It's Got to Be Perfect: the memoirs of a modern-day matchmaker (8 page)

I decided to get straight to the point. ‘So,’ I said leaning forward, ‘what kind of men do you like?’

Her cheeks flushed and she picked up her glass and took a sip.

I pointed to a dark-haired man with cute dimples standing at the bar. ‘How about him?’

She threw a casual glance over her shoulder, and then looked back at me, shaking her head.

‘Why not?’

‘Looks like a womaniser.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘What makes you say that?’

She looked over at him again, this time pausing longer. ‘He’s too good-looking. I don’t date men like that.’

‘You don’t fancy good-looking men?’

She took another sip. ‘Good relationships aren’t based on that.’

‘What, sexual attraction?’

She shook her head. ‘I need someone who fits in with my family, my culture and who matches my intellect.’

‘Even if you don’t fancy them?’

She took another sip, though this time it was more of a gulp.

I scanned the room once again and noticed a man with a broad smile and blonde hair who was sitting on a sofa.

‘Okay, what about him?’ I pointed.

She turned to look. ‘No,’ she said shaking her head.

‘Why not?’

She went to put her glass down then lifted it to her mouth again. ‘This might sound a little mean.’

‘Go on.’

‘He’s not sophisticated enough.’

‘Because?’

‘Button-down collar.’

‘Okay,’ I said, scanning the room, searching for someone who might fit her ideal. I settled on a dark-haired man with intelligent eyes and a Hermes belt. ‘Him?’

She looked over, her gaze sizing him up. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, someone like him.’

Her glass was half-empty when she excused herself for a trip to the ladies. I watched her glide across the room, and then have an awkward “after you, no after you” dance with cute dimples at the bar. I noticed his head swivel, following her as she walked away. However, Mr Hermes belt ignored her as she swept past, seemingly more focused on looking up Marie’s skirt as she leant over the bar.

When she’d returned from the toilet, her make-up and composure refreshed, she continued describing her future husband.

‘I need a man who can fit in with my life,’ she began, her face expressionless. ‘He would have an international background, like myself. And a successful career. He’d have to want a large family. And, most importantly, he would need to be from an upper-class family.’

I raised my eyebrows again. ‘Why?’

‘It’s important to have shared values,’ she said, staring ahead.

I shrugged my shoulders and pretended to make notes, hoping I hadn’t sounded so clinical when I’d listed my requirements to Matthew no less than a month ago.

When she’d finished the last of her wine, she dabbed the sides of her mouth with a napkin and bid me a pleasant evening. I leaned forward to kiss her goodbye, but she sidestepped my advances and then offered me her hand to shake instead, as though there had been a gross misunderstanding and she was, in actuality, hiring me to assist her in a business merger.

When I sat back down to yet another refilled glass, I checked my watch and tapped my pen on the table. My next client, Jeremy, was late. Due to the sporadic network coverage in the bar, I nipped upstairs to give him a call. As I approached reception, I saw Marie leaning over the desk, boobs squeezed together, bottom in the air as though she were inviting penetration. With a slow deliberate lick of her lips, she pressed a piece of paper into the hand of a man standing in front of her.

‘Ahh, Ayleee. Dis ees Jirimie,’ she purred, as the man spun round, and flashed me a smile.

‘Blatch, Jeremy Blatch,’ he said, in the manner of an international spy.

Although a little slick, he was breathtakingly handsome, as though he’d just walked off the set of Hugo Boss advert. Wearing a grey suit and a white shirt, and with floppy dark blonde hair framing dazzling blue eyes, he looked every inch the fantasy Mr Right most women dreamed about.

Suspecting that Marie had just passed on her number, and concerned she may try to straddle him if I left it a moment longer, I suggested to Jeremy that we go downstairs to the bar.

‘That’s a first. I’m usually invited upstairs,’ he said with a wink.

I was surprised to find myself immune to his charms. It seemed my mind had adjusted from its instinctive default of perceiving men as potential boyfriends for myself, to assessing them objectively on behalf of others. Right then, I saw him as prime stock for the single girls of London.

Once settled in the bar, he unbuttoned his jacket. Through his slim-fit white shirt, I noticed the outline of a tight stomach and taut pecs. Oblivious to my X-ray assessment, or politely ignoring it, he ordered a Martini and I wondered if he actually thought he
was
James Bond.

‘I want to meet someone special,’ he said, before I’d had the chance to begin questioning him.

