The Men in her Life

declaration and signature section, then snatched itself away as if the clause were an open flame. Apart from the question of Mo’s wedding, not really very much at all, she decided. Even less after her little chat with Barbara, who would have about as much chance of knowing the sort of man Holly would like as Mo or Colette would. But perhaps that was the point. Perhaps the closest people to you were the most useless at matchmaking because they had all sorts of other investment in you. Perhaps it was the very fact that Barbara was someone Holly would never ever have as a friend that made her perfect for this sordid job. Hmmm.
    What have you got to lose? Colette had asked. The answer was simple, a) pride, and b) four hundred pounds. The four hundred pounds Holly could cope with, although she wondered whether she wouldn’t rather spend it on the English Eccentrics dress she had spotted in Fenwicks the day after the bad shopping day. Would the pleasure of appearing in it at the wedding negate the need for an escort? Just lolling around on her bed in the dress might be far more satisfying than sex with any man the dating agency had to offer. But sex was not what she was here for, exactly, she reminded herself.
    Barbara came clicking back into the room with a sheaf of plastic slip folders in her hand. Holly had expected about three, but there were at least thirty. One of them surely might be OK. It would be a laugh. What the hell? If she put it on Access, she could buy the dress as well. Holly took a deep breath, bent forward and put her signature on the confidentiality agreement.
    The faces were as different as those of men in a tube carriage, but you didn’t spend your tube journey wondering whether you’d like to go to bed with the person reading the Standard opposite. Or perhaps some people did, Holly thought. Perhaps that was why Colette didn’t mind travelling all that way up and down the Metropolitan line every day. Perhaps her own preference for taxis was actually symbolic of one of those psychological barriers Colette was always talking about. She could see it as a question in a magazine quiz entitled Do You REALLY Want A Relationship? Question 1. Are you a) 18-24, b) 25-34, c) far too old to be reading this kind of crap? Question 2. Do you a) travel on public transport, b) walk or jog, c) always take taxis?
    When they had first started doing those quizzes at school, it had been a simple choice. Were you an a) b) or c) kind of person? Usually b) was the best kind, a kind of medium line between ballsy and insipid, but the other two had their good points. Holly nearly always ended up with equal amounts of a) and c) which Colette said proved how interesting she was. Then when you graduated onto the grown-up women’s magazines it started getting more complicated and you had to score each answer from the chart that was usually on another page, so that flipping back to see what you had marked became very tiresome. And then, Holly thought, trying to concentrate on the forms in front of her, when you grew out of that, you joined a dating agency, and you got to look at the quizzes other people had filled in, which in itself was quite fun.
    After the photo, she found the first thing she looked at was the box for cinema. The ones that mentioned anything with Eddie Murphy she put to one side immediately. There was one man who listed Terms of Endearment and Truly, Madly, Deeply but she discarded him, because she’d seen both films with men, and she knew that they just didn’t get those films. This one was clearly only writing what he thought would appeal, and you couldn’t start a relationship like that.
    She had got about halfway through making one pile into two piles of NO and MAYBE when Barbara returned to the room.
    ‘Sometimes it’s a good idea to cover up the photo until you’ve read the details,’ she suggested, leaning over Holly’s shoulder, adding in her singsong voice, ‘you don’t have to, but it’s different...’
    You don’t have to but it’s different, Holly mouthed at her back as Barbara began to click her long red fingernails importantly over the plastic-coated markers in a drawer filing cabinet.
    Oh hell, why not, Holly thought. It was quite a quick way of getting through the rest of the pile. Nearly all of them eliminated themselves on the basis of politics (not interested) or sport (rugby, rowing, darts) without her even having to deliberate what it would be like waking up next to that