Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

‘Or “terrible personal hygiene”,’ Posy added and Nina didn’t even mind that they were ragging on her because she’d missed this, missed them. No one was more supportive of her friends’ love lives than Nina but God, it was so boring when they all safely and sedately paired up.

‘I would rather have a venereal disease than ever settle down!’ Nina said, which wasn’t at all true but it had the desired reaction. Verity gasped in shock and Posy pretended to choke on her wine. ‘Although … I have been thinking that it’s maybe time to give HookUpp a rest.’

Very and Posy gawped at her.

‘Close your mouths, for God’s sake. It’s not that surprising that I’m sick of it, is it?’

Very and Posy glanced at each other and then began to howl with laughter.

‘It’s not at all funny.’ Nina was actually quite offended now. ‘Do you know how many evenings I’ve wasted with men from HookUpp, who always turn out to be complete losers? I told Sebastian that he needed a better dickhead filter on that app. I just know that I’m not going to find my soulmate, the other half of my heart, with the help of a dating-app algorithm invented by some spoddy geek on Sebastian’s payroll, who’s probably never even had sex.’

Posy wasn’t laughing any more. ‘I’ll be sure to mention your ringing endorsement to the other half of my heart,’ she said dryly.

Very wiped her eyes. ‘When you say soulmate, do you mean someone who’s covered in tattoos and doesn’t return your phone calls because they’re “too cool”? You know you love a bad boy, Nina, but part of the deal with bad boys is that they don’t like to be tied down either.’

‘Yes,’ argued Nina, ‘but just look at Cathy and Heathcliff. They were full of passion and romance and—’

‘Yeah,’ scoffed Posy, ‘and their love story ended really well.’

‘—yes, but it’s not the eighteen hundreds so I’m not going to die in childbirth mourning my lost love. And anyway, Cathy and Heathcliff were soulmates,’ Nina persisted, ‘and I want one of them for my very own. God, it shouldn’t be this hard to find a man who’s fiendishly good-looking, has a devil-may-care attitude and an adventurous spirit. A guy who wants to stay up all night dancing and drinking and generally being spontaneous but in the morning, he’ll get out of bed first so he can make me a decent cup of coffee.’ Nina fanned her face. ‘And you don’t even want to know what we were doing in that bed.’

Verity fanned her own face. ‘You got that right.’

‘Anyway, that’s what I want in a man and I’m not going to settle for anything less any more. But I certainly won’t be settling down with him, because settling down is for boring people with no romantic vision, and I would rather be alone than be boring.’

Very raised her eyebrows. ‘Are you saying that Posy and I are boring? Because if you are, that would be incredibly rude and hurtful.’

‘And untrue,’ Posy continued. ‘Very and I aren’t boring. We have layers and you, Nina, have no will power. Your HookUpp-ban won’t last more than two weeks, and then you’ll be back to up-swiping on any man with a tattoo.’

‘Well,’ sniffed Nina, ‘that’s very rude too. I’m serious, Posy – no more HookUpp, I’m on a serious hunt for my very own romantic hero and I’m going to delete your husband’s stupid dating app off my phone.’

They glared at each other for a moment, until Verity smacked the table with both hands, jolting them out of their glare-off.

‘Time out! Honestly, this is like a night out with my sisters. Let’s stop arguing and start bitching about Tom instead. Are we really buying this footnotes emergency?’

They weren’t buying it. Tom had been working on his PhD dissertation for years. That wasn’t even Nina exaggerating – it had taken four years for Tom to write what was basically a really long essay on who knows what? Tom wasn’t very forthcoming about his other life around the corner at UCL, where he also did some undergraduate teaching. Some of his students had turned up to help paint the shop just before they’d relaunched and even they knew very little about Tom’s PhD.

It wasn’t just Tom’s academic world that was the source of much debate. Nina interacted with him the most and knew that he lived in Finsbury Park, because she’d practically dragged the information out of him by threatening to pin him down and read out the dirty bits in the filthiest books they stocked in their erotica section. But everything else was a mystery. Girlfriends? Boyfriends? Family? Pets? Who knew, but it was fun to speculate.

‘Tom is deep undercover, deep, waiting for his handlers in Moscow to activate him,’ Verity, who was currently reading a spy romance novel set during the Cold War, decided as there was a commotion at the door of The Midnight Bell.

The three of them looked over to see someone entirely obscured by hundreds upon hundreds of flowers stumble into the saloon bar. Then this unknown person staggered to their little corner, their usual table in fact, and a familiar voice said, ‘Morland, I’m in anguish. Don’t be angry with me. You know I hate it when you’re angry with me. Also, I think there’s every chance that I have late-onset hay fever.’ Sebastian finished up with an extravagant sneeze that dislodged a few freesias.

‘I’m still very cross with you,’ Posy said calmly. ‘And you need to apologise to Nina, who is getting an employment contract first thing tomorrow morning.’

There was a pause. Nina wasn’t going to hold her breath. Sebastian Thorndyke apologise to someone who wasn’t Posy? Hell would freeze over first.

‘Tattoo Girl, accept these as a token of my esteem and abject shame, blah blah blah,’ said Sebastian and he managed to thrust several bunches of roses in the general direction of Nina.

‘Crap attempt at an apology accepted,’ Nina decided, because the roses were beautiful; a deep blood red, their petals velvety soft, their scent heady and deep enough to mask the smell of chlorine from the pool of the Health Club a couple of doors down.

