by Haley Hill
‘It’s for my research.’
‘Ah, yes, of course. Research. Found the answers yet, Super Ellie?’
I stopped outside a pizza shop. ‘Not yet,’ I said, eyeing up a slice. It was only eleven o’clock but I hadn’t had any breakfast.
‘One plain slice, please,’ I said, handing the vendor ten dollars.
‘You’re eating pizza without me?’ Matthew asked.
‘Sorry,’ I said, grabbing the slice.
He tutted. ‘I feel so betrayed.’
I took a big bite. ‘Sorry,’ I said again, with my mouth full. ‘I’ll save you some. So where are you today? Having your legs waxed?’
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Seaweed wrap.’
I wiped my mouth with the napkin. ‘You’re still on strike?’
‘Yep.’
‘And Lucy’s OK with that?’
‘Of course not, she’s going nuts. Her boss said he’d fire her if she isn’t back in the office next week. Or he might have said, “finger her”, I can’t quite remember.’
I sighed. ‘You don’t really want her to get fired, do you?’
‘The further away she is from that smarmy twat, the better chance we have of saving our marriage.’
I shook my head. ‘So by abandoning your kids, and forcing your wife out of a job, you’re actually helping your marriage?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘or, worst-case scenario, I’ll lose two inches off my thighs, which will benefit me when I’m single.’
‘Seriously, Matthew. There has to be a better way.’ I took another mouthful of pizza.
He laughed. ‘My way is working just fine,’ he said, clearly keen to terminate the topic. ‘So,’ he continued, ‘who’s the next expert on your hit list?’
I wiped my mouth again. It appeared I had lost the ability to eat and walk at the same time. ‘An anthropologist. Susan Villecox,’ I said.
‘Willy cocks?’
‘No, Villecox,’ I corrected.
He giggled.
I rolled my eyes. ‘You’re such a child.’
He carried on laughing. ‘It’s not my fault all relationship experts sound like sexual deviants.’
I ignored him and continued. ‘She’s spent the past twenty years studying romantic pairing amongst humans and primates.’
He sniggered. ‘I bet she lives in Long Island.’
I glanced down at the remainder of the pizza and then shoved it into my mouth.
Matthew was still laughing. ‘She does, doesn’t she? Please tell me I’m right.’
I swallowed. ‘Just because you guessed where she lives, which is hardly surprising considering it’s in the state of New York, doesn’t make her research any less credible.’
Eventually, he stopped laughing.
‘Make sure you do save me some pizza,’ he said. ‘I might be out sooner than you think.’
Chapter 12
On the train to Long Island, I downloaded Mandi’s report onto my phone. She’d listed hers and all the other matchmakers’ interview results in various tables and charts and carefully highlighted why each of our clients had chosen to divorce or separate.
Quickly realising that there was enough reading material to last an entire train trip around China, I jumped straight to the summary and scan-read it. It was the final paragraph that shocked me the most, which stated that over seventy per cent of the women and over eighty per cent of the men interviewed said they wished that they could have saved their relationship.
I called Mandi straight away.
‘Hey, Ellie! It’s so great to hear from you! How are you? How are the Americans? How is Nick? How was the divorce attorney? Have you read the report?’
‘Yes, I’ve just read it.’
‘It’s so depressing, isn’t it, Ellie? We are supposed to be helping our clients. We’re supposed to be making them happy. Helping them find love. And instead all we’re doing is making them miserable. Setting them up for heartbreak.’ She paused. ‘I’m so depressed, Ellie. This is so depressing.’ She let out a long deep sigh. ‘And yet another divorce notification yesterday.’ She paused. ‘Harriet and Jeremy. Can you believe it? I nearly cried.’
My stomach flipped. ‘What? No way. You mean the other Harriet and her husband Julian surely? Not Harriet and Jeremy?’
