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Get a grip, Rachel. As far as they’re concerned you’re perfectly at ease. They don’t know that you’ve aged in dog years or restarted your nail-biting habit over the presentation. They can’t see the uncomfortable crotch hammock that your too-yellow tights are making under your dress.
She took a deep breath, resisting the urge to plunge her hand down the back of her tights to make adjustments.
‘Ah, Rachel, James, hello.’ Their boss stood up when he saw them. ‘Gentlemen, allow me to introduce Rachel Lambert and James McCormack, two of our brightest young architects. I think you’re going to love what they’ve come up with.’
His expression warned them not to prove him wrong.
After work, Sarah yanked open the front door before Rachel could get her key out of the lock. Then she nearly wrestled her to the sofa.
‘Ace, you’re home! Let me take that for you!’ She grabbed Rachel’s giant portfolio case.
‘What are you doing?’ Rachel protested as Sarah wrenched off one of her brogues. In her tiny hands the shoe looked huge and inelegant.
‘You’ve had a hard day, so you need to relax.’
‘And this mugging is supposed to relax me?’
Sarah looked surprised by the shoe in her hand. ‘I want you to put your feet up and I’ll cook for us.’
Rachel grinned at her sweet, impulsive housemate. ‘Thank you. Can I have my shoe back please?’
‘Catherine’s just changing. Dinner’s ready soon.’
Sarah retreated to the kitchen with the shoe still in her hand.
‘Do I have to stay here on the sofa?’ Rachel called. ‘Or am I allowed in the kitchen?’
Slowly she rolled her shoulders, feeling the satisfying tick tick tick of her vertebrae cracking away the tension of the past few weeks.
‘Have you been grounded or something?’ Catherine said as she came downstairs from her bedroom.
‘Sarah stole my shoe.’
Catherine didn’t look surprised. ‘How’d it go today?’
Rachel couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.
‘That good, eh?’
‘Remember the time I got that flight to Prague for twenty-nine pounds? And the hotel lost my reservation and gave me a suite for the price of a double? Today was better. Seriously, I rocked it! The clients loved our pitch. They made all the right noises about letting us present our ideas. I think they’re going to give us a chance.’
She didn’t need to tell Catherine that her design would be competing against James’s. It was all she’d rabbited on about lately.
‘Well done, I knew they’d love it!’ Catherine scooped her up in a hug. ‘You’ve told your mum?’
Rachel’s face felt like it might split in two. ‘She rang me back right after the meeting. She thinks I’m awesome.’
Catherine squeezed her again. ‘She’s always been the president of your fan club.’
‘I know.’ She sat back down, resting her head on the back of the sofa and listening to Sarah mangle pop songs at the top of her voice in the kitchen. As much as she loved going out, these rare nights home were bliss. Their rambling, derelict house was the anchor that held them all steady in London.
Or maybe it just seemed like that. She vaguely remembered the same feeling in Catherine’s old flat. Which meant it wasn’t really the house, but the housemates. They might not spend all their time together like they did in the early days, but she couldn’t imagine her life without them.
It was only because of Catherine’s extra mortgage that they’d met at all. She’d sunk so much money into the new matchmaking business that she’d needed flatmates to help pay back the loan. Rachel and Sarah had been the first two to answer her advert. Rachel was only a junior architect then, who still went home to her parents’ every week for dinner and clean laundry. And Sarah was fresh from uni. That was seven years ago.
And now they had the Clapton house. It had taken blood, sweat and tears to get the money together to buy it at auction. Rachel still cried sometimes, looking at her meagre savings account, but it was an excellent long-term financial decision. Assuming it didn’t actually fall down. As the resident architect, she was the one who had to make sure that didn’t happen.
‘Richard is getting married,’ Catherine said, pulling her from her reverie.
‘No way. Who’d have him?’
‘The Hungarian teenager. He wants me to have dinner with them.’
‘Why? Is he looking for a grown-up’s approval?’
Catherine didn’t smile. Rachel always thought that her serious face was her most beautiful. Although that was like choosing which of Thornton’s Decadently Dark chocolates she preferred. All of them, obviously.
‘What’s this mean for you and him?’
‘As long as nothing changes then it doesn’t mean anything.’
