EVA WOODS grew up in Ireland and now lives in London, where she writes and lectures on creative writing. She likes wine, pop music and holidays, and thinks online dating is like the worst board game ever invented.

To Diana Beaumont, who makes me a better writer

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1: Interrupted Routines

Chapter 2: Pickled Eggs and Popcorn

Chapter 3: The Internet Wizard

Chapter 4: The Accidental Proposal

Chapter 5: A Decaf No-Syrup Low-Fat Soy Latte

Chapter 6: The Ex Factor

Chapter 7: How Everyone Met Everyone

Chapter 8: Four Dates and a Social Funeral

Chapter 9: The Madwoman in the Attic

Chapter 10: Broccoli in the Bathtub

Chapter 11: Drowning in a Vat of Rescue Remedy

Chapter 12: War and Piss

Chapter 13: Bumhead and Eggface

Chapter 14: Undercover Cheerleader

Chapter 15: The Dirtiest Martini

Chapter 16: Triple Word Scores

Chapter 17: The Love Algorithm

Chapter 18: The Leather Ceiling

Chapter 19: Bling the Merciless

Chapter 20: My Miniature Heart

Chapter 21: Jurassic Garden Centre

Chapter 22: Suggestive Topiary

Chapter 23: The Awkward Makeover

Chapter 24: The Final Showdown

Chapter 25: The Incident

Chapter 26: The Dating Dessert Buffet

Chapter 27: How Voldemort met Chewbacca

Chapter 28: Bean Counting

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Marnie

‘Will all passengers please fasten their seat belts; the captain has now started our descent…’

She ignored the announcement for as long as possible. After all, when you were running away—when you had nowhere else to go—there was no hurry to arrive. Only when the air hostess came to tell her off did she grudgingly belt up, and take out her headphones and open her window blind. From above, London was grey. Like something shrivelled, shivering in the January air. She wasn’t sure why she was coming back. Not home—she didn’t know exactly where home was right now.

The plane banked lower through freezing winter fog. Around her people began to gather their possessions, crumple up their rubbish, stretch their legs and arms. Looking forward to a new city. Buckingham Palace. The Tower of London. Madame Tussauds.

Not her. She was terrified. But if her mother had taught her anything, it was this: always get your game face on. And so she put on her huge sunglasses, despite the gloom, and brushed in-flight food from her carefully put-together outfit, reapplied red lipstick. Was the cape-coat too much? The dress too bright? No time to change now. She took out her phone and composed a tweet. Hitting the tarmac! Can’t wait to see you all, London! xx.

She had a moment to think of what she’d left, and feel the tears push at her eyes for the tenth time that journey. Game face. She pasted on a smile. The tannoy dinged, and the grey ground came into sight. She was back.

Chapter 1 Interrupted Routines

Helen

How many texts do you get in an average day? How many emails, Facebook alerts, tweets? Most get instantly forgotten—your friend obsessing about their weight or if their boss spotted them on Facebook (ironically), that marketing newsletter you keep meaning to unsubscribe from, a celebrity’s breakfast on Instagram. But sometimes you get a message that’s more than this.

This message might not say anything special. At first you might even ignore it, roll over and go back to sleep, slip your phone into your bag, forget about it. But although you won’t know it at the time, the message is the start of something that means that your life will never be the same again.

Of course, at least 99.99999 per cent of them are total rubbish, but still. You can never quite be sure.

* * *

Helen was woken by the buzz of her phone, shooting upright in bed, groping on the bedside table among the TV remote, the control for the windows blinds, the tissues, the hand cream, and the framed photo of her cat—her flat was somewhere between NASA launch control and the Pinterest board of a forty-something spinster. She blinked at the phone. Read the message again. Emitted a small ‘huh’ to the empty space beside her in the bed, then checked the time: 7.45 a.m. Only a person of deep selfishness would text a freelancer at 7.45 a.m.

The message stayed on the screen, burned behind her eyes. Her first thought was: She’s back. Hello, Marnie, goodbye non-interrupted sleep. Her second thought was: Bloody hell! She’s back! A flicker of something came and went in her stomach—excitement. Nerves. Something else that she couldn’t quite identify. Then she sat up and started Googling bars, restaurants, and detox treatments.

* * *

There’s a saying that if knowing someone doesn’t change you as a person, then they’re not a true friend, just an acquaintance. Helen would have added to this. If knowing someone didn’t permanently make you feel like you were about to get on a roller coaster—excited, terrified, and with the slight possibility of serious injury—then they weren’t a true friend.

She got up on the dot of 8 a.m.—no need to vary the Routine yet—and commenced her morning. It was a Tuesday, so she washed her hair, flossed her teeth, and shaved her legs. She rubbed in a deep conditioning mask, setting her alarm for exactly four minutes, then spent that time looking into the mirror at her flushed face and chanting, ‘I am successful. I am happy. I am fine on my own.’

She wasn’t convinced by the affirmations—she didn’t feel all that successful or happy. But she was most definitely on her own.

She cleaned out the shower and sprayed shine mist, then gave the sink a quick rinse and gathered up the towels and sheets for the wash, as she did every week. Then she made coffee in her cafetière, gleaming beside the sink where she’d washed it last night, and boiled an egg for exactly five minutes, putting the toast in at the three-minute mark. During all this time she didn’t glance at her phone once.

Discipline. That was the key.

At 8.46 a.m., Helen judged it was a good time to text back. Hi! Great news. Shall I round up a fun posse? As her finger hovered over the send button, she debated asking where Marnie was staying, then didn’t. She probably had something sorted, a squat or a house-sitting job or a boyfriend she’d already picked up in Victoria Coach Station.

The answering text came straight back, which meant Marnie had just arrived, and wasn’t sure what she was doing. Yeah! 2nite if poss? Would love to c u all xx.

Helen opened up the Facebook Messenger group she used every day to chat with Rosa and Ani. Guess what! M’s back.

She imagined them picking the message up: Rosa at her desk in the newspaper office, Ani on her way to court maybe. Both dressed smartly, with lanyards and coffee and bright work faces. Ani came straight back. Whaaaat? Out of the blue like that? Any word on where she’s been all this time?

Dunno. I guess we’ll find out. Dinner tonight?

Tonight tonight? As in later on this same day?

Oh come on. Live a little. You can get out at eight surely?

Ani’s reply came back. I’m meant to go round to my parents. Crafting ornamental flowers for my cousin’s engagement party while answering 10,000 questions about when it’s going to be my turn.

Helen typed: Wouldn’t you rather come for a lovely dinner instead of that?

Ani: I would literally rather staple my eyes shut instead of that. So—count me in, I guess. What about you, Rosa?

Rosa answered. Am typing from under my desk, guys. Again. Have started keeping tissues down here.

In Rosa’s open-plan office, under her desk was one of the few places she could hide to cry. Which was what you needed to do a lot when you’d just split up with your husband, and said former husband worked on the other side of the room.

Would a drink cheer you up? Helen quickly typed. Totally understand if not.

Why not, said Rosa. Career and marriage in tatters, might as well work on social life. Newly single Rosa was prone to such pronouncements. G2G. Need to redo make-up before David comes past.

Take care, sweets, said Helen. Remember you’re amazing and we love you and you don’t need him.

G2G too, I’m due in court, Ani typed. Acrimonious divorce hearing. At least David didn’t sleep with your sister, Rosa.

Probably only because I don’t have a sister.

Helen signed off with expressions of sympathy and good luck. Miraculously, she’d managed to gather up all four of them on a weekday night, in London, in January, with just a few hours’ notice. That seemed enough of an achievement for one day, but work called.

She clicked on her inbox, taking a deep breath. She loved working from home, couldn’t imagine going back to an office, but you had to have rules. Getting dressed was one, even if it was in pyjamas. Another was not letting what she did affect her life—but this was easier said than done.

Her first email said: I think my husband has been meeting someone from your site. Can you give me his details? It’s disgusting. I don’t know how you can work on something like this.

Helen’s heart squeezed. Finding out that the man you loved was seeing someone else, kissing them, holding them, sending flirty messages: it wasn’t that she couldn’t imagine it. She could, and only too well. But this was her job. She typed out the standard response. We’re sorry but we can’t give out information about our members. We’d suggest you talk to your husband—it could just be curiosity, or a cry for help. Maybe you can spice things up a bit?

She took another deep breath and added the rest. She hated to, but her boss insisted. PS—you can always sign up with us yourself!

Helen pressed send. Some days, most days, she hated what she did, hated herself for doing it. It certainly wasn’t what she’d expected when she’d applied for the in-hindsight-too-good-to-be-true homeworking job two years ago, but by the time she’d found out it was already too late. And here she was, stuck. She glanced at the masthead of the website she ran. Bit on the Side. The UK’s top dating site for people in relationships.

Another day at the office. Everything was the same as usual, except that Marnie was back.

* * *

Ani.

Ani put her phone away as she approached court. Her client was waiting on the steps, smoking into the breeze. Ani tried not to wince as he leaned in to kiss her. She preferred a nice brisk handshake or better still, no physical contact at all. ‘Mark, hi. How are you feeling?’

‘Can’t wait to get it over, like, so I never have to see that bitch again.’

‘Well, you will have to see her if Taylor and Ashley end up living with you.’ (Which they were asking for. Which she’d advised against.) She kept on her smile.

‘Sure, sure. I mean—I just wanna make sure I get my rights, you know? They’re my kids too.’

Ani told herself it was not her job to pass judgement. It wasn’t her fault if Mark’s ex-wife started crying the minute they went into court, or if Mark tried to look down the blouse of their barrister, Louise, or if the opposing barrister was twenty minutes late, causing them all to sit in awkward silence, the judge leafing through the docket with increasing irritation and saying things like ‘What is PlayStation?’ or ‘Mr Smith allowed his daughter to watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians for four hours? What is a Kardashian?’

Eventually, Louise started to say, ‘Sir, perhaps we should…’ and just then someone swept in in a flurry of expensive wool coat.

‘So sorry, sir. We had to suspend a hearing, my client fainted.’

Yeah right, thought Ani, who was wise to such tricks. The barrister would be cramming as many cases as possible into the day, trying to bump up his income. She looked up and her irritation grew exponentially. He was about thirty-five, tanned even though it was January, and his green eyes stared out from under expensively cut black hair. Handsome, and entirely aware of it.

‘All right, Mr Robins, proceed,’ said the judge, mollified. Ani looked at her papers—Adam Robins. He cast her a glance as he glided into his seat, as if to say he could wipe the floor with them without even trying.

And he was right. Louise was good but Adam Robins annihilated her, listing all Mark’s transgressions—shagging Denise’s sister under the Christmas tree, blowing the kids’ present money on Call of Duty 4, telling Denise he’d get her a gift subscription to Weight Watchers because ‘that’s what you really need, love’.

Mark occasionally protested: ‘I never!’, ‘Well, she always said she were fat!’, or ‘It weren’t full sex, just oral’, but Ani was surprised when, at the end of it, he still got part-time access to the kids. He trailed out muttering in an unconvincing manner about men’s rights. ‘This is a disgrace, I’ll be getting onto Fathers for Justice.’

‘They disbanded,’ she said crisply, as they stood on the court steps. ‘Well, Mark, it wasn’t what you wanted, but it’s the best result possible, really.’

Undaunted, he said, ‘S’pose. Listen, you busy Saturday?’

She misunderstood at first. ‘I don’t work weekends, and anyway…’

‘Nah, I meant you and me. Curry, pint. You know some good places for a curry I bet. What’s it short for, by the way? Ani’s not an Indian name?’

She stared at him for a minute, speechless. A voice cut in. ‘Anisha. Sorry, Ms Singh, I mean. I just wanted to say: no hard feelings?’

It was the bloody barrister, Adam Robins, sweeping his dark hair off his face. Mark shook his outstretched hand, seemingly unperturbed by the character assassination Robins had just carried out on him in court. Ani glared at him. How dare he be so handsome and so confident. ‘Mr Robins, is it? Maybe you could try not to be late in future? My time is valuable too, you know.’

Adam Robins blinked. His eyes were the exact shade of green Fruit Pastilles. ‘I’m sure it is—I know your hourly rates, after all.’

Mark’s eyes widened. ‘You’re saying she…’

‘For law.’ Ani turned her back on the barrister. To Mark she said briskly, ‘I’m leaving now. I have other clients.’

‘Can I get your email then? Personal, like.’

‘Sure. It’s ani@notinamillonyearspal.com. Do contact me for the next divorce you will almost inevitably have.’

As she stomped off, she heard Adam Robins make a small noise that could have been a laugh, and Mark asking, ‘Is that all lower case, you reckon?’ It was unprofessional, but she didn’t care. And that was why she was, at thirty-two, more single than a single LP—no B-side—and why when she saw her parents at the weekend she’d have to once again tell them that, no, she wasn’t seeing anyone, and no, she still didn’t want them to find her a nice boy, thanks all the same. Because how could you believe in love when you spent all day sweeping up the smashed remnants of it?

At least she had dinner tonight to take her mind off things. After all, if there was one person who was more terminally single than Ani, then that was Marnie.

* * *

Rosa.

Rosa was sitting at her desk again, running through her mental checklist. Eye make-up smears? Check, she’d stopped wearing it two weeks ago, after she’d interviewed a mid-list actress without realising she had massive smudges all down her cheeks like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Snot on face, dress, hair? Check, she’d taken to carrying around so many tissues that were she to fall out of an aeroplane she would probably survive without even minor bruising. Her floral dress, cardigan, and thick tights might have caused her fashion-forward boss to visibly wince that morning, but at least she looked respectable. Was she currently making loud gasping sob noises without even noticing? Check, unless she’d gone deaf at that frequency. All was fine, or at least as fine as it could be given her husband had left her two months before.

She looked at the copy on her screen. Star of TV cop drama ’Aving a Laugh Natasha Byrd lived up to her name at our brunch. Picking at a salad, she told me she eats only once a day and…

Crap. Like jungle drums, she knew when David was approaching. Rosa’s desk was right on the route to the main meeting room, and the editorial conference must have ended early—most days she hid in the loos at this time, waiting for him to get safely back to his desk. Only one thing for it. After grabbing her phone, she slid gently to her knees and ducked under the desk again. It was cosy down there, among the trailing leads and decades-old dust. It was fast becoming her new favourite place.

