MICHELE GORMAN
Match Me If You Can

Copyright

Published by Avon

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016

Copyright © Michele Gorman 2016

Cover illustration © Lisa Horton 2016

Michele Gorman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007585663

Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780007585670

Version: 2015-12-11

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One: Catherine

Chapter Two: Rachel

Chapter Three: Sarah

Chapter Four: Catherine

Chapter Five: Rachel

Chapter Six: Sarah

Chapter Seven: Catherine

Chapter Eight: Rachel

Chapter Nine: Sarah

Chapter Ten: Catherine

Chapter Eleven: Rachel

Chapter Twelve: Sarah

Chapter Thirteen: Catherine

Chapter Fourteen: Rachel

Chapter Fifteen: Sarah

Chapter Sixteen: Catherine

Chapter Seventeen: Rachel

Chapter Eighteen: Sarah

Chapter Nineteen: Catherine

Chapter Twenty: Rachel

Chapter Twenty-One: Sarah

Chapter Twenty-Two: Catherine

Chapter Twenty-Three: Rachel

Chapter Twenty-Four: Sarah

Chapter Twenty-Five: Catherine

Chapter Twenty-Six: Rachel

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Sarah

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Catherine

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Rachel

Chapter Thirty: Sarah

Chapter Thirty-One: Catherine

Chapter Thirty-Two: Rachel

Chapter Thirty-Three: Sarah

Chapter Thirty-Four: Catherine

Chapter Thirty-Five: Rachel

Chapter Thirty-Six: Sarah

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Catherine

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Rachel

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Sarah

Chapter Forty: Catherine

Chapter Forty-One: Rachel

Chapter Forty-Two: Sarah

Chapter Forty-Three: Catherine

Chapter Forty-Four: Rachel

Chapter Forty-Five: Sarah

Chapter Forty-Six: Catherine

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Ready to do a little baking of your own?

About the Author

Also by Michele Gorman

About the Publisher

Chapter One
Catherine

‘What did you say?’ Catherine whispered as Richard calmly sipped the last of his wine. Even as her insides churned, she knew her face gave nothing away. Fifteen years of practice with him gave her the kind of composure that poker players dreamed of.

Only this didn’t feel like a winning hand.

‘I’ve asked Magda to marry me,’ he repeated, this time at least having the decency to look contrite. He glanced around the busy Soho restaurant. ‘Kate, you’re not about to freak out, are you?’

‘Don’t call me Kate. And when have I ever freaked out?’

Catherine wasn’t a freaker-outer, at least not in public. Richard would have known that when he planned his matrimonial ambush. She glared over his shoulder at an empty spot on the wall. Don’t you dare cry, she warned herself. He’ll only get the wrong idea and then everything will be really awkward. Besides, it was none of his business any more how she felt. She took a shaky breath. ‘I’m …’ She stopped when the word came out squeaky. ‘I’m just surprised, that’s all. I didn’t know you were so serious after only a few months.’

A few months! She’d been with him for years before she’d even left her toothbrush at his place. And now he was getting engaged to a woman he hadn’t even known for as long as his Waitrose delivery man.

‘It was a year last weekend, actually. We went to the rooftop bar at SushiSamba to celebrate.’

‘Oh, she’s finally legal then?’

Catherine probably had bras that were older than Magda.

‘You know,’ said Richard, signalling the waiter for the bill. ‘Cattiness isn’t flattering on you.’

Maybe not but it was better than letting her real thoughts fly.

‘Neither is dating someone who has to ask her dad to borrow the car keys.’

‘You know very well that she’s twenty-three. She’s mature for her age.’

‘And firm, I bet.’

A whisper of a smirk played around Richard’s mouth, despite the fact that she was savaging his girlfriend.

Catherine didn’t wish for her twenties back. Just some of their elasticity. Tall and slim, with thick dark hair that dried straight and swingy, her peaches-and-cream complexion and direct hazel eyes all helped her pull off the classically professional look she’d cultivated for so long. She knew she looked good for thirty-six. As long as she didn’t stand beside her ex-husband’s new fiancée.

He sighed. ‘Let’s not fight. I wanted you to be the first to know because you’re my best friend. Magda has her heart set on a spring wedding.’

‘Which spring?’ It was early November already.

His closed-lip smile told her it wouldn’t be a long engagement.

‘That’s only a few months away.’

‘Please be happy for me,’ he said.

His words shifted Catherine’s anger off the boil. She could probably be happy for him in time, but just now she wanted to sulk. It was the contrast that stung. When they’d got engaged, he hadn’t even officially asked her.

‘Just don’t expect me to be your best man, or woman, or whatever.’

He smiled. ‘Magda might find it a bit too twenty-first century to have you handing out the rings on our wedding day.’

His words caved in her tummy again. ‘Well, being from the twenty-first century herself …’

Richard shook his head. ‘We’ll work on your congratulations speech, shall we? I’d like us all to have dinner. Magda is dying to meet you.’

‘I can hardly wait.’

Some people sought refuge in the arms of a lover. Others enjoyed the warm embrace of a spicy Pinot Noir.

Red wine just gave Catherine a headache and relationships were usually a pain in the other end. Her job was her sanctuary.

It was a short walk from the restaurant to her office in Covent Garden and her thoughts cleared a little with each step. By the time she reached her doorway on the busy little street and politely moved aside the drunk teen she found there, she knew that her reaction to Richard’s news wasn’t really about him, or them. It was about her.

She’d just assumed that she’d be first to find love again after their divorce. She was the one looking, not him. So how had someone who never made it out of first gear overtaken her on the road to romance? She’d stalled along the way and her roadside assistance membership was out of date.

The office’s security door latch closed with a satisfying thunk, cutting off all the noise from the road. As her eyes swept over her reception area, taking in the colourful oil paintings and the richly patterned overstuffed sofa, the hungry little worm that was wriggling its way into her psyche paused for breath.

Work always did that.

In her office her desktop phone blinked with a message. Should she answer it?

She definitely shouldn’t. It was after ten p.m. It could wait till morning.

But the light taunted her. What else are you doing tonight? it whispered. Going home to watch another rerun of Don’t Tell the Bride? Come on, you know you want to.

She snatched the receiver and punched in the answerphone code.

‘You have one new message. Message received at eight fifty-two p.m.’

‘Catherine? This is Georgina. Did you mean to set me up with a dairy drinker?’

She made it sound like she’d been out with a mass murderer.

‘I’m sorry but I can’t see him again. The dairy thing is just too weird.’

Well actually, thought Catherine, it would have been weird if he’d shoved a wheel of Brie down his trousers. Pouring milk in his coffee was pretty normal.

But she wouldn’t argue with Georgina, even though her client’s list of technical requirements made a NASA space launch look simple. If she wanted a lactose-intolerant man who played piano and didn’t chew gum, then Catherine would find him.

That was her job, for better or worse.

Matchmakers had it easier before the internet, when clients were just grateful to have a choice beyond their next-door neighbour and the second cousin with the squint.

Now everyone went online, picking out partners like they did an expensive pair of shoes – they had to fit perfectly and be suitable for the occasion, and be the right height, eye-wateringly beautiful with no sign of wear and tear, coveted by friends and colleagues and impressive to mothers.

Clients like Georgina thought finding love was as easy as ordering from ASOS.

Catherine scrolled through some more options in her database. Georgina hadn’t been on their books long but she’d already worked her way through most of their ‘A’ list. When she’d first signed Georgina as a client she’d seen the stunning, successful, secure thirty-one-year-old as a welcome addition. A woman for whom love was just around the corner. That corner was turning out to be in a maze the size of a football pitch. The dairy disaster was just the latest dead end.

But Catherine hadn’t earned her reputation as London’s Best Date Doctor (Evening Standard, 2014) by giving up. She was a peddler of hope, even when it was hanging by a dairy-free thread.

She could talk to Richard about including the client’s world view on ice cream in their Love Match assessment form. But where would that lead? One minute you’re measuring gelato love and the next you’d have to sort the toothpaste squeezers from the rollers.

And really, none of that mattered.

If only clients like Georgina would get that through their heads. A partner splurging for dinner or throwing his socks in the laundry didn’t make up for jealousy or thoughtlessness or emotional distance. Good grooming was no compensation if your date bored the snot out of you and, at the end of the day, relationships didn’t work without that spark anyway.

Despite the fact that she was definitely still mad at him, Catherine found herself thinking of Richard.

Sparks had never been their problem.

He’d made her laugh from the first time they met at uni. By the time classes broke up for the summer holidays he’d been making her laugh for months, as they progressed from shag buddies to something ever-so-slightly more serious. Her spare knickers found their way into his bottom drawer but she didn’t stake any claim to his bathroom cabinet or stock her favourite tea in his kitchen. Theirs was a relationship built by stealth over years.

Magda the Marriage-Seeking Missile clearly had a different timetable.

As she chewed over his news in the calm of her office, Catherine knew she didn’t mind Richard getting remarried per se. Or even that he’d proposed to someone who probably spoke in texty acronyms (she LOL’d at the very idea). After all, getting divorced was Catherine’s fault. Besides, she wasn’t in love with him.

It was just that he made it seem so easy with Magda. Where was all the hard work and second-guessing and foot-dragging she knew to be part and parcel of a relationship with Richard?

If it wasn’t there, that must mean she’d been wrong. Those things weren’t integral to Richard. They were integral to Richard when he’d been with her.

That smarted.

It was after midnight by the time she let herself into the quiet house. Eerie blue telly light bathed the front room, where Sarah lay curled on the sofa. She looked like a different person with her expression uncoiled in sleep.

As Catherine turned off the telly, Sarah snorted herself awake.

‘I might have nodded off,’ she said, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. ‘I was watching a proper good documentary just now.’

‘You mean a cookery programme, don’t you, Sarah Lee?’

Sarah grinned at the nickname that Catherine had given her after tasting her lemon sponge.

‘No,’ said Sarah, shaking her head. ‘I mean a real documentary. There was this Greek man who moved to the US in the 1960s and started a pizza restaurant, but his business was stuffed because he wouldn’t modernise. It was really sad. He almost lost his family and his livelihood, but he turned it around in the end. It was ace.’

She beamed at this happy ending.

‘You’re talking about Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares,’ said Catherine.

Sarah giggled. ‘It was really moving, though Gordon shouldn’t shout and swear so much.’

As usual, thought Catherine, she’s missing the point. ‘It wouldn’t get the same ratings if he was nice. Besides, Mary Berry has the market cornered on loveliness in the kitchen.’

Sarah got a faraway look just thinking about her idol. She swung her long legs off the sofa to let Catherine join her.

‘You’ve been running?’ Catherine said, noting her housemate’s jogging bottoms and baggy wrinkled tee shirt.

‘This morning.’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I don’t stink, do I?’

‘No. But I’m surprised you don’t get a rash from sitting around in sweaty clothes all day.’ It drove her nuts that Sarah refused to make any effort whatsoever with her appearance. Granted, she had the kind of wide-eyed, fine-boned pleasant face that didn’t need much make-up, but she wouldn’t even use moisturiser. That was fine at twenty-eight, but she was asking for wrinkles by the time she was Catherine’s age. And it was a crime to keep such pretty, long dark-blonde hair tied back day and night in a messy, occasionally greasy, ponytail. She needed an intervention, really. Maybe they should just drag her kicking and screaming to a salon appointment.

Catherine noticed that Rachel’s bedroom light was on. ‘Rachel’s back from her date?’ she asked.

‘Not unless she came in quietly while I was asleep.’

They both laughed at the idea of Rachel doing anything quietly.

‘It must be going well,’ Catherine said, kicking off her suede heels so she could massage her aching feet.

‘Maybe we should ring to make sure she’s okay?’

Sarah wore her worry like a heavy winter coat, in all seasons.

‘She probably won’t appreciate the interruption.’

‘But it’s getting late,’ Sarah continued, her green eyes widening even more than usual. ‘Something might be wrong. What if her date’s got her tied up in his car? Or his basement, or maybe he’s taken her to a remote valley in Wales.’

Imaginative didn’t even begin to describe Sarah’s thought process sometimes. ‘Text her if you want to,’ said Catherine.

‘But what if he’s duct-taped her fingers together? He’d only need one piece for each hand, you know.’ Sarah wrapped her own slender fingers with imaginary tape. ‘Then she couldn’t text back.’

‘She couldn’t answer your call either, could she? Or he might have thrown her phone in the Thames along with all the other evidence.’

Catherine immediately felt bad about teasing Sarah when she saw her expression.

‘I’m positive that she’s fine,’ she conceded. ‘If she’s not back in an hour, we’ll call her, okay?’

But they only needed to wait a few minutes before Rachel careened into the living room. Her deep auburn hair stood up in wild cowlicks and curls and her teal wool coat was mis-buttoned. With pale green tights under her burgundy and yellow wasp-waisted dress, it was no wonder she described her style as 1950s Contrasting Colour Wheel.

She looked like she’d just escaped from Sarah’s imagined Welsh valley, but Catherine knew better. Rachel always looked like she’d been out in a gale.

She flung herself on the sofa, aiming for the space between her housemates but missing due to an abundance of bum cheek. She had all the curves that Catherine and Sarah wished they had. On a shelf together they’d be wooden bookends to her Ming vase.

Sarah drew her arms around her friend as she sat half in her lap. ‘It was a good date, then?’

Rachel laughed. ‘My bikini wax appointments are more fun. I ditched him after the first drink.’

‘But you were out for a long time.’

‘I met up with James.’

‘You’ve been seeing a lot of each other lately,’ Catherine said.

‘Eight hours a day for the past five years. We do work together, remember?’

‘And play together, apparently. Still just friends?’ Catherine couldn’t resist asking.

‘Catherine, I wouldn’t go back there for all the Prada in Selfridges.’

‘It never hurts to ask.’

‘It’s after midnight,’ Rachel said. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be off duty?’

‘As if a matchmaker is ever off duty.’

Chapter Two
Rachel

‘You are a really good architect,’ Rachel told herself again. ‘You are ready for this. You’ll nail it.’ She studied her reflection. ‘But you’re a wanker for talking to yourself in the mirror. And your outfit’s all wrong.’

She sucked in her tummy and peered at her lilac dress. If she was a little less curvy she could have borrowed something from Catherine’s form-fitting monochrome closet. Maybe something in confidence-inspiring beige. Their stuffy corporate clients would probably appreciate that more than her bright swingy frock and loudly contrasting tights.

Not that her clothes were totally to blame for the impression she made. Her hair also had a lot to answer for. Deep red and wavy, it rejected any attempt to look composed. She didn’t exactly whisper sophistication so much as shout colour-blind cat lady. And while it was nice to be mistaken for one of the junior architects, today she wished she looked all of her thirty-one years.