Rachel could see Catherine retreating from her feelings. She rarely went off-kilter. You could detonate a bomb beside her and she’d carry on as normal. Maybe that’s what Richard did with his news.
‘You’re sure about that?’ Rachel asked. Just because Catherine called time on their marriage didn’t mean it was easy to hear this news.
‘Rachel, we just celebrated a happily divorced ten years. Of course I’m sure. As long as he doesn’t let this nonsense interfere with the business.’
‘Right,’ Rachel said. ‘That’s the business you own with your soon-to-be-remarried ex-husband. Whose fiancée you hate. What could possibly go wrong there?’
‘It’ll be okay,’ said Catherine. With that, she got up and went to check on Sarah.
Rachel couldn’t exactly throw stones at Catherine while she had James to deal with at work. She just hoped Catherine wouldn’t end up mixing business with displeasure.
Not everyone got to ignore their exes when their tolerance ran out. Sometimes children, social circles, mortgages or, in Rachel’s case, office space, made it hard to just delete his contact details and make your friends promise to forget all about that dark period. And sometimes people, like Catherine and Richard, actually wanted to stay in each other’s lives. Not only that, they built an entire business model around the idea that other people did too.
It definitely wasn’t for everyone, Rachel thought as she followed Catherine down to the kitchen. But after last night’s date she had to admit that it might be for her.
She just knew that Catherine was going to be smug about that.
‘This looks delicious,’ Catherine said as Sarah dished up their dinner – a huge salad of grilled halloumi, rocket, blood oranges and olives – at their battered, beloved kitchen table. It was big and comfortable and never divulged the secrets they shared over it. Like the rest of the house, it had seen better decades.
‘So, I’ve been thinking about RecycLove.com,’ Rachel said.
‘Oh?’ Catherine gave away nothing.
‘Because your date was bad? I want details!’ cried Sarah as she slid a tray full of shiny white meringues into the oven.
‘Please, not while we’re eating,’ Rachel said.
‘How did you meet this guy?’ asked Catherine.
‘At the pub last Friday. But it was close to last orders so I didn’t talk to him that much.’
‘That’s what you get for going out with someone you don’t even know,’ said Catherine.
Instead of answering, Rachel dug her phone out, opened Twitter and shared his photo round the table.
‘Ah, I see.’ Catherine smiled.
‘Nice one,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s pretty. I’d overlook a lot to snog him.’
‘That’s what I figured too. We’ve been tweeting all week. Just jokey messages, mild flirtation. He suggested a drink near the office. He did seem normal at first. Until he started flirting.’ She grimaced.
‘But you’d been flirting with him on Twitter.’
‘Not like this. At first it was hot.’ Her face started to burn. This wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to confess, even to friends. ‘We started talking about what we’d do to each other … in the bedroom.’
‘Rachel!’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘You don’t even know him.’
‘Well, obviously, Sarah, at that point I was hoping to change that! It’s been a while, you know.’
Both women nodded. The only man who’d been in their house in the last six months had come to fix the boiler.
‘So I said something fairly tame like …’ She lowered her voice. So embarrassing. ‘Like I’d wear a body stocking. He said he’d like that. Then he asked if I’d wee on him while he wore the body stocking.’
‘Wow,’ Catherine said, keeping a straight face, Rachel noted. She probably had a tick box on the website for such fetishes.
‘That’s sick!’ Sarah said. ‘You should have reported him to the police.’
‘For what? Wanting to wee on me? It’s not a crime. The crime was that I didn’t just get up and leave. But it seemed rude not to finish my drink. That’s when it got really weird.’
‘That’s when it got weird?’ Catherine said.
‘Did he start punching himself?’ Sarah asked.
Rachel shook her head.
‘No, no punching …?’
Sarah’s mind worked in mysterious ways.
‘It’s just that wanting to be dominated probably comes from low self-esteem, maybe self-harm,’ Sarah continued.
Then again, Rachel thought, she was a clever woman. She just didn’t feel the need to fill the rest of them in on the steps in her thought process. Sometimes talking to her was like being paintballed from all sides.
‘So,’ Rachel continued. ‘I said that weeing on people wasn’t really my thing. And then he asked if I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my saviour. Because otherwise I was going to hell.’
‘Because you didn’t wee on him?’ Sarah asked. ‘That seems harsh.’
