The Love Market

by Carol Mason

  We stare at one another while my humiliation takes a bow before leaving the stage. This hurts more than I can let on. More than I would have even expected. I go to close the door now. He gently puts his hand out to stop me. ‘Just tell me you’ll think about it.’

  I look off to the side of his head, through a spring of tears. ‘Move your foot or I’ll slam this and break all your toes,’ I bluff.

  Tense moments tick, and I get a quick flashback to one of our last fights. Mike usually has a personality like a sea before the storm, but he’d occasionally lose his rag. Something that usually came off more funny than threatening. That time, he pelted a shoe at me across the room. It missed me, but hit the Lladro figurine of a little boy that Mike’s mother had given us. Mike knew I’d always hated it, even though he’d loved it. It seemed poignant that he’d broken it. As though, by fighting, we had succeeded on some darker level, in breaking him rather than just an ornament.

  Mike studies me closely, then he moves his foot. I am able to close the door. I lean up against it, my breathing racking me. I don’t fully breathe out until I hear the scrunch of gravel under his feet as he walks away.

  And I realise one true thing. The thought just floats up from whatever place it comes from. No one will love me like Mike loved me. And that much I know. I know without anyone having to wag their finger in front of my face and tell me.

  Ten

  Aimee sits by the window, swinging a flared indigo denim leg over the chair arm, in the powder blue satin top we just bought her. ‘Why didn’t he come in?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I shrug, still feeling somehow traumatized by our encounter. ‘I suppose I didn’t exactly invite him.’

  She stares at me. ‘What does an orgasm feel like?’ When she sees my face she says, ‘If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll ask somebody else. Granddad. Or Rachel’s mum.’

  We face each other in a narrowed-eye stand-off. I am about to take her to task, or at least to ask why she’s asking me this, but I don’t have the emotional energy.

  ‘Like a sneeze,’ I tell her, trying to be offhand about it. ‘A-choo! Only not with your nose.’

  She twirls a long piece of newly blonde hair around a finger. Jacqui just took her to the salon as a treat. She had soft golden highlights put in. It’s nice. Makes her look very grown up. ‘Would it be completely inappropriate of me if I asked you why you want to know this?’

  ‘I kissed Rachel’s boyfriend.’

  I frown. ‘I didn’t know she had one. ‘Where?’

  ‘On the mouth of course.’

  ‘I mean, where in the house? I’m assuming you’d go somewhere where Rachel couldn’t see.’ A bedroom? With pants off? I’ll kill him.

  ‘Outside. No one saw.’

  ‘You don’t kiss a friend’s boyfriend, Aimee. It’s one of the big no-no’s of life. Are you still jealous because she won a competition? Surely not…’

  ‘He wanted to do other things.’

  He’s dead. And I’m never letting her out of my sight again.

  ‘And you? What did you want?’ I ask her, feeling burnt out with my sudden inner, quiet panic. She stops playing with her hair, lets her leg just dangle now over the side of the chair. She does look stunning, and I see my daughter through a boy’s eyes. She’s sexy, which is a very odd thought to be having about your own child. ‘I don’t know,’ she says.

  ‘Is this why you suddenly wanted to come home?’

  She shakes her head. ‘No. Mr. Bradshaw caught us kissing.’

  ‘I thought you said no one saw.’

  ‘Well he did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He wanted to kiss me too.’

  ‘That’s not funny Aimee.’

  ‘It’s not meant to be.’

  ‘Pete Bradshaw would not want to kiss one of his daughter’s friends in his house full of thirty teenagers, with his wife there!’

  Off goes the wagging leg again. Aimee was defiant, even as a baby.

  ‘You don’t make up lies about people, Aimee. Somebody might take you seriously and that’s a very dangerous game to be playing.’

  ‘So I take it you’re not going out boyfriend-shopping tonight then?’ she asks.

  I ignore that, and tell her I’m going to bed.