‘…So I think let’s go big on detox for Jan—more quinoa, more mung—what’s the newest grain, anyone?’

Ow! The castor of Rosa’s chair, pushed aside by unseen hands, rolled over her thumb. ‘Holy CRAP,’ she yelled, before she could stop herself.

Oh no. ‘Bloody hell, are you OK?’ She peered up to see Jason Connell, the new whizz-kid editor who’d been poached from clickbait site Listbuzz, along with her boss, Suzanne, who was in metal-look leggings and on a two-week Botox cycle.

‘What are you doing, Rosa?’ demanded Suzanne. ‘Aren’t you a bit old for hide-and-seek?’

But Rosa could only look at the third person in the group, in his skinny red jeans and clashing yellow T-shirt. The man she’d married five years ago, the man she’d intended to spend her life with. Who she’d never expected to see wearing red jeans, or packing up his collection of vinyl and moving out, or for that matter, sleeping with an intern. She’d advised him against the jeans, but he’d bought them anyway, and in retrospect that should have been a sign.

‘Rosa?’ David was staring down at her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine!’ She tried to summon every ounce of journalistic nous that might be left to her. ‘Um, it’s a new trend I’m testing. It’s called—head-desk-space.’

‘Head-desk-space?’ Suzanne’s over-plucked brows nearly met in the middle of her Botoxed forehead. She had no facial expressions left, so she had to inspire sheer terror through slight flares of her nostrils. It was a closely guarded secret—which meant everyone from the cleaner to the board members knew—that Suzanne had once been caught in flagrante with Bill McGregor, the married MD, in the old print rooms of the newspaper, and consequently could never be fired, despite being the personification of pure evil—the impressions on the evening edition had apparently left little to the imagination.

‘Yep. It’s a new meditation trend,’ said Rosa desperately. ‘You know, research shows mindfulness can boost performance at work by up to…um…forty-seven per cent.’

‘I like it,’ said the new editor. He loomed over Rosa—he must have been over six foot tall, and was built like a surfer, his wavy blond hair slightly too long and his tie slightly too loose for London. On a better day, when she wasn’t hiding under a desk being watched by her boss, his boss, and her soon-to-be ex-husband, Rosa might have found his Australian accent sexy. ‘It’s a good angle. Ways to work smarter, not harder. Can we do a feature?’

‘Sure!’ said Suzanne gamely. ‘Whatever you like, Jason. We’ll get right on it.’ But her nostrils said—I will kill you, Rosa. I will crush you like I crush fresh lemon for my morning detox. Rosa, however, could still only look at David. He gave her a quick glance—was that pity?—then turned and walked away. She’d been right. Those jeans really did make him look like a Christmas turkey.

Jason Connell was still watching her curiously. She tried to communicate with a smile that she was a slick, totally professional, valued member of staff—not easy when you were hiding under a desk. He hunkered down to her, and gently flicked her long dark plait. She gaped.

‘You had dust in it.’ Then he smiled—was that a wink?—and went back to his office.

Rosa resumed her seat. Only four hours and twenty-three minutes before she could leave the office, have a drink and, with any luck, obliterate the bit of her brain that would remember this encounter. And Marnie was back! Marnie was sure to have some advice about how to cope with working in the same office as your ex. After all, there was no dating situation on earth she hadn’t experienced.

Chapter 2 Pickled Eggs and Popcorn

Helen

‘The reservation was like for seven?’ The waiter gave Helen a scowl as he took her to the table (not actually a table but an old school desk, this being a trendy London eatery).

‘I know, I’m just early.’ Twenty minutes early. Helen-time. She wanted to check it wasn’t too noisy or too busy, and that they had a good table, not too close to the door or loos. It had to be nice, since she was dragging Ani and Rosa out on a school night. And things with Marnie might be a little weird, after her disappearing act. She felt another flare of nerves in her stomach.

‘Because like I can’t hold the table?’

Helen looked around the empty place—it was a Tuesday night in January after all—and tacked on a conciliatory smile. ‘Of course. They won’t be long, I promise.’ The waiter sniffed. He had tattoos up both arms and one of a butterfly on his cheek.

She wondered who should sit where—if only it was acceptable to make out place cards for casual social occasions! But despite it all, Helen was excited. For months now she’d had a slight, a very very slight, third-wheel feeling. Rosa and Ani had met in uni, and even though they’d all been friends for years, Helen was always aware she was the newcomer. But Marnie—well, ever since day one of primary school, Marnie and Helen had come as something of a package deal. ‘Like those twins, where one is living inside the other and slowly eating it,’ as Marnie had once cheerfully put it. Before Marnie left, the four of them had been a tight-knit group, where no one ever got left out or felt alone. Maybe they could go back to that? Helen’s stomach dipped again. So many things had happened since then. It seemed unlikely.

Rosa was the second to arrive, unwinding her long scarf from her plait. ‘I couldn’t stay another second,’ she declared. ‘I swear, working with David, it’s like—’ She mimed a rope around her neck. ‘I’m going to have to change jobs. Go back to Puzzle Weekly or Knitting Times. Oh God. And today I actually had to fabricate a whole trend that helps you chill out at work.’

‘I’m sorry. Want some Rescue Remedy?’

‘Yes please.’ Rosa opened her mouth and Helen squeezed in a few drops from the yellow bottle.

‘Berocca?’

‘Go on then.’

Helen rooted around in the massive handbag she always carried. Ani called it the Doombag, because it contained solutions for everything that could possibly go wrong in life, short of full-scale nuclear war. Ani herself arrived just then, shouting into her phone. ‘Tell them the offer is derisory. Yes, that actual word. D-e- Can’t you just look it up?’ She waved over to them. ‘I have to go. Just get it sorted, will you?’

Rosa put a guilty hand over her fizzing orange drink. ‘It’s, um, a new cocktail?’

Ani raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t think caffeine is a good idea for you right now, judging by the manic texts I’ve been getting all day. How’s the fake trend?’

‘Booming,’ said Rosa glumly. ‘How was court?’

Ani took off her jacket, revealing a cream silk shirt and tweed skirt, and fluffed out her neat bob. ‘Well, we lost, and the opposing barrister was really hot—’

‘Ooh, was he?’

‘—yeah, so obviously I was really rude to him and basically called him a twat—’

‘Of course.’

‘—and then my sleazy client hit on me.’

‘Ew.’

‘Worse—I realised it was the first time anyone’s asked me out in months.’ She looked round. ‘No Marnie then?’

‘It’s only twenty past,’ said Rosa, checking her watch.

‘Will she show?’

‘Of course. She texted earlier.’ Helen wished she felt as confident as she sounded.

‘I bet she’s got a lovely tan,’ said Rosa, stabbing at the retro pickled eggs the waiter had just brought. ‘Maybe I’ll move to South America too. Leave behind horrible cold London and my horrible boss and horrible David. Marnie’s probably picked up some gorgeous Brazilian beach dude.’

‘Or dudess,’ Ani reminded them. ‘Remember that Dutch girl she went out with?’

‘Oh yeah.’ Rosa sighed. ‘God, I am such a dating novice.’

The waiter was eyeballing the empty place. ‘Are you expecting the rest of your party soon?’

‘Very soon. We’ll be happy to move if you fill up.’ Ani was pleasant and assertive—Helen resolved to copy her in future. ‘So Marnie’s been in South America all this time?’

Helen shrugged. ‘I think so. It was Argentina last I heard.’ Soooo gorgeous, the food is to die for, the kids are beautiful… Marnie’s life was like a travelogue, beamed out via Facebook and Twitter. Nothing ever went wrong. Every day was hashtag-blessed. But communication had been sporadic for a while now—Marnie too busy having the time of her life to get in touch, most likely.

Ani was looking at the menu. ‘Well, should we order? Oh, surprise, surprise, pulled pork. Tell me this, is there any un-pulled pork in the whole of London right now?’

Helen was starting to feel anxious, checking the time, when she realised—like the night bus you wait for so long you slip into a sort of hallucinatory state—Marnie was there.

* * *

There was something about Marnie. A shimmer in the air around her. Even though Rosa was sad and Helen was worried and Ani was tired, all three of them looked up as she came in, and one by one they smiled.

She was thin, was Helen’s first thought. Thin, and incredibly pale given she’d been travelling, and she’d cut her strawberry-blonde-copper-ginger hair into a short crop. It would have made someone else look like a dinner lady, but on Marnie it was cute, child-like yet sexy. She was wearing a vast cape, which again came out more catwalk trend than ‘Little Red Riding Hood: the London Years’, and a short dress the colour of sunshine. Her big green eyes flicked over them, faltered. ‘Guys, I’m late—I’m not used to the tube…’

Helen was on her feet, gathering her up. ‘Never mind. You’re here!’ Marnie smelled like she always did, of exotic spices and airport lounges. For a moment, Helen felt the name hover between them. Would Marnie mention Ed? God, she hoped not.

Marnie’s arms met behind Helen’s back, and she pulled away, staring. ‘Oh my God! Look at you!’

Helen blushed. ‘Oh. Yeah.’

‘How come you didn’t tell me?’

Helen didn’t say: Er, maybe because I haven’t heard from you in months. She said, ‘Oh, it’s no big deal. I just joined a gym and stuff.’

‘Um, hello, you must have lost, what—three stone?’

‘Four,’ said Ani. ‘She looks amazing, doesn’t she? Hey, it’s great to see you.’ Ani was on her feet now too, embracing the other side of Marnie, and Rosa draped herself over them, so the four women were enmeshed in a kind of eight-armed hug monster.

Marnie squeezed Ani: ‘God, you look like a grown-up, I love the suit,’ then kissed Rosa’s wan cheek: ‘Sweetie, I’m so sorry about David. I want to hear everything.’ Soon they were sitting down, and the waiter, suddenly happy and smiling after the application of Marnie’s magic smile and her warm, ‘Hi! How’s your day been?’ was bringing extra pickled eggs and sneaking them popcorn in little tin buckets.

‘Pulled pork,’ said Marnie, looked at the menu. ‘What’s that? Sounds like what they used to put in the ‘mystery meat’ sandwiches at primary school. I’m not paying £17.99 for school dinners, they can do one.’

The others burst out laughing. ‘Marnie,’ said Ani, raising her jam-jar cocktail. ‘London has missed you.’

* * *

It was almost as if Marnie had never been away, Helen thought, trying to manoeuvre her head-sized burger into her mouth. As if she hadn’t just left two years ago, without even saying goodbye, only surfacing to email from various exotic locales. Everyone was carefully not mentioning it, though Helen was dying to ask: Why did you go? Why didn’t you tell me? But then, she was keen to keep the conversation away from the events of two years ago. They’d just been listening to the sorry tale of Rosa and David’s breakup, retold for Marnie’s benefit.

‘…I’d no idea anything was even wrong. I just thought he was a bit stressed at work…’

‘Ah love, that must have been horrible.’

‘And this girl had started as an intern. Daisy. You know the sort, all cute and helpless and, um…twenty.’

(Cute and helpless was Marnie’s thing, and Helen had time to realise this, quickly panic, and then relax in relief. Marnie was not twenty, not even close.)

‘Ooooh, tell me he didn’t…’

‘It came up on his phone. He was too stupid to turn off the messaging…’

‘Oh my God, the utter dick.’

‘And I asked him and he said they were in love, and he was moving in with her—I mean, Jesus, she lives with four other students in some fleapit…’

‘I can’t believe it!’

‘And Mum and Dad, you know what they’re like, they think they’re so lefty and hip, then suddenly Mum’s crying on the phone to the rabbi and Dad’s down the synagogue with David’s uncle trying to sort it all out—they’re not even practising, it’s ridiculous…’

By the end of the story Marnie’s eyes were jewel-bright with tears, and Rosa was half crying, half laughing. ‘At least I kept the flat. And at least I never have to listen to his stupid Bob Dylan B-sides ever again. I guess, if I’m honest, I should have known he wasn’t happy. I mean, I actually had to beg him to have sex with me instead of watching Robson Green’s Extreme Fishing. But now I’m thirty-two, and I’m single again, and I have no idea what to do. How do you date? I don’t even know. You’re the dating expert—help me!’

Marnie swirled her glass of ‘Brigitte Bardot’s Knickers’ (it being against the law to have non-ironic cocktail names in London), a concoction of Campari, gin, and Fanta, and looked at Ani and Helen. ‘Hmmm. What about you two, any romance?’

When Marnie wasn’t there, Ani was too pessimistic to discuss her love life, Helen just didn’t date (because: reasons), and Rosa had been happily married until a few months ago. So at the question, a silence fell over them. Helen cleared her throat. ‘Ani got asked out by her client,’ she said.

Ani rolled her eyes. ‘Mr “I had sex with my kids’ auntie under the Christmas tree”, yeah, great. If I’m lucky he still has his Santa suit. Otherwise, no, still nothing that sticks. Mum and Dad are starting to despair of me, I think.’

‘And you, Helz?’

She went for an ironic shrug and ended up spattering chipotle mayonnaise on her chin. ‘Do Dr Derek Shepherd and Walter White, crack dealer, count as men? Because I’ve been spending a lot of time with them.’

‘No, box sets do not count.’

Helen squirmed. Marnie couldn’t know the real reason Helen hadn’t dated in two years. ‘Ach, it’s such a lot of hassle and heartache—tell her about your last date, Ani.’

‘The one where he took out his contacts and said, “You could be anyone now!”, then his cat bit me on the foot? I still have the scar.’

‘Not him, the other one.’

‘The one who took off his trousers and he was wearing Superman pants? Or the one who didn’t even have a bedroom? Honestly, he was living in an actual airing cupboard.’

‘I was thinking of Blubbing Ben, actually.’

‘Oh God, yes. Wait till you hear this, Marn.’ Ani launched into a story of a date she’d had recently, the punchline of which was ‘and then he spent the whole evening crying on my shoulder, and the worst bit was, it was a dry-clean-only top’.

