make a profit on website orders alone. Nina had wanted to remind Posy of all the brilliant ideas they’d had to bring in more customers when they were planning the relaunch but Posy had a stress rash all over her neck so Nina decided it was best to leave it for the time being.
‘Honestly, being married is really hard work,’ Posy was now complaining. ‘Don’t get me wrong, like seventy-five per cent of the time, Sebastian is lovely and makes me feel lovely too but the other twenty-five per cent of the time, he’s an absolute pain in the arse. Also, I have hardly any time to read any more.’
Verity sighed long and low. ‘I know what you mean. I never thought that I could bear to have a full-time boyfriend …’
‘What about Peter Hardy, oceanographer?’ Nina interrupted. Peter Hardy who’d been Verity’s boyfriend before posh architect, Johnny.
Verity blushed as she always did when her ex was mentioned. ‘He was hardly full-time, what with him being away so much graphing oceans!’ She shook her head as if she could hardly bear to talk about him. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, I can’t believe that Johnny fits into my life with the ease that he does – you know how much I need my own space – but my reading time has really suffered.’
‘World’s smallest violin, ladies,’ Nina said, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together. ‘I thought we’d come to the pub to reassure me that I wasn’t about to be sacked, and then we’d order another bottle and bitch about Tom and it would be just like the old days before you two “settled down”, so will you stop banging on about your relationships?’
‘You say “settled down” the same way that someone else would say “venereal disease”,’ Verity noted with a small smile.
‘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