Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop. Annie Darling

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      ‘She burned too brightly for this world.’

      Noah and his infernal iPad left the shop before lunch, not to return. Nina hoped that he was done with his creepy, silent observing but when she got back from the accountants, Posy said that Noah would return the next day.

      ‘He seems nice though, doesn’t he?’ she insisted. ‘He’s a friend of Sebastian’s.’

      ‘Really? Sebastian has friends?’ Nina shook her head. Sebastian Thorndyke was many things: a digital entrepreneur, Posy’s childhood nemesis and now recently wed husband, but he was also the Rudest Man in London and completely lacking any filter. The last time Nina had run into him, when she’d been debuting her new pink hair, Sebastian had taken one look at her neatly set, sherbet waves and sniggered.

      ‘Torrid night of passion with a candyfloss machine, was it?’ he’d asked.

      As a result of that and many other insults, Nina couldn’t imagine that Sebastian had many friends, but here was Posy, insisting that he did and that apparently this Noah was one of them. Maybe that was why Nina still had a nagging thought that she knew Noah from somewhere, even though she’d rather poke her eye out than hang out at boring techy things with Posy’s husband. He certainly hadn’t been at Posy and Sebastian’s wedding, which had been a very small affair thrown together at three weeks’ notice. ‘They met at Oxford,’ Posy said, her face going all melty as it did when she was thinking about Sebastian. ‘Been friends ever since. Noah doesn’t put up with any of Sebastian’s nonsense. Don’t you think he’s a little bit sexy, in a nerdy way?’

      ‘Ugh! No! He was wearing a tie!’ Nina exclaimed with a shudder. ‘And a suit. So not my type. I do bad boys. I don’t do nerds.’

      ‘Have you ever thought of going against type?’ Verity asked out of the corner of her mouth because she was cashing up and if she got too distracted, she lost count.

      ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Nina asked. ‘It would be like asking me to have brown eyes instead of blue. Or to stop being five foot six. I can’t change the way I am.’

      ‘Change is good,’ Posy insisted as she picked up the books that had been discarded on the three sofas that dominated the centre of the main room and began to reshelve them. ‘There’s been lots of changes round here in the last few months and they’ve all been pretty positive.’

      There was truth in this. Last summer, the old and ailing Bookends had become Happy Ever After with a new romance remit and colour scheme, and a reopened tearoom. Nina was much happier selling romance novels to mostly ladies than she had been not really selling anything much to the occasional punter who had infrequently visited the shop.

      But in order for Bookends to become Happy Ever After, lovely Lavinia, their boss and mentor, had died and Nina missed her as much now as she did that awful morning a few months ago when she’d first heard the news. It was why their central display table was a little shrine to their much-loved friend. Each time Nina caught sight of Lavinia’s favourite books stacked on it or caught the heady scent of Lavinia’s favourite pink roses in the glass vase she’d bought from Woolworths in the sixties, she felt the same sweet piercing ache.

      Also, Posy had gone from never dating (unless Nina bullied her into it) to marrying Lavinia’s grandson, Sebastian, in the space of what felt like five minutes. Posy said that it had been building for years, but as far as Nina could tell, one minute Posy and Sebastian were shouting at each other as they usually did, the next they were plighting their troth at Camden Town Hall.

      But in some ways that, too, had been a good change. Evidently Sebastian made Posy very happy. The frown that she’d always worn had been replaced by a slightly dazed smile and even better, she, and her younger brother Sam, had vacated the flat above the shop to live with Sebastian in Lavinia’s house in a pretty garden square on the other side of Bloomsbury. Though Nina missed Sam dreadfully – he could always be persuaded to go on a chocolate run or fix her iPhone when the screen froze – Posy had offered her old flat to Nina and Verity rent-free.

      Nina hadn’t waited to be asked twice. Paying rent had taken up a huge chunk of her not-very-big bookseller’s wages. Not to mention that Nina had been stuck out in Southfields in a houseshare with five other people, no lounge, and an infestation of silverfish in the kitchen that would not quit. It had been a hell of a commute, especially when the District Line was malfunctioning, which it did frequently. There had also been an awful lot of sleeping on friends’ sofas after missing the last tube home.

      So, the good changes and the bad changes just about balanced each other out. And some things never changed, like Nina waiting for Posy to finish reshelving and Verity to complete the cashing up, before she asked hopefully, ‘Pub?’

      Going to the pub after work was a time-honoured tradition, except that was another thing that had changed – and not for the better.

      ‘I would …’ Posy began then shook her head. ‘But I really should get home. Sebastian’s been away on a business trip and I haven’t seen him for three whole days. We are still practically on our honeymoon.’

      Nina didn’t think that it was still a honeymoon if you’d married last June and it was now fricking February, but she decided it was wiser not to mention it. Instead she turned pleading eyes to Verity. ‘Pub, Very?’

      ‘I can’t. I need a half-hour decompression lie-down then Johnny and I are going to a lecture about art deco at the Courtauld Institute,’ Verity said, because one of the other changes was that Verity, Verity, a self-professed introvert, was besotted with her newish boyfriend, a posh architect called Johnny, and Nina hardly saw her. She’d much preferred it when Verity had been seeing an oceanographer called Peter Hardy who’d mostly been away oceanographing so Verity could often be persuaded to go to the pub.

      ‘What’s that? What’s that I hear?’ Nina cupped a hand to her ear. ‘Oh yes. It’s the sound of wedding bells breaking up my old gang.’

      ‘I went to the pub with you yesterday,’ Posy pointed out.

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