‘I’m tired of meeting airheads and bimbos,’ he continued, nodding in the direction of Marie, who just happened to be wiggling past our table. When she saw Jeremy looking over, she bent down to pick up something from the floor, waving her bottom in the air like a mallard. He looked away, evidently unimpressed.

‘No, I’m being unfair,’ he continued. ‘Some of the girls I’ve dated have been remarkably clever and successful.’ He paused, and then looked a bit strained. ‘It’s just, I don’t know …’

‘You haven’t found what you’re looking for?’ I said.

‘Yes, you’re right. I haven’t.’ He looked down to stir his Martini.

‘I thought it was shaken and not stirred?’

He laughed, looking quite chuffed with the analogy.

Unlike William and Harriet, Jeremy seemed to have no inhibitions when talking about his personal life and relayed his childhood with a mix of passion and nostalgia.

‘Life used to be so simple,’ he said, having described the farm in Somerset where he grew up. ‘When did it get so complicated?’

He downed his Martini, and then went on to explain how, when he was a child, he’d play outside all day with his dog, Rusty, who never left his side. ‘He didn’t care how much I earned or what car I drove.’ He threw a glance to the ground. ‘And back then neither did I. Now life is all about work.’ He picked up his phone. ‘And the reason I’m working so hard,’ he frowned at the screen, ‘is so that one day I can have that life back.’

During his second Martini, he went on to explain how his dad went bankrupt when Jeremy was eight years old, and that the family had to move to London for work. And that they couldn’t afford to take Rusty with them.

‘I begged my dad to keep him, promised I would find a job to pay for his food.’ He gripped the Martini stirrer. ‘But he wouldn’t listen.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘It was cold that day, so cold.’

‘What day?’

‘The day my dad shot Rusty with a .38 special.’

My hand few to my mouth. I heard a snap and then saw the Martini-stirrer fall to the table in two pieces.

‘That was the moment I vowed never to be poor again,’ he said.

After he’d blinked his tears away, we ordered more drinks. Then he explained how, when they’d first moved to London, he’d bunk off school and wash cars and windows to help his mum out with the bills and that by the age of eighteen, he had grown it into a national cleaning company.

‘And now, six businesses later, I find myself running a hedge fund,’ he said, sinking back into his chair.

‘What a story.’

‘Yeah, great isn’t it? Now I get to wear this bloody suit every day and pretend to be someone I’m not.’ He laughed, though I could tell it was forced. ‘And now, I’m embroiled in this ridiculous life. I own a watch that allows me to dive to a depth of 300 meters. I can turn my Bang and Olufsen sound system on from my desk. I employ someone to book my flights, wash my underpants, clean my toilets and buy my clothes. I have twelve thousand square foot of property that I hardly use, a forty foot yacht and a car that can accelerate from zero to sixty in two seconds.’ He sighed. ‘The women I meet, they don’t want me. They want a lifestyle.’

I cocked my head and thought about what he’d said.

He leaned forward and picked up the broken stirrer. ‘I guess I’m looking for an old-fashioned girl.’ He paused. ‘I want a big family, and a wife who has the time and patience to nurture our children. Not work all hours while some stranger plonks them in front of the TV.’ He looked at me, his eyes clouded to the dull blue of his silk tie. ‘Are there any women like that left in the world?’

I nodded while the image of Harriet flashed through my mind. I tried to suppress it, after all, nothing on paper would put them together, but there was a strange feeling niggling in my stomach. And I knew it was more than the gallon of house white.

Later that night, vivid dreams disturbed my sleep: a party, Harriet shaking hands with faceless men from behind a Venetian mask, William laughing, waving a joint and wearing a tennis skirt, Jeremy dressed as dog and holding a shotgun and Marie, naked, sprawled across the desk at reception. I woke abruptly when I felt myself falling down a never-ending staircase, blood-red carpet spiralling into darkness. I sat up in bed, my heart pounding as I gasped for air. That was when I realised that there was no going back. I couldn’t let them down.

They had put their faith in me, and now all I had to do was the same.

Chapter Seven

‘What do you mean there aren’t enough champagne glasses?’ raged Cordelia, throwing up her arms, as though she were initiating an angry version of the Mexican wave. ‘This is outrageous!’

Steve took a step back and blinked. ‘I was told that one hundred and fifty people were coming,’ he answered in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘So there are one hundred and fifty glasses.’

He pointed to the table where they stood, looking all polished and proud.

I raised my hand tentatively. ‘There are more people coming than I–’

Cordelia interrupted, still glaring at Steve. ‘We have three hundred guests arriving in … ’ She checked her watch ‘… oh, fifteen minutes. They’re each expecting champagne on arrival so you’d better have this resolved.’

