Married at First Swipe

by Claire Frost

  Praise for Married at First Swipe:

  ‘A total delight. Witty and fresh – I absolutely loved it!’

  Milly Johnson, Sunday Times bestselling author

  ‘A witty, warm, wonderful read!’

  Sophie Cousens, author of This Time Next Year

  ‘Funny, feel-good and full of warmth, love and friendship’

  Laura Kemp, author of Under a Starry Sky

  ‘A witty, tender story that packs a real emotional punch. I loved it!’

  Nicola Gill, author of The Neighbours

  ‘A heart-warming and joyous page-turner. Impossible to put down!’

  Holly Martin, author of Sunrise Over Sapphire Bay

  ‘Enthralling and entertaining!’

  Heidi Swain, Sunday Times bestselling author

  ‘I couldn’t put it down. What a wonderful, warm, wise and witty book!’

  Alex Brown, Sunday Times bestselling author

  ‘Fresh, funny, and the perfect tonic for these gloomy times. Totally relatable but at the same time, total escapism, and it was so easy to race through the pages’

  Lia Louis, author of Dear Emmie Blue

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  To Steve, for being with me every step of the way.

  Prologue

  Hannah gripped her dad’s arm just below the crook of his elbow, her fingers turning white with the effort. She stood as straight and tall as she could in her too-new shoes, with her shoulders back and her other hand clutching a small but pretty bouquet of hydrangeas and asters. She swayed slightly, though she knew it wasn’t because of the heels she was unaccustomed to wearing.

  ‘You don’t have to go through with this, you know, Hannah darling. We can call the whole thing off now, I promise. I can even tell him for you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Dad, this is everything I said I wanted,’ she insisted. Though even to her the words sounded hollow and echoey. ‘It is everything I want,’ she tried again. ‘Truly, I can’t wait to walk down the aisle and begin the rest of my life with this man.’

  Her dad gently loosened her grip on his arm and patted her hand. ‘You always were a determined young thing, even when you were little,’ he chuckled softly. ‘But remember that you aren’t alone on this journey. Whenever things get hard – and believe me, things will get hard – your family will be here to love and support you. It might be you walking down that aisle, but you’re not doing it alone. You’ve got your great big, hulking dad by your side for one thing!’

  ‘And me! You’ve got me too, don’t forget,’ her small half-sister piped up from a few feet in front of them, where she’d been devising some kind of complicated dance set to a tune in her head only she knew. ‘And Mummy said I look like a princess today, so I will wave my magic wand and cast a spell to make everything all right,’ she added triumphantly, brandishing her flowergirl wand that was actually a plastic stick with a star attached to the end, drooping under the weight of the glitter that had been liberally applied during a crafting afternoon a few days before.

  Hannah and her dad both laughed, and the intensity in the tiny room dropped a few notches.

  Noticing Jess waving, Hannah’s dad turned to his daughters. ‘I think that’s our cue.’

  He paused to look at Hannah. ‘Ready?’

  She removed a stray piece of glitter from her dad’s cheek. ‘Ready.’

  As the rows of people in the large room swivelled to look and smile at their little procession, Hannah only had eyes for one person: the man waiting for her at the altar. He slowly turned around and their eyes met.

  Finally she got her first ever glimpse of the man she was about to marry.

  JANUARY Eight months earlier

  Chapter 1 Jess

  One of the few qualities Hannah had inherited from her dad was his ability to mix the strongest, most moreish gin and tonics known to humankind. Which was why she and Jess were already halfway through the bottle of ‘small-batch, artisan gin, distilled just three times a year when Mercury is in retrograde’ at 7 p.m.

  ‘Andy and Pippa must have been very grateful to send you a bottle of such wanky, overpriced gin,’ Hannah said as she glugged the rest of the clear liquid in her glass. ‘Though I’m definitely not complaining. It tastes delicious.’

  ‘I’m so happy they’re engaged.’ Jess smiled. ‘They really do seem made for each other. And the fact they met through Save The Date means I’m even happier. So if they want to send me a bottle of Mystic Meg’s tears, I’ll drink it. And on that subject, you need to do your bartender bit again – we need filling up. Plus, I’ve just remembered, I’ve got a packet of crisps in my bag that I didn’t eat at lunchtime – cheese and onion McCoys will go perfectly with a big G and small T.’

