sam’s life. She had seen him every day when he got home from school, usually accompanied by his friend Pants, who had an out-of-control crush on her. Now, she hadn’t seen Pants in weeks and Sam, like everyone else, it seemed, was moving on, and Nina was stuck in exactly the same place.

‘Well, Noah’s mates with Sebastian,’ Sam said diffidently, though he adored his new brother-in-law. He shook his fringe out of his eyes. ‘So, we hang sometimes.’

‘And what’s a Hackintosh?’ Nina persevered.