If Harry Met Sally Again Page 3

  ‘You know I liked him, Nina. He’s a charming boy, but his coming from divorced parents was bound to have ramifications in the future. Offspring of divorced parents are one hundred and seventy-two per cent more likely to divorce than those from non-broken homes.’

  ‘You’re the one who was desperate for me to marry him,’ I say, wondering where she gets these crazy facts from, but she also triggers a thought about the script I hadn’t had thus far.

  ‘Not necessarily.’ My mother seems oblivious to the fact that she’s spent the last five years asking me when she should start looking for a ‘Cilla hat’.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ I say, wanting to challenge her but knowing it’s not worth the effort; she’d only interpret it as me being defensive. ‘He’s seeing someone else.’

  ‘Who is?’ asks Narissa, arriving with her kids through the patio doors of Mum and Dad’s 1970s semi where we grew up.

  ‘Auntie Nee-naw, Auntie Nee-naw,’ yell Tilly and Henry. I wince. Neenaw is the name Narissa inflicted on me when I was one and she was three, when she thought it was funny to call me after an ambulance siren, and it’s stuck ever since. I hated it when I was a child and I loathe it now, now that her shyster children are doing the same.

  I scoop up three-year-old Henry, who runs his Lightning McQueen toy around my shoulders, up the side of my neck and over my cheeks and nose.

  ‘Will is,’ I reply, Lightning parked on my forehead.

  ‘You broke up? Why?’

  ‘He’s seeing someone else,’ repeats Mum, herding five-year-old Tilly away from the fire with her poker. Narissa hugs me, something she rarely does.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m focusing on other things.’

  ‘Like what?’ asks Narissa, tucking her expensive, shiny bob behind her ears while Tilly rifles in her patent yellow, raincoat pockets for marshmallows.

  ‘Like finishing the script I’ve been working on.’ I put Henry down and attach marshmallows to their sticks.

  Narissa stares into the fire with her big green eyes. I’ve always been envious of her eyes. She got Dad’s eyes, big and bright and green. I got Mum’s: small and dark and a non-descript brown.

  ‘You should get a proper job,’ says Mum.

  ‘Like your sister had,’ I mouth to Narissa before Mum has the chance to say it herself. Narissa and I laugh as Mum catches me taking the mick.

  ‘If only as a buffer,’ she says, waving the poker at me, in mock chastisement. ‘And whilst you’re at it, some colour wouldn’t go amiss. This goth thing you’ve got going on at the moment does nothing for your complexion.’

  ‘Mum, it’s not goth; it’s simple. Nora Ephron only ever wore black; if it was good enough for her, then it’s good enough for me.’

  ‘I’m certain Nora Ephron had a husband and children before she committed to black. No man wants a frump.’

  ‘No, Mum.’ I say, hoping to appease her.

  ‘I only say these things because I worry.’ She goes to the trestle table on the patio, which is piled high with every frozen bonfire-inspired treat from Marks and Spencer’s imaginable. When we were growing up, Narissa and I nicknamed Mum, ‘Queen Defrost’. Nothing has changed.

  ‘And for what it’s worth, I have a proper job.’

  Mum looks blankly at me.

  ‘The bookshop,’ Narissa reminds her.

  ‘Oh, that!’ Mum thinks working in a bookshop is for students and ‘alternatives’. I wouldn’t mind the scorn if she’d had a career herself, but she didn’t. Before she married Dad she trained as a nurse but never actually worked as one.

  ‘Breaking up with Will has motivated me to do something with my life, to follow my dream.’

  Mum inhales sharply as if I’ve just told her I want to prostitute myself for a living in the flat downstairs, when in fact, over the last few days, I’ve already drafted the final act, even if I’m still not 100 per cent certain about the ending.

  ‘Maybe one of Narissa’s friends could help you find something. Just for a little while, until the writing starts to pay.’

  Before Narissa married and had kids she worked in financial PR; nothing I have done has ever quite matched up.

  I look at my big sister, standing by the fire in her brand-new clothes with her kids running circles around her, and wonder what’s so amazing about marrying someone with money, giving up your career and breeding feral children.