Rosa shook her head over her ‘Brighton Rock and Roll’—peach schnapps, vodka, cream soda, a stick of actual rock to stir it. ‘I don’t know why you can’t just date someone nice, Ani.’

‘You sound like my mum. I’m trying to find someone nice—I date all the time. You guys don’t know what it’s like. I don’t want to put you off, Rosa, but if you decide to jump back into the water, well, online dating is like deliberately swimming into a big shoal of sharks.’

Marnie was nodding. ‘My friend Caty, do you remember her? The one who does reiki healing and has that weird little sausage dog? She was seeing this guy she met online, and it was all going really well, except he wouldn’t invite her to his place. He said his flatmates were always there, the place was a mess, he needed to clean up, blah blah. Then one day he says, fine, come round. So she goes, and it’s lovely. Like a really nice clean grown-up place. And the next morning they’re making waffles in the kitchen, and she’s in his shirt, just like in a romcom.’

‘With yoghurt?’ said Helen, transfixed despite herself by the image.

‘Yep. They are totally eating yoghurt. Probably he’s dabbed some on her chin and licked it off. Anyway, you can see where this is going.’

‘Oh no.’ Rosa buried her head in her hands.

‘Oh yes. So the door goes and it’s his wife. That’s right, she’s home early from her holiday. With the kids. So that’s internet dating,’ said Marnie grimly. ‘Every time you think it can’t get worse, you hit another rock bottom. A new low standard every time.’

‘It’s not all like that,’ Helen said. ‘I mean, I would know.’

‘Of course, I forgot you ran that dating site.’ No surprise—Helen never talked about her job. Because: more reasons.

‘How come none of us have ever used it? Maybe I should, now my husband’s left me for a teenager.’ Rosa was attacking her drink as if it had personally offended her.

Helen wished she hadn’t said anything. She usually succeeded in making her job sound so dull no one ever wanted to ask about it. ‘Um, well, it’s sort of a bit…niche.’

‘Trust me, Rosa, babe, you don’t want to go online,’ said Marnie, shaking her head. ‘No offence, Helz. I’m sure you do a great job. Rosa just needs to be eased in.’

‘None taken,’ she said, with huge relief. Mentioning her job, how stupid. That and Ed were two topics that needed to be avoided at all costs.

‘She’s right,’ said Ani, who was on her third ‘Why Hasn’t He Kahluaed?’ (Kahlua, pineapple juice, a dash of paprika.) ‘I went on Tinder, and I got chatting to this guy who seemed nice, so I asked him out, and he said could we just meet in a park so in case we didn’t like each other we could save money on drinks, and we met up and it was freezing and we walked round in the rain for half an hour and then he tried to shove his hand down my top.’

Helen no longer felt like drinking the rest of her ‘Sloe Dirty Orgasm’, a sloe-gin martini with an unfortunate splash of Bailey’s leaching through it. Across the table, Rosa was also looking crestfallen. ‘Sounds awful. Is there any point? I might just stay home and watch The Great British Bake Off, like the spinster I’m now inevitably to become.’

‘I’ve got a better idea.’ Marnie wiped the remains of her aubergine dip from her plate—as Ani pointed out, London food was more like Milupa every year. ‘Ladies—and sorry to lump you in, Rosa, babe—but am I right in thinking that what we have here are four totally single women?’

Helen hadn’t known Marnie’s romantic situation, was afraid to ask. And there was no need to usually—she would tell you herself, in Technicolor detail. ‘I guess so,’ she said cautiously, as Rosa slumped into her spicy coleslaw.

‘So why is it? Why are we all single? Look at us.’ Marnie spread her arms. Helen moved a glass out of her way. ‘We’re amazing, sassy women.’

‘That’s the problem,’ said Ani. ‘They don’t want sassy women.’

‘No,’ said Rosa gloomily. ‘They want twenty-year-olds who wear Miffy T-shirts to the office.’

Marnie said, ‘I bet that’s not true. You must all have one nice ex, who isn’t a total moron or douchebag.’

‘I’ve been with David since I was nineteen,’ said Rosa sadly. ‘I met him in a lecture, and then he showed me how to use the soup dispenser in the canteen. It was so romantic.’

Marnie’s gaze turned. ‘And you, Ani?’

‘Oh, I’ve dated loads of people, as you know. But I’m considering stopping it all and taking up stabbing myself in the eye with pencils instead.’

‘And were any of them nice?’

Ani shrugged. ‘A few were fine. Just no spark, you know. Nothing ever seems to get off the ground.’

‘Because she’s commitment-phobic,’ said Rosa, stabbing at her drink.

‘I’m not commitment-phobic! I’m just looking for something very specific.’

‘Which doesn’t exist. No one’s perfect, Ani.’

‘Well, I’m not giving up just yet. Believe me, when you handle as many divorce cases as I do, you want to get it right.’

Helen knew it was her turn next. She took a large bite of her burger, and a swill of ironic cocktail. ‘I don’t have any recent exes,’ she said, quickly. ‘I’ve sort of been off dating since you—since I last saw you. You know, keeping up with my busy schedule of Netflix and cleaning the bathroom.’

‘This whole time?’

That whole time, almost to the day. Deflect. ‘Well, more or less.’

Marnie wasn’t letting her off so easily. ‘But you could date if you wanted. You’re so pretty—isn’t she? And so nice.’ Ani and Rosa nodded agreement; Helen blushed into her cocktail. ‘See? And loads of boys have liked you. What about…’ Helen watched her friend mentally scroll through almost thirty years of history. ‘Donny Myers?’ she came up with, finally.

‘Oh for God’s sake. We were six!’

‘He asked you to marry him once, remember, with that note in assembly?’

‘Aw,’ said Rosa, sappily.

Helen held up her hands in disbelief. ‘Donnie Darko? You must be kidding me. Don’t you remember, he was the prime suspect when Hammy the Hamster went missing that time? And then no one would sit next to him at lunch for the whole rest of school?’

‘But apart from that, he was all right.’

‘Apart from suspected hamstercide? That’s like saying apart from those few hours, it was a lovely voyage on the Titanic.’

‘I’m sure I’m still friends with him on Facebook,’ said Marnie stoutly. ‘I could look him up. Don’t you want to meet someone?’

Ani shook her head. ‘We’ve tried. She doesn’t.’

‘She’s in a rut,’ said Rosa.

‘Hey, I like my rut,’ Helen said. ‘I’m thinking of getting it re-upholstered in fact. Maybe in a nice paisley.’ And she did like it—as ruts often were, it was very cosy and safe. Deflect, deflect. ‘What’s this all about, Marnie? Are you not dating anyone at the moment?’ If so, that was an unusual state of affairs. And hey, what about Ed? Why did you leave? What’s going on in your head?

Marnie sighed. ‘Oh, it’s a disaster out there. The last person I dated, Hamish was his name, totally gorgeous, seemed really into me, and then I go to meet him for our fourth date and he doesn’t even turn up.’

‘Hamish?’ Rosa frowned. ‘Were there not any hunky Latin lovers out there?’

‘Hmm?’ Marnie looked puzzled. ‘Oh! No, well, you know, there are lots of backpackers and that. Anyway, he won’t answer my emails or calls, just totally ghosts me.’

‘That sucks,’ said Rosa. ‘How rude!’

‘Par for the course sadly,’ said Ani. ‘More ghosts in London right now than in the whole of Ghostbusters.’

Marnie was nodding. ‘Guys. As you know, my love life has been…varied.’ There was a tactful silence. Helen ran through some of Marnie’s dates—the guy who literally went off to join the circus, the guy who bred guinea pigs in his bedroom, the guy who turned up to meet her high on ketamine… Not to mention Ed, of course. Which she was steadfastly not doing.

‘You’ve certainly given it a good go,’ said Ani kindly. ‘If dating was a job you’d be in a corner office right now.’

She meant it nicely, but there was another small silence—Marnie’s employment history was as long and chequered as her love life. She liked to describe herself as an artist when asked what she did, or sometimes a ‘world traveller’, which was a bit annoying seeing as it wasn’t an actual job, unless you were a Victorian lady of independent means and adventurous spirit, travelling with a feisty lesbian companion or dallying with the porters. Over the years, Marnie had attempted a variety of mad jobs—dog walker, life model, working in an occult bookshop—and even the odd proper one in a call centre or office. But they were thirty-two now. Helen wasn’t sure, but she suspected they were approaching the cut-off time between ‘charmingly whimsical’ and ‘forty-year-old still living in their parents’ garage’.

‘I’ve had enough,’ Marnie was saying. ‘I’m sick of moving about, different cities, different countries, meeting guys on Tinder, youth hostels, beaches… I want to find someone nice.’

Helen was afraid to say the next thing. ‘So what were you…?’

‘Guys, I’ve got the best idea.’

And there it was. The phrase that had prefaced most of the disasters of Helen’s life, from the Sun-In green hair incident of 1994, to the vodka and peach-schnapps vomit-off of 2003. But which had also heralded many of the best days, the laughing-till-you-fell-off-your-chair days, the most precious moments, Instagram-bright.

‘What?’ said Rosa, who was the kindest of them, but who’d also missed out on the most insane Marnie times by virtue of being at home with David cooking Nigella dinners and watching box sets of The West Wing.

Marnie said, ‘Well, we’re all single. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. Sorry, Rosa. But it’s true. And we’d all like to meet someone nice.’ Helen opened her mouth to say she didn’t want to meet anyone, nice or otherwise, then shut it again. ‘But Ani’s stories are scary—and me too, I’ve had some awful times online dating. You can’t be sure what you’re going to get.’ Marnie leaned in eagerly. There was a flush to her pale face, her green eyes glowing. ‘What I’m suggesting is this—we each set one of the others up with an ex of ours.’

‘That’s crazy.’ Helen had blurted it out before she could think. She tried to never use the c-word. ‘I mean, what? I don’t understand.’

‘Simple.’ Marnie dusted off her hands and pointed round the table. ‘Rosa would, say, set Ani up with someone she’s dated. Ani’d set you up…’

‘What?’ said Helen and Ani in unison, but Marnie went on, undeterred: ‘… and you’d set me up. I’d do Rosa. That’s just an example. We could always draw names. And we’d have to have rules. Like, only nice people. The whole point is to get a better option than those online dates. A sort of Freecycle, but for guys. He-cycle, if you will.’

‘I really, really will not,’ muttered Helen. Dating each other’s exes! This was dangerous. Deflect, deflect!

‘That’s mental,’ said Ani, and Helen winced at the word. ‘Someone would definitely get upset. And how would it even work?’

‘Like I just said.’ Helen had forgotten that Marnie could be surprisingly organised and persuasive when she put her mind to something. ‘Why’s it mental? I want to meet someone, don’t you?’ She looked hard at Ani.

‘I mean, I guess, but only if…’

‘How many internet dates did you go on in the last year?’

‘Um…a few.’

‘How many’s a few?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I bet you kept count.’ Marnie was staring her out. ‘Twenty?’

Ani was turning red. ‘Um…a bit more than that, maaaaaybe…’

‘More than thirty? More than forty?’ Marnie was like Jeremy Paxman with eyeliner flicks. ‘Come on, tell us.’

‘Forty-seven,’ Ani whispered.

‘Christ on a bike,’ shouted Rosa. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Christians. I mean—just, wow.’

‘I want to find the right person!’ said Ani, still red. ‘And you know, it’s so easy online. You just click, and then if you’re free, why not meet up? It’s either that or let my parents set me up with Dad’s golfing buddy’s nephew from Leeds, who has his own mobile disco business.’

‘Exactly.’ Marnie slapped the table. ‘It’s too easy. It’s like going to Tesco. And it’s about as romantic. Whereas this way—well, we can have a man curated for us by our lovely friends, who know us so well.’ She beamed at them. ‘Think about it. It takes out all the risk—we get pre-screened, predated men.’

‘Curated,’ muttered Rosa, who seemed to be having trouble with the whole conversation. ‘I don’t know. This is all new to me. I’m still getting my head around being single.’ She bit her lip, and Helen could see her eyes were filling up. Most of their nights out recently had ended with a weeping Rosa. She looked round at her friends—Marnie flushed and determined, Ani scowling, maybe thinking of her forty-seven bad dates, Rosa on the verge of tears. And what if Marnie suddenly suggested someone take on her most dateable ex of all? No way. The subject had to be changed, and fast. And Helen, with conflict-defusing skills that Ban Ki-moon would be proud of, was the Official Difficult Subject Changer of the group.

‘Guys, it’s a lovely idea, but remember—I don’t date. Like, ever. So I’m afraid I’m out. Now, did anyone want dessert? They have an ice-cream sundae made with popping candy!’

Chapter 3 The Internet Wizard

Helen

Helen woke up the next morning not at 8 a.m, or even 9, but at the unconscionable time of 10.36 a.m. Her tongue felt like the bottom of the bin right before she washed it out with bleach and hot water (second Wednesday of the month). Bloody Marnie.

The night had dissolved somewhere around one, with Helen being poured into an Uber. She never got taxis—she could afford the odd one, but she saw it as a sign you hadn’t planned your night properly. And she was always hearing horror stories from Rosa about their shady safety standards. Admittedly, Rosa herself had been fast asleep in the back of one heading north. Helen must have been drunk, because she’d asked if Marnie needed to stay at hers.

‘No, no,’ she’d said, putting Helen in the cab—she was always mysteriously sober, despite being so tiny. ‘I have somewhere sorted. It’s fine.’ She’d patted the side of the car and stepped back, holding her arms away from her cape to wave.

Sitting up now and groping for her phone, Helen realised she didn’t know if Marnie even had the money to get home. Or where home currently was for her. In fact she hadn’t managed to find out anything about Marnie’s life for the past two years. Some friend she was. But at least, in all this talk of exes, there’d been no mention of Ed. She squinted at her phone. It glowed with message symbols, missed calls and voicemails, emails, texts, even WhatsApps. And her heart stilled.

No. Not now. It couldn’t be her mum, after all this time—Oh, thank God! They were all from Logan.

