Love Your Life Read online

  “I know,” she says equably. “But I don’t want to date my sister. Or you. Sorry, babe. You know I love your halloumi crumble.” She reaches out an arm to squeeze my waist affectionately. “But I want someone I can roast a chicken with.”

  She clicks on Filters and a box appears with four headings: Yes Please!, Don’t Mind, Not Ideal, and Deal-breaker.

  “Deal-breaker,” says Sarika firmly, starting to type Vegetarian in the box. After two letters, the word Vegetarian autofills and she clicks on it.

  “You can’t rule out all vegetarians,” I say in utter horror. “It’s prejudiced. It’s…is it even legal?”

  “Ava, lighten up!” retorts Sarika. “Now, watch. This bit is fun. Apply filter.”

  As she clicks, the photos on the screen start to shimmer. Then, one by one, big red crosses appear in front of faces, scattered over the screen. I glance at the cute guy—and feel a nasty lurch. There’s a cross in front of his face. He looks as though he’s been sentenced to execution.

  “What’s going on?” I demand anxiously. “What is this?”

  “It’s called ‘Last Chance,’ ” explains Sarika. “I can reprieve any of them by clicking on them.”

  “Reprieve him!” I say, pointing to my favorite. “Reprieve him!”

  “Ava, you don’t know anything about him,” says Sarika, rolling her eyes.

  “He looks nice!”

  “But he’s vegetarian,” says Sarika, and presses Done.

  The screen shimmers again and all the guys with crossed-out faces disappear. The remaining guys swirl around the screen and then assemble again in neat rows of photos, with new ones taking the place of the vanished.

  “Great,” says Sarika with satisfaction. “I’m getting somewhere.”

  I stare at the screen, slightly traumatized by this culling process.

  “It’s brutal,” I say. “It’s heartless.”

  “Better than swiping,” puts in Nell.

  “Exactly!” Sarika nods. “It’s scientific. There are more than eight hundred possible filters on the site. Height, job, habits, location, political views, education…The algorithms were developed at NASA, apparently. You can process five hundred guys in, like, no time.” She consults her list again. “Right, on to the next. No one over six foot three.” She starts typing again. “I’ve tried super-tall. Doesn’t work with me.”

  She presses Apply Filter, three red crosses appear, and within seconds a new selection of guys is gazing out from the screen.

  “Apparently one woman kept on applying filters until there was only one guy left on the screen, and she contacted him and they’re still together,” Sarika adds, scrolling down the typed list on her phone. “That’s your ideal.”

  “It still feels wrong,” I say, watching the screen in dismay. “This can’t be the way.”

  “It’s the only way,” Sarika contradicts me. “Basically everybody dates online now, right? Eve-ry-bo-dy. Millions of people. Billions of people.”

  “I guess so,” I say warily.

  “Everybody dates online,” Sarika reiterates clearly, as though she’s giving a TED Talk. “It’s like going to a cocktail party and everybody in the world’s standing there, trying to catch your eye. That’s never going to work! You need to narrow it down. Ergo.” She gestures at the screen.

  “ASOS is bad enough,” puts in Nell. “I searched for white shirt yesterday. You know how many I got? Twelve hundred and sixty-four. I was like, I don’t have time for this shit. I’ll take the first one. Whatever.”

  “Exactly,” says Sarika. “And that’s a shirt, not a life partner. No more than ten minutes from tube station,” she adds, typing briskly. “I’ve had enough of schlepping to flats in the middle of nowhere.”

  “You’re ruling out guys who live more than ten minutes from the tube?” My jaw sags. “Is that even a thing?”

  “You can create your own filters, and if they like them they add them to the website,” Sarika explains. “They’re considering my one about hair-washing frequency.”

  “But what if the perfect guy lives eleven minutes from the tube station?” I know I’m sounding agitated, but I can’t help it. I can already see him, drinking his coffee in the sunshine, wearing his cycle shorts, listening to his Bach playlist, longing for someone just like Sarika.

  “He’ll lie about it,” says Sarika comfortably. “He’ll put ten minutes. It’s fine.”

  She’s really not getting the point.

