It's Got to Be Perfect: the memoirs of a modern-day matchmaker (23 page)

When pen-tapping was no longer functioning as a diversion, I looked up to see a brunette in a brightly-patterned wrap dress edging down the stairs. Below her thick dark-brown fringe, were a delicate nose, pointy chin and rosebud mouth. She looked like the sort of flower fairy I imagined as a child to be living at the bottom of my garden

I stood up to greet her. ‘Emily?’

She studied me with inquisitive hazel eyes. ‘You’re Ellie?’

I smiled, gesturing for her to take a seat.

‘You don’t look like I thought you would,’ she said, leaning her elbows on the table after she’d sat down.

I laughed. ‘What were you expecting?’

‘I dunno, someone a bit older.’

I laughed again. ‘What, like your mum?’

She giggled. ‘I can’t imagine her here. In this place. Must’ve been hilarious.’

I went on to relay the conversation I’d had with her mother, carefully omitting any reference to Oompa Loopmas. Afterwards she covered her face with her hands and apologised profusely, before daring to peer through a gap in her fingers.

‘I think I was born to be humiliated,’ she said.

‘Anyone with parents was born to be humiliated,’ I replied.

Moving the conversation on, I asked why she’d changed her mind about meeting me, as opposed to her stated preference for instant death via a lead bullet through the cranium.

Her shoulders drooped and her chest sunk in. ‘My best friend just got engaged,’ she said.

I looked on, waiting for the rest.

‘She and I were the only single girls left in our group. Now I’m the only one.’

I continued to wait.

‘All they talk about is weddings and babies. They don’t want to go to bars or clubs anymore. They just go around each other’s houses for dinner parties and bang on about interior designs and landscape gardening. Honestly, it’s like they’re in their fifties, not their twenties. One of the girls has even started an antiquing club.’

I frowned. ‘Antiquing?’

‘She’s American,’ she said as though it explained everything.

I laughed. ‘Okay, so you don’t want to hang out with them anymore, maybe you just need new friends to go to bars with?’

‘Don’t really want to do that anymore either,’ she said, ‘although I could do with a drink now.’

I smiled and then nodded at Steve.

‘I thought I’d be married by twenty-eight,’ she said.

I smirked. ‘Have you met anyone you’d like to marry?’

She shook her head and then peered at my left hand. ‘Are you married yet?’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Not yet. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the best laid plans have a nasty habit of backfiring.’

Steve laid two glasses of wine on the table. She swiped the one nearest her and took several gulps. Straight away, I noticed her nail polish. Aside from a few chips, it reminded me of a colour I used to wear myself.

‘My mum says if you don’t have a plan, then life will find someone who does.’ She took another gulp. ‘But, Dad left her when I was seven, so what does she know anyway?’

‘She probably knows a lot more than you’d think.’

‘He said she’d let herself go.’

‘Do you think that was fair?’

She stared into her glass. ‘What leaving her or telling her it was because she had a fat arse?’

I laughed.

She took another swig. ‘But he’s divorced again now, so clearly he knows shit too.’

I put my notepad and pen on the table. ‘Well, it’s obvious you don’t want to be like your parents.’

‘Who does?’

‘And you don’t want to be like your friends.’

‘No way.’

‘So what
do
you want?’

She leaned back in her chair. ‘To fall in love, get married and be happy.’

‘How about to be happy, fall in love and then get married?’

‘That’s the same thing.’

‘No it’s not.’

She blinked. ‘But if I meet the right guy and he loves me, then that will make me happy. I know it will.’

She sat with her arms crossed in front of her chest, eyes narrowed, jaw jutting out in defiance. It felt almost as though I were looking back at a reflection of my younger self. Only then did I realise that I should know better than to try to teach a lesson that we all must learn for ourselves.

‘Okay then,’ I picked up my notepad and clicked my pen. ‘Tell me all about this knight in shining armour.’

She went on to describe the same man that every female client had also described: thirty to thirty-five years-old, over 6ft, intelligent, good sense of humour, solvent, never married, no children. But this time with the added stipulation of “must like rock music and poetry” and a preference for tattooed torsos.

