Alice Brown's Lessons in the Curious Art of Dating (5 page)

‘Coffee?’ Her breath was unsteady as she self-consciously put Audrey’s letter on her desk. ‘I’m nipping to the shop . . .’

Audrey grunted but didn’t look up. Alice hovered expectantly. She’d put the handwritten envelope tantalizingly close to Audrey’s line of vision. The envelope was thick and cream, and was addressed in swirly gold calligraphy. Alice had been sent one too, and she had an idea what it might be. She paused, telepathically urging Audrey to see it. Audrey’s eyes were fixed on her computer.

‘Looks like you’ve got an invitation to something,’ Alice prompted. ‘It’s a handwritten envelope . . . with gold pen.’

Everyone at Table For Two had a keenly developed ‘wedding radar’, and gold pen could only mean one thing . . . nuptials! Weddings were the holy grail of the dating agency. To set up a match that ended in a wedding was the golden goose of matchmaking. It was what all the staff – and all the clients – wanted most. It was the stuff that sent the company brochure to the printers for a revamp, and it was what prompted Audrey to hang the expense and take out an ad in the local gazette – not just to lure in new clients, but to lord it over the rival agencies too. In this age of one-night stands, virtual relationships and text sex, a wedding was a modern miracle.

Audrey snapped her head up and gazed penetratingly at
Alice. Alice could almost see the words ‘gold pen’ sinking in.

‘Yes, well, get along now.’ She shooed her away.

Alice scuttled back to her desk, coat still on, and tore open her own handwritten envelope whilst simultaneously trying to spy on Audrey through the glass wall. Her heart beating fast, she yanked out the card. Her eyes danced along the words hurriedly, trying to take them in before Audrey could do the same . . . ‘Mr & Mrs Derek Whitworth’ . . . ‘request the pleasure of’ . . . ‘wedding’ . . . Yes,
wedding
!

Alice’s eyes flew up to Audrey’s office. She could see Audrey’s eyes making their way across the same card, her hand creeping up to her bosom in excitement as she read.

‘. . . of Jason Christopher Lee to Jennifer Lesley Whitworth.’

Jason and Jennifer! They were one of hers! Alice cried out in happiness. How fantastic! They were such a great couple. She’d set them up herself, and now they were getting married! She’d done it! She’d matched a marriage!

Suddenly Audrey shot out from her office, waving the invitation aloft.

‘Ladies,’ she declared loudly, a wobble in her voice and a flush on her neck. ‘We have a Table For Two wedding!’

The office erupted in squeals. Cassandra and Bianca hugged each other with delight. Hilary – wedged in her seat – wolf-whistled loudly. Audrey kept waving the invitation whilst triumphantly declaring, ‘
A wedding, a wedding!
’ Only Alice was quiet. She was staring at her own invitation, rereading it to make sure it was real.

Mr & Mrs Derek Whitworth
request the pleasure of
... ... Alice Brown .....
at the wedding of
Jason Christopher Lee to Jennifer Lesley Whitworth
Bramley Church, Honey Blossom Lane
Saturday April 6th, 3 p.m. Followed by dinner & dancing at The Rectory
RSVP

It was there in gold and cream. She’d done it. Another one of her matches had made it all the way to the altar! Jennifer had been her client for a few months, and as soon as Jason joined the books Alice had known they’d be a perfect match. And now they were getting married! Her eyes prickled with tears of happiness. She looked at her celebrating colleagues, a beaming smile on her face.

‘Of course, I always knew Jason and Jennifer were the real thing,’ Audrey said as she sank into the nearest seat and fanned herself with her invitation.

Bianca was rummaging in the office fridge for the bottle of cava kept for special occasions.

‘I knew it the moment I set them up. I said to them, “Mark my words, I’ve got the perfect partner for you.” A matchmaker gets a sixth sense about these things.’

Alice’s smile froze. The excitement drained down her body and collected in a lump in the pit of her stomach. It had been
her
match,
her
idea. She was the one who’d phoned them and arranged the dates – not Audrey!

But Audrey was steamrollering on.

‘This is my twentieth Table For Two wedding, ladies. Hurry up with that champagne, Bianca! This is what you should have as your goal when you’re making matches. It’s not about finding partners. It’s about finding husbands and wives. Matchmaking a wedding is the crème de la crème. That’s what you should aim for: crème!’

Alice numbly accepted a glass of cava. She felt sick. Audrey
knew
it had been her match.

‘Of course, girls, I really shouldn’t be surprised by these latest nuptials,’ Audrey continued immodestly. ‘After all, when I launched Table For Two, the first five matches I ever made
did
all make it up the aisle!’

‘And not a single one since,’ Hilary muttered darkly, loud enough for only Alice to hear. Alice smiled weakly in gratitude. At least Hilary wasn’t fooled by Audrey’s blatant credit-pinching. Besides, she and Hilary always shared a secret smirk whenever Audrey regaled them with this story – which was at least twice a week. It was the first thing visitors to the website were bombarded with, and it was emblazoned triumphantly across the front cover of the company brochure. The story of Audrey’s matching prowess had reached such flowery Table For Two legend that Audrey was bound to have it carved on her headstone.

‘To weddings!’ Hilary toasted loudly, her irony unnoticed by the majority of the room.

‘To my nose for a perfect match!’ trilled Audrey triumphantly. ‘It never lets me down!’

Bianca and Cassandra cheered.

Alice took a tiny sip of her drink. She knew the truth. And so did Jennifer and Jason.

Everyone was too busy celebrating to hear the phone ring, its sound buried beneath their hysterical chatter. Alice picked it up.

‘Good morning, Table For Two,’ she said hollowly.

‘Is that Alice?’ a nervous voice asked.

‘Speaking.’

