When Polly Met Olly

by Zoe May

  Derek laughs. ‘Alright then. I’ll revamp the website today and add some stuff about being a personal, approachable agency. Maybe we can pick up some of the clients who didn’t want to sign with Olly,’ Derek says pensively, as though he’s thinking aloud.

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ I comment, popping the last bite of my pancake into my mouth.

  ‘Okay. Good work, Polly,’ Derek says, before signalling over his shoulder for the bill.

  Chapter 8

  It’s funny how your life can change in such a short space of time. Only a week ago, I was taking photos of turnips in Alicia’s dining room, wondering how I was going to pay my rent, and now I’m a matchmaker with a pay check! I feel pretty good and even better to be taking photos in Central Park with my friends.

  Scarlett and Amy are two friends from university who also moved to New York after graduation. Amy studied fashion and works as a designer’s assistant, while Scarlett, who is fluent in five languages, has developed a specialism in travel photography. She’s managed to get a ton of contacts at travel magazines around the world and she’s constantly jetting off to weird and wonderful locations, snapping the most amazing exotic scenery for editorial features.

  We wander through the park, taking photos of the scenery and catching up. It feels good to be in the zone again – twisting my lens and snapping my surroundings. As much as I’m enjoying my new job as a matchmaker, nothing beats that deep focused feeling I get when I’m trying to get a good shot – that sense of pure concentration and fulfilment when you’re just in the zone and doing exactly what it is that you’re meant to be doing.

  Scarlett’s got a trip coming up to visit a coastal village in Morocco that’s meant to be the hottest new travel destination. She’s super excited about it and describes the scenery of ‘rugged stone beaches, rickety old shipping boats, seagulls and white fortress walls’ that she can’t wait to photograph. Meanwhile, Amy whinges about her demanding diva boss who’s being incredibly picky about the design of pieces for her autumn/winter collection. The way Amy describes her reminds me of Alicia with her ridiculous demands for the turnip picture. I ended up staying at the office until 8 p.m. last night making up for the time I’d spent working on them in the morning when I was meant to be matchmaking. Fortunately, Alicia seemed happy with the pictures in the end, but I’m really glad that job’s over.

  ‘Have you got any more photography jobs coming up?’ Scarlett asks, glancing over as she adjusts the lens on her camera before taking a picture of a robin that’s perched on a bench in the park.

  ‘Umm, no. Not yet.’ I laugh a little awkwardly. Scarlett has really excelled since university. Somehow, she’s totally found her feet in the photography world, while I’m still floundering. She’s not arrogant or smug about it. She knows I’m a decent photographer and I know she wants me to do well, that’s why she’s always asking about my jobs and encouraging me to keep going.

  ‘I’m a bit busy at the moment with the dating agency stuff. I’ll probably try to do some more photography jobs on the side once I’m settled in,’ I tell her, forcing an upbeat smile that probably comes across a lot more positive than how I feel.

  The thing is, as much as I’m grateful for having found a job, I am a bit worried about photography. Even though matchmaking is entertaining, I’m worried that I might get sucked into it and abandon my true ambitions to become a full-time photographer. So many people who do arts courses seem to go down that route. Wannabe actors who’ve studied drama for three years move to New York and then end up being extroverted waiters at fancy restaurants. Or aspiring writers do courses in creative writing and then end up writing newsletters for boring companies. I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to stay true to my original photography dreams; I don’t want to give up. It’s just like when I decided, aged about 12, that I was going to live in New York. I believed I’d made it and even though sometimes, it seemed farfetched, I stuck to my guns and kept on believing, and then I made it happen. I want to achieve the same thing with my photography ambitions. Although becoming a proper photographer seems like an impossible dream sometimes, I have to keep believing in it if it’s ever going to happen. A few months ago, I even stuck a poster on my bedroom wall of a Mario Testino portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Like the Statue of Liberty poster I had on my bedroom wall when I was a kid, I wanted to have the Mario Testino poster there as an intention-setting tool – a daily reminder to keep chasing my hopes and my dreams.

