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When Polly Met Olly: A fantastically uplifting romantic comedy for 2019!
Zoe May
The new fantastically feel-good read from Zoe May, coming soon!Perfect for fans of Sophie Kinsella and Debbie Viggiano.
About the Author (#ue6e727e4-6e55-5926-9443-b5ab77b6d3ca)
Zoe May lives in south-east London and works as a copywriter. Zoe has dreamt of being a novelist since she was a teenager. She moved to London in her early twenties and worked in journalism and copywriting before writing her debut novel, Perfect Match. Having experienced the London dating scene first hand, Zoe could not resist writing a novel about dating, since it seems to supply endless amounts of weird and wonderful material! As well as writing, Zoe enjoys going to the theatre, walking her dog, painting and, of course, reading.
Zoe loves to hear from readers, you can contact her on Twitter at: @zoe_writes (https://twitter.com/zoe_writes?lang=en)
Also by Zoe May (#ue6e727e4-6e55-5926-9443-b5ab77b6d3ca)
Perfect Match
How Not to Date a Prince
When Polly Met Olly
ZOE MAY
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters
and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s
imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This edition 2019
1
First published in Great Britain by
HQ, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Zoe 2019
Zoe May asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade
or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without
the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than
that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN: eBook: 9780008321611
Version: 2018-12-14
Table of Contents
Cover (#u18660105-93cc-5299-81be-81d38787e5c6)
About the Author (#udc09a5e7-0081-56de-bade-8cb609aa4edb)
Also by Zoe May (#uc3d7543a-324b-5ac7-975a-08ed3ffac886)
Title Page (#u93300c2b-0ccc-574c-9aa8-d6fd704ee517)
Copyright (#u1e674247-156a-5f1d-80b9-b46f35643ba8)
Chapter 1 (#u43637f88-96a3-542c-916e-64f822ed922f)
Chapter 2 (#u887fa645-1ad7-5b3c-82c2-17e94070fb62)
Chapter 3 (#u27e83e61-d003-58d6-bf59-c27db5440df0)
Chapter 4 (#u9bc144d1-d8c5-50f0-a157-83f483b1945b)
Chapter 5 (#uf043a7ea-f243-5143-91be-139b9e100294)
Chapter 6 (#u4626c70c-bf0a-585e-85f1-5ed0dbbbbf62)
Chapter 7 (#ub0f2af34-e929-586b-9f8e-fb40d9dca3bf)
Chapter 8 (#u89b4ef10-7159-5979-81f3-bc65bbf8654d)
Chapter 9 (#ue93c349f-0d5e-5218-8b7e-02ce9bf1094e)
Chapter 10 (#u306dc0fa-65bc-5b1b-9b4d-ac52eb2bbfc6)
Chapter 11 (#uce164fb3-61a9-56f5-87ae-9425166b02f7)
Chapter 12 (#ufb3b498b-e9a8-57ce-be36-2872a49d4ad5)
Chapter 13 (#u4fc0fb98-9d32-53c8-9fe8-ffe65d34dd6b)
Chapter 14 (#u0b270095-3a1e-5cde-a7b1-e63a26104188)
Chapter 15 (#ua469c7fc-7f5d-5bdc-96bc-71e6b2668985)
Chapter 16 (#u9dc198b0-d58c-5c54-8535-85b6723ec219)
Chapter 17 (#u44be8182-f73a-5bbb-87f9-a3699686a1b5)
Chapter 18 (#u35874d22-cd34-5f13-adcd-098c6914ebfc)
Chapter 19 (#u24811e11-1c01-5a42-8e03-b870733a22ee)
Chapter 20 (#u6b580c46-5078-559c-b3ec-e70a9012fe67)
Chapter 21 (#u42062421-3d02-5c45-a36b-cf57b3b45bf4)
Chapter 22 (#ud8fb7228-5ee8-5a94-9204-de9a690f1f86)
Chapter 23 (#ue9ad9383-5a5f-5408-9caf-9462c4ac538b)
Chapter 24 (#u9715da18-76c5-5737-ac36-43763b375d1c)
Chapter 25 (#ua5ae52c2-3d61-565f-9b2b-46fdf00bb5b5)
Chapter 26 (#ub93961b8-931e-5b9b-a1ba-93e631dfe5d3)
Chapter 27 (#u55e7317a-10d7-552a-8448-9bb1a465053c)
Chapter 28 (#u457bf4d0-23cf-50a4-abc8-d56cb01f012d)
Chapter 29 (#u018a980f-d606-5be4-8942-baa8fdfb7591)
Chapter 30 (#ud3495797-3e0f-5f34-a475-44c78a91573e)
Acknowledgements (#u197392de-9d49-5072-994b-710a82da89d1)
Extract (#u698c1def-76fe-5a6b-9051-551efab54b92)
Keep Reading … (#ue01c5c22-6d5c-52fb-bac3-7aea62d66a1f)
Dear Reader … (#uf76bfca6-2eab-553c-b5c8-7e5a7aa0a7a4)
About the Publisher (#uf17ddfff-3d1e-5969-b073-26f7f15f17c7)
Chapter 1 (#ue6e727e4-6e55-5926-9443-b5ab77b6d3ca)
Surely, I’m not qualified to be a matchmaker?!
