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I sighed. Victoria had been charting my IVF process with the precision of a government agent. This, I suspected, was precisely the reason she’d been lurking by her front door since 7 a.m., jog-ready, to jump out and catch me on my way to work.
I glared at her. A glare that I hoped would say: Do you think my face would look like this if I’d just discovered I was incubating a much-longed-for half-me-half-Nick bundle of cells? No, Victoria. Instead of expressing elation, relief and the warm glow of raised hCG, this face is more befitting an exhausted and dejected woman who has endured two years of invasive medical interventions comprising, yet not exclusive to, double-dose vaginal suppositories, self-administered stomach injections, daily internal scans performed with a dildo ultrasound device, leg-stirrup procedures with disturbing terms such as ‘egg harvesting’ and ‘implantation’, then topped off with a giant needle stuck between my eyes to release my chakra. And all that to be told once again that I have failed to do the very thing that women were made to do.
Victoria screwed up her face. She’d been at the Botox again. ‘Aw, Ellie, no luck?’
I shook my head and made a point of theatrically rubbing my barren uterus.
‘Third time lucky maybe?’
‘Victoria, this was the third time.’
‘Oh yes, fourth then.’ Her bouncing quickened. For a moment, there was a glimpse of empathy in her stretched smile.
I scowled at her. She knew there’d be no fourth attempt.
She sniffed, and started bouncing higher.
‘You could always adopt,’ she said, adjusting her heart rate monitor. And with that she sped off.
I stood on the street for a moment, not realising I was still holding my stomach, and looked up at Nick’s and my house. Against the rows of magnificent Victorian villas, it looked like the neglected stepchild, stuck on the end like an ill-considered afterthought. While its siblings had been sent to Farrow and Ball finishing school, ours had been pebble-dashed and left to fend for itself against the elements. They say a pet chooses the owner and I wondered if that might be true for a house too. As much as I’d tried to fit in on this street, I was starting to doubt I ever would.
Up the road, mothers were bundling impeccably presented offspring into shiny cars. For them, life seemed so easy. Most had met their dashing eloquent husbands at top-tier universities, or later, working in some kind of glamorous grown-up profession. They’d gone on to marry in a grand French chateau or palatial Tuscan villa, then breed effortlessly, popping out rosy-cheeked cherubs every year or so, sometimes two or three at a time, while also advancing their careers, renovating and interior-designing their houses and serving quail eggs as appetisers. They even found time to accessorise with chiffon scarves.
When Nick and I moved here, I wanted to be just like them, but in the past few weeks, the L.K.Bennett riding boots I’d bought on Northcote Road had started to pinch a little.
My thoughts were distracted by the sight of Victoria’s three-year-old Boden-clad daughter marching out of their front gate, followed by an exhausted-looking woman who I presumed to be the latest au pair.
‘Morning, Camille,’ I said, grinning at the little girl a tad overzealously.
She looked me up and down and frowned. It was as though she could sense I wasn’t biologically qualified to be communicating with her. Then she scooted off, her little ponytail swinging briskly. I watched her for a while, then made my way to the station, dodging stylishly swathed pregnant bellies and designer buggies.
I arrived at the Canary Wharf office with a large latte in hand. It felt good to be able to pollute my body again without the potential of embryo toxicity bearing down on my conscience. I pushed open the double doors to reception and took a deep breath. My role as CEO may have been usurped by the venture capitalist’s grandson, Dominic, who’d apparently learned everything there was to know about romantic love at Harvard Business School, but what truly mattered was that the dating agency I had conceived seven years ago was now an international corporation. Matthew might believe my motives were questionable, but over the years I had helped thousands of people find love. I took another sip of coffee and smiled. If that wasn’t a legacy worth leaving then what was?
‘Afternoon, Eleanor,’ Dominic said in his I’m-American-in-case-you-wondered accent. Then he slammed a file onto my desk. ‘Meeting’s in five.’
I gulped down the rest of my latte and leafed through the file, which contained the minutes and action points of the last investor meeting. My smile faded. I pushed it to one side and then switched on my computer, so I could at least reply to a few emails before the investors arrived.
Ten more franchise enquiries. One from Korea.
Matchmaking in Korea? I wondered. Surely they had more pressing things to worry about.
Then one from Victoria and her unnecessarily double-barrelled surname.
Subject title: FW: New hope for IVF-resistant couples.
I deleted it. Then I glanced at my phone. Nick had called five times. I dropped my phone back down on the desk. I knew it was cruel to extend his two-minute wait to an entire day, but I’d decided that a statement such as ‘You have no hope of ever being a father, unless you substitute me for a fresh-follicled twenty-something or we find a psychologically unhinged surrogate on the internet’ was probably best delivered in person.
