Ellie didn’t respond.
‘I thought so. It’s not much fun having someone play God with your life, is it?’
‘Don’t kid yourself, you’re not playing God. You’re being just as manipulative as the man who conned your gullible mother. Only I’m not pathetic like her and I’m not going to let this little blip shape the rest of my life. I’m always going to love you because it’s in my DNA to, but I’m never going to like you and, after today, we will never see each other again.’
‘With all the contempt you have for me, you still have faith we’re a Match, don’t you?’ he said scornfully.
‘Yes, of course we are, and Christ knows I wish we weren’t.’
‘You see, that’s the funny thing, Ells. Because we aren’t Matched and we never have been.’
Ellie narrowed her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re a woman of science, yet you were so desperate to be coupled that not for a single moment did you doubt your results.’
‘I was not “desperate to be coupled”. I had a perfectly happy life before you.’
‘You were, and still are, an ice-cold corporate whore who dated a series of wealthy idiots. You made up excuses not to see your family and all you had to keep you company was your work. With me you had everything, which is ironic because, in reality, I am nothing to you.’
‘Of the 1.7 billion people who’ve been tested, there hasn’t been one reported mis-Match—’
‘Until now. You and I are a mis-Match, Ellie, because I hacked into your servers to manipulate our results.’
‘Rubbish,’ Ellie said, secretly baulking at the notion. She folded her arms indignantly. ‘Our servers are more secure than almost every major international company across the world. We receive so many hacking attempts yet no one gets in. We have the best software and team money can buy to protect us against people like you.’
‘You’re right about some of that. But what your system didn’t take into account was your own vanity. Do you remember receiving an email some time ago with the subject “Businesswoman of the Year Award”? You couldn’t help but open it.’
Ellie vaguely remembered reading the email as it had been sent to her private account, which only a few people had knowledge of.
‘Attached to it was a link you clicked on and that opened to nothing, didn’t it?’ Matthew continued. ‘Well, it wasn’t nothing to me, because your click released a tiny, undetectable piece of tailor-made malware that allowed me to remotely access your network and work my way around your files. Everything you had access to, I had access to. Then I simply replicated my strand of DNA to mirror image yours, sat back and waited for you to get in touch. That’s why I came for a job interview, to learn a little more about the programming and systems you use. Please thank your head of personnel for leaving me alone in the room for a few moments with her laptop while she searched for a working camera to take my headshot. That was a huge help in accessing your network. Oh, and tell her to frisk interviewees for lens deflectors next time – they’re pocket-sized gadgets that render digital cameras useless.’
Ellie wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. She felt her cheeks glow red, a combination of regret for allowing him into her life without question and fury for trusting him.
‘You fell in love with me through your own free will,’ Matthew continued. ‘You so desperately wanted it that you talked yourself into it. You can’t blame your DNA for getting you into this mess – you can only blame yourself.’
Ellie took a moment to regulate her shallow breaths.
‘There are several reasons I did this,’ Matthew continued, sinking deeper into his sofa. ‘Humiliating you was one of them. But I also wanted to demonstrate how greedy we are as human beings. How willing we are to give up everything and anyone we hold dear on the suggestion there might be something better around the corner. What you felt for me wasn’t a DNA Match; we weren’t designed for each other, we weren’t written in the stars. It was mind over matter that made you fall in love, not science. It was a good old-fashioned boy-meets-girl relationship, nothing more and nothing less. And once I tell everyone how I fooled the woman who “discovered” Matches, you’ll be a laughing stock and your credibility ruined.’
Ellie gripped the arms of the sofa as her temper got the better of her. ‘So what? Go ahead. Go public with it, be my guest. I’ll survive it. In the end, plenty of others have found a true happiness they never thought possible because of me.’
‘Oh, Ells. Still so naive. Have you not learned anything from this?’
She glared at him, not knowing what he was talking about.
‘You’re not the only one to have the rug pulled from under your feet. Millions of your subscribers are about to have their lives turned upside down too.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘Did you think I’d simply mis-Match you and me? Of course not. I rewrote your whole coding so that, over the space of the last eighteen months, at least two million people on your database were Matched with the wrong person.’
Ellie swallowed hard, and her heart beat so fast she thought it might break her chest bone.
‘My mis-Matches are so completely random, even I don’t know who’s been affected,’ he continued. ‘Anyone signed up and Matched in that time period – which by your company’s growth rate is around twenty-five million people – could be one of my mis-Matches. Because of me, your business has just become completely worthless. Nobody will know if their Match is for real or if they’ve just talked themselves into it. I told you I was going to destroy you, and I never make promises that I can’t keep.’
Chapter 86
MANDY
It was the pounding in her forehead that eventually woke Mandy from her unconscious state.
With her eyes still closed, she reached her right hand slowly towards her face and felt the egg-shaped lump. It was tender to the touch. She could feel a line of stitches holding it together. Slowly, she attempted to open her eyes but her eyelids felt as if they’d been glued. She tried to move her left hand but it was too heavy and she was too weak. She went to grasp it with the other and realised it was encased in plaster that stretched towards the middle of her forearm.
As she gradually came round, Mandy couldn’t fathom out where she was or why the smell reminded her of bleach and mouthwash. She guessed she must be in a bathroom until she turned her head and squinted through the window. As her eyes focused, she recognised the built-up landscape outside. She had been here before, she recognised that view. Both times she’d lost her children, she’d been here. She was in a hospital.
Suddenly, a rising sense of panic engulfed her. She moved her hands under the sheets to her pronounced belly. It was much flatter than before. No, please not again, she prayed helplessly.
‘Is somebody there?’ she croaked, her throat bone dry, but she was alone in the room. Mandy tried to pull herself up in the bed and lie back against the metal frame, but a sharp, shooting pain wrapped its way around her stomach. She grimaced and her hand flailed against the side of the bed, looking for the button she knew should be there. She jabbed at it hard.
It took a few moments before a nurse with ponytail appeared at her door. ‘Ah, you’re awake, how are you feeling?’ She spoke in a foreign accent and made her way to Mandy’s side.
‘My baby,’ Mandy mumbled, and tried to clamber out of the bed. ‘Where’s my baby?’
‘Let me get the doctor,’ the nurse said, and left the room.
Mandy’s body trembled involuntarily as she took in her surroundings. The nagging pain in her forehead compounded with the pain in her stomach and wrist made her nauseous. She only just managed to lean towards the edge of the bed before she vomited on the floor. The doctor arrived.