Free Behaving Like Adults by Anna Maxted Page B

tanned, and I thought how fragile he was. It’s hard for men, being unbreakable.
    I wriggled closer, and I said, ‘Do you remember that chant, at school?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜â€œFirst the worst, second the best.”’
    â€˜No.’ Muffled into the pillow. Then, ‘Maybe. Yeah.’ He rolled over so he was half on his side. ‘Third the one with the hairy chest.’
    I pouted. ‘Ye-es, but maybe we should worry about that when we get to it.’
    Nick smiled and grabbed me and we spent a long time proving that second was, indeed, best.
    Maybe, I thought, it would be like that with Stuart.
    I spent two hours responding to joyful emails about the party before Claw and Nige rolled back from lunch, thumping on the locked door and frightening the life out of me. I said I hadn’t wanted to be disturbed, then got back to the post. I love this about our members. They’re paying us to provide a service and yet they’re appreciative of the tiniest frills. Well. Most of them are. I was on the last email when Elisabeth Stanton-Browne rang to complain about last week’s date night. Elisabeth S-B is high maintenance. And that’s an understatement. To describe Elisabeth as ‘high maintenance’, is to refer to the Alps as ‘hilly’.
    I didn’t mind. I saw her as a challenge. I just hoped there was a man in the world who was good enough. This time, she was sour that I’d put her with Martyn for her last date of the evening. I didn’t tell her – there was no excusing such stupidity – but
I
thought I was being clever, putting her with Martyn for her last date. I hoped they’d hit it off and go for a drink. This is how it works. We dissect everyone’sapplications, speak to them on the phone to find out more about them, and then, simply, we match. We meet at a bar every Tuesday and/or Wednesday night – each member attends
one
night a month – and every person is assigned four dates, each of which lasts twenty-five minutes.
    Originally, we had them lasting fifteen minutes, but it didn’t work. The pressure to impress was impossible, like having to justify your existence to an egg timer. Even the sweetest members came across as unbearable, ‘I earn six figures I scaled Everest with one foot taped to a coffee table my other watch is a Rolex I live in a townhouse in Chelsea and holiday in Cannes’.
    Twenty-five minutes is perfect. Enough time to relax, not enough time to go mad if you loathe someone. After every date, members tick their card, indicating whether they’re interested in seeing that respective date again as a friend or as a partner. At the end of the night, Claw, Nige and I conduct debriefing sessions. Although some members sneak off for debriefing sessions of their own.
    To me, debriefing was the most rewarding part of the job – it was when I discovered how wrong or right I’d been in my assessments. If a member was blushing and fluttery about a date, my heart cartwheeled, it was a glorious vicarious thrill, second only to when people fell in love. We hadn’t had a wedding yet, but we had a bunch of lasting relationships, and a slew of friendships. That made me proud.
Making
people’s lives. As yet, I hadn’t made Elisabeth’s life.
    â€˜That advertising guy, with the shaved head and trendy glasses, Michael—’
    â€˜Martyn?’
    â€˜Martyn, whatever. He was so strait-laced he could have been a priest. I have to say, Holly, I’m offended that you put me with him. I do have a sense of fun, you know. I do have a zany side. He had
no
side apart from a boring side. We had zero in common, it was painful. Occasionally a word was said that we both related to, and we
clung
to it.Travelling. Clubs. Air hostesses. We
clung
to those words for dear life!’
    I was intrigued to hear about her interest in air hostesses, but held back from enquiry. I said, ‘I’m