A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger (8 page)

And then I'd done the same for my cousin Anna with Peter from Glasgow, for my school friend Michelle with Sean from Berwick and for pretty much anyone else who asked. They picked the men; I wrote the emails.

All
the men had been hooked, yet I'd felt nothing during the courtships. Maybe it was because I was pretending to be someone else, which did rather take the edge off things; maybe I was just frozen. But I could see that it was no joke, this Internet love thing. Fully grown men abandoning their pride and begging, throwing themselves at the perfect cyber feet of all of these perfect cyber girls?

‘I know what you're going through, Iain old chap,' I said to the computer. ‘Hang on in there.'

‘SHIIIIIT!!!!!!' Joanna wrote on MSN as soon as I logged on (under the catchy moniker of First Date Aid
Charlotte). Obviously she was in as much of a state as Iain. I grinned.

The smiley was added for good measure, even though it went against everything I believed in.

I started, then deleted. At times I struggled to remember that I was simply a ghost-writer, not a dating coach.

The
modus operandi
I'd established for First Date Aid was straightforward. If a client contacted me I familiarized myself with them as best I possibly could and, thus armed, set up an Internet dating account on their behalf. They had full access to their profile, so they could see the emails that were passing back and forth on their behalf. So far this was working well, but Jo had got so excited about Iain that she was messaging me several thousand times per day to comment on the action.

I looked at poor Iain's ‘Online Now!' profile.

I closed the messenger window and went back to my inbox. A new client, Shelley Cartwright, had contacted me since dinner and I hovered the mouse over her name, toying with the idea of reading the message tomorrow. It was late and I was tired. But, of course, I clicked. Running First Date Aid might not be high-profile communications work for one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies but it was staving off the madness.

I opened her email and groaned. It was like standing in front of an angry bear armed with a machine gun and a mallet and a knife.

Hi.

I saw the ad in the
Evening Standard
. (
The
Evening Standard
had been Sam's latest triumph; thanks to him I'd paid about a sixth of the going rate
.) I'm far too busy to be fiddling around on the Internet so would like to contract you for two weeks. I've looked on
love.com
and have selected two suitable men, Stuart and William; links to their profiles are below. Please could you schedule dates with both if they are available. I have openings on 26 and 29 September and would prefer a meeting in either Canary Wharf, where I work, or London Bridge, where I live. I request that you do not use abbreviated text or swear words
in any messages you send on my behalf. Please email an invoice and note that I accept your rates and terms. You can use the attached photo to create my online dating account and I have written a short summary of myself in addition, also attached.

Regards,

Shelley

I chuckled. ‘I'm far too busy to be fiddling around on the Internet'? Why did so many clients need to let me know that they were above Internet dating? Who were they trying to fool? I had lost count of the number of emails I'd seen like this.
Hey, you, Internet woman, I've failed completely to find someone, I can't even get myself an Internet date and guess what? It's YOUR fault. Write me some emails, you slave, and I shall throw you some pennies. P. S. I AM BETTER THAN YOU.

But business was business. And Business Charley liked a challenge.

Dear Shelley,

Thanks for contacting us. We'd be delighted to work with you but I'm afraid we need a few more details first. If you could take a quick look at the ‘How it works' page you'll get an idea of the level of knowledge we require before we can send emails on a client's behalf.

Normally this knowledge can be gathered in a quick painless phone call. Although we are not a dating service we do aim for maximum success and therefore it's important that we know our
clients well enough to send messages which represent them faithfully.

Please either indicate a time when we can speak or send us 600 words about yourself (there's an online breakdown of the kind of info we need) and in the meantime we'll start your profile and acquaint ourselves with the two men you like.

All best,

Charlotte Lambert

Director

First Date Aid

I logged into
love.com
and opened up Shelley's photo. Sighing, I got my notebook out and started scribbling. She was wearing a suit. ‘Educated; professional; salary above £100 K,' she had written in the ‘searching for' box. Again, never a good sign. As I had had to explain to an angry woman called Jenny, from Manchester, yesterday, the reason that Giles (also from Manchester) had not replied to the email I had written for her was not that I'd failed but rather that she had terrified the living shit out of him with the financial ‘requirements' listed on her profile. Poor Giles was a shy millionaire and I was quite sure that write-ups like Jenny's (‘I like to be taken out for expensive cocktails and can't pretend that I don't appreciate the odd Swarovski necklace!') had filled him with fear.

Shelley's summary of herself was a disaster:
I'm ambitious, successful and extremely hard-working: time-wasters need not apply.

Great opening gambit, I thought grimly, scribbling some notes.

I am not here to make friends and am looking for a man whose aim is to meet a like-minded professional female with the view to settling down. [
I winced
.]

I'm single because I'm very busy with my job as an executive management consultant. However, I believe I have a lot to give and therefore am seizing the day with online dating! If you are based in London and like what you see on my profile please contact me to arrange a meet.

Best, Shelley

I sighed. If Shelley's best shot at ‘warmth' was an exclamation-marked line about seizing the day, then God save the educated professionals she was expecting to snare. I stared at her uncompromising face. She was very attractive and well presented – she had a well-kept, fringed bob and very expensive-looking glasses … And her suit was clearly a knock-out. But where was the warmth? What would a potential partner see in this face other than a cold career fiend who would never be available to have a glass of wine with him of an evening? Before Yvonne had arrived tonight, screaming about her communications course, Sam and I had sat by the window and shared a bottle of wine. Granted, we were not a couple, but the point was that this was what people
did
when they were together. Chilled. Chatted. Relaxed. I was going to have to completely rewrite her profile before I did anything else.

