‘But you said you had your festive menu locked down!’ Posy cried, pointing an accusing finger at Mattie.
‘It is locked down, but I still reserve the right to add more delicious items to it as I see fit, which is a good thing,’ Mattie reminded Posy, who settled back on the cushion with a mollified sigh. ‘I’m sure you have plenty of other things you could be fretting about. Like the electronic gate, for example. Sorry about that, but it was the only way to free Strumpet.’
‘Oh my God! I can’t believe that none of us thought to film Strumpet’s ordeal,’ exclaimed Nina from the bottom of the stairs. She stuck her head round the door. ‘We’d have been sure to go viral. Hey, Posy! God, you weren’t joking about being pregnant, were you?’
Posy patted her bump and held a bun aloft. ‘There’s a bun-in-the-oven joke to be made but my pregnancy brain isn’t providing a punchline, and I would get up to hug you but it’s just taken me ten minutes to sit down.’
‘I’ll come and hug you,’ Nina decided and she flung herself very gently at Posy. ‘I can’t believe you’re going to have a little sproglet.’
‘I can hardly believe it myself,’ Posy said in a muffled voice as her face was smooshed against Nina’s breasts. ‘Though I’m very cross with you, Nina – you were meant to be back ten days ago.’
‘Pfffttttt! What are ten days between friends?’ Nina scoffed. She straightened up, pinched a spiced bun and held it to her mouth at a very peculiar angle. ‘So, notice anything different about me?’
Nina was wearing a vintage black fifties sundress, adorned with poppies, which were no match for the brightly coloured tattoos which covered her arms from wrist to shoulder, but if anything, she was looking quite toned down.
‘Like the hair,’ Mattie said, indicating Nina’s bright-red hair, which matched her lipstick. ‘Suits you.’
‘Thank you, though I’m going to change it very soon because I realise now that I clash with Noah, and he absolutely refuses to dye his. Says he has first dibs on being a redhead,’ Nina said, holding her hand to her face, so that Mattie wondered if she was hiding a very ill-advised facial tattoo. Though surely she’d have noticed last night. Although she had been very tired. ‘Guess again.’
‘Well, you’re not wearing your official Happy Ever After T-shirt, though Tom will never wear his and I’m too pregnant to get into mine and Verity said that she wasn’t going to be the only one wearing it, so I guess I can let you off,’ Posy noted. She grinned. ‘Were the firemen very good looking?’
‘From a distance,’ Mattie admitted. ‘Then one of them turned out to be about twelve and another one of them was knocking on for fifty, but the two in the middle weren’t bad.’
‘Oooh! Did you have stirrings? I didn’t think you were the sort to have stirrings,’ Posy said.
‘This is huge if true! Mattie, did you get a fluttering in your nethers?’ Nina asked as Tom appeared stage right from the Classics anteroom.
‘Good God,’ he said in a truly appalled voice and disappeared stage right again. Mattie put a hand to her cheek to confirm that yes, it was hot and yes, she had just blushed.
‘Why have you got your hand on your face?’ Nina demanded. ‘When I’ve had my hand on my face for ages!’
‘Is there some law that only one person in a gathering can have their hand on their face at any one time?’ Mattie asked tartly; this had to be the jet lag talking. Though she was just grateful that nobody was talking about stirrings and flutterings any more.
‘LOOK AT MY HAND!’ Nina shouted loud enough that three customers turned to look at her hand and Tom reappeared.
‘Do you mind?’ he began furiously. ‘I’m trying to help a customer put together a list of feel-good romances for someone who’s been recently bereaved.’
‘FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY, WILL YOU LOOK AT MY SODDING HAND?’ Nina shouted, thrusting her left hand forward so they could all get a good look at it.
‘Your nail polish is chipped,’ Tom said in a disapproving voice. He was very good at standing firm in the face of Nina being absolutely impossible, which was impressive of him, but he was also very unobservant.
‘Is that …?’ Posy stared down at Nina’s hand. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
‘Yes, yes!’ Nina prompted, dancing on the spot as if she were about to wet herself.
‘Engagement ring and wedding ring!’ Mattie said in disbelief. ‘Did you get married?’
‘GUYS, I GOT MARRIED!’ Nina shouted again to a smattering of very half-hearted applause from the customers who hadn’t been frightened away.
‘Massive congratulations,’ said Verity, who’d come through the door in time for the announcement. ‘I think there’s a family in Wigan who didn’t quite catch your news.’
‘Very, I got married,’ Nina said and collapsed onto the nearest sofa so hard that poor Posy sitting next to her bounced. ‘And can I just say, that you lot are rubbish at getting a clue. Anyway, that’s why I was ten days late.’
‘You could have got married any time in the six months that you were away,’ Posy pointed out. Then she struck a pensive expression. ‘Unless … it is Noah that you’re married to?’
Noah was a business analyst and friend of Sebastian’s who’d come in to help them transform from a quirky and inefficient niche bookshop to a fully digitised and relevant to the twenty-first century niche bookshop. Though it turned out he’d spent most of his time falling in love with Nina and vice versa. Mattie looked at Nina. Not at her ring, but at her face. Underneath the heavy retro glamour make-up and the jet lag, Nina’s eyes sparkled and her usual knowing grin had been replaced by a beaming smile as she talked about their Vegas wedding.
‘I decided that I was going to surprise him, not realising that he’d decided to surprise me,’ she recalled. ‘It was very modern, a joint proposal. And we were going to just slope off and get married by an Elvis impersonator but our friends, Marianne and Claude, were coming out for our last few days anyway. Then Noah wanted his two sisters to fly out, if they could, and so we had to delay it for a bit, but it all worked out because then we could order more hula girls for the ceremony.’
‘But you didn’t invite any of us,’ Posy said in a hurt little voice and then a big fat tear rolled down her cheek, rapidly joined by an equally large tear rolling down her other cheek.
‘I thought about it,’ Nina said quickly, taking hold of Posy’s hand and linking their fingers. ‘But it was originally meant to be just Noah and I, and probably only one of you would have been able to leave the shop to come to Vegas. So we decided that we’d keep it a surprise and then have a massive party when we got back. Hey! We’re having a massive party and you’re all invited. But after Christmas. I’m not having the birth of Jesus Christ overshadowing our celebration.’
‘I invited you to my wedding,’ Posy insisted tearfully. ‘Though I do appreciate that my wedding was at St Pancras town hall, which was just a bus ride away, and you should know that everything makes me cry at the moment.’
‘She cried reading the blurb on the back of a book,’ Tom explained dryly. ‘Just the blurb.’
‘So, you’re not mad at me?’ Nina asked with a frown. ‘Don’t be mad at me! I’m back now, full of ideas for the Christmas season. Hey! You haven’t had the Christmas brainstorm without me, have you?’
Verity pulled an agonised face. ‘We’re a little bit behind schedule on our Christmas planning, so we should have the Christmas brainstorm as soon as. In fact, let’s do it tomorrow night. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ she added to a still-tearful Posy.
‘Maybe.’ Posy shrugged,