Logan Cassidy: internet mogul, entrepreneur, and owner of a vast network of shady businesses, from the dating/cheating website Helen reluctantly ran, to a cut-every-corner budget airline and a chain of underwear shops for larger ladies, More Than a Handful.

MASSIVE EMERGENCY, the first email read. Helen scrolled down. BIG SECURITY BREACH CALL ME NOW. And the last one—WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?

Helen closed her eyes for a second. It was going to be one of those days. She called Logan, clearing her throat again and again to try to sound like she hadn’t just woken up. ‘Hi! Sorry, I had an early doctor’s appointment. Er, women’s troubles.’

‘Whatever, whatever,’ he said hastily, in his South London growl. ‘Now I need you on this ASAP. I think we’ve been hacked. Like them that got into the Pentagon.’

‘What’s happened?’ Logan had an overdeveloped sense of the importance of bitontheside.com in global events. It was probably just a server glitch.

‘Someone’s replaced the profile pics. Instead of all that skiing and raising bloody glasses of wine, they’re bloody—well, have a look.’

Helen felt panic bubble into her bloodstream. This wasn’t supposed to happen today. She was already behind on dusting the bookcases and brushing Mr Fluffypants, a job that was only slight less dangerous than being a UN weapons inspector. ‘They didn’t get into the personal data?’

His voice softened. ‘No, that’s locked up tighter than a nun’s chuff. But the rest—the fences are down, the T. rex is out, ya know? So I’m gonna send in the T. rex wrangler.’

‘Er, what?’

Logan was a big Jurassic Park fan. He reputedly had a life-size model of a dinosaur in the atrium of his mansion in Essex. He saw a lot of John Hammond in himself. ‘I’m sending a web guy to you,’ he yelled. ‘He’s meant to be good. Total geek. He’ll fix it, OK?’

‘OK. But what do you mean, to me?’ He didn’t mean to her flat, surely?

‘You’re still in that dump in Peckham, yeah?’

‘It’s Peckham Rye actually and it’s really up and coming—but Logan—Logan!’

‘Going into a tunnel. Bloody sort this for me, Helen. I’m counting on ya.’ His voice faded.

Helen caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, eyes bloodshot, blonde curls sticking up, boobs falling out of her Frozen-motif pyjamas. Then she heard the cheerful trill of the doorbell. It really was going to be one of those days.

She shuffled to the door of her basement flat, tying up her silk dressing gown—a present from Marnie when she’d worked in a vintage shop, and which for years Helen had felt too big to wear, preferring to hide inside massive towelling robes. A big man stood on her doorstep. Not fat, but very tall, very wide. Strapping. If you could call someone strapping when they wore a T-shirt that said ‘No I cannot fix your computer’ and combats with more pockets than a snooker table. He had flaming red hair and a red beard, like a Viking, and he glanced pointedly at a Casio watch.

‘Yes?’ she said, irritably, through the security chain.

‘You’ve got a bug,’ he said. Northern accent.

‘Um, no, I just—I worked late…’

‘In your website, I mean. I’m here to have a look.’

‘How do I know that’s who you are?’

‘Did your boss not say I’d be around?’ He scrabbled in one pocket, then another. ‘Bollocks,’ he muttered. ‘OK, here.’

She glanced at what he’d handed her. ‘That’s a Blockbuster video card. Which expired in 2004.’

‘It’s not my fault the high street could no longer keep up with the increasing ease of pay-to-view websites. Speaking of websites, yours is borked.’

‘Borked?’

‘Yeah, it’s like—a technical computer term for up the swanny. Now let me in or it’ll only get worse.’

‘OK,’ she relented. ‘I’m not—this has taken me by surprise.’ He looked puzzled. ‘I’m not dressed,’ she explained.

He looked her over. ‘You are dressed, i.e., you’re not naked.’ Helen stared at him. He stared back. ‘Computer… fixey? I’m sorry, you are employed by that dodgy South London geezer, yes?’

‘Yes.’ Helen snapped into action and held the door open. ‘I’m sorry. What do you need me to do?’

‘Show me the admin details. Who does the coding?’

‘The original design was before my time, but I do the basic maintenance and admin.’

‘You know code?’

‘Yes,’ she said defensively. ‘What, because I’m a woman?’

‘No, because you wear pyjamas with cartoons on. Actually that’s quite a coder-y thing to do, I should have realised.’ He sat down in one of her lovely vintage armchairs, making the old springs groan, and whipped out a laptop. It was square, functional and very un-sleek. Like him. ‘I’ll need your computer too.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because, if you have malware or something, it’ll be on there. Malware is, how can I put this—totes bad software that will totes corrupt everything.’

‘I know what malware is!’ People really didn’t take you seriously when you wore Disney clothes as an adult, Helen reflected. She set him up with the details, then hovered anxiously in the kitchen as he worked.

‘Jesus Christ on a bike,’ he said at one point.

‘Not good?’

‘Let’s just say your defences are more lax than Dad’s Army. A child could get into this.’

‘Why would a child want to get into a dating website?’ she said, crossly.

‘Dating. Is that what you call it?’

‘Of course. It’s a place to meet new people.’

‘New married people.’

‘You think it’s any different from other sites? Half the people on Tinder are married—and so dumb they use their wedding photos as profile pictures. At least this way it’s more open, and you know what you’re getting.’ Helen swelled in righteous anger. ‘Anyway, it’s none of your business. If you don’t like it, don’t also work for it by fixing the site.’ He stared at her. Helen realised her dressing gown had fallen open in her ire, and hastily closed it. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. What was she thinking, shouting at a total stranger?

‘Hey, I don’t mind either way,’ he said. ‘I was just curious. The personal details are secure, anyway. But someone’s been hacking you. Look, all the profile pictures—well, they’re not of faces any more, put it that way. Brings a whole new meaning to the term “dickhead”.’

Helen looked, then felt a slow blush move over her face. ‘Is that…easy to do?’

‘No. Do you know of any enemies the site might have?’

Helen thought of Logan and his cut-price empire. The media attention the site had attracted through a series of dubious PR activities. The time he went on This Morning and got into a fist-fight with Phil. ‘Um…any number, to be honest with you.’

‘Right. Well, I’ve fixed the bug that’s replacing the photos, so people can show off their ski holidays and trips to Machu Picchu again. But you need to beef up your security.’ He spun her laptop back to her. ‘By the way, you’ve got an email from someone called Marnie. Subject—amazeballs dating plan.’

‘Give me that.’ Blushing, Helen pushed the screen down. ‘Thanks for fixing it. But I should get dressed now. I mean, in clothes.’ Oh great, now she sounded like she was flirting. ‘It doesn’t inspire confidence, you know,’ she said, in a burst. ‘Your T-shirt. I mean, that’s your job, isn’t it? Fixing computers?’

He squinted down. ‘Oh. I didn’t realise that’s what I was wearing.’

‘Do you have another one that says “Have you tried turning it off and on again”?’

‘How did you know?’

‘Never mind.’

He stood up. ‘You didn’t tell me your name. Normally people tell me their names and offer me cups of tea and stuff.’

‘Sorry. You just took me by surprise.’

‘It’s OK. I don’t understand why people set so much store by drinking hot liquids. Anyway, I’m going to tell you my name, in case you get hacked again.’

‘Is that likely?’

‘Yep. I’ve fixed it now but whoever did it was good. The bug also found every instance of the word “snowboarding” and replaced it with “looking like a douche”.’ He let out a loud laugh. ‘“I really enjoy jetting off for a spot of looking like a douche.” Sorry, but your hacker is hilarious. I’d like to shake them by the hand.’

‘But—you’re sure this was done on purpose? It wasn’t a virus, or a server problem?’

He gave her a withering look. ‘A server problem wouldn’t replace all the pictures with ones of people’s penises. You were hacked.’

‘Oh my God, just like in Jurassic Park. Logan was right.’

‘You like Jurassic Park?’

‘Duh. I was born in 1982, of course I do.’

‘Right. I just thought, you know, the kittens.’ He waved a hand at her cushions, which were upholstered in a distinctly feline theme.

‘Kittens and dinosaurs are not mutually exclusive.’

‘Actually they are, because mammals weren’t really around until the Pleistocene.’

‘Probably one of the many reasons why opening Jurassic Park was such a bad idea.’

He gave her a long look. Helen held his gaze. He said, ‘You’re right, as it happens. You can’t get Jurassic Park back online without Dennis Nedry. Lucky for you, I am Dennis Nedry.’ He paused for a second. ‘Except, you know, not really gross and into industrial sabotage and stuff.’

‘Good to know.’

He fumbled in one of his many cargo pockets. ‘My card. Not a Blockbuster one this time.’

Karl Olsen, Computer Wizard. ‘Wizard, huh?’

‘Yes, I am the Gandalf of online security. They shall not pass. Well, there’s no need for you to tell me your name, but contact me if your hacker starts again.’ He chuckled. ‘“Looking like a douche”. That’s a funny guy.’

‘You assume it’s a guy.’

‘Yes, yes, hashtag–not all hackers, I know. But statistically it most likely is. Bye.’

Abruptly, Karl the computer wizard shouldered his rucksack and headed for the door.

‘Wait,’ she said suddenly. ‘Helen.’

‘Helen?’

‘Er… That’s my name. And I—Look, when I started this job, it was a normal dating site. It just didn’t take off, so he changed it without telling me. Always bank on the lowest end of the market, that’s Logan’s philosophy. I’ve looked for a new job, but there’s not much around.’ And she couldn’t bear going back to work in an office (because: yet more reasons), and every time she imagined going to interviews it made her throat constrict in anxiety, so she stayed where she was and tried not to think about the harm she was doing every day.

He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter what I think, Helen. I’m just some random computer genius and, as you pointed out, I’m participating in the evil by fixing the site. So don’t worry so much. OK?’

‘OK,’ she muttered, tying her dressing gown tighter.

‘Are you all right?’ He looked at her keenly. ‘You seem somewhat suboptimal.’

‘Yes, I’m just—I was up late, and this is a bit of a shock.’

‘It’s all fine now. Computer wizard. Expelliarmus.’ He made a bizarre air-wand gesture. ‘You’re still upset though?’ She shrugged. Of course she was. ‘Do you mind if I…’ He reached out one large finger and touched her on the forehead, between her eyebrows, pressing hard.

Helen felt an instant relief of tension. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Pressure points. Helps with the anxiety. Well, bye then. I’d say it was nice to meet you but in all honesty I think it just made you intensely uncomfortable.’

As he left she realised it was the first time a man had been in her flat in two years. Well, a human man, anyway.

‘YRRROOOWWL!’

Helen felt an affectionate blood-drawing scratch on her bare leg and bent down to pick up Mr Fluffypants, her sociopathic Persian cat. Green eyes, fluffy white fur, weighing the same as a small Rottweiler. She was very well aware that she was a living stereotype, but when everything kicked off two years ago it had seemed inevitable she’d become a tragic spinster, so she gave in and got a damn cat. And some cushions. And learned to crochet. She had her eye on a foot spa next.

She kissed the cat’s fluffy head. ‘Who’s a good kitty? You’re the only man I need, aren’t you? You’ll never leave me?’

‘YROOOOWWWL!’ Mr Fluffypants, spotting a bird in the garden, shot from Helen’s arms and right out the cat flap. She sighed. Story of her life.

* * *

Ani.

Ani read Marnie’s email on her work computer, squinting at the weird fonts and emojis, and immediately dashed off a message to Rosa asking if she’d seen it too. There was no way she was doing it. No. Way. Anyway, she had other fish to fry. Didn’t she?

She took a deep breath, flexed her fingers over the keyboard, and called up a different email address. Hi! Hope you had a good Christmas?

Was it too late for that, in January? She changed it to: Hi! Happy New Year!

Too many exclamation marks? She deleted the first one. Still on for tonight then? Where shall we go?

Maybe she should wait for the response before asking where to go—it might seem too forward. But then, maybe it was dangerous to leave the suggestion open that it wouldn’t go ahead. She needed this to go ahead.

‘Are you OK, Ani?’

She looked across at her colleague, Catherine, who was spooning up quinoa salad from Tupperware and Googling yoga retreats. ‘Fine, why?’

‘You were sort of…muttering to yourself.’

‘Oh. Just…thinking of strategies for the Leyton divorce.’

‘The one where she stole all his limited-edition tiepins and had them melted down?’

‘Yes. He’s suing her for five grand. Who even spends five grand on tiepins?’ Ani shook her head. There it was, every single day—the end of love, the terrible things people did to each other when it had all burned away. Sod it. Tonight couldn’t go as badly wrong as that—there just wasn’t time. She pressed send with a firm click, and then she pushed back her work chair and lifted her Radley bag. Everyone in the office looked up in surprise—Ani was an inveterate desk-luncher. ‘Going out,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll be an hour or so. Or, you know. An hour exactly.’

What Ani had not told any of her friends, largely because she was doing her best not to think about it herself, was that she already had a date that night. Date number forty-eight in the space of a year. Though it was a new year now, so perhaps she could start again from zero. Perhaps this would be the one, and it would all work out, and she wouldn’t have to go on any more internet dates, wouldn’t have to swipe right and left until her thumb went numb, and definitely wouldn’t have to take part in Marnie’s ridiculous dating pact idea.

She’d met Will at a birthday party before Christmas—the kind of thing she’d usually avoid, a lot of lawyers, drinks in a chain bar with watered-down cocktails, desultory chats about house prices. One of the couples in the group, Phil and Jemmy—him red cords and coffee breath, her ski tan and tight rictus smile—had got engaged recently and planned to hire a ‘lovely little barn’ in the Cotswolds for a mere twenty grand. Ani had watched her friend Louise, whose birthday it was, exclaim over the ring, while Jake, her boyfriend, stared uncomfortably into his Peroni.

‘Yay! Another wedding.’

She’d looked up at the unexpected sardonic tone—wondering if for a second her thoughts had developed a voice of their own—and saw a man scowling beside her. He was pleasant-looking, with a square-ish face, corduroy jacket, and pink cocktail in his hand, which he was sucking at determinedly through a straw.

She gave him a sideways look. ‘It’ll be lovely I’m sure. Very original. Dove release, probably.’

