Alice Brown's Lessons in the Curious Art of Dating (24 page)

‘There’s something I wanted to ask.’ Alice’s voice broke Kate’s reverie. ‘It’s about your criteria.’

‘Yes?’ Kate lowered the paperwork.

Alice looked awkward. ‘Well . . . I was wondering if you’d changed your mind?’

‘What do you mean?’ Kate asked, an alarm bell going off inside.

‘Well, are you still looking for all the things in a man that you originally specified?’

‘Of course!’ What was Alice getting at? Was she saying she hadn’t been good enough for Sebastian and Michael? Had they complained about her? Had they said she wasn’t good-looking enough? Too fat? Kate’s throat tightened.

‘So you’d still like to meet someone tall, handsome, dark-haired . . . ?’

‘Yes.’

‘. . . with a strong jaw and blue eyes . . . ?’

‘Yes!’

‘. . . and a job in management, who takes regular holidays and has a nice car? Someone sporty, with a good physique . . . ?’

‘
Yes, yes!
’ Kate could hear her voice becoming shrill. ‘Why are you asking?’ She looked sharply at Alice for clues. Was she being told to lower her standards? Was she being told she was substandard for this kind of man?

Alice blushed and put down her teacup. Despite her pinkening cheeks, she still looked pale and drawn.

‘I just wanted to check I was still on the right track.’

Kate felt relief surge through her body.

‘Yes, that all sounds perfect. Just the kind of man I’m after!’

‘So you wouldn’t consider anyone who isn’t a high earner and all those other things?’

‘Er . . .’ Kate felt confused, like she was being tested. She tried to laugh. ‘I know that being rich and handsome won’t make him a better person. Money isn’t everything, of course. It’s just that: well . . . little girls want to marry princes, don’t they? Not dustmen. Not that there’s anything wrong with dustmen, it’s just that . . . well . . . a dustman was never part of my life plan.’ She smiled weakly.

‘OK.’

Kate relaxed.

‘So I’ll just keep looking for more of the same?’

‘Yes!’ Kate said certainly. Except that a bit of uncertainty was beginning to creep in. More of the same as Sebastian and Michael? She’d hated her dates with them. But they
had
ticked all the boxes. She’d just been unlucky. Sebastian and Michael were right on paper but wrong in person. That didn’t mean that
all
tall, dark and handsome men were wrong. Tall, dark and handsome was just what she wanted! Tall, dark and handsome and with a car. And a big bank balance and nice teeth.

‘Yes,’ she repeated as she picked up her teacup and looked at Alice. ‘More of the same, please.’

When Alice got back to the office the first thing she saw was the florist leaving.

‘Oh, Audrey,’ Bianca gasped. ‘What fantastic flowers. Are they from John?’

‘Mmmm-hmmmm.’ Even Audrey wasn’t usually this disinterested in receiving a mountain of blooms that took both arms to hold.

‘Not many men still send their wives bouquets like that after twenty years of marriage!’ Bianca enthused sweetly. ‘It’s not your anniversary, is it?’

‘No.’ Audrey dumped the bouquet on Hilary’s desk for her to arrange into a vase. Audrey’s eye caught Alice’s as she hovered by the door. She seemed to puff up her chest. ‘They’re just for being me,’ she said stiffly, and turned and headed back into her office.

Alice scuttled to her desk. Audrey had been in a strange mood all day. She’d taken every possible opportunity to put her in her place. She’d even sent her out in the rain to get her lunch, which was something she didn’t normally demand of anyone. She was probably angry with her for
not coming back to the table last night. With a quick rush of shame Alice remembered how she’d run off home. Why hadn’t she had more backbone? She could at least have said goodbye!

But Audrey hadn’t actually
said
that this was what was upsetting her. And she
had
been quite drunk. Maybe she couldn’t remember, Alice thought hopefully. But her hope instantly evaporated. More likely she
could
remember, and she’d seen John follow her out and give her his handkerchief. Maybe that was what was angering her: her husband being nice to the black sheep of Table For Two.

Alice sneaked a look at Audrey’s bouquet as Hilary attempted to stuff it into a vase. It was even more enormous than usual. And it was
just for being me
. Alice had to hand it to Audrey: she must have done something pretty amazing after she’d left. John hadn’t seemed like a man in the mood to blow fifty pounds on flowers for his wife. He’d actually seemed quite angry.

Trying to look as invisible as possible, Alice sidled over to Hilary, on the pretext of helping her arrange the flowers.

‘Can I ask you something?’ she whispered. She nervously looked over in Audrey’s direction, but her boss had already sealed herself into her glass office and was frowning heavily at her computer.

‘Do I look like a sodding florist?’ Hilary muttered as she stabbed another hyacinth into the vase. ‘Kevin never sends me flowers. Do you think she does this just to torture me?’

‘You’ve worked here a long time . . .’ Alice started delicately.

‘Too bloody long!’

‘Did you ever meet the first five clients? You know: the ones who all got married?’

‘I hadn’t joined when Audrey matched them,’ Hilary replied, ramming in a handful of fern. ‘She hired me a few months after. But I did meet them later on; she was forever rounding them up for photoshoots with the local paper.’

