A Thousand Small Explosions Page 3

‘Yes, but it’s not like he’s on my doorstep, is it?’ Bethany replied. ‘I can’t just pop round for dinner and a cuddle, can I? At least you’re actually interacting with these guys, even if they are treating you like crap.’

  ‘That’s just how men are, though, isn’t it?’ said Shawna. ‘If you’re not one of the millions on that register who’ve been Matched already then you’ve got to make do with what you can get until Mr Right eventually turns up. If he turns up.’

  ‘So until then we’ve got to put up with a lot of shitbags,’ added Lucy.

  Bethany disagreed but kept her thoughts to herself.

  ‘What I don’t get is what’s stopping you from going over to Australia and living happily ever after with Kevin?’ continued Shawna. ‘Science reckons he’s the one for you, but you’re wasting your days here.’

  ‘I can’t just drop everything and go to Australia,’ Bethany replied, shaking her head firmly. ‘I’ve got my flat, my career, my family, my cat to think about…’

  ‘Your flat’s rented, you don’t have a career, you have a job you hate - and I know that because we all hate it – you see your family once every two months and cats are pretty adaptable to living with other people. So when it comes down to it girl, you don’t have any excuse.’

  ‘It’s not like you’re taking a huge leap of faith either, is it?’ Lucy continued. ‘You were, literally, made for each other. Tell me what you like about him.’

  ‘He’s funny, he makes me feel good about myself, he’s kind, he has a gorgeous smile…’

  ‘What about downstairs? What’s he packing?’

  ‘Lucy! What a question! I don’t know.’

  ‘You mean you’ve not sent each other a few sexy selfies?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Bethany felt herself blush.

  ‘Christ, there’s enough naked selfies of me floating around cyberspace to break the internet,’ Lucy laughed.

  ‘Well if you don’t do that then you sext, right?’ Shawna interrupted.

  ‘Sext?’

  ‘Yeah, send each other filthy text messages or talk dirty down the phone to each other? Tell him what you want to do to him when you see him?’

  Bethany shook her head.

  ‘What about sexy time on Skype? Or Facetime?’

  ‘We’ve never done Skype or Facetime.’

  ‘So you’ve not even seen him on video?’

  ‘No. I don’t need to.’ The truth is that Bethany had broached the subject of Skyping a couple of times, but Kevin didn’t have a laptop or a smartphone. Shawna and Lucy’s eyes met and simultaneously nodded.

  ‘It’s definitely love then,’ said Shawna. ‘And if he’s as amazing as you say he is, you need to stop wasting time and get out there and see him.’

  ‘Or you’ll end up like us,’ added Lucy, her tone suddenly shifting from lighthearted into something resembling a warning. ‘Beth honey, we’ve got slim pickings to choose from because all the quality men have been snapped up by their Matches. Me and Shawna are like the vultures left picking at the bones of what’s been left behind and believe us, it isn’t nice. It really isn’t. If I had a chance to be with my Match, I’d be on the next plane out of here, not sitting eating lunch and coming up with a hundred excuses as to why I shouldn’t go.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Bethany replied, taken aback by Lucy’s directness. ‘I just can’t leave everything behind and go on a whim. Besides, do you know how much it costs for a flight to Australia?’

  ‘Of course I do, I’m a bloody travel agent! And it’s not going to cost you that much with the discounts we get by working here. It’s the only bloody perk we have.’

  ‘No, it’s just not me to do that kind of thing.’

  Shawna and Lucy glared at her, both of them with their tattooed eyebrows raised as far as the Botox would allow.

  ‘I can’t,’ repeated Bethany, and paused. ‘Can I?’

  CHAPTER 9

  NICK

  ‘I think we should do it,’ Sally muttered, before squirming.

  She lay on her back staring at the exposed beams holding up the bedroom ceiling, illuminated by the street lamp outside.

  ‘It usually takes you longer than that, but I’m not complaining,’ Nick replied, as he removed his head from between her legs and surfaced from beneath the duvet. His hand moved towards the bedside cabinet where he kept their condoms.