  “Sarika, listen,” I say in frustration. “What if there’s an amazing guy who’s six foot five and vegetarian and he lives twenty minutes away from Crouch End…and you’ve ruled him out? This is nuts!”

  “Ava, stop freaking out,” says Sarika calmly. “You have to have some deal-breakers.”

  “No you don’t,” I say adamantly. “I don’t have any deal-breakers. I want a good man, that’s all. A decent, civilized human being. I don’t care what he looks like, what his job is, where he lives…”

  “What about if he hates dogs?” says Sarika, raising her eyebrows.

  I’m silenced.

  He couldn’t hate dogs, because only really strange, sad people don’t like dogs.

  “OK,” I concede at last. “That’s my only deal-breaker. He has to like dogs. But that’s the only one. Literally.”

  “What about golf?” chips in Nell craftily.

  Damn her. Golf is my Achilles’ heel. I’ll admit I have an irrational loathing for the game. And the outfits. And the people who play it.

  But in my defense, it’s because I used to live near the snootiest golf club in the world. There was a public footpath across the land, but if you even tried to go for a walk on it, all you got was furious people in matching sweaters flapping their arms at you, telling you to be quiet, or go back, were you an idiot?

  It wasn’t just me who found it stressful; the council had to have a word with the golf club. Apparently they brought in a new system of signs and it’s all fine now. But by then we’d moved away, and I’d already decided I was allergic to golf.

  However, I’m not admitting that now, because I don’t like to think of myself as a prejudiced person.

  “I don’t have a problem with golf,” I say, lifting my chin. “And anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, two matching lists of attributes aren’t love. Algorithms aren’t love.”

  “Algorithms are the only way,” says Sarika, squinting at the screen. “Mmm, he’s nice.”

  “OK, where’s the algorithm that tells me what a guy smells like?” I retort, more passionately than I intended. “Where’s the algorithm that tells me how he laughs or the way he ruffles a dog’s head? That’s what matters to me, not all these irrelevant details. I could fall in love with a scientist or a farmer. He could be five feet tall or seven feet. As long as there was chemistry. Chemistry.”

  “Oh, chemistry,” says Sarika, exchanging grins with Nell.

  “Yes, chemistry!” I retort defiantly. “That’s what matters! Love is…is…” I grope for words. “It’s the ineffable, mysterious connection that happens between two humans when they connect, and they feel it…and they just know.”

  “Ava.” Sarika regards me fondly. “You are a love.”

  “She’s getting in practice for her romantic-writing course,” suggests Nell. “You realize Lizzy Bennet had a zillion deal-breakers, Ava? No arrogant snooty types. No idiot clergymen.” Nell nods at Sarika. “Put that one in.”

  “No idiot clergymen.” Sarika pretends to type, grinning at me over the top of her laptop. “Shall I put, Only those with stately homes need apply?”

  “Very funny.” I sink down next to her on the sofa and Sarika puts a conciliatory hand on mine.

  “Ava. Babe. We’re different, that’s all. We want different things. I want to bypass all the time-wasting. Whereas you want…chemistry.
”

  “Ava wants magic,” says Nell.

  “Not magic.” I flinch slightly, because my friends always make out I’m too romantic and rosy-tinted, and I’m not. “What I want is—” I break off, my thoughts a little jumbled.

  “What do you want?” asks Nell, and she sounds genuinely curious. At last I draw breath.

  “I want a guy who looks at me…and I look at him…and it’s all there. We don’t have to say anything. It’s all there.”

  I break off into a misty silence. It has to be possible. Love has to be possible—otherwise, what are we all doing?

  “I want that too.” Sarika nods, breaking the spell. “Only within ten minutes from a tube station.”

  Nell guffaws with laughter and I raise a reluctant smile.

  “I’ve got a date tonight, actually,” I reveal. “That’s why I can’t stay.”

  “A date?” Sarika’s head jerks up. “You’re telling us this now?”

  “I thought you were packing for Italy,” says Nell, almost accusingly.

  “I am packing. After my date.”

  “Exciting!” Sarika’s eyes sparkle at me. “Where did you meet him, at the ice cream social?”