You’d think getting a job at a dating agency might actually require you to have found love, or at least be good at dating, but apparently not. I’ve been single for three years and I haven’t had a date for six months, yet I’m pretty sure I’m nailing this interview.
‘So, what kind of message would you send Erica?’ Derek asks, handing me a print-out showing a dating profile of a pretty, tanned brunette. Derek is the boss of To the Moon & Back dating agency, although with his nicotine-stained teeth, lurid purple shirt stretching over his giant pot belly and cramped city office, he’s not exactly what I imagine when I think of Cupid.
What kind of message would I sent Erica? When Derek says ‘you’, he doesn’t mean me, as in Polly Wood. He means me pretending to be 34-year-old bachelor Andy Graham, because that’s what my job as a matchmaker would involve. While Andy, and the rest of the busy singletons on the agency’s books, are out earning the big bucks, too busy to trawl internet dating sites looking for love, I’ll be sitting here with Derek, firing off messages on their behalf in the hope of clinching dates. It’s a little morally questionable I suppose, since the women will be chatting to me beforehand, and will no doubt become enamoured with my witty repartee and effortless charm, but to be honest, I haven’t really given the moral side of it much thought. According to Derek, it’s what all dating agencies do, and anyway, ethics somehow stop being so important when you really need cash.
I try to put myself in the mindset of Andy, while thinking up a message for Erica. I only know about him from reading a form he’s supposedly filled in, which Derek gave me to study five minutes earlier. According to the form, Andy is an ex-army officer turned property surveyor. He grew up in a small town in Ohio where his family still reside. His younger brother, aged 31, has already settled down with a wife and three kids, and reading in between the lines, I get the impression that Andy feels he’s beginning to lag behind. He works long hours, reads Second World War history books in his spare time, enjoys visiting aviation museums and likes to play tennis at the weekends. Oh, and he has a penchant for Thai food.
I take a look at Erica’s profile. She’s 32, lives in the Upper East Side and works as a fashion buyer. Her interests are listed as: ‘yoga, fine dining, dinner parties (hosting and attending!), dancing, cocktails with the girls, travelling, tennis, and festivals’. Erica sounds cool. She sounds fun. She seems like a girl about town. And to be perfectly honest, she strikes me as a bit too cool for Andy. I can’t imagine her wanting to visit aviation museums or discuss Second World War history. But for all I know, Andy could have stunningly handsome looks that somehow make up for his yawn-inducing interests. But from what I do know so far, he and Erica hardly seem like a great match. I glance up at Derek, scanning his face for any sign that this might be a trick question, but he simply looks back, keen with anticipation. He doesn’t seem like he’s testing me; he clearly thinks Erica is in Andy’s league, although as far as I can see, the only thing they have in common is tennis.
‘So, what do you think?’ Derek presses me.
‘Erm, I’d keep the opener light. From Erica’s profile, you can tell she’s a breezy, happy kind of person. I’d try to mirror that tone,’ I tell him, biding time while I attempt to think of a witty opener.
‘Good tactic,’ Derek agrees with an encouraging nod.
‘Thanks,’ I reply as I desperately try to come up with an attention-grabbing message. Something that will capture Erica’s attention among the deluge of ‘hey, how r u? x’ type openers she probably receives all the time. But what can I write? What could Andy possibly say that would grab Erica’s attention when their only mutual interest is tennis?! Then suddenly, it hits me. I smile to myself.
‘I’d probably go with something along the lines of “I’m glad to see you’re a tennis player, because I’m going to court you”,’ I tell Derek.
He snorts with laughter. ‘Good one! Cheeky! I think Erica would like that.’
I grin, feeling a flush of pride. ‘Thank you.’