  ‘Not “it” as in sex,’ Sally replied, ‘I think we should do the Match Your DNA test.’

  Nick manoeuvred himself back to his side of the bed.

  ‘Way to kill the moment, babe.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why now? Before Sumaira and Deepak rocked up for dinner and started talking about it, you were adamant we didn’t need to do it.’

  ‘Oh baby I still am,’ she replied, and her fingers played with the hairs on his chest as if to reassure him. ‘But like Sumaira says, it’ll give us a bit of added security, just to know. To really know.’

  “Bloody Sumaira,” thought Nick, but he didn’t complain aloud. ‘Are you sure this isn’t your way of telling me you have pre-wedding jitters?’

  ‘Of course not, silly,’ Sally replied and pulled his head down to kiss the crown. ‘But you know what I’m like. It’s okay for you; your parents have been together since the Dark Ages while my mum’s been married three times and my dad is on his fourth wife. They’re both always searching for something they don’t think they have and I don’t want to be like them; I want to know that at least biologically, we stand a chance.’

  ‘What if it turns out our DNA doesn’t Match?’

  ‘Then we’ll be mindful that maybe we’ll need to put more effort into our relationship. Like John Lennon said, “Love is all you need”.’

  ‘Yes but he also said, “I Am The Walrus”, so let’s not hold too much credence to his pearls of wisdom.’

  ‘So you’ll do it?’

  ‘If it makes you happy, then yes, I’ll do it. Now can I go back to doing something else that makes you happy?’

  Sally caught a flash of his smile and the whites surrounding his deep brown eyes as Nick’s head disappeared back beneath the duvet and between her legs.

  CHAPTER 10

  ELLIE

  The clock radio hit 3.40am when Ellie finally gave up trying to get to sleep.

  With a busy day ahead, she’d desperately needed to sleep but her active brain didn’t seem to care. Instead, it raced at the speed of a runaway train with what she needed to accomplish in the next few hours to promote her new App. Under normal circumstances she’d have taken a sleeping tablet that had been prescribed by her private physician but she couldn’t risk feeling groggy when she needed to be on point.

  Being interviewed by the world’s press was something Ellie had grown to loathe since reluctantly becoming a public figure. A decade earlier, she was another anonymous worker bee, busy behind the scenes. Then the next thing she knew, the world’s media was both praising her and lambasting her in equal measures.

  As public appetite for her story grew, the tabloids sifted through every inch of her private life, examining her past like she was on trial, picking apart her former relationships. They threw enough cash at her exes until they spilled the beans on what she was like as a person, as a girlfriend and as a lover.

  As a result, it made Ellie not just wary of the press but of the opposite sex too. And while she was aware it was unfair to tar every man with the same brush, each time she met someone new, her barriers went up and she’d attempt to second-guess the motivation behind their attraction towards her. Were they only interested in her wealth? Did banging a billionaire make for good bragging rights to their friends? Or was she going to make another kiss-and-tell headline in the Sun On Sunday? Ellie couldn’t remember a time when Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Cook had been hauled over the coals for their sex lives, yet it seemed to happen to her quite frequently.

  She rolled on to her side and stretched her legs out and she recalled how she’d been forced to employ a leg
al team specifically to fire off warning shots every time she had an inkling the press was up to no good. Then after half a dozen successful libel cases, she became too costly to lie about so they lost interest in her. Her media team became the go-to guys for all press inquiries, and she turned off her Google alerts and Facebook and Twitter accounts so as to remove any temptation to discover what people were writing about her. Only when absolutely necessary would she step out publicly as the company’s figurehead.

  Ellie gave a frustrated groan, threw her sheets to one side, turned on the bedside lamp and made her way to the en-suite bathroom to pee. Suddenly she recalled the email she’d received hours earlier, confirming a DNA Match had been identified. She’d signed up some ten years earlier when the company was still in its infancy and as its popularity slowly began to increase, she had assumed it’d just be a matter of time before she found her Match.