She unclasped the chunky red fabric flower necklace and stuffed it into her bag. It clashed with her hair anyway, which was starting to frizz from the damp November day.

Stifling a yawn as she reached her desk, she was tempted to lay her head down, just for a second. Instead she dialled her mum’s office.

By the third ring she knew it would go through to voicemail.

‘Hi Mum. I’m just getting ready for my presentation. It’s this morning, remember? I just really wanted to … Well anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes after.’ She was about to hang up when she thought she heard a click. ‘Hello Mum? Hello? Oh. I thought you picked up. If you get this message before ten thirty, call me, okay? I’ll just be going through the presentation one more time.’

Hanging up, she clicked again through her slides. Midway through, the screen began to blur. Just a little rest was what she needed …

She opened one mascaraed eye when James set a steaming takeaway cup on her desk. The aroma made her nose twitch.

‘I figured you could use this,’ he said, handing her a pastry bag to go with her coffee. ‘You weren’t actually kipping, were you?’

Stretching, she glanced at the wall clock. ‘Just a little one. Chocolate croissant?’ she guessed. ‘Ooh la la.’

‘Oui madame, zis eez zee least I can do,’ he said in a pathetic French accent. ‘Seriously, I’m sorry I kept you out late.’ Remorse was written all over his boyish face.

‘Don’t be,’ she mumbled. ‘I figured if I stayed up I might be tired enough to sleep. Stupid plan.’

She’d watched her bedside clock pass two a.m., then three, with her mind racing over the pitch this morning.

She sipped the hot sweet coffee. ‘God that’s good, thanks,’ she said. ‘You feel okay?’

He slurped the last of his drink. ‘No thanks to you.’

‘You didn’t have to finish the bottle, you know.’

‘Oh but I did, Rach. You wouldn’t help me.’

Like she’d risk a hangover on the most important morning of her career. She had the tolerance of a toddler on antibiotics anyway. ‘I meant you could have left it unfinished.’

He stared at her like she was insane.

‘Sorry. Forgot who I was talking to.’ James put the extra pinch in penny-pincher. His guilt must have been overwhelming to splurge on a coffee and croissant.

‘Better drink up,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here soon. Are you nervous?’ His direct blue-eyed gaze didn’t leave her face.

She sipped, considering his question. Was she nervous? She used to dream about getting this chance. Now part of her wished she was just a trainee architect again. It wouldn’t be so bad doing CAD drawings and photocopying floor plans for the next thirty-five years, right?

Yeah right. Like she’d give up this chance after working her arse off.

‘Why should I be nervous? It’s only our careers on the line,’ she said as the takeaway cup shook slightly in her hand.

He noticed, and put his hand over hers. ‘You absolutely definitely shouldn’t be nervous. You’re going to be great. We both are. We can go through the presentation again if you want?’

They both glanced at her screen. A skyscraper screen saver hid their slides. ‘No need. I know it better than the national anthem.’

‘You’re a star.’ James smiled as he strolled back to his office humming “God Save the Queen”.

The second he rounded the corner she went back to the presentation. They might be friends but she wasn’t about to let a chocolate croissant make her forget that they were also rivals.

* * *

She’d just about got her flipping tummy under control by the time he came back with his suit jacket on. ‘Ready?’ He pulled at his buttoned-up collar and straightened his tie.

She gurned at him. ‘How’re my teeth?’ On account of the big gap between the two front ones, she always checked.

‘Clear. Mine?’

‘There’s something brown in there.’ Rachel pointed as he snapped his lips shut.

Panicked, he took a swig from the mineral water on her desk. ‘Better now?’

‘It looks like … no, must be something stuck in there from all the arse-kissing you’ve been doing.’

‘Really, Rachel?’ he said. ‘You want to joke right now? My arse-kissing got us this meeting, and it’s not over yet. Get ready to pucker up.’

She tried to smile as they walked into the conference room but her lips started quivering when she saw her boss making small talk with their most important clients.

Get a grip, Rachel. As far as they’re concerned you’re perfectly at ease. They don’t know that you’ve aged in dog years or restarted your nail-biting habit over the presentation. They can’t see the uncomfortable crotch hammock that your too-yellow tights are making under your dress.

She took a deep breath, resisting the urge to plunge her hand down the back of her tights to make adjustments.

‘Ah, Rachel, James, hello.’ Their boss stood up when he saw them. ‘Gentlemen, allow me to introduce Rachel Lambert and James McCormack, two of our brightest young architects. I think you’re going to love what they’ve come up with.’

His expression warned them not to prove him wrong.

After work, Sarah yanked open the front door before Rachel could get her key out of the lock. Then she nearly wrestled her to the sofa.

‘Ace, you’re home! Let me take that for you!’ She grabbed Rachel’s giant portfolio case.

‘What are you doing?’ Rachel protested as Sarah wrenched off one of her brogues. In her tiny hands the shoe looked huge and inelegant.

‘You’ve had a hard day, so you need to relax.’

‘And this mugging is supposed to relax me?’

Sarah looked surprised by the shoe in her hand. ‘I want you to put your feet up and I’ll cook for us.’

Rachel grinned at her sweet, impulsive housemate. ‘Thank you. Can I have my shoe back please?’

‘Catherine’s just changing. Dinner’s ready soon.’

Sarah retreated to the kitchen with the shoe still in her hand.

‘Do I have to stay here on the sofa?’ Rachel called. ‘Or am I allowed in the kitchen?’

Slowly she rolled her shoulders, feeling the satisfying tick tick tick of her vertebrae cracking away the tension of the past few weeks.

‘Have you been grounded or something?’ Catherine said as she came downstairs from her bedroom.

‘Sarah stole my shoe.’

Catherine didn’t look surprised. ‘How’d it go today?’

Rachel couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.

‘That good, eh?’

‘Remember the time I got that flight to Prague for twenty-nine pounds? And the hotel lost my reservation and gave me a suite for the price of a double? Today was better. Seriously, I rocked it! The clients loved our pitch. They made all the right noises about letting us present our ideas. I think they’re going to give us a chance.’

She didn’t need to tell Catherine that her design would be competing against James’s. It was all she’d rabbited on about lately.

‘Well done, I knew they’d love it!’ Catherine scooped her up in a hug. ‘You’ve told your mum?’

Rachel’s face felt like it might split in two. ‘She rang me back right after the meeting. She thinks I’m awesome.’

Catherine squeezed her again. ‘She’s always been the president of your fan club.’

‘I know.’ She sat back down, resting her head on the back of the sofa and listening to Sarah mangle pop songs at the top of her voice in the kitchen. As much as she loved going out, these rare nights home were bliss. Their rambling, derelict house was the anchor that held them all steady in London.

Or maybe it just seemed like that. She vaguely remembered the same feeling in Catherine’s old flat. Which meant it wasn’t really the house, but the housemates. They might not spend all their time together like they did in the early days, but she couldn’t imagine her life without them.

It was only because of Catherine’s extra mortgage that they’d met at all. She’d sunk so much money into the new matchmaking business that she’d needed flatmates to help pay back the loan. Rachel and Sarah had been the first two to answer her advert. Rachel was only a junior architect then, who still went home to her parents’ every week for dinner and clean laundry. And Sarah was fresh from uni. That was seven years ago.

And now they had the Clapton house. It had taken blood, sweat and tears to get the money together to buy it at auction. Rachel still cried sometimes, looking at her meagre savings account, but it was an excellent long-term financial decision. Assuming it didn’t actually fall down. As the resident architect, she was the one who had to make sure that didn’t happen.

‘Richard is getting married,’ Catherine said, pulling her from her reverie.

‘No way. Who’d have him?’

‘The Hungarian teenager. He wants me to have dinner with them.’

‘Why? Is he looking for a grown-up’s approval?’

Catherine didn’t smile. Rachel always thought that her serious face was her most beautiful. Although that was like choosing which of Thornton’s Decadently Dark chocolates she preferred. All of them, obviously.

‘What’s this mean for you and him?’

‘As long as nothing changes then it doesn’t mean anything.’

Rachel could see Catherine retreating from her feelings. She rarely went off-kilter. You could detonate a bomb beside her and she’d carry on as normal. Maybe that’s what Richard did with his news.

‘You’re sure about that?’ Rachel asked. Just because Catherine called time on their marriage didn’t mean it was easy to hear this news.

‘Rachel, we just celebrated a happily divorced ten years. Of course I’m sure. As long as he doesn’t let this nonsense interfere with the business.’

‘Right,’ Rachel said. ‘That’s the business you own with your soon-to-be-remarried ex-husband. Whose fiancée you hate. What could possibly go wrong there?’

‘It’ll be okay,’ said Catherine. With that, she got up and went to check on Sarah.

Rachel couldn’t exactly throw stones at Catherine while she had James to deal with at work. She just hoped Catherine wouldn’t end up mixing business with displeasure.

Not everyone got to ignore their exes when their tolerance ran out. Sometimes children, social circles, mortgages or, in Rachel’s case, office space, made it hard to just delete his contact details and make your friends promise to forget all about that dark period. And sometimes people, like Catherine and Richard, actually wanted to stay in each other’s lives. Not only that, they built an entire business model around the idea that other people did too.

It definitely wasn’t for everyone, Rachel thought as she followed Catherine down to the kitchen. But after last night’s date she had to admit that it might be for her.

She just knew that Catherine was going to be smug about that.

‘This looks delicious,’ Catherine said as Sarah dished up their dinner – a huge salad of grilled halloumi, rocket, blood oranges and olives – at their battered, beloved kitchen table. It was big and comfortable and never divulged the secrets they shared over it. Like the rest of the house, it had seen better decades.

‘So, I’ve been thinking about RecycLove.com,’ Rachel said.

‘Oh?’ Catherine gave away nothing.

‘Because your date was bad? I want details!’ cried Sarah as she slid a tray full of shiny white meringues into the oven.

‘Please, not while we’re eating,’ Rachel said.

‘How did you meet this guy?’ asked Catherine.

‘At the pub last Friday. But it was close to last orders so I didn’t talk to him that much.’

‘That’s what you get for going out with someone you don’t even know,’ said Catherine.

Instead of answering, Rachel dug her phone out, opened Twitter and shared his photo round the table.

‘Ah, I see.’ Catherine smiled.

‘Nice one,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s pretty. I’d overlook a lot to snog him.’

‘That’s what I figured too. We’ve been tweeting all week. Just jokey messages, mild flirtation. He suggested a drink near the office. He did seem normal at first. Until he started flirting.’ She grimaced.

‘But you’d been flirting with him on Twitter.’

‘Not like this. At first it was hot.’ Her face started to burn. This wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to confess, even to friends. ‘We started talking about what we’d do to each other … in the bedroom.’

‘Rachel!’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘You don’t even know him.’

‘Well, obviously, Sarah, at that point I was hoping to change that! It’s been a while, you know.’

Both women nodded. The only man who’d been in their house in the last six months had come to fix the boiler.

‘So I said something fairly tame like …’ She lowered her voice. So embarrassing. ‘Like I’d wear a body stocking. He said he’d like that. Then he asked if I’d wee on him while he wore the body stocking.’

‘Wow,’ Catherine said, keeping a straight face, Rachel noted. She probably had a tick box on the website for such fetishes.

‘That’s sick!’ Sarah said. ‘You should have reported him to the police.’

‘For what? Wanting to wee on me? It’s not a crime. The crime was that I didn’t just get up and leave. But it seemed rude not to finish my drink. That’s when it got really weird.’

‘That’s when it got weird?’ Catherine said.

‘Did he start punching himself?’ Sarah asked.

Rachel shook her head.

‘No, no punching …?’

Sarah’s mind worked in mysterious ways.

‘It’s just that wanting to be dominated probably comes from low self-esteem, maybe self-harm,’ Sarah continued.

Then again, Rachel thought, she was a clever woman. She just didn’t feel the need to fill the rest of them in on the steps in her thought process. Sometimes talking to her was like being paintballed from all sides.

‘So,’ Rachel continued. ‘I said that weeing on people wasn’t really my thing. And then he asked if I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my saviour. Because otherwise I was going to hell.’

‘Because you didn’t wee on him?’ Sarah asked. ‘That seems harsh.’

‘That’s when I left.’ She turned to Catherine. ‘If I join RecycLove.com can you promise I won’t have to wee on anyone?’

‘I can’t make any promises,’ Catherine said. ‘But it’s got to be better than meeting randoms in bars. You’re really thinking of joining?’

Rachel nodded. She couldn’t believe it had come to this. A decade ago when she was just out of uni she’d never have joined a dating site. It had been too easy to meet guys then, and anyway, online dating reminded her of those WLTM adverts that everyone laughed over in the back of the papers.

But now, unless she developed a fetish or was born-again, she might need RecycLove. ‘I’m afraid it’s time.’

‘That’s great, Rachel,’ Catherine said. ‘Who’ll join with you?’

‘James, of course. He owes me.’

That was the rule with RecycLove. It was like a normal dating website but she could only join by bringing an ex to upcycle. New joiners gave their ex a romantic evaluation, which could be painful, Rachel thought, even if it was for their eyes only. On the other hand, knowing where she might be going wrong would let her make changes if she wanted. Then she’d get access to all those dating prospects … all those improved dating prospects.

She just had to convince James to join with her. And let himself be criticised for his failure at boyfriendship. How hard could that be?

‘But I’ll only join if Sarah does too,’ she said.

Sarah stared at her housemate as if she’d just asked her to donate a kidney.

Chapter Three
Sarah

Sarah’s heart pounded as her running shoes kicked up little dust whorls along the path. The huge plane trees spread their bare branches overhead, shielding her from a bit of the drizzle. Not that bad weather ever stopped her park runs. She’d cemented the habit into her routine when she ran long-distance for her school. Now it kept her jeans from getting too tight when she ate most of her baking. And it let her think.

She never claimed to be the brightest match in the box when it came to reading people but she knew a set-up when she saw one. And last night was one mother of a set-up.

Rachel and Catherine thought she didn’t know how they talked about her, that they worried she was turning into some kind of housebound, daytime-telly-watching, tracksuit-wearing weirdo. Like she didn’t worry herself. She was about one box set away from hermithood.

But there wasn’t really a lot she could do about that at the moment. Besides, her life wasn’t too bad, in the scheme of things. So she wasn’t dating. At least she didn’t have to go through all that effort – the buffing and straightening and shaving and shopping and standing around in uncomfortable shoes, trying to be the most fascinating thing on the planet – only to have a guy want to wee on her.

A few joggers passed her in the opposite direction but none overtook her. Even a decade after she last ran competitively, she was still fast.

