The Soulmate Agency Read online

  She pursed her lips and her strident voice rang out again, “My step mother’s a perfect aristocrat with an honourable pedigree and a tongue like a double edged razor. She managed to dispose of me to boarding school within a month of her arrival and believe me when I say that holidays with her were total purgatory. My father may be one of the landed gentry, but he never let me forget that he wanted me to be a boy and my step-mother continually gloated over the fact that I’d never be Lady Hardcastle as that privilege would be reserved for her son’s wife.”

  She flapped her feet back and forth narrowly avoiding cracking the wooden soles of her shoes together. “I suppose you’re all thinking that I got a good education out of it.”

  She laughed, it was like listening to a wheezing braying donkey with sinusitis. “Good education! I learnt to seek the corner beds in dormitories and to fight for myself. I also learnt French, German and Italian and how to walk with a straight back, but not much more.”

  She suddenly smiled and it transformed her melancholic monologue into a living story. “That is until I was in Suffolk, there I learnt how to really play hockey and joined the radio club. I suppose you could say the hockey allowed me to express my aggression and anger, whatever it did I enjoyed it then and I enjoy it now. I played in the England under twenties for two years and still coach a local school team. The radio club gave me an interest in engineering and the one sensible decision I got out of my father was to allow me to take up an engineering apprenticeship rather than go to university. Tell the truth by the time I was sixteen I’d had enough of institutions and would have eloped with the butler rather than go to another one. Mark you if it meant staying out of their way he’d have funded me for a trip to the moon.”

  She sniggered at her own joke. “I did get a degree in Engineering in the end, the hard way through night school, and currently work for Authentik-Sound, the same firm I joined as an apprentice. It’s had a couple of take-overs over the years; however it is still a genuine British company.”

  She suddenly dug her hands into her deep skirt pockets. “The company specialises in up-market hi-fi equipment and I design and built prototypes that are later used as models for production. That’s not production as you know it as all our stuff is hand-built. I suppose I most well known product is the AS2240-XRB digital amplifier. It’s regarded as the bench-mark digital amplifier for classical hi-fi buffs and we sell it world-wide. I also designed our hybrid amplifier that has a digital integrated circuit front end and a class B valve amplifier on the back-end to smooth out the quantization effects and give a good tonal response.”

  A thin man in the seat next to her sat bolt upright, “Do you mean the ASVB5? I’ve got one of those, smashing piece of kit that.”

  “What speakers?” She shot back.

  “Holden 455Bs.”

  She nodded, “Good match that, it’s designed for the 455Cs, but their rather large for the standard domestic environment.”

  Angela coughed and Riona gave her a glowering stare. She re-licked her golden teeth and almost clumped her sandals together. “Before you ask, my step-mother is right in that I can never be Lady Hardcastle thanks to the wonderfully antiquated British Peerage System. However, my father has at last decided that I might have some use. He’s got terminal cancer and my step-brother killed himself before siring any offspring. It was a stupid quad-bike accident; my step-brother discovered, too late, that quad-bikes don’t climb trees.”

  She momentarily pursed her lips. “Thus father is now without a direct male heir and cannot produce another son as he now has a sperm count so low it’s off the scale.”

  She dug her hands deeper into her skirt pockets and looked sullen, “However, should I marry and produce a son he can use some mediaeval act of parliament to skip a generation and pass the title onto a son of mine, provided that is I produce said heir before my father dies.”

  She nodded her head from side to side, “Probably that gives him a two-year window of opportunity, but he’s a stubborn old stick and will probably hang on for a few more years if I don’t oblige.”

  She suddenly extracted a hand and waved a red-tipped digit, “Don’t think I agree with all this, it’s just that he’s given me an ultimatum: attend this dating holiday or be struck out of the will all together, not that I’m in it for much anyway.”

  She shrugged, “I’m not here for the money. Bastard has all the photographs of my real mother and I just know that if they’re left to my step-mother she’ll burn the lot out of spite.”

  She, and the group, fell silent. Angela stood up, “Time for a ten minute break,” she announced, much to the group’s relief.

  Chapter 5

  Cameron

  After the break, in which all the individual coffee pots were replenished, Angela unceremoniously picked up her bag and pulled out another ceramic disc. “Eucalyptus,” she announced.

  No-one moved for a few seconds and then the thin man next to Riona, the proud owner of an ASVB5 hi-fi amplifier, let out a long hiss. All eyes swivelled his way. Although his deep blue slacks, white shirt and blue suede footwear were immaculate he somehow didn’t look right. For a start he was reasonably tall, say five foot eight, yet he was painfully thin and looked like he weighed less than seven stone. Then there was his hair, it looked more like an askew bleached wig than real hair and didn’t seem to be organized into any pattern. His face was also out of proportion with thin cheeks with an angular jaw, very pointed nose and exceptionally bushy blond eyebrows that seemed to hover over a pair of translucent pale blue eyes. He clasped his long bony fingers together and started to speak in a soft highland accent. “I’m Cameron MacLeod. I was born in the Hebrides and lived there most of my early life. My hometown is a small village just outside Stornoway and I attended primary school there.”

