The Love Market

by Carol Mason

  ‘You don’t have to have a public breakdown to prove to the world that you carry pain,’ she says.

  I shake my head, feeling the tears build. ‘It’s just odd thinking of him being out there living a life without me. Him with someone else. Or me, with somebody who doesn’t share any of my history, who isn’t Aimee’s father. Who never actually stood there and shared that joy and amazement when she was born. How do you suddenly not have someone in your life any more when for thirteen years they literally were your life?’

  Our pace slows a little more, until we come to a walk. Jacqui looks at me with that expression in her eyes, the expression of someone who will always want to protect me from my worst self. ‘This isn’t because you want him back, is it?’

  ‘I can’t be that messed up can I?’

  ‘It’s got definite Taylor-Burton elements to it. But where’s the law that says you can’t get back together again if you’ve made a mistake?’

  I lean over and pant, realising that as I’ve not been running in about two months I seem to have become seriously unfit. ‘Yes, but we were never Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, were we?’ Jacqui will always confer romance on everything, and I’ve become so cynical that I don’t know whether she’s right to want to, or she’s mad to try to. ‘They had something indestructible that destroyed them. We were empty vessels who wanted the other to fill them.’

  ‘How do you know he’s not divorced and out there thinking about you?’ she asks.

  I stand up straight again. ‘Are we talking about Patrick again by any chance?’ My sister is like a dog with a bone over this topic. After I told her about him all those years ago, Jacqui was the only one who seemed to fall under the spell of him the way I had. She was the only one who didn’t judge him, or me, when I told her what the problem was with Patrick. I could say things about him and she knew. As though she too had been his lover at one time. Plus she was the only one who ever tried to drill me with good advice about how to forget him. Which couldn’t have been brilliant because it clearly never worked.

  We walk now, Jacqui strides it out employing both legs and arms, always putting the max into it, convinced she has to shed a few more pounds than she really does. ‘I don’t know anything about him, or what he’s doing. Do I?’

  ‘But the point is, you still wonder.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I tell her. ‘For being in my head.’ I peer at her strikingly pretty face. ‘But actually, I don’t. Not any more.’

  ‘Have you Googled him lately?’

  ‘I don’t do things like that.’

  ‘Why not? You did it before.’

  She forgets nothing. ‘Once. Ages ago.’

  ‘But didn’t you look him up after you thought you saw him in London?’

  I tut. ‘Okay, twice then. And it wasn’t him. We’ve been through this a million times.’

  ‘All because he was wearing sunglasses and you needed to see his eyes to be convinced. And you rang the hotel and they told you there was no guest by that name.’ Sometimes we will find ourselves talking about Patrick as though he wasn’t old news.

  I remember how I snuck away from Mike to use the payphone, how my heart hammered as I dialled that number. How I was worried Mike was going to know just by my face. I was outside myself watching myself do it, disapproving but unable to stop myself. If it was Patrick I had to know. And I had to cope with whatever act of insanity I would commit when I found out. The fact that I was even contemplating a reckless act of insanity of course spoke volumes to me about my marriage, which depressed me for days. And that was a side-effect I tried to hide, but Mike had to see it and know.

  ‘Everybody wonders about somebody, Jacqui. It’s called the politics of disenchantment. But—I even researched this once—most reunions with old flames don’t work out. Not unless it was a war separation or something on that scale. The moral is, you have to live the life you’re living. Not some parallel life that you wish you could live.’

  She pretends to play the violin. ‘Nice words. I’ve got some too. Life is short. Botox is just round the corner. You have to grab your happiness by the horns. Maybe seeing him three years ago meant you were on some parallel cosmic track. Maybe it meant you weren’t supposed to forget him.’

  ‘Well I’m sure he’s forgotten me. I mean it’s not as though he’s ever come looking for me in all these years, has he?’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe he really wanted to. Or maybe he did and you were nowhere to be found. If only you’d been a modern gal who keeps her own name in case old boyfriends try to look her up.’

  I laugh.

  ‘Seriously,’ she says. ‘You’re thirty-six and gorgeous. You’re a good person, a great mother—even if Aimee doesn’t think so at the moment—and whatever you felt deep down, you were a good wife. So it’s guaranteed that you’re going to find another man. But there’s still this unfinished business in you. And even if he lives in another country, even if you’ve not spoken to him in fifteen years… who’s to say that there’s absolutely no way it can ever happen? What have you got to lose by looking him up? Really? When you think about it, Celine—nothing.’

  I give her a sweaty hug. ‘You talk a load of pipe-dreams, but I love you nevertheless.’

  ~ * * * ~

  I go home and Google breaking up. How did I ever exist before I used the Internet to find out how I’m feeling? There is so much written on divorce. All the distasteful puns by men about ex-wives taking them to the cleaners. Quotes from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Margaret Atwood. There’s “Wikihow” to cope with going solo again. Apparently God has a lot to say on the subject too. And best of all, there’s the jargon that sounds impressive, by the so-called relationship experts, but no one has a clue what it means. My favourite being:

  ‘When you and that person have changed to any extent, it is necessary to let go of the relationship, so that each of you can fulfill your life path.’