‘Wishing tree. Pictures of the couple holding up thank-you signs. Japes when the first-dance music starts out romantic then goes into “Smack My Bitch Up”.’

Ani looked at him properly. ‘Not a wedding fan?’ She was already thinking, But what if he’s single and we hit it off and he doesn’t want to get married what will I tell my parents maybe it wouldn’t work maybe I shouldn’t date him. The part of her brain that could pinpoint potential areas for defence in a heartbeat could also have her married to and divorced from a man in 0.3 seconds.

The man’s face fell, but he kept drinking, talking around the glittery straw. ‘My fiancée just left me. Sort of put me off.’

Was it a bad idea, dating such a recent dumpee? It was times like this that Ani missed Marnie, despite her flakiness. There was no point in asking long-married Rosa about dating: ‘Just be open and tell him how you feel, what could possibly go wrong?’ Or Helen, who never dated at all: ‘What’s the point? Bet the fiancée dumped him for good reason, like he picks his nose or wears her pants.’ But Marnie would listen to every last detail, then say he sounded lovely and she was sure it would all work out. Even if he didn’t, and it definitely a hundred per cent wouldn’t.

As Ani walked aimlessly towards the shops, her phone dinged. Was it him? What if he cancelled, or if his vague suggestion of meeting up hadn’t been serious? She’d messaged him after they met, carefully non-committal, so that if he replied ‘OMG of course I don’t want to date you, YOU HEARTLESS CRONE’ she could claim she was just being polite. Plausible deniability, that was the key in dating. And also in defending people who’d made some pretty serious errors of judgement in life (same thing really). And he’d replied, We should meet up again sometime, but was that just something people said? What if he’d changed his mind over Christmas? Got back with the fiancée?

It was him. Her fingers shook slightly as she scrolled. Hi! Happy New Year. How about a curry maybe—Brick Lane or something? It was an odd choice for a first date—too formal, too pressured—but she let him off, as he was out of practice. She replied Sure OK x, taking care not to be too enthusiastic. She didn’t want him to think it was anything better than a solid uninspired choice. Game on.

Nervy and tense, Ani wandered up and down the aisles in Boots, with a vague uneasy sense that she ought to be doing things to herself. Buffing. Moisturising. Plumping up some of her hairs and removing some of the others. She bought a limp prawn sandwich and some Ribena, then found herself staring at the rack of condoms by the till. Uh-uh. Rule number one of dates—you had to trick the universe into letting things go well, and that meant putting in as little preparation as possible. Ideally you wanted to be found with unshaven legs, wearing your least favourite outfit, and perhaps with spinach caught in your teeth. Ani, in every other way a devout rationalist, believed firmly in the powers of the jinx. Unfortunately, she was not very good at being unprepared for things.

‘Do you have your Boots Advantage card?’ asked the man at the counter.

‘Yes,’ she sighed, digging it out. Of course she had. She always did everything right. So why couldn’t she manage that in her love life?

* * *

Rosa.

Amazeballs dating plan!

Rosa received Marnie’s email on a painful morning at work, during which she was trying to keep her head, if not actually under her desk, then as far down onto it as it was possible to get. Her temples throbbed in steady rhythm with the clacking keys around her. On her desk sat three different types of liquid—a bottle of water, a giant coffee, and a can of Diet Coke. None of them had helped—she should have realised that, as the others had tried to explain over the years, nothing could touch a Marnie hangover.

Unable to face the email at first, she went back to tapping at her feature on ‘head-desk-space’, the hot new in-work meditation trend that was sweeping the nation. Only trouble was, it didn’t exist. So far she had two hundred filler words on January—Now the last of the mince pies has been eaten and the New Year’s resolutions are starting to shake, it’s time to reaffirm our goals for the year. A recent study—here she’d added square brackets and a note to herself saying ‘FIND OR MAKE UP LATER’—says that 67% of us want to be more fulfilled in work. The solution? Meditations and exercises we can do at our desks.

Her phone beeped and, hoping for the magic inspiration that would finish off her feature, she grabbed it. Ani. Have you seen M’s email? She was really serious??

Rosa sent back a surprised emoji and opened her personal email again. She usually kept it closed, as Suzanne was not above snooping: ‘So I notice you’re having painful periods, I want five hundred words on that by three.’ The message from Marnie read Super awesome fourway dating plan!!!!! Five exclamation marks. The points on them seemed to wink at Rosa’s hungover brain.

Hi lovely ladies! Rosa groaned out loud. Following last night’s totes fun dinner, I have gone and done some further thoughts on our v v sensible plan. ‘Totes’ had really crept in as a word, Rosa thought. Maybe there was a feature in that… How your thirties are your new twenties. How thirty-something women are pretending to be younger, maybe because their husbands are leaving them for teenagers in cartoon T-shirts.

She read on.

So, I think the best thing to do would be to each pick a friend, then set them up with an ex of our choice. We’re bound to at least find someone decent that way. (TripAdvisor for men!) However I think there need to be some rules.

1. Only exes we are over! We don’t want broken hearts or unresolved tensions getting between us.

2. They must be nice. No hairy backs or creeps (unless you think your chosen friend will like that).

3. You must tell your friends every single detail! At the very least we can use this as a v v good social experiment. I’m thinking we should call it Project Love—the mission is to find us all a lovely date without the risks of going online.

Rosa groaned for a final time, disturbing the somnambulist occupant of the next desk, Sleepy Si, who did the night shifts. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed, as he settled back. She sent another emoji to Ani, this one startled and a little upset. In her current state of mind, the smiley faces seemed to sum things up better than words.

‘Rosa?’

She took a deep breath. How did Suzanne manage to move around without making a sound? Did she have some kind of pact with the devil whereby she could defy the laws of physics? ‘Yes, hi!’

Rosa’s boss was standing over her, tapping one stiletto heel. With her leather trousers and teased blonde hair, she looked like Stevie Nicks with an account at Cos. ‘Meeting room. Now.’

Rosa scurried after her, wondering what Suzanne’s problem could be. Had the barista put full-fat milk in her latte? Had her childminder allowed the twins to watch Rastamouse again? Oh Lord, David was in the meeting room, along with various hacks from different parts of the paper. She slunk into a seat, trying to make herself as small as possible. David looked fresh and youthful, his facial hair shaved into some odd little beard. No doubt it was all the rage with the under-twenty-fives.

Jason Connell, Editorial Whizz-Kid, swept in, buttoning his suit. Rosa caught a whiff of lemon aftershave, masking the unmistakable scent of Alpha Male. ‘We’re up crap creek,’ he said succinctly. ‘Five clients have pulled their ads from this week’s supplement. We’ve even lost the underwear chain More Than a Handful, and they’ve been advertising with us since 1994.’ How did he know all this, when he’d only been in post for a month? Rosa supposed she ought to feel alarmed, but such was the horror of her hangover that nothing else could get to her. Not even David, taking notes in the corner like the school swot he was. ‘So I need ideas. And fast.’

She was dimly aware that people were saying things. ‘How about a piece on ways to save cash?’ The Money section. Reviled and mocked for the rest of the year, January was their one chance to shine, and even Jason gave them a brief smile for the effort. ‘Maybe. Thanks.’

‘What about the rise of mumpreneurs?’ That was David, who worked on Business. It wasn’t a bad idea. Rosa saw Suzanne’s nostrils twitch—he was treading on their turf.

Jason nodded. ‘Good. That kind of thing. We need something really snazzy. A big piece that will make people choose us over other papers and magazines.’ He pointed to Suzanne and Rosa. ‘There’s scope for Features to take market share from monthly consumer magazines too, if we come up with something good.’

God, what recycled guff could they peddle this time? Ways to revive your flagging sex life? Top winter sun destinations? Both things Rosa now had no use for.

‘Rosa.’ Jason’s steely eyes were fixed on her, and she felt an odd blush rising up her neck. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Um…organic veg boxes?’

A terrible idea. She heard Suzanne suck in air through her teeth. But Jason smiled encouragingly. ‘That workplace meditation idea—what did you call it? A lifestyle hack?’

‘Er, yeah.’

‘Right. Well, I want more like that. It’s January. Everyone’s in a rut, miserable, wanting to change their life. Except they don’t want to change their life at all. No one actually wants to quit their job and move to Bali.’

Rosa was nodding. She understood exactly what narrative they were selling: change without having to go through any actual change.

Suzanne snapped her fingers in Rosa’s face, hissing, ‘Come on, ideas, ideas.’

‘What, more?’

‘Yes, more. This is what we pay you for.’

It wasn’t, thought Rosa. They paid her to sub-edit, and she did features for no extra on the side, but her mind had gone blank. ‘Um…um…’

‘Come on!’ Suzanne’s face was almost moving—and you really didn’t want that. Everyone was staring. Jason, David. All waiting for her to say something decent, anything to prove she was still capable of journalism. ‘I want an idea, Rosa!’

Rosa said the first thing that came into her head. ‘Um… what about a pact to date your friends’ exes?’

* * *

Helen.

Helen read Marnie’s email with a sinking heart. She was still in her dressing gown, though it was gone midday. The business card of the weird IT guy was in her pocket, poking into her stomach. She reread the line: We don’t want broken hearts or unresolved tensions getting between us!

Well, that was one rule that had been broken for years. She wondered if Marnie had thought of Ed when she’d suggested this dating swap. It was her idea to pass on exes. Would she even mind if it was him?

She looked down at her phone. Imagined typing it. Hey, Marnie, sorry I forgot to mention this but I kind of slept with Ed? But no. She couldn’t. And she couldn’t do this dating pact. Because Helen knew from bitter experience that one of the worst things you could ever do was fall in love with your friend’s ex.

Chapter 4 The Accidental Proposal

Ani

Ani had a terrible habit, almost shameful in modern times—she was incorrigibly on time for everything. She did her best, slowing her walk right down on the way from the tube to the restaurant, but she was still only four minutes late. She ordered a gin and tonic in the almost-empty restaurant, and when she thanked the waiter he said something in reply. ‘I’m sorry?’ He said it again and she realised—Hindi. ‘Er…I only speak English, sorry.’

She’d hoped it would be a cool Brick Lane place, of the type Rosa was always having to do features on, where they served the food in hammocks or only ate cereal or things on toast. She looked at the laminated menu—a bit of curry was stuck on the side. It wasn’t a cool place. And Will was late. Despite years of dating, Ani had not been able to reconcile herself to the lax attitude to time most people displayed. On impulse she texted Marnie: Waiting for late date. Many misgivings.

Marnie came back: Might be OK? Give him a chance!

Horrible Indian restaurant. Twenty minutes late. Rebound man.

Hmm. Three strikes already. May as well stay though—a girl has to eat.

That was true, Ani thought. It was nice having Marnie back, rather than off roaming the world somehow. She’d actually missed her. Despite everything. So she stayed, but she’d already eaten her way through five poppadums with lime pickle when Will walked in the door. Twenty-five minutes late. Just inside her threshold for ‘no longer pretending it’s OK’, which was half an hour. ‘Hi!’ She half rose, wondering if they’d hug, then sat down again when he pulled out a chair. ‘How are you? Good Christmas?’

‘I—OK, I suppose.’ He sighed deeply. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just—well, I ought to tell you. I had a run-in with Kat last night.’

Kat? Who the…? ‘Oh. Your ex?’ Ani tried to infuse the syllables with threat, understanding, and indifference all at once. It was hard.

‘Yes, she—well, she came around. Said she wanted to get a few things.’ Ani braced herself to hear they’d slept together. ‘She gave me back the ring,’ he said, dolefully. ‘Her engagement ring.’

‘Oh—well—is that good? Maybe you can sell it?’

‘They have almost no resale value. It’s worth like a tenth of what I paid.’

‘How can that be? The metals at least—’

‘The truth is, Ani, jewels have no real value. It’s like everything with weddings. It’s worth what you’ll pay for it. When you still believe you’re in love. But take that away and it’s just a cake, or a dress, or a bit of metal.’

Ani was thinking through the implications of that. ‘It’s almost as if you’re buying…’

‘Hope,’ he finished bleakly. ‘Yeah.’

Hope, she thought, eyes focused on a smear of pickle on the passing waiter’s shirt. Hope was what kept her going on date after date, year after year, thinking, what if this, tonight, was the one, and she cancelled because she was tired and really wanted to watch The Good Wife? What if her perfect man, the love of her life, slipped her by because she wasn’t paying attention, because she slacked off for a second, because she was too impatient and sharp and scared them away? But she could now see that, despite Marnie’s encouragement, tonight’s hope was outside the restaurant, setting off sadly down the street. What had Marnie said? A girl has to eat. ‘I haven’t had any dinner,’ she said firmly. ‘Shall we order?’

‘Oh. I guess. I’m not sure I could eat much.’

The waiter came. ‘Any ideas?’ she said to Will, brusquely. ‘I’ll have a lamb bhuna and a peshwari naan, please.’

He was staring at the menu. ‘It all sounds the same to me. Kat and I used to eat in a lot, salads, healthy stuff. She really kept in shape.’

‘So why did you pick this place?’

‘I thought you’d prefer it.’

Ani held her breath till her ears popped. ‘Look, my parents aren’t even from India, they grew up in Uganda. Just pick something.’

‘I don’t like spicy food,’ Will said to the waiter. ‘So something mild. A korma?’

Ani and the waiter exchanged a look that needed no translation.

She did her best after that, and they chatted about food, about work, about Louise and Jake and whether they were really as happy as Louise would make out—nothing like a little shared bitch to grease the wheels of social interaction—but at the end of the day it was a cheap Indian restaurant with strip lighting, blaring Indi-pop from a TV in the corner, and only three of the tables occupied—one with a rugby team, who chanted and whooped every time someone took a drink. ‘Down it! Down it!’ Ani looked at her phone surreptitiously and realised only forty minutes had gone by. Suddenly she didn’t care if it was rude—she wanted to go home.

Will clearly had the same idea. He’d taken out his wallet and was staring into it.

‘Shall we just…’

‘It’s here,’ he said mournfully.

‘What is?’

