Nina wasn’t in the least bit cool but didn’t feel up to pointing it out. They all moved outside the pub. Over the side wall, a fight was brewing, and a girl with very blond extensions was hovering around it, excited to be in the middle.
A clutch of teenagers was boasting loudly and cheerily in the corner, not listening to one another, looking aggressive and anxious. People were pushing and shoving to get to the bar. Nina realized she was feeling stressed. Her heart rate was raised and she was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people around her; the smell of exhaust; the noise of honking cars and clinking glasses and noisy squeals and all the general Friday-night sense of a summer city weekend in full swing.
She thought about how the evening would end—girls without shoes, lots of hollering in the street, ambulance sirens wailing—and wondered, rather traitorously, how soon Surinder would want to go home.
In the end, she didn’t have to wait that long. Griffin got drunk and maudlin and looked like he was about to cry, and then suddenly a whole clutch of lovely young people, noisy and expectant and giggly, arrived and it turned out one of them worked with Griffin and yelled his name.
He immediately transformed and became bouncy and cheerful and started using phrases like “reverse reem” and “that’s so basic,” and Surinder and Nina looked at each other and by mutual agreement sidled away.
They walked home together slowly through the muggy evening, the dark settling around them.
“It’s still light up at . . .” Nina realized she had been about to say “home.” “Up north,” she finished quickly.
They passed two cats having a fight on a wall as someone hollered at them from up high to shut the eff up. From the next building came loud banging EDM. Someone was yelling at them to shut up, too. A car with its top down and music blaring out of it came squealing up the road, far too fast. The girls both started. The occupants of the car laughed loudly, then started catcalling a group of women marching in the opposite direction.
Surinder sighed. “So. Desperate to move back?”
Nina shook her head. “I’m going to fill the van once and for all, and then that’s it. I think . . . I think I’m done here. I’ve just bought a whole load of stock at auction.”
Surinder nodded. “I didn’t . . . I don’t know why. I thought it was just going to be some kind of freezing no-man’s-land; I thought I’d kind of come and visit you and laugh at men in skirts and ask what haggis was and sing some Proclaimers songs.”
“The Proclaimers are great!” said Nina.
“Oh my God, you have gone so native,” said Surinder. “It’s ridiculous.”
“They ARE great, though.”
It was clear that Surinder hadn’t finished.
“But it’s not . . . it’s not like that at all,” she said slowly, as a police helicopter lit up the night and filled the air with noise. “It’s . . . it’s special up there. A kind of place of the heart. I mean, it just gets to you. Those long fields, and the sun that never goes down, and the way people look out for each other.”
“Well, we have to,” pointed out Nina. “There isn’t an Accident and Emergency for sixty miles.”
“It just feels like you can breathe up there, like these silly day-to-day problems and worries don’t matter so much anymore. That there’s actually time to think about your life and what you want to do, instead of just racing from work to bar to dates to the gym to stupid stuff.”
“Also, all the hot men,” smiled Nina.
“That, too,” said Surinder, smiling. “If you like freckles. Which I do.”
“Come back with me. There’s plenty of space.”
Surinder shook her head emphatically as they went in the gate of the little row house. Someone had left a bag of poop neatly tied up on top of the low wall. They both looked at it and sighed.
“Speaking of which, have you made a date with your dark-eyed stranger?”
Nina shrugged anxiously. “I’ve left him a note. Hopefully I’ll see him tomorrow night.” She pulled out her phone. “I’m waiting for him to contact me the modern way.”
Surinder grinned. “Ha! Look at you, you can’t deal with stuff that’s not on parchment!”
“It’s not like that,” said Nina, but in actual fact it had been difficult for her to give up their secret message place, the thrill and romance of the tree. “Plus, he hasn’t texted me.”
“Maybe he has, and you’re too medieval to work your phone anymore.”
Nina stuck out her tongue. “Just come back and live with me.”
“I can’t,” said Surinder. “I’m too cowardly. I couldn’t leave my job, couldn’t leave my mortgage and everything. Plus, what would I do? Being an administrative genius isn’t enough, you know!”
“I’m sure you’d find something.”
“But what if I didn’t? And I’d be stuck making no money at a job I hated. I hate my job now, but the money’s good. What do you make?”
Nina winced. “Yeah, it’s not a lot.”
“No,” said Surinder. “You’ll never be able to buy property or take a vacation or get a new car.”
“I’ve got the van!”
“Yeah, whatever. But you love it. You’re good at it. I wouldn’t be able to do that.”
Surinder stared at the tiny scrubby square of garden, the fumes roaring down the road.
“Cup of tea?”
Nina had begged for their help, and once more her faithful friends had sweetly heeded her call. Griffin turned up the next morning looking incredibly hungover and a little ashamed, and, as both girls noticed, wearing the same T-shirt he’d had on the night before. He had, it turned out, ended up with one of the young girls who had been out with the gang and was half embarrassed, half unbelievably proud of himself. Nina was half disapproving, half pleased that he seemed to have perked up a little bit.
“I don’t know how to get in touch with her now, though,” he said, pretending to look shamefaced as Nina ordered coffee and big breakfasts for everyone. “I mean, is it Tinder, is it texting, what is it?”
Nina reflected that she still hadn’t had a message from Marek. Maybe he’d changed his mind. Forgotten all about her. Figured they’d taken it far enough. She tried to stop her itchy fingers from picking up her phone every two seconds.