A Thousand Small Explosions Read online

  Impersonating a gentleman came easy to Christopher but other behaviours like reading facial expressions and being mindful of people’s emotions he’d learned from books and online. He rehearsed several different smiles as he waited for Amy to return, and checked his mobile phone to see where Number Eight was. He hoped she’d have returned home by the time he and Amy had finished their desserts because it was only a ten-minute car journey from the restaurant to the girl’s flat.

  He spotted Amy slipping her phone back into her purse as she left the bathroom and wondered if she’d called a friend to inform them her first date with her Match was going well. It was clear she was one of the ninety-two per cent who felt an instant attraction to their pairing.

  Then, as she sat down, there was something about the way her tongue ran over her lips that gave Christopher a mild rush of blood to his head, like the first puff from a cigarette or when he jumped out of bed too quickly. He dismissed it as tiredness making its presence known and shook it off as quickly as it had arrived.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked his still visibly flushed date.

  ‘Yes, I just had to make a call to work,’ she replied. ‘It’s been a chaotic few weeks.’

  ‘I don’t think I asked you what you did for a living?’

  ‘Oh, I thought I’d mentioned it?’ Amy replied and took a sip of her drink, ‘I’m a police officer.’

  CHAPTER 13

  BETHANY

  Bethany slept for around three fitful hours of her thirty-hour journey.

  Much of the flight from Heathrow to Bangkok, Thailand and then to Melbourne, Australia, was spent with her fingernails embedded in the armrests of her seat, terrified that each jolt of turbulence was going to bring her plane down. She read one of several romance novels downloaded to her Kindle, then watched six movies back-to-back to take her mind off her maiden flight. She eventually drifted off to sleep shortly before landing.

  Bethany had just enough time to freshen up and regain her composure before she picked up a pre-booked sedan-style hire car. She was relieved to discover Australians drove on the same side of the road as the British. She programmed the vehicle’s satellite navigation system with the address she’d be travelling some 250km to in Echuka, Murray Basin and began the next phase of the most important adventure of her life. And as she drove along the Northern Highway, she sang along to Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith albums she’d Bluetoothed from her phone to the car’s stereo and tried to keep her nerves at bay.

  Bethany recalled her conversation just ten days earlier with work colleagues Lucy and Shawna. She’d stared at them across the table in the canteen, growing ever conscious that she didn’t have to be like them with their over-made-up faces, fake hair extensions and an obsession to stay skinny just to remain viable in an ever-shrinking dating pool. But she was grateful for their home truths as they helped her to understand why she had no excuse not to travel to Australia to meet Kevin, her DNA Match. The only reason preventing her was fear of the unknown.

  By the end of that week, Bethany had plundered her savings to purchase an open-ended return flight to Australia, and her understanding parents had volunteered to continue paying rent on her flat while she was away. And as her cat settled into his new life at her grandmother’s flat, Bethany was making herself comfortable in an aisle seat on a Megabus travelling to Heathrow Airport, beside herself with nervous excitement over what the next few weeks might hold. As she took another glance at the picture of Kevin she used as her phone’s screensaver, one thing she was sure of was that she wasn’t going to be disappointed.

  After a three-hour car journey, including pit stops for drinks, snacks and toilet breaks, the sat nav informed Bethany she was soon to arrive at her destination. She was on edge as she pulled the car over to the side of the road, stepped outside and stretched her tired legs. She was immediately struck by the searing heat and was glad she had lathered herself in factor fifty sunscreen before setting off.

  She glanced over at a sign reading “Williamson’s Farm” that was attached to waist-high wire fencing, running the length of a dirt track road framed by tall, scrawny trees with trunks buried deep in arid soil. In the distance, she could make out a large, white house and the roofs of outbuildings and barns that she recognised from Kevin’s texted photos.

  Bethany felt her stomach begin to churn like it would whenever she had daydreamed of what it might feel like to meet Kevin in person. Now the moment was almost upon her and she was terrified, particularly as he had no idea she was about to appear at his home without warning.

  Back at Heathrow Airport, she’d texted him a white lie, informing him she was changing mobile phone network suppliers so she’d be out of contact for a day or two, He’d sounded agitated by the news but she reassured him it wasn’t her subtle way of trying to break up with him.

  She picked up her phone and switched it to camera mode, then took a selfie of herself with Kevin’s parents’ farm in the background.

  ‘Hey babe, you okay?’ she typed; her fingers trembling so much so that she was grateful for predictive text.

  ‘Hey!’ he replied, almost immediately. ‘I’ve really missed you! You got your new phone sorted out?’

  ‘Yes thanks.’

  ‘I’m with the cows in the shed, the place reeks, man!’

  “Aww, poor you! Guess where I am?’

  ‘In bed?’

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘Still at work?’

  ‘No,’ she replied and then sent him the photo she’d taken.

  Bethany’s heart raced at a speed of knots as she awaited Kevin’s text. Instead, the phone rang.

  ‘Surprise!’ she squealed.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come, I’m sorry,’ Kevin replied curtly and then hung up.

  CHAPTER 14

  NICK

  ‘Don’t open it!’ Sally had yelled down the phone to Nick.

