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‘Henry! Are you in there?’ Helen knocked at least six times on his door.
‘Yup.’
‘Are you downloading something? My Wi-Fi’s bust! Any chance you can pause it for a second, I really need to check something!’Goodbye remaining calm, this must be fixed NOW, said her brain.
She heard a deep sigh through Henry’s bedroom door as he heaved himself off his beanbag to open the door.
‘Nope I’m actually not …’
Through the doorway Helen saw Henry and a short, red-haired girl that must be his new girlfriend Nessy, hunched over a coffee table with a half-complete puzzle on it.
‘Oh, maybe Dad …’
‘Mum and Dad are out at The Smugglers for quiz night,remember.’ Henry paused and softened. ‘Do you want me to take a look at something?’
Helen nodded quickly.
‘I’ll be back in a second Ness …’
‘Lovely to meet you!’ Nessy said overenthusiastically as Henry pulled the door to.
Helen passed over her phone. ‘I can’t get this app to work, all my messages are gone and the screen is blank when I open it …’
‘Hmmm.’ Henry closed Connex, opened YouTube and started to play her latest video on pouring fondant. ‘Internet seems fine. You tried running an update?’
Helen shook her head. Henry opened the app store. ‘Nope it’s all updated here. That’s strange. I’ll reinstall it, give me a minute.’ Henry started fiddling on the phone. Helen felt a little sick as he deleted the app, reinstalled it, then opened it again to the same blank screens. ‘Nah not that either.’
He then moved to Twitter and went to Connex’s feed. ‘Ah here you go, that explains it.’
‘What explains what?’
‘Connex’s servers have gone down, they’ve lost their user data. Well, that will screw them up as a company.’
‘What do you mean they lost their data?’
‘Here – read this.’ Henry opened their homepage which had the following statement on it:
At Connex we value bringing people together, which is why we’re sorry to report that a routine server configuration update has caused an outage across our platform. We understand you want to meet and Connex with people, so our love technicians are working around the clock to get us back online. Whilst we are confident there haven’t been any data breaches, we must apologise that any existing data on our app (matches, conversations) appear to have been lost. We will automatically be upgrading all user accounts to premium next month as our way of saying ‘sorry we let you down’. Please check back on this page or our Twitter for all the latest updates. We hope you can Connex again very soon.
Helen’s mind went blank. In her myopic vision she couldn’t hear Nessy clicking the puzzle pieces into place anymore, and Henry had disappeared from in front of her. It was meant to be easy. Brody had said he was looking for a relationship, it felt right, and she had his flip flops!
In another reality, another Helen was probably messaging him now. They would be swapping voice notes, counting down to their London date, the start of something. Not this endless void of singleness. But she wasn’t planning anything. She wasn’t glowing warmly knowing in her gut that she’d met her guy. She was right back to where she started, as if fate had just taken a huge eraser to the past twenty-four hours. It wasn’t fair.
‘Are you all right Hels?’ Henry’s hand was on her arm, gently pulling it away from the other one where she’d been subconsciously picking at her own wrists. Red marks had appeared in a dirty cluster by her bracelet. ‘Maybe you should go lie down?’
On autopilot Helen turned back and walked into her bedroom. She looked at her reflection in the dusty mirror above her dressing table. In the background was her wardrobe, and the prom dress. In her hand was her phone with picture after picture of her and Jonathan on it that she hadn’t deleted. She tightened her grip. This was meant to be her time. She would make it her time. She had to find him.
Chapter 8
Elle:What! You didn’t swap numbers? Or socials?
Helen:No, wejustcommunicated through the app!
Elle:That’s a bit weird.
Sophie:What a bummer: maybe Connex will get the data back. They’re a big company, so I’m sure they’re going to try to fix this.
I know this doesn’t help but maybe meeting Brody (even if it doesn’t work out) is a good sign that you’re finally opening back up to love.