  “No, at the assembly rooms,” says Nell. “He helped her when her carriage wheel got stuck.”

  “He wrote a note with his quill pen and stuck it into her bonnet.” Sarika giggles.

  “Ha ha.” I lift my eyes to heaven. “Online, obviously. But I didn’t set up a million artificial deal-breakers, I went by instinct.”

  “Instinct?” echoes Nell. “Meaning…”

  “His eyes,” I say proudly. “There’s a look in his eyes.”

  After the disastrous date with Seth, I came up with a new theory: It’s all in the eyes. I never liked Seth’s eyes. That should have told me. So I went online and searched for a guy with gorgeous eyes…and I found one! I’m actually quite excited. I keep looking at his picture and feeling a real connection with him.

  “You can tell a lot about someone from his eyes,” concedes Sarika. “Let’s see.”

  I summon up a photo and look at it lovingly for a moment before showing it to Sarika, then Nell. “He’s called Stuart,” I tell them. “He’s in IT.”

  “Nice eyes,” concedes Nell. “I’ll give you that.”

  Nice? Is that all she can say? They’re wonderful eyes! They crinkle with warmth and intelligence and wit, even in a tiny photo on a phone. I’ve never seen such amazing eyes, and I’ve looked at a lot of dating profiles….

  “Harold!” Sarika suddenly shrieks, and I leap up in alarm. “That’s my chicken wrap! Bad dog!”

  While we’ve been talking, Harold has silently crept over to Sarika’s side of the sofa and swiped her Pret A Manger wrap out of her bag, still in its plastic. Now he’s looking from her to me to Nell as though to say, “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Harold!” I chide. “Drop!” I take a step toward him and he backs away a step. “Drop!” I repeat, without much conviction.

  Harold’s bright eyes travel around the room again, as though he’s assessing the situation.

  “Drop.” I try to sound commanding. “Drop.”

  “Drop!” echoes Nell, her alto voice booming round the room.

  I lean slowly toward Harold and his eyes follow me, inch by inch, until I make a sudden grab. But I’m too slow. I’m always too slow for Harold. He scrabbles and slides to the corner behind the TV where no one can get him, then starts chewing furiously at the wrap, pausing every so often to regard the three of us with an expression of triumph.

  “Bloody dog,” says Nell.

  “Shouldn’t have left it in my bag,” says Sarika, shaking her head. “Harold, don’t eat the plastic, you total moron.”

  “Harold?” A familiar voice comes wafting in from the hall. “Where’s that gorgeous dog?”

  A moment later, Maud appears round the door, holding the hands of two of her children, Romy and Arthur. “Sorry I’m late,” she declaims in her theatrical way. “Nightmare at school pickup. I haven’t seen Harold for ages,” she adds, turning to beam at him. “Is he looking forward to his little holiday?”

  “He’s not a gorgeous dog,” says Sarika ominously. “He’s a bad, naughty dog.”

  “What did he do?” says Arthur, his eyes lighting up in delight.

  Harold is a bit of a legend in Arthur’s year-two class. He once starred at show-and-tell, where he swiped the school teddy, escaped into the playground, and had to be rounded up by three teachers.

  “He stole my chicken wrap,” says Sarika, and both children roar with laughter.

  “Harold steals everything,” proclaims Romy, who is four. “Harold steals all the food. Harold, here!” She holds out her hand encouragingly, and Harold lifts his head as though to say “Later,” then resumes chomping.

  “Wait, where’s Bertie?” says Maud, as though only just noticing. “Arthur, where’s Bertie?”

  Arthur looks blank, as though he’d never even realized he had a brother called Bertie, and Maud clicks her tongue. “He’ll be somewhere,” she says vaguely.

  Maud’s basic conundrum in life is that she has three children but only two hands. Her ex, Damon, is a barrister. He works insanely hard and is pretty generous on the money front but not on the showing-up front. (She says, on the plus side, at least her kids’ lives won’t be ruined by helicopter parenting.)