  She sounded anxious. ‘Wait until you get home and we’ll do it together.’

  Sally admitted to Nick that from the moment her smart watch had indicated an email had arrived from Match Your DNA, her stomach had felt like it was trapped in a lift and had dropped twenty flights. She’d called him immediately and after checking his inbox while she remained glued to the other end of the line, he revealed he too had received a notification.

  The rest of her day at work in the press office of the homeless charity had dragged on longer than she ever thought possible as she became increasingly preoccupied with Nick’s results. When the clock reached 6pm, Sally made an excuse to avoid Billie’s birthday drinks in the Malmaison Hotel. Instead, she hurried to the bus station to make her way home.

  Meanwhile at the media agency where Nick worked, he’d given his results equal amount of attention. While he was supposed to be thinking of snappy, original ways to promote a new brand of intimate wipes for women, he was instead wondering what the contents of the email might reveal.

  But it was Sally’s insistence on taking the test in the first place that really concerned him. He’d assumed they were content and in agreement that their future was together, but her need for scientific confirmation tapped into a recurring worry that he wasn’t good enough for his wife-to-be; that their five-year age gap was too big and that he was, and always would be, too immature for her.

  When Nick finally made it home thirty minutes after her, Sally was already clutching her second glass of red wine and sitting on the kitchen island with her legs dangling over the side.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he began, ‘I got held up in a meeting…’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Sally interrupted and took an anxious swig of her drink. ‘Can we get this over with?’

  ‘May I say one thing first?’ Nick asked, and perched on the island next to her. ‘I don’t care what these results say. I could be Matched with Jennifer Lawrence as far as I’m concerned and it wouldn’t make the blindest bit of difference. You are the one I’m destined to be with, no matter what these emails tell us.’

&n
bsp; Sally smiled and felt her eyes well. Then she picked up her phone and pressed the email icon, scrolling down and opening the message. She began to read it out loud. ‘“Sally Brooks: Ref 4156745246BAW. No designated Match”.’

  A foreboding silence filled the room as neither knew what to say to one another. Eventually, Nick wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

  ‘We’re going to make it work, I know we are,’ he offered. ‘Millions of couples have and we’ll be no exception. Just because we aren’t biologically matched doesn’t mean we aren’t meant to be together. You still love me right? After reading that, you still love me?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Then who cares what a bit of chemistry or biology says. Nothing is going to change that.’

  Sally swallowed hard and began to weep. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I just wanted to make sure we stood a chance … that we were pre-destined to be together.’

  ‘Fuck that, let’s take a punt instead.’

  Sally smiled and ran her fingers through his thick, dark hair, and drew his lips towards hers before they rested their foreheads against each other’s.

  ‘Let’s go out and get an early dinner,’ he continued. ‘That new Turkish restaurant has opened on the high street. My treat.’

  Sally nodded as Nick hopped off the island and made his way towards the coat hook on the back of the door to grab his denim jacket.

  ‘What about yours?’ she asked.

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your results.’

  ‘I don’t really care,’ he shrugged. ‘I know what I need to know.’

  ‘But what if…’

  ‘What if nothing.’

  ‘Well I’d like to know who my competition is.’

  ‘You have no competition.’

  ‘Nevertheless…’

  ‘Here, catch,’ he said as he threw his phone towards her. She caught it and as he put his arms through his coat sleeves, she opened his inbox and began to read.

  ‘Oh. My. God.’ She laughed loudly. She put her hand over her mouth and looked at him with wide-open eyes.

  ‘What? Have I got a Match?’

  ‘You certainly have.’

  ‘Oh Christ, please don’t tell me I’m Matched with your mum.’

  ‘No, don’t worry, it’s not my mum,’ Sally replied. ‘Your Match is actually a man called Alexander.’

  CHAPTER 15

  ELLIE

  Ellie’s face felt rigid like it’d been caked in concrete. She couldn’t wait to return to her home and start removing the thickly applied make-up, layer by layer.

  After a morning standing in front of cameras for various international TV news channels, a journalist from The Economist magazine tried to encourage her to discuss personal matters rather than the launch of her company’s new App. But enough bullets had hit Ellie over the years to know when a writer was about to take aim. So she dodged them by giving him a polite smile and reminding him of what she was there to discuss and what subjects were out of bounds.

  As her head of security Andrei drove her from central London to her townhouse in Belgravia, she opened the secure internal company messaging system on her tablet and discovered a file that’d been sent by Ula, her PA.

  “Timothy Kelly,” read the folder and Ellie realised it must contain the details she had requested of her DNA Match. She was more nervous than she thought she’d be as her finger hovered above the icon. She worried about what it might contain and just how much detail Ula had unearthed. She assumed Ula had taken her advice and subcontracted it out to the team her firm employed to carry out background checks on the senders of threatening emails and other aggressive communications she received on a weekly basis.

  She took a deep breath and pressed the icon. It contained a handful of documents: a photograph from a local newspaper of a provincial football team; his LinkedIn CV, his internet browser history from the last six months, a bank statement and some miscellaneous images. She didn’t want to know by what shifty means that information had been gathered.

