It's Got to Be Perfect: the memoirs of a modern-day matchmaker by Haley Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

find them more than just a socially acceptable name,’ I said as I returned, snatching the card from his hand and replacing it with his Dennis the Menace mug. I looked at Dennis then back at Matthew, then back at Dennis. He patted down his hair, but as soon as he removed his hand, it sprang back up.
    ‘So what happens next?’ he asked.
    ‘They meet me for a drink and a chat about what they’re looking for. Then I match them.’
    ‘And then?’
    ‘Everyone lives happily ever after.’
    He nodded his head from side to side as though, he were weighing up his left and right brain. ‘How are you going to match them?’
    ‘They tell me what they want and I give it to them.’
    He scrunched up his nose. ‘But most of us don’t actually know what we want. We just think we do.’
    I sighed. ‘I’m not in the mood for one of your Marxist the-media-constructs-our-thoughts lectures.’
    He continued, ignoring my protests. ‘Attraction is an entirely biochemical reaction set off by a combination of characteristics to which our genetic programming and social conditioning respond.’
    ‘And what’s wrong with that?’
    ‘It’s flawed. Look at the divorce rate.’
    ‘We don’t marry everyone we fancy.’
    ‘Thankfully.’
    I glared at him. ‘There’s more to love than attraction. We aren’t robots driven by neurotransmitters and hormones. We have something called free will. We can think independently from our physical drives and conditioning.’
    His full-body laugh caused him to spill coffee all over the table. It quickly seeped onto the business cards. I dabbed them with my sleeve but, already, the corners had started to curl.
    After he’d skulked off in a huff, I looked back down at the cards and reshuffled them. I then gazed out of the window at the sky, hoping to be the recipient of some kind of divine inspiration. But, instead, a bird dropping landed on the pane. I watched the greyish gloop slide down the glass, undigested berries lagging behind and I wondered if I too might have bitten off more than I could chew.
    ‘If we sieve through the hookers and the sugar daddies, I’m sure we’ll find some decent people here tonight,’ Caro observed, scanning the bar. We were at Zuma in Knightsbridge, a favourite with the “chilled-out jet-set crowd”, according to Harper’s magazine.
    I took in the ultra-hip minimalist interior and smoothed down my dress, trying to act as though it had been thrown on nonchalantly, rather than the result of three hours of unsatisfactory pontification. Caro leaned over the glass bar, her red Gucci dress nipped in at the waist and plunging at the neckline. Three barmen leapt towards her, their attention darting between her Bambi brown eyes and her perfectly plumped cleavage.
    ‘We need some cocktails,’ she declared, smoothing her sleek dark bob behind her ears.
    Following a flamboyant display of glass juggling, and some kind of cocktail-shaker courtship dance, eventually we were presented with two rose-petal Martinis. The baby-faced barman grinned victoriously and Caro leaned over the bar and kissed him on the lips.
    I pulled her back. ‘Caro.’
    ‘What?’
    I shook my head.
    She was still grinning when I took her hand and led her away.
    ‘I’d prefer us to focus on the men who’ve actually gone through puberty.’
    She threw a glance over her shoulder and then strode off towards a table of suited men who appeared to be engaged in a serious work-type conversation. When she reached the table, her presence diverted their concentration like a resistor in a circuit. Once she’d delivered her opening line, their corporate faces cracked into smiles, and then the best-looking one pulled up a chair for her to join them.
    Watching from the bar, and sipping my Martini, I wondered where her self-assurance came from. Was it a case of lots of cuddles as a child? Or perhaps, as I once wondered after an especially interesting episode of Doctor Phil , it was a pseudo-esteem masking a