She sighed. ‘No, Harriet and Jeremy. He called me yesterday. He’s filing for divorce. He sounded gutted. I tried to talk him out of it but he wasn’t interested. He mentioned something about a man called Matthew who keeps taking Harriet to spas. I never thought she was the type to cheat, did you? And they make such a beautiful couple. I can remember the day he proposed like it was yesterday. The poem he wrote her. They were so happy. Oh, Ellie, this is beyond depressing. If Jeremy and Harriet can’t make it, then what hope do the rest of us have? What are we going to do?’
I watched Manhattan fading away into the distance.
‘Mandi, take a deep breath,’ I said. ‘Divorce isn’t an airborne virus.’
She sighed. ‘At least if it was, we could quarantine those infected.’
I laughed, imagining Mandi erecting makeshift Ebola-style isolation units in our offices.
‘We don’t need to inform the World Health Organisation just yet,’ I said. ‘As far as I’m aware no one has died from divorce.’
Mandi sighed again. ‘But, Ellie, divorcees are dead. They are dead from the soul down. Their spirit has gone.’
I frowned, wondering where in the body Mandi imagined the soul to be located. Somewhere at the top, I reasoned, for her comment to make any sense.
‘There is life after divorce, Mandi,’ I said.
‘I know, I just can’t bear to think about it. All those poor people, heartbroken and lonely. If Steve ever left me, I would simply die.’
I smirked, recalling her drunken sharing last month when she detailed Steve’s most irritating habits.
‘You wouldn’t miss the lip smacking when he eats though, would you? Or the slurping noise he makes when he drinks his tea.’
She giggled. ‘Or the way he scratches his balls through his jogging pants.’
‘Or the fact that he calls them “jogging pants”.’
She laughed. ‘OK, so no marriage is perfect, but still, the report showed that most of our clients were happier married than they were divorced, so how do we fix this?’
‘That’s precisely what I plan to figure out.’
She paused for a moment. ‘I have every faith in you, Ellie.’ Then she quickly added, ‘Oh, by the way, did you know Dominic is hacking into your email?’
I laughed. ‘Of course he is. I wouldn’t expect anything less.’
Sexual deviant or not, Susan Villecox had an impressive Long-Island residence. The wrap-around glass sliding doors and porcelain tiled floors were more befitting a Hollywood movie star than an academic famed for her introversion. She greeted me wearing a Donna Karan trouser suit and a Cartier diamond choker. Her grey hair was swept up off her face into an elegant chignon.
‘Such a pleasure to meet you,’ she said, smiling as she took my hand. ‘What a beautiful girl you are. A quintessential English rose.’
I smiled back at her, wondering if she had mislaid her glasses.
‘Do sit down, my darling.’ She gestured for me to take a seat on a sleek white sofa. ‘Let me fix you a drink.’
She returned with two drinks and handed me one. Then she sat down, kicked off her shoes to reveal a perfect pedicure and lifted her legs up onto the sofa.
‘So, tell me, Ellie, what would you like to know?’
I took a sip of my drink. It tasted like gin, only stronger. ‘I’m trying to understand more about the reasons we divorce.’
She nodded.
‘I’ve seen so many of my clients suffer, and I want to help them.’
She regarded me for a moment. ‘And you? Are you suffering?’
I took another sip. ‘Not right now,’ I said.
She laughed. ‘To love is to suffer,’ she said.
I reached for the notepad and pen in my bag.
‘Woody Allen said that,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to write it down.’
I put my bag back down and felt my cheeks flush.
‘He was right though,’ she continued. ‘It’s in our nature to suffer, or to anticipate suffering when we are not.’ She took another sip of her drink.’ More often the anticipation of suffering is more painful than the suffering itself.’
I stared at her for a moment trying to make sense of her words.
She laughed to herself. ‘Humans have been falling in and out of love for centuries. This kind of suffering is nothing new.’
‘But we’re supposed to be evolving, aren’t we?’
‘Indeed, that is part of the problem.’
I took another sip, hoping that the gin might help decode her riddles.