She turned through the park gates and started for home. When she got inside she ran straight upstairs to the shower. She didn’t want to be told off again by Catherine.

Maybe she’d be happier in her kitchen anyway, she thought as she towelled herself dry. At least there she didn’t have to worry about whether she could hold the attention of some guy she’d just met, who might not even be worth her time. Amongst her pots and pans there was no pressure, and things generally ran to plan, unless she dropped a knife on her foot or set something on fire.

The others weren’t up yet when she got to the kitchen. Plunging her hands into the tin of flour first, she lifted the sticky bread dough from the bowl where she’d been letting it rise. She could make bread in her sleep. Just thinking about her mum, in the bright yellow kitchen kneading the bread for her and Robin and Sissy, made her salivate.

She began knocking back the dough on the floury tabletop. As usual she couldn’t resist the urge to squeeze it through her fingers. Paul Hollywood wouldn’t approve but she indulged herself anyway. Few things felt better to Sarah than soft, smooth, living dough between her hands.

Rachel staggered into the kitchen with last night’s eye make-up pooling on her cheeks. ‘Coffee. Please, I’m begging you.’

‘There’s a cup left in the pot … no, two cups … or a cup and a half … well it depends on how big your cup is. You look like you’ve been punched in the face.’

‘Call me Dolly,’ Rachel said, wiping her thumbs beneath her eyes. ‘Parton,’ she said in answer to Sarah’s confused look. ‘She sleeps in her make-up in case she has to face the photographers.’

‘If you say so.’ The only photographers in Upper Clapton were the ones the police sent out when there’d been a stabbing on the Murder Mile. ‘You’re more Edward Scissorhands than Dolly.’

‘Thanks very much. That for us?’ Rachel asked, pointing to the dough between Sarah’s hands.

‘Mmm,’ she said, leaving Rachel in the dark as to the answer. ‘I’m going to Sissy’s later.’

Sissy loved her sourdough bread. Sarah always felt bad that she couldn’t just leave it with her, instead of asking the staff to dole it out slice by slice to her toast-addicted sister.

‘Which reminds me,’ Rachel said. ‘Here.’ She pulled some papers from the kitchen drawer.

‘My hands are covered. What is it?’

She was just playing dumb. It said right at the top what it was.

‘Your application for The Great British Bake Off,’ Rachel said, popping her coffee cup in the microwave. ‘It’s about time you applied, Sarah Lee.’

‘No way! I’d fall apart at the first signature bake. I’m happy just baking here, for you lot.’

‘Bullshit, Sarah. You’re not happy. Anyone can see that. This would be so good for you. You need to get your confidence back and this could do it—’

Ding! Her coffee was ready.

Time’s up, thought Sarah. That was the end of the morning’s round of Let’s Fix Sarah. Tune in tomorrow. It would probably be a repeat.

‘Will you at least think about it?’ Rachel asked.

‘Yeah.’

Which they both knew meant no.

‘It would be so good for you.’

‘But Rachel, I’m twenty-eight. Being an adult means that I don’t have to do what’s good for me.’

‘Is that why you won’t sign up to RecycLove with me either? You’d rather sit alone in the house and be miserable than do this one little thing to make yourself happy?’

Sarah slammed the tea towel drawer shut. Why did everyone automatically assume that if someone spent time alone she was miserable?

‘But I’m not alone. I have you and Catherine.’

She covered the dough with a towel and shoved it back in the boiler cupboard to prove again.

‘You know what I mean,’ Rachel continued. ‘We’re no substitute for a normal, honest, red-blooded bloke.’

Sarah got the eggs out. There wasn’t enough butter for a Madeira cake, but she could use veggie oil for cupcakes instead. ‘Let me know if you find one of those,’ she said.

‘C’mon, it’ll be fun.’

Sarah glanced up. ‘That’s your idea of fun? Tracking down my ex so that he can tell me everything that’s wrong with me?’

‘You’ll get to do it to him too, though.’

‘Oh, well, then it sounds ace.’

She was amazed that Catherine’s business model actually worked. Even if there were enough people out there who didn’t want to stab their exes with a salad fork, how many of those were willing to critique their ex-lover’s techniques and relationship suitability and then (shudder) listen to the same thing about themselves?

She could live without that kind of honesty, thank you very much.

‘Well I’m doing it,’ Rachel said. ‘Aren’t you even curious to hear straight from the jackass’s mouth what he thought of you? You must have wondered what goes through a guy’s head.’

About a million times, along with every other woman in the world, Sarah thought.

Rachel continued. ‘This might be the one chance we have to find out without caring, if you see what I mean. Nobody wants to hear the truth while they’ve still got feelings, but now, years later? Bring it on. And then we’ll get access to all those men … all those improved men.’

‘I don’t even know how to get in touch with any of my exes,’ Sarah said, cracking eggs into the glass bowl. ‘I don’t keep their numbers after the event.’

‘Except for Sebastian.’

‘No way, I deleted him when we broke up.’ She laughed. ‘Not that he’d be hard to find. He’ll be in whichever club has the most Russian models.’

‘You could just ask your brother for his number. They are friends.’

‘He won’t do it,’ Sarah said, talking about Sebastian, not her brother.

‘Why not? You ended on good terms with him. You just weren’t right for each other.’

‘That wasn’t the problem. He thought all women were right for him.’

‘He didn’t actually cheat though, did he?’

‘No, I don’t think so. He was just shite at remembering to pay attention to me when pretty women walked by.’

‘See?’ said Rachel. ‘You’ve already got something for his feedback form. He’ll appreciate the advice. Think about it? Please?’

‘Will you leave me alone if I do?’

‘Of course not. I’ll ask you again tomorrow. If James and I join, will you sign up?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Sarah lied, shoving the Bake Off form back in the kitchen drawer.

* * *

Sarah tried not to smoosh the cupcakes as she sprinted from the train station to Sissy’s place. As she rounded the corner she saw her sister standing outside the facility’s front door, looking pointedly at her watch.

‘I’ve got cupcakes,’ Sarah called. ‘And I’m not late.’

‘Close call.’

Sissy was a stickler for time.

When Sarah opened her arms, Sissy threw herself into them with the full force of a small rhinoceros. As they hugged she breathed in the familiar scent of her strawberry VO5 shampoo.

‘You brought the bread?’ She caught Sarah in her signature laser-beam stare. She had the same colour green eyes as their mum, though they were almond-shaped, whereas Sarah’s were more mossy, round and deep-set.

‘Of course, I promised didn’t I? Shall we have a slice of toast?’

Sissy nodded. ‘With jam.’

While Sarah got to work slicing the bread in the communal kitchen, Sissy selected two plates from the cabinet. Carefully she opened the jam jar and unwrapped the butter. When the toast popped up, golden and steaming, she began her process. Nobody did toast as thoroughly as Sissy.

‘Want to eat it in the garden?’ Sarah asked as she spotted Kelly. Like Sarah, she was in her late twenties, but with a coiled-up energy like those women who taught Zumba classes. She strode rather than walked, with her shiny black hair swinging in a ponytail. She was always easy to pick out, even in the shapeless lilac and black uniform that all the nurses wore. ‘I’ll just give the rest of the loaf to Kelly, okay? Can you carry mine out too, please?’

‘Kelly the bread jailor,’ Sissy muttered as Sarah gave her both plates.

‘Hi Sarah, all right?’ Kelly asked with the same easy manner that all the support workers had.

‘All right, thanks. Here’s Sissy’s bread. We’re tucking into some now.’

But Sarah wasn’t looking at Kelly as she handed over the loaf. She was watching Sissy as she shuffled at her snail’s pace toward the garden door at the end of the corridor.

‘As if you’d get out of here without toast,’ Kelly said.

‘Tell me about it.’

Sissy reached the door but, with her hands full, she couldn’t open it. ‘Oh, sorry,’ Sarah said. ‘I should help Sissy.’

Kelly gently touched her arm. ‘Let’s give her a minute.’

They watched as Sissy stood at the door with the plates in her hands. She looked left and right, for help, Sarah knew.

Her heart began to speed. ‘I’ll just—’

‘Leave it just a minute, Sarah.’

Sissy walked into the nearest room and came out a few seconds later with a metal chair in her hands instead of the plates. Carefully she propped the door open with the chair. Then, still not hurrying, she went back into the room for the plates and carried them through to the garden.

Sarah let out the breath she didn’t realise she was holding.

‘We’re trying to let her do as much as possible for herself,’ Kelly said. ‘She’s a clever girl. She figures things out. Why don’t you go enjoy your toast?’

As usual, Sarah was in awe of Kelly. She and the others made the care home seem so normal. No drama, no fuss and no institutional feel. Despite the emergency call buttons and trained medical staff wandering around, it felt like a family there. Sissy loved it.

Sissy’s diagnosis hadn’t been a surprise to their mum. When she’d found herself pregnant at forty-two, she’d taken the chromosome disorder test at the insistence of her shell-shocked new boyfriend. Just as a precaution, he’d said.

‘It’s only precautionary if I’d do something about it,’ she’d told him, her Scouse accent becoming more pronounced with her anger. ‘And I won’t.’ She’d taken the test just to shut him up.

He didn’t believe she’d have a Down’s syndrome child.

She didn’t believe he’d leave her if she did.

They were both wrong.

He probably wasn’t a bad person, Sarah conceded when she was feeling generous. He just hadn’t planned to father Sissy so soon after meeting their mum.

Their poor mum. Her track record wasn’t great when it came to men sticking around once her epidural wore off. Sarah’s dad had been the first to run the hundred-yard dash, when Sarah was born and her brother, Robin, was a toddler. She didn’t have any interest in knowing her father. Sissy and Robin and their mum had always been enough.

Sissy found a spot under the tree for them to sit. The late autumn sun was weak and their toast turned stone-cold, but Sissy loved the garden.

‘I have a boyfriend, you know,’ she said.

‘Is that right?’ Sarah struggled to keep her voice steady. ‘Anyone I know?’

Most of the residents in the home were older than Sissy … much older.

‘Nope.’

‘Is he handsome?’

‘Yeah, and a bit fat,’ she said, nibbling her toast in perfectly even bites along each edge until she got to the last buttery golden mouthful in the middle.

‘Oh, well, that’s all right, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘How old is your boyfriend?’ Sarah asked, holding her breath.

Instead of answering, Sissy brushed the fine blonde hair from her face so it didn’t interrupt her snack.

She wasn’t sly by nature, but if she got the tiniest inkling that Sarah might get upset she’d avoid her questions.

‘Same as me,’ she finally said.

At least he wasn’t some old perv, Sarah thought. Though he could still be a young one.

‘Do you and your boyfriend do fun things together?’

‘We paint and watch telly and hold hands.’

Sarah needed to talk to Kelly about this. A shared interest in EastEnders was one thing, as long as they weren’t shagging during the advert breaks.

It was probably the single biggest worry they had about Sissy. Her trusting nature was to be expected when she was little. Now that she was sixteen it could be dangerous.

As if sexual politics weren’t hard enough without Down’s syndrome.

‘Why don’t you have a boyfriend?’ Sissy asked, staring at her.

‘Do I need one?’

Evasion. It ran in the family.

‘It’s nice having one,’ she said. ‘You could bake him cupcakes.’

‘But I bake you cupcakes. Would you be happy sharing them with my boyfriend?’

Sissy thought about this for a minute. ‘You’d have to bake extra for him.’

Before Sarah left she sought out Kelly again to talk about her sister’s budding romance.

‘I know it’s hard, Sarah, but she’s growing up.’ The way Kelly said this made Sarah want to crawl into her lap for a cuddle. She had that kind of friendly authority. ‘Nature is making changes and it’s normal for her to want to explore these. She’s done really well so far when it’s come to her maturing body, right?’

Sarah nodded. She’d been the one who freaked out about Sissy’s first period. Her sister was fine with it.

‘We’re talking to her about sex and the feelings she’s starting to have,’ Kelly continued.

‘I understand that, but she’s got a mental age of nine. How can she understand what those changes mean, or how she’s supposed to handle them?’

Kelly squeezed her hand.

Just five minutes in her lap and Sarah was sure she’d feel better.

‘We help her understand things the same way we would a nine-year-old,’ she answered. ‘With a lot of clear explanation in an environment where she’s encouraged to ask questions and get honest answers. The boy she’s been spending time with is sixteen too. We keep a close eye on them and, as you know, we talk regularly to everyone here about expressing their feelings in an appropriate way.’

‘But you can’t stop hormones,’ Sarah pointed out, remembering her own teenage years. She may not have had sex till well into university but that hadn’t stopped her thinking about it a lot.

Kelly smiled. ‘I promise we’re keeping a close eye on them. And it’s good for her to have companionship. Everybody has intimacy needs. It can be unhealthy if they’re not expressed. See you on Thursday?’

‘Yep, Thursday.’

If her sixteen-year-old sister had a boyfriend, maybe she did need to think a bit more about RecycLove.

Chapter Four
Catherine

Catherine did a double take when she saw her next client. Was the universe just messing with her? After everything these past few weeks, it had to be having a laugh.

Struggling to keep her composure, she said, ‘Mr Larson? I’m Catherine. Please come through.’

But the universe didn’t answer. And when her client did, it was in a broad Australian accent.

‘Aw Catherine, don’t be so formal. You can call me Paul. Pleasure to meet ya.’

With just a glance she took in every detail, from his long legs to his shortish, nearly ginger hair and very ginger stubble, from his blue eyes to the quick smile he flashed as he sat in the wingback chair opposite her desk.

The man was the spitting image of Richard. Same aquiline nose, same strong jaw, same full lips and the kind of skin that burst into freckles at the sun’s first rays.

But he wasn’t Richard. He was definitely Paul. Australian Paul who just happened to look like her ex-husband and wanted her help finding the love of his life. She forced herself to stop staring and do her job.

‘So, Paul, I wanted us to meet so that I can get a good idea about you, your likes and dislikes and what you’re looking for in a partner. And I’d like you to feel free to ask me anything at all.’

He glanced around her office. ‘How’d you end up in this line of work?’

‘Oh, well.’ She hadn’t meant for him to ask personal questions. ‘It wasn’t a conscious plan at first. I worked for another introduction service when I first returned from the US. I simply answered her advert.’

‘Why were you in the US?’

Catherine felt her control of the interview slipping away. ‘I went with my husband when he took a job there. Now, if it’s all right, I’d like to talk a bit about you. Maybe you could start by telling me about your dating history?’

‘Straight in there, eh?’ he said.

Yeah, how’s that feel? Catherine thought. She waited for him to answer.

‘All of it?’

‘You can give me the highlights if you’d prefer.’

He scratched his stubble. ‘I wouldn’t call them highlights. I’ve gone out with a few women for a while. Mostly I just date.’