Once Emily had left, I completed my notes, feeling as though I’d been subjected to a four-year detention assignment: describe Mr Right in your own words, several thousand times. When I’d finished, I flung my pen on the table and sunk my head into my hands.

‘Need another drink?’ Steve asked, peering down at me.

I looked up. ‘Yes please, something strong. But not too strong, I have to babysit tonight.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You?’

I followed him back to the bar and pulled myself onto one of the stools. ‘Henry, you remember. Ephenant?’

He laughed and then poured some whiskey into a tumbler, followed by five cubes of ice, which I assumed were his childcare dilution allowance. ‘So who did the elephant trunk belong to?’

‘An international entrepreneur looking for pink nipples.’

‘The guy with the dodgy highlights?’

I nodded and gulped down the whiskey. It burned my throat.

‘So what’s his story?’

‘Not sure yet.’ I put the glass back down on the bar. ‘Mia’s client, we matched him with a glamour model.’

Steve nodded.

‘Didn’t go so well though.’

He shrugged his shoulders.

I checked my watch. ‘She’s coming here in a minute.’

‘Right.’

‘I’ve got to call him first.’

‘Yeah.’

It was clear he wasn’t listening to me. ‘You all right?’

‘Um hum.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yeah, go and call trouser trunk.’

I stood in reception, watching Marie grinning sadistically while punching staples into a Barbie doll, which looked uncannily like Mandi, and I dialled his number. The ringing tone was international.

‘Hey gorgeous,’ he answered, without even knowing who I was.

‘It’s Ellie, I’m a colleague of Mia’s.’

‘And how is the devil’s Cupid?’

‘She’s fine, thanks. I was just calling to ask about Kerri. Is it a good time to talk?’

I heard a girl giggling in the background and something that sounded like the light slap of flesh. ‘Yeah sure, I’m in Marbella on my yacht. Chilling. Wanna join us?’

‘Er, no,’ I replied.

‘Shame. So, you got anymore hotties you can send my way?’

‘I want to talk about your date with Kerri.’

He laughed.

‘Well?’ I asked.

‘Hang on.’ I heard a girl’s voice in the background saying something that sounded Slavic.

‘Is that Russian?’

He laughed. ‘So, what do you want to know?’

‘The date?’

He laughed again and I heard some more flesh-slapping.

‘Hello?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, sorry.’

‘So?’

‘So, what?’

I took a long and laboured breath. ‘How. Did. It. Go?’

‘Okay, okay, calm down. And I thought Mia was the angry one.’ He paused and it sounded as though he were slurping a drink. ‘Okay, yeah, Kerri. Where do I start?’

‘What did you think when you saw her?’

He wolf-whistled. ‘Hot.’

‘And?’

‘Nice tits.’

‘Apart from that?’

‘Not a keeper.’

‘Why not?’

‘Too many issues.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I dunno.’ Another slurp.

‘Give me an example.’

‘Hang on.’ I heard another girl’s voice in the background. This time it sounded Chinese.

‘Is that Mandarin?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not even going to ask what’s going on.’

He laughed. ‘We’re playing chess.’

There was more giggling in the background.

‘Sure you are. Anyway back to Kerri.’

‘Where were we?’

‘Example.’

‘Oh yeah, okay, here’s one. We were at my villa, on the terrace, champagne, sunset … everything you birds love.’

I sighed.

‘So I suggested we have a drink in the hot tub.’

‘And?’

‘She went all psycho on me.’

‘Psycho?’

‘Yeah, freaking out.’

‘About what?’

‘I dunno. All I did was point out that the chorine levels might damage her bikini, and that it was probably best she leave it on the side.’

‘Hmm.’

Another slurp. ‘Then she started ranting on about how I just saw her as a pair of tits.’ He laughed.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘Because it’s all bollocks.’ He paused to laugh again. ‘She was happy for me to fly her out here and pay for everything, and she turned up with her massive tits, flashing them every chance she got. Then she had a go at me for looking at them.’

There were more giggles in the background. ‘Are you sure you actually want a relationship? Because this isn’t Rent-a-tit.’

He laughed again. ‘I think you mean tits. I can’t see how anyone would want just one. But there’s definitely a business idea there. I’ll give Stelios a call. Easytits, I can see it now.’

