the occasion, and be the right height, eye-wateringly beautiful with no sign of wear and tear, coveted by friends and colleagues and impressive to mothers.
Clients like Georgina thought finding love was as easy as ordering from ASOS.
Catherine scrolled through some more options in her database. Georgina hadn’t been on their books long but she’d already worked her way through most of their ‘A’ list. When she’d first signed Georgina as a client she’d seen the stunning, successful, secure thirty-one-year-old as a welcome addition. A woman for whom love was just around the corner. That corner was turning out to be in a maze the size of a football pitch. The dairy disaster was just the latest dead end.
But Catherine hadn’t earned her reputation as London’s Best Date Doctor (Evening Standard, 2014) by giving up. She was a peddler of hope, even when it was hanging by a dairy-free thread.
She could talk to Richard about including the client’s world view on ice cream in their Love Match assessment form. But where would that lead? One minute you’re measuring gelato love and the next you’d have to sort the toothpaste squeezers from the rollers.
And really, none of that mattered.
If only clients like Georgina would get that through their heads. A partner splurging for dinner or throwing his socks in the laundry didn’t make up for jealousy or thoughtlessness or emotional distance. Good grooming was no compensation if your date bored the snot out of you and, at the end of the day, relationships didn’t work without that spark anyway.
Despite the fact that she was definitely still mad at him, Catherine found herself thinking of Richard.
Sparks had never been their problem.
He’d made her laugh from the first time they met at uni. By the time classes broke up for the summer holidays he’d been making her laugh for months, as they progressed from shag buddies to something ever-so-slightly more serious. Her spare knickers found their way into his bottom drawer but she didn’t stake any claim to his bathroom cabinet or stock her favourite tea in his kitchen. Theirs was a relationship built by stealth over years.
Magda the Marriage-Seeking Missile clearly had a different timetable.
As she chewed over his news in the calm of her office, Catherine knew she didn’t mind Richard getting remarried per se. Or even that he’d proposed to someone who probably spoke in texty acronyms (she LOL’d at the very idea). After all, getting divorced was Catherine’s fault. Besides, she wasn’t in love with him.
It was just that he made it seem so easy with Magda. Where was all the hard work and second-guessing and foot-dragging she knew to be part and parcel of a relationship with Richard?
If it wasn’t there, that must mean she’d been wrong. Those things weren’t integral to Richard. They were integral to Richard when he’d been with her.
That smarted.
It was after midnight by the time she let herself into the quiet house. Eerie blue telly light bathed the front room, where Sarah lay curled on the sofa. She looked like a different person with her expression uncoiled in sleep.
As Catherine turned off the telly, Sarah snorted herself awake.
‘I might have nodded off,’ she said, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. ‘I was watching a proper good documentary just now.’
‘You mean a cookery programme, don’t you, Sarah Lee?’
Sarah grinned at the nickname that Catherine had given her after tasting her lemon sponge.
‘No,’ said Sarah, shaking her head. ‘I mean a real documentary. There was this Greek man who moved to the US in the 1960s and started a pizza restaurant, but his business was stuffed because he wouldn’t modernise. It was really sad. He almost lost his family and his livelihood, but he turned it around in the end. It was ace.’
She beamed at this happy ending.
‘You’re talking about Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares,’ said Catherine.
Sarah giggled. ‘It was really moving, though Gordon shouldn’t shout and swear so much.’
As usual, thought Catherine, she’s missing the point. ‘It wouldn’t get the same ratings if he was nice. Besides, Mary Berry has the market cornered on loveliness in the kitchen.’
Sarah got a faraway look just thinking about her idol. She swung her long legs off the sofa to let Catherine join her.
‘You’ve been running?’ Catherine said, noting her housemate’s jogging bottoms and baggy wrinkled tee shirt.
‘This morning.’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I don’t stink, do I?’
‘No. But I’m surprised you don’t get a rash from sitting around in sweaty clothes all day.’ It drove her nuts that Sarah refused to make any effort whatsoever with her appearance. Granted, she had the kind of wide-eyed, fine-boned pleasant face that didn’t need much make-up, but she wouldn’t even use moisturiser. That was fine at twenty-eight, but she was asking for wrinkles by the time she was Catherine’s age. And it was a crime to keep such pretty, long dark-blonde hair tied back day and night in a messy, occasionally greasy, ponytail. She needed an intervention, really. Maybe they should just drag her kicking and screaming to a salon appointment.
Catherine noticed that Rachel’s bedroom light was on. ‘Rachel’s back from her date?’ she asked.
‘Not unless she came in quietly while I was asleep.’
They both laughed at the idea of Rachel doing anything quietly.
‘It must be going well,’ Catherine said, kicking off her suede heels so she could massage her aching feet.
‘Maybe we should ring to make sure she’s okay?’
Sarah wore her worry like a heavy winter coat, in all seasons.
‘She probably won’t appreciate the interruption.’
‘But it’s getting late,’ Sarah continued, her green eyes widening even more than usual. ‘Something might be wrong. What if her date’s got her tied up in his car? Or his basement, or maybe he’s taken her to a remote valley in Wales.’
Imaginative didn’t even begin to describe Sarah’s thought process sometimes. ‘Text her if you want to,’ said Catherine.
‘But what if he’s duct-taped her fingers together? He’d only need one piece for each hand, you know.’ Sarah wrapped her own slender fingers with imaginary tape. ‘Then she couldn’t text back.’
‘She couldn’t answer your call either, could she? Or he might have thrown her phone in the Thames along with all the other evidence.’
Catherine immediately felt bad about teasing Sarah when she saw her expression.
‘I’m positive that she’s fine,’ she conceded. ‘If she’s not back in an hour, we’ll call her, okay?’
But they only needed to wait a few minutes before Rachel careened into the living room. Her deep auburn hair stood up in wild cowlicks and curls and her teal wool coat was mis-buttoned. With pale green tights under her burgundy and yellow wasp-waisted dress, it was no wonder she described her style as 1950s Contrasting Colour Wheel.
She looked like she’d just escaped from Sarah’s imagined Welsh valley, but Catherine knew better. Rachel always looked like she’d been out in a gale.
She flung herself on the sofa, aiming for the space between her housemates but missing due to an abundance of bum cheek. She had all the curves that Catherine and Sarah wished they had. On a shelf together they’d be wooden bookends to her Ming vase.
Sarah drew her arms around her friend as she sat half in her lap. ‘It was a good date, then?’
Rachel laughed. ‘My bikini wax appointments are more fun. I ditched him after the first drink.’