“Who hasn’t written anything in three years.”
“You’re biding your time because you have creative integrity.” Chloe smiled faintly at the praise, but her chest felt tight. “I wish you’d come visit us,” Akiko went on, “especially if you’re feeling so down on yourself. You haven’t even met your goddaughter yet. She’s growing so fast—”
“I’m not down on myself, I just…sometimes I miss what we were back then, when everything felt so full of possibility.”
“Everything still is! We’re thirty-one, not seventy-one,” Akiko said, sternly now. “This is not the Chloe I know.”
Chloe closed her eyes, feeling an unwelcome surge of emotion. She knew Kiko was only trying to help, but she could never truly understand. Kiko loved her job managing three festivaltheaters, sat on numerous panels about women in the arts, had married her soulmate at twenty-eight, and now had a beautiful baby to boot.
“I know, I need to come visit. I will, I promise, I’ll find a weekend.”
“You’d better,” Akiko said, then groaned impatiently as Elodie shrieked again. “Look, you don’t think I miss being young and carefree, running around Oxford snogging boys, pretending we’re living in a John Betjeman poem? Of course I do, but none of us get to be students forever. And if you soak too long in nostalgia, you’ll drown in it.”
Chloe bit her lip, duly chastised.
“The invitedoessay I get a plus-one,” she said, switching gears. “Maybe I could take my dad to hype me up—‘My daughter might not have hit her career goals, but she does an excellent job refilling the bird feeder.’ ”
“That’s it!” Akiko cried.
“Akiko, I’m not taking my dad.”
“Not your dad, you should take a date. Nothing says ‘I’ve made it in life’ like walking in there with a hot guy on your arm.”
Chloe’s mind jumped to Wendy, to the high-end dating agency. If she was going to find a decent date anywhere, it would be there. But would having a plus-one really make her more inclined to go?
“Chloe?” A deep voice bellowed from outside the door. “Are you hiding in the stationery cupboard again?”
Shit.
“Gotta go,” Chloe whispered, hanging up.
The door creaked open and McKenzie stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed in disapproval.
“Just looking for a stapler,” she said, holding the stapler aloft like a trophy. “Light’s broken.”
“Have you chased Eddie Redmayne’s agent about theAardvarkscript?” he asked.
“I chased first thing,” she told him. “I’ve chased every day this week.”
“Well, make sure you chase again before the end of the day,” he said, then cleared his throat. “And when you get a minute, could you pop out and get me a sticky bun? There’s a good girl.”
Chloe gave him a tight smile. She wanted to tell him that she thought there was more chance of her getting Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne to marry her than there was of getting him signed up to star in a limited series about a vigilante aardvark who tackled knife crime in Scotland.Aardvarks weren’t even indigenous to the UK. It made absolutely no sense. She also wanted to say that no, she did not have time to “pop out and get him a sticky bun,” because she’d already popped out twice today to fetch him baked snacks, and she had a huge list of jobs to do before she could leave tonight, and that it was no longer appropriate to call a female colleague “a good girl.” But she didn’t say any of this. She just said, “Yes, Mr.McKenzie. Of course.”
On her walk to the bakery, Chloe felt the tingling hum of an existential crisis coming on. If she was too ashamed of her life to face her old university friends, what did that tell her? It told her she needed to change something. Maybe she should go backpacking. Maybe she should sign up for a marathon. Should she get a pixie cut? No, no, a haircut wasn’t going to be enough this time. She reached into her bag for the card. If Wendy was anything to go by, then Perfect Partners had to be worth a try.
She dialed the number, and a woman answered. She spokein a crisp, clipped accent and immediately asked for a referral code. Chloe gave Wendy’s name, hoping that would be enough.
“Thank you,” the woman said without inflection. “You are eligible for a consultation. We have an opening next week. If you give me your email address, I will send over an application form.”
“But what is it?” Chloe asked. “And how much does it cost? I was just calling to find out—”
“Please complete the questionnaire and psychometric profilein fullbefore you come to the appointment. I’m afraid I can’t give you any more information until then.”
Chloe gave the woman her email address, and the line promptly went dead. While she might have been mildly curious before, now Chloe was intrigued. This air of secrecy around Perfect Partners, the lack of information online, it all felt delightfully mysterious. And given that the current highlight of her day was hiding in a dark stationery cupboard, maybe this was exactly what she needed in her life: a little mystery.
4
A few days later, shefound herself standing outside an unassuming building on the Strand. It was almost invisible from the street, just an innocuous gray door with a small “PP” on the buzzer.