He slurped again. When I heard another voice in the background, this time in Spanish, I hung up the phone before my mind could begin to pair nationalities with nipple shades.

Outside the club, my heels dug into the softening tarmac. The stuffy inner city air slid into my lungs like treacle from a spoon. Taxis and buses sighed like packhorses ready to drop, while red-faced office workers, sweating into their suits, funnelled between and beside them, seeking the path of least resistance, eyes focused on their goal, brains programmed with aspiration.

Just when I thought nothing could distract them, one by one, their heads swivelled, and the pavement cleared, like the sea parting for Moses. It was as though the city held its breath while Kerri’s tiny frame and double Fs, squeezed into a child-size white linen dress were carried on four-inch Manolo Blahniks towards me. Women’s eyes narrowed to a toxic green, men’s jaws unhinged as their spellbound gaze followed her path, heads bobbing in time with her chest as it bounced braless towards the club. With a broad grin, she skipped towards me, but I sidestepped her, opened the door to the club and bundled her in.

Once she was seated at the bar, and I had introduced her to a now chirpier Steve, I bolted up the stairs and back onto the street, armed with the Dictaphone I’d purposely concealed in my bag that morning. Men were still dithering on the pavement, appearing dazed as though they’d just witnessed some sort of supernatural phenomenon. I pressed “record” and approached the first group I came to.

‘Hi,’ I said breathlessly, in an unfit rather than sexy manner. ‘Mind if I ask you about that girl you just saw?’ After an initial moment of unified bafflement, my question seemed to intensify their trance. ‘What did you think of her?’

‘Hot,’ said one of the men, staring ahead.

‘Hot as hell,’ another one added, blowing on his fingertips.

I turned back to the first one. ‘Would you date her?’

‘Fuck yeah.’ His eyes darted around as though he were envisaging the scenario.

‘Would you marry her?’

‘Most definitely.’

I frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Er, because she’s hot.’

‘What if she was stupid?’

‘Even better.’ The finger-blower laughed.

My eyes narrowed. ‘What if she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to have a double mastectomy?’

For a moment, their grins subsided, but then the finger-blower’s laughter rumbled up again.

‘Still, she’s got a great arse.’

They laughed and globules of saliva scattered like shrapnel across my face.

I wiped it off with my sleeve. ‘But then you were diagnosed with testicular cancer and had to have your balls chopped off?’

The laughter stopped.

I stepped towards them. ‘The surgery went wrong. There was necrosis. Then gangrene. It spread to your penis. It had to be amputated. What then?’

They stepped back, smiles fading.

‘Would her arse matter then, eunuch boys?’

They backed away, mumbling various excuses about returning to work. I shrugged, fully confident my approach had come across more hard-hitting journalist than mentally unstable matchmaker.

The two men I approached next were standing outside a prestigious law firm and wearing pinstriped suits and red braces. I expected to glean a more sensible response from them.

‘Gentlemen.’ I felt for the Dictaphone in my bag to check it was still recording. ‘Would you mind if I asked you few questions about the girl who was just here, the one in the white dress?’

As soon as I mentioned “white dress” it was as though their brains shut down and the contents of their testicles took over.

‘That dress,’ the fiftysomething man remarked. ‘Spectacular.’

The younger man, in his mid-thirties, was staring straight ahead.

I turned to him. ‘What did you think of her?’

A smile crept across his face. ‘X-rated,’ he said and then they both smirked.

I rolled my eyes. ‘So I take it you’d date her then?’

‘She looks expensive,’ the older one said, flashing his wedding ring. ‘But so long as she was discreet, I’d happily give her a pearl necklace to complement her dress.’

His laugh escalated, his eyes squinted to a close and his mouth gaped open, revealing years of decay. I felt an urge to ram the Dictaphone down his throat, pushing it all the way into his stomach so that his acid bile could digest his words.

When I returned to the club, having left their lecherous laughs to merge with the rest of London’s toxic emissions, I wondered if I should show Kerri my findings. I wanted her to understand that, when presented with a body as sexy as hers, men lost their ability to focus on anything else. And that introducing herself boobs first was tantamount to burying a Rembrandt in the boot of a Ferrari. But after I’d played the tape, I wondered if my approach might have been a little too radical.