  He gave a rye smile, “There were twelve pupils and two teachers. From there I attended upper school in Stornoway. That was a larger school, we had at least 50, sometimes 75, depending on the weather and how the boats were running.”

  He took a pause as if collecting his thoughts. “My father was a deep sea fisherman. He died when I was thirteen - cancer. Mother owns and runs the village shop cum Post Office cum off licence cum chandlery. I have two brothers, both younger. They still live on the island, but neither are fisherman and neither show any interest in the shop. My older sister married a crofter from Harris and she now lives there.”

  His pale eyes swept round the room, anxiety clearly visible in both of them. “After Upper School, where I’d got ‘A’ levels in Maths, Physics and I.T., I studied Computer Engineering at Loughborough University. I followed that with a Master of Science Research degree at London University sponsored by EasiSoft.”

  He shrugged, “Guess I took the easy option and took their job offer at the end of my sponsorship, been with them ever since working out of their offices in Ipswich, Suffolk.”

  He swallowed and his scrawny neck shuddered as the Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “I mainly work on the algorithms necessary to combat unwarranted intrusion into our products and maintain the technical anti-virus help section of our website.”

  He suddenly gazed out of the window. “I work alongside engineers in California, where the head offices are, and India, where the main software centre is. So although I do have colleagues I talk to every day, none of them are in this country.”

  He shrugged, “Guess that’s me.”

  Angela gave him a heart warming smile and leant slightly towards him, “What about girlfriends?”

  He shook his head. “Not since University, but she went back to Sri Lanka,” He turned his eyes down towards his trainers, “She never wrote, not even one e-mail.”

  “Hobbies,” She enquired.

  Cameron nodded, “Walking, especially in the hills.”

  “What hills?”

  He grinned, “Any hills. Lake District, Snowdonia, Skye, Yorkshire; take your pick.”

  “Alone?”

  “Usually.”

&nb
sp; “Any thing else?”

  He gave another slow smile, “I compile crosswords for a monthly rambler’s magazine.”

  Angela nodded sagely, “So you work alone and walk alone, do you do anything with other people?”

  “I go to church and sing in the choir for major festivals.”

  “But not every week?”

  He shook his head. Angela sat back and her eyes swung round the group, “Any questions for clarification.”

  The woman with the aristocratic nose who’d queried the non-smoking policy gazed at him, “Would you describe yourself as a computer nerd?”

  Angela’s eyes narrowed and her succulent lips suddenly straightened out. “We don’t allow leading questions of a disparaging nature.” Her eyes swept around, “Any other questions?”

  The redhead half raised a hand. “How did you cope with Loughborough after such a small school?”

  Cameron screwed his face up as if remembering something awful. “University Chaplain gave me a key to the chapel, I used to go and sit there a lot during my first term. After that you sort of manage to make your own space. You don’t have to run with the crowd.”

  There were no further questions and Angela decided to pass on to the next person, she’d suspected that Cameron would be difficult and taciturn, she hoped the next candidate would be both more forthcoming and send off the group to lunch on a high-note. She picked up her little bag.

  Chapter 6

  Willow

  The word ‘Hibiscus’ had barely bounced of the nearest wall when the woman with the aristocratic nose stood up and took a small bow, “Don’t clap,” she muttered in her acerbic husky voice, “just throw money.”

  There was no doubt that she was due to be next to speak and she sat back in the chair and smiled while waiting for the assembled group to examine her with their eyes. Her standing up had confirmed that she was tall, very tall, for a woman, possibly six foot six inches, added to that she was wearing deep blue 3 inch stiletto heeled shoes that added to her height. Her only garment was a pale blue cotton dress that clung to her thin frame, her apparent thinness being enhanced by the fact that although her hips were clearly visible she had no breasts to speak of. Meanwhile her face was totally dominated by her angular pointed aristocratic nose that sat between a pair of high cheekbones and just below a pair of green mischievous eyes. Her mousy blond hair had obviously had a wavy perm at some time, but now it was gathered back into a single plait that hung just below her shoulder blades. She smiled, showing a set of teeth that could best be described as slightly askew off-white cricket stumps and gave a mighty sniff. “I’m Willow. That’s not my real name, but nowadays that’s what everybody calls me. My real name is Carlotta Constance Maryanne Valerie Montenetano, which is why I prefer Willow. My mother was a C list stage actress and I’m told my father was floor manager at some seedy theatre on the Dorset coast, I was never told anything else about him and frankly I don’t care. Because mother was an itinerant actress I was dragged from theatre to theatre and taught by a succession of seedy private tutors until I was about twelve, at which point both they and I gave up. From then on mother acted and I read. By the time I was fifteen I’d read, and studied, most of the standard plays and most of the classics. Mother finally settled in Bournemouth. On my sixteenth birthday the education authorities caught up with me, despaired and promptly sent me to the local college to study English. Unfortunately, as my birthday fell the wrong side of September I technically had one more year of schooling to attend. I dumped English and studied Drama instead. Thus three years later I left college with a single drama ‘A’ level, a knowledge of boys and their disgusting habits, and a love of nicotine. Somehow I talked my way into becoming the cinema critic for the local paper and enjoyed three years of free cinema everyday, a growing syndication of my critiques and the minute rises in salary, but hey who cares when you’re enjoying yourself? As an aside I married a chap named Tom when I was nineteen and divorced him at twenty when I found him in bed with my mother.”