  Once they were both happily sipping and crunching away, Jess nudged her best friend and said, ‘So, how did your second date go the other night? I haven’t had a chance to ask you properly.’

  ‘Well, let’s just say I must have been very drunk to agree to a second date as there’s definitely not going to be a third.’

  ‘Why? He seemed all right when I checked out his profile on the app. His pictures looked fairly normal and he didn’t say he was ideally looking to marry a woman aged sixteen to twenty-one.’

  ‘But neither did he admit to still living at home aged thirty-nine or his bedroom being a shrine to The Avengers. He saved that information for last night. Oh, and Captain America is his favourite character – despite everyone else knowing he is the shittest of all the Avengers.’

  ‘You can’t write someone off because they have bad taste in comic-book characters, Han!’

  ‘I’m sorry, did you miss the bit where I mentioned he lives at home with his mum and his room boasts an Incredible Hulk duvet set complete with matching curtains? And to top it all off, when he said on his profile he was a “video games developer”, what he actually meant was he plays Call Of Duty on his PlayStation all day, but is hopeful that very soon Sony will notice his brilliance and offer him the CEO job. And his name is Barry.’

  ‘Urgh, okay, fair enough,’ Jess said, making a face and giggling. ‘Onwards and upwards, hey?’ she added, clinking her glass against Hannah’s.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure how much further there is to go downwards. Anyway, I thought the whole point of me working for your dating app is that I get to find love and live happily ever after running an Insta-perfect beach bar in Colombia with my gorgeous husband.’

  ‘You’re not the greatest advert for Save The Date, that’s for sure,’ Jess replied, earning a mock outraged face from her friend. ‘Though you finding the man of your dreams isn’t the only reason you work here, surely? What could be better than actually getting paid to spend eight hours a day with your best mate?’

  ‘Getting paid to spend eight hours a day with your best mate drinking gin?’ Hannah suggested. ‘Shall we have one more for the road?’

  ‘No, I’d better not have any more or I’ll make the twins drunk when I kiss them goodnight. Although it is Friday, I suppose, and I might need to drink through the rest of the weekend in preparation for my meeting at the bank on Monday.’

  ‘What meeting? Is everything okay?’ Hannah asked, her eyes wide.

  ‘The bank called me when you were out at lunch and asked me to come in to discuss the business. But I’m sure it’s all fine,’ Jess added quickly in her most smart, capabl
e businesswoman voice. Hannah continued to eye her keenly. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything until after the meeting because I didn’t want you to stress, Han. There’s probably nothing to worry about anyway.’ Hannah took a gulp of gin and smiled, and Jess’s shoulders relaxed a little.

  ‘I’m sure whatever it is, it’s just a blip.’ Hannah nodded. ‘You’ve done so well launching Save The Date in the first place, and there’s no other app out there for people who want to settle down and get married, rather than just hook up or go on a few dates. Our USP is still our strongest asset.’

  ‘Listen to you and all your technical talk – we’ll make a businesswoman out of you yet. No more working in crappy bars on the other side of the world for you!’

  ‘I’ll have you know that all the bars I’ve worked in are very high class, actually!’ Hannah laughed. ‘And six months ago I was only in Italy, hardly the other side of the world.’

  ‘True, but six months before that you were in Peru or somewhere equally far away, and before that you were in Oz, if I’m not very much mistaken! Right, three gin and tonics is probably three too many, so I’d better go and rescue Tom from the clutches of two eight-year-olds and make sure they get to bed.’

  ‘Can’t Tom put himself to bed?’ Hannah joked. ‘Okay, boss, you go and marshal the twins into their rooms and I’ll tidy up in here before I go,’ she said, glancing around the small summerhouse at the bottom of Jess and Tom’s garden that formed Save The Date HQ.

  ‘What would I do without you?’ Jess smiled, giving her friend a hug. ‘Have a fab weekend and see you on Monday, unless you fancy coming round for a roast on Sunday?’