Needs to calm the hell down
, I wrote in my book as I logged on to
love.com
to view the first of her selected men.

Then I stopped.

Needs to calm the hell down?
This was a phrase I had heard
recently. I opened Shelley's profile write-up again.
I'm single because I'm too busy
. I swallowed and clicked on her picture once more.
I'm ambitious, successful and extremely hard-working
, said Shelley, with her ultra-straight fringe and her glasses and her smart, well-made clothes. Shelley, whose profile men would delete from their search, knowing that she would never be home from work before ten p.m. Shelley, whose profile screamed **NIGHTMARE**.

You're a man who's never seen me before. At first glance do you think I'm a nightmare?
I texted Hailey and Ness.

Yes, my love
, Hailey responded.

Of course not!
Ness replied, which meant yes.

Fuck it. Fuck
me
! I was a nightmare!

‘Was, Charley, was,' I muttered, turning my phone off.
You've changed since you broke your leg! You sit and have wine with your housemate. You chat to your friends on the phone. You hang out with your parents in the countryside. And you haven't done any
real
work for weeks!

Yes, only because you're bloody immobile and have absolutely no other option
, I admitted. In a part of my brain that I was trying hard to bury, a voice was suggesting that perhaps I hadn't changed all that much. And that perhaps I was actually quite similar to this sharply fringed woman on the screen.

I looked in the mirror. I saw a girl who also had short dark hair and a very straight fringe. Very similar glasses and, if not smart
clothes
, at least smart pyjamas.

This was not a comfortable state of affairs. Shelley, whom I'd never even met, felt more like my twin sister than lovely laid-back arty Ness ever had.

I popped Shelley's two desired dates into her Favour
ites folder and opened one of their profiles to take my mind off the situation. Stuart was what I liked to describe as ‘meh'. There was nothing wrong with him at all – nice-looking, clearly wealthy, probably quite intelligent … but … meh. Just nothing there. Nothing silly or odd or out-of-the-ordinary. Nothing that distinguished him from the rest of humanity. He worked in finance and probably already lived in the redbrick detached house in Surrey that his woman of choice from
love.com
would one day move into.

I didn't understand why clients wanted me to compose emails to men like Stuart. What was the point? Men like him didn't
want
imagination or humour; they didn't want clever flirting and subtle affection. In fact, they probably responded a lot better to a message from some woman's PA asking if they were available for a forty-five-minute lunch at Club Gascon.

I yawned, suddenly exhausted. It was time for bed. I'd look at the other man (William?) tomorrow. Until Shelley allowed me further access to her inner workings, this was a waste of my time.

I turned the light off and rolled over into the Beatles-crossing-Abbey-Road posture that seemed to be the only way of getting to sleep at the moment. It hadn't been too bad a day, really: I had thought about John's marriage only twice, the physio had said that I'd be off crutches soon and, best of all, my PA Cassie had sent me a text saying that everyone in the office was being driven mad by Margot.

Forty minutes later, I still hadn't slept. I was being tortured by Shelley too-busy-for-love Cartwright. I was
not
as bad as her. Surely! I'd had Dr Nathan Gillies after all! We'd gone out for four years!

No, that didn't help. Not once in those four years had we woken up on a Sunday morning, stretched, shagged, rolled back over and gone to sleep, only to surface hours later for some bacon and the newspaper. The truth was that Dr Nathan Gillies normally saw private patients on Sundays and I generally went running, had a power brunch with Hailey, did some work, then spent the rest of the day helping at the Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home. And sometimes took charcoal sketching classes with a softly spoken transvestite in Bruntsfield when I felt my cultural life needed boosting.

Dammit. No chilling at all, then. Just a load of engagements.

But my face was warmer than Shelley's! And I had a sense of humour! A warm, silly, self-deprecating sense of humour, according to my friends. Poor old Iain was in Internet love with Joanna because of
my
emails! Me! Nice! Warm!

My leg began to itch unbearably and I turned the light on, reaching over for the straightened-out wire coat-hanger that Dad had given me so I could scratch underneath the plaster. (‘Ignore those silly doctors,' he'd whispered. ‘No one's leg ever fell off after they scratched it with a coat-hanger, my girl!')

As I retrieved it, I caught sight of my Salutech security pass, which was still on the peg next to my door. I took it down and studied it. Bugger, bugger and bugger. My face was
not
warmer than Shelley's. I might have the sense of
humour that she lacked, but you'd struggle to see it in my stern, self-important pose.

‘Damn you, Shelley Cartwright,' I said, shoving the coat-hanger down my plaster. It felt horrible down there, like my skin was covered with melted toffee. I winced.

I turned the light off and wriggled down again, then turned it back on and wriggled up. ‘Cocking Cartwright,' I muttered, firing up my laptop. I was wide awake and very pissed off, and I knew there was only one thing that would help. When in doubt: work. I logged back on to
love.com
and knocked out a profile for Shelley in ten minutes. As I sat back to admire my handiwork I saw, to my amusement, that Mervyn from West Glamorgan, aged twenty-two, had already added her to his Favourites. ‘Good luck, young man.'

Good grief! Mervyn had sent her a message too! Knowing it was probably a bit naughty to go into Shelley's mailbox before she and I had spoken on the phone, I clicked. After all, I was stuck in bed with a toffee leg while my deputy stole my job and my housemate created strange concoctions in pans. Surely I was allowed some merriment.