‘Vicar’s daughter, you can have some flowers too.’

Verity was gifted a few bouquets of gerbera daisies, Carol, the landlady of The Midnight Bell, was very happy with a selection of stocks, imported tulips and lilies, and Posy said that they’d take the rest home with them, even though they’d only just finished their first bottle of wine.

As soon as Posy and Sebastian left, Verity was on her feet with an apologetic smile. ‘I’m not seeing Johnny tonight,’ she announced as Nina opened her mouth to accuse Verity of doing just that. ‘I really need to spend some quality time with Strumpet and I have a ton of washing to do.’

‘Just this once, I’ll forgive you for cruelly abandoning me,’ Nina said, standing up too. ‘But only because I’m meeting Marianne and Claude in Camden in half an hour. Don’t wait up.’

‘I won’t but don’t get so drunk that you can’t remember the code to the gate and end up ringing my mobile,’ Verity said as they left the pub together.

‘That happened once!’

‘Once this month, you mean,’ Verity said. ‘“You take delight in vexing me.”’

When Verity felt the need to quote from Pride And Prejudice, it meant that she was actually quite cross.

There was only one thing for it. ‘“It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive,”’ Nina quoted from Wuthering Heights, which made Verity hoot with delight because that girl had never met a literary quote that she didn’t like. Plus, Verity was a vicar’s daughter so Nina got extra points for mentioning God.

God was nowhere to be found in The Dublin Castle on Camden’s Parkway, but Nina’s two best friends were. It was easy to spot them; they both had jet-black hair (the couple that dyed together stayed together, apparently), though Claude favoured a gravity-defying quiff and Marianne preferred a Bettie Page-style pageboy. Tonight Claude was wearing a bright-red teddy boy-style suit and white brothel creepers while Marianne was poured into a leopard-print catsuit and had accessorised it with her bitchiest resting face. In short, they looked terrifying. Imposing. Intimidating. Then they caught sight of Nina coming through the door and they both smiled like loons and jumped up to hug her.

Nina and Marianne had met at a burlesque class years ago, and as well as being her bestie, Marianne was Nina’s main supplier of vintage clothing and Claude was her personal tattooist and piercer. They were also both avid readers (Claude perhaps slightly less interested in Nina’s stock these days than he was pre-Happy Ever After) so it was a very expensive, very enabley dual friendship. No sooner had Nina sat down after getting her round in, than Marianne was handing over a bulging Happy Ever After tote bag. When Nina had last seen the bag, it had been bulging with a carefully curated collection of romance novels for Marianne and now it bulged with …

‘A cherry-print wiggle dress, two pencil skirts for work and a leopard-print cardie with diamante buttons,’ Marianne said, as Nina pulled out each item. ‘They should fit, shall I add them to your tab?’

Marianne had Nina’s measurements on file though Nina really had to stop eating so much cake, otherwise those measurements might be subject to change – or she’d have to start double Spanx-ing. ‘You know me, I never say no to anything leopard print,’ Nina said as Claude pulled out a sharpie and his phone and took hold of Nina’s left arm, which was a work in progress.

Eventually it would be an entire sleeve dedicated to Wuthering Heights.They were currently halfway through; Nina’s forearm had the silhouettes of Cathy and Heathcliff embracing by a gnarled, barren tree and the quote, ‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.’ The tree’s branches, bowed by the wind, would continue up her arm, along with swallows flying in a stormy, bruised sky.

Nina’s mother hated it. She’d also hated the rose-and-thorn design, which Claude was covering up, and she wasn’t too keen on Nina’s other arm, which had the full Alice in Wonderland sleeve that had so enamoured Lavinia. ‘Just you wait and see what I have planned for my legs,’ Nina was fond of saying, which just made her mother crosser.

‘I have the sketch you sent over. Shall I freestyle it for you so we can see how it looks?’ Claude asked, gesturing at Nina’s upper arm, which was adorned with the barest outline of gnarled tree branches.

‘Be my guest,’ Nina said. She drank her vodka tonic one-handed, chatting to Marianne about the vintage fair her friend was attending at the weekend, then filled her in on the latest trials and tribulations of working in Happy Ever After.

‘I wouldn’t stand for having some business-studies geek stalking me,’ Marianne said. ‘How creepy!’

‘Isn’t it, though?’ Nina was relieved to finally be with people who saw her point of view.

‘Who knows where your personal details will end up?’ Claude mused as he drew delicate black swallows swooping on Nina’s upper arm. ‘Probably in a filing cabinet in Vladimir Putin’s office.’

Claude was a bit of a conspiracy theorist – Nina had once made the three-hour mistake of mentioning in his hearing how sad it was that Hillary Clinton hadn’t won the US election – so Nina and Marianne ignored him. It was best that way.

‘I could come into the shop and pester you with queries, which you could help me with in a charming way,’ Marianne suggested. ‘Then he could report back that you’re an excellent employee.’

‘Might be worth a shot,’ Nina thought, then held her glass up. ‘Talking of shots, I think it’s your round, Claude.’

Two more vodka tonics and Nina’s whole world was in lovely soft focus. They trooped into the little backroom of the pub to see a band play whiny moperock, and they sounded like every other whiny moperock band that Nina had had the misfortune of seeing in and around the backrooms of Camden pubs.