  “Sarika,” she begins now. “You don’t happen to be driving through Muswell Hill at five o’clock on Thursday, do you? Only I need someone to pick up Arthur from a playdate, and I just wondered…”

  She flutters her eyelashes at Sarika, and I grin inwardly. Maud asks favors all the time. Will we mind her children/take in her shopping/research train times/tell her what tire pressure her car should be at? This isn’t since becoming a single parent—this is ever since I’ve known her. I still remember meeting Maud at choir. This amazing-looking girl with tawny, mesmerizing eyes came over, and her very first words to me were, “You couldn’t possibly buy me a pint of milk, could you?”

  Of course I said yes. It’s almost impossible to refuse Maud. It’s like her superhero power. But you can resist if you try, and we’ve all learned, the hard way. If any of us said yes to all Maud’s requests, we’d basically become her full-time bondslaves. So we’ve informally agreed on a rough ratio of one to ten.

  “No, Maud,” says Sarika, without missing a beat. “I couldn’t. I work, remember?”

  “Of course,” Maud says with no rancor. “I just wondered if perhaps you had the afternoon off. Ava—”

  “Italy,” I remind her.

  “Of course.” Maud nods fervently. “Impossible. I see that.”

  She’s always so charming, you want to say yes. She should basically run the country, because she could persuade anyone to do anything. But instead she runs her children’s ridiculously complicated social lives, plus an online furniture-upcycling business, which she says is going to start making a profit any month now.

  “Well, never mind,” she says. “Shall I make some tea?”

  “You didn’t ask me,” comes Nell’s voice, upbeat but just a little tense. “Don’t leave me out, Maud!”

  As I turn to look at Nell, she’s smiling broadly enough—but in her Nell-ish way. It’s a determined smile, Nell has. A strong smile. It says, “Just for now, I’m not going to punch you, although I can’t speak for the next five minutes.”

  “Don’t leave me out,” she repeats. And she’s kind of joking—but she’s not. I force myself not to glance at her cane in the corner, because she’s having a good patch at the moment and we don’t bring up the subject except when she does. We’ve learned that over these last few years.

  “Nell!” Maud looks stricken. “I’m so sorry. What an oversight. Will you pick up Arthur for me?”

  “No,�
�� shoots back Nell. “Sod off. Do your own chores.”

  Sarika snuffles with laughter, and I can’t help grinning.

  “Of course,” replies Maud, in the same earnest way. “I totally understand. By the way, Nell, my sweet, I meant to say, there’s a revolting-looking man standing by your car, writing a note. Shall I have a word?”

  At once, Sarika lifts her head and glances at me. Sensing the atmosphere, Harold gives an ominous whine.

  Nell frowns. “Does he look like a miserable git?”

  “Yes. Gray trousers. Mustache. That kind of thing.”

  “It’s that bastard John Sweetman,” says Nell. “Moved in a month ago. He’s always on at me. He wants to have that space for unloading his shopping. He knows I’ve got a blue badge, but…” She shrugs.

  “No bloody way,” says Sarika, clapping her laptop shut and getting on her feet. “These people!”

  “You stay here, Nell,” I say. “We’re on it.”

  “You don’t need to fight my battles for me,” says Nell gruffly.

  “Not for you. With you.” I squeeze her shoulder and follow the others out into the forecourt of Nell’s block, our faces equally set and determined.

  “Hello, good evening, is there a problem?” Maud is already greeting the man in her posh boarding-school voice, and I see him taking in her appearance, a little stunned.

  I mean, she’s quite a sight. Six feet tall in platforms, trailing red hair, drifty skirt, two equally stunning red-haired children at her sides, and a third clambering onto her shoulders from the top of a nearby 4X4. (That’s where Bertie was.)

  “Spider-Man!” he yells, before climbing back onto the car roof.

  “Is there a problem?” Maud repeats. “I believe my friend is parked here entirely legally, and writing this unfounded note would count as—”

  “Harassment,” chimes in Sarika deftly. She’s whipped out her phone and is taking photos of the guy. “Harassment on several counts. How many letters is it you’ve written to my client?”

  The man’s eyes bulge at the word “client,” but he doesn’t retreat.