The Soulmate Agency Read online

  Cameron hesitated, he had absolutely no idea how to respond to such a statement, so he tried a joke. “Well it’s no good looking at me. I can’t even ride a horse, let alone wear armour.”

  Her resulting laugh couple have scared horses half a mile away. It was a cross between a braying donkey, a boiling water tank and the snort of a mule.

  Cameron decided to change the subject away from too personal a conversation. It wasn’t that he didn’t want a personal conversation with Riona. It was that he, personally, could only cope with so much at a time. “Hockey,” he said, “You said you played for England?”

  She in turn was grateful for the change of subject. She hated being introspective, in fact under normal circumstances she would never talk about her feelings and emotions. As she replied a small clock two floors above struck four, but they continued facing each other over the safe distance of the electronic tennis table. For the moment the spacing was safe, the conversation was safe and the outside influences were having little effect. So they, oblivious to the time, continued talking, just being happy to be with someone of the opposite sex, whom they also deemed, ‘safe.’

  Chapter 14

  Henry/Willow

  Henry and Willow opted for a walk past the stable block and towards the rear paddocks. As soon as they got into the open air Willow lit up a cigarette, Henry tactfully changed to the upwind side of her. “Bad for your health you know,” he muttered.

  She snapped, “Please don’t start, or I’ll turn right around.”

  They walked on in silence for a few minutes. Willow wondering why she had accepted Henry’s invitation and Henry wondering if he had been wise. They reached the paddock fence, leant on it and watched a young woman take a small horse over a set of staggered jumps. Willow took a drag on her cigarette, “I shouldn’t be with you you know. Feedback form I got from this place said that I should look to pair off with somebody who understood the media.”

  Henry sighed, “So you’d rather be with Derek?”

  She stubbed out the cigarette on the fence rail and put the stub carefully into a small pill tin. “No fear, his voice would drive me mad and I just know that angel face Angela was manipulating us together. I just don’t believe all this feedback stuff.”

  Henry smiled, “You could be right. My feedback assured me that I should look for someone who is reliable and exercises careful caution in their work. I guess that means that it’s been pre-planned by Angela that I look to Gwen, but she’s Welsh.”

  Willow gave a toothy grin and put on a false Welsh accent, “Got something against the Welsh have we?”

  He looked away, “No. It’s just that Sally was Welsh, with almost exactly the same sing-song voice and I’m not looking for a replacement, but something different.”

  Horror crossed Willow’s face. “Sorry, sarcasm’s always been my downfall.”

  They watched the horse do a smart turn and a quick jump. “Tell me, is it fun being in charge of a company?”

  Henry relaxed slightly, but still didn’t make eye-contact with Willow. “You could say that, well it was at the beginning.” He gripped the wooden rail tight. “Now I have about three hundred employees in this country and, if you count my supplies, I’m responsible for about a thousand jobs world-wide.”

  Willow watched his expression, “And you find it a burden.”

  For the first time he looked her in the eyes, “Yes and no. If I could just talk it over with someone who had no axe to grind I might find it easier. As it is I’m beginning to worry about every decision. Take Guava Juice for instance. As a product it’s marginal, frankly it’s hardly worth the effort, but if I chop it twenty jobs go in a poor part of the world where there’s not much else.”

  Willow toyed with the idea of having another cigarette as she always felt she thought better when she smoked, but she decided against it. “Then it is worth the effort isn’t it? You’re providing livelihoods and family income. It may be marginal in your company’s accounts, but it’s probably a bloody economic miracle to them.”

  He rolled his eyes, “That’s what I mean, I’ve never thought of it in that light.”

  She turned away to watch the horse. “There are other sorts of pressure you know. People read my every word. What if I feel a stage production is total and utter rubbish, but if I say so in print and no-one goes the theatre might have to close through lack of funds?”

  He frowned, “I thought you had some clever diplomatic terms like: ‘The production was interesting it its use of basic techniques to enhance the underlying quality of an apparently simple story.’”

  She gave a chortle and a wide smile, “All my critic friends would know exactly what that meant.”

  “Ah,” he said, “would the general reader? And if they did go to see the production they’d soon realise the underlying message in your words, but the theatre would have already got their money.”

  She chortled again. “Think I’ll take a second look at the descriptions on your juice bottles.”

  He tapped the rail and looked serious, “Not one untruth and not one piece of spin, just pure fruit juice.”

  He then laughed, “But then I might not have told the whole truth either. We do our best, but I can never be absolutely sure that every drop of every juice from every supplier is bone fide.”

  He shielded his eyes from the Sun. “There’s a bench up there under the trees, fancy a sit down?”

  Five minutes later they were sitting on the bench, or trying to. It was made of extruded aluminium and the front feet had sunk into the mud, resulting in a slippery slope of a seat. After two minutes they stood up, wrestled the bench out of the mud, moved it back a foot or so and sat down. Henry wiped his hands on an immaculately pressed handkerchief. “Bit like looking for the proverbial soulmate, easy to wallow in the mud and not risk anything.”

  “Meaning?”