  She gave a mischievous grin and continued in the same semi-sarcastic, scathing tone. “After that I left home, moved to London, began using the pen-name ‘Willow’ and started work for a tabloid as their theatre critic, after all my mother was an actress so I must know about theatre mustn’t I? I worked for them for four years and then moved to a broadsheet as part of a team doing both theatre and cinema. Then, once I had earned a reputation, I became their sole cinema critic. Somewhere in that time I met a fellow called Gabriel and married him, shame really as he was already married and had just forgotten to tell me that little fact.”

  She paused for a second to let the words sink in and then moved on. “I decided when I was twenty-seven that I ought to see the world and backpacked across Europe, the Asian continent and ended up in Australia. I decided that Australia had about as much culture as puss in a yellow-head and came back to England as a stewardess on a first-class cruse ship. Somewhere in America I married the First Officer and somewhere in France I divorced him on the grounds of intolerable cruelty; I found him in a Jacuzzi with an entire ladies basketball team and he didn’t invite me in!”

  She smoothed down her already smooth dress. “On my return I joined the same newspaper, but as their critic covering Theatre, Cinema, TV and Drama, but not opera as I can’t stand the frightful howling. I’m still there.”

  He eyes swept round the room, “Why am I here? Because I still have this insane belief that there are some good men out there and one of them has my name pre-tattooed on his heart.”

  Derek gave a gentle cough, “So you’re the infamous Willow that described the latest BBC soap opera as ‘Blander than factory produced white bread?’

  She smiled, “I was being kind.”

  Riona let out a snorting horse-like snigger, “You said that Gathering Garnets for Guenevere was ‘the most abysmal piece of cinematography since the silent movies,’ and Dark Street: Death in the Alley as ‘a total waste of celluloid,’ but between the two of them they cleared up at the Oscars!”

  Willow wagged her left index finger, “Don’t confuse quality with Hollywood hype. Those box office flops put their studios into the red for over fifty million dollars; even the dreary American public didn’t bother to turn out for them.”

  Angela looked at her watch, “Time for lunch I think.”

  Her eyes flicked around. “Just for today we’ll be having a working lunch, so in a minute the staff will bring a buffet in here. After that we can sit and enjoy our lunch as we continue to learn about each other. OK?

  “Only if I can visit Pansy.” Interrupted Willow.

  “Of course.”

  Willow stood up and exited while extracting a pack of cigarettes from her shoulder strapped raffia handbag while the others stood up and stretched just as four heavily laden hostess trolleys arrived. Lunch began.

  Chapter 7

  Gwen

  Cameron surveyed the buffet and selected a couple of honey-glazed chicken legs, a couple of pieces of different and exotic looking cheeses, a pair of succulent looking sausage rolls and some sundries. Riona sidled up next to him, spotted her name on a silver cover and lifted it off. Cameron expected to see some sort of vegetarian option, instead lying on the plate in twin splendour were a pair of dark brown jam doughnuts covered in sugar granules. She deftly opened them up like bread rolls, stuffed them with chicken nougats and flipped them shut. She finished off her plate of doughnut chicken delight by adding a small bowl of salsa dip and a few sprigs of raw cauliflower. She must have noted his incredulous expression. “Good stuff,” she said grinning from ear to ear, “you ought to try it.”

  He shuddered at the thought and decided to change the subject. “Now you’ve produced the world’s best hi-fi amps what next?”

  She sat down and took a mouthful of doughnut/chicken/salsa and talked as she ate. “Just finishing the new ASVB6, it has half the harmonic distortion of the ASVB5.”

  Cameron paused before putting a piece of chicken leg in hi
s mouth. “But that’s ridiculous, the harmonic distortion of the B5 is so low no-one’s going to notice the difference.”

  She gave a wicked smile, “A large part of the sort of markets we sell into is where people buy on specification and, despite the laws of biology and aural acoustics, really believe they can hear the difference.”

  She took another large bite out of her doughnut sandwich; Cameron almost shuddered at the masticating mess behind the gold teeth as she spoke. “Also just finished a small solar powered satellite radio for distribution by aid agencies in Africa. We may have cut costs to the bone, but you can drop it onto packed mud from thirty feet and it won’t break.” She chewed a little, “Next up I’ve been asked to produce an external USB computer sound-card from the B5.”

  Cameron shook his head, “And play MP3 on it, you might as well use a tin can.”

  Riona licked some sugar grain off of her golden teeth, “Well it’s all about perception…”

  Across the other side of the room Willow had returned from her smoking expedition and was surveying the cheese-board as Derek skilfully cut a piece of stilton and flopped it onto a cheese biscuit. He added a sprig of parsley and gave her a gentle smile. “Don’t know if I should talk to you. You described my voice over for Norwegian Odyssey as ‘listening to your favourite uncle reading the telephone directory backwards.’”