‘That’s when I left.’ She turned to Catherine. ‘If I join RecycLove.com can you promise I won’t have to wee on anyone?’
‘I can’t make any promises,’ Catherine said. ‘But it’s got to be better than meeting randoms in bars. You’re really thinking of joining?’
Rachel nodded. She couldn’t believe it had come to this. A decade ago when she was just out of uni she’d never have joined a dating site. It had been too easy to meet guys then, and anyway, online dating reminded her of those WLTM adverts that everyone laughed over in the back of the papers.
But now, unless she developed a fetish or was born-again, she might need RecycLove. ‘I’m afraid it’s time.’
‘That’s great, Rachel,’ Catherine said. ‘Who’ll join with you?’
‘James, of course. He owes me.’
That was the rule with RecycLove. It was like a normal dating website but she could only join by bringing an ex to upcycle. New joiners gave their ex a romantic evaluation, which could be painful, Rachel thought, even if it was for their eyes only. On the other hand, knowing where she might be going wrong would let her make changes if she wanted. Then she’d get access to all those dating prospects … all those improved dating prospects.
She just had to convince James to join with her. And let himself be criticised for his failure at boyfriendship. How hard could that be?
‘But I’ll only join if Sarah does too,’ she said.
Sarah stared at her housemate as if she’d just asked her to donate a kidney.
Chapter Three
Sarah
Sarah’s heart pounded as her running shoes kicked up little dust whorls along the path. The huge plane trees spread their bare branches overhead, shielding her from a bit of the drizzle. Not that bad weather ever stopped her park runs. She’d cemented the habit into her routine when she ran long-distance for her school. Now it kept her jeans from getting too tight when she ate most of her baking. And it let her think.
She never claimed to be the brightest match in the box when it came to reading people but she knew a set-up when she saw one. And last night was one mother of a set-up.
Rachel and Catherine thought she didn’t know how they talked about her, that they worried she was turning into some kind of housebound, daytime-telly-watching, tracksuit-wearing weirdo. Like she didn’t worry herself. She was about one box set away from hermithood.
But there wasn’t really a lot she could do about that at the moment. Besides, her life wasn’t too bad, in the scheme of things. So she wasn’t dating. At least she didn’t have to go through all that effort – the buffing and straightening and shaving and shopping and standing around in uncomfortable shoes, trying to be the most fascinating thing on the planet – only to have a guy want to wee on her.
A few joggers passed her in the opposite direction but none overtook her. Even a decade after she last ran competitively, she was still fast.
She turned through the park gates and started for home. When she got inside she ran straight upstairs to the shower. She didn’t want to be told off again by Catherine.
Maybe she’d be happier in her kitchen anyway, she thought as she towelled herself dry. At least there she didn’t have to worry about whether she could hold the attention of some guy she’d just met, who might not even be worth her time. Amongst her pots and pans there was no pressure, and things generally ran to plan, unless she dropped a knife on her foot or set something on fire.
The others weren’t up yet when she got to the kitchen. Plunging her hands into the tin of flour first, she lifted the sticky bread dough from the bowl where she’d been letting it rise. She could make bread in her sleep. Just thinking about her mum, in the bright yellow kitchen kneading the bread for her and Robin and Sissy, made her salivate.
She began knocking back the dough on the floury tabletop. As usual she couldn’t resist the urge to squeeze it through her fingers. Paul Hollywood wouldn’t approve but she indulged herself anyway. Few things felt better to Sarah than soft, smooth, living dough between her hands.
Rachel staggered into the kitchen with last night’s eye make-up pooling on her cheeks. ‘Coffee. Please, I’m begging you.’
‘There’s a cup left in the pot … no, two cups … or a cup and a half … well it depends on how big your cup is. You look like you’ve been punched in the face.’
‘Call me Dolly,’ Rachel said, wiping her thumbs beneath her eyes. ‘Parton,’ she said in answer to Sarah’s confused look. ‘She sleeps in her make-up in case she has to face the photographers.’
‘If you say so.’ The only photographers in Upper Clapton were the ones the police sent out when there’d been a stabbing on the Murder Mile. ‘You’re more Edward Scissorhands than Dolly.’
‘Thanks very much. That for us?’ Rachel asked, pointing to the dough between Sarah’s hands.
‘Mmm,’ she said, leaving Rachel in the dark as to the answer. ‘I’m going to Sissy’s later.’
