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.
This particular bunch of moperockers, The Noble Rots, were clients of Claude, so Nina made enthusiastic noises (‘I thought you were very good! So much emotional depth!’) when they came to find Claude after their set.
They were with a little entourage, which consisted of a taciturn, dumpy roadie, an even more taciturn guy (who steered clear of Nina and Marianne like he might get girl cooties) who was their manager and two Japanese girls who didn’t say a word but stared at the four boys in the band in a creepy way that would have Noah suing for copyright. The girls had come all the way from Osaka to see The Noble Rots play second on the bill at The Dublin Castle. Nina couldn’t help but think that it was a terrible waste of airfare.
With pickings that slim, it wasn’t surprising that all four members of The Noble Rots made a beeline for Nina, after it had been quickly established that Marianne was with Claude. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Marianne had advised the singer when he asked what starsign she was. ‘I’ve been with Claude for eleven years and you really don’t want to get on the wrong side of a man who regularly applies needles to your skin.’
After vowing that she was quitting HookUpp, it was extremely pleasing to have four able, real-life men jostling each other out of the way to get closer to Nina as they headed towards Camden High Street to get something to eat.
Nina had been spurned so many times by men like Steven, 31, writer, that she’d forgotten that she was actually considered to be quite attractive, pretty even. Or as Noel, The Noble Rots’ singer, purred in her ear, ‘You look like a nineteen fifties pin-up girl. I’d love you to be my Miss February.’
It was quite a good line but Nina didn’t do lead singers. Far too much ego. She didn’t do drummers either. Everyone knew that drummers suffered from haemorrhoids and it was impossible to put a sexy spin on haemorrhoids.
Which left the bassist and the guitarist, one on each arm. The bassist, Nick, had dirty blond hair and a dirty smile to match and bought Nina a bag of chips. The guitarist, Rob, didn’t buy Nina anything, but stared at her broodingly as she lasciviously licked ketchup off a chip.
Oh, be still her heart! Nina did have a weakness for men who stared at her broodingly. This was why you needed to meet men in a real-world setting rather than an app. So you could lock eyes with a stranger on a street, feel that tingle in your fingers and toes, get that good, lowdown ache in your belly. There wasn’t an app in the world that could make you feel like that.
‘So,