  ~ * * * ~

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, later when I look in her room. ‘About the boyfriend shopping.’ She pulls a rueful smile.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I tell her. I go in and sit on the edge of her bed. ‘Are you all right?’

  She puts her book down and looks at me, like she’s grasping for the right way to say something, like someone trying to work her way around a speech impediment. ‘It was just weird having Dad leave me at the door.’

  ‘I’m so sorry… You wish he was coming home with you.’

  One hand uncurls from her book and her thin fingers meander down the cat’s belly. ‘I don’t know. Not if you don’t.’

  This show of unity touches me.

  ‘It was just weird.’

  I go to stroke Molly as well, and Aimee’s and my fingers meet, briefly. ‘I know,’ I tell her. I remember how I had to share my dad with his new girlfriends, often getting dropped at the last minute, for a better offer. Could I see Mike suddenly dropping visits if he met someone? Neither of us has had to share him before.

  ‘Mr. Bradshaw never tried to kiss me. I made that up.’

  ‘I know that too,’ I whisper. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ~ * * * ~

  I return to my room. My book on physiognomy is fascinating: the assessment of a person’s character or personality from their face. But rather than make me sleepy, it’s got me picturing all of my clients and comparing them against the theory. While I thought a big nose was a sign of a big something else, it’s apparently an indicator of health and vitality. Big ears? More comfortable taking risks. A thinner top lip to the bottom one? Watch out, this person may be serially unfaithful. And a woman’s eyebrows plucked into a tiny line, like my client Kim’s, is a sign of suppressed rage. I get out of bed and pick up a mirror and look at my own face. Definitely not thin eyebrows. Disproportionately tiny ears. I go back to bed, put the book away, lie there looking at ceiling. I still can’t fall asleep. Now Ian Dury’s Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick is playing on a never-ending loop in my head, so I decide I might as well check my email.

  I’ve a bunch. The first four are from Kim. Speak of the devil. The first one is titled Urgent.

  Time is ticking. I haven’t heard from you in a while. Do you have anybody else for me?

  The second is titled Urgent!!!

  On second thoughts, I’m not sure I can go through with any of this again. Will phone you early in the morning to talk—unless you’re up now? I can’t sleep.

  The third is titled IMPERATIVE you read this!!!

  I’m having serious second thoughts, Celine. I just don’t think you and I are working out. I’m not even sure you even WANT to match me any more.

  The fourth: Did you DIE?

  Sorry, I know you’re going to think I’m overreacting but I have given this a lot of thought. I can’t do this any more. I’ve just had enough. Please prepare a refund for me.

  Oh dear.

  No one’s asked for a refund before! Of course it’s all poetic justice; I usually charge the women half what I charge the men—mainly because they aren’t such high earners. But in Kim’s case I charged her the men’s fee because I read in the Newcastle Chronicle that she was loaded.

  But she’s not getting a refund! Number one, I don’t like to admit failure. Plus I’ve put time and thought into matching her, and every time she brushes through clients writing them all off I lose a bit of credibility with them. But also, I don’t really believe the solution to her unhappy singlehood is to dump me. So by giving her a refund I am failing both myself and her. But if I reply now, knowing her, she’ll be at the other end of the email, and then I’m never going to get to sleep. I’ll wait until morning, until she’s coo
led off.

  The next one I see is from Fran Kennedy. Fran married Allan, the man I’d matched her with, only, very sadly, Allan now has lung cancer and she often pours out her heart in an email. I open every one she sends me fearing the worst, but true to form in this one, Fran’s spirits are high even though he’s not doing well. I read it several times then type a long reply. By the time I am done, I am sleepy. I’m just about to log out, when another email pops in.

  When I see the name, I am so shocked that I lie there inhaling for about half a minute and nearly forget to breathe out.

  The name right there before my eyes is Patrick Shale.

  Eleven

  Have I just had a painless heart attack?

  There’s no message header, so I scroll for the message, part of me thinking I must have fallen asleep and this is a dream.