  ‘I’d love to, but Scott and Jules have invited me for lunch and you know I can’t pass up the opportunity for some Auntie Hannah cuddles with Leo.’

  ‘Indeed! Well, give Sir Chubby Chops a kiss from me, won’t you?’

  ‘Jess, it’s rude to call Scott chubby even if he is my brother!’

  ‘Ha ha, you’re so funny. Remind me not to let you loose on the gin again. But give them all my love.’

  ‘I will. See you next week.’

  Jess glanced up at the dark Mancunian clouds sweeping across the already grey sky as she made her way past the huge trampoline in the garden and up the path to the back door of the large home she shared with Tom and their twins, Sam and Lily.

  Before she reached the back door, she turned to wave at her oldest friend. Jess had created the ‘office’ a year before, when she realised she needed more space than just the kitchen table from which to run her business. It was only six months ago that she had asked Hannah to be her right-hand woman, working out of the summerhouse and earning a fair amount more than she had from the bar work she was used to in Australia, Argentina or wherever else in the world she’d found herself. Jess had been pleased but surprised when Hannah had accepted the job as it meant she would be spending the foreseeable future in Manchester for the first time in years, but when she’d said as much, Hannah had revealed the real reason she was keen to stick around.

  ‘I know I’ve been a bit – okay, a lot – here, there and everywhere the past few years, but coming back here for Scott’s wedding and helping you out with ideas for the app made me realise the joy of working during the day and having evenings to myself. I think I’m done with lock-ins until two a.m. and the inevitable hangover that forces me to have a large Maccy Ds as soon as I wake up, a cycle I then repeat for as long as I can stick with the job. And now Scott and Julia have had Leo, I’ve decided it’s time for me to put down some roots nearby, too. Plus, what’s not to love about getting paid to dick around with you every day?’

  Jess had rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t have been happier to have her best friend so close after years and years of rushed, broken phone calls with her from the other side of the world.

  The pair of them had always been chalk and cheese – even back in those early years of secondary school they’d joked that Hannah was chalk (easily changeable and a bit flaky), while Jess was cheese (solid, immovable and, Hannah liked to add, a bit smelly). When they played netball during PE, it was Hannah who was chosen as the flighty, quick-on-her-feet wing attack, while Jess was always the dogged, dependable goal defence. But somehow their friendship just worked. And from the age of fifteen, Tom had been a part of that friendship too. Jess started going out with him at the end of Year 11, just as she and Hannah were celebrating the last of their GCSEs and their imminent sixteenth birthdays. Tom had seemed impossibly grown-up to the two of them as he was about to start his last year of school, was having driving lessons and went to the pub with his mates every Saturday night after finishing his job on the deli counter at Sainsbury’s. Jess and Hannah, meanwhile, were still at the having-sleepovers-and-sneaking-a-sip-from-their-parents’-vodka-bottles stage, and both sat wide-eyed as Tom regaled them with stories of his friends being sick into pint glasses and uni open days. When she snogged Tom for the first time, Jess could never have imagined that she would still be kissing him almost twenty years later. Although, she had to admit to herself, there was quite a lot less lip action – or in fact, action of any kind – between them nowadays.

  The three of them had spent a lot of time hanging out together, whether they were lounging in Jess’s room helping Tom – who Hannah quickly nicknamed Tank after her favourite TV show as a kid – revise for his mocks or driving round town in his old banger screeching along to guitar bands at the tops of their lungs. Jess had always been careful to make sure her friend didn’t feel like a spare part, and once Tom’s A levels were out of the way, they spent the summer in beer gardens with a whole crowd of his mates, trying to look old enough to drink. Hannah even had a few snogs and, after too many cider and blacks, the odd grope with a few of the lads, but nothing that even came close to what Jess and Tom had. And when things got serious and Tom announced he was going to take another twelve months out on top of his gap year so he and Jess could go to uni together – much to his parents’ annoyance – Hannah couldn’t have been happier for her best friend, saying drunkenly but solemnly one night, ‘Jess, you’re like the sister I never had, and Tank, you’re like the brother I wish I did have instead of the arrogant, entitled stoner my parents refuse to ever criticise!’

