Strumpet! Did she leave you home alone?’ Nina hefted Strumpet into her arms, nearly giving herself a hernia in the process, and padded down the hall to the kitchen wearing Strumpet like he was a fur stole.
There was a note pinned to the fridge. ‘Hey Nina, probably going to stay at Johnny’s tonight. Strumpet has already been fed, despite what he might tell you. Be good. See you tomorrow. Very xxx’
It was only a short time ago that Verity and Posy, with a bit of nagging, could be persuaded to go out with Nina. And now it wasn’t even nine o’clock on a Wednesday evening and Posy was snuggled up with her husband, and Verity was sharing sofa space (she really wasn’t the snuggling sort) with her extremely eligible handsome architect boyfriend. And where did that leave Nina?
While she would rather die than become a smug married, it would be wonderful to have someone to come home to. And God, a passion-filled all-nighter with her Heathcliff-alike would absolutely hit the spot right now. Instead, Nina’s companion for the night was a chubby, demanding cat, like she was a spinstery crazy cat lady, with nothing to do but put on her pyjamas, ferret in the fridge for some leftovers and catch up on the latest episode of Tattoo Fixers.
It was less Wuthering Heights and more the absolute pits.
‘But I begin to fancy you don’t like me.’
Though Nina was very fond of saying ‘I can sleep when I’m dead’ every time any of her friends, especially Verity who was evangelical about eight hours of shut-eye, remonstrated with her about burning the candle at both ends, there was a lot to be said for an early night.
She’d been in bed by an unprecedented half past ten and woke up the next morning before her alarm. It was quite a revelation that getting showered, dressed and made-up could be done in a leisurely fashion, and when Verity finally came home from staying the night at Johnny’s, she did a double-take to see Nina sitting in the kitchen, lingering over toast and jam and her first cup of coffee of the day.
‘Morning, Very!’ Nina picked up the cafetière. ‘Do you want a cup?’
Verity goggled at her. ‘What is going on here?’ she asked in a bewildered fashion. ‘Did you stay out all night?’
‘I beg your pardon!’ Nina gasped, like she was affronted at the notion that the only reason she was up was because she hadn’t gone to bed. ‘The very idea! Not like you, you dirty stop-out!’
It was Verity’s turn to gasp in outrage. ‘I’m not a dirty stop-out. I’m in a loving, committed relationship, thank you very much.’
Half an hour later when Posy arrived for work, Nina took great delight in opening the shop door for her with much ceremony and a chirpy, ‘Posy! You’re five minutes late! No need to worry though, I’ve already signed for a couple of deliveries and done the till float.’
Posy put a hand to her forehead and pretended to swoon. ‘Oh God, I must be hallucinating. Are you really Nina?’
Nina nodded. ‘I’m a new, improved Nina who had an early night.’
‘I always knew this day would come,’ Posy said with a grin, nudging Nina. ‘If you continue to be new and improved, I might have to promote you to deputy manager, then you could open the shop every day and I could have a bit of a lie-in.’
‘I’m pretty sure that come tomorrow, I’ll revert back to Nina version one,’ Nina decided and then Posy pretended to cry and it set a jokey mood for the morning, which was just as well, because the day was grey and drizzly, yet again, and the shop was very quiet. Nina hoped that it was just because of the weather and not because they’d run out of customers. Verity still seemed to have a lot of orders coming in through the website and Posy insisted that it was just a lull and ‘things will pick up nearer to Valentine’s Day.’
But Valentine’s Day was only a week away and Nina couldn’t see that people would want to buy more romantic fiction if they had the real thing. And if they were single, why buy a romantic novel as a special Valentine’s Day treat, when it would only remind you of the fact that no one loved you?
Anyway, Valentine’s Day or not, the shop had become awfully quiet now that Christmas was long gone.
When they’d reopened as Happy Ever After last summer, they’d planned all sorts of exciting things. Author events, blogger evenings, a book-of-the-month club, but as yet none of these exciting things had happened.
No one even bothered to update the shop’s Twitter or Instagram feeds any more. Sam, Posy’s sixteen-year-old brother, and Little Sophie, their Saturday girl, had promised to take responsibility for them, but their good intentions had lasted a maximum of two weeks. Nina wouldn’t have minded taking them over, or the Instagram at least, so she could take pictures of the new releases, but no one seemed to know the login details for each account. When Nina had asked Sam, he’d gone full teenage strop on her, so she suspected that he couldn’t actually remember what the passwords were.
Still, there was something to be said for a slow morning. Nina painted her nails then read a very sexy workplace romance called Billionaire In The Boardroom, Gigolo In The Bedroom in between texting back and forth with her friend Marianne about her new-found resolve to stop taking a chance on losers and really focus on finding her own true love, so despite the lack of customers, the morning sped by.
As the shop was quiet and she had actually started work early that morning, Nina reasoned that no one would mind if she was a little late back from lunch. She had planned to grab a quick bite with lovely Annika, girlfriend of lovely Stefan who ran the Swedish deli on Rochester Street, but Annika and Stefan had had a massive argument, which sounded far from lovely, so Nina had to listen to an entire repeat of said massive argument and then offer advice.
Usually when her women friends were fighting with their significant others, Nina would argue that passion made a relationship stronger as long as the reason for the fight didn’t involve cheating or skidmarks, but Annika wasn’t convinced.
‘He cares more about his smokehouse than he cares about me,’ she said sadly of the little wooden shed in the backyard of the deli where Stefan cured his own salmon.
So, Nina was late back from lunch. Only by fifteen minutes, which was nothing. She’d been back from lunch much later than that before. Much, much later.
Unfortunately the sun had come out since Nina had left the shop and when she returned, Happy Ever After was full of customers, as if the romance novel-reading public only ventured outside for blue skies.
‘Sorry!’ Nina said in a jaunty voice as she approached the counter where Posy was manning the till and a very reluctant Verity had been press-ganged into helping. ‘I got held up.’
‘There’s a reason why it’s called a lunch hour,’ Posy snapped in a very un-Posy-like manner. ‘That’s because it’s only meant to last sixty minutes.’
‘I said I was sorry. Keep your hair on,’ Nina said, nudging Posy out of the way with her hip, so she could serve the next customer. ‘Hello! Shall I take those from you?’
‘I’m