  Life path. Wasn’t I on a life path? If I wasn’t, then what was it? If I wasn’t already fulfilling it, then what the hell was I doing?

  ‘Refusing to let go of the painful past will serve as a roadblock to love.’ Yes, and you’ll become just like my mother: one of those stung by life people who can’t exactly love themselves either.

  ‘Letting go of your old self and letting the new you emerge can be frightening. But by taking a leap of faith into the unknown, it might reveal what you are truly capable of becoming.’

  The new me. A leap of faith into the unknown?

  I think about this for a while, not minding this one, actually. Didn’t the old me used to be such a daring girl? I dove headlong into life, and the thrill of it was fantastic. Then marriage made everything feel a little too certain for my comfort level.

  I click off there, and think of Jacqui egging me on to do this.

  Then—madly—I type in Patrick’s name.

  Five

  There are countless articles on him. Many of which I’ve seen before, because, of course I’ve Googled him way more than I’ve ever admitted to anyone, which always felt like a form of infidelity in itself. Would I have liked Mike looking up the same ex-girlfriend? Would I have been able to convince myself that it was enough that it was me he’d married? But then again, perhaps infidelity is not the worst thing that can happen to a marriage; it’s giving up.

  I digest everything on him like it’s new to me. Wikipedia references. Career profiles. Something about him winning an Emmy for his coverage of Hong Kong being returned to China. A fascinating interview with him in Frontline magazine. But it’s the image results that spellbind me. So many of them I have seen before, when I combed over them to answer that one question: was it him I’d seen in London?

  There’s a new one on. He’s wearing a khaki combat jacket, and is posing against a parched mountainous backdrop of some foreign warzone. It looks like it’s probably recent. It’s his most ‘close-up’ shot on here. The face is older: shockingly so; the cheeks fuller and softer with age, a flush of a suntan across the bridge of
his prominent nose. His once fair hair is greying, and there is a sadness and seriousness that never used to be there in his eyes. ‘Wikipedia’ tells me his birthday—which I already knew. Patrick is forty-three now. ‘Journalisted’ catalogues every article he’s written on wars. And yet, I can’t find anything about his personal life. Nor is he on ‘Facebook’, not that I would have really expected him to be.

  I type in the words “Patrick Shale, contact information”, and hold my breath. But all that comes up is the name of a literary and talent agent who, it seems, represents him. I try again, “Patrick Shale, email”, not expecting the result to be any different.

  But hang on….

  There is a Patrick Shale, with an email address, who lectures in the journalism school of Ryerson Polytechnical University, in Toronto.

  My heart springs out of my body.

  It has to be him.

  Six

  I have to go down to Manchester for a Fake Date. To meet a potential client—a lawyer who was referred to me by one of my female clients, the sparkly and infectious Trish Buckham. Trish is a highly successful lawyer herself, even though you’d never know it by her micro-minis, funky hairstyle and foul mouth. She has been on a couple of coffee-meets, because she prefers the quick exit strategy, rather than the way I normally like it to happen—in a restaurant, where you’re forced to get to know your match for the time it takes to consume a civilised meal. She never sounds over the moon when I ring her about a possible match. So sometimes I wonder if her heart really is in meeting someone, or if she’s doing it just to convince herself—or others—that she’s trying.

  It’s usual for clients to refer friends to me, but it’s almost always people I’ve already successfully matched who will refer a friend, usually one of the same sex. So this is a bit different. Before taking on new clients I will meet the women for lunch as well as talk to them a lot on the phone. I always make the men meet me in a restaurant for dinner, in a fake date situation so I can see them the way a female date would see them, and iron out their kinks before I put them on The Love Market. Manchester is a bit out of my net, but Trish all but begged me to help him.

  My train’s at twenty past ten, so I drop Aimee off at school at ten to nine, then plan to run a few errands around town before heading to the station. Just as I’m pulling out of the school drop-off area, I see Rachel’s mum’s shiny white Range Rover pulling in behind me. I put the car in ‘park’, wait until she has waved off Rachel, and then I get out of my car just as she is about to pull off.

  ‘Sorry,’ I tell her, when she gets out. ‘I didn’t mean to flag you off the road like a policeman, Sandi!’ We exchange a bit of friendly chatter and I try not to imagine her cozying up in bed with her husband and them talking about me and Mike and assuming one of us must have had an affair. I tell her that Aimee is sad she hasn’t been invited to Rachel’s party when every other girl in her class has.

  As she listens, nothing moves except for her blonde hair blowing around her face in the early April wind. Then her expression hardens. ‘I’m sorry, Celine, I wasn’t really aware… They don’t really tell you things any more, do they? They think they’re so independent now.’ She blushes, avoids my eyes, and holds onto her hair to stop it blowing—something I think she wants me to know is irritating her, to communicate that it’s going to be a short conversation. ‘You know, it’s not really up to me to tell her who to be friends with.’ She tries a smile, her hand up by her ear, her Rolex gleaming from under her jacket’s sleeve. ‘They go through phases, don’t they?’