  He stretched out his legs, they were no-where near as long or slinky as hers. “Meaning I struck lucky with Sally, perhaps it was the naïvety of youth, perhaps something else. However, I’ve seen enough of the desperate marriages some of my friends have got into to know that it’s not all plain sailing. Besides, I’m older now.”

  She raised her eyes to heaven and flapped her hands, “No need to tell me, remember I’ve had three attempts.”

  She took out a cigarette and pulled out a small silver lighter. Henry judged the wind, “Mind if we change places?”

  The swapped over and Willow gazed at the red end of her cigarette. “I haven’t always smoked you know. I gave up when I married my first husband, it was the break up of my third that drove me back.”

  Henry gazed at her profile. “I guess that the break up was a lot more than the little vignette you painted in the lounge.”

  She gave a grimace of a smile. “I should say so. The basketball team he was having a bath with were all under eighteen, I suspect some of them were much much younger. It was the lecherous smirk on his face and the sailor taking photographs that set off warning bells. Next time he was on watch I searched his cabin and found a couple of photo albums full of pictures of him and young women. In every picture everyone was naked and it was clear to me that some on the young women were clearly very uncomfortable.”

  “What did you do?”

  She took a long pull on her cigarette. “I took the album straight to the captain. Initially he wanted to laugh it off, ‘boys will be boys you know,’ was his response. Once I threatened to mail the album to his head office he did a U-turn, suspended my husband from duty and had him put off at the next port of call.” She took another drag, “Didn’t stop the swine beating me up though, and in public. That’s how I got my divorce; American courts don’t like wife beaters, especially when you can show them a video of him throwing you over the bar and into the bottle rack beyond”

  She took another drag and stubbed out the cigarette, once again she carefully placed the stub in her small tin. Henry didn’t quite know what to say, but he tried. “Please don’t think tha
t all men are like that.”

  She snorted, “Then I’m a bad chooser. As I said I found my first husband in bed with my mother, apparently he’d been bedding her since the week after our marriage. Second husband was a really nice guy and I might have stuck with him even though he was technically already married, but legally separated. She drummed her fingers on her knees, “Except I had a chat with the first wife. She had three kids, all by him, and he wouldn’t pay her a penny in alimony. Initially he claimed that they weren’t his and once paternity had been proved he swore that she had moved out on him, not the other way round. Trouble was she was still in their house that he’d try to sell from underneath her against a court order and he’d employed a set of thugs to make her life a misery in an attempt to force her to move out. She had all the pictures and newspaper articles to prove it and a couple of recorded telephone messages I’ll never forget for their sheer menace.”

  She gazed across the grass into a different time. “If it hadn’t been for her photo album I wouldn’t have believed it was the same man.”

  She drummed her fingers again. “What did you do?” Asked Henry softly.

  “I employed a private detective. She verified all his wife said, and more. She also produced a sort of mistress and a couple of convictions for kerb-crawling in areas of known prostitution. As I said I tend to choose the wrong men.”

  Henry sat still for a few minutes and then said, in an abstract manner, “I was a bit economical with the truth too. Yes I was very happily married to Sally, but she wasn’t a waitress, she stacked shelves at the local co-op and sometimes cleared tables in their coffee-shop. They tried her on the tills once or twice, it was useless as she couldn’t handle the pressure when the queue built up.”

  “But you loved her?”

  “Very much.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  Willow waited for the answer, this was an important question. In the end he gave a tiny shake of the head. “I cherish the memory of our love, but I can’t say I still love her.”

  He wrung his hands, “I used to think that I was betraying her memory, but that’s not so. I’ve changed and she’s never coming back.”

  He looked straight at Willow, “And I’m old enough and wise enough to know that I must not look for a direct replacement because I’ll never find one and if I did I would have moved on, but I would have chosen someone who was right for me fifteen years ago and not now.”

  “So what are you looking for?”

  He gazed out across the grass into his inner psyche. “Someone who sets my heart a flutter. I don’t really care about much else.” He paused, “Sorry, that’s balderdash. I want someone who’s honest with me, doesn’t cheat on me, and I won’t cheat on them. Doesn’t mind that I’ve been married before and is willing to work at a relationship.”

  She nodded and bit her bottom lip, “What about children?”

  He closed his eyes, “Would be nice, but not essential. Right person comes first, talk of children comes later.”

  He frowned, “Children important to you?”

  She said, in an even more husky voice than usual, “Yes, but I’ve only got one ovary and my clock’s ticking.”

  She turned and looked at Henry, anxiety on her face, “And I’ve got to get it right next time, I just couldn’t stand another wrong choice and another failed marriage.”

  They sat in silence until Willow looked at her watch. “What time is it?” He murmured.

  “Five to four.”

  “Do you want to go back to our scheming Angela?”

  “No, not at the moment.”

  He nodded, “Neither do I, how about we just stay here?”

  She gave a wide-mouthed toothy smile. “That’s just fine by me.”

  So they sat under the trees and continued talking, another pair lost to the planned tea-time meeting.