‘How long is a while?’

‘About twice as long as I should have, according to them.’

Her fingers flew over her keyboard, recording every word he said.

Issues? she typed after his last comment. Her eyes never left his. It was a skill she’d learned from her mentor when she first started in the business. Don’t break eye contact with the client. The longer you held their gaze the deeper they’d dig to offer up an honest appraisal of themselves, unearthing their habits and quirks in the process. Those golden nuggets of information were what made her so successful in finding love for them.

‘Have you ever been in love?’ she asked.

Jokey Paul disappeared. Aha, she thought, there’s the nugget. ‘Tell me about her.’

‘We went out in Oz,’ he said. ‘We were just kids, at school together. Anabelle. Her name was Anabelle.’

‘And it ended because …?’

He shrugged. ‘Nothing dramatic. She moved away, that’s all, to Cairns where her mum got a good job. She was a biotech chemist. Her mum, I mean.’

‘You didn’t keep in touch?’

‘For a while, but it was pointless. I couldn’t go there and she wasn’t coming back. So that was it. Does that mean I peaked romantically at sixteen?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, matching his smile. ‘There are a lot of women in London.’ Though competing with young Anabelle, perfectly preserved in Paul’s memory, wouldn’t be easy. Catherine ran across that problem quite a lot, actually. The One That Got Away Syndrome. She’d bet anything that Paul dated women younger than him, and got bored when the novelty wore off.

But aside from Anabelle he didn’t seem to have any serious hang-ups. She felt like she could work with him.

‘So you’re in banking,’ she said, consulting her initial telephone notes, ‘as head of Investment Operations. Is that interesting?’

‘S’pose it’s all right.’ He sounded like a grumpy teen.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘There’s not much to tell, really. It’s just a job.’

He wasn’t rude about it, or bitter. Just … meh. As they talked more about his likes and interests, she had a hard time finding anything to raise him above the thousands of other good-looking, solvent men in London. He’d have to be better than this if he wanted to measure up. Yet she felt he did have something.

‘Why are you thinking about using a relationship consultant now?’ she asked.

‘Is that a polite way of asking if I think I need to?’ He smiled. ‘Nah, it’s not that hard to meet women. Waving your Platinum Amex in the right bars is like chumming the water.’

Catherine felt herself bristle. ‘The women are the bait?’

‘No, the money’s the bait. The women are the sharks. That was fun when I first moved to London but it gets old after a while.’

So she was right about him. ‘What are you looking for now?’

He paused. ‘Quality, I s’pose. Someone who’s got everything I’m looking for and is really together, you know? She’s comfortable in her own skin and knows what she wants and doesn’t need to play games. But I don’t seem to attract that kind of woman.’

‘Why not, do you think?’ Catherine had to tread carefully here. She wasn’t in the business of making people feel bad, but she also didn’t want to over-promise.

He laughed. ‘I guess I’m too rough around the edges for them. They’re used to blokes who know their wines and which fork to use and all that bullshit. I’m just a hick from Queensland who wants to enjoy myself.’

‘Are those other things important, do you think?’

When he sighed, Catherine caught another glimpse of the man beneath the Amex card.

‘I’m starting to think they are,’ he said.

She wanted to disagree with him, but it was true. The women she looked after did expect a certain amount of finesse in their dates. Not that it was the most important thing. It was all just packaging, really.

One of the most important parts of her job was figuring out which of their services would give the client the best chance of finding love. RecycLove was for the people who liked the idea of choosing loads of dates to go out with. It sounded like Paul had had enough of that. The proper matchmaking service, Love Match, was best for would-be romancers who treated dates like they did dental appointments – an inconvenient necessity. She didn’t mind these clients who expected her to find a lover to match their requirements. But there was a third, rarer type of client who most interested her.

They were the diamonds in the rough.

The work she did with them didn’t have an official name. She didn’t advertise it and not even Richard knew much about the details.

People did come to her though, when they heard from former clients about how Catherine was able to mould people into the perfect romantic prospect.

She only had time to take on a few of these clients, so she was very picky. As she listened to Paul, her excitement started to fizz. He seemed to have all the important qualities women looked for. Already she could see that a few tweaks here and there would make a big difference to his chances of finding the woman he wanted. Maybe all he needed was a good polish.

Could she do it? Could she improve him?

She realised she’d gone quiet when she noticed him studying her. ‘Well, if you don’t feel that you’ve got some of the superficial attributes that your dates look for, I might be able to help you make a few changes.’

She always felt nervous when she pitched like this. She really wanted him to say yes.

‘Do I need more kerb appeal?’

She could tell he was teasing her. ‘Probably just small things, to help you stand out and meet more of our clients’ requirements.’

‘So this is a makeover, like one of those DIY programmes where they fill the house with purple velvet and candles?’

‘Of course not. Purple velvet clashes with your eyes.’ She smiled at her own joke. ‘But I could assess you and give you some guidance if you’d like.’

He stretched his legs out in front of him. ‘And this is all part of the package deal? Do you really think it’ll help?’

‘It can’t hurt,’ Catherine said.

‘Thanks for that blinding vote of confidence. I’ve got nothing to lose then. Where do I sign?’

As Catherine prepared the contracts, she had to wonder whether this was a good idea.

Yes, he did remind her of Richard … Richard in the early days before they both got so serious about life.

Of course, they hadn’t been serious back then. They’d been only kids, really, when they met. Richard had talked to her first, on the first day of class as they’d crowded into their second year economics lecture at uni. Well, he’d smiled first anyway. Knowing her, she’d done most of the talking. What had started with shared jokes in class soon expanded to shared notes and study dates around exam time. So far so platonic.

Then they ran into each other at a party that some of the third years were throwing. Pressed together by their dancing classmates, heat and alcohol threw their friendship into a sexy new light. At least they did for Catherine. It took Richard a few weeks to catch up, but once he did they spent as much time together out of their clothes as they did in them.

Catherine did start wondering after a while whether there was more to Richard-and-Catherine than shared class notes and drunken fumbling. There was something about him. It wasn’t his looks – pale gingers were an acquired taste. But he was comfortable in his own skin, when most of the other boys covered up their self-consciousness with twattishness.

But she wasn’t about to spook him with any declarations. She’d done that to a boy once before, in school. He’d never spoken to her again. This time she planned to make a tentative query about their future that she could totally backtrack on if she needed to.

When he arrived for dinner with a bottle of wine, she kissed him hello like she always did when they were alone (rarely in public though).

‘Did you get me over here on false pretences?’ he asked, nuzzling her neck.

Had he guessed what she was planning?

‘If so, I totally approve,’ he said. ‘But I’ll need to have a snack before we …’

She laughed with relief. ‘No, dinner is in the oven.’ She untangled herself from his arms. ‘Wine?’

If he was disappointed that there’d be no naked starter he didn’t show it. That was the thing about Richard. He took everything in his stride. Their evening was as relaxed as usual, until they finished their meal.

‘I was wondering about something,’ she said.

Richard’s expression turned serious. She nearly chickened out then and asked if he wanted to watch a film instead of what she really wanted to know.

‘Have you lured me into some kind of relationship?’ she asked. Yes, a joke. That was good. It didn’t sound so threatening.

Her heart hammered as she twirled her wine glass by the stem, trying to look like she didn’t care too much about the answer.

‘You may have lured me,’ he said. ‘But I think we are. Aren’t we?’

Relief flooded through her. ‘I think so too. I just wondered because we didn’t start out in the usual way.’

‘What’s the usual way?’

‘You know. Dates and romance and all that.’

He laughed. ‘That’s never really been my thing.’

‘Nor mine. Relaxed and casual is much better.’

It was the first little lie of many.

So, relaxed and casual was how their relationship progressed until graduation. Neither asked the other to join holidays or family visits. They just rubbed along together, with Richard in her life but not part of it. She told him that was fine. Usually she believed it herself.

Besides, she wasn’t anxious to have her heart handed to her in pieces again. She did love Richard and she thought he probably loved her. It was enough to be best friends with her boyfriend. It was fun, relaxed and, above all, safe.

But soon their diplomas would be in hand. Decisions had to be made. Coming from England’s commuter belt, Catherine grew up dreaming of a career in London. Richard preferred Manchester and started applying for jobs there.

They were about to be geographically unsuitable and she didn’t fancy a long-distance relationship. But she didn’t want to call quits on it either. So she quietly applied for positions in Manchester too. When she got an offer before Richard, it looked a bit like he was following her. She liked that.

But when he was offered the job in the US a few years later, there was no way for Catherine to move there and make it look like an accident.

Chapter Five
Rachel

Rachel inspected James’s office from the doorway. How did he get any work done in such a tip? It looked like an overfull recycling bag had exploded on the floor. Magazines, hardback books and plans were piled everywhere, weighed down with coffee-stained mugs. He didn’t even bother putting his files on the shelves the right way around – they were shoved in there on their sides.

Scientists could grow disease cultures on his desk.

She felt her lips pinching with disapproval. It was a signature move inherited from her mum. Ordered space, ordered mind; that was her motto. Rachel had inherited that too.

He was hunched over, sketching furiously. She could see the red pen in his hand. That meant he was working on interior walls. He was as obsessive about his colour-coded pens as they all were.

‘James? Want to try the new sushi place with me?’

Light and breezy, that’s what she was aiming for. No ulterior motives here.

He glanced up from his tracing paper. ‘Thanks, I would but I’m kind of busy right now.’

‘Come on. I’d rather eat in and you know I hate sitting by myself.’

He didn’t look up again. ‘Why don’t you ask Alison or Beth?’

Creeping across the litter-strewn floor, Rachel hovered over his shoulder. The sketch was good. ‘I’ll buy.’

He threw himself over the paper like she was trying to copy his exam answers. ‘Could you get me takeaway if you’re going? You know what I like.’

‘Come with me.’

His head snapped up. ‘What’s up, Rachel?’

Damn.

‘Nothing’s up. Can’t a friend buy another friend lunch?’

He sighed, putting the cap on his Sharpie. ‘How long have we known each other?’

‘Around five years, I think.’

Five years in January, actually, plus extra credit time for the year they went out.

‘And after that long don’t you think I can tell when you’re up to something?’

‘You’re no fun to try to manipulate, do you know that?’

She pushed the rolls of tracing paper off his extra chair so she could sit. She’d hoped to do this over maki rolls.

‘James.’

‘Yes, Rachel.’

She didn’t expect him to make it easy for her. ‘Do you feel like you’re getting everything you want, romantically, from your life? Because I don’t.’

She felt too wooden, rehearsed, but she had to push on.

‘I keep going out with these guys I meet, and they keep disappointing me. If they don’t just want sex then they’re too clingy. If they’re not too clingy they’re emotionally unavailable. If not that then they have a girlfriend already. I’m so sick of it all.’

He nodded. ‘Uh huh, I see. Just so I know, Rach, are you just telling me about your dates or is there a question in here somewhere?’

‘There’s a question.’

‘Then can we please …’ He made a winding-up motion with his finger. ‘Make this as painless as possible?’

‘You don’t want any background at all?’

‘Well, you’ve already told me about the bloke who wanted to wee on you.’ He pulled a face.

Rachel sighed. ‘Exactly my point. I can’t keep meeting random guys in pubs. I need a more structured approach if I’m going to meet anyone worthwhile. I’m joining Catherine’s website.’

‘Fine, good for you.’

‘You know, James, this is exactly why we broke up!’

‘Why, Rachel? What do you want me to say? That I’m thrilled you’re joining a website to meet guys? Maybe I don’t really want to listen to you talk about the shitty men in your life.’

‘No! Because you’re totally dismissive. Not to mention that you’re an absolute pig,’ she added, looking again around the office. ‘I’m asking for your help.’

‘Calling me a pig isn’t really making me warm to your request, you know.’

She shrugged. ‘I had other words in mind, so I was actually being kind.’

He smiled. ‘Tell me what you need, Rach.’

Her tummy churned at the way he said this. It was easier being his friend when he wasn’t being tender.

‘I can’t join unless I bring an ex with me. It’s really simple. We sign up and give each other feedback about what we were like in the relationship. You know, an assessment about what we did right and wrong.’

He rubbed his chin. ‘Do I really want to know what you think is wrong with me?’

‘But you’ll get to do it to me too. Just imagine, James. You can outline every single one of my flaws and I’ll have to sit there and take it. Besides, nobody else sees the assessment. Only us. Then I write an endorsement telling women why they should go out with you.’

‘Hmm, that’s interesting.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Tell me more.’

‘That’s it, really. Once we’re on the website we can go out with whomever we want to.’

‘No, I mean tell me more about why women should go out with me. You’ll throw me this tiny bone, won’t you? It might be the only ego stroke I get this year. Come on, Rach, tell me, tell me. Is it my hair? It’s my hair, isn’t it?’ He flicked his head and pursed his lips.

She laughed. James was many things – cheapskate, workaholic, smart-arse – but he wasn’t conceited. He never minded making a fool of himself to make her laugh. ‘Yeah, I guess you have good hair.’ It was a thick dark mop, long and shaggy. He wore it side-combed over his forehead like they did in the boy bands. ‘And you’re not too short. That would be a plus for women who aren’t very tall.’

They were nearly the same height when she wore her high heels and, though he wasn’t classically handsome, his regular features were a decent backdrop for the most startling blue eyes she’d ever seen. His mouth was perhaps a bit too small, but it suited his narrow chin which, in turn, suited his slender frame. His personality would attract women as much as his looks.

Of course, he’d rather hear that he was devastatingly god-like handsome.

‘Will you do it?’ she asked. ‘Will you join with me? I have to bring someone with me.’

‘Are you saying you need me?’

‘Yes, James,’ she muttered. ‘I need you.’

Thank God that was no longer really true. A few years ago it would have been.

‘And all I have to do is fill in a few forms and you’ll let me go back to work? I can do that. Wait, this doesn’t mean the sushi offer is off, does it?’

‘I’ll still get your sushi, James.’

‘Cool. Extra wasabi please.’

Rachel beamed all the way to the restaurant. That wasn’t as hard as it could have been.

The house was empty after work when she unlocked both deadbolts and the door lock to let herself in. They weren’t paranoid, fortressing themselves in like this. When they’d first come to look at the house, the door had been patched at the bottom where someone had kicked through it. One of the first things they’d bought was a solid replacement. The little buggers would break bones now if they tried forcing their way in.

Even with the risk of burglary, Rachel loved their house. Back when it was built, Victorian families needed lots of rooms. Clapton wasn’t overrun by Poundlands and chicken shops then.