Sissy loved her sourdough bread. Sarah always felt bad that she couldn’t just leave it with her, instead of asking the staff to dole it out slice by slice to her toast-addicted sister.
‘Which reminds me,’ Rachel said. ‘Here.’ She pulled some papers from the kitchen drawer.
‘My hands are covered. What is it?’
She was just playing dumb. It said right at the top what it was.
‘Your application for The Great British Bake Off,’ Rachel said, popping her coffee cup in the microwave. ‘It’s about time you applied, Sarah Lee.’
‘No way! I’d fall apart at the first signature bake. I’m happy just baking here, for you lot.’
‘Bullshit, Sarah. You’re not happy. Anyone can see that. This would be so good for you. You need to get your confidence back and this could do it—’
Ding! Her coffee was ready.
Time’s up, thought Sarah. That was the end of the morning’s round of Let’s Fix Sarah. Tune in tomorrow. It would probably be a repeat.
‘Will you at least think about it?’ Rachel asked.
‘Yeah.’
Which they both knew meant no.
‘It would be so good for you.’
‘But Rachel, I’m twenty-eight. Being an adult means that I don’t have to do what’s good for me.’
‘Is that why you won’t sign up to RecycLove with me either? You’d rather sit alone in the house and be miserable than do this one little thing to make yourself happy?’
Sarah slammed the tea towel drawer shut. Why did everyone automatically assume that if someone spent time alone she was miserable?
‘But I’m not alone. I have you and Catherine.’
She covered the dough with a towel and shoved it back in the boiler cupboard to prove again.
‘You know what I mean,’ Rachel continued. ‘We’re no substitute for a normal, honest, red-blooded bloke.’
Sarah got the eggs out. There wasn’t enough butter for a Madeira cake, but she could use veggie oil for cupcakes instead. ‘Let me know if you find one of those,’ she said.
‘C’mon, it’ll be fun.’
Sarah glanced up. ‘That’s your idea of fun? Tracking down my ex so that he can tell me everything that’s wrong with me?’
‘You’ll get to do it to him too, though.’
‘Oh, well, then it sounds ace.’
She was amazed that Catherine’s business model actually worked. Even if there were enough people out there who didn’t want to stab their exes with a salad fork, how many of those were willing to critique their ex-lover’s techniques and relationship suitability and then (shudder) listen to the same thing about themselves?
She could live without that kind of honesty, thank you very much.
‘Well I’m doing it,’ Rachel said. ‘Aren’t you even curious to hear straight from the jackass’s mouth what he thought of you? You must have wondered what goes through a guy’s head.’
About a million times, along with every other woman in the world, Sarah thought.
Rachel continued. ‘This might be the one chance we have to find out without caring, if you see what I mean. Nobody wants to hear the truth while they’ve still got feelings, but now, years later? Bring it on. And then we’ll get access to all those men … all those improved men.’
‘I don’t even know how to get in touch with any of my exes,’ Sarah said, cracking eggs into the glass bowl. ‘I don’t keep their numbers after the event.’
‘Except for Sebastian.’
‘No way, I deleted him when we broke up.’ She laughed. ‘Not that he’d be hard to find. He’ll be in whichever club has the most Russian models.’
‘You could just ask your brother for his number. They are friends.’
‘He won’t do it,’ Sarah said, talking about Sebastian, not her brother.
‘Why not? You ended on good terms with him. You just weren’t right for each other.’
‘That wasn’t the problem. He thought all women were right for him.’
‘He didn’t actually cheat though, did he?’
‘No, I don’t think so. He was just shite at remembering to pay attention to me when pretty women walked by.’
‘See?’ said Rachel. ‘You’ve already got something for his feedback form. He’ll appreciate the advice. Think about it? Please?’
‘Will you leave me alone if I do?’
‘Of course not. I’ll ask you again tomorrow. If James and I join, will you sign up?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Sarah lied, shoving the Bake Off form back in the kitchen drawer.
* * *
Sarah tried not to smoosh the cupcakes as she sprinted from the train station to Sissy’s place. As she rounded the corner she saw her sister standing outside the facility’s front door, looking pointedly at her watch.
‘I’ve got cupcakes,’ Sarah called. ‘And I’m not late.’
‘Close call.’
Sissy was a stickler for time.