‘Great line! Very good!’ Derek laughs.
‘Thanks. I mean, why play singles when you can play doubles?’ I add, cringing internally. I think I might be taking the tennis puns too far now. Fortunately, Derek laughs again, clearly not adverse to a good sports-themed chat-up line.
‘Indeed!’ he says.
A couple of cars honk loudly outside and for a second, I’m taken out of this surreal alternative reality of pretending to be Andy messaging Erica and it hits me that the real me has probably got this job. In fact, I know I have. I’m 99.99 per cent sure. I can tell by the way Derek is regarding me like a proud father. I can tell in the easy, relaxed way we’ve been chatting the entire interview. We seem to have really hit it off, which is a little disconcerting seeing as I’m, you know, a respectable (okay, at least semi-respectable) person and he’s a middle-aged owner of a slightly shady dating agency. Maybe it’s because I’m British, having grown up in Cornwall before moving to the States when I was 18. Derek said he used to date a Brit, recounting how they went on holiday to Cornwall one summer. He even described it as ‘heavenly’. Or, perhaps we click because we went to the same university. Derek’s barely looked at my CV but he glanced at it for a second as I came in and when he saw that I went to Wittingon Liberal Arts College, that was it. He was gone. Even though our degrees were thirty years apart, he was treating me like an old chum, reminiscing about his times at the college bar, where he insisted with a chortle and a wink that he’d had ‘many a wild night’.
He went a bit misty-eyed talking about those days, which isn’t that surprising really. I only left three years ago and sometimes even I get misty-eyed thinking about it. Probably because everything has gone a bit awry since. I moved to the States for university convinced I’d make it big here, but now I’m beginning to think there’s a reason my dad, who grew up in New York, left to marry an English woman and live in Cornwall. Because while my student days were idyllic, it turns out real life in Manhattan is nothing like the dream world of a liberal arts university. The chaotic streets of New York bear no resemblance to the tree-lined pathways of the campus; people in the city don’t spend hours having picnics and reading poetry; and a degree in photography, although widely revered among my college peers and considered of utmost importance by my professor, seems to hold little to no currency in the real world. I’ve found that out the hard way, which is why I’m here, trying to clinch this job, which despite being a bit shady, is surprisingly well paid. Well, by my standards anyway. It pays twice as much as my last job as a barmaid and I’m pretty sure I won’t have to wash pint glasses or deal with annoying drunks. Although you never know.
Derek studied an equally impractical course – media studies and communication skills – and from a quick Google search this morning, it doesn’t seem like he’s managed to put it to much real-world use either, unless he was a very communicative boss in his former career as an adult entertainment company director. Or in his stint as a used car salesman. Yep, it’s fair to say that neither of us would quite make the list of our college’s star alumni. Despite Derek’s questionable background, his latest venture, To the Moon & Back, seems to be doing surprisingly well. The company won Dating Agency of the Year at the prestigious US Dating Awards a few years ago. And it’s received a ton of rave reviews online with former clients claiming that thanks to the agency, they finally met the love of their life after years of struggling to find a partner. It was even profiled by TheNew Yorker, which described it as an, ‘innovative and ambitious dating service with a friendly personal approach’.
The website of To the Moon & Back is incredibly slick too, which is why I was a little surprised when I rocked up to find that in person it consists of nothing more than a client lounge and a cramped back office. With a central address on Wall Street, I thought it was going to be as swanky as its zip code, but it’s tiny. Located at the top floor of a financial advisory firm, it’s nothing like the salubrious offices below. The client lounge, which Derek showed me through earlier, is like a kooky cocktail bar, with a huge sofa laden with sparkly cushions and throws, two comfy armchairs, an ornate coffee table, low-hanging gold lamps and sumptuous curtains. Leading on from the lounge is this pokey office, which features Derek’s worn-looking old desk, a dated Mac computer, a filing cabinet, a shrivelled pot plant in the corner and an incongruous and oddly distracting waving Chinese cat ornament which sits proudly next to Derek’s monitor. Derek told me he’s been running the whole operation himself since he launched the business two years ago, but apparently, he now needs extra help looking after his client list of ‘successful single bachelors’ and fighting off competition from rival agency, Elite Love Match, which Derek claims are ‘scum, a bunch of charlatans, the worst dating agency in New York’.
Derek’s stomach growls and he reaches into his desk drawer, pulling out a pack of Oreos.
‘Fancy a biscuit?’ He thrusts the pack towards me.