He held something aloft, winking and glittering in the strip lighting. ‘I forgot I put it in here. I—I—How could she? How could she?’ He burst into tears.

At that exact moment the waiter clocked the ring, and nudged the others, who started clapping and cheering. ‘Congratulations! Wedding bells!’ Ani realised, surreally, they were singing an off-key version of ‘I’m Getting Married in the Morning’. The rugby boys caught on and started whooping again, and two other miserable-looking couples, insulated in anoraks against the cold January night, joined in with some desultory applause. Ani was still reeling. Will seemed to have frozen in shock.

‘Ding dong, the bells are gonna chiiiiime…’

‘Get in there, mate! Give her one! A kiss I mean, haaaaaa.’

‘No, no, there’s been a—no…’

‘So do not let them tarry, ding dong…’

‘Nice one! Wedding night five!’

Will stood up, knocking the remains of his ultra-mild curry onto his cream trousers. What had she been thinking? She could never love a man in cream trousers. This was what happened when you settled for less than perfect, when you gave people the benefit of the doubt. He shouted, semi-hysterically: ‘I don’t want to marry her! I just want to marry Kat, and she doesn’t love me any more!’ And he flung the ring across the room, where it bounced off a framed picture of the Taj Mahal and landed in the insipid rosé wine of a woman in a green anorak.

Later, when she’d dispatched a weeping Will in a taxi, and paid for her meal and his and also the wine of the anorak woman, and explained to the disappointed waiters that no, she wasn’t Kat, and fended off two offers to ‘give her one instead’ from rugby boys, Ani took out her phone to delete his number. She never should have added him in the first place—no contacts in the phone until date two. Stupid.

She found herself trudging along in the cold, the collar of her Reiss coat pulled up against the wind, taking out her phone to text Marnie. Marnie would understand. And that—almost, maybe—made up for everything else. She saw she had a WhatsApp message from Rosa and clicked on it as she walked. Ooohhh noooo may have got commissioned to write a piece on the stupid dating project. Might have to do it now.

Why not? Ani thought. Nothing could be worse than almost getting accidentally engaged in a restaurant with wipe-clean menus. And her friends would do a better job of finding her a man than she was herself. It wouldn’t be hard. Me too, she typed, before she could change her mind. What’s the worst that could happen?

Chapter 5 A Decaf No-Syrup Low-Fat Soy Latte

Helen

‘Great news!’ said Marnie down the phone. ‘Ani and Rosa are totes in for Project Love.’

Helen’s heart sank. ‘Ani’s in? Are you serious?’

‘Apparently she had some really awful date and changed her mind, get her to tell you about it. So you’ll do it, won’t you?’

No no no no no. ‘Ach, I don’t know. I haven’t dated in years.’ Two years, to be exact. She hoped Marnie would never do the maths.

‘All the more reason to start!’ Helen and Marnie saw the world in very different ways. Marnie kept an ever-growing list of things to try—eating bull testicles, hiking the Inca trail, wakeboarding—while Helen kept a list of ‘things I’ll quite happily die before I ever do, thanks very much’.

‘I don’t know, Marn. What if it all goes horribly wrong, or he wears Superman pants like Ani’s date, or he’s secretly a serial killer? I just read a story exactly like that in Take a Break.’

‘You don’t need to marry the guy! Just have two drinks, then politely leave if you don’t like him. That’s the minimum—just one is rude, you may as well tell them to their face they’re an uggo.’

‘See, I don’t know any of these rules.’

‘It’s like a game, Helz. You love those. Imagine you need to get to the top level. Remember when we used to play the Game of Life all the time? It’s just like that, only your dearest friends will choose your little blue pin for you.’

‘But games make sense. You take action, you get results. People are so—well, let’s just say their programming seems to have some serious bugs.’

‘But I think it would be good for us. Get us out of our ruts. And it’s ages since we did anything fun together.’

What rut was Marnie in? She was living the dream, meeting hot guys on beaches and never paying tax. ‘We had dinner literally two nights ago. I still have the hangover.’

‘Come on. I’ll be your best friend!’ It was an ironic yet non-ironic nod to Marnie’s stock phrase all the way through their childhood and teenage years. Aw, Helz, if you don’t steal your dad’s Drambuie we won’t have enough booze! Aw, Helz, have a smoke, everyone else is. Aw, Helz, snog weird Nigel who smells of egg sandwiches! And Helen was the only one who ever got caught, and then her mum would turn to her with cloudy, hurt eyes, and… ‘No,’ she said, surprised at her own firmness. ‘I really can’t. Honestly. Do it without me.’

‘But—I’ll be your best friend.’

‘You already are my best friend,’ said Helen, feeling guilty—but not guilty enough to join in with the stupid dating project. ‘Look, let’s do something just the two of us. How about lunch today?’ Before Marnie left, the two of them used to meet up at least twice a week, sometimes even catching the tube together on the way to other things, just so they could chat and catch up. Maybe they could get that back. Never mind that a spontaneous lunch would throw out Helen’s food rota and she might not eat all the tomato soup before its use-by date. She could hear voices in the background. ‘Are you in a café?’

‘Yeah. I’m just…updating my blog about vintage fashion.’

What blog? ‘Oh. Well, if you’re busy—’

Marnie paused. ‘No, no, I’d love to. I’d have an hour, would that be enough?’

‘Of course. See you at, say, the Milk Bar? It’s this new place. Supposed to be cool.’ What if it had stopped being cool in the two days since she’d read about it in Time Out? Would Marnie sniff and say, God, not that place, we should clearly be going to that café in Shoreditch where you eat all your food off of old CDs.

‘Great. Can’t wait to see you.’

Helen looked at the latest batch of ‘is my partner cheating on me’ emails, and pushed her chair away from her desk. Who cared if Thursday was ‘clean out the shower and mop the floor’ day? Just for once, she was going to do something spontaneous. Marnie was back in town, and that meant things would start to happen. They always did. Though not always in a good way.

* * *

‘Hi, hi, sorry, sorry, I’m late. Gosh, it’s busy.’

Marnie arrived just after Helen had done the hard work of finding a table in the hip but hopelessly impractical coffee shop. She was currently staking out a space on a sagging sofa, beside a bearded hipster with arm tattoos and a Mac. They were both compulsory, it seemed. Marnie was soberly dressed for her, in jeans and a plain black T-shirt. She gave Helen a squeeze, then eyed her, shaking her head. ‘I just can’t get used to you looking so different.’

‘Do I look that different?’ Helen tugged self-consciously at her skirt, worried she was overdressed beside Marnie’s understated look.

‘Massively. You look…pretty. Really, really pretty. I mean, not that you didn’t before, but…you know.’

Helen dipped her head, embarrassed. ‘I was going to order, what would you like?’

‘Oh, I’m not very hungry. Just a green tea, please.’

‘Not coffee?’ Usually Marnie ran on about seventy-five per cent espresso. Did Helen even know her best friend any more?

She shuddered. ‘No thanks.’

After the endless order—butter or spread? Gluten-free bread? Soy milk or dairy? Decaf? Sugar?—Helen squeezed back in, knocking against the coffee of the hipster. He took in a hissing breath. Marnie faced him. ‘Hey, we’re really sorry. It’s just so cramped, isn’t it? Aren’t the suitcases daft?’

Amazingly, the man, who looked as if he hadn’t smiled since iOS 6 came out, was responding. ‘No problemo. You’re right, it’s so pretentious here, but the coffee—’ he kissed his fingers, non-ironically ‘—it’s really the best.’

‘That’s great. Enjoy your drink.’

He smiled back. ‘Here, I’ll move to that table over there. Give you some space.’

Amazing. Helen had forgotten—it was always like this. Marnie winning people over, blagging things, powering through problems. Helen doing the admin, the clear-up, holding the coats. ‘How are you?’ she asked. ‘I meant to ask—you’ve got somewhere sorted? To live I mean?’ She should have checked this before. Bad friend. But then again: reasons.

‘Oh yes. Lovely people, arty types. Cam and Susie and Fred.’

‘Did you know them before?’

‘No, I just moved in yesterday. It’s like guardianship,’ she explained. ‘You know, like we live in an empty building and the rent’s cheap. It’s so cool. It’s an old school. We use the PE showers!’

Didn’t sound cool at all to Helen—no locks and a big draughty building full of dust more like—but what did she know about the latest trends in communal living? She hadn’t even had a flatmate in two years. ‘Great. Great. And work?’

‘Oh, I’m…’ Here Marnie paused. ‘Well, I’m looking into a few things. Teaching and so on, art, drama…’

Perhaps that explained the all-black and the restricted lunch hour. Maybe she was in the middle of a drama workshop or something cool, and Helen had dragged her out to hear her own ‘news’, which would consist of Mr Fluffypants catching a mouse and (not unconnected) her plans to re-cover her armchairs. ‘So tell me all about the trip! Was it amazing out there?’ It must have been for you to stay away for two years!

‘Where?’

‘Brazil. Or was it Argentina?’

‘Oh. Well, both, sort of. I moved about a lot. What have you been up to all this time?’

‘Um…you know. Working.’ And feeling guilty, and missing you, and generally pining over Ed and staying in a lot. Maybe she could work the Mr Fluffypants story up into a better anecdote if she did some impressions. She didn’t tell Marnie about the website, because she was always afraid someone would ask the name of it, and also she didn’t want to mention Karl for some reason. Marnie would only suggest Helen ask him out. Which was clearly a ridiculous idea. Helen tried to think of something cool she’d done in the past two years. Read every issue of Take a Break magazine? Knitted a hat for the cat? Thought seriously about writing some Game of Thrones fan fiction? God, she really was in a rut. ‘Nothing’s changed, really.’

‘That’s not true! You’re living on your own, you’re working from home now… What made you change jobs?’

‘Oh, I just… I felt like something different. Bit more flexibility.’ The flexibility to make sure she rarely had to leave the house, more like.

‘How’s your mum?’ asked Marnie, sipping her tea daintily.

Helen shrugged. ‘Oh, she’s… I think she’s all right. You can never be sure though. She could go at any time. How’s yours?’

Marnie grimaced. ‘Same. On to boyfriend 165, or something.’

‘Have you been to see her?’

‘And be interrogated by Mr “UKIP just say what we’ve all been thinking” about when I’ll find a proper job and get a mortgage? No thanks.’

Helen almost asked about Marnie’s dad, then didn’t. Marnie hadn’t seen him much since she was thirteen, when he’d finally made good on his lifelong promises and walked out. Time to change the subject again. Her mum, Marnie’s dad—both topics to be avoided if possible. ‘Soooo…do you have an ex in mind? You know, for the project.’ Again, Ed’s name seemed to float between them, and Helen waited for Marnie to bring him up, but she didn’t.

‘Depends who it’s for. It’s quite healthy really. I mean why shouldn’t we pass on dates we haven’t sparked with?’

A millions reasons, Helen thought. Because we’re British. Because, ew. Because people are people and not robots and feelings are bound to be hurt and things will get messy. She didn’t say any of this. Instead, she said, ‘And you think it would be OK?’

‘I don’t see why not. I wouldn’t mind if you dated one of my exes. I’d be happy if you were happy.’

Helen bit her lip. At times she had tried to convince herself of this, but she knew one thing was true: not all exes were the same. Which was why she hadn’t, and still couldn’t, tell Marnie anything about it. She changed the subject again to safer things. ‘Any other plans while you’re here?’

‘While I’m here? I’m here for good!’

There was a short silence, during which Helen thought of the past two Marnie-less years. What if she just took off again? Of course, she’d always been a wanderer—Spain, Dublin, New York, and Australia were just a few of the places Marnie had lived over the years—but she’d never stayed away for two whole years before. ‘I just meant, you know, you said London was so money-obsessed, so cold, so joyless.’ This had been the gist of Marnie’s first garbled email from the beach, after she’d up and left with no warning.

‘Not at all. It’s full of theatres and museums and lovely parks and most of all, it’s got my favourite people in it.’ She gave Helen’s arm a little squeeze, then looked at her watch again. ‘Crap, I’ve got five minutes. I better tell you my news—I’ve been contacting people, seeing who’s around.’

Everyone was around. Everyone else they knew had shown a singular lack of imagination when it came to not moving to London, or not staying in Reading, where they’d grown up. Except for Marnie, who had jet fuel in her feet. ‘Oh?’ Helen was starting to feel as if the majority of the conversation was taking place in her own head. ‘Did anyone reply?’

‘Oh sure. Anyway I started looking up a few people I’ve lost contact with, emailing…’

Suddenly, like seeing the mist clear and the cliff top under her feet, Helen realised where this conversation was going. Oh God. Here it was at last.

‘So I dropped Ed a line! It’s been two years after all, I think it’s time we caught up.’

Helen’s heart was racing as if she’d downed a quadruple espresso. Did Marnie know? No, she didn’t. She couldn’t. She heard her own voice try to stay casual. ‘And was he about?’

‘Well, I haven’t heard back yet. He’s probably quite busy, you know with his music and stuff.’

Thank God. And yet there was something else—a tiny treacherous stab of disappointment.

Marnie and Helen had been close, before. So close they were sworn ‘sober death picture friends’. This meant that if one should happen to die suddenly, the other was charged with making sure the officially released photo was one where the deceased looked sober and upstanding, and not one of them clutching tequila shots in a bikini, which would make Daily Telegraph readers shake their heads over the marmalade and decide they probably deserved to be horribly murdered anyway. But now, Helen had no idea what her friend was thinking. Was Ed just another guy to her now? After all, she’d broken up with him.

Marnie was saying, ‘If he is around, anyway, I think I’ll ask him to my welcome-home drinks. It’d be nice to catch up.’ She leaned forward to reach her tea, and Helen saw something round her neck. A necklace with a pale green stone. The birthday necklace. Oh God.

She swallowed hard. ‘You’re having welcome-home drinks?’

‘Well, sure. Why not?’

‘Um… No reason.’ Helen realised she would have to go, and that would mean maybe seeing Ed, after all this time, and being in the same room as him, and talking to him. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She would have to. And then, she also realised, all her defences suddenly caving in like a kid’s sandcastle, she was going to join in with the stupid project, and go out with whoever one of her friends picked for her, because anything was better than the way things were after Ed, and nothing was as stupid as what she’d done back then. And anyway, she owed Marnie. Big time.