Suddenly Mandi sped past, wearing an oversized neon pink kaftan.
‘Meeting time, Ellie!’ she shrilled, leaving the throb of luminous pink in my eyes. Dominic strutted ahead of her, clenching his buttocks as though he were harbouring a hamster in his colon. I screwed up my face, wondering if I had just cause to alert the animal authorities.
Then I looked back down and continued with my paperwork procrastination, flicking through the post. At the bottom of the pile was a gold envelope. It looked like a wedding invitation. My stomach flipped. The excitement had never waned. I ripped open the envelope, and pulled out a card. It had a watermarked image of a slim woman, grinning and holding a cocktail. We’ve finally done it! was the quote on the front. I flipped it over and read the back.
Dearest Ellie,
You are cordially invited to the Divorce Party of Cassandra Wheeler (formerly Stud-Wheeler).
Where: The Wheeler (formerly Stud-Wheeler) residence.
When: Friday 14th Feb
Dress to impress.
Please bring a bottle. Or five.
I let out a deep sigh as I slotted it into my divorce party file, which was getting fatter by the day. Then I pulled myself up from the chair to face the meeting and Dominic’s ill-founded plans for my company.
Before I entered the meeting room, I saw Mandi through the glass walls and her latest assistant, sitting beside her, poised to take minutes as though she were at the G8 summit. The investor panel, which consisted of four heavy players in the tech and entertainment industry, were seated in a row opposite Dominic, who’d commandeered his side of the table as though he were hosting an episode of The Apprentice.
He stood up when I entered the room. ‘Eleanor,’ he said, gesturing for me to sit beside him in a smaller chair, ‘so nice of you to join us.’
I forced a smile, then nodded at the investors.
Straight away, Mandi pulled her pink glittery laptop out of her bag, adjusted her headband and smoothed down her kaftan. I studied her ensemble. It was unlike her to wear anything that wasn’t nipped in at the waist and tailored to her ribcage. She clapped her hands, and looked around, then clapped them again, as though she expected the lights to dim. When they didn’t she leaned over and switched them off herself. Then she plugged her laptop into the projector, pressed a few buttons and a map identical in colour to her kaftan appeared on the wall.
‘OK, everyone,’ she began. ‘Are we all ready?’
Dominic sighed.
I nodded and smiled. Mandi’s assistant clapped.
Mandi clasped her hands together and grinned. ‘I have fabulous news. Amazing! The best news ever!’
‘You’re leaving,’ Dominic mumbled.
She ignored him, further dramatising with a drum roll to the table.
‘As of this week,’ she continued, ‘we’ve finally done it. We have matchmakers stationed in every continent!’ She pressed a key on her laptop and suddenly pink hearts popped up all over the globe, presumably identifying matchmaker infiltration hotspots.
She looked around the room and began clapping herself. Her assistant joined in.
‘Yay, everyone!’ Mandi said. ‘Well done, us!’
Dominic raised both eyebrows. ‘Every continent?’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘We have matchmakers in Antarctica?’
Mandi shook her head, as though she were about to reprimand a troublesome toddler. ‘Antarctica is an iceberg, Dominic, not a continent.’
He rolled his eyes.
‘Besides, it’s melting,’ she said. ‘It’s unwise to expand into an economy with diminishing returns. Didn’t they teach you that at Harvard?’
One of the investors closed his eyes and sank into his chair.
Mandi glided over to the map like an air hostess pointing out the safety exits. ‘Ten here…’ she pointed to France ‘…ten here…’ then Germany ‘…and here…’ then Italy ‘…twelve here…’ Sweden. She reached up and pointed to New York. ‘Twenty matchmakers in New York…’ her finger moved across America ‘…five in LA, seven in San Fransisco…’ then down to Australia ‘… eight in Melbourne, five in Sydney…’ The pointing continued, as did Mandi’s list of countries.
Ten minutes later, when I was feeling somewhat dazed, Mandi leaned forward and tapped on the keypad. Suddenly pink hearts started racing across the wall like some kind of customised disco ball. It felt as though they were throbbing in time to the pulse in my head. ‘One hundred and one matchmakers,’ Mandi concluded with a loud applause.
‘We could make a coat out of them,’ Dominic mumbled.
Mandi glared at him, her applause unfaltering. Her intern joined in.
‘We did it,’ Mandi said. ‘It took ten years, but we did it. This is possibly the most exciting day of my life!’
I grinned at Mandi and high-fived her from across the table.