  I feel my spine elongating and try not to come off as though I’m growing myself to doff her on top of the head with my cheap handbag. ‘You know, Sandi, Aimee’s been very down since her fall. Not being able to compete for the gymnastics trophy after the months of hard work she put in—’

  ‘It wasn’t Rachel’s fault she had an accident! Aimee didn’t have to make her feel so bad for winning!’

  ‘I was going to say, it absolutely devastated her.’ This outburst stuns me for a moment or two. Then I add, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know that Aimee made Rachel feel bad. I thought Aimee rang and congratulated Rachel?’

  ‘She did. But Rachel could tell she didn’t really mean it.’

  Rage pounds in me. ‘Well…Sandi, Rachel should have accepted the congratulations and tried to see where they were coming from. If Aimee wasn’t squealing with excitement for Rachel it’s because she was just so gutted that she hadn’t been able to compete! Can’t you understand that? Can’t Rachel? My daughter was genuinely happy for Rachel and genuinely sad for herself.’

  Sandi gives me a withering look. ‘Well you have to teach her that it’s no way to behave.’

  I open my mouth to say: Well maybe you could try asking Rachel to imagine how she would feel if her parents had just split up, then she falls off her bloody bike and is laid up with broken limbs. Then she can’t compete in the one competition that meant so much to her!

  The words are bursting out of me, but instead I look at her Hermes scarf neatly fastened around her neck, and remember that in life you can’t expect everyone to behave and think and feel as you. If I haven’t managed to change her position now, I’m not going to. I’m just wasting my breath. So I say, ‘You’re right. And you know, if you and Rachel think it’s fair to invite every girl in the class except Aimee, well, if you can live with that, then I suppose I’ll have to.’

  Our hard stares last two beats of my rattling heart, then Sandi Bradshaw says a snooty, ‘Good heavens!’ and starts walking back to her car. Then she gets into her supercharged petrol-guzzler and drives off.

  ~ * * * ~

  I got into the matchmaking business mainly as a hobby when Aimee was little. Going back to my job as a recruitment consultant after my maternity leave, while Mike worked nights and looked after Aimee during the day, wasn’t really working out. I was spending so much time at work and travelling the twenty miles to and from Newcastle that I rarely saw my daughter, and Mike never had time to sleep.

  I had loved my recruiting job initially. With my degree in Human Resources, and my own flair, I was good at the business development side of attracting new clients, the relationship-building. But best of all I loved searching the market for suitable candidates, the interviewing, and the psychology of evaluating their personality tests—seeing how they might react in certain situations and using it to determine if they were the right fit with a certain corporate culture. I loved the whole exploration of who a person really was, compared to how they saw themselves—and saving them from ending up in jobs they weren’t suited to. Then, in my mid-twenties, two things happened around the same time. I had recently headhunted an accountant called Sharon Gillespie for a new position that was being developed in credit control for an international retailer based in Gateshead. It was the only case I’d been involved in where the fit was wrong. But I had gotten to know Sharon quite well as she’d tried and failed to settle into her new role, and I also knew that she was single and wanting to meet someone. I had an inkling she might get on well with another client of mine, who also worked in the financial sector and was having a career crisis of his own. They were similarly educated, similarly attractive and both quietly spoken. I introduced them, and love bloomed. Two years later they were married—Mike and I attended their wedding—and Sharon ended up returning to the job I had headhunted her away from.

  Around that time, I read an article on how Internet dating was set to go mega. So I started to put my mind to a business idea. After a lot more research into the market for personal introductions, I reasoned that I could apply my existing skills of people-fitting while offering a high-end matchmaking service, the likes of which wasn’t really being done in the north east of England. Mike and I had already decided I should leave my job and stay home until Aimee was school age. So I decided to run some ads in the right magazines, to treat it more like a hobby at first and see what happened. I came up with a name—The Love Market, which felt like an obvious cho
ice—bought a Mac computer and designed my own website, drew up my business plan, all this while Aimee took naps or played beside me. After the first six months I had eleven clients and growing. After the first three years I was successfully matching more than fifty per cent. Now, I have a manageable portfolio of eighty: fifty women to thirty men, and a success rate of seventy per cent. Is it a bad life? Well, sometimes it’s frustrating. But it can be entertaining and rewarding. Occasionally it puts me on a such a high that it renews my faith in the concept of their being ‘the right one’ for all of us. That’s more than you can say for most jobs.

  ~ * * * ~

  James Halton-Daly is everything that Trish said he is. I can tell this the moment I catch sight of his handsomeness as he sits at the table. He looks up from the menu, and sees me striding towards him. He stands to greet me, beams an honest, warm smile, and gives me the quick and shameless once-over.