Marnie was standing up, swallowing the last of her tea. The hipster man paused in frowning at his Mac to watch her. Even in plain black, she was the most striking woman in the place.

‘Hey,’ said Helen, faux casual. ‘That project—you know, if you’re all doing it, I guess I will too. Count me in.’

‘OMG! Really?’

‘Yeah, why not. It’ll be fun.’ In the same way that gouging out your eyeballs was fun.

‘Awesomesauce! We’ll find you someone lovely, I promise. Listen, I’ll pay for this.’

‘Don’t be daft, you hardly had anything!’ Surely Marnie didn’t have a lot of cash right now.

‘It’s done.’ She put some cash down on the counter, then blew a kiss and dashed off. Helen watched her go, off to her cool life, while Helen was heading home to her cat and her box sets. She wondered how it was you could know someone so well, and still not know them at all.

* * *

Marnie.

‘You’re late,’ said Barry, tapping on his oversized Casio watch.

‘I’m sorry, I just lost track of…’

‘No excuses. I’ll have to dock you a quarter-hour’s pay.’ Marnie opened her mouth to say she was only six minutes late, and had he seen how busy the streets were, but she closed it again, tying on her apron. No point in arguing. She needed this job, and as far as Bean Counters was concerned, Barry was the lord and master of all he surveyed—except when the regional manager stopped by once a month. ‘And turn your phone off,’ Barry hissed. ‘We have to give the customers our full attention during their beverage experience.’

Beverage experience? Marnie fumbled her phone out of her jeans, spotting a message from Cam, her new flatmate. That was the one who stood too close, rather than the one who peed with the bathroom door open, or the one who she’d already caught ‘accidentally’ going through her backpack. It said: Party tonite bring ur own stash. She didn’t want to go to a party, stash or no stash. She wanted to cosy up in her own nice place and watch TV. Exactly what Helen would be doing, no doubt. A place that was warm, and clean, and didn’t contain any sleazy flatmates or recreational drugs, or, for that matter, any bedbugs—she scratched her arm, reflexively. She sighed. Would she ever have that?

‘Marie! Get your arse in gear!’ Barry was pointing frantically at the counter, where a line of customers was waiting, tapping their feet at the thirty-second delay. She thought about telling him her name was Marnie, and that her arse was not and never would be any of his concern, but again, what was the point? With a bit of luck she wouldn’t be here long enough for it to matter.

She took her place, pasting on a smile. ‘Good afternoon, welcome to Bean Counters. Are you ready to begin your beverage journey?’

Chapter 6 The Ex Factor

Helen

‘Right,’ said Marnie, looking round at the other three. ‘We’re all here. Time to start…Project Love.’ They had gathered in Rosa’s flat, which she now lived in alone, David having shacked up with The Intern—apparently, a nasty break-up was what it took to get a place to yourself in London, even a tatty new-build on the scruffy end of Willesden Green.

Ani groaned. ‘We can’t call it that.’ She was shoving Kettle Chips into her mouth like letters in a postbox. She waved the bag at Helen, who shook her head. She was prone to anxiety-eating and knew that if she had even one crisp she’d probably end up eating Ani’s head, and then it was goodbye four-stone weight loss, hello being lifted out of her house by a crane.

‘Are you going to stay here, Rosa?’ she said, trying to postpone the inevitable.

Rosa grabbed one of her Moroccan-print cushions and stuck it over her face, her standard response to anything divorce-related. ‘I don’t know. We’ll have to sell, I guess. So enjoy this while you can.’ Rosa indicated her tatami matting, her carved Indian table, and all her pretty ornaments. There was a photo of her wedding day over the piano, happy faces pushed together. Rosa in vintage lace, David with a top hat, and, in the background, Ani, Helen, and Marnie—who’d flown in from New York ten minutes before the ceremony—in red bridesmaid dresses, throwing confetti. Helen averted her eyes from it—her dress had been ordered in a size twenty. ‘I spent years decorating this place,’ said Rosa miserably. ‘I thought we’d be here for ever. Or at least until we bought somewhere bigger in the suburbs. He always said I loved Ikea so much, I must have Stockholm syndrome.’ Ani met Helen’s eyes—they’d have to watch Rosa, or she’d slide into another wine-and-weeping marathon.

‘Well,’ said Helen brightly, ‘I love living on my own. Think of all that fun decorating you can do. I’ll lend you my fabric swatches!’

Rosa gave what sounded like a stifled scream into the cushion.

‘Come on,’ said Marnie impatiently. ‘We need to get started on Project Love.’ She was kneeling at the coffee table with a notebook, like a child playing at school. Today she was wearing a daisy-print dress, her hair in clips. She looked younger than the Intern David had skipped off with. Ani was sitting at Rosa’s feet, while she stretched out on the sofa. Helen had the armchair, a fancy grey modular thing David had liked, but which made her nervous she might spill red wine on it.

‘Do we have to do this?’ she said, hopefully. ‘I’ve brought a DVD of Mean Girls.’

‘We do,’ said Rosa, muffled. ‘I’ll probably get fired if I don’t. And I’ve already been dumped and my husband’s left me for a—’

‘We can do it, but we’re not calling it Project Love,’ said Ani, cutting her off.

Marnie pouted. ‘But that’s what it is! A new approach to finding happiness.’

‘No, no, we can’t. It’s too optimistic. We might jinx it.’

‘Didn’t think you believed in that,’ said Rosa, from behind her cushion.

Ani blushed a little. ‘Trust me. When you date a lot, you start to believe anything. Otherwise you’d have to think it was your fault every time something promising turns into an 18-cert horror show.’

‘That’s not the spirit.’ Marnie frowned. ‘Positivity, people!’

‘OK, OK. Let’s call it Project “Maybe we’ll meet a guy who isn’t awful and a liar and a cheat, or who won’t accidentally propose to you, then burst into tears in an Indian restaurant”.’

Rosa removed the cushion and rubbed Ani’s shoulder with her stockinged foot. ‘That won’t happen again. You’ve definitely taken one for the team there. Hey, why don’t we call it the Ex Factor or something? You know, because… exes.’

The others considered it. ‘Did you just come up with that right there?’ asked Ani suspiciously.

Rosa picked at a thread in the cushion. ‘Um… It was Jason’s idea actually. For the article, you know.’

Another look from Ani to Helen. Helen said, ‘Is it “Jason” now then? Not “Scary Editor Surf Dude”?’

‘He’s not so scary. He’s quite nice actually.’

‘Is he hot?’ asked Marnie, suddenly interested.

‘Oh, I guess,’ said Rosa, vaguely. ‘I don’t really notice other men, you know. Anyway, he can’t wait to see the piece.’

Helen’s stomach lurched at the thought of the article. This was really going to happen.

‘I don’t mind what we call it, so long as we do it,’ said Marnie. ‘Now what we’ll do is write down our names, then pull them out of a hat. Do you have a hat, Rosa?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s only an expression,’ said Ani. ‘We can just draw them out of a hand.’

‘Oh, OK then, if you want to rob it of all joy and fun and sense of occasion.’

‘Put them in that glass thing,’ said Rosa soothingly. ‘Chuck the tea light out, it’s burned down anyway. Like my marriage.’

Ani patted her reflexively. Marnie scribbled down their names and tore the paper up into four.

‘And are we picking the name of the person whose ex we’re dating, or the one who we’re setting up?’ Helen had a sense of rising panic. Surely this wasn’t going to actually go ahead. She looked around for a candle; maybe she could accidentally-on-purpose set the bits of paper on fire.

Ani looked blank. ‘Also what if we pick ourselves?’ said Rosa. ‘I mean if I picked you…and you picked me…or what if I picked Ani, and then Ani picks Marnie, Helen picks me…’

‘God,’ said Ani, wrinkling her brow. ‘It’s harder than I thought.’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t bother,’ said Helen quickly, though she knew it was hopeless. Once Marnie set her mind on something, resistance was futile.

‘Honestly, guys,’ said Marnie, ‘some top professionals you lot are. It’s very simple. If you get your own name, put it back in. We’re picking the person we’re going to set up. Right?’

Oh God, thought Helen. Why had she agreed to this? And which friend would be the worst to set up? Ani, the cynical perfectionist? Rosa, with the weight of her first post-divorce date, or Marnie, who seemed willing to date anyone, from a FTSE-100 exec to a basically homeless busker?

The pot, a stained-glass one Rosa had got in Marrakesh on honeymoon, went solemnly round. ‘Choose…wisely,’ said Marnie, skittishly. ‘Otherwise your face will melt off like that dude in Last Crusade. Rosa, you go first, it’s your flat.’

Rosa fished, unfolded the square of paper. ‘Drum roll, please. So, I’m setting up…you, Marn.’

‘Whoop! I bet you’ll have a really nice ex for me. Now you, Ani.’

She pulled out a slip. ‘I am matchmaking for…Rosa!’

‘Hurray!’ Rosa clapped. ‘You’ll get me someone good, I know you will.’

Marnie held out the pot. ‘Helz, you choose.’

Quick, do something set it on fire no there’s no candles eat the paper! Eat it! With trepidation, Helen unfolded her paper and read: ‘Ani.’

‘Well, here’s to my future husband,’ said Ani with heavy irony. Helen bit her lip. The pressure! Who would she even choose?

‘OK, my turn.’ Marnie unfolded her paper, just as Helen was working out that there was only one name left and it was—

‘You, Helz,’ said Marnie. ‘Great! I’ve been wanting to set you up for years.’

And Helen had always strenuously avoided it. Because: reasons reasons reasons. Oh God, what if she picked Ed? She wouldn’t. No, surely she wouldn’t. Was that good or bad? ‘Someone nice,’ she pleaded. ‘Not someone who likes going to clubs or taking drugs or a City banker with a fetish for nipple clamps or a part-time stripper.’

Marnie raised her eyebrows. ‘Gary was actually a pretty nice guy, you know. Great abs.’

‘Please. Someone normal. Or, you know, normal for me.’

‘Just trust me, Helz!’ Marnie tapped the table. ‘Right, ladies. Now we’ve got our names, we have to choose a nice ex, then contact them and set them up with our matchmakee.’

‘What if they’re married? Or say no? Or are gay now?’ Helen was still stalling.

‘Then choose someone else.’

Oh dear. It was going to be hard enough to find one person, let alone several. Who could she pick? Someone from school? That guy she snogged at an Ocean Colour Scene gig in the first year of university? She couldn’t even remember his name—Andy something? Not Peter, her nice-but-dull main ex, who she’d dated between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five; he was happily married with four kids and working in Kent as a used-car salesman. And thinking over her other thin-on-the-ground exes, and knowing Ani’s high standards, she just hoped her friend would forgive her.

* * *

Ani.

‘You look so beautiful, dar-link!’

‘Auntie, I look like a drag queen. That’s an insult actually. They’d look much better.’

‘What is drag queen?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. You know what it means. Like Lily Savage.’ (Or Cousin Mehdi, she added to herself.) Her aunt Zhosi still pretended not to speak English properly, even though she’d been in the UK since she was twelve years old, fleeing Uganda with her parents and brother, Ani’s dad. And also with her second cousin, Ani’s mother. Yes, Ani’s parents were second cousins. Not first cousins—though, as she often felt like explaining, that wasn’t illegal in the UK—but still a little odd, something that made people look at her twice. It also meant family parties, where everyone was related to everyone else and with grudges that went all the way back to the turn of the last century, could be rather fraught.

Ani’s mother came in, glowing in a fuchsia sari and gold jewellery. She blinked at Ani. ‘That looks…different.’

‘Beautiful, no?’ Aunt Zhosi swept a hand to indicate Ani’s face.

‘Well, maybe we can tone down this eyeshadow a bit. You look like you’ve been in the boxing ring, Anisha.’

Ani sat glowering as they pawed at her face, her mother removing some of the fifteen layers of foundation, while her aunt defiantly stuck yet more jewels on Ani’s face. She just looked daft in traditional clothes. Her short hair clashed with her extravagant make-up and clothes, and the lime-green sari her aunt had picked out made her skin look washed out. She held herself all wrong, used to suits, so the fabric hung awkwardly and had to be fixed by the tutting hordes of aunties and cousins (often both in the same person).

‘Mum!’ The door flew open and a teenage girl stood there, hands on newly discovered hips, her turquoise sari hanging perfectly. She said breathily, ‘Mum, Manisha is well pissed off! She says they’ve like put the wrong colour flowers on the plates or something.’

Aunty Z threw up her hands and muttered something in Hindi. Ani assumed it translated as, ‘I have had it with this damn bridezilla, why didn’t I get her to elope?’ The girl, Ani’s cousin Pria—thirteen going on thirty—glanced at her. ‘Um, that colour is like, so not good on you?’

‘Who died and made you Gok Wan?’ snapped Ani.

‘Um, that, like, doesn’t even make sense?’

Ani’s mother chased Pria. ‘Go, go, help your mother. And spit out that chewing gum!’ She rested her hand on Ani’s head, on the vast concoction of clips Aunt Zhosi had stuck in. ‘Are you all right, sweetheart? You don’t wish it was you?’

‘What, getting trussed up and delivered to a man like a package? No thanks.’

Her mother reattached a failing-off rhinestone. ‘You know, I felt the same when my parents suggested I marry Daddy. I was a modern girl, at university—I didn’t want to marry my second cousin. How backward. But now look, we have you and your brothers, and we’ve grown closer each year.’ It was true—Ani’s parents were still sickeningly in love, even after thirty-five years.

‘I just don’t want to be someone’s Stepford wife, Mum. I’m too independent, it wouldn’t work.’

In reply, she got a glare. ‘Is that what you think I am?’ Ani’s mother was a cardiothoracic surgeon, head of her department.

‘No! I just… It’s a lot of pressure, you know. Find a man and quick, but make sure it’s the right man, so you don’t end up with a messy divorce or trapped in a horrible marriage. I don’t know how you get it right.’