‘Thank God for that! It’s me; Kate, Kate Biggs . . . From last night . . . ?’

‘Oh, hi, Kate.’ Alice shrugged out of her coat and laid her wedding invitation aside. ‘How are you? What can I do for you?’

‘I’m going for it. I’d like to join up, please!’

‘That’s fantastic news!’ Alice said with as much encouragement as she could muster. ‘Well done! You won’t regret it, I promise.’

Audrey could take all the credit, Alice thought to herself. She knew the truth. And this was what the job was all about – people like Kate Biggs, and their dreams. And Alice was going to do her very best to make those dreams come true. She twisted away from Audrey’s triumphant noises and concentrated on the phone call.

Kate pushed through the office door, trained her eyes on the floor and concentrated on getting to her desk at racing-driver speed. She shoved her shopping under her desk and tried to look as if she’d been rooted to the same spot for a day and a half.

She sneaked a look at her watch. Why did she feel so guilty whenever she took a lunch break? She’d only been gone for forty-five minutes: barely enough time for Julian, her boss, to have finished his starter at The Privet. Julian always took ridiculously long lunch breaks. And Kate was always working through hers. Not for the first time that day (or any day), Kate pondered the bitter irony of the fact that the more you got paid and the more senior you became, the fewer hours you bothered to work for your money.

Normal working hours didn’t apply to either Kate or Julian, but in totally opposite ways. Kate was always the first to arrive at the office at 7.30 a.m., and was always the last to leave. But Julian had the working hours of a primary-school child. He’d be in by 9.00, and would spend the first half-hour perched on some unfortunate colleague’s desk,
arrogantly swinging his leg, chomping on a croissant and blindly spitting out flakes of pastry (Kate had frequently gone to the loo mid-morning to discover chunks of Julian’s breakfast in her hair). And then he’d be off for a couple of so-called meetings, which largely involved him braying with laughter over a male client’s lame attempts at humour, or flirting gruesomely with the female clients.

A hard morning of braying and flirting would be topped off by lunch, which usually ran from 12.00 to 3.00. This would be followed by a very noisy half-hour in the office, with Julian demanding to see everyone’s press plans and then snorting at their ideas, before jumping into his sports car and abandoning ship. By 3.30 p.m., Julian’s Blackberry would be switched off whilst he bandied some nonsense about ‘brainstorming’ or ‘networking’. But everyone knew he’d screeched out of the car park and straight into the nearest old-boys members’ bar. Or failing that, he’d be sporting a ridiculous Aran tank top whilst idly slinging a few tennis balls around a court with an ageng public-school chum.

Kate hated him.

A lot.

However, she loved her job.

A lot.

No matter how irritating Julian was, working for Julian Marquis PR was fantastic. And Kate had to admit that for the few short minutes a day when Julian put the work in, he was brilliant. Julian Marquis PR was the hottest public-relations company in the city, and to land a job there was a real career boost. The hours were exhausting, but no two
days were the same, and watching Julian spin a new idea, or manipulate a tabloid editor to write exactly what he told him to, was awe-inspiring. And the thrill of seeing one of her stories in a national newspaper never failed to give Kate a soaring, bursting-with-pride high.

As Kate whizzed through her emails her eye fell on her shopping bags. She felt a small twinge of guilt at the punishment she’d just put her credit card through, but it was instantly extinguished by a surge of excitement. What woman alive couldn’t be moved to ecstasy by the purchase of a cripplingly expensive but exquisitely beautiful pair of shoes? And Kate had managed to buy three new pairs this lunchtime alone! It had been a necessity. Well, one pair was, at least. She needed to look just right for her meeting at Table For Two. She’d already spent hours agonizing over what to wear. She wanted to give the right impression. She didn’t want to look too keen, or too . . .
single
. She wanted to look like a successful woman; someone in control of her life; someone who men routinely threw themselves at. She wanted to look like the kind of woman who didn’t need to go to a dating agency at all, but was giving it a go as some kind of modern social experiment. The right outfit, Kate believed, could say all this. And as every woman knows, a killer outfit starts with the shoes.

Kate resisted the urge to photograph her new purchases on her iPhone and send the pictures to Lou. Instead she nudged her shopping out of sight and set about applying herself to her work. Today she really had to concentrate on one of her less glamorous clients: the Pedigree Pooch
account. (‘It might be bitch offal to you,’ Julian had stated blithely when Kate and her colleagues sighed on learning they’d won the business, ‘but to me it’s twelve mortgage payments and a week in the south of France.’)

Kate’s dog-food client had created a new variety of ‘jellied meat chunks for the discerning hound’ and had tasked Julian Marquis PR with devising some ‘sexy’ ways to promote it. Kate had had to fight not to choke with laughter when the client had come out with this, straight-faced and earnest, in the briefing meeting. But it had been even harder not to convulse (so hard it had actually hurt) as she watched Julian bend over backwards to agree that their brand-new jellied meat chunks did indeed look appetizing and that canine food had never been so mouth-wateringly gourmet.

Kate soon lost herself in thought over how exactly she could make dog meat sexy . . .

Two hours later, Julian burst back into the office, his jacket rumpled and his eyes alarmingly wide.

‘Katy, darling!’ he chimed extravagantly. ‘What’s hanging?’

Kate hated being called Katy. Only Julian did it. She’d corrected him numerous times, but it seemed to go in one ear and out the other.

‘I’ve just been coming up with some ideas for the Pedigree Pooch account,’ she managed politely.

‘Ah, tempting tripe for the pampered pet. Well, come on then! Amaaaaaaze me,’ Julian drooled sarcastically, dropping himself onto her desk. ‘Tell me how you’re going to
single-handedly make us all wish we were yappy, flea-ridden lapdogs, just so we can chomp down the latest treats from Pedigree Pooch.’