  ‘Don’t get too sucked into that place though,’ Scarlett warns, lowering her camera from taking pictures of the robin. ‘It sounds funny and everything but you’re a photographer, not a matchmaker.’

  ‘I know,’ I reply. ‘I’m not going to give up, I just need a bit of money to tide me over for a bit. I couldn’t keep scraping away like that, eating cheap dumplings in Chinatown for dinner because I couldn’t afford a proper meal.’

  ‘You were eating at the Dumpling Dictator’s?’ Amy asks, raising an eyebrow.

  The Dumpling Dictator is a legend in Manhattan. She’s been running a dumpling takeaway in Chinatown for twenty years but refuses to learn more than about twelve words of English. Her menu consists of six things, two of which she doesn’t serve and two of which are tea and coffee. She gets queues around the block for her dumplings, which come with two different fillings – pork or vegetables. If you don’t make your decision within about twenty seconds of getting to the front of the queue, you’re kicked out of the takeaway. The local press picked up on her antics and dubbed her the ‘Dumpling Dictator’. Her behaviour would be enough to turn most customers away, but people keep coming back, probably because she serves five dumplings for a dollar-fifty and that’s a deal you can’t beat.

  ‘Oh yeah, me and the Dumpling Dictator are like this.’ I hold up two fingers intertwined. Amy laughs.

  An alarm beeps on Scarlett’s phone. She takes it out of her bag and looks at the screen.

  ‘Oh, that talk with Anthony Bollaris is on in half an hour, we’d better go,’ she says, looking at both me and Amy.

  ‘Cool.’ Amy hitches her bag up her shoulder.

  Anthony Bollaris is a multimedia artist who everyone but me seems to love. He’s doing a talk at the Met this afternoon ahead of an upcoming exhibition that’s been advertised across the city.

  ‘You guys go, I’m just going to stay here and take some pictures,’ I tell them.

  Scarlett makes a weak attempt to get me to come, but when she sees that I do genuinely just want to hang out in the park alone and take photos, she lets it go and I hug them both goodbye before wandering down the winding paths by myself, taking snaps of interesting things I see. I try to get into the zone: the pure state of focus, concentration and fulfilment I usually get when taking pictures, but even though I’m enjoying myself, I feel a bit distracted. I walk around for a bit, snapping away, before settling down on a bench.

  I flick through the photos I’ve taken. Some have turned out okay, but it’s not been my best session. A lot of them are quite amateurish – a pseudo-meaningful snap of a man sitting alone on a park bench and a close-up shot of a pretty flower. They’re the kind of photos I used to take as a teenager. I sigh. For some reason, I’m just not feeling it today. I linger on the park bench, not sure what to do next. I glance at my watch, it’s 3.30 p.m. I could call my parents since it’ll be 10.30 a.m. back home and they’re likely to be awake.

  I call the landline, which rings five or six times. I’m about to hang up when my mum answers.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hey Mum, it’s me!’

  ‘Polly, hello love,’ she answers. I smile to myself. No one else calls me love and it’s good to hear.

  ‘I was just washing the dishes, had to dry my hands. What are you up to? Is everything okay?’ she asks. I picture her standing in the kitchen, the phone pressed between her cheek and shoulder as she dries her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Yeah, everything’s fine,’ I say, gazing blankly across the park.

>   ‘You don’t sound fine, what’s up?’ My mum asks, a note of panic in her voice. Ever since I moved to the US, she’s always been slightly on edge about my well-being. For the first few months I lived in the States, she made me text her every day, as if a liberal arts college was a crime-infested ghetto. I had to tactfully suggest, after two months of fretful daily communication, that maybe we could go a day or two without talking. She was reluctant at first, but she got used to the idea. Now we chat a little bit in a family group chat during the week (my dad likes to send pictures of the garden) and we usually catch up on the phone at the weekends. Except last weekend, we missed calling each other. I was preoccupied with my photoshoot for Alicia and somehow, neither of us got around to calling. I mentioned starting a new job by text, but I didn’t go into too much detail. I’m not sure how my mum would feel about me flirting with women on the internet for a living.

  ‘How’s the new job? Is everything okay?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah… It’s fine, don’t worry,’ I insist.

