‘Because that’s what many people think,’ she replied. ‘You’ve probably guessed by now that I haven’t been completely honest with you about who I am or what I do for a living.’
‘Uhuh.’
‘The surname I used on my DNA profile is my mum’s maiden name, Ayling. My actual surname is Stanford and I don’t work as a personal assistant to a CEO. I actually work for myself. And what I do is a little … controversial.’
‘What, are you an arms dealer or something?’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Nothing like that.’ Ellie paused and took a deep breath. ‘Tim, I am the scientist who discovered the Match Your DNA gene, and a lot of people hate me for it.’
Chapter 41
MANDY
Many family birthdays, anniversaries, girls’ nights out, work leaving parties, meals out and get-togethers passed and Mandy declined them all.
Each time an invitation came, she mustered up an excuse as to why she was unable to attend, often citing that she had plans with Richard some one hundred miles away. She was telling the truth, at least in part, as she was choosing to spend more and more of her time with his family rather than her own.
From the tone of their voicemail messages, she guessed that her mother and sisters were finding it increasingly frustrating. They had once been a tight-knit unit, brought on by the death of their father more than a decade ago, but now Mandy was trying to pull away and the rest couldn’t understand why. Of course, they thought that she had found her Match and expected her to be at her most open, but Mandy just couldn’t tell them. Not yet.
Spending time with them didn’t nourish her in the same way spending time with Pat and Chloe did. She felt more and more alienated from her family; two of her sisters were in the midst of the love and happiness that Mandy could never have, and she doubted they’d be able to understand what she was going through. And her mother, though she too had lost the love of her life, was too old-fashioned to truly understand how strong a Match bond could be, and what it’s like when it’s taken away. Richard’s family filled the void.
‘If you want to have a few drinks, then why don’t you stay over?’ Pat had texted the evening before. So with a packed overnight bag, she spent the evening with them watching DVDs, drinking wine and leafing through an album of Richard’s baby photos.
Not for the first time, she wondered what their baby might have looked like.
When they finally retired to bed, Mandy found herself wide awake in the guest room, unable to sleep. She closed her eyes and, as she did most nights, she pictured a future they’d never have. She imagined walking through her parents’ front door on Christmas Day arm in arm, and how he’d be the centre of her family’s attention. Her fingers clenched the duvet and she squeezed it hard in frustration.
On her way back from the bathroom, Mandy spied Richard’s bedroom door slightly ajar. Hesitantly, she opened it, but the room was empty. She entered, quietly closing the door behind her, and turned on a lamp.
Curiosity got the better of her and she slid open the drawer of his bedside cabinet and peeked inside. There were toiletries such as moisturisers, hair products and deodorants, along with an open pack of ten condoms. She flipped the lid and counted – just four remaining. She immediately wondered who’d been the lucky girl – or girls – with whom he’d used the missing ones. The thought made her heart sink.
She was envious of a woman she couldn’t even put a face to. She looked under his bed and found his threadbare army-green backpack from his travelling days. The torn airline and coach labels were still attached, but there was nothing inside. She removed occasional pieces of clothing from his chest of drawers to press against her skin or to run her fingertips across and inhale; each one made her nerve endings tingle.
Then, in the bottom drawer, tucked way at the back, she found a scuffed mobile phone, several models out of date. Mandy turned it on, assuming the battery would be dead, but there were two bars of power left and it was so old it required no pass code.
She was aware that she was invading Richard’s privacy but she didn’t care, her thirst for more knowledge about him was unquenchable. The more she learned, the more she needed to know.
Most of his old text messages were from personal training clients or friends organising nights out. They revealed very little about him, other than he had a wide circle of friends and grateful clients.
However, his photos were dominated by images of one person in particular: a young woman, in various states of undress. She was nearer to Richard’s age than Mandy’s and was far prettier, she thought. Mandy fought away the pangs of jealousy. She frowned, wondering who the girl was, and continued to flick through his pictures quickly, hoping the photos of this girl would cease.
That was when she stumbled across a naked selfie of Richard.
She held her breath and felt her heart racing, unsure what to do next. She swiped from right to left to see half a dozen more explicit pictures of her Match. She was surprised at how well endowed he was, and unashamedly pinched the phone’s display to get a closer look. She suddenly experienced a sensation she hadn’t felt in quite some time – an overwhelming arousal.
She found a three-minute video clip and her face flushed red. It was of Richard, pleasuring himself, in that very room on the bed where she sat. Mandy couldn’t hold herself back any longer. She double checked the bedroom door was closed, turned down the volume on Richard’s phone and lay back, in exactly the same position as he had. Slowly and silently she slipped her hand down the front of her pyjamas and began to touch herself, closing her eyes and envisaging how it might have felt to have Richard inside her. It wasn’t long before she felt every muscle in her body clench and she erupted at the exact same moment as the image of her Match.
She replaced the mobile back in his drawer and lay on the bed, smiling and waiting for her light-headedness to ease. But instead of returning to her own room, she drifted off into a deep sleep, and only awoke hours later when she heard the sound of the door hinges creaking and Pat’s face appeared.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Mandy immediately apologised. ‘I couldn’t sleep so I came in here.’
‘It’s fine, darling,’ Pat replied and gave her a warm smile. ‘You can stay with Richard as often as you like.’
‘You’d like children of your own, wouldn’t you?’
Pat’s question caught Mandy off guard. They’d been sitting in a park close to Pat’s house, staring at the rolling countryside surrounding them. Mandy had been telling her about her failed marriage and how it had left her at the brink of despair, but she had focused her gaze on a young mum with two small children and the conversation tapered off. The excited kids were taking it in turns to throw bread to the ducks in the pond, giggling each time the birds quacked.
‘Yes, I’d have loved my own family,’ Mandy replied, with a resigned smile.
‘You mentioned that you have nieces and a nephew? Do you see them often?’
‘I see them a lot. Well, not so much lately … My sisters tell me I can spend as much time with them as I want, but it’s not the same when they’re not your own.’
‘It can be, if you allow yourself.’
‘Not for me. I actually fell pregnant with Sean, my ex-husband, twice, but miscarried both times, the first a few months after we got married, and then a couple of weeks after he left me for his DNA Match. I thought that was it for me, that I didn’t stand a chance of being a mum with someone I really loved, until I discovered I had Richard. Then my imagination went into overdrive.’ Mandy gave a quiet laugh. ‘We were going to buy a little old cottage in a village together – somewhere that needed doing up from scratch that we could work on together – and the first room we’d do up was the nursery. And we’d time it just right so that I’d fall pregnant as we were finishing the place and I’d be the mum I always saw myself being. Now that opportunity has been taken away from me.’