Page 17 of Big Nick Energy
‘Is that an analogy for something else?’ I ask quizzically, but she cackles in return, shaking her head at me as she readjusts her top hat and belly, making her way into the kids’ section of the library. Today is one of many events in our library in Hampton Grove, trying to ensure our kids get into the season. I wear a knitted elf dress with colourful tights and a matching hat and we’ve called in Lucy to dress up and dazzle us all with her drama and dance skills. She’s an old friend from university who still lives locally and does all of this for kebabs and bottles of wine.
‘How many colouring pages do we need?’ Olga asks. ‘I’m keeping an eye on these. Last time, the kids were feral and they didn’t colour properly. I am rationing the crayons. No scissors.’
Olga, Helen and I run this library in a large Georgian building that sits on a grassy hill outside this leafy suburb of London. I’ve been offered jobs in the more modern libraries around here but they all look like leisure centres. Despite all our attempts at modernisation, the nooks and crannies of the building still remain, and you get to walk into this place with its history, wooden window frames, original fireplaces and high ceilings, and find a book or a story that suits. Helen and I have spent an age decorating it, putting tinsel, garlands and fairy lights on every tabletop, so much so that Olga occasionally wears sunglasses indoors, but it’s what makes this place magical. We wear Christmas hats, we theme the displays and have sweets for the kids. Olga is less enthused. She works here to improve her English so all the books are at her disposal. Libraries are for reading and quiet. Not little unpredictable children who don’t use the colouring pages properly.
‘I can supervise the little ones,’ I say to Olga.
She looks at me, nodding. ‘That is a good trade then. But I also want news about this boy you had seconds with.’ Despite her severe tones which match her severe cropped haircut, there is a warmth to Olga in how she paints her nails different colours and loves a homemade knitted hat. ‘I am happy you have found your way back to this buffet.’
Helen laughs again, tapping away on her computer but leaning over to listen in. She wants in on the gossip. Both of them are married so they always love news of my single shenanigans. I watch as Lucy starts to welcome a few little ones into the children’s section. ‘I bumped into someone I used to date at university. We may have…’
‘Done the ol’ fandango?’ Helen says. I love Helen’s Christmas jumpers, her thick London accent and the way she always has her blonde hair up in a perfect ballerina bun. She’s the sort who always keeps us in tea, biscuits and gossip. It’s because of her that I know that the people who run the bakery in town are also swingers on Sundays.
‘Yes,’ I say, scrunching my face awkwardly. It was also very good sex. I think back to the memory of that day we left the café. I assumed we might go to a hotel, or worse find a quiet alley, but instead a black car showed up and a driver called Francesco drove us to Fulham, to a flat that Nick calls home. Was it fancier than my maisonette? It had a lobby. I walked through it thinking my boots were noisy, amazed at how I could see my reflection in the floor. And then we took a lift up to a flat that overlooked the river. There was a balcony, a kitchen island, bifold doors, all those signs that we were older now, and grown up. Well, Nick was. I don’t have bifold doors. I have a window that opens out onto the back of a Chinese restaurant calledWok This Way.
‘No Christmas tree?’ I remember saying as I walked in. There were no photos up, no soft furnishings, and more importantly – because that’s what I look out for – no books.
‘I’m getting round to it.’
But then he walked over to me and we were inches away from each other. ‘You do look fucking good,’ he whispered, and I felt full of bravado, completely attracted to him so I moved towards him and we kissed. A moment so intoxicating, so filled with desire for him, where he propped me up on that posh kitchen island with its fancy sink and solo fruit bowl and I wrapped my legs around him.
‘We had sex on an island,’ I tell them.
Olga furrows her brow. ‘Like in the middle of the Thames?’
‘No, a kitchen island,’ I say, trying not to laugh.
‘Kinky,’ Helen says, winking. ‘Did you use anything on the island?’
‘Such as?’
‘A… pasta server?’ Helen continues, giggling. A few parents walking past look at her strangely. Christ, Helen. I don’t know what she and her husband get up to and I don’t want to know. We made love on the island and there was something so familiar and right about it, but also a feeling of disbelief that this all came from wanting to buy the same teapot.
‘You scrunch your face like this when we ask about the sex.’ Olga demonstrates said face. ‘Why?’
The children’s section has filled up now and Lucy puts on music, dancing around and asking the children to follow her. ‘Because… Lucy may have a point. I’ve moved on since university. If it didn’t work out then, why would it now?’ I ponder.
‘Why did you break up?’ Helen asks.
‘We were young. Last year of university, we were going in different directions.’
‘So the road is forks, and now it comes back to one,’ Olga says. Naturally, with her strong Eastern European accent wethink she’s talking about someone fucking a road. The best part of my job is working out the conundrum of her English.
‘The road forked, yes.’
She takes out a notebook she keeps in her dungaree pockets and makes a note.
‘Then maybe it’s come back together for a reason. What does he do?’ Helen asks.
‘He’s in finance.’
‘Marry him,’ Olga says immediately.
I put my hands in the air. ‘Really?’
‘Security, pension, nice holidays, you can do big shop in Waitrose,’ Olga says.
‘How rich? Does he have money to fix the roof?’ Helen asks.