Alice sneaked a glance at Audrey’s office to double-check her door was firmly closed. ‘Did they seem happy?’

‘Of course not – they were married by then!’

‘What I mean is – do you think they stood the test of time? Do you think they’re all still married?’

‘I doubt it. Actually, at least one of the clients came back to us a few years later. She wanted help getting back into the scene after her divorce.’

‘Divorce?’ Alice felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

‘Audrey never mentions it, of course. She didn’t want to take her back on as a client. I think she was terrified in case anyone remembered her from all the publicity.’

‘So just
one
couple got divorced . . . ?’ Alice whispered hopefully.

‘Oh, at least! There were rumours about one of the other couples too.’ Hilary paused in her flower-arranging, trying to remember. ‘She was African; from Nigeria, I think. She only had a few months left on her visa.’

Alice gasped. ‘Are you saying Audrey matched a marriage of convenience?’ She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
It was even worse than Sheryl had said. She wished she’d never started digging.

Hilary shrugged. ‘It was only a rumour; who knows? And I’m not saying she’d have done it deliberately. Knowing Audrey and her ability to read people, which is precisely zilch, she probably never had a clue. But it certainly made the chances of hitting the matchmaking jackpot a lot higher if one of the parties wanted to get a ring on her finger within the fortnight.’ Hilary frowned heavily at her lumpy floral display.

‘You didn’t hear any rumours about any of the couples already dating before she actually matched them, did you?’ Alice asked innocently, barely able to breathe as she did so.

Hilary suppressed a snort of laughter.

‘No, but I
did
always think there was something fishy about Audrey’s cousin.’

‘Audrey’s cousin?’ Alice echoed in dismay, her head beginning to spin.

‘Yeah, he was a second cousin once removed, or something like that. Whatever, he never looked too enamoured with his wife. I don’t think I ever saw him exchange two words with her. He was a strange-looking bloke; looked like he’d hit hard times. I don’t reckon he had a penny to his name. He was the kind of guy you wanted to take home and give a damn good meal. I think Audrey had to buy him his suit for the photos. I used to wonder if she’d paid him to get married; you know – to help bump up the statistics and get her into the papers? Your first four matches getting hitched doesn’t quite have the same ring as five!’

Alice reeled in shock.

‘Of course, it’s probably not true,’ Hilary continued as she picked up another handful of flowers and looked at her overstuffed vase in exasperation. ‘Most likely the other four couples are in a state of permanent ecstasy and are all living on Utopia Avenue . . .’

Alice returned to her desk and sat down, the room reeling around her. So Sheryl had been right about the divorces. And if she’d been right about that, what about everything else she’d said? Alice looked at Audrey, who was angrily trying to swat a fly against her desk with a copy of
Brides
magazine. Was Sheryl right? Was Audrey in on the bad-matches-for-extra-fees scam too?

Numbly, Alice’s hand crept into her cardigan pocket. Her fingers brushed against something soft. It was John’s handkerchief. Alice had washed it last night, intending to return it to Audrey today. But something had stopped her – fear, probably. How would any woman react if her employee handed back her husband’s hanky – let alone Audrey? And how could Alice explain having it without admitting she’d been crying? She could imagine Audrey’s scorn. And then she’d peer at Alice’s eyes and notice how puffy they were. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out that Alice had spent most of the night sobbing.

What Alice wanted most was to wipe the whole evening from her memory forever – in fact, the whole
week
! Ever since she’d had that coffee with Sheryl, everything had gone into free fall. First of all Sheryl had made her doubt the integrity of her chosen profession. And then the ball –
supposedly the best night of her life and the apex of her matchmaking career – had ended in humiliation. And now Hilary had unwittingly turned her world on its head, and everything she thought she knew about her boss suddenly seemed like it might just be a lie.

So Alice couldn’t bring herself to return John’s hanky to Audrey. Instead she let it nestle, cosy in her cardigan pocket. The truth was, she was beginning to like having it there. In amongst all the confusion and the tumult, the hanky felt soft, comforting, simple. It was the only thing she could think of that actually felt nice.

‘Drink?’ asked Geraldine as she waved a bottle of red towards John and fumbled in the drawer for a corkscrew. ‘I don’t know about you, but I feel I deserve one. It’s been a long week.’

She expertly pulled out the cork, poured the wine into two enormous goblets and carried them over to the sofa. Geraldine’s office was large, tatty and shambolic, yet John had never known her to misplace anything, and it never failed to astonish him how many strange and wonderful things she conjured from her cupboards. She’d once served him an impromptu afternoon tea of scones, cream and jam, all courtesy of her filing cabinet.

‘All meetings after 5.30 should be conducted over a large glass of wine,’ she said amiably as she flopped onto the couch. ‘It’s the law. Or at least it should be.’

John laughed. Geraldine was right: it had been a long week.

‘So.’ Geraldine slapped the sofa between them cheerfully. ‘I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than schlep all the way to the office on a Friday night for a chat. Not that I’m
complaining: you’re the best view I’ve had all week. But seeing as I have it on good authority that you do actually own a telephone, I don’t need to be Miss Marple to work out there’s probably something serious on your mind.’ She peered at him curiously.