  Chapter 15

  Treasa

  Treasa left the hall and walked down a leafy footpath. She had her tiny hands stuffed into her trousers’ pockets and a look of determination in her eye. Before long she crossed a road and went down some steps into a village car-park. She looked around wanting a place to think and to her surprise found the village church unlocked. Once inside she was hit by the sheer tranquillity of the place. It was almost as if you could feel the centuries of prayer warmly reflecting off of the walls and God benignly welcoming you with open arms. She hesitated for a moment; although nominally a Christian churches were not her normal habitat. After a pause she headed for the side chapel and sat in the front pew looking over a small altar towards a plain brass cross. She had plenty to think about as the Golden Satellite Children’s channel had just offered her another new contract, this would be her eleventh. As was their custom the offer was for a two-year contract and even that had a get out clause for them after a year. The problem for them and for Treasa was that she had become an institution. She obviously hadn’t set out to make it that way, but twenty years of near identical children’s TV presenting had made it so. However, now the Golden Satellite Channel wanted to change the make-up of their content. For the last eighteen years she’d presented the channel from eight in the morning to eleven o’clock when the channel reverted to showing mindless American children’s programmes that were so bland nobody watched. At noon the broadcast channel changed from Children’s TV to a movie channel. Now her new producer wanted to make his mark and change the entire format of the children’s slot into one based on computer games where the children and their presenter – namely her – acted out the computer game. Treasa was in no doubt that he wanted to use some computer games that had a violent basis to give what he called a ‘hard edge’ to the programming. As a sop to here they had also offered her the eleven to noon slot for a new series called ‘Molly Mint’s Visits.’ She was glad they were dumping the American stuff and pleased to be asked to present for four hours a day, but hesitant about the overall change and frankly appalled at the notion of just acting out computer games. Where was the originality, the spark of imagination, the joy of discovery? She’d been wrestling with the problem for about a week and had to give the channel an answer by Thursday. Her agent took the pragmatic view, that of staying in employment; Treasa was not so sure. Was she just frightened of change, or did she really believe that this type of children’s TV was just trash of a different kind? She sat very still and wrestled with the problem. If she refused to sign would anybody else employ her? Could anybody else employ her?

  She’d been there for an hour, running over the options and getting nowhere fast when her deliberations were interrupted by the police. She heard a small noise and turned to find a very young looking tall well-built policeman looking down at her. He gave her a quizzical smile, “Well young lady,” he said benevolently, “can I ask what you are doing here and not going to school?”

  Treasa sighed, this was a common problem. Part of her contract was to wear on a fairly daily basis what she wore on TV, the idea being that it would enable real children to talk to the real presenter and so up the ratings. This clause was actually worth a couple of thousand pounds a years, but Treasa often wondered whether the hassle justified the earnings. She reached into her pocket, pulled out her ID card and offered it to the policeman. “Been a long time since I was at school.” She drawled.

  The policeman examined the card, looked at Treasa and shook his head. “No good giving me your mum’s ID card.”

  Treasa rolled her eyes, “It’s my ID card.”

  The policeman squinted at her as she was between him and a brightly lit stained glass window through which the summer sun was streaming down. “Do I look like a fool,” he said gently, if somewhat sternly.

  Treasa drummed her small fingers on the chair, “I demand a fingerprint scan,” she said undaunted by his attitude. “I know my rights and if you want to be made a fool of that’s up to you.”

  She didn’t realise it, but for all the world she looked like a spoilt child wanting her own way. The policeman laughed, “An
d how do you think I’m going to do that? Keep a laser in my pocket do I?”

  She said menacingly, “Whistle up a traffic car on that radio of yours, they’ve all got fingerprint identification facilities these days.”

  For the first time he began to have doubts. Children didn’t normally speak in that manner and know such things. Then again, he decided, she could just be ultra-precocious. He wandered down the church and called up his control centre.

  The car took a half-hour to arrive and Treasa only knew of its arrival by the commotion at the end of the church. She sighed and wandered down the aisle. Now her meditations had been disturbed she wanted to get back to the relative sanity of Minton Hall. In the church lobby a flat-capped traffic policeman was remonstrating with the young constable. “How,” he said in a flat Yorkshire voice, “am I supposed to take the fingerprint of a child without the parent’s permission? I can only do that if she’s been arrested on suspicion of committing a crime, otherwise we’re setting ourselves up for accusations of child abuse.”

  She watched the traffic policeman. He was well built, but not fat. Over six feet tall and with a face like a farmer, all laughter lines and wrinkles around the blue eyes. Somewhere along the line he’d probably had a broken nose is it didn’t seem quite straight, but then his eyebrows didn’t seem even either. She decided to interrupted, her patience wearing thin. “No need for parental consent, I am an adult.”

  The young constable, clearly annoyed with his colleague, turned and snapped at her, “You keep out of this young lady, you’ve already caused enough trouble.”

  Treasa decided on a policy of action. She stepped forward and stamped as hard as she could on the constable’s left instep. The combination of the unexpected event, solid shoes and strong thigh muscles from daily dance routines caused the constable to yell with pain. Treasa turned to the traffic cop. “That enough to get me a scan?”