‘You make it sound so romantic,’ said Deepak and rolled his eyes. ‘But it’s not really up to you to make that decision for them, is it? If they ain’t broke, don’t try and fix them.’
‘The test worked for us, though, didn’t it? I mean, we knew anyway, but it gave us that added bit of security, that we’d always been destined to be with each other.’
‘Can we not turn into one of those smug, sanctimonious couples, please?’
‘You don’t need to be in a couple to be smug and sanctimonious, sweetheart.’
Now it was Sumaira’s turn to roll her eyes. She swigged the remainder of the contents of her glass under her husband’s watchful eye.
Nick rested his head on his fiancée’s shoulder and glanced out the window at the glare of cars’ headlights and figures milling about on the pavement outside the pub. They lived in a converted factory apartment and the windows were floor to ceiling – no escape from seeing the busy street outside, and what his life used to look like. Not so long ago, his usual evening would’ve been made up of bar crawls around Birmingham’s hip, up-and-coming areas, before falling asleep on a night bus and waking up many stops from where he lived.
But his priorities had changed almost overnight when he met Sally. Sally was in her early thirties – five years his senior – and he knew from their first conversation about old Hitchcock films that there was something a bit different about her. In their early days together, she’d got a kick from opening his mind to new travel destinations, new foods, new artists and music, and Nick began to see the world from a fresh perspective. When he glanced at her with her impossibly sharp cheekbones, chestnut-brown, pixie-cropped hair and grey eyes, he hoped that some day their children would acquire their mother’s good looks and open-mindedness.
Quite what Nick offered Sally in return he couldn’t be sure, but when he’d proposed to her on their three-year anniversary in a restaurant in Santorini, she’d cried so hard that he couldn’t be sure if she’d accepted or declined.
‘If you two are the best example of what being Matched is about, I’m quite happy for Sal and I to remain just how we are,’ teased Nick, and slipped his glasses down his nose to rub his tired eyes. He reached for his e-cigarette and took several puffs. ‘We’ve been together for almost four years now, and now she’s promised to love, honour and obey me, I’m a hundred per cent sure we’re made for each other.’
‘Hold on, “obey”?’ Sumaira interrupted, raising an eyebrow. ‘You should be so lucky.’
‘You obey me,’ added Deepak confidently. ‘Everyone knows I wear the trousers in our relationship.’
‘You do wear them, hunny, but ask yourself who buys them for you.’
‘What if we’re not, though?’ Sally asked suddenly. ‘What if we’re not made for each other?’
Until then, Nick had listened with apparent amusement as Sumaira attempted to talk them into Match Your DNA testing. It hadn’t been the first time she’d raised the subject in the two years they’d known each other, and Nick was sure it wouldn’t be the last. Sally’s friend could be both belligerent and persuasive at the same time. But Nick was surprised to hear Sally say this. She’d always been very anti-Match-Your-DNA, as was he. ‘Excuse me?’ he said.
‘You know that I love you with all my heart and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but … what if we aren’t actually soulmates?’
Nick frowned. ‘Where’s this coming from?’
‘Oh, nowhere, don’t worry, I’m not having second thoughts or anything.’ She gave him a reassuring pat on the arm. ‘It’s just that I was wondering are we happy to just think we’re right for each other or do we want to know for sure?’
‘Babe, you’re drunk.’ Nick dismissed her and scratched at his stubble. ‘I’m perfectly happy knowing what I know and I don’t need some test telling me that.’
‘I read something online that said Match Your DNA is going to break up around 3 million marriages. But within a generation, divorce will barely be a thing any more,’ Sumaira said.
‘That’s because marriage won’t be “a thing” either,’ Deepak retorted. ‘It’ll become an outdated institution, you mark my words. You won’t need to prove anything to anyone because everyone will be partnered with who they’re destined to be with.’
‘You’re really not helping me here,’ Nick said, and dug his fork into the crumbly remains of Sally’s raspberry cheesecake.
‘Sorry, mate, you’re right. Let’s have a toast. To the certainty of chance.’
‘To the certainty of chance,’ the others replied and clinked their glasses against Nick’s.
All but Sally’s glass reached his.
Chapter 5
ELLIE
Ellie swiped the screen of her tablet and begrudged the extensive list of tasks she needed to complete before her working day was over.
Her assistant, Ula, was ferociously efficient and updated and prioritised the list five times daily, even though Ellie never asked her to. Instead of finding this useful, Ellie often felt animosity for both the tablet and Ula for their constant reminders of her failing in reaching the bottom of the list. Sometimes she felt the urge to shove the device down Ula’s throat.
Ellie had hoped that by now, being her own boss, she’d have hired enough reliable staff to whom she could delegate a large proportion of her workload. But as time marched on, she gradually began to accept the label of ‘bloody control freak’ that an ex-boyfriend had once thrown at her.
Ellie glanced at the clock. It was 10.10pm, and she realised she’d already missed the celebratory drinks for her chairman of operations, who’d recently welcomed his son into the world. She doubted anyone had believed her promise to attend – she rarely found the time to fraternise – and while she encouraged it among her staff and even subsidised the company’s social club, when it came to her own participation, time had a habit of getting away from her, despite her best intentions.
Ellie let out a long yawn and glanced out of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Her ostentatiously unostentatious office was on the seventy-first floor of London’s Shard building, and the panoramic view allowed her to see way beyond the Thames below, out towards the colourful lights illuminating the night sky as far as the eye could see.
She slipped out of her Miu Miu heels and walked barefoot across the thick white rugs, which adorned the floor, towards the drinks cabinet in the corner of the room. She ignored the stock of champagne, wine, whisky and vodka and chose one of a dozen chilled cans of an energy drink instead. She poured it into a glass with a handful of ice cubes and took a sip. The decor of her office was as sparse as her home, she realised. It said nothing about her. But when you didn’t care enough about your own decisions it was far more convenient to pay interior designers to make them for you.
Ellie’s business was her priority, not the thread count of the Egyptian cotton covering her bed, how many David Hockney paintings hung from her picture rails or the number of Swarovski crystals used in her hallway chandelier.
She made her way back to her desk and reluctantly glanced at the next day’s to-do list, which Ula had already compiled. She waited for her driver and head of security Andrei to take her home, where she planned to read her PR department’s suggestions on her upcoming speech to the media about a new update to her app. This update would revolutionise her industry so she had to get it right.
Then, at 5.30am the next morning, a hair stylist and a make-up artist would meet her at her Belgravia home ahead of the pre-recorded television interviews with CNN, BBC News 24, Fox News and Al Jazeera. Afterwards, she would sit down with a journalist from the Economist, pose for some photographs for the Press Association and hopefully be back home no later than 10am. It wasn’t the best way to begin her Saturday, she thought.