She continued. ‘We are complex creatures, hard-wired for a world that no longer exists. We have drives that have been embedded in our brains for hundreds of generations. Yet we expect to conform to a fixed set of values that have been determined by society.’
Immediately, I imagined Matthew sitting next to me, topping up his drink and nodding.
Susan placed her glass onto a side table.
‘Our drives and values are at odds,’ she continued. ‘And where there is tension, there is suffering.’
‘So how do we stop our drives and values being at odds?’
She raised her eyebrows and stared at me. ‘How do you think?’
I looked down at the floor, then back at her. ‘Change them?’
She smiled. ‘Precisely, Ellie.’
I took another sip. ‘But we can’t adapt our drives, so we have to adapt our values?’
Her smile dropped. ‘You want to tell our idealistic society to tolerate infidelity?’
I shrugged my shoulders.
She laughed. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘sexual jealousy is just as strong as the drive to stray, so the tension would still be in place. Try again?’
I wrapped my fingers on the side of my glass. ‘So if we can’t adjust our values, then we have to adapt our drives.’ I took another sip. ‘But our drives are an intrinsic part of us. We can’t alter them.’
Susan smiled. ‘Ah, but we can, Ellie.’
I scrunched up my mouth. ‘Drugs?’
She smiled and then nodded at my glass. ‘Intimacy is enhanced every day by socially acceptable drugs such as alcohol, prescription medications like Viagra and illegal drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy. Neurochemical enhancement is probably the closest to a solution for adapting our drives to suit our values.’ She leaned over to the table and then handed me a business card. ‘Professor Sheldon is at the forefront of research in this area. Give him a call.’
I smiled and tucked the card into the side pocket of my handbag.
Once I’d finished my drink, Susan was quick to show me out. Just as she was about to close the door, I turned back to her.
‘Is there any other advice you could offer me?’ I asked.
She smiled and regarded me for a moment. ‘You want everyone to be happy and in love. That is an admiral endeavour.’ She looked out beyond me and up at the sky. ‘However, if we lived in a world where all our wishes were granted without any effort or pain, how would we ever learn to grow, as an individual or as a species?’
Nick arrived home soon after me, but not before I’d laid the table and popped a bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge. He rushed into the kitchen, then grabbed me round the waist and kissed me on the lips.
‘Evening, my gorgeous, gorgeous girl,’ he said. ‘I missed you today.’ Then he stepped back and tasted his lips. ‘Have you been drinking already?’
I smiled. ‘You know what the academics are like. They love a tipple.’
Nick shook his head. ‘Just don’t make a habit of it. Daytime drinking is a slippery slope.’
I laughed. ‘Yes, it’s much better for the liver if you concentrate your fifty unit consumption to between the hours of 6 p.m. and midnight like you do.’
He smirked and then checked his watch. ‘One minute past six,’ he said, before opening the fridge and nosing around. Straight away, he spotted the bottle I’d bought and grinned.
I pointed back at the fridge. ‘I got us fillet steaks too, spent a month’s rent at Lobel’s.’
He looked at me, then back at the fridge and cocked his head. ‘Are you feeling guilty about something?’
I shook my head and laughed. ‘I thought it would be nice for us to celebrate the first day in your new job.’
He grabbed the wine and turned to me. ‘Have I told you how much I love you, Mrs Rigby?’
When we sat down to eat, I asked Nick how his first day had gone.
He took a sip of wine. ‘I just know I’m going to love it. My team is super-intelligent and dynamic. I’ve already learned so much just working with them for a day.’
I took a sip too. ‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘And how many of you are in the team?’
He chewed his steak and then swallowed. ‘Just three of us: Jenna, Amy and me.’
I took another sip.
He continued. ‘You’d love them. Jenna has a first from Harvard, she’s only twenty-eight and she’s already a Director. Amy has an MBA from Princeton. They are both so funny too. Jenna had me in stitches today when she was telling me about this creepy guy on the floor above. Apparently, he’s got the biggest crush on her. She said that he—’
I cleared my throat. I’d heard enough about crush-inducing Jenna and super-brain Amy. ‘And the offices, are they nice?’ I asked.