There were little traces of those more affluent days left – ornate cornicing and plaster roses on some of the ceilings, tall sash windows and wide-beam oak floors. But cheap dividing walls scarred the floors where they’d been put up in haste and disintegrated at leisure. Big holes and cracks pockmarked the plaster. Wires and pipes ran in the shortest distance between two points. Basically, they lived in a semi-derelict building site.

But that’s what they’d signed up for when they bought the house. None of them could afford their own flat in the area. It might be dirty and dangerous but property prices there were rising faster than Jude Law’s hairline. So they bought something together that could eventually be subdivided. One day, when the time came, they’d each have their own flat. Till then they added a working fridge and settled into the original shabby chic decor. Pictures hung on wires straight from the mouldings. Those covered up the damp-stained walls, and threadbare rugs were strewn over the scratched and splintery floors. They’d scavenged through the charity shops to find velvet sofas and reading chairs to fill the cavernous sitting room.

People paid good money for decorators to give them that kind of distressed look. Their home’s distress was authentic.

Still, what a huge tick on her Adult To-Do list. She’d got the degree, she had the job and she’d invested in the house with Catherine and Sarah. Soon she’d be working on the relationship.

Sometimes she had to remind herself that there was nothing wrong with her. Just because she wasn’t married or doing the school run each morning didn’t mean she had a tail or anything. Millions of women were in the same boat, with high standards and a low tolerance for wankishness.

She made her way down to the kitchen to flick on the kettle, glancing at the 1950s black Bakelite wall clock as she went. It was after seven. She’d kill for a cup of coffee, but the bags under her eyes were now suitcases and she had to sleep. Herbal tea wasn’t top of her favourites list but it was better than nothing. And she did feel virtuous drinking grass clippings.

She spotted the Bake Off application still in the tea drawer, as unfilled-in as when she’d first printed it off. Not surprising. Sarah was the last person to sing her own praises.

Her eyes darted to the kitchen doorway.

She’d be coming back from Sissy’s on the train now, like she did every Tuesday and Thursday. And often at weekends too.

Rachel stared at the application. The teabags were under it anyway …

She picked up the sheets.

When the kettle finished its furious boil she poured her tea and rummaged in her bag for the thriller she’d been devouring. There were only around fifty pages left and she was pretty sure she knew who’d done it.

Her glance bounced between the book and the application.

She should read her book and drink her tea.

But she did know who’d done it.

Her eyes wandered to the Bake Off questions.

How long has the applicant been baking?

That was easy. Sarah was already great by the time she moved into the old flat. It was her promise of home-made scones that won her Catherine’s vote when they first met.

Her mum had taught her to bake when she was little (the next question). Every year when she got tipsy on her birthday she told them how she’d baked her own Victoria sponge when she turned six. Every year they pretended this was new information.

Glancing again at the doorway, Rachel’s hand found a pen. It seemed to have a mind of its own.

I started baking my own cakes at six, she wrote.

Next question: What did she personally get from baking?

Sarah never really talked about it but it seemed to make her really happy. She usually sang when she baked, and filled the whole kitchen with a homeliness as she worked through her recipes. Rachel said as much on the form, but skipped the part about the singing in case that might be distracting on set.

Next were a load of questions about skills and knowledge. She had to guess at those. Sarah seemed to know how to bake everything, so Rachel just listed the main categories from one of her cookbooks as examples. The judges probably wanted a broad idea anyway.

When she got to the questions about hobbies and ambitions, it started sounding a lot like a dating profile. I like long chocolate eclairs on the beach, enjoying sunset cheesecakes, and I live life to the fullest-fat cream. The questions were handy though, given the conversation she’d have with Sarah when she got in. Two birds, one stone.

She let out a little yelp when the front door opened upstairs.

‘Anybody home yet?’ Sarah called from the living room.

She shoved the application back in the drawer. Somehow it seemed less sneaky to keep it there in relatively plain sight.

‘Been home long?’ Sarah said, throwing her bag on the table. ‘Whatcha doing?’

‘Just finishing my book. I got home a few minutes ago. Have you eaten?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘Let’s order from the Noodle Shop.’

She moved toward the tea drawer to get the noodle menu.

‘Let me do it!’ Rachel cried, launching herself at the drawer to shove the application beneath the menus. ‘You’ve just walked in the door. Go change into something more comfy. You want the Thai noodles, right?’

Sarah stared at her jeans and baggy dark blue fisherman’s jumper. ‘Catherine wants to get me out of my trackies and you want me in them. I wish you’d make up your minds,’ she called over her shoulder.

Rachel’s heart hammered. So much for feeling less sneaky. Still, Sarah would be grateful if she got the chance to have Paul Hollywood compliment her iced buns.

Twenty minutes later, Aziz was at their front door. His parents owned the Noodle Shop.

‘All right?’ he said, handing Rachel the steaming plastic bags.

‘Good, Aziz, thanks. You?’

Something about him looked different but Rachel couldn’t put her finger on it. Was it his hair? Yes, that was it. She could see his hair. ‘No helmet? Where’s your scooter?’

‘Got nicked yesterday,’ he mumbled, hunching further into his winter coat.

‘Oh no! Your parents aren’t making you deliver on foot?’

‘Nah, we’re not doing deliveries till we get the insurance money to replace it.’

‘Well thanks for making an exception for us.’

‘No problem, you’re our best customers. See you later.’

Poor Noodle Shop family, thought Rachel. As if the people in their neighbourhood didn’t have enough trouble making ends meet.

‘Aziz’s scooter got nicked,’ Rachel told Sarah as she unpacked their order.

‘That’s shite! It’s probably halfway to Africa by now.’

‘It didn’t run away, Sarah. It was stolen.’

‘I know. They’re selling them in Africa.’

‘Are you sure that’s not bicycles?’

‘Maybe.’ Sarah shifted her container of noodles aside to make room for her sketch pad. ‘What do you think of this? I’m pitching it at the ideas meeting tomorrow.’

Rachel pulled the pad closer.

She loved Sarah’s sketches. No wonder her cards were consistently bestsellers. Her company was very lucky to have her.

She’d done some preliminary colouring in on the pen-and-ink sketch. Two figures stood hand-in-hand beneath an arch of summer flowers.

‘What’s the theme?’ Rachel asked.

The man in the sketch was balding, with a big tummy beneath his suit.

‘It’s an Asian lady marrying an English man,’ she said, scooping up some noodles with her chopsticks.

The lithe young woman smiled adoringly at her paunchy groom.

‘Seriously?’

‘Harry’s always looking for ways to expand the wedding cards. I know everybody thinks she’s a mail-order bride but sometimes they must really be in love. Don’t they deserve a nice card too?’

Sarah was such a romantic at heart. Maybe it was the cause of her success as a wedding card designer. Or a consequence. Either way, it worked for her.

‘Well, good luck in the meeting,’ said Rachel through a mouthful of steaming noodles. ‘It is quite romantic. Speaking of which, I talked to James today. He’s joining RecycLove with me.’

Sarah peered at Rachel from beneath her blonde fringe. ‘Are you sure you’re going to be okay with James dating right under your nose?’

‘Womankind is welcome to him! We are absolutely just friends. So now you have to join with me,’ she continued. ‘And don’t say you’ll think about it. I know that means you won’t do it. We’ll do it together.’

Sarah sighed, closing her sketchbook. ‘Rachel, I don’t even know where to start with the profile.’

Rachel thought about the Bake Off application. ‘But I do. I’ll help you. It’s probably just some questions about your hobbies and stuff. Please say you will. All you have to do is ask Sebastian. If James said yes, then a horndog like Sebastian definitely will, just to get access to all the women. Please say you will. Please? What’s there to lose?’

Sarah ticked off on her fingers. ‘My dignity, my self-esteem, hours out of my life, just off the top of my head.’

‘At least try, Sarah. If you hate it you can always quit. Nothing ventured, nothing gained … Shall I text Catherine and tell her we’ll do it together?’

Rachel reached for her phone.

‘I’m texting. If you want me to stop, say so. No? Okay. Texting.’

Sarah squirmed, but didn’t move to stop her.

‘Texting. Texting. Sent. RecycLove, here we come.’

Chapter Six
Sarah

Everyone in the conference room stared between Sarah and her sketch pad.

Her boss was doing that thing with his throat when he got embarrassed.

As if he had anything to be embarrassed about. He wasn’t the one being gawped at like he’d drawn willies on the wall.

‘Help me see where you’re going with this, Sarah,’ he said.

But I’ve literally drawn you a picture, she wanted to shout. Why didn’t people ever seem to know what she was talking about?

Instead she said, ‘It’s simple. Lots of English men and Asian women get married. This card would be for them.’

‘You mean mail-order brides?’ Harry asked.

Someone sniggered. It was Maria-Therese. That woman spent more time in Harry’s back pocket than his own wallet did.

‘No, Harry, not mail-order brides! Don’t be insulting. It’s for Asian women and English men who are in love.’

‘I think that might be a little too niche for us, Sarah,’ he said.

This time she caught Maria-Therese roll her beady little eyes. She could never look at her colleague’s twitchy needle nose and pinched lips in her thin, washed-out face without thinking of bubonic-infected rodents.

‘But we’re supposed to be thinking of niche markets. Isn’t that what you keep telling us in these meetings?’

‘Not quite that niche,’ he said. ‘Who’s next?’

The problem with Harry was that he had no vision. They’d already covered all the usual ethnic combinations, plus gay marriage and their non-standard body type range (which was Sarah’s idea).

She didn’t mind illustrating traditional boy-meets-girl cards but they were getting killed by companies like MoonPig. At the rate they were going, she’d be sketching tourists for a fiver in Trafalgar Square by this time next year.

Harry’s meetings only took an hour but they always felt like they sucked about a week from Sarah’s soul. Despite all the evidence – the growth in online cards and all the high-street shops closing down – Harry refused to adapt. He’d only make little tweaks here and there to his family’s business. That was like reupholstering the seats on your horse-drawn cart when everyone else was working at Ford.

Sarah didn’t know which she hated more – getting bollocked for not bringing an idea to the meeting each week, or getting bollocked when she did.

She hurried toward the lifts, stuffing her sketch pads back into her bag. She didn’t have a desk there. None of them did. Harry called it ‘flexible working’, but he was just too skint to pay for office space. Working from home suited Sarah anyway, with Sissy to think about.

She was waiting as usual just outside the front door when Sarah got there, beneath the big sign that welcomed everyone to Whispering Sands. What a misnomer. Nobody whispered in the care home and the only sand within thirty miles was in the car park, left over from when they gritted it last winter.

‘You’re—’

‘I’m not late,’ Sarah said. ‘Are you ready to go?’

‘I was ready at two thirty,’ said Sissy, holding her wrist two inches from Sarah’s face.

‘Your watch is fast.’

‘No, you’re slow.’

‘Whatever. Let’s go. Button your coat.’ The November days were closing in. ‘We can pick up some flowers for Mum on the way.’

She was only in the next town but travelling back there always gave Sarah pangs, like that sinking-in-the-stomach feeling when you think about an ex that you really liked.

She pushed the feelings aside as they got to the florist near their mum’s.

‘Do you like any of these bouquets?’ she asked Sissy, who was sniffing the flowers in each of the two dozen buckets by the desk.

‘These smell nicest,’ she said, pointing to the long-stem red roses.

‘Yeah, well for three quid a stem, they should. What about one of these?’ She pointed to the £10 bunches.

Carefully, Sissy inspected each bouquet. It would take her a while to decide.

Sissy never let Sarah rush her. Her scrupulous attention to detail meant that even the most mundane task took her about a million years. Plus, she liked to touch everything she saw, which made clothes shopping with her an exercise in patience.

‘How’s everything going with your boyfriend?’ Sarah asked as Sissy sniffed a purple and yellow bouquet.

‘Good.’ Sniff.

‘Still holding hands?’

‘Sometimes.’ She glanced over. ‘And kissing.’

‘Oh, kissing? Is that nice?’

‘Yep.’ Sniff sniff. ‘This one smells nice.’

‘Anything besides kissing?’

She thought for a minute. ‘He gave me his jelly.’

‘Nothing more? No hugging or … sex?’

Sissy rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be gross. We’re not supposed to do that.’

‘I’m just checking.’

‘Don’t worry.’

Of course she worried.

‘I brought a drawing for Mum,’ Sissy said as Sarah paid the florist for the bouquet she finally chose.

‘Can I see it?’

Carefully, she unfolded the pink sheet.

‘Nice one,’ Sarah said. ‘You’re really talented.’

Sissy had covered the whole page with tiny squares, then coloured each one in to create a paper mosaic. It was a zoo scene with elephants, giraffes, lions and monkeys.

‘I really like the way you’ve done the sky. Is there a storm coming?’ Sarah pointed to the roiling dark clouds in one corner.

Sissy nodded. ‘It’s going to rain.’

They walked around the corner from the florist’s shop.

‘Here we are. Ready to visit Mum?’

Sissy took Sarah’s hand and they walked together through the cemetery gates.

As Sarah dropped her sister off she tried not to mind that Sissy never looked even the littlest bit sad to leave her. She might at least wave wistfully every once in a while instead of just returning to her friends without as much as a backwards glance.

Sarah knew she should be happy that Sissy was so independent but the truth was, she wanted Sissy to need her as much as she needed Sissy. Instead she was such a typical teenager.

As Sarah got on the train back to London she called Robin.

‘All right?’ he said when he answered.

‘All right,’ said Sarah. ‘I just dropped Sissy off. We went to the cemetery. You should see the picture that she did for Mum. It was really ace.’

Kelly at the home was trying to get some funding to start running an art class since several of the residents loved drawing and painting. None of them were as good as Sissy though.

‘She’s got a boyfriend,’ Sarah told him. ‘She says they’ve been kissing.’

‘Jesus, that’s not good,’ he said. ‘They should be keeping a closer eye on her.’

‘Kelly says it’s normal and that we need to be ready for this new phase.’

‘Kelly wouldn’t say that if Sissy was her sister. She shouldn’t be letting guys kiss her. Should I talk to her?’

‘Oh I’m begging you, please don’t!’ Sarah knew how that’d go. When she was in sixth form, Robin had decided to tell her about sex. For some reason he thought it’d go down better if he used all the official words.

Her face still burned thinking about him talking about vaginas.

‘We need to let Kelly do the job she’s trained for,’ she said. ‘Please don’t talk to Sissy about it. If you spook her she’ll never tell us anything.’

‘I wish Mum was here,’ he said. ‘She’d know how to handle it.’

‘Me too,’ Sarah murmured.

* * *

Their mum could do anything, and Sarah didn’t believe that only because she was her child. She had the usual parenting skills – rooting out the monsters from under the bed and kissing away hurts – but Sarah hadn’t realised the half of it till she was older.

