A vibrating from his trouser pocket tickled his groin; not an entirely unpleasant experience. As a rule, Christopher was quite fastidious when it came to turning his phone off at appropriate times and he loathed people who didn’t extend him the same courtesy. But today he’d made an exception.
He removed the phone and read the message on the screen; it was an email from Match Your DNA. He recalled sending them a mouth swab on a whim some months earlier but had yet to receive a registered Match. Until now. Would he like to pay to receive their contact details, the message asked. Would I? he thought. Would I really? He put the phone away and pondered what his Match might look like, before deciding it was inappropriate to be thinking about a second woman while he was still in the company of the first.
He rose to his feet and returned to the kitchen to find her where he’d left her minutes earlier, lying on her back on the cold, slate floor, the garrotte still embedded in her neck. She was no longer bleeding, the final few drops having pooled around the collar of her blouse.
He took a digital Polaroid camera from his jacket and used it to take two identical photographs of her face before waiting patiently for them to develop. He placed both photos in an A5 hard-backed envelope and then slipped it into his jacket pocket.
Then Christopher scooped his kit into his backpack and left, waiting until he had exited the darkness of the garden before removing his plastic overshoes, mask and balaclava.
Chapter 3
JADE
Jade smiled when a message from Kevin flashed across the screen of her mobile.
‘Evening, beautiful girl, how are you?’ it read. She liked how Kevin always began his messages with the same phrase.
‘I’m good thanks,’ she replied before adding a yellow smiley-faced emoji. ‘I’m knackered, though.’
‘Sorry I didn’t text you earlier. It’s been a busy day. I didn’t piss you off, did I?’
‘Yeah, you did a bit but you know what a grumpy cow I can be. What have you been doing?’
A picture appeared on her screen of a wooden barn and a tractor under a bright, blazing sun. Inside the barn, she could just about make out cattle behind metal bars and milking equipment attached to their udders.
‘I’ve been repairing the cowshed roof. Not that we’re expecting rain yet but we might as well do it now. How about you?’
‘I’m in bed in my pyjamas and looking at the weird hotels on the Lonely Planet website you told me about.’ Jade moved her laptop on to the floor and looked up at her pinboard of places she wanted to visit.
‘Amazing, aren’t they? We need to travel the world and see them together one day.’
‘It kind of makes me wish I’d taken a year out after uni and gone backpacking with my mates.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘That’s a daft bloody question – money doesn’t grow on trees where I’m from.’ If only it did, she thought. Her mum and dad weren’t loaded and she had to fund her studies. She had a student loan the size of the Tyne to pay off while her housemates from uni had all left to live their dream and travel America. The constant Facebook updates made her seethe, seeing their photos of them all having fun without her.
‘I hate to cut this short babe, but Dad wants me to help with the cattle feed. Text me later?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Jade replied, irked that their time had been cut short after she’d waited all night to speak to him.
‘Love you, Xxx’ Kevin texted.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ she replied, and put the phone down. A moment later she picked it up and typed again. ‘Love you too. Xxx’
Jade climbed out from under her thick duvet and placed her phone on its charging mat on the bedside table. She glanced into the full-length mirror, which had photographs of her absent friends who were off travelling taped to the frame, and vowed to reduce the dark rings around her blue eyes by sleeping for longer and drinking more water. She made a mental note to get her red, curly locks trimmed at the weekend and to treat herself to a spray tan. She always felt better when her pale skin had a dash of colour.
She slipped back into bed and wondered how different her life might have been had she taken that gap year with her friends. Maybe it would’ve given her the courage to ignore pressure from her parents to return to Sunderland after her three years at Loughborough. As the first member of her family to be offered a place at university, they couldn’t understand why employers weren’t beating down her door with job offers the moment she graduated. And while the credit card bills and loans began to mount, she had little choice but to either declare herself bankrupt at twenty-one or move back into the terraced family home she thought she’d escaped.
She disliked the angry, frustrated person she had become, but didn’t know how to change. She resented her parents for making her return and began to estrange herself from them. By the time she could afford to rent her own flat, they were barely on speaking terms.
She also blamed them for her failure to get onto the travel and tourism career ladder, and for making her spend her working days behind the reception desk of a hotel on the outskirts of town. It was supposed to have been a stopgap job but somewhere along the line it had become the norm. Jade was sick of being so irate with everyone and she yearned to get back to the life she had originally imagined for herself.
The only bright spot in each Groundhog Day was talking to the man she’d been paired with on Match Your DNA. Kevin.
She cracked a smile at the most recent photograph she had of Kevin, which watched over her from its frame on the bookcase. He had almost white-blond hair and eyebrows, a smile that spread from ear to ear and his tanned body was lean but muscular. She couldn’t have made him up if she’d tried.
He’d only sent her a handful of pictures over the seven months they’d been talking, but from the moment they’d first spoken on the phone and Jade had experienced the shiver she’d read about in magazines, she was sure there was no man on earth better suited to her.
Fate could be a bastard, she decided, having placed her Match on the other side of the world in Australia. Maybe one day she might meet him, if she could ever afford it.
Chapter 4
NICK
‘Oh, you guys should totally do it,’ Sumaira urged, a wide grin on her face and a devilish twinkle in her eye.
‘Why? I’ve found my soulmate,’ Sally said, entwining her fingers with Nick’s.
Nick leaned across the dining table and reached for the Prosecco with his other hand. He poured the last few drops into his glass. ‘Anyone want a top up?’ he asked. After a hearty yes from the other three guests, he extricated his hand from his fiancée’s and moved towards the kitchen.
‘But you want to be sure, don’t you?’ Sumaira pushed. ‘I mean you guys are so good together, but you never know who else is out there …’
Nick returned from the kitchen with the bottle – the fifth of the evening – and went to pour Sumaira a glass.
Deepak placed his hand over his wife’s glass. ‘She’s fine, mate. Mrs Loose Lips here has had enough for one night.’
‘Spoilsport,’ Sumaira sniped and pulled a face. She turned back to Sally ‘All I’m saying is that you want to make sure you’ve found the one before you walk down the aisle.’