  But there’s no message.

  I log out, log back in again. Still a blank where the message should be. I close my eyes, take a breath, open them, and look again. I log off again, pull the plug from the socket, wait a while, stick it back in again, and reboot.

  Still no message.

  Patrick has sent me a blank email. Why would he do that? And why would Patrick even email me at all, especially as Jacqui and I have been talking about him so much lately?

  I smell a rat. A female rat that’s voluptuous with a blonde bob, called Jacqui, and it works as an architect.

  I scroll down again just to make sure I’ve not missed anything, and then what I see makes me squeal out loud. Underneath the “nothing” that he has written, there is a small line of text that reads:

  On 4/26, Celine Lewis at CelineLewis@hotmail.com wrote:

  Hang on. I wrote?

  I wrote?

  I scroll down to read what it is that I supposedly wrote, and there is... Nothing! What?

  When I look up, Aimee is standing in my doorway, staring at me as though she’s seeing an alien. ‘You look weird,’ she says. Her eyes instantly go to my laptop.

  I realise my face is stuck in a just-been-terrified expression. ‘Sorry...I …can’t sleep.’

  ‘I heard a noise.’ She frowns at the laptop.

  ‘I got up for the loo and stubbed my toe.’

  ‘Can you stub it more quietly next time?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She looks at me now. ‘Can I take you back to your room?’

  ‘Why? Has it moved?’

  I get off the bed and go and give her a quick kiss. ‘Can I ask you a question though, before you go?’

  ‘Hum?’ She rubs her eyes, vigorously, with her knuckles, like she used to do when she was little.

  ‘Aimee, you didn’t look up Patrick on the Internet and send him an email did you?’

  Her eyes go from me to my laptop again and she blushes. ‘No,’ she finally says. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe because you knew I’d been Googling him. Maybe you found his email, intended to type something, got distracted, and the message accidentally got sent anyway?’ I am trying to give her an “out”.

  She looks at me like I’m raving. ‘Mum? Are you sure you don’t think that’s a really strange question? Why would I want to email your old boyfriend?’

  ‘I don’t know, Aimee. You’re right. Forget I asked.’

  She nods and I watch her traipse back to her room, not plod-plodding her feet this time like a herd of pet elephants—something she has taken to doing lately. Right now she’s too tired. Her nightshirt is stuck in her knickers; a milky white bottom cheek peeking out. ‘Aimee,’ I say, before she disappears into her room. ‘You didn’t tell Aunt Jacqui that I’d Googled him did you? You know, the other day when she took you to get your hair cut?’

  Jacqui would employ all her wiles to find his email, I’m sure, if she got the sudden urge to try to reunite us. Too much of a coincidence that the message was sent when I was in Manchester, when Jacqui was staying here with Aimee.

  She turns, rubs her face again. ‘No,’ she says, tiresomely. ‘Now can I go back to bed?’

  I stare at his name for about ten minutes, and the blank space where he could have written something but didn’t. Why reply at all if he didn’t want to say anything?

  Feeling he’s even this tiny step back in my life is electrifying. That he’s actually out there, alive, on the other side of this mindboggling piece of technology. I click on REPLY. Then I suddenly overheat, my palms, feet, back and chest breaking out into a hot flush. Now what? I stare at the blank screen and ponder a few scenarios which all sound equally contrived, desperate, or just plain mad.

  Then I find my fingers typing…

  Dear Patrick,

  I have a very odd family who think it’s funny to meddle in my personal life.

  Honest, at least. A start.

  The truth is, I don’t know how either my sister or my daughter (not sure who is the culprit yet, but I will find out) found your email address, or why they went looking for it in the first place, or why they decided to send you a blank message. I’m sorry for this. I’m sure you were as surprised by it as I was getting in your reply. Sorry again.

  All the best, Celine.

  I press “send”.

