‘Mum!’ Mandy gasped. ‘I told you, we haven’t spoken yet and I haven’t seen a picture of his willy.’
‘Talking of willies, I’m breaking into the meat feast,’ said Paula, and offered a slice to her sister. Mandy shook her head. It was her firm belief that, while her coupled sisters could afford to rest on their laurels and eat to their hearts and stomachs’ content, she had to be careful what she ate. It didn’t matter that it was a cheat day either; according toGrazia, the difference between a size fourteen and a size sixteen can sometimes be just one mouthful.
Mandy selected the shirtless picture of a surfing Richard and passed her phone around the table for her family to see.
‘Bloody hell, he’s a fit little bugger!’ Paula shrieked. ‘Although he must be about a decade younger than you! You have a toy boy, you’re one of those cougars, aren’t you?’
‘So when are you going to meet him?’ asked Kirstin.
‘I don’t know yet, we’ve got to start a conversation first.’
‘She’s waiting for another picture of his willy to make sure he measures up,’ Karen said, and they all burst into laughter.
‘You lot have filthy minds,’ Mandy said. ‘I wish I hadn’t said anything now.’
For once, she was pleased she had some good news to share with her family when it came to her love life. With three younger sisters who had settled down and married – all of them to their DNA Matches – she was riven by insecurities and she’d begun to feel like she’d been left on the shelf, especially since they’d started having children. Mandy was a thirty-seven-year-old divorcee and she was beginning to feel as if she’d never be anything else. However, since Richard had come into her life – albeit not yet in person – everything was nowlooking up and all she could think about was how things were about to change for the better.
The confirmation email she’d received from Match Your DNA had informed her that Richard had ticked the box, which meant that, in the event of a Match, his contact details could be sent out. He would also have received a notification informing him of this as well as Mandy’s contact details, yet he hadn’t been in touch. The suspense was killing her. However, Mandy was old-fashioned at heart and believed it the man’s job to do the chasing.
‘Right, this is what you need to do,’ began Kirstin. ‘First off, send him a text. Be proactive and set a date when you’ll meet in person, at a restaurant or something … one of the fancy ones like Carluccio’s or Jamie’s. Then make him wait a few dates before you let him kiss you, let alone anything else.’
‘Oh, to hell with that,’ interrupted Paula, who took a long drag from her e-cigarette. ‘The beauty of being Matched with someone is that you don’t have to faff around with all that game playing. You know that you two are perfect for each other, so go and shag each other’s brains out.’
Mandy felt her face turn scarlet.
Her mother shook her head and rolled her eyes.
‘Mandy’s not like you, Paula,’ said Karen. ‘She’s always taken things slowly.’
‘And look where that’s got her.’ Paula turned to Mandy and said, ‘No offence. But what I’m saying is that she doesn’t need to be that slow any more. Mum would give her right arm to be a grandmother again, and Karen and I have spent enough on designer vaginas to not want to push another kid out. And Kirstin, yes I know lesbians can have babies too, but you’re too busy playing the field to even think about settling down. Mandy, grandchild number four rests on your shoulders. Just think, by this time next year, you could be married and pregnant.’
All eyes flashed a wary look at Paula, who quickly said, ‘Sorry. I didn’t think.’
‘It’s OK.’ Mandy looked down at the table.
Mandy had always longed for a child of her own, and when she had been married to Sean they had had a couple of near misses. She and her childhood sweetheart had married straight out of school, saved hard, bought a house together and had tried to start a family. It had completely shaken her world to lose those babies and this had been part of the reason why the marriage had fallen apart. Sometimes there were times at night when, with only the silence to keep her company in her bedroom, she swore she could hear her biological clock ticking. She had probably less than a decade left to conceive a child naturally and, even then, her body was prone to complications. During the many evenings she’d spent babysitting her nieces and nephew, she’d ached to have the same for herself, someone to love unconditionally. Of course she loved her sisters’ kids, but it wasn’t the same at all. She dreamed of having someone she had helped to create and mould, someone who depended on her, who needed her, who would always seek her out for guidance and who, until her dying day, would call her ‘Mum’.
The thought of becoming a childless spinster was a terrifying prospect, and as the years sped past, Mandy worried that instead of a possibility, it was becoming more and more of a probability.
‘I think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself,’ Mandy said. ‘I’m going to let him make the first move, and let’s see how we get on from there, OK?’
The others nodded reluctantly and Mandy recalled how, not so long ago, she’d been wary of registering with Match Your DNA. Her marriage had become unsteady because of the miscarriages, but the final nail in the coffin had been when Sean suddenly left her for another woman eleven years her senior. He had taken the test withoutMandy’s knowledge and been Matched. He promptly ended their marriage and once their house was sold, he had moved to a country chateau in Bordeaux to be with his French Match. Mandy had been left to pick up the pieces – a tiny starter home and a broken heart.
Match Your DNA was no longer the enemy – time had healed Mandy’s relationship with the thought of it. And now, after three years as a singleton, she was ready to share her life with someone again, this time with someone who’d been made for her, rather than leaving it to chance. What could possibly go wrong?
She hoped her Match was thinking the same thing, although he was taking his time getting in touch. She prayed that he wasn’t already married and that she wasn’t about to break up a happy home, like Régine had done to her, just to get the husband and child that was rightfully hers.
Chapter 7
CHRISTOPHER
Christopher sat at the antique wooden desk in the box room which was situated at the rear of his two-storey apartment.
He turned on both computer screens and his wireless Bluetooth keyboards, and adjusted their positions until they were perfectly parallel to each other. He opened up his emails on the first screen, and on the second he flicked through several programmes before clicking on the Where’s My Mobile Phone? link he’d downloaded some months ago. Twenty-four different phone numbers appeared on his screen, but just two flashed in a bright green colour to indicate their users were on the move. That was about usual for this time of the evening, he reasoned.
It was the penultimate phone number that piqued his curiosity. He opened a map in his toolbar and added a red ring to indicate where the user was. Her phone’s GPS system offered her current location as the street where she lived.
Based on her typical pattern of behaviour, Number Seven would have just finished a shift at the no-frills Soho chicken restaurant where she worked until around 11pm. She would then have caught the number 29 bushome. He predicted she would be settled in her bed within the hour before her second job as an office cleaner began in central London at 6am. It was between those hours that Christopher’s work could begin.
