“Send her an Instagram of a cup of coffee,” suggested Surinder. “Even she ought to be able to interpret that.”
Griffin looked pleased. “I will.”
The auction house was an old dank place underneath the arches of an abandoned railway station.
The large man in charge grunted briefly and nodded when Nina showed him her paperwork. Inside were great piles of books from a house contents sale. There were boxes upon boxes. Nina would have liked to settle down and go through them all there and then, but there simply wasn’t enough time; she had to get back to work. But, after Griffin had mentioned it, she’d perused the list fairly thoroughly online before she made her commission bid, and it suited her purposes perfectly; many estate book buyers were looking for rare first editions, but she wanted good copies of contemporary books to sell, and this collection didn’t disappoint: loads of recent fiction and nonfiction from a careful, non-spine-bending reader. She’d definitely gotten lucky.
It was another hot, sticky day; the tar was practically melting on the roads. It was strange to go out without her jacket. She hadn’t done that for so long, it felt like she was missing something.
She got a sense on the back of her neck, something prickling before she saw him. She turned her head as Surinder and Griffin happily bickered in the gloom of the arches. At first he was just a dark figure shambling up the road. Gradually he resolved himself and she jumped up.
“Marek?” she said.
He smiled his slow, lazy, puppy-dog smile and held out his hands.
“I am here.”
“But how did you . . . ?”
“Your friend Surinder, she say you need help today. She find me.” His voice softened. “Whenever Nina needs help, I am here.”
Nina blinked. She remembered kissing him, how soft his full lips were on hers, how much she had yearned to move closer to his large, bearlike body. She found herself blushing.
“It’s so good to see you . . .”
He went to kiss her, but they missed and he gently kissed her ear, which wasn’t ideal, by which time Griffin and Surinder had emerged into the sunlight and Surinder was clapping Marek on the back and Griffin was saying hello to him in a slightly suspicious way that, had Nina been paying attention, would have helped her to realize that regardless of the young ladies he met in bars, he still had a fairly vested interest in who Nina was seeing.
“How’s Jim?” asked Nina, but Marek just shrugged and smiled and they started lugging great chests full of novels out to the van, into which Surinder and Nina had already loaded the last of the books stored at Surinder’s house.
Nina was thrilled to see inside them, noticing old volumes of children’s stories with thin tissue paper protecting the inside plates, and hand-tooled gold leaf on the covers, along with all the pristine hardbacks—it looked, from the state of things, as if the owner, whoever he or she was, had simply bought everything, without regard to whether they would read it or not. Nina wondered what on earth it would be like to have that much money, to buy that many books without worrying.
Every so often she would notice a volume that she wanted to dive into right away, but she managed to control herself until most of the work was done. Driving back to Scotland with all the books in the back was going to be a true long-distance-truck-driver job, but once she had them up there, she’d be good for months.
They drifted afterward to a little park, and found, with some difficulty, a free spot, clearing away other people’s garbage and cigarette butts so they could sit down and eat ice creams from the van at the entrance that was blaring its radio noisily to attract attention. Men were bare-chested everywhere, and space was at such a premium that Nina could smell their aftershave. The sun beat down uncomfortably on her head and she wished there was even the tiniest draft.
Griffin was lying on his front, exchanging messages on his phone with the new girl and laughing hysterically and possibly a bit too loudly, Nina thought. Eventually he jumped up and said, with a mock eye roll, “Sorry, duty calls . . . or rather, Judi calls,” and the others smiled politely. Then Surinder looked at Nina and said, “Have you still got your key?” When Nina nodded, she said, “Right, I’m getting out of third-wheel land . . . see you later. NOT TOO MUCH LATER.”
Nina kissed her on the cheek and watched as she moved gracefully through the crowds in the park and the great mounds of litter that followed any nice day, as the sun started to sink a little in the sky. She felt her heart beat even harder and glanced over at Marek, who had his head down, not looking at her. The back of his neck was pink. Silence fell.
“Um,” she said finally, feeling she absolutely had to say something. “How . . . how have you been?”
Marek turned to her, his dark eyes intense. “Nina,” he said. “Come walk with me.”
Nina stood up. She could tell he was as nervous as she was, but she didn’t find this any more reassuring a thought, not really. They walked through the lengthening shadows of the park and out of the gates toward the canal. Slow barges drifted up and down in the early evening sunshine; people sat outside bars and restaurants talking loudly; others were walking dogs, or yelling into phones and not looking where they were going: all the normal business of the city on a hot summer’s day.
But Nina was concentrating on Marek’s hand, swinging casually by his side, wondering if she should take it. It felt strange, the two of them together, in daylight, like a normal boy and girl on a date. She snuck a peek at him. He glanced at her too, and she smiled back.
“Through here,” he said quietly, and, surprised, she followed him. They stepped off the road and up a side street. Nina suddenly felt a bit nervous, but Marek smiled at her and she felt reassured. Then she gasped as the street opened out into the most beautiful little garden square. Nina had never seen it before. In fact, there was absolutely no way you could ever find it unless you knew it was there. It had railings all around it and a little gate beneath a bower with a small sign: CRAIGHART COMMUNITY GARDEN, painted rather charmingly in the handwriting of several different children, decorated with butterflies and flowers.
Inside were rows and rows of cabbages and carrots. A grandma and a couple of children were hoeing in tidy lines, the chatter of their voices sounding sweet in the evening air, but apart from that, there were very few people around. Bumblebees buzzed in the air, up and around, and there was the scent of late honeysuckle from a portion that someone had planted in the flower beds at the side.