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Love Is…
Haley Hill
‘High drama and lots of laughs’ - Fabulous MagazineDating Agency doyenne Ellie Rigby always thought that helping people find love with the hard part…But now she’s all loved up with husband Nick and has hundreds of matchmaking successes under her belt, Ellie ought to know all there is to know about love.As her struggles to get pregnant put strain on her marriage, and her matchmaking service starts losing clients, Ellie realises she has so much more to learn. So setting off on a global research trip, Ellie makes it her mission to find out what makes love last forever, and whether it’s enough to save her own romance.
HALEY HILL is a fresh new voice in fiction. Prior to becoming an author, Haley launched and ran the Elect Club dating agency – and is an expert in all things dating! She lives in South London with her husband and twin daughters. Love Is… is her second book.
To my grandmother, Grace, whose love life never quite measured up to the romance novels she read.
Keep flirting with the Elvis impersonator, nan, there’s still time.
One of the greatest secrets to happiness is to curb your desires and to love what you already have.
Emilie du Chalet
Contents
Cover (#u297f7491-49fc-5680-90bc-f227c59c67f3)
About the Author (#u5f9440f2-2760-5bf0-8a8c-6e5871a1aa90)
Title (#u4164ee10-988a-55f1-8576-5e9e8078c139)
Dedication (#ua04b7b64-e6b7-5c65-895d-ff638f6b7c22)
Epigraph (#u3f5478b6-3cfd-5d02-b9f9-c61c8d88270b)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_166b8d9f-a74b-5419-bb6e-75dafde52451)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_c1ac6609-466b-5930-958b-c9b9471c602d)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_5105a076-c282-5fe7-a960-26f1aa62e8b3)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_2ca02c52-40d1-5437-9de3-a27e35efa4dc)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_57357dc4-163d-5bd7-9a9c-f0cccf748868)
Chapter 6 (#ulink_4fc3ae4b-d80f-5bb5-a5c3-caa6915f9e86)
Chapter 7 (#ulink_b00f7535-8a85-5faa-b6d5-5fcc88cb9067)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_140d82b2-e830-51d6-b7ad-a56f72258ceb)
I sat on the toilet and stared at the packet.
After years spent bringing couples together, attending their weddings, then their offspring’s christenings, spending more money on baby gifts than I did on my mortgage, surely I deserved my chance of happiness too. Wasn’t that the way this karma thing was supposed to work? I thought Eros and I had a deal.
I glared up at the ceiling to register my protest, then ripped off the cellophane. It must have been about the hundredth pregnancy test I’d bought since our wedding day. I’d tried to restrict it to one per cycle, but invariably I ended up back at Superdrug, clearing the shelves in the family planning section, hoping that a different brand might provide a different result. And I’d tried them all, from the basic two-liners to the early-response super tests complete with digital screen to spell out the result in shouty capitals. And then of course there were the ovulation kits, the sight of which now triggered some kind of Pavlovian response in Nick, sending him on a desperate quest for alcohol before I presented myself wearing Ann Summers lingerie and a ‘you know what that does to your sperm count’ nod at his wine glass.
I continued to stare at the turquoise and pink branding until the colours merged like a Maldivian sunset and my thoughts wandered back to our honeymoon. At the time, I’d believed that all it took was a sandy beach, white linen sheets and a quick flick of the fertility fairy’s wand. And after seven nights of consummating our marriage in a five-star beach hut, as I skipped into the chemist at the airport, I couldn’t have been more certain that the tiny mound of a stomach I’d developed was the manifestation of Nick’s and my future happiness, and entirely unrelated to the ten thousand calories I’d consumed each day at the hotel buffet. I glanced back down at the box and laughed out loud. If only I’d known, I thought.
My phone vibrated. I ignored it.
‘Well, I know now,’ I said to myself as I pulled out one of the tests, ‘that even with the aid of a NASA-engineered ovulation detector, we had no hope of conceiving.’
Our first Harley Street consultation had been over a year ago, but since then, the doctor’s words had been bouncing back and forth in my head like a ping-pong ball.
‘Intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection is the only option,’ he’d said.
He’d gone on to explain in medical terms that I had the follicles of a fifty-year-old heroin addict, my uterine lining was thinner than an Olsen sister, and my ovaries were about as useful as a snorkel in a tsunami.
My stomach churned. This round of treatment was our third and final chance. I took a deep breath and pulled out the test. My heart beat faster. I could feel the pulse in the tips of my fingers. I lost my grip for a second and it slipped from my grasp. I caught it swiftly with my other hand, as if it were the Olympic torch.
I’d learned from the fertility forums that it was better to wee into a container, to ensure the stick was properly immersed, rather than hold it under a stream of urine. The method was more accurate, ‘Mum to Three Snow-babies’ had advised. I rested the test, lid still on, on the cistern and spread the information leaflet open. I already knew it by heart. It didn’t matter. I read it again. Just to be sure.
It is best to conduct the test in the morning after a night’s sleep. The urine is more concentrated.
I couldn’t recall sleeping, although my uncompromised pelvic floor muscles had at least managed to hold off any bladder evacuation.
My hands were trembling as I reached for an old lid from a toothpaste pump dispenser. It was the perfect size for collecting a sample, ‘Here’s Hoping’ had explained on the Fertility Friends forum. I sat down on the toilet and held it under me until I felt warm urine overflowing from the top. Once I’d carefully submerged the test in the container, I closed my eyes, visualising the word ‘pregnant’ in my mind, hoping it might somehow instruct the test to comply. Moments later, when I found myself chanting and rubbing my womb, unwittingly re-enacting a hypno-spiritual video I’d seen on YouTube, I realised that I was in dire need of distraction. Instinctively, I went to call Nick, but then I remembered he had an important breakfast meeting, so instead I called Matthew.
