Carla shoved her arms into her coat sleeves and rushed out of the building, ignoring Jess’s shouts for her to return. Her sister’s deceit was too painful to contemplate and she couldn’t face spending another second in the same vicinity as her. She couldn’t believe her own team had hidden things from her, even if they thought it was the right thing to do at the time.
She hurried through the streets with tears streaming down her cheeks. A corner of the park provided a brief respite and she sat on a bench facing the trees, gulping deep breaths of air and trying to force herself to get a grip.
Carla had always been good at math, able to see patterns and formulas that others couldn’t. She liked things that could be explained, things that had reason and were tangible. As a child, fairy tales had thrown up too many questions for her pragmatic mind, such as why didn’t Cinderella leave her stepsisters and get a job with employers who appreciated her skill set more? And why did princesses pin their hopes on marrying for money rather than setting up their own businesses?
She and Jess used to have heated debates about such matters.
“If stories have endured through time there must be some truth in them, or else people wouldn’t pass them on,” Jess said.
“You can’t prove these things actually happened,” Carla argued. “Think about it, Jess, no one ever wore glass slippers.”
“You can’t prove that. Perhaps they did.”
The sisters usually reached a stalemate, resulting in Jess flouncing to their shared bedroom to look at her angel cards and Carla scribbling notes on why she was right.
She tried to apply her realistic thought process to her current situation. Telling herself Tom was still her perfect partner meant overriding her faith in the matchmaking system she’d created.
Carla loved Tom and she tried to ignore the worries that were muddying her emotions. She desperately wanted to see him so they could talk things through logically.
She waited until her emotions settled down a little, tied her hair into a tighter bun and briskly walked over to his apartment. Her hand shook as she opened the door, and even more so when she saw Tom standing in the middle of his hallway, a suitcase parked at his side.
“Hey, you,” he said, moving forward for a hug. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you. Didn’t you see my missed calls?”
“I’ve been at work, trying to sort something out.” She tucked her head under his chin, relishing the beat of his heart against her cheek.
“Are you okay?” He pulled back to look at her. “You look upset. Is it your family again?”
“No...well, yes.” Carla’s eyes settled on the passport sitting on top of his suitcase and she chose to ignore it. “I need to talk to you.”
He looked at his watch. “I don’t have long. A guy from the convention has been in touch. A client canceled, meaning there was a spare flight ticket available. It will save me a lot of money and I get to fly business class, too.”
The excitement in his voice made Carla feel even more wretched and her throat ached when she spoke. “When are you leaving?”
“Now. My Uber is going to be here in four minutes.” He glanced at his watch. “Um, three...”
“Oh.” Carla dropped her arms to her sides. How could she tell Tom about the issue at work, their mismatch and Jess’s deceit in such a minuscule amount of time?
“Sorry. I did try to reach you,” he reiterated. “What did you want to talk about?”
She swallowed her words away. “It’s fine, probably nothing.”
“Are you sure? I can cancel the cab...”
“Yes.” The word sounded strangled when it came out of her mouth and every part of her wanted to yell no instead. She needed him more than some crappy boardgame convention, but she didn’t want to spoil his opportunity. “It’s a surprise you’re going so soon, that’s all.”
Tom kissed the top of her head and smoothed a lock of hair off her forehead. “You look a bit tired, probably overworking as usual. Why don’t you take a break somewhere, too? See if Jess wants to go somewhere nice for a few days? Maybe a girls’ weekend away to relax?”
“I really don’t want to—”
Tom’s phone pinged to say his Uber had arrived. He tugged his suitcase onto the path outside and Carla followed him. “I’ve left something for you on the coffee table,” he said, pressing his lips against hers. “You can play it while I’m away.”
“Thanks.” Her voice sounded blank.
“I’ll call you when I get there, probably tomorrow because it’s a long flight. Please don’t forget to lock up for me.”
She waved to him from the front step, then wrapped her arms across her body as his taxi disappeared around the corner.
Inside the house, Tom had finished a prototype of his board game and had left it on the coffee table. There was a tiny paper sunhat and a passport with her name written on the front. The game was beautifully crafted, a fine display of his talent.
He’d also left her a note.
Darling Carla,
You can play this game and pretend you’re on holiday! The stickers haven’t arrived yet, so I look forward to playing it with you properly—on our wedding night. I can’t wait until we’re man and wife.
Love you lots,
Tom x
Carla pressed the note to her chest. It should make her feel better, assuring her that everything was still fantastic between them. She wanted to picture them lying on a four-poster bed together, with white silk curtains billowing as they played his new game. But all she could do was cry.
She left Tom’s place, locked his front door and caught a taxi back to her own apartment. As she took a shower, she let the steaming-hot water run off her body until her skin was tight and numb. Her insides were tangled in a huge knot, and her concerns about her and Tom’s suitability grew bigger and stronger until she felt like retching.
Carla wanted to discuss things with him in person, a conversation not hampered by their work schedules or different time zones. If she waited until he returned, there’d only be a week or so until they married, to see if they really were still suited for each other. And then there was Myrtle’s insistence that a man she’d met two decades ago was actually the one and still waiting for her overseas.
What the hell was she going to do?
Carla called into work to say she was sick, something she’d never done before because she liked to appear invincible. With her stomach cramping, and unable to face Jess, she paced around her apartment, fretting about the couples she might have set on the path to destruction.
She called Arnie at Data Daze and ordered him to take the Logical Love entry form offline immediately and to run a full audit. She requested a list of the questions that had been mixed up during the system update and emailed her team with details on the issue.
Carla messaged Jess and instructed her to personally contact every couple who’d matched (or in fact mismatched) during the twelve-month problem period. Her sister was to say it was a courtesy call, to ascertain if clients were still together and if they were happy. Only then could Carla assess the full magnitude of the situation and decide on a way forward.
Jess replied, Okay.
Carla glared at her sister’s response, having expected an apology, assurances or a promise to keep her updated. Okay did little to stamp out Carla’s fears, about her business, her fiancé and her sister.
The couple of phone conversations she managed to have with Tom, after he’d arrived in America, were hampered by delays on the line and a crackling noise that sounded like cellophane. He gushed about the games he’d discovered, the people he’d met and the initial interest in his work. Whenever he asked Carla how she was, she didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
Her travel journal offered a welcome distraction, and she focused on the pages, pasting down corners of photos that had peeled away, looking up restaurants, bars and shops online to see if they still existed. She browsed photos of men she’d previously dated, trying to assess if any of the relationships might have been more significant than she’d originally thought before deciding that they hadn’t been.
She looked up a few of their names on Facebook, too, and it was strange seeing people who’d been a brief part of her life, and how they’d changed over time. Carla felt like a stalker, prying into their personal information, even if they’d displayed it for the world to see. A couple of them no longer lived overseas, so wouldn’t even count in Myrtle’s prediction.
More memories trickled back to her, of eating paella on a beach in Barcelona and admiring Salvador Dalí’s melting-clock paintings. She thought about the men she’d met and also about her previous self, the young woman who’d lost her mother and left England to travel for a year without much of a plan, except to escape her family superstitions for a while. It was like getting back in touch with a long-lost twin.
When Carla had finished her maintenance work on the journal, she tidied her apartment and found a box stashed away in her spare room that contained some of her mum’s belongings. There was a red dress, a straw hat and a worn brown leather luggage tag. They were musty and there were still grains of sand at the bottom of the box.
Carla washed the dress and watched it flap on the clothing line outside. When it was dry, she tried it on, and somehow the color made her feel braver, made her eyes brighter. And when she looked in the mirror, it was like Suzette Carter was staring right back at her, urging her to follow her own instincts.
