left. It was a male voice. They didn’t get many male voices at Happy Ever After and this wasn’t Tom’s world-weary tones or Posy’s husband, Sebastian’s haughty posh-boy drawl. It was a soft voice; polite, curious and yet it had a steely undertone that instantly made Nina bristle.
She turned to see a man behind her counter. He had red hair, an auburn-y, russet-y, Rita Hayworth shade of red that Nina had tried and failed to replicate on her own hair a few months before. To go with the hair he had pale skin liberally dotted with freckles, and green eyes, which admittedly were quite nice, but that wasn’t important. What was important was that he was standing behind her counter.
‘What am I doing?’ Nina asked incredulously. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Observing,’ the man said, glancing over at the small pile of erotic-romance novels that Nina had been looking at (she was pretty sure that at one point she’d said, ‘Oooh! I love a threesome scene’ out loud) and making a note on his iPad. ‘Just pretend that I’m not here. You’ve done a pretty good job of it so far. I’ve been standing here for the last half hour.’
‘You should have said something,’ Nina protested. She felt … violated. She’d been sitting there stuffing her face with muffin, maybe even chewing with her mouth open, slurping her coffee, making lascivious comments about the books, and the whole time this random man had been standing there. ‘Observing what? Observing me? There are laws about this sort of thing.’
‘Actually, this is a public space and …’
Nina couldn’t stand people who began a sentence with ‘Actually …’ when challenged. It meant that their argument was weak and that they were about to drop some more multi-syllable words at her.
‘It’s private property,’ she snapped. ‘You’re here at the owner’s invitation, and talking of which … POSY!’ Bellowing like a Billingsgate fishwife wasn’t enough. Nina was forced to jump down from her stool, always a tricky manoeuvre in a tight pencil skirt, to push open the office door as the flame-haired usurper made another note on his iPad. ‘POSY! Some strange bloke is trespassing.’
The strange bloke muttered something under his breath, the pale skin beneath his freckles pinking up. ‘I have every right to be here,’ he said stiffly, and Nina was sure that he reminded her of someone but she couldn’t think, for the life of her, who. Maybe that ginger bloke from last year’s Great British Bake Off?
‘Yeah, he does,’ said Posy, sticking her head round the office door. ‘This is Noah. Didn’t I introduce you?’
‘No, you didn’t.’ Nina swept another glance over this Noah. He was wearing a suit – a navy-blue suit, a white shirt and a narrow navy-blue tie. Honestly, who wore a suit and tie in this day and age? Apart from Posy’s husband Sebastian, but at least he accessorised his suits with polka-dot handkerchiefs or brightly coloured socks. Not like this guy, who coordinated his suit with his tie. Why would anyone do that?
‘Well, I’m pretty sure I did. I definitely introduced him to Very and it serves you right for being fifteen minutes late,’ Posy said implacably. ‘Noah’s a business analyst. He’s here to analyse the business. We did cover this in the staff meeting yesterday.’
‘That was yesterday. Have you any idea how much vodka I’ve drunk since then? Anyway, you know the business side of the business isn’t any of my business.’
Nina was genetically designed to tune out certain words like ‘business’ and ‘analyst’. And also ‘index-linked pension’, ‘slippers’ and ‘early night’.
‘Nina!’ Posy said with a sigh. ‘You knew we were looking at ways to grow the business. Working smarter. Digital whatnots. All that jazz.’
Noah, the business analyst, that Nina was still pretty sure she hadn’t been told about, had been silent during this exchange, but now he took a step forward.
‘I’m just here to observe your best business practices,’ he said, though Nina wasn’t sure she had any of them. She just turned up, clocked in, sold some books then trooped upstairs to get ready to go out and blow her wages on boys, booze and um, something else beginning with b.
‘It’s very creepy to just stand there and watch someone when they obviously don’t know you’re there,’ Nina persisted.
‘I did say hello, but you were shouting about coffee so perhaps you didn’t hear me,’ Noah said. ‘Anyway, it’s been established that I’m Noah and you’re Nina. Posy filled me in on the rest.’
‘I did,’ Posy said blandly, which could mean anything. It wasn’t as if Nina had led a blameless life. Far from it. ‘Nina, I’ve really got to go to the accountant’s now. He gets very stroppy if I’m even a minute late.’
Nina was feeling very stroppy herself and maybe Noah got the message because when Posy left in a panicked scramble, he decided to relocate to the office. Verity, though quiet herself, was sure to take a very dim view of being quietly observed, but as Nina perched on a stool and waited for the first customer of the day, she could hear unsettling noises from behind her.
Verity was chattering away. Laughing. Once, even snorting with mirth. It was very unlike Verity, who rarely chattered, or laughed, or snorted with mirth in the presence of strangers. ‘Can you believe that we still input stock into a ledger?’ she giggled.
‘You mean you write it down in a book?’ Noah, the so-called business expert, asked incredulously.
‘Yes, and then when we sell a book, we tick it off in the ledger.’
‘I didn’t notice a barcode scanner on the counter and your till … it belongs in a museum, doesn’t it?’
Nina patted the old-fashioned till affectionately. Bertha was at least forty years old and a little temperamental. Her drawer tended to stick but there was a particular spot you had to thump when she did, and then she was right as rain.
‘Lavinia – who owned Bookends, and left the shop to Posy, who turned it into Happy Ever After – was quite set in her ways,’ Verity was explaining earnestly. ‘Especially after her husband Perry died. She didn’t like things that beeped, and I like that the shop is quite quaint and charming but … but …’
‘But what?’ Noah prompted. ‘You can tell me. I’m just an observer. No judgement, no consequences.’
‘Don’t trust him!’ Nina wanted to yell but at that moment the door opened, the bell tinkled and two women came into the shop, so she was forced to stop earwigging and pin a smile on her face. ‘Welcome to Happy Ever After. Let me know if there’s anything in particular you were looking for.’
The women were middle-aged and in sensible shoes, slacks and pac-a-macs, but Nina knew not to try and second guess any customer’s reading preferences from their outward appearance.
‘Vampire erotica?’ One of the women queried, proving Nina’s theory right.
‘Erotica section is the end room on the right. Paranormal erotica on your left as you go in, then the vampire fiction will be on the top two shelves,’ Nina told her. ‘We’ve had a new book in last week by a woman called Julietta Jacobs about a vampire mafia boss. It’s pure filth.’
‘Oooh, sounds just my thing,’ the woman said, and she and her friend went through
