‘No, I get it, I really do. You didn’t trust me, and that’s fine because, given your situation, I’d probably have kept shtum too.’
Ellie gave a nervous half-smile but didn’t appear convinced that he was OK with it. Tim placed her hands inside his, and immediately she felt that familiar sensation return. It spread throughout her body as it had when he’d kissed her on their disastrous second date.
‘Look, Ellie, you could be working behind the checkouts at Lidl and I wouldn’t give a flying fajita. I mean, the fact you could afford to own Lidl and still have change to buy Morrisons and Tesco doesn’t matter to me either. But you need to see it from my perspective – my first date in yonks is with the person who single-handedly reinvented the concept of dating. It’s bloody hilarious.’
‘So you’re not angry with me?’
‘No, of course I’m not. But I still don’t get why that nutter outside the restaurant threw red paint at you? We looked like we’d spent the evening clubbing seals to death.’
Ellie sighed. She hated thinking about this side of her job. ‘Because not everyone is pleased with the consequences of Match Your DNA. While my discovery has Matched millions and millions of people around the world, it’s also broken up an awful of a lot of couples who thought they were made for each other and it turned out they weren’t. And I get the blame for that – more often than you can probably imagine.’ She paused, trying to gauge his reaction before continuing. ‘And getting to where I am today, it’s not been easy. Like most large businesses, sometimes corners had to be cut and people felt they were hurt, but it was all for the greater good to get us to where are today … I don’t want you to think badly of me.’
‘Can you give me a little credit to come up with my own opinion?’
Ellie hesitated. ‘That woman with the paint … I wasn’t honest when I said I didn’t know her. Do you remember that incident in Edinburgh seven years ago when a man started stabbing shoppers in the city centre?’
‘Didn’t he kill, like, half-a-dozen people before the police got him?’
Ellie nodded. ‘The killer was her son. He had mental health issues and had been living under her supervision until he found his Match. His Match was already married and, well, once she learned of his problems, she left him and went back to her husband. Her Match started stalking her and then one day stabbed her to death in the shop where she worked before attacking random people. It was awful.’
‘And his mum blames you?’
‘Yes. We’ve told her – through the courts – that we can’t be held responsible for who takes the test, but she refuses to accept it.’
Tim nodded, appearing to understand her. ‘I’m sorry for upsetting you. Let’s move on to a lighter subject. Take me back, how did you discover this DNA thing?’
‘Thanks,’ Ellie said, feeling more at ease. ‘It started twelve years ago when I hadn’t long left university. I was carrying out some freelance research work at a lab in Cambridge, examining the links between DNA and depression. One day I was thinking about a conversation I’d had with my sister Maggie about why she married her husband, John. She was adamant it was love at first sight, and even though they were only fourteen when they met, they knew they’d end up spending the rest of their lives together. I’m a scientist so by nature I’m sceptical about that kind of thing, but it did get me thinking – what if she was right? What if love at first sight actually exists? Perhaps there’s something tangible inside all of us that we’ve been confusing with sexual attraction. Having not experienced it myself, I couldn’t imagine how you could just look or talk to another person and immediately know they’re the one.’
‘This isn’t going to get too sciency is it?’ Tim laughed. ‘I failed all my exams in anything that involved Bunsen burners or dissecting frogs.’
‘No, I’ll keep it simple,’ Ellie said. She was used to explaining this in layman’s terms. ‘When you see someone for the first time, you know if you fancy them or not. Well, I began by looking at what it is that appeals to different people, like whether it’s their face, their body shape, how they carry themselves, etc. And then I looked to see if there was more to it than just an instant attraction … What about those people who ended up with paired with someone completely against their usual type? I wondered if there was an element, or a gene, that makes our entire body react, bypassing what our brain is telling us. Can we be intrinsically linked – scientifically – to another?’
Tim sighed dramatically. ‘In my spare time I question how the Galactic Empire built the Death Star without the rest of the universe noticing. Meanwhile, you’re out there finding genes nobody knew existed.’
‘I’m sure your questions are just as important as mine.’ Ellie smiled. ‘Anyway, this is the sciency bit, so stay with me. It’s important I give you an idea of the scale of what I was up against. We have roughly 100 trillion cells in our bodies and inside each of them are two metres of DNA – if you unravelled them all, they’d stretch to the sun and back a hundred times.’
Tim’s eyes widened. ‘I’m still with you.’
‘And the sun is 98 million miles away from Earth … Well, we already knew women produce pheromones and men have receptors that bind the pheromone molecules, and that can create an attraction between the two. But, I discovered that when certain people are brought together, there’s a variable gene inside us that allows both sexes to produce pheromones and have receptor genes. Two heterosexual people, two gay people – it doesn’t matter. Once the right Match is made it’s set in stone. I examined the DNA of hundreds of couples, and those who shared that same gene are the ones who’d say they’d fallen for each other the moment they met. I expanded my search globally to include thousands of volunteers in my database, and kept finding the same thing time and time again – only one other person shares that gene with you. And that person is your DNA Match.’
‘I thought the idea of all animals was to shag around and propagate the species?’
‘That’s what men like to believe. But when you break it down to basics, then yes, it is.’
‘But say you’re an eighty-year-old woman and your Match is an eighteen-year-old man – there’s not much propagating going to happen.’
‘You’re right. Every single person produces their own personal pheromone – it’s like a unique fingerprint that remains the same for the rest of your life. And it’s the luck of the draw as to whether your Match is with someone who lives in the same country or whether it’s someone in a Brazilian favela. Likewise, you could be Matched with someone around your age or be decades apart. It’s actually intergenerational Matches that have helped to cause a drop in birth rates around the world. And the gene is largely responsible for falling numbers of one-night stands and STIs.’
‘Maybe it’s nature’s way of balancing us out. We’re close to finding cures for cancer and AIDS, so now nature is trying to keep us under control with love.’
‘There’ve been stranger theories.’
‘So you don’t think that true love can exist between couples who aren’t pre-destined?’
‘No, no, of course it can. What I am saying is that my discovery can help you find that person you are linked to. Should you choose not to be with them, you can still fall in love with someone else. But I found that those who have been Matched often feel something deeper and more complete. The other person is literally their other half.’
‘And how did you turn all this into a business?’
‘Once I realised the ramifications of what it might mean, it scared me so much that I sat on it for a while. It was a huge responsibility. I didn’t want to get it wrong. Because once the news got out, I’d be changing the way people thought about their relationships for ever. It’d be like telling the world I could prove there was no God or that aliens existed – people wouldn’t believe me or they’d be scared. I got many, many scientists – and I’m talking dozens – to go over my research to prove I wasn’t a crackpot. And when every test came back positive, there was no denying it. Some old uni friends who were now hedge-fund investors helped me to register Match Your DNA as a trademark and get biological patents for Australia, Europe, Japan and the USA. And then, after an announcement in the Lancet, the story went viral.’