  ‘I don’t need help from Narissa or her friends, thanks very much. I’m pursuing my writing and that’s that!’ I hand Narissa the sticks with the kids’ now burnt marshmallows. ‘I’m going inside to watch telly with Dad.’

  ‘Hello, Squirrel,’ says Dad not taking his eyes off the television. I curl up on the squashy, pink armchair next to his one – a relic of Mum’s 1980s shopping extravaganzas. The lounge wouldn’t look out of place as a centre-page spread in a Littlewoods’ catalogue: white display cabinets, enough trinkets to fill a small warehouse, and a sundial clock above the ‘crazy-paving’ stone fireplace.

  ‘What you watching?’

  ‘Dambusters.’

  ‘Nice.’ I gaze at the huge grey box in the corner of the room, an object large enough to house a small theatre company.

  ‘You okay?’ he asks, eyes still forward.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Good girl.’ Despite his reticence, I know he can’t make any sense of Will breaking up with his little girl. ‘This is a good bit.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I say, feigning interest. I dig out my phone. There’s a message from Will:

  I’ll pay two months’ rent to give you time to find someone else. Hope that’s okay. Will

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ I say, only just managing to omit an expletive. Dad, drinking his tea, glances over. I fixate on Will’s use of ‘someone else’. What does he mean by that? A new boyfriend? A new flatmate? A general Will-shaped-replacement who might sit on his place on the sofa, sleep on his side of the bed, and spend half an hour on the loo each morning? Is he out of his mind? Has he forgotten how much our rent is and how much I earn? Has he forgotten he earns three times my salary and is living rent free at his Dad’s?

  It’s a studio flat with a cupboard for a bedroom. What am I supposed to do, advertise your half of the bed on Gumtree?

  I hit send then stare at my phone, watching the little box with the moving ellipsis that indicates Will is typing a reply.

  You could turn the lounge into your room and the bedroom into a lodger’s room

  ‘Now I really know you’re having a laugh,’ I mutter, annoyed that he’s replied so quickly. He’s clearly thought this through, aware I can’t manage the rent on my own but happy to leave me with the predicament regardless.

  So when the lodger is drunk and making a cheese toasty at 3 a.m., I’m supposed to sleep through that?

  I gaze out of the window, through Mum’s frilly lace curtains, at the street outside. The guy across the way is polishing his Ford Mondeo, accompanied by the blaring, triumphant Dambusters theme music. I try not to slip into a suburban depression. My phone bleeps.

  You’ll figure something out.

  I can tell by the brevity of his response that he’s trying to end the conversation. My finger typing gets faster and more forceful.

  You’re contractually obliged to pay.

  I look for the moving dots, they don’t appear. Fed up I go to the kitchen to make tea.

  Waiting for the kettle to boil, I watch Narissa, through the kitchen window, warming her hands by the fire chatting easily to Mum. The kids’ faces are lit up by their sparklers; her life looks so complete. I look down at my solitary mug and swallow a lump in my throat, thinking of how Will was here last year, before the cheating, enduring all of this with me, promising to take me home early, away from the torture of my family. I can’t help but feel a smidge envious of Narissa. It’s not as if marriage and kids were really on my radar with Will – though I thought about it – and it’s not as if I want that now, but now that the chance has been removed, now that I must start at the b
eginning, find someone new – seeing her and her family stings. Just the thought of the infinitesimal likelihood of meeting someone, who I will love and who will love me despite the baggage and the flaws and the morning breath, exhausts me.

  Pushing a spoon against the teabag, dropping it into the composting bin and wiping down the worktop, I resign myself to a life of singledom and take my tea back to the living room.

  ‘Your phone made a sound,’ Dad says, as if this is the first time he’s ever heard a phone beep or buzz in his life. I drape myself over the armchair and read the message.

  I’m only obliged to pay until the end of the year when the contract expires.

  I stare at the message, furious with myself for allowing Will to have dealt with all of the flat admin. There’s nothing I can do. Once the two months are up, I’m on my own – money or no money.

  4

  ‘Freaky Freddy!’ Astrid and I whisper in unison, when the clatter of his van roller door draws our attention outside. Freddy, who has the appearance and charm of a young Uncle Fester, drops off a brown paper package every Monday to Mr Love, who lives above the shop.