There hadn’t been much spare cash left over from her mum’s secretarial job after the rent was paid, but Sarah had never noticed that they were pretty poor. They weren’t exactly the sort to splash out in restaurants anyway and why would they want to, with their mum’s cooking?

She turned her hobby into a part-time job, to go with her full-time job, when Sarah and Robin were little. She made delicious beef stews, lasagnes and shepherd’s pies in bulk for their neighbours, cooking as easily for fourteen as she did for four. And when Sissy was born the few quid she charged per meal were a lifesaver. She had to quit her job then, and their carer’s and disability benefits didn’t stretch very far.

Their rented terraced house had one of those kitchen extensions off the back that opened on to a long, narrow garden. The appliances and work surfaces spread across the back half of the big room, with overstuffed sofas and the TV beneath skylights at the front. They pretty much lived in those two rooms, till first Robin and then Sarah went away to London.

Maybe if they’d still been at home when their mum got ill, they’d have noticed how run-down she was getting.

At first she wouldn’t go to her GP. ‘It’s nothing,’ she’d said. ‘Stop worrying and have some more cake.’

But she wasn’t eating her own food. That wasn’t like her.

Then she got a nosebleed one night when Robin and Sarah were home for dinner. After ten minutes it still wouldn’t stop.

‘Mum, do you get these often?’ Robin asked gently as he passed her another wad of toilet roll and made her keep her head tipped back.

‘I’ve had a few,’ she said through the tissue. ‘But it’s no big deal.’

Robin caught Sarah’s eye. I’m sorry, his look said, but watching your mother bleed is a big deal. ‘I’m making you an appointment with the GP tomorrow, Mum.’

This time she didn’t fight them, or dismiss the suggestion. Something was obviously wrong. The evidence was right there, dripping down her face.

But Sarah didn’t expect cancer. Maybe a sinus infection or haemophilia at a stretch, but not cancer.

She should have been more worried, but she clearly remembered not being that worried. She went whole days without thinking about her mum and her nosebleeds. Partly it was because she’d downplayed everything (another of her Parenting 101 skills) and partly it was because Sarah was caught up in her own life. Still pretty new at her job, she was excited about living in London. And she was more concerned with catching the last Tube home than her mother’s health.

She should have been bone-freezingly terrified for her.

The GP sent her off for blood tests and when they came back showing that her white blood cells were going haywire, it finally hit Sarah. This was no sinus infection or pollen allergy.

Her mum had lived two days past her six-month prognosis. Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia doesn’t like to be kept waiting, and by the time she’d gone to the GP it had already travelled to her spine. Her last weeks were horrible, painful and undignified, yet her only concern had been for them, her children. When Sarah had promised her she’d look after Sissy no matter what else happened, Sarah saw the relief in her expression. They’d already talked about what should happen if the worst came to the worst.

Sarah had wanted to come live in the house with Sissy.

‘No you will not,’ her mum had said with nearly her usual strength. ‘You can give her all the love in the world, but she’s only a child and you can’t take that responsibility. I’ve cared for her for thirteen years, every minute of every day and night. Believe me when I tell you it’s a twenty-four-hour job and you haven’t had the experience or training to do it. She’ll need someone qualified to look after her.’

‘I could learn!’ Sarah said.

‘I know you want to, love, but we have to think about what’s best for Sissy too. Promise me, Sarah. I mean it. I’ve got to know that she’ll be safe and looked after. There are good facilities that can do that. We’ll have to find one.’

Sarah had hated the idea of her little sister moving out of her home but her mum had been adamant.

‘It’s not just a matter of making sure she’s fed and clean and happy,’ her mum had said. ‘There are medical issues. What if you didn’t spot an infection in time? It wouldn’t be your fault, you wouldn’t know, but have you thought about that? Or have you thought about what you’d do if you came back here? You can’t leave Sissy alone in the house all day to work. Would you give up your job and your life to stay with her? Then I’d have to worry about you both while I’m up there knocking on the pearly gates.’

‘Don’t talk like that, Mum.’

‘Why, do you think I’m heading south instead?’ She’d pointed to the floor, mustering a laugh. ‘Promise me, Sarah.’

She’d had no choice. Every time she had brought it up, her mum panicked at the thought that Sissy wouldn’t get the care she needed. So they had a lot of really uncomfortable meetings with social services. Each time, Sarah had felt like she and Robin were plotting behind Sissy’s back. She knew her mother was right, but that didn’t make it any easier.

Thankfully, Sissy was pretty healthy. They had to watch for the infections but she didn’t have the heart defects that many Down’s syndrome kids did. And so far there was no sign of leukaemia either. Not that Mum’s was hereditary, at least as far as they knew, but Sissy was at a higher risk with her condition. There was so much that doctors didn’t know yet about Down’s, but what they did know was depressing. Sissy had a one in fifty chance of developing leukaemia by the age of five. Sarah was sure their mum had known this. Not that she’d have worried them with such a potentially deadly fact.

But Sissy was beating the odds (screw you, Fate! thought Sarah).

Each birthday that they celebrated put more distance between her and the disease. She could still get it, but every time she blew out her birthday candles, the odds swung further in her favour.

Chapter Seven
Catherine

‘But, Georgina,’ Catherine tried again, glancing at the time, ‘I’m just suggesting that you might have better luck if you were a little less …’

Picky?

Petty?

Unrealistic, spoilt or exasperating?

‘… less restrictive in your requirements,’ she finally said. They’d been on the phone for nearly ten minutes, going round and round. She’d never refunded a client’s fee before but she was nearly ready to cut a cheque for this woman.

It was only supposed to be a routine checking-in call. They had them weekly with their Love Match clients, but this had turned into Georgina’s bitch session about the quality of the men she’d been set up with.

It was setting Catherine’s teeth on edge.

No, hang on, that wasn’t really fair, she reminded herself. Yes, Georgina was a pain in the arse, but what was really making her cross was knowing that Richard and Magda were lying in wait to ruin her night straight after the call.

‘Are you saying there’s something wrong with my approach?’ Georgina demanded. ‘Because I’ve never had any complaints before.’

No, thought Catherine. And you’ve not had that many dates either.

‘But everyone can benefit from an outside perspective,’ she said instead of what she was thinking. ‘That’s my job, after all. In fact …’

She knew she’d regret her next words but she also knew that Georgina would never get anywhere in her current state. ‘In fact, we do offer another service here that may interest you. It’s an advisory relationship.’

‘But you already advise me.’

Catherine heard the snarky ditto marks around the word advise. She took a deep breath. Calm professionalism, that’s what she needed to get through this call.

‘Well, I do guide you towards suitable men, yes. But this is more about working together to overcome any barriers that may be stopping you from finding what you’re looking for.’

‘What kind of barriers?’ Georgina sounded suspicious. ‘How much does this cost? I’m not keen to pay more money when, to be honest, I’m not a hundred per cent convinced about the service as it is.’

Catherine bit her tongue. ‘It’s completely free.’

‘I see. And what kind of advice would you give me, for example, if I said yes?’

Catherine glanced again at her mobile as it flashed incoming emails at her.

She was going to be late for dinner. She’d managed to put it off for nearly a month already. Now it would look even more like she didn’t want to meet Magda.

But no, this was work. Let Richard wait. Magda would just have to stay up past her bedtime.

‘Well, you could streamline your criteria. Home in on the five or six things that are really critical to you.’ She scanned down the long, long list of requirements Georgina had insisted on since she joined. ‘For example, are you sure you wouldn’t consider someone who golfs? Even the occasional round?’

‘But Catherine, it takes four hours to play golf! Four hours, plus getting to the club and back, changing and showering and probably having a drink afterwards. That’s my entire weekend day spent alone. If he’s a regular golfer, that’s every weekend day spent alone.’

She had a point. Personally, Catherine wasn’t a golfing fan either. ‘What about other sports? You said no to any sporting interests. How about football? That only takes an hour and a half and he can do it in the local park.’

Georgina sighed in a way that made Catherine’s heart leap. Was she actually going to relax one of her demands? She dared not hope.

‘It’s a mindset as much as the activity itself,’ she said. ‘But I suppose, as long as he’s not obsessive about it, then it’s okay.’

Victory! Catherine wanted to pull the front of her top over her head and run around the office making V-signs.

Of course, she wouldn’t do that.

‘Rugby?’

‘Okay.’

‘Billiards?’

‘That’s not a sport,’ Georgina said.

‘No, it’s more of a pub pastime, I suppose.’

‘The pub? Now we’re getting into a whole different world of problems.’

Catherine knew when to drop the subject. ‘What about beards? Is that a definite no-go? Even if they’re handsome and aren’t wedded to facial hair? For lots of men it’s just a phase, and they can often be persuaded to lose it.’

Georgina made a non-committal noise.

‘Is that a yes?’

‘S’pose. But I’m not going to go out with anyone who looks like a lumberjack. I don’t care if he’s got Bradley Cooper’s face underneath all that hair.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Catherine, running her finger down Georgina’s list. ‘Now, let’s talk about language fluency. I know you speak French, so maybe it isn’t necessary for him to as well?’

‘No, that’s non-negotiable. I don’t want to be the only one planning our French holidays.’

Catherine thought for a moment. ‘What if he’s a member of a concierge service like Quintessentially? The consultants there can book the entire thing for you. All you have to do is turn up at the airport with your bag and your passport. In fact, they could plan all your holidays. It really would be a big advantage.’

‘Hmm, I like the sound of that,’ Georgina said. ‘Fine then, please only find me dates who’re Quintessentially members.’

Bollocks, that backfired. There were probably even fewer of those than there were fluent French speakers. She let out a sigh. Win some, lose some. She had one more battle to fight, and then she really did have to go.

‘Shoes without socks. Georgina, that really is getting too particular. Is it a hygiene issue? Because Boots does decent foot spray and—’

‘It’s not hygiene,’ she said. ‘It’s Sloaney. I can’t stand those South Ken types. You just know he’s going to fnar fnar fnar at his own jokes and have fond memories of all the times he was bummed at school. No, he must wear socks.’

Catherine had to hand it to Georgina. She may be about as flexible as Woody Allen but she did have a reason for every demand she made.

* * *

‘So so SO sorry I’m late!’ Catherine hurried into the restaurant twenty minutes later full of smiles and excuses.

The blonde young woman bounced up from her chair when Richard stood to kiss Catherine hello. ‘I am so happy to finally meet you!’ Magda said, nearly pushing Richard out of the way so she could clasp Catherine to her. ‘You have no idea how much Richard talks about you.’

‘Congratulations on your engagement,’ Catherine said, noting the huge round diamond sparkling on her finger.

So this was Magda. Her wide, ice-blue eyes were framed by darkly mascaraed lashes, set in a flawlessly smooth square face that was much more Cameron Diaz than SpongeBob SquarePants.

In the nanosecond that they stood together, Catherine committed Magda’s figure to memory. As tall and as slim as she’d been at twenty-three, there was nothing to fault there. Catherine adjusted her beige jumper, wishing she’d worn a dress. But she hadn’t wanted to seem as if she was making an effort.

Mission accomplished, she thought crossly.

When she took a seat across from Magda at the small square table, the girl scrunched up her shoulders, gurned and giggled like they were sharing the most exciting secret imaginable.

Maybe that was the attraction for Richard. Magda seemed to be the inverse of Catherine – a bubbly-looking blonde instead of a sensible brunette. Catherine was Hobbs and M&S. Magda was Gucci and, Catherine was betting, Agent Provocateur. And instead of her straight, smooth dark locks, Magda’s hair looped in huge curls. If those curls could talk they’d say, Take me to the bedroom.

‘I got caught up at work,’ Catherine said.

‘I think what you do is fascinating,’ gushed Magda. ‘You have to tell me all about it. Richard never tells me anything.’

She pushed out her pillowy bottom lip.

‘Oh, well, there’s not a lot to tell, really. We’ve got two businesses – the website and the dating agency. I’ve been working mostly on the website lately.’ She didn’t make eye contact with Richard in case he took that as a judgement. ‘But I’ve recently signed an interesting client. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it, actually, Richard. But not tonight, obviously.’

‘No, no, please do,’ Magda said. ‘I insist! After all, I am sort of involved now that Richard and I are getting married.’

Catherine saw Richard wince and realised that he was nervous. Though she couldn’t work out who he was wincing at.

And really, she should be squirming, not him. She was the one sitting across from her replacement, like the spare laptop that he couldn’t quite bring himself to get rid of. But no, it wouldn’t even occur to Richard how this might grate on her ego. He was too busy pretending that it was normal for his ex-wife to have dinner with his fiancée.

And, she realised, it was more about her ego than her heart. After everything that had happened she couldn’t really imagine being with him now. But that wasn’t to say she wanted his upgrade to be easy.

Petty? Yes. Understandable? She thought so.

She found herself relaxing as she explained that she’d offered Paul and Georgina the remodelling service. Ah, the sweet influence of work! It was such a clever business model. Clients paid them to be both their customers and their product. The more clients they had buying, the more product they had to sell. So spending a few extra hours to improve their success rate would be worthwhile. She didn’t expect Richard to object. After all, she was spending her time, not his.

She was surprised, though, by how many questions Magda asked. That girl wasn’t kidding. She did want to know every detail.

‘Shall I choose some wine?’ Richard said after the waiter went away for the second time with an empty order pad.

He started flipping through the wine menu, running his finger down each page as if he was looking for something special.

Catherine suppressed a smile. He’d choose the fourth or fifth cheapest wine. He always did. He was just too proud to admit he didn’t know much about it.

Did Magda know this, or was she impressed by his sommelier impersonation?

‘See anything interesting?’ Catherine couldn’t help asking.

‘Hmm, there are a few good vintages,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll like this one.’ He pointed out his choice to the waiter.

She wondered what else Magda didn’t know.

Did he still claim that he made his own pesto because he’d found the perfect basil at the market? He actually bought it from the Italian deli in Farringdon and froze it. Or that when he said he’d played football with David Beckham, it had been for half an hour when he was sixteen years old, away at football summer camp with a lot of other not-very-athletic boys? The camp’s founder knew David’s dad from when he fitted his new boiler and got him in as a favour.

Everyone was a little bit false when it came down to it. Catherine only needed to look at herself, smiling at Magda as if they were new best friends.

When she thought about it, that’s what she was offering with the client remodelling service: a few tips and tricks to brighten up a sagging façade. They were only cosmetic renovations.

Mentally she filed away Richard’s wine gimmick to share with Paul. He wouldn’t need to be an expert, only to look competent on a date. Once a woman was in love with him she wouldn’t care that he didn’t know his Meursault from his Merlot.

‘What other changes are you thinking of making?’ Magda asked.

‘Changes?’