Nick took a gulp of wine. ‘They are so cool. You can order a latte on an iPad. There are fridges stocked with drinks and snacks, you can just help yourself. And there are fresh doughnuts delivered every afternoon. Jenna says that when—’
‘I’ll have to pop by one day,’ I interrupted, ‘and try a doughnut?’
Nick speared another chunk of steak. ‘I’d rather settle in a bit first,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t want people to think I’ve got a needy wife to contend with.’
I went to speak but accidentally breathed in some wine and started coughing.
‘You all right?’ he asked, shoving the steak into his mouth.
I coughed one more time to clear my throat. ‘Fine,’ I said.
After he’d gone on to list the multiple team-building social occasions he’d diarised, he eventually got around to asking how my day had been.
‘What was her name, the anthropologist?’
‘Susan Villecox.’
‘Willy cocks?’
‘Oh, don’t you start. I had enough of that from Matthew.’
Nick rolled his eyes. ‘I thought we’d left him in London?’
I sighed. ‘We did. I mean, we didn’t leave him there. But I didn’t pack him in my suitcase either, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘Wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, you don’t do much without him right beside you, do you? Sometimes I wonder if I haven’t married you both.’
I screwed up my face. ‘What? I hardly see him any more, remember.’
Nick refilled his glass and let out a deep sigh. ‘Anyway, moving on, so did you learn anything from this willy cocks lady?’
I shook my head from side to side. ‘She said that we can’t avoid suffering. And that our values are at odds with our drives.’
Nick frowned. ‘Whose values? Yours and mine?’
‘No, humankind’s.’
Nick nodded and chewed some more.
I continued. ‘Ancient males and females pair-bonded to raise children.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘What, no effeminate male BFF hanging around too?’
I continued, ignoring him. ‘However, according to her research, during that time the couples were routinely unfaithful.’
Nick took another mouthful of steak. ‘I thought it was just the men who were h
ard-wired to stray?’
I laughed. ‘Nope, the women were at it too. Having a romp in the bushes with a genetically superior male and then fooling her partner into raising his children. It was for the better of the species, Susan Villecox told me.’
He chuckled. ‘Lucky for me there are no genetically superior males then.’
I smirked. ‘Whereas I need to keep a close eye on any girls younger and more fertile-looking than me.’
Nick looked down. It was as though the word ‘fertile’ had sucked us back to London, back to the unfilled nest that we had left behind.
I reached across the table and squeezed his hand.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘we don’t have anything to worry about. If we keep loving each other, then that’s all that matters.’
Nick sat back and laughed. ‘If you believe that, Ellie, then what’s this mission all about?’
I looked down at my plate and closed my knife and fork together. ‘To stop people falling out of love.’
Nick shook his head, smiling like one might at a three-year-old who had just declared she wants to be a princess when she grows up.
‘And what experts have you got lined up for tomorrow?’ he asked.
I leaned back and stretched my arms above my head. ‘None. I’ve had enough information for today, I need to let it all settle. I’ll probably take a stroll around Central Park and make a plan.’
Nick smirked again.
‘What? Why are you laughing?’
He stood up to clear the plates. ‘Nothing. It’s just nice to see you wind down a bit and take some time for yourself.’
I sat up and folded my arms. ‘I’m not taking time for myself,’ I said. ‘I’m contemplating the future happiness of society, which incidentally,’ I added with a smirk, ‘is far more constructive than eating doughnuts and gossiping with Jenna and Amy.’
He leaned over and tickled me until I opened my arms again. ‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘I’m serious.’
He bent down and kissed me on the forehead. ‘You know I could never fall out of love with you.’
I looked up at him and smiled. Then I refilled our glasses, realising that this might be an opportune time to introduce Mandi’s weekend plans for us.
When Nick sat back down, I shuffled up next to him.
‘Are you up for some fun this weekend?’ I asked.