  Twelve

  Dear Celine,

  I’m not sorry to have received your email—quite the opposite. But yes, it did come as a surprise. And the main reason I emailed you back without writing anything was, to be truthful, because I really didn’t know what to write after all these years. But other than having that lame excuse, it was a pretty dumb thing to do.

  I looked you up when I got it, and I found your website, and I see you run an introductions service, and you called it The Love Market. You can’t imagine how that touched me, or how it took me back. Although you probably won’t believe this, but I thought of you just recently. I was sorting through some boxes in my apartment and I came across the Dictaphone I used in Sa Pa. Remember? When I stood by the window and you sat there watching me?

  He means, when I sat on the end of the bed naked, and watched him by the window trying to work. But he couldn’t concentrate on what it was he was saying, because he was too busy concentrating on me. ‘You’re distracting me,’ he said, looking at me compulsively, until he finally gave up.

  I hope the last fifteen years of your life have been good ones. I always imagined you would have married a great guy, and ended up settling and having a good life in that village you loved to hate. Looks like you have a daughter too... I am happy for you.

  Patrick.

  ~ * * * ~

  The shades of green and grey and mauve moorland don’t change the longer you sit at the kitchen table and gaze out of the window.

  I am paralyzed by his email.

  I’m so paralyzed that when the phone rings, I pick up without bothering to look at my call display, thinking it’ll be Kim on the case of her refund.

  ‘Hi.’ I hear a voice say. And then, after a pause, ‘Do you know who this is?’

  The voice has an accent. I’m about to say ‘No. I don’t talk to telemarketers, or anyone ringing to tell me there’s a dead billionaire with no relatives who bears my last name.’ But all that comes out is a rather strangulated ‘eu-oooh,’

  Because I know who it is almost immediately.

  Butterflies have colonized my stomach. ‘Sorry,’ he says, amused.

  Patrick says.

  ‘I just saw your phone number on your website, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the idea of talking to you.’

  Patrick’s words in my ear.

  Silence. Perhaps I’ve died.

  ‘Are you still there?’ he asks.

  ‘I, erm…’—have to remove the hand from my mouth because I’m biting my palm and it hurts.

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘It’s amazing how easily you can find people when you suddenly go looking for them. But then you know that already.’

  Mischief in that voice? ‘I didn’t go looking for you, Patrick.’ Seems I’ve found my tongue. ‘It was my sister who—’ />
  ‘—Can’t you just say it was you?’ he says, disarmingly. He always had the power to blindside me with his directness and his ability to place an innocent few words onto a charged, higher level.

  ‘But it really wasn’t!’ I’m almost too stunned to have a sense of humour. The butterflies have turned to nausea. That wobbly stomach I’d get with just the memory of sex with him. It’s back.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ he says after what seems like a very long silence. ‘I mean that in a good way. I saw your picture on your website. I can’t stop looking at it. In fact, I’m looking at it right now.’ A definite smile in his voice. Patrick had a way of coming close to intimidating me with something very simple that he’d say, in the sexiest, yet most unnerving way, and it seems like it’s fifteen years ago all over again; nothing’s changed. To think he’s sitting there looking at my picture is wild.

  It’s the one Jacqui took in our garden. A medium close-up. My dark hair cut into flattering long layers, slightly falling in my eyes. My black and white stripy halter-top looking very glam with my two-week old tan from our holiday to Cyprus.

  We must have taken hundreds getting me to look—as she insisted—wise and insightful, like someone who you’d trust to make a sound decision about your personal life, yet a fun girl with her finger on the zeitgeist. ‘Bloody cooperate!’ she said. ‘They want Jennifer Aniston-cum-Oprah Winfrey as their matchmaker, not Martha Stewart.’

  ‘You suit being in your thirties, if that makes any sense. It’s like the age that was meant for you.’ He sounds as though my picture has touched him.

  ‘Patrick, I...’ I laugh, nervously. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Just don’t hang up on me, okay?’

  I laugh again. ‘Okay. But this is too weird that I am actually sitting here talking to you!’