  ‘Really? Are you sure? Because if it’s not working out, the vacancy at the surgery is still available. Gerald was saying yesterday that he needs someone to start ASAP and I thought of you. It would be a nice steady job. Something to get you started. You could stay at home for a bit, save up. Your dad and I would love to have you around.’

  ‘I know mum, maybe, but I want to give things more of a chance here first,’ I say, feeling a little guilty.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ My mum sighs. Like my dad, she’s not a city person and she doesn’t really understand how I could choose a busy, crowded, bustling metropolis like New York over the beautiful, peaceful, natural scenery of Cornwall. She doesn’t get that I like the adventure, the people, the unpredictability. Even though it’s not always easy in New York, your luck can change in a second and suddenly life can be spectacular. Whereas in Cornwall, gazing over the rolling fields, the days would just blur into one another and I’d always feel as though life was just passing me by.

  ‘So, what’s up? Talk to me,’ my mum says.

  ‘Oh, nothing’s up. I’ve just lost my photography mojo today,’ I tell her.

  ‘It’ll come back love. Is everything else alright?’ she asks. My mum has something of a sixth sense when it comes to knowing if something’s up with me. If I’m totally honest, although I’m finding working as a matchmaker kind of interesting, the weird clinical attitudes the agencies have to romance has got to me a bit. I think on some level, it is bothering me. It’s nothing like the love between my parents back home.

  ‘Mum,’ I venture, ‘You know when you met Dad, how did you know he was right for you?’

  ‘Umm…’ My mum goes quite for a moment, thinking. ‘I didn’t at first. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, I was just getting on with my gardening projects and work, then your dad came along. I thought he was handsome and interesting, but I didn’t think he’d stick around. He was just this funny bloke from New York. I thought he’d spend a few months here, get bored and be on the next plane back home, but then a few months turned into a year and before I realised it, we’d fallen for each other and he wasn’t going anywhere. Sometimes love comes along when you least expect it, I suppose.’

  I smile to myself. ‘So you didn’t have, like, a mental checklist you went through then?’

  ‘A mental checklist?’ My mum echoes.

  ‘Yeah, you know, earns such-and-such amount, early riser or night owl, six-foot-two.’

  My mum snorts with laughter. ‘No! Of course not! What are you talking about?’

  I tell her about my consultation at Elite Love Match.

  My mum howls with laughter. ‘You New Yorkers are crazy. You’re not ordering a robot with special hi-tech features, you’re talking about human beings. You can’t control love.’

  ‘That’s what I thought!’ I add. It feels good to hear my mum, who’s been married for twenty-five years, confirm my suspicion that the way Olly Corrigan does love is not realistic.

  My mum’s laughter finally dies down. ‘Honestly love, people who look for a relationship with a mental checklist are going to be single forever. It just doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought it seemed a bit much.’

  ‘It really is. It’s very extreme. I can’t wait to tell the girls at bridge about that,’ my mum says. ‘They’ll love that.’

  We chat for a bit longer before she hands me over to my dad, who asks about my news before telling me about a gong meditation class he’s started going to at the village hall and an ‘incredible’ new jam seller at the farmers’ market. He ends up having to dash to catch the market, which is held on Saturday mornings because he wants to get there ‘before all the good stuff goes’.

  I say goodbye and send them my love before hanging up, feeling more relieved than I expected to know that love isn’t just a checklist.

  Chapter 9

  The rest of the weekend is fairly uneventful. I catch up on sleep since I still haven’t quite got used to going from my irregular freelance routine to my regular nine-to-five employment. Gabe and I hang out in the flat on Sunday evening. Adam’s flown to Chicago for a business trip and so unlike most Sundays, which Gabe and Adam reserve for doing coupley things, he ends up in the flat with nothing better to do than relax with me. So, we snuggle up under a duvet on the sofa, order pizza and binge-watch horror movies – the perfect antidote to all the romance that’s become the theme of my life. By Monday morning, I feel sufficiently recharged and by the time I arrive at the office, clutching two coffees fresh from Starbucks for myself and Derek, I feel almost excited to be back at work and walking through Derek’s bizarre client lounge. I feel pumped – ready to fire off messages to unsuspecting women and lock down dates.