‘To the business,’ she said, frowning. ‘You must have a lot of ideas about how to grow it.’

‘It doesn’t need growing. It does pretty well as it is,’ Catherine said, knowing she sounded defensive.

‘But you cannot rest on your laurels.’

‘What makes you think that I’m resting on my laurels?’

‘Oh, I did not mean to offend you! I just thought that a businesswoman like you would be full of ideas.’

‘We can’t expand too quickly or we won’t be able to give our clients the service they’re paying for.’

She did not have to justify her business to this child.

‘Catherine is always coming up with new ideas,’ Richard said, grasping Magda’s hand. ‘RecycLove wouldn’t exist without her.’

But Magda wouldn’t be distracted. ‘So this renovation idea,’ she continued. ‘Giving clients a one-on-one self-improvement, is that not going to stretch the staff?’

‘Magda,’ Catherine said, knowing she was about to sound exactly like her mother. ‘Richard and I talk through all business-related matters and decide together what makes sense for the company.’

She may as well have said, Your dad and I don’t think you need to worry about that kind of grown-up talk. Now go upstairs and do some colouring in.

‘Magda does have a point though, Catherine. Will taking on two new clients be too much for you?’

‘No! Definitely not. I’ll keep track, shall I, and report back to you in a few weeks. Now, are you ordering starters or just mains?’

She’d known dinner would be uncomfortable, but she hadn’t expected a work critique.

‘Just a main for me,’ said Magda. ‘With the holidays coming, I need to watch my diet or I will never fit into my dress.’

She rolled her eyes like she was a contestant on The Biggest Loser.

Catherine officially hated her.

Chapter Eight
Rachel

James didn’t fool her. He might be doodling in his notebook but he’d also hang on every word their boss said. He just thought that pretending disinterest made him look cool.

Rachel, on the other hand, was leaning so far forward that she was practically lying across the table. Missed a trick there. She should have had her nose in her book when Ed came in. But then nobody ever accused her of being cool.

‘So what’s up?’ James asked, as if he and Ed were old pals.

‘Thanks for coming,’ Ed said, ignoring James’s bonhomie. Rachel allowed herself the tiniest smile. Not that his snub meant she’d get promoted to the favourite instead.

‘I wanted to touch base about the Zigler pitch,’ Ed continued. ‘At the risk of repeating myself, you did an excellent job and the client loved your ideas. It’s not always easy for young architects to read a meeting correctly, to know just where to pitch your message, but you did it.’

Young architects? Ed was welcome to think of her as a fresh-faced hotshot. She smoothed down her dress – navy polka dots today. Sometimes her style did work in her favour. Though he didn’t need to make it sound like he was their grandfather, tutoring them at his wizened old knee and fishing Werther’s Originals from his cardigan pockets. She knew for a fact that he’d only just turned forty. His wife had sent an enormous cake to the office a few months ago and embarrassed the hell out of him. There was no arguing with his experience though. He’d been with the company since he graduated, working his way up to partner. The higher he climbed, the more hair he lost. These days his shiny scalp was reflecting a lot more than his success.

When Ed’s eyebrows knitted together in concern, Rachel realised she’d been beaming idiotically. Composing herself, she said, ‘Thanks, Ed. We worked really hard on it. And thanks for giving us a chance.’

Way to go, she thought. Pitch your message about two notches above kiss-arse.

Ed directed his next comments to James. ‘I thought your use of that mood board was excellent. It lifted your idea from a drawing to a concept. Inspired.’

That wasn’t James’s idea. It was hers. Well, technically she’d nicked it from Sarah. She was always putting mood boards together for her cards. She shredded magazines faster than a hamster when she got a new idea. Even if the housemates were still reading them.

‘And the presentation was slick,’ Ed continued as James doodled. ‘You used just the right amount of animation to keep their interest. Too much just makes everyone dizzy and lowers the perceived quality of your message.’

Why did he keep looking at James? He’d never been able to work the 3-D program properly. Those animations were hers.

‘Actually, Ed, the mood board was my idea,’ she said.

Ed’s smile creased the laugh lines near his pale blue eyes and made his face look less narrow than usual. Without the smile he looked like a youngish Richard E Grant.

‘Rachel, there’s no “I” in team.’

She felt her face go crimson. She shouldn’t have said anything. Now she just looked petty, while James confidently doodled. If only she could rewind the conversation and take it back. But she couldn’t make Ed unhear her.

Actually, sod that. She didn’t want to take it back. She wanted credit where it was due in the first place. Then she wouldn’t have to stick up for herself. Because that’s all she was doing. She wouldn’t get anywhere if her boss thought James did all the work while she sat in the meeting looking pretty.

Ed kept talking to James while she stewed. Then he complimented the pastries they’d ordered for the meeting. This time he looked straight at Rachel.

That figured. James got credit for all the important work. She got pastries. What did that make her – Julia Child to his Mies van der Rohe?

No, she wasn’t even Julia. She was Mr Kipling handing out pre-packaged cakes.

‘This is ridiculous!’ she said. ‘There may not be an “I” in team, Ed, but if you change your perspective a bit, you’ll see that there is a “me”. You seem to have forgotten that.’

Ed stared at her.

James stared at her.

She wanted to crawl under the table and forget the meeting ever happened.

‘Rachel, is everything all right? I’m sensing there might be an issue here and, honestly, I need to know that nothing’s going to derail you. You and James will be working closely together on this project. Is there a problem?’

She was so incensed at Ed that she hardly heard what he’d just said.

‘We’ve got a shot at the design?’ James asked, finally stilling his pen.

‘You’ve got it. Congratulations. Sorry it’s taken so long, but I guess they’ve got a lot on. They just got back to me yesterday. They want to see your preliminary design on the,’ he consulted his notebook, ‘the twenty-first of next month, so you’ve got five weeks.’

Well not really, thought Rachel, since the office would shut down for Christmas in a few weeks. Ho Ho Panic Ho.

‘It’s all yours,’ Ed said. ‘Well, both of yours. So I need to know if there’s going to be any issue with working together. Rachel?’

‘What? No, no, of course not. That’s awesome, Ed, thanks!’ She couldn’t wait to call her mum.

‘James, what about you? All okay?’

He nodded. ‘Absolutely fine, Ed. Oh, and by the way, it really was Rachel who came up with the mood board, not me. And she’s a whizz at using the software and all the details that made the clients feel comfortable. If I wasn’t so literal – You want me to design? Okay, I design,’ he added in a simpleton’s voice, ‘I’d be good at all the touchy-feely stuff like she is.’

The unimportant stuff, he meant. By implication, the actual designs were his. That was bullshit.

‘Well as long as you deliver one great design next month, I don’t care how you divide up the work.’

Surely, Rachel thought, he meant one design each. ‘Ed, we’re each submitting our own ideas, aren’t we?’

There was that ‘me’ again. Maybe she did sound like she wasn’t a team player.

He shook his head. ‘No, you’ll submit one concept. You’re working together on this. Okay?’

‘Sure, fine,’ Rachel said. She felt anything but fine.

* * *

As soon as Ed left the conference room, James stuck his hand up for a high-five.

So he definitely wasn’t expecting Rachel to punch him in the arm.

‘Ow, Jesus, what was that for?’

‘I’m good at the touchy-feely stuff? James, you made me sound like your assistant.’

He looked stunned. ‘I did not, Rach. What are you talking about? It wasn’t fair that Ed was giving me credit for work you did. I was just setting the record straight. I was defending you.’

That was exactly the faux-chivalry crap he used to pull when they were seeing each other. He’d always known how to play a room. And the last thing Rachel needed was him wading in with his ‘help’ when it came to her job.

‘I don’t need defending, James. I can stand up for myself. I’m here because I’m a good architect, just like you, not some charity case who needs your protection.’

She felt so humiliated. The damage was done in Ed’s eyes. No matter what she said, now he’d think she was just trying to grab some credit. She didn’t want to have to fight for it. She shouldn’t have to.

All the happiness she’d felt at the beginning of the meeting was wiped away. Now she didn’t want to ring her mum. ‘You made me look like an idiot.’

‘I … what?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m really sorry you think that. You don’t look like an idiot and I really didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I’m not trying to protect you. I know you don’t need it. I just wanted to set the record straight with Ed, that’s all.’

The fight went out of her. ‘Can we please just get on with our jobs?’

He shrugged. ‘Are we good, Rach?’

‘Yes, we’re good.’

‘You’re sure? This isn’t one of those times when you say we’re good when you’re really still mad?’

She smiled. ‘So you do sometimes pay attention. No, I’m not mad. I might have overreacted.’ He’d never been malicious. Clueless and exasperating, yes, but not malicious.

‘Well, I am sorry. Do you want to go through some ideas now? I’ve been working on a few things, just some rough thoughts.’

‘I’ve got time. My office?’ she asked.

‘Or mine. Whatever.’

‘Okay, I’ll just run to the loo. See you in five minutes in my office then?’

She caught his smirk as she turned toward the loos.

Fine, she was being petty. She still had some power to win back.

She’d composed herself by the time James approached her desk with his pad.

‘I see you’ve been sketching too,’ he said, trying to get a look at the drawings already on her desk.

‘Just a few ideas,’ she said, covering the pages as he sat down.

‘I guess if we’re working together now we should probably stop seeing each other as competitors.’

‘I don’t think we’re competitors.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Do you?’

He shook his head. ‘Nuh uh, we’re a team. Just like Ed said. So let me see what you’ve got.’

‘Let me see yours first.’

If they were feral dogs they’d be circling each other with menace. Grudgingly, they traded books.

Suspicion hadn’t always been the cornerstone of their relationship. There had been a time when she’d trusted him with, well, if not her life then at least her naked sleeping person. For much of that year they were as close as two people could be. How could they not be? They were great friends nearly from day one in the office together. And they’d made good lovers nearly from night one in bed together. Rachel felt like she’d hit the lottery – a boyfriend that she could kiss at work. Bonus.

But the relationship kept mucking up the rest of it, so of course it wasn’t that easy. If it had been, they’d be swapping notebooks over breakfast instead of treating it like a hostage situation.

Rachel scanned his drawings to get a feel for the overall look. It was that first glance that set the tone for the client’s impression. You only got one chance to make it.

Then she studied them more closely. She knew he was doing the same thing to her designs. She didn’t dare look up until she was finished.

‘They’re pretty different from mine,’ she finally said.

‘That’s an understatement. We couldn’t be farther apart if we were drawing from different briefs.’

Rachel studied his sketches again. ‘It goes this way up, right?’ James’s building barely had any solid walls. It looked like a pair of glassed-in Brutalist car parks. ‘Well I am surprised by your interpretation,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘It’s all about bringing the outside inside.’ He looked very pleased with himself.

‘It’s not what the brief asked for,’ she pointed out.

‘Yes, it was. It said that we should work with materials that are consistent with the surroundings.’

‘Meaning what? Working with air? The sky? The fluffy white clouds? We’re not designing a house in the Caribbean. It’s a London office. We have to be practical.’

‘The brief didn’t say to be practical. It said it has to be functional. This is functional.’

‘Oh really. How are they supposed to get from one building to another? Swing over on a rope?’

‘You’re one to talk about practical. Were you trying to design a giant doorstop? Yours looks like the cheese grater fell over.’

Rachel had drawn an elegant building that tapered from the pavement on one end to twenty-one floors high at the other.

‘And what’s this supposed to be?’ he continued.

‘It’s an aluminium membrane encasing the external lifts. The brief said to be fun.’

‘That means interesting paint, not a water slide down the outside of the building,’ he said.

‘Clearly we’ve got different interpretations of the brief.’

‘Clearly. Maybe we should let Ed decide.’

‘No way, James. He’s given us this chance to design for one of the firm’s best clients. We’ve only got a little over a month to do it. How would it look if we can’t even agree on the basics? We’ve got to figure this out for ourselves.’

‘Flip a coin?’

‘Not funny.’

That was the trouble with working with your ex, thought Rachel. All the things you’d normally not have to deal with any more – the arguments, annoying habits and, in their case, competitiveness – were still there. And without any sex to compensate.

The idea of going out with James might have been fantastic way back when, but the reality gave Rachel the kind of aversion therapy that people paid good money for. She hoped his RecycLove assessment had space for essays.

No, she conceded as he took back his drawings. That wasn’t really fair. He hadn’t always been a horrendous boyfriend. For every time he’d made her want to throttle him there were probably three when they’d enjoyed themselves. In meteorological terms, he was generally fine with outbreaks of blustery showers. But she’d still got soaked, and that put her off him in a matter of … okay, fine, it took months.

Chapter Nine
Sarah

Sarah’s brother had a rotten sense of timing. If you wanted someone to spoil your punchline, turn the room awkward with a single question or, in her case, ring the bell when her hands were covered in a papier-mâché of eggy flour, he was your man. With a sigh, she scrubbed her skin. Pasta dough made superglue look like children’s paste.

‘Just a sec!’ she shouted, even though there was no way he could hear her all the way upstairs at the front of the house.

‘You’re early,’ she said by way of greeting.

Robin leaned in to kiss his sister’s cheek. ‘Nice to see you too. You’ve got something on your face.’

He pointed, not moving to wipe it off. It probably looked like something had come out of her nose.

‘Sorry, I’m in the middle of the pasta.’

‘Home-made pasta? Is it a special occasion?’

‘Can’t I do something nice for my only brother?’

Of course, she wasn’t just doing something nice for her only brother. She planned to ambush him while he was in a carb coma.

She didn’t usually have to stuff Robin full of spaghetti alla Genovese to ask for favours. They’d always been close, and especially so since their mum died. But Sarah knew he wasn’t going to be keen to do what she wanted without a lot of persuasion.

‘Drop your coat and stuff on the sofa.’ She kicked her running shoes under the coffee table. ‘I’ve just got to finish kneading the dough and we can eat in about an hour.’

He sidestepped the reading lamp’s wire that trailed across the sitting room floor. ‘This place is a deathtrap.’

‘But it’s our deathtrap and we love it.’

‘I brought wine,’ he said as he followed her down to the kitchen. ‘You want some, right?’ He began flinging the drawers open like he lived there, which was fine with her. Wall-to-wall dereliction made everyone who entered feel at home. Maybe it reminded them of their student housing. Not for much longer though.

‘The opener’s in—’

‘What’s this?’

He held up The Great British Bake Off application.

‘It’s nothing. I was going to say the wine opener’s in the drawer to your left.’

‘Are you applying?’

‘No. It was Rachel’s stupid idea. Put it back in the drawer please.’

‘It’s not a stupid idea at all. You should do it. I love your baking.’

‘I doubt Paul Hollywood wants your opinion on it, but thanks. I’m not doing it.’ The way Sarah said it made him drop the subject.