  Now, eighteen years later, Jess opened the back door and was met by a cacophony of wailing (Lily), laughing (Sam) and shouting (Tom). She briefly thought about closing the door and retreating back to the summerhouse, but instead she took a deep breath, a step inside and smiled brightly before beginning what was very much her second job.

  Chapter 2 Hannah

  That evening, Hannah tipped the last of her glass of wine down her throat and wondered when her life had changed so much. Even just a year ago, a Friday night would have involved working behind a bar on the beach in Bali or Bondi and then drinking rum with the locals, but now the most excitement she got was a FaceTime call with her friend Dee in Oz, who seemed to be having the time of her life on the Gold Coast and had even met a bronzed god called Ade. It was 6 a.m. their time and they hadn’t been to bed after staying up to watch the sunrise over the sea. But after twenty minutes of Dee waxing lyrical about how she was living her best life, bronzed god Ade had started giving her a foot massage that definitely hadn’t ended at her ankle and she’d started to rather lose focus on their conversation. Not wanting a front-row seat at her friend’s sex show, Hannah had promptly said her goodbyes – she liked Dee a lot, but not that much.

  Now, she absent-mindedly reached for her phone and pulled up the Save The Date app, which notified her she had some new suggested matches. Unfortunately, as nice as Steven, John and Philip said they were, their pictures suggested they were either mummy’s boys à la Barry or corporate types who left their socks on during sex. Groaning, she closed the window and instead clicked on what she could admit to herself – but definitely not Jess – was her favourite of all the dating apps. She logged into her profile and pulled up her saved matches and scrolled till she landed on:

  M
att, 34

  A doctor who doesn’t need a stethoscope to make your heart beat faster.

  They’d messaged a couple of times the previous week but hadn’t arranged to meet. Noticing the app showed him as ‘active’, she sent a message asking if he was free for a drink the following day, before she could overthink it.

  His answer came back within a minute.

  Hannah! So my medical jokes won you over eventually – go me! Sure, a drink sounds great. I’m in the middle of my last night shift of the week at the mo (and yes, I’m on my break rather than messaging from a patient’s bedside, before you ask!), but I only need a few hours’ kip as I need to get back into day shift mode for Monday, so let’s say a late lunch at the George and Dragon on the high street – does that work for you?

  Hannah agreed, although she was surprised at both his choice of pub and timing. She wasn’t sure she’d actually been inside the George and Dragon, but it definitely fell into the category of ‘old man pub’ rather than ‘cool, hipster, impress-your-date bar’. Oh well, she didn’t have anything to lose, and she still had the whole of Saturday morning free for herself. Maybe she’d finally get round to joining the gym. She picked up her phone again and opened WhatsApp.

  Hey, Tom, feels like we haven’t caught up in ages. I’m finally going to get off my arse and join a gym – I need to find one near here that’s cheap but not filled with posers. Any thoughts? x

  Her phone lit up with a notification that meant Tom was still awake.

  A gym without posers is like a school without naughty children! I go to the leisure centre one sometimes (it’s PAYG) as it’s pretty decent. Catch up soon. x

  That was tomorrow morning sorted, then.

  * * *

  After wheezing her way through twenty minutes on the cross-trainer and (almost) ten on the rower, Hannah stood smugly under the less-than-powerful shower in the leisure centre changing rooms, thankful she’d remembered to bring her own shampoo and conditioner and didn’t have to rely on the white slime dripping from the soap box on the wall. She rinsed her hair, wrapped her towel tightly round her and gave her full attention to her imminent date. Matt looked handsome enough in his profile picture and his messages had painted an image of a wise-cracking but caring guy looking for someone fun and interesting to have a relationship with. Whether he’d live up to this in the flesh remained to be seen; she could but hope. She spent longer than normal drying her long, dark locks and straightening them (she hoped Matt felt honoured), then, glancing at the clock on the far side of the changing room, she realised she only had ten minutes to make the fifteen-minute walk to the pub where they’d agreed to meet. She hastily smoothed on some pressed powder, swiped mascara somewhere close to her lashes and added a cloud of blusher to her cheeks, before stuffing her gym kit into her bag and shoving her feet into her Converse.