  ‘More porn?’ Astrid speculates. I mime a pretend shiver.

  We listen to Mr Love coming down the stairs, systematically undoing the locks that barricade him into his flat – Mr Love is agoraphobic – and exchanging a few indistinguishable words with Freddy. He then bolts himself back in again. A half hour later and the shop computer burrs.

  ‘Skype time,’ sings Astrid.

  We take our places at the counter for our weekly call with Mr Love who only communicates via Skype. Even though he lives directly upstairs, neither Astrid nor I have ever met him in the flesh. The drill is always the same: he tells us exactly what he wants us to do, lets us know when our wages will be transferred, and then asks if we have anything we’d like to ask him.

  ‘Is there a budget for Thanksgiving decorations this year?’ Astrid asks after we’ve been through this week’s business.

  Astrid loves Thanksgiving. She spent a year in New England as a child when her father was teaching there. Last year she was all about the pumpkins – pumpkin pie, pumpkin sweets, pumpkin in as many shapes and sizes as she could find – but Mr Love wouldn’t cough up the cash so we ended up carving a couple for the window at our own expense. This year she’s all about a turkey for the window. She has her heart set on a giant stuffed one she’s found on eBay.

  Mr Love stares straight at the camera, his hair grey and wispy, his face gaunt, and blows a smoke ring. ‘No,’ he says, in his plummy tones.

  With Astrid’s idea vetoed, this is usually the point at which Mr Love tells us to get back to work but today he falters for a moment before saying: ‘We need to make some cutbacks.’

  Astrid and I glance anxiously at each other and then back at the screen.

  ‘Let’s start with ordering less stock, turning off the heating and using less electricity. The coffee machine should go, so too the microwave. No more music. The lights and till are all we need.’

  In all the time we’ve worked at the shop it’s never made a profit, but Mr Love hasn’t ever seemed concerned. Astrid and I assumed the business made him enough in the eighties and nineties for him to retire on, to retain it as a hobby. We thought that while the rise of the Internet hit the business hard, it didn’t really affect Mr Love’s personal income; it seems we were wrong.

  ‘I’ll knit fingerless gloves,’ says Astrid, jokingly, a nuance Mr Love misses.

  ‘Fine,’ he says.

  ‘And I’ll bring eggnog, and pumpkin soup in flasks.’

  ‘We can sing our own songs, something seasonal,’ giggles Astrid, as Mr Love stands up, leaving us with only a view of his skinny groin. He pulls up his ancient pink cords and tightens his belt.

  ‘Very sensible. Back to work.’

  ‘Crap,’ I say, going straight to the coffee machine, after Mr Love’s gone, despite his instructions. ‘Do you think our jobs are on the line?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ says Astrid, returning to the main body of the shop, which houses our fiction. The area has three tables: one for bestselling fiction, one for our personal recommendations, and another for seasonal titles.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do if I lost this job. It’s going to be hard enough paying the rent with it, let alone without it.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that.’

  Just then one of our regulars arrives.

  ‘Mornin’,’ says Doreen. She takes off her backpack, a huge contraption with a little bell, and hoicks at her khaki shorts. She then rummages in her bumbag and produces a small bag of cheese puffs – a staple of Doreen’s diet – before parking herself at the counter where she’s likely to stay for the best part of the day.

  ‘How’s it goin’?’ she asks, in her thick, Scottish accent, pulling on the peak of her baseball cap, which conceals her cropped hair.

  ‘Mr Love is making cuts.’ I make Doreen a coffee too, cleaning down the coffee machine as I do.

  ‘Aye, the shop’s in a saw-ree state,’ she says, without a hint of accountability – Doreen rarely buys a thing but happily chugs back our coffees free of charge. ‘When ‘im and ‘is missus ran the place it was heevin’ but then ‘is paw snuffed it, leaving him no nothin’. When ‘is wife left him, he gave up. Who knows when he last left that flat o’ ‘is.’

  ‘Was his father wealthy?’ I ask, drawing up a stool beside her.

  ‘Aye, some Lord Fancy-Pants. Ah dunno. Aw a know is people said Mrs Love ran awah wi’ another fella but I ‘eard it was a lassie. Bein’ a lesbian in them days wasnae as easy as it is noo.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, stifling a laugh.