  But when the number of registered users had powered through the one billion mark, Ellie was beginning to give up hope. Her Match was either in a happy relationship with somebody else, he was living in a developing country with no access to or knowledge of the test, or he was just not interest in taking it.

  So Ellie had grown accustomed to spending her life alone and in recent years, had become too consumed with work to even care. She didn’t need a relationship to make her content or a better person; she could do all that for herself. What could a Match add to her life that she wasn’t capable of finding on her own? Nevertheless, she had to acknowledge that a tiny part of her was interested as to who this person was and what made them tick.

  ‘Sod it,’ she said out loud, and marched back into the bedroom, opened her email, paid £9.99 for her Match’s details and waited. Two minutes later, an automated response landed in her box.

  “Name: Timothy Kelly,” she read. “Age: 38. Location: Leighton Buzzard, UK. Occupation: Systems Analyst. Eyes: Hazel. Hair: Black. Height: 5ft 9in. Contact: (0774) 8620900.”

  His description accounted for almost half the men in the Western world, she thought and found herself needing to know more.

  “Ula”, she began to type in an email to her PA. “Discover what you can about a Timothy Kelly, a systems analyst from Leighton Buzzard. His email address is timbo.kelly@bmale.org. Email me what you find out tomorrow. Thanks.”

  To her surprise, Ula emailed her back immediately. “Does she ever bloody sleep?” Ellie wondered. ‘Has he a job interview with us? I can’t see him on my list,’ Ula asked.

  ‘Sort of,’ Ellie replied. ‘And make sure you find a photograph of him. Hire outside help if you need it.’

  Ellie placed her phone back on her nightstand and climbed back into bed. She turned to lie on her other side and stared at the vacant half of her bed, the sheet just as crisp and unwrinkled as when her housekeeper had laid it that morning.

  And for the first time in a handful of years, she allowed herself to imagine what it might feel like to share the space with somebody else.

  CHAPTER 11

  AMANDA

  Amanda hovered outside the perimeter of the stone wall surrounding the building until everyone ahead escaped the drizzle and walked towards their shared destination.

  Although she was generally a confident person in most social situations, when it came to large groups of unfamiliar faces, she was prone to shyly clamming up or becoming tongue-tied when she spoke. She already knew she’d have no idea what to say if anyone attempted a conversation with her once she was inside, so she decided to keep a low profile and be one of the last to enter. And it wouldn’t matter if she were a few minutes late as nobody knew her or expected her to be there.

  She took a packet of mints from her handbag and popped a sugar-free Polo into her mouth, then removed a make-up mirror and angled it from her face to her feet to check that she still resembled something presentable after the hour-long car journey. She ruffled her hair hoping the damp wouldn’t make her curls frizzy.

  Finally, when she heard music begin to play inside, she walked slowly up the path, approached the door and braced herself. Then with her hand on the doorknob, she paused.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked herself. “What are you going to get out of going inside?”

  If she were being brutally honest with herself, she didn’t know. She was only aware that she and her Match Richard were destined to share something together, no matter how complicated that might be. So she turned the handle, made her way inside and found an empty seat at the very back of the room.

  She picked up one of the booklets that’d been left on each of the chairs and flicked through it as two guitarists played and sang a ballad she didn’t recognise. Upon finishing, a man wearing a sincere smile replaced them by the microphone stand at the front.

  ‘Thank you, Stuart and Derek,’ he began. ‘First of all, I’d like to thank you all for coming. And secondly, on behalf of his family, I’d like to welcome you all to St Peter And All Saints Church for a special ceremony in memory of our dear friend, Richard Taylor.’

  CHAPTER 12

  CHRISTOPHER

  Christopher stared hard at her through the restaurant window, attempting to decipher her body language. She looked nervous, he thought.

  Amy, his Match Your DNA date, was sitting at the table with folded arms and her legs crossed at the ankle. And according to one of the many instructional YouTube videos he’d viewed, it meant she was being either defensive or anxious. Either one worked for him as it put him at an advantage.