Her mother watched her in the mirror. ‘Do you feel under pressure, sweetheart?’

‘Um…a bit. Like, Manisha’s three years younger than me and she’s getting hitched, and I don’t even have a boyfriend.’

‘We won’t push you into anything, Anisha. We aren’t going to take you to India and marry you off. As long as you’re happy. But you don’t seem happy. All this dating and meeting all these boys—do you even like any of them?’

‘Some. Now and again.’

‘Do you want to share your life with someone?’

Ani thought of her cousin, the year-long extravaganza of family parties, and the boys she’d seen with her parents for six months before, the frantic planning, the beauty regimes, the diets. Manisha, always Ani’s chubby cousin, beside whom she could stuff herself with sweets with impunity at family gatherings, had lost three stone and was now an irritating size eight who talked about nothing but ‘gluten free, innit’. This was only the engagement party and there were a thousand people coming. Of course, Ani didn’t want that. She sighed and said in a small voice: ‘Yes. But it has to be the right person. I have to be sure.’

Her mother’s hand stroked her forehead. It was cool, and smelled faintly of antiseptic, just like Ani always remembered. ‘Well, if you want, Daddy and I can make some enquiries. That’s all it would be, you know—we can just introduce you to some boys. No pressure.’

She put her hand over her mother’s, stilling it. ‘Thanks, Mum. I’m not saying no. Maybe you’d do a better job—I’m not really managing it myself. But not yet, OK? I have a date, anyway,’ she said, stretching the truth slightly. ‘Not from online. Friend of Helen’s.’ She didn’t know how to explain the Ex Factor. She’d have to find a way to hide Rosa’s paper when the article came out. Her parents always read it, wanting to support Ani’s friends.

‘Oh, good!’ Her mother was visibly cheered. ‘I’m sure he will be lovely. Helen’s such a nice girl. Daddy always calls her when he needs to fix the computer.’

And what kind of exes would she have? Ani hadn’t known Helen to even fancy anyone since that guy Ed, who had somehow ended up dating Marnie. She’d always been mystified as to why Helen wasn’t more annoyed about that. And who would Ani herself choose for Rosa, so vulnerable and broken? Why had she let herself in for such a mad idea? Ani shook her head, dislodging another three rhinestones.

* * *

The engagement party went by, as parties do. All that planning for a few hours of speeches and glitter. Despite herself, Ani enjoyed it, the music, the clapping, the smiles on the faces of her family, Manisha looking so pretty and so genuinely happy. As Ani sat, her feet aching in the gold heels Aunt Zhosi had forced on her, her grandmother (also her great-aunt, confusingly,) toddled over and pinched her cheek. ‘Good and plump! Such a healthy girl.’

Ani winced. ‘Hi, Bubs. Here, sit down.’ She pulled up a seat for the wiry little woman.

Her grandma shook her head. ‘No seats needed, thank you, I’m not dying. How about you, my Anisha? When will it be your turn? When will you meet a nice boy?’

‘Um, I don’t know, when the male population of London stops being such a bunch of useless babies?’ She thought fleetingly of the handsome barrister, Adam Robins. That was the kind of man she needed. Suave. Successful. Not on the rebound. Yet any time she met one she said something to drive them away.

‘You can meet a nice girl instead if you like. We wouldn’t mind. Mrs Kapoor’s granddaughter had a wedding with an English girl. They both wore saris!’

‘Thanks, Bubs. Sadly I don’t think that’s an option.’

Her grandmother peered at her. ‘It’s your job, Anisha. Spending all that time divorcing people, it can’t be good for you.’ She tapped her own scrawny chest. ‘Your heart. It must suffer.’

Ani would have contradicted her, saying she didn’t divorce people, she just helped when things were already broken. Gave them the gift of a dignified ending. Offered an exit when there was no hope. But it was possible her grandma was right about her heart. She just had to hope that the crazy project might work.

Chapter 7 How Everyone Met Everyone

Rosa

‘Are your emissions killing the planet?’

It was 2001 and I was making my way through Bath University Freshers’ Fair when I suddenly heard the words. I sniffed at myself, alarmed, before realising the boy who’d called to me was manning the Greenpeace stall. He was six foot tall, tanned from a summer working on organic farms, and his dreadlocks and beard were bleached almost white. We drifted towards each other as the night wore on, until we were furiously snogging on his fetid futon, under a poster that pleaded with us to ‘Stop Whaling Now’…

‘Stop Wailing?’ Suzanne said, frowning (or maybe, it was hard to tell).

‘Whaling,’ said Rosa. ‘You know, like whales. The animals?’

‘Oh, those.’ Suzanne turned to Jason. ‘Rosa isn’t really a writer, of course, but will it do?’

Rosa laid down the draft article she’d been reading to them: Jason wanted ‘how they met’ stories for each of the exes, so she’d had to delve deep into her memories of the time before David. BD. It seemed like another life.

Jason was listening with his chin in his hands. ‘So what happened next? Why didn’t it work out?’

‘Oh, the usual uni stuff. You know.’ The Tom thing had lasted for ten days, a long time in First Year, and mainly involved strategically bumping into each other in the student union while Supergrass played on the stereo. Then he was spotted tangling pierced tongues with a tattooed girl called River (‘Puddle, more like,’ said Ani, fast becoming Rosa’s favourite person at Bath), and Rosa began exchanging significant glances with David Strauss, the editor of the student paper (despite Tom deeming all media ‘the immoral finger-puppets of capitalism’), and that was that.

‘Well, I can’t wait to read the others.’

Rosa looked at Suzanne, whose nostrils were doing their best to express incredulity. ‘You mean…it’s OK?’

‘It’s great. I love the voice.’ Jason smiled warmly, gathering up his iPad and pushing back his shaggy fair hair. ‘Got to run, I have to interview the head of the World Bank in five, but top work, Rosa.’

Suzanne watched him go, her eyes fixed somewhere round the bottom of his suit jacket. She whipped her head round; Rosa hastily stared at her article. ‘Hmph. Well, you better get on and set those dates up. Jason will be watching with a lot of interest.’ Almost as much interest as Suzanne was taking in his bum.

‘Sure thing. It’s all underway,’ Rosa lied.

As Suzanne stalked off, muttering dire words on where were the pull quotes for the bloody juice cleanse story for God’s sake, Rosa went back to her desk and found the Twitter account she believed was Tom—@manarchist. She sent a message. Hi, Tom, is that you? How are you?? Sorry to get in touch out of the blue but would love to pick your brains about something.

As she awaited his response, she wondered if Marnie would like him. She’d been tweeting about the project already:

@marnieinthecity Can’t wait to get started on #exfactor dating project. My fab friend is going to find me a lovely date!!!

But of course she’d like him. Tom was handsome, and passionate, and maybe he’d started showering more than once a week by now, and Marnie seemed to like most men, regardless of looks, age, intelligence, or even not-being-a-twatness. As long as he was single, Rosa was pretty sure her work was done.

* * *

Ani.

He was late. Why were they always late? And I didn’t like what I was wearing. I’d probably be too hot in the theatre, and sweat on him. And while I was counting my anxieties, why were we going to the theatre anyway? Wasn’t it more traditional on a first date to actually, you know, talk?

Ani stopped, and sighed, pulling her mind from 2010 back to the present day. Across the desk, Catherine—who was twenty-seven but looked fourteen—was on the phone to her mum talking about the 5:2 diet. ‘So today all I’ve had is four carrots, one boiled egg…’

Checking her boss wasn’t around—he was out at a boozy lunch in his club—Ani called Helen. ‘I need help.’

Helen sounded stressed. ‘I need help too. This bloody article.’

‘Tell me about it. What am I supposed to be saying?’

‘Well, just a bit about the guy, how you met, why it didn’t work out, that sort of thing. Which one was he again?’

‘The one who took me to the most God-awful play I’ve ever seen. Where the cast came up and threw stuff at you, remember I told you about it?’

‘Nope. I’m going to need more than that for the database.’ Helen and Rosa kept a mental Rolodex of all Ani’s dates over the years. It was well into the hundreds by now, and sometimes Ani couldn’t even remember them herself.

‘Simon, 2010, receding hair, bought himself a drink at the theatre and didn’t ask if I wanted one, stuck to soda water all night while I accidentally got drunk, theatre critic?’

‘Oh yes, got it now. Awkward Theatre Critic Guy. And you’ve picked him for Rosa?’

‘Well, they have the same job, and he was quite good-looking, and he wasn’t so bad. Just—you know.’

‘Not quite right for you?’

‘Yes. And don’t say I’m commitment-phobic.’ Ani could hear Helen’s diplomatic silence.

‘Maybe he was just nervous back then. Why didn’t it go anywhere?’

‘Aside from taking me to the world’s worst play and not asking if I wanted a drink? I don’t know. I don’t think he fancied me. No kiss. So I didn’t call him.’ Sometimes Ani found it overwhelming, how hard it was to connect with people. Dating was like groping for a foothold on a cliff, and falling again and again. It was hard to imagine how anything could ever work.

‘It’ll be OK though, won’t it?’ She could hear the worry in Helen’s voice. This would be her first date in years, after all.

‘Of course. It’ll be…fun.’ Even to herself, Ani didn’t sound convinced.

‘An experiment, anyway.’

‘That’s right. An experiment.’

‘Speaking of which, I better go and set your date up! Marnie’s already sent me the email address for mine. Dan someone. Lord knows who she’d pick, he could be anyone.’

‘So she didn’t pick…you know? Ed?’

Silence down the phone. Then Helen laughed in a strained fashion. ‘Ed? Ha ha, no. I don’t think he’s—I think he’s not about at the moment. They’re not in touch.’

‘And you’re really OK with her, after everything?’

‘Of course! Ed and I were just friends. Anyway, it was ages ago. Of course I’m OK!’

Ani really wanted to ask who Helen had chosen for her, but they’d all agreed not to give out pre-date information in case it jinxed things. Just because one friend hadn’t got on with them, didn’t mean the other wouldn’t like the guy. ‘If you’re sure.’

She hung up and went back to worrying about Simon and Rosa, her dear and recently heartbroken friend. It would be OK, surely? It had been years—maybe he’d changed, maybe he was a bit more suave. She called up an email.

Hi Simon! Long time no see, huh? I hope you don’t think this is weird but are you single?

* * *

Helen.

Helen put down the phone, and scowled at what she’d written.

‘Oi, Moby. MOOOOOOBY.’

When I first heard the nickname the cool boys had given me, I thought they meant the singer. Which was mystifying, as I wasn’t cool, edgy, or indeed bald. Then I realised they meant a different Moby, one less known for their ambient hits. Moby Dick.

‘Just ignore them,’ said the boy who sat behind me in Computer Camp.

‘I can’t,’ I said miserably. ‘They’re the cool boys.’

‘They’re the cool boys at Computer Camp,’ said the boy, pushing his thick glasses up his spotty nose. ‘Like duh. None of us are cool.’

He’d been right, Helen thought. The year was 1997; the location, Reading University Summer Computer Camp. Helen was fifteen, finding way too much meaning in the words of Alanis Morissette songs and, at that point, still four hours away from her first kiss. Nik was small for his age, and had glasses, and spots, and dressed in what looked like his mum’s idea of trendy clothes. But who was Helen to talk? She’d had to buy her clothes in Etam, not Tammy Girl, so she was at the Camp disco in a massive pair of denim dungarees. Uncool even at Computer Camp.

Nik had pushed his tongue dutifully around her mouth, hands clamped on her waist (a large area). Helen had moved her tongue too, and so what if her mind kept wandering to the piece of code they’d learned that day, it still counted as her first kiss, and even Marnie, who’d already kissed twelve boys and let one feel under her bra, had been a tiny bit impressed when Helen had rung her from the payphone to tell her. She and Nik had lost touch after Computer Camp, since Helen didn’t have a mobile or the internet at home, and, anyway, she’d been a bit preoccupied in the months following it. However, a quick Facebook search threw him up.

Helen scrolled through his profile—articles from The Economist, the odd photo, check-ins at various airports round the world. His latest picture showed a man in board shorts, posing on the deck of a boat. A proper grown-up man, with chest hair, who looked to be reasonably handsome. Helen hoped so. She didn’t think spotty nerds who knew all the dialogue from Return of the Jedi were really Ani’s type. But globetrotting business tycoons who hung out on boats—very much Ani’s type.

She sent him a message. Dear Nik, how are you these days? You seem to be doing really well. I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but do you ever date? Weird request I know!

Helen sent it, then pushed her laptop away and went to her wardrobe. The mirror showed her current self—a woman of thirty-two, size ten-to-twelve, with blonde hair curling round an anxious face—but in her head, sometimes, she was still Moby. Sometimes she wondered if she always would be.

At the back of the wardrobe was a pink box, pasted all over with hearts and stickers. She remembered Marnie making that nail polish smear, back in 1995, the two of them squashed up on Helen’s bed. Inside were photos—her and Marnie in their primary-school uniforms, arms round each other’s shoulders. Helen had never noticed before, but Marnie was wearing odd socks in the picture, and her jumper had a large hole in it. Something squeezed Helen’s heart, looking at that tough little girl, with her fierce expression. It was worth doing this ridiculous project, if it made Marnie happy. And who knew, maybe it would even work out for some of them? Rosa and Ani—yes, and Marnie too—deserved to find lovely boyfriends.

She set it aside and found the picture she was looking for. On the back her mum had scrawled: Helen takes the prize for World Wide Web design! Computer Camp 1997. Helen stroked the red, delighted face of the girl in the picture, clutching her cheap plastic trophy. She’d been so happy at Computer Camp, with no idea that everything was soon to fall so spectacularly apart. If she ended up seeing Nik again—if by some chance he and Ani hit it off—he would find Helen very much changed as well.

Chapter 8 Four Dates and a Social Funeral

Rosa

Rosa had spent the day not-writing the rest of her dating article. Not-writing was an activity that could take up vast tracts of time. It mainly involved Googling things, drinking coffee from the horrible machine in the corridor, hiding from Suzanne and, since the split, also hiding from David. Alternated with bouts of weeping in the ladies’, and reapplying mascara.

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