  ‘How long ago was this?’ asks Astrid.

  Doreen shrugs. ‘Twentae years?’

  I look up at the ceiling, the scent of Woodbines filtering through it. ‘He’s been up there all that time?’

  ‘Aye,’ sniffs Doreen. ‘The place just went to ruin, till yous lot came along.’

  Astrid took over as manager four years ago, having just returned from teaching English to kids in the Jakarta slums. She was full of enthusiasm and determined to turn the shop’s prospects around. I joined a year later, part-time, when I realised the small amount of money I’d put aside from writing since uni was rapidly dwindling. We’ve done the best we can with the little resources we have, but with Mr Love’s lack of cooperation it’s been a losing battle.

  ‘I won’t see another independent bookshop close, particularly one that pays my mortgage,’ says Astrid, sounding relaxed but I know she’s concerned; she’s spiralling her hair round her index finger the way she does when she’s worried.

  If Astrid had the money she’d offer to buy the shop, her dream is to have her own bookshop. She’d turn the place into something even better than Kathleen Kelly’s in You’ve Got Mail. But given that she and Aidan have just bought a huge, semi-detached ‘doer-upper’ in Streatham with an equally huge mortgage, there’s no way that’s going to happen.

  ‘We need to come up with a plan of action to generate more business,’ she says. ‘Something different every day of the week but which costs us next to nothing.’

  ‘I could host writing workshops one evening a week. People might stay afterwards and buy something,’ I say, as the shop door opens and another of our regulars, known only to us as Bat Shit Crazy, enters.

  ‘Morning,’ I say.

  She mutters an incoherent greeting into one of her dirty lace gloves and scurries to the area off the centre of the shop, which houses some of the non-fiction. In the security mirror I see her fingering the spines of the botanical reference books while chewing her long, matted grey hair.

  ‘Customers won’t linger if it’s cold,’ says Astrid, spreading a large sheet of paper on the counter and writing down my suggestion.

  ‘We could offer free coffee.’

  Doreen lifts her mug in a gesture of ‘cheers to that’.

  ‘The coffee machine is meant to be banned, remember?
Plus in this neighbourhood, it would attract far too many free-loaders.’ Astrid darts her eyes towards Doreen and raises an eyebrow. I try not to spit out my drink.

  ‘How about a free coffee with every three books bought? Mr Love won’t know about the machine being on and when we show him it’s making money he’ll be fine about it.’

  ‘Like them loyalty cards y’ get at Nero’s?’ asks Doreen.

  ‘Exactly,’ I say, surprised she frequents any establishment where the coffee isn’t free.

  ‘I like that,’ says Astrid, adding it to the list. ‘What else?’

  We sit and think for a while, tucking into Astrid’s homemade toffee apple and cinnamon muffins. Doreen chomps on her cheese puffs.

  ‘What about a barter system where people can exchange a box of second-hand books for a new book? Then we can have a second-hand section where everything sells for a pound. People might come in for a cheap book and leave with something else.’

  ‘Nice!’ I say, as the shop door creaks open.

  ‘Only us,’ says Aidan in his light Newcastle accent, having just made the twenty-minute Tube ride to spend twenty minutes with Astrid during his lunch hour. He takes off his woolly hat, kisses Astrid with a smile, and sits down next to her behind the counter.

  It never fails to amaze me that Aidan hasn’t lost any of his passion for Astrid, even though they’ve known each other for eighteen years, and been married for two. They were teenage sweethearts, meeting when he moved south with his parents aged thirteen, falling for each other despite acne, science goggles and smelly trainers.

  ‘Good morning at work?’ I ask.

  ‘Awright,’ he says, blowing his long, Greek nose, which sits in a freckled, square face. His cheeks are flushed from the cold. ‘It’s right busy.’

  Aidan is like Chandler from Friends: sharp as a tack, incredibly kind, and totally in awe of his woman, plus, like Chandler, none of his friends know what he does. We know it has something to do with numbers, computers and the government but the details are extremely hazy. He could well be a spy, for all we know. Not even Astrid seems to know. From the bemused expression Aidan often wears I sometimes wonder if he knows.