  Amy glanced at the clock on her phone’s display at least once per minute. She frequently stroked or fiddled with her hair, or tapped her feet against the leg of her chair. She was an attractive woman, he conceded, and looked exactly like the picture she had emailed him, but had filtered first of course.

  Her long, dark hair had a slight wave to it, fashionable black-rimmed glasses framed her eyes and her use of make-up on her pale skin was subtle. She was of a slim build but did little to advertise it, playing it safe with trousers, heels and a plain blue top and jacket.

  Christopher was aware it was perceived to be bad social etiquette to arrive late for a date, especially with a person science decreed had been made for him. But he didn’t care; it was all part of the game. It was better to keep her waiting and a little on edge because then he’d be in control of the situation and maintain the upper hand from the off.

  As he bided his time outside the busy restaurant, he caught sight of his own reflection in the window. He’d not been acquainted with a good night’s sleep for some weeks, so had bought a cover-up stick from Boots to dab the bags and shadows under his eyes. He’d also used a tinted moisturiser he’d removed from the bathroom cabinet of Number Four to disguise the fact his nocturnal project meant he’d sleep during the day, which affected his melatonin levels.

  While he’d found time to shave, he hadn’t been able to book an appointment to get his hair trimmed, so he did the best he could with his side parting and a generous helping of a product that made it look much darker than its usual reddish brown colour. He smiled to himself, satisfied that how unlike many of his former schoolmates, his wrinkles were minimal, his teeth were as near to straight as could be and his features were angular rather than plumped by excess skin. He looked a decade younger than his thirty-three years.

  Christopher straightened the lapels of his tailor-fitted jacket, held out a little longer until Amy looked like she was about to stand up and leave and then entered the restaurant.

  His eyes scanned the generically furnished room as he pretended to search for his date. Her frustration at his tardiness dissipated the moment their eyes locked. To Christopher, it looked as if an invisible force had thrown her back into her chair as she stammered a nervous ‘hello.’

  ‘Amy, hi, I am so sorry I’m late,’ Christopher apologised, shaking her hand confidently and kissing her on both cheeks.

  ‘That’s okay, I only just got here myself a few minutes ago,’ she lied and swallowed hard.

  ‘I was held
up at work on this new magazine I’ve been working on and then I got stuck in traffic.’

  ‘You said in your email you were a graphic designer?’ she asked, drinking him in and unconvincingly playing it cool.

  ‘Yes, I’m a freelance so I have a quite few projects on the go at any one time.’

  ‘Who do you design for?’

  ‘Mainly luxury trade magazines, you know, companies that build yachts or planes and brochures for holiday destinations that you won’t find at Thomas Cook,’ he boasted. ‘It’s very exclusive.’ She didn’t look as impressed as he had hoped.

  ‘Where are you based?’

  ‘I work from home in Holland Park which is convenient. Shall we order some drinks?’

  Christopher moved his glass so it sat next to Amy’s then opened the wine menu as the waitress arrived, and ordered the most expensive bottle on the list. ‘Will you be eating tonight?’ the waitress asked.

  He looked up and into the server’s eyes as she spoke, wondering what noises she’d make if his trusty garrote penetrated her throat and severed her thyroid cartilage. It fascinated him how each one of his sitting ducks had, so far, offered a different squawk from the last.

  Christopher looked at Amy and raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you have time for something to eat?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she replied, trying - but failing - not to appear too eager.

  As they both read their menus in silence, Christopher felt Amy’s eyes lift from the page to his face. He glanced at her and she offered an embarrassed smile, her cheeks flushed and her irises widened. He’d read enough about human behaviour to know that meant she was attracted to him.

  ‘I’m sorry, do you mind if I just quickly use the bathroom?’ she asked. ‘You can order for me if you like. See it as your first test to see how much of a Match we really are.’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied and rose to his feet as she left the table.