When Sarah opened her arms, Sissy threw herself into them with the full force of a small rhinoceros. As they hugged she breathed in the familiar scent of her strawberry VO5 shampoo.
‘You brought the bread?’ She caught Sarah in her signature laser-beam stare. She had the same colour green eyes as their mum, though they were almond-shaped, whereas Sarah’s were more mossy, round and deep-set.
‘Of course, I promised didn’t I? Shall we have a slice of toast?’
Sissy nodded. ‘With jam.’
While Sarah got to work slicing the bread in the communal kitchen, Sissy selected two plates from the cabinet. Carefully she opened the jam jar and unwrapped the butter. When the toast popped up, golden and steaming, she began her process. Nobody did toast as thoroughly as Sissy.
‘Want to eat it in the garden?’ Sarah asked as she spotted Kelly. Like Sarah, she was in her late twenties, but with a coiled-up energy like those women who taught Zumba classes. She strode rather than walked, with her shiny black hair swinging in a ponytail. She was always easy to pick out, even in the shapeless lilac and black uniform that all the nurses wore. ‘I’ll just give the rest of the loaf to Kelly, okay? Can you carry mine out too, please?’
‘Kelly the bread jailor,’ Sissy muttered as Sarah gave her both plates.
‘Hi Sarah, all right?’ Kelly asked with the same easy manner that all the support workers had.
‘All right, thanks. Here’s Sissy’s bread. We’re tucking into some now.’
But Sarah wasn’t looking at Kelly as she handed over the loaf. She was watching Sissy as she shuffled at her snail’s pace toward the garden door at the end of the corridor.
‘As if you’d get out of here without toast,’ Kelly said.
‘Tell me about it.’
Sissy reached the door but, with her hands full, she couldn’t open it. ‘Oh, sorry,’ Sarah said. ‘I should help Sissy.’
Kelly gently touched her arm. ‘Let’s give her a minute.’
They watched as Sissy stood at the door with the plates in her hands. She looked left and right, for help, Sarah knew.
Her heart began to speed. ‘I’ll just—’
‘Leave it just a minute, Sarah.’
Sissy walked into the nearest room and came out a few seconds later with a metal chair in her hands instead of the plates. Carefully she propped the door open with the chair. Then, still not hurrying, she went back into the room for the plates and carried them through to the garden.
Sarah let out the breath she didn’t realise she was holding.
‘We’re trying to let her do as much as possible for herself,’ Kelly said. ‘She’s a clever girl. She figures things out. Why don’t you go enjoy your toast?’
As usual, Sarah was in awe of Kelly. She and the others made the care home seem so normal. No drama, no fuss and no institutional feel. Despite the emergency call buttons and trained medical staff wandering around, it felt like a family there. Sissy loved it.
Sissy’s diagnosis hadn’t been a surprise to their mum. When she’d found herself pregnant at forty-two, she’d taken the chromosome disorder test at the insistence of her shell-shocked new boyfriend. Just as a precaution, he’d said.
‘It’s only precautionary if I’d do something about it,’ she’d told him, her Scouse accent becoming more pronounced with her anger. ‘And I won’t.’ She’d taken the test just to shut him up.
He didn’t believe she’d have a Down’s syndrome child.
She didn’t believe he’d leave her if she did.
They were both wrong.
He probably wasn’t a bad person, Sarah conceded when she was feeling generous. He just hadn’t planned to father Sissy so soon after meeting their mum.
Their poor mum. Her track record wasn’t great when it came to men sticking around once her epidural wore off. Sarah’s dad had been the first to run the hundred-yard dash, when Sarah was born and her brother, Robin, was a toddler. She didn’t have any interest in knowing her father. Sissy and Robin and their mum had always been enough.
Sissy found a spot under the tree for them to sit. The late autumn sun was weak and their toast turned stone-cold, but Sissy loved the garden.
‘I have a boyfriend, you know,’ she said.
‘Is that right?’ Sarah struggled to keep her voice steady. ‘Anyone I know?’
Most of the residents in the home were older than Sissy … much older.
‘Nope.’
‘Is he handsome?’
‘Yeah, and a bit fat,’ she said, nibbling her toast in perfectly even bites along each edge until she got to the last buttery golden mouthful in the middle.
‘Oh, well, that’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t mind.’