Robin was two glasses into the Chianti by the time the water for the pasta started boiling in the huge pot. Both were ready for the next step.

‘So, I was thinking about Sissy,’ Sarah said, gathering the soft spaghetti strands from the broom handle where they’d been dangling since she’d pulled them from the pasta machine.

‘She was in cracking good spirits when I went up yesterday,’ he said, watching Sarah drop the pasta into the water.

‘I know. She’s been like that for the past few weeks. It’s probably because of that boyfriend. Have you met him?’

His expression darkened. ‘No, have you?’

Sarah shook her head, watching the timer. ‘Kelly says he’s very nice.’

‘I’m sure he is, for someone who wants to shag my little sister.’

He finished his wine with a gulp.

‘Anyway, Robin, she needs a holiday. So I was wondering … Maybe you and Lucy could take her somewhere? I’d love to plan something with her but I’ll be tied up with the builders for who knows how long. She really needs to get away.’

The builders were meant to arrive the first week in January to start the renovations. Rachel had done all the designs and Sarah was supposed to keep the team of builders under control. It was their way of paying for their share of the house since they hadn’t had as much cash as Catherine to contribute towards the purchase.

As she waited for her brother’s answer she realised she was holding her breath. She also knew that, if it were up to Robin alone, she’d be breathing fine.

‘I’m not sure that’ll work, Sarah. There’s Lucy to think about. It’s not that she doesn’t like Sissy. She’s just not completely comfortable with her yet. Give her some time to get used to Sissy.’

‘Robin, I don’t want to tell you how to run your life.’

She was definitely going to tell him how to run his life.

‘But she’s had over a year and Sissy shouldn’t need to be got used to. She’s a person. She’s your sister. If Lucy wants to be part of your life, she’s going to need to let Sissy into hers.’

He leaned back in the kitchen chair. ‘I know, and she will. She’s never been around someone with Down’s before. She just needs some more time. But I don’t think a week away together at this point is going to make them bond.’

Nor would keeping them apart. ‘So you won’t do it?’

‘Please, Sarah, try to understand. I know Lucy does your head in but I do love her. What if you and I at least take Sissy away for the weekend? You could get away for just a day or two, couldn’t you? Or I can take her myself if you’re busy?’

He looked so guilty that Sarah started feeling bad, but no, if she let him get off easily then he’d never force the issue with his girlfriend. If Lucy was going to be in Robin’s life then she had to accept them all. That was the deal.

‘It’s not the same as a proper holiday, Robin, and you know it. It’s been over a year since she’s been away.’

‘Look how well that turned out,’ he said.

Sarah grimaced at the memory.

Majorca had seemed like a good idea. Sissy would live on a sun lounger if she could get someone to deliver her toast to her, and though Sarah wasn’t much for the sun, she did love the warm weather. Robin had their mum’s paper-white skin but wanted to eat his way across the island.

They had walked out to the beach after lunch on their first day, laden with towels and sun cream and snorkelling gear. There hadn’t been many other people there but all the sun loungers were taken.

‘We’ll have to sit on the sand,’ Sarah said.

‘I don’t like the sand,’ said Sissy.

‘Neither do I but there aren’t any free chairs. It won’t matter too much. You’ll be in the water anyway.’

‘C’mon, Sissy, let’s swim,’ Robin said. ‘Race you in!’

Sissy ran into the sea, whooping as she went. As Sarah watched them she thought there was no doubt that they were all related. Robin had the same runner’s build and thick dark blond hair as Sarah, with Sissy’s round face and vivid green eyes. Their mum was never really far away.

She spread their towels on a patch of sand near some steep rocks. The hotel sat directly on the cove, which was just a few hundred metres across. The hot sun was tempered by a breeze off the water that blew snippets of laughter and conversation from the swimmers. Sarah threw herself onto her tummy with one of the Artists & Illustrators back issues she’d brought with her. A week of doing nothing but this! Bliss. She looked forward to these holidays as much as Sissy did.

She read the same paragraph again and again till the David Hockney article blurred. The next thing she knew she was being levered over onto her back.

‘Sissy, you’re soaking wet! And your hands are freezing.’

Laughing, she dripped seawater on Sarah’s face. ‘Come swim with me.’

‘Your lips are blue. Warm up in the sun first and then I’ll go in with you.’

She sat up. The sun had shifted position. ‘How long have you been in the water? I was dead tired.’

‘It’s nearly five now,’ said Robin, checking the watch in his bag. ‘Have you been asleep all this time? You should cover up. You look burned.’

She pulled the towel around her shoulders. They were already going stingy.

‘There are loads of restaurants along the beach,’ said Robin. ‘We should check one out for tea later.’

That was fine with Sarah. A few glasses of wine would take the sting out of her sunburn.

But they couldn’t agree on a restaurant. Sissy was happy with any place that served prawns. Sarah didn’t want to spend a fortune on their first night and Robin had his heart set on a restaurant directly on the water. Nothing made them all happy.

‘But we’re paying for the view,’ Sarah complained as Robin loitered in front of one beachfront bistro. ‘The food probably isn’t even good.’

‘There wouldn’t be anyone inside if the food wasn’t good.’

‘Maybe they’re all suckers like you, here for the sunset.’

‘And the prawns.’ He pointed to the menu. ‘Look, Sissy, they’ve got prawns.’

‘I want to go here,’ Sissy said. Robin smiled.

Sarah shot him a look over their sister’s head. Dirty tricks.

She was wrong about the wine. It just made her tipsy and aching. But she was right about the food. It was expensive, with Robin gorging on the ceviche like he was the king of Atlantis.

They went to bed with full tummies and empty wallets.

‘Are you awake?’ Sissy whispered into Sarah’s ear the next morning.

She could see daylight through her eyelids but she knew better than to open them. Her only chance of any kind of lie-in at all was to play dead.

Tap tap tap. ‘Sarah, are you awake?’ She didn’t bother whispering this time.

Sarah kept her eyes screwed shut. ‘No. I’m sleeping. What time is it?’

‘The sun’s up. You’re not sleeping. You’re talking.’

‘Thanks to you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

They were on the beach before most of the other guests had finished breakfast.

Unfortunately most of the other guests were German.

‘Here,’ said Sissy, choosing three of the sun loungers with umbrellas. ‘For your burn.’

‘That’s very thoughtful, Sissy, but we can’t sit there. People have already put their towels down.’

‘But they’re not here.’

‘I know, but they’ve reserved the seats.’

Sarah knew how stupid that sounded. How was she supposed to explain about this early morning Continental reservation system? Sissy was a linear thinker and didn’t usually break the rules. And since there was no actual rule about reserving sun loungers …

Sissy moved the resident towel to the sand, laid out her own and settled down with a contented sigh. Sarah knew her sister. It would take an Act of Parliament to move her. So she painfully lowered herself into the next lounger over.

‘What are you going to say to the people who come out to sit in their chairs?’ Robin asked.

‘I’ll say that my sister rightly said that beach chairs can’t be reserved. They’re for people to sit in. Are you joining us?’

‘I’ll have a swim first.’

In other words, he was leaving Sarah to face the angry tourists. ‘Coward.’

He jogged to the water and threw himself in.

‘Can I swim too?’ Sissy asked.

‘Twenty more minutes, I think. Just till your breakfast digests. Robin stopped eating before you did.’

Sissy took Robin’s watch from his bag to count down the minutes.

Sarah was shrouded from head to toe from the sun but still enjoying the already warm morning. She watched a couple of eager swimmers who, like Robin, were having a post-breakfast dip.

Suddenly their brother stopped swimming. He must have got a cramp. It was shallow enough for him to stand up, but he looked scared.

Sarah sat straighter in her chair. What was he afraid of?

He started swinging his arms, rushing for the shore.

Were there sharks?

Jellyfish?

‘Robin, what is it?!’

Instead of answering he darted towards the rocks to the left. Then he wheeled around and started running towards them.

But he didn’t make it.

As he neared, he slowed.

Then he crouched, still walking, with a look of horror on his face.

‘I’m going to …’

He squatted.

His face contorted with a mix of mortification and relief.

Right there on the beach in the glare of the sun, in front of the German tourists who were just emerging from breakfast, Sarah’s brother shat his swim trunks.

‘Don’t just sit there!’ he shouted. ‘Give me a towel.’

And a spade to cover his … tracks.

Half an hour later Sarah was paralysed with cramp too, but at least she made it to the room. Just.

That restaurant was emptying more than their wallets.

Luckily Sissy wasn’t sick. Her squeamishness about raw fish saved her from the fate of her shitting siblings. But they couldn’t leave her to fend for herself on the beach while they dealt with the aftermath of bad seafood. It would have been cruel to make her stay in the room with them on her only proper holiday, so they had no choice but to take turns on the beach, ready to dash to the loo at the next eruption.

Sissy chose a different sun lounger each morning, tipping the towels onto the sand. Unfortunately she seemed to have a sixth sense about the towel’s owner. It was always the same German man. By mid-week, when Robin and Sarah were feeling nearly normal again, he no longer bothered to remonstrate with their stubborn sister, but silently collected his towel and moved along the beach.

They wouldn’t be going back to that hotel.

‘I know it’s not ideal,’ said Robin. ‘But having a day away, or maybe a weekend, is the best I can do right now. I’ll sort out a week in the new year, I promise. I can take Sissy myself if I need to. I know how important it is to her.’

‘You are still planning to come over for Christmas, aren’t you?’

‘Of course, I’ll be here.’

It was a new-ish tradition since their mum died. Rachel and Catherine both went home to their families. They always invited her but she wanted to be with Sissy and Robin. So they came to stay for Christmas Eve through Boxing Day and she cooked a feast. They fought over board games and ate their weight in Celebrations. ‘All three nights?’ She knew she was pushing her luck.

‘Definitely,’ said Robin. ‘Though Lucy will just come on Christmas night and stay for Boxing Day if that’s all right.’

It was more than all right. She made a face that she hoped passed for regret. ‘Too bad she can’t come the whole time, but I understand.’

Robin laughed. ‘I bet you’re really broken up about it.’

As she stirred the home-made pesto into the hot pasta, she thought, at least he’s coming for Christmas. I’m prepared to let Sissy’s holiday go. For now.

‘Wow, this is good,’ she said, when she slurped in the first long strands.

‘You’re not supposed to compliment your own cooking, you know. But yeah, you’ll make someone a nice little wifey one day. If you ever leave the flat.’

‘I’ll have you know that I’m joining Catherine’s website with Rachel.’

‘You’re kidding!’

If only, but Rachel wouldn’t let her get out of it. ‘Thanks for that vote of confidence.’

‘You’ll be a star, I’m sure. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I never pegged you for an internet dater.’

‘Rachel’s making me. Speaking of which, someone has to join with me. A man.’

‘Don’t look at me. I’m taken.’

‘I mean someone I’ve dated. I was thinking about Sebastian. Do you think he’d do it? Is he even still single?’

Robin laughed. ‘What do you think?’

‘Of course he is,’ they said together.

He took out his phone. ‘Here’s his number. Definitely get in touch. I think it’s a great idea, you online dating. You’ve barely been out since Mum died. You should stop punishing yourself.’

‘I’m not punishing myself. I’ve just been busy.’

‘Having a relationship with your oven isn’t the same as having one with a person, Sarah.’

Like she sat around all day icing cupcakes. He never seemed to realise how busy she actually was. She wanted to see Sissy a lot, but that meant less time for everything else. Add holding down a job and, soon, renovating a house and then see how much time was left for a relationship.

‘Shut up and eat your pasta,’ she told him instead.

Chapter Ten
Catherine

Catherine hurried to the bar, wishing she’d changed into her ballerina flats for the walk. But after feeling frumpy in her jumper the last time she met Richard, she was back in uniform. The gunmetal grey suede heels perfectly matched her wrap dress. They were worth the bunion-bashing.

Richard hadn’t asked her for drinks in months before his wedding announcement. Then dinner with Magda and now this. It could only mean one thing. He had news, and she just bet it wasn’t good. She still felt strangely unsettled after meeting him and Magda. Nothing concrete had put her off, just a sixth sense. It was the same sense making her suspicious now.

At least Magda wasn’t joining them.

Her anger flickered when she saw that he hadn’t yet turned up. What was so important in his life that he got to be late?

At first she’d genuinely believed that his other work commitments were the sole reason for his dwindling commitment to RecycLove. But there’d been too many flimsy excuses. He’d definitely become more selfish since meeting Magda.

She felt like telling him that. They were business partners first and foremost. She’d have no trouble speaking to one of her staff who wasn’t pulling their weight.

Ten minutes passed with no sign of him.

Richard, you’re so rude, she texted. I’m leaving in two minutes if you’re not here.

She heard a phone ping behind her.

‘I got our wine,’ he said, setting the ice bucket on the table and kissing her cheek. He smelled of an unfamiliar cologne that made her think of car fresheners.

‘You’re late.’

‘Nice to see you too. And I’m not late. I was in the building, at the bar getting our drinks.’

‘I didn’t see you there.’

‘That’s because you’re too vain to wear your glasses.’ He poured the wine.

‘You know I hate it when you order for me.’

It was a habit he’d carried over from their marriage.

‘You always drink white. What’s got you in such a strop tonight?’

‘I don’t have a lot of time,’ she snapped. ‘I have to meet Rachel in an hour. And you are late.’

‘I feel sorry for Rachel then. You’re in a mood. Cheers. So how was your day, dear?’

It was no use. Richard never rose to argumentative bait. He was the worst person imaginable to pick a fight with. ‘It was busy, as usual,’ she said, reaching for her wine. He was right. It was exactly what she wanted.

‘Because of the new clients?’

‘Partly.’

‘And the makeover service, I guess. I’ve been thinking. We should roll it out to everyone.’

‘Everyone?! Richard, do you realise how much more work that would mean?’ She could barely get through her day as it was.

‘You could charge for it, of course. Then you could hire more consultants. And you said yourself that it wasn’t taking too much time.’

‘Yes, for two clients. It would be too much for the whole business.’

That was so typically Richard. He’d always underestimated the details.

Her mind flicked back to their move to America. Case in point.

Richard had made everything sound so simple when he got the offer to work in Washington DC. It was an adventure and she was welcome to come along.

‘Come along?’ she’d asked. ‘Come along?! What is that supposed to mean? Come along as what, exactly?’

‘Well, as my girlfriend, at least for now,’ he’d said, looking perplexed. ‘We don’t really have time to get married before we go. We’ll have to do it there. Or fly back to the UK after I start work if you want.’

‘You’re asking me to marry you?’ she’d whispered.

‘Well I assumed we would. Didn’t you?’

So that was her marriage proposal. Well I assumed we would.

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