With a hair flick that signalled the conversation was over, she flounced off, the length of her stride impaired by the tightness of her pencil skirt. In repose, she looked like a Forties screen siren in her skintight black and white monochrome outfit, but when she walked, particularly at any speed, she assumed the gait of an elongated penguin.

Caro jumped up and down on the spot, her dark bob lifting and falling like a jellyfish with somewhere to be.

‘Champagne cocktails,’ she declared on the final bounce, but our vacant expressions clearly signalled a need for further explanation. ‘In cocktail glasses?’ she peered over the bar. ‘Looks like you’ve got enough of those. We’ll need to name it something in theme, like …’ She paused and put her finger on her chin ‘… Cupid’s Crush or Sexy Slush.’

Steve grinned. ‘Sexy Slush?’

‘I don’t think Cupid has a crush,’ I added, immediately aware that it was in no way constructive.

‘Have you got any rose petals?’ Caro continued. ‘Or lychees? I’ll call Mario at Zuma. He knows exactly what to do with a lychee.’

Steve scrunched up his face. ‘One hundred and fifty cocktails in fifteen minutes – they’ll get what they get.’

‘Let me help.’ Caro jumped up onto the bar, flipped her legs over and landed, most impressively, on the other side. Marie popped up next to her as though she had been hiding there all along.

‘I weel elp Steve,’ Marie said, lunging towards him, boobs bursting out of a flimsy halter-necked top.

When I suggested to Marie, that considering she was the receptionist, she might be best placed greeting the guests at reception, she span around, rising on her heels. Her green eyes narrowed to slits and she hissed something in French that Caro translated as, “stupid pouting horse”.

By 8pm, aside from three hundred luminous pink cocktails lined up like a Texan beauty pageant, the bar was a vision of understated elegance. Cushions lay strewn across the sofas, while freshly plucked flowers leaned against crystal vases like models draped over yachts. To the haunting sounds of “Bar Grooves” as it echoed through the vaults, shadows moved across the walls like the ghosts of parties past.

In the bronze gilt mirror suspended on the wall, a girl looked back at me, the implied optimism of her glittery dress almost enough to distract from the angst in her eyes.

‘You look gorgeous,’ Steve said after I’d caught him watching me.

My shoes pinched, my bra was too tight and it was an effort to hold in my tummy.
Funny how looking good means feeling bad
, I thought as I picked up one of the overdressed cocktails. Only after I’d fought my way through the tacky paraphernalia, and mastered the curly straw, did I feel the warmth of the alcohol burn in my stomach and spread through my veins.

By the time my breathing had slowed, excited voices began to trickle down the staircase and groups of girls flooded into the bar like schools of migrating salmon. Modelling this season’s Gucci and Dior, they strode into the room with the polish of a Miss World procession. Pilates-sculpted muscles were vacuum-packed in spa fresh skin, and finished with St Tropez tans. Hair shone the L’Oreal spectrum of shades from deep chestnut to champagne blonde. Nature’s flaws were concealed by MAC, nature’s blessings were enhanced by shimmer.

A girl with a Heidi Klum body walked down the staircase and straight towards me.

‘Where are the men?’ she asked, scanning the room like an assassin.

I checked my watch. It was 8.10pm. ‘They’ll be here soon,’ I said.

She glared at me as though she expected me to produce one from my pocket, so I ushered her towards the cocktails.

‘Would you like one?’ I asked.

She sneered and then grabbed a glass, holding it away from her as though it might explode at any moment.

‘It’s a cherry plucker,’ I said, trying to match the enthusiasm with which Caro and Steve had christened it.

Using the umbrella as a probe, she examined the contents with the precision of a pathologist, eventually retrieving a freakishly large cherry that she held aloft, as though she had located the tumour that had turned an otherwise good cocktail bad. She handed me the glass, but retained the cherry presumably to send it for further testing. With a glass in each hand, I took a large gulp from each and then smiled, feeling like a politician at a press conference, making a point out of eating a GM vegetable. As the sugary syrup lined my throat, I looked up to see two men strutting down the staircase side by side, all cheekbones and jawlines. It was Mike and Stephen who we’d met at the Champagne bar. Throwing the cherry to the ground, the Heidi Klum look-a-like, along with the rest of the Stepford-Wives-in-waiting, moved towards them like starved piranhas. I took another sip from each cocktail and wondered when it was that the hunters had become the hunted.