He answered on the first ring.
‘What?’ he asked.
I could hear a child screaming in the background so I raised my voice.
‘The two-minute wait,’ I said.
I heard more wailing and then a noise that sounded like something choking. Matthew issued a reprimand and then came back on the line.
‘OK, Ellie,’ he said, retaining the disciplinarian tone for me too. ‘Move away from the vision board. That photo of you and Nick cradling a Photoshopped baby isn’t helping anyone.’
‘It’s worse than that,’ I said. ‘I was chanting.’
Matthew laughed. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘two minutes is but a mere blip on the timeline of life. I’ve got another seventeen years to get through until these two are off my hands.’
I let out a deep sigh and flopped down onto my bed. ‘It’s not just the two minutes,’ I said. ‘It’s all that came before it too. Surely you understand that?’
Matthew laughed again. ‘Ah, but I do, my sweet.’ He paused for a moment to intercept a further misdemeanour then continued. ‘I remember precisely what preceded this current bout of neurosis.’ He took a deep breath and then exhaled. ‘This all began long before you started fretting about your inability to breed.’
I’d been hoping for distraction not ego annihilation. ‘What did?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he said, in a manner that implied he was drumming his fingers on the table. ‘Let’s consider Eleanor Rigby’s life journey so far, shall we? What were you doing before this all-consuming quest for conception?’
‘I don’t know, working?’
He sighed. ‘Ellie, you spent five years planning your wedding.’
I went to speak but Matthew continued. ‘Prior to that you spent four years aggressively soliciting a proposal from Nick. Before that you engineered a career that enabled you to personally interview thousands of eligible men.’
‘And women,’ I said, ‘as a matchmaker. I was trying to help people.’
He chuckled. ‘This behaviour, although disturbing enough in isolation, was preceded by many other alarming antics: a shambolic engagement, two disastrous cohabitations, fours years cyberstalking Hugh Jackman, a stretch hyper-parenting a pet rat and six years fanatically coddling two Cabbage Patch dolls.’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘Ellie, you’ve been looking for love since the day you were born.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ I said, pulling myself up from the bed. ‘And FYI, Bungle was a guinea pig. Not a rat.’
Matthew must’ve handed the phone over to his toddler, because all I could hear was the choking sound, then wailing, then manic laughter, then some salivary noises, then more wailing then Matthew coming back on the line.
‘There you go,’ he said. ‘That’s what your life will sound like if you get what you wish for.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘It can’t be all bad.’
‘It’s not all bad,’ he replied, ‘but it won’t make you happy. Just like marriage won’t make you happy. And kids certainly won’t make your marriage happy.’ He paused for a moment, seemingly to wipe a child’s orifice, then continued. ‘If you kept abreast of the latest research, as you should, you would know that a recent study showed a couple’s happiness decreases proportionately with the birth of each child.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Who conducted that study?’ I said. ‘Was it you, interviewing yourself?’
He laughed. ‘We’re conditioned to think we need to have children in order to be content, when in fact, if we bother to look at the evidence, the opposite is true.’ He let out a deep sigh. ‘Why else do you think Lucy went back to work and left me looking after the little buggers?’
I giggled. ‘You love it really.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I really don’t. I love them, of course, but I don’t especially enjoy sacrificing my every human right in the name of positive parenting.’ He moved away from the phone to confiscate some crayons then continued. ‘Freud said that our need to procreate is driven by a fear of death.’ He went on to adopt a lady therapist voice. ‘Do you fear death, Eleanor Rigby?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘The only one who should fear death is you, if you don’t shut up.’
He was still laughing when I hung up.
I checked the timer on my phone. Twenty seconds to go.
I flopped down on the bed again, feeling the weight of my body sink into the mattress. Nick said he would love me no matter what.
Would he really though? I wondered. Even if I could never give him the sandy-haired children he’d always wanted? The son he could hoist up onto his shoulders and teach what it means to be a man, or the little girl with pigtails reaching for his hand, eyes wide with adoration. What if it was just us? For the rest of our lives. Our union having no greater purpose than to provide comfort to each other in old age. We’d play bridge, grow vegetables and potter around the house. And then we’d die.
Ten seconds to go.
I burst back into the bathroom. Before I reached for the test, I stopped and looked up at the ceiling, retracting my earlier complaint to the Almighty and substituting it with a pledge to reinstate my monthly charitable donations.
I snatched the test from the pot and stared at the screen on the side. The words registered straight away.
Not pregnant.
I looked again, just in case I was hallucinating the ‘Not’. I shook it and then held it up to the light. I knew there was nothing I could do to change it. I threw it in the bin along with the backup test and then went to get ready for work.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_a9ec93c9-266d-5b6f-b643-3bb12d33d83d)
I nudged the front door closed with my shoulder to force the lock into place. A flake of black paint fell onto the front path.
I turned to see Victoria, who was bouncing on the spot, clad head-to-toe in Lycra, ponytail swinging like a metronome.
‘Morning, Ellie,’ she said.
‘Morning,’ I mumbled, pulling my handbag onto my shoulder. I’d hoped I would be able to sneak out before she’d emerged from her five-thousand-square-foot double-fronted mansion for her morning showy-offy jog.
She continued to bounce but at the same time cocked her head. ‘You didn’t reply to my text.’