  ‘Morning Derek.’ I breeze into the office, where Derek is already sitting at his desk, a look of concentration etched onto his face as he eyes his monitor.

  ‘Morning Polly,’ he says, glancing over with a friendly smile.

  ‘Got you a coffee.’ I head over to his desk and place a latte down.

  ‘Thanks!’ Derek smiles, looking genuinely touched. ‘That was sweet of you,’ he says. ‘Did you, err, put any sugar in it?’

  ‘Oh, no, sorry.’

  ‘No problem.’ Derek pulls open his office drawer and takes out a box of sugar cubes. He pulls off the lid of the coffee cup and gently drops a few in, rotating his stirrer, while asking me about my weekend.

  ‘It was alright. I took some pictures, relaxed,’ I tell him as I take off my coat.

  ‘Ah yes, I almost forgot you were a photographer. How’s that going?’ Derek asks.

  ‘S’ok.’ I shrug as I drape my coat on the back of my desk chair. I don’t really have the energy to talk about my photography dreams to Derek. The two worlds of To the Moon & Back and photography aren’t exactly aligned.

  ‘How’s your wife doing?’ I ask.

  ‘Her knee’s been playing up a bit. She’s been experiencing some pain. She’s got an appointment with a doctor, so we’ll see how it goes,’ Derek says.

  ‘Ah, okay.’

  ‘Thanks for asking though,’ Derek says, frowning at his monitor. I get the feeling he also doesn’t really want to talk too much about his personal life at work.

  ‘I’ve revamped the website,’ he tells me. ‘Gave it a warmer friendlier feel, like you suggested.’

  ‘Really?’ I walk over to Derek’s desk to get a closer look. The homepage is displayed on the screen, and the agency now has the tagline, ‘A personalised dating service tailored to your individual needs’.

  ‘Nice!’ I scan the text on the homepage, which Derek has also peppered with the words ‘friendly’, ‘bespoke’, ‘warm’, even ‘gentle’.

  ‘We’ll see how it goes, eh?’ Derek says with a cheerful grin.

  ‘Fingers crossed!’ I smile back, holding up my crossed fingers as I head back to my desk.

  I sit down and log onto Match. I’m really hoping Andy Graham has finally received a message.
I sent a ton on Friday and I’m praying that at least one person’s got back to him. It’s been a whole week now and I haven’t even managed to strike up a conversation with anyone, let alone set up a date. For my first client, it’s not exactly going brilliantly.

  ‘Yes!’ I blurt out as I see a little ‘1’ hovering over Andy’s inbox. One message! Fantastic!

  Derek glances over, questioningly.

  ‘Just a message, for Andy,’ I explain.

  Derek nods and gets back to tweaking the website.

  I open Andy’s inbox to find a message from the stunning blonde woman whose profile I favourited last week.

  Katarina:

  Hello Andy,

  I love your profile!

  I think we might have quite a lot in common. It would be great to chat! Have you been on Match long?

  Don’t be a stranger.

  Xxx

  Katarina

  A lot in common? I raise an eyebrow, before clicking onto her page. She says she lives in Midtown and describes herself as a ‘professional model and actress’. She looks impossibly glamourous and half her pictures are high-end editorial shots or photos of her larking about backstage at New York Fashion Week. She lists her interests as ‘fashion, fine art, dancing and keeping fit’. What part of that is in any way in line with Andy’s passion for aviation museums or Second World War history? They hardly seem like a good match to me.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Derek asks, looking over expectantly.

  ‘Oh, err, great! Yeah, excellent!’ I lie, still trying to get my head around Katarina’s message.

  ‘Chatting to someone?’ Derek says, spotting the message open on my screen.

  ‘Erm…’ I hesitate, not sure whether I should reply. Katarina seems a bit (okay, a lot) out of Andy’s league and I don’t particularly want to set him up for failure. ‘Might be. Sort of,’ I reply vaguely.

  ‘Excellent. Andy could do with a date.’