Dominic shook his head as though struggling to release himself from a disturbing dream. Then he stood up and disconnected Mandi’s laptop as if disarming a nuclear bomb. He replaced it with his laptop and went on to present the previous year’s accounts, taking personal responsibility for everything that was profitable and apportioning blame, mostly to me, for everything that wasn’t. Then he concluded with his strategy for the coming year.
‘Client retention,’ he declared, as though he’d discovered the cure for cancer.
I frowned. One of the investors leaned forward.
Dominic continued. ‘Currently we’re retaining clients for an average of six months. If we could up that to twelve, we’d double our profits.’
The investor who was leaning forward, interrupted. ‘Adjusting for client acquisition costs,’ he said, ‘we’d actually triple our profits.’
‘Exactly,’ said Dominic.
Mandi’s hand shot up.
Dominic ignored it.
Mandi coughed loudly.
I gestured at Mandi to speak.
She turned to Dominic. ‘But our job is to match people. To find them partners. We want them to find love and leave our agency. That’s what they’re paying us for.’
‘Yes,’ Mandi’s assistant chipped in. ‘The clients get upset if they’ve been with us for months without being presented with a life partner.’
Mandi glared at her.
Dominic ignored them both. Then he tapped the keys on his laptop.
He continued. ‘You can see from my projections, if we delay matching our clients by a week or so each time, it will prolong the duration of the service, significantly increasing the revenue from monthly subscriptions.’
He pressed a key and a bar graph was projected onto the wall.
One of the investors made a note on a pad in front of him. Another one checked his mobile.
‘Another significant change I propose,’ Dominic said, leaning back expansively, ‘is with technology.’
All four investors sat up straight. The one with the mobile in his hand quickly put it back in his pocket.
‘Apps,’ Dominic declared, this time as though he’d discovered a renewable energy source. He tapped on his laptop and then another graph appeared, seemingly demonstrating a considerable reduction in costs and an exponential growth in profits.
‘Matchmaking apps.’ He smiled a self-congratulatory smile, while pressing keys on his laptop, which projected an array of charts and screenshots onto the wall. ‘If we convert our service to a digital interface, we’ll cut staffing costs by ninety per cent.’
As Dominic continued babbling on about profit margins and shareholder dividends, I gripped the sides of my chair and starting counting back from a hundred, a technique Dr Phil had explored on a recent episode about anger management. I counted slowly and purposefully, breathing deeply as I did, but at fifty-six, I could no longer stand to listen to Dominic’s attempts to brainwash the investors into agreeing to erode every value that the agency had been founded upon.
I stood up and glared at him. ‘Enough,’ I said.
Dominic stepped back. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You’re excused,’ I said, pushing past him and slamming shut his laptop, bar graph wilting as I did.
Mandi sat forward in her seat. An investor smirked.
Dominic glared back at me. ‘What’s the matter, Eleanor? Are you not concerned about profits?’
‘Of course I am concerned about profits,’ I said. ‘My house is falling down, I’m thirty-six and still wearing Primark shoes. I had more disposable income when I was twenty than I do now. I would love nothing more than a nice fat dividend once in a while. But—’ I turned to the investors ‘—that is not why I am here. That is not why I founded this company.’ I turned back to Dominic. ‘So yes, Dominic, I am concerned about profits. But what I’m more concerned about is our clients.’
Dominic rolled his eyes, as though I was about to suggest we pitch for government-funded matchmaking.
‘This year,’ I continued, ‘we’ve had more divorces than marriages. Did you know that, Dominic?’
He straightened his tie.
‘Last year alone, our clients reported 14,198 failed relationships and 1,239 broken engagements.’
Mandi’s eyes widened.
I continued, ‘Six hundred and seventy-five divorces.’
Mandi gasped.
I leaned forward and connected Mandi’s laptop back to the projector. ‘Mandi’s presentation showed we’re doing a great job. We have contributed to more marriages than any of the online agencies. However, we could do better. We’re helping people find love. But I believe we should extend our service to help our couples maintain their relationships. They need our support.’
Mandi shook her fist in the air like a ‘let ’em ’ave it’ angry cartoon character.
Dominic tried to speak but I silenced him with a glare and continued.
‘We offer a personal service. That’s how we differentiate from all the other dating agencies. The superficial swipe-to-reject dating apps out there are feeding the narcissistic monster that is sabotaging the fundamental principles of marriage.’ I narrowed my eyes at Dominic. ‘Besides,’ I added, ‘if we dehumanise matchmakers, who’s to say we won’t dehumanise daters?’
Dominic shook his head. ‘What does that even mean?’
I sighed, wishing Matthew was there to back me up by citing Freudian and Jungian papers.
Dominic rolled his eyes and began checking emails on his phone.