  Ellie clicked on the photograph of the football team first and read the caption below, eventually locating the name Tim Kelly. She found him in the back row of the picture; a man of average build, with dark, short, receding hair, a beard and a big grin spread across his face. She immediately decided that physically, he was not her usual type.

  She scanned his CV and learned he’d worked his way through a succession of employers, chiefly in computing, since leaving university. His internet history was typical for a man of his age. Youtube links to 1990s music videos and Family Guy clips, football and Grand Prix results, the occasional pornographic site – but nothing freakish, she was relieved to discover – and regular visits to Netflix and Spotify for his films and music. He liked Coldplay, the Foo Fighters, Stereophonics and watching anything with Matt Damon or Leonardo DiCaprio in, none of which were to her taste. His bank statement divulged his supermarkets of choice were Tesco and Aldi; he bought most of his clothes from Burton’s and Next, he donated by direct debit to Alzheimer’s and stray dogs’ charities and put some money away towards his pension each month.

  There was nothing in the file to suggest he was or had been married, that he had a current partner or any children. He had no criminal record, no bankruptcies or any notable money concerns. His mortgage was modest, he repaid his credit card on time and he had no student loan left. His social media presence was almost zero with the exception of some comments on a Cambridge United FC message board.

  In short, it appeared Timothy Kelly was an unremarkable man but one with whom she shared an extraordinary link.

  ‘Can we take a diversion to the King’s Road?’ Ellie asked Andrei and within a few minutes, he’d returned to the car and handed her a brand new, no frills, pay-as-you-go mobile phone so she wouldn’t have to give out her actual number. She hadn’t used one since she was an impoverished university student and she caught herself smiling as she recalled a much less complicated time in her life.

  She typed in Timothy’s number and began to write a text. “Hi,” she said. “My name is Ellie and we have been Matched up!” She then paused, deleting the message. Too chirpy, she thought. “Hello, I’m your Match on Match Your DNA. Would you like to meet me?” ‘Too slutty,’ she muttered. “Hi Timothy, I believe we’re supposed to be spending the rest of our lives together,” she typed, and then added a smiley face.

  Ellie paused before hitting the send button, then remained stationary with the phone in her hand, staring at it, scared of what the Pandora’s box she’d just opened might contain. She didn’t have long to wait for a response and the phone’s loud alert sound made her jump.

  “Ahh, Mrs Kelly, what took you so long?” Timothy responded and added a winking face. “And please call me Tim.”

  He has a sense of humour, Ellie thought, and immediately relaxed her tensed shoulders. “Sorry, I was busy choosing my wedding dress,” she typed and sent an emoji of a woman wearing a veil.

  “What a coincidence, so was I. So tell me a little about my wife-to-be as I only know the basics. It’d be nice to find some common ground before I book the register office.”

  “No church then?”

  “No, Satanists like me aren’t welcome there.”

  “Something we have in common,” she replied and included a smiling devil icon.

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Steal their souls.”

  “No I said FOR a living, not WITH the living.’”

  “Ah, now I’m with you. Other than worship Lucifer, I work in a boring office job. You?”

  “Computer nerd.”

  Over the next thirty minutes, Ellie failed to notice the queue of traffic that kept her car stationary or the pouring rain that lashed against the window. When Andrei finally pulled up outside her home, she was glued to her phone like a schoolgirl as she and Tim continued messaging back and forth. Andrei opened the car door and then opened an umbrella.

  “Can I take my wi
fe-to-be for a drink some time?” Tim texted.

  “I’m not sure…” she replied.

  “I won’t bite, honest. Sometimes we just need to take a gamble and hope for the best.”

  Ellie bit her bottom lip and slipped the phone into her handbag as Andrei escorted her into the house where he shut the door behind them and she hung her damp coat up to dry. She paused for a few minutes, weighing up the pros and cons of allowing a stranger into her life before making her decision. The very reason she did the Match Your DNA test was now a living, breathing person. He had a name and a face and he was waiting to learn if she wanted to meet him. But she was scared. She removed the phone from her bag, then read and re-read his text again before replying.

  “Okay, I’d like that,” she typed apprehensively.

  “Cool. Are you free on Friday night?”

  CHAPTER 16

  AMANDA

  Amanda learned much more about her DNA Match Richard Taylor from his memorial service than from her internet research.

  She felt like an impostor, sitting alone at the back of St Peter And All Saints Church and listening closely to Richard’s friends regale the congregation with anecdotes about his life, what inspired him and how he carried himself as a confidant. She discovered he was a genuine team player both in and out of the sporting arena, a loyal pal and a good shoulder to cry on. She learned that he’d played hockey and badminton for the county; he’d become a vegetarian at the age of twelve and he’d overcome cancer when he was seventeen through chemotherapy and a positive attitude. Amanda thought back to the photos on his Facebook profile of his global travels and wondered if it’d been his brush with the disease that inspired him to see the world.

  Richard had also run two marathons to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support and had organised for local people with learning difficulties to take part in assault courses and exercise programmes. His selfless deeds made Amanda feel like the laziest, most selfish person on earth and she knew that when her time came, she wouldn’t be remembered for her philanthropic ways like Richard was.