Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Acknowledgments

Questions for Discussion

Carla Carter s Diary

Twenty-one years ago

Dear Diary,

Happy birthday to me! So, this is it. I’m twenty-one today and I’m feeling excited and sort of mature and, to be honest, also a bit scared. My birthday’s fallen on Friday the thirteenth this year, something Gran has surely noticed. She’s going to be on edge all day, expecting the house to be struck by lightning or for my candles to set fire to her curtains. I seriously doubt she’ll be expecting the big news I’m going to share with her after my birthday tea, the decision I’ve been deliberating over for months.

My birthday presents felt extra lucky this morning. Gran gave me a tiny glass eye on a silver necklace, telling me, “If someone or something is jealous or wants to harm you, the eye will reflect or distract them.” It sounds useful, if highly unlikely. The pendant belonged to my mum, and I saw tears in Gran’s eyes when she fastened it around my neck. It’s really tough for her with Mum and Granddad gone, and hard for my little sis, too, which makes what I’m about to tell them both even more difficult.

Jess has been teasing me about getting old. I suppose an eight-year gap between sisters seems pretty wide when you’re only thirteen. She bought me the cutest little brass paperweight in the shape of a four-leaf clover, and I already know my aunts Mimi and Evelyn will insist on reading my tea leaves.

Gran and Jess are putting the finishing touches on my cake in the kitchen. It’s my favorite, sponge filled with jam and buttercream, and the house smells of vanilla and strawberry. I don’t believe in premonitions but I already know what Gran will say when I go back downstairs. “If you blow out all twenty-one candles at once, you’ll be married within the year. Miss any and the number left is the number of years until your wedding day.”

I’ll try not to roll my eyes. The older Gran gets, the more she believes in this kind of stuff. Mimi and Evelyn are the same, forever reminding me and Jess about an old curse that claims women in our family are destined to be unlucky in love. When I blow out my candles, I’ll try to emit the tiniest puff of air, to leave them all alight. That way I won’t walk down the aisle until I’m forty-two!

Why would I even think about marriage at my age anyway? Life is short, and losing Mum is proof of that. She was the only one in my family who didn’t care if she opened an umbrella indoors. “Act now, think later,” she used to tell me.

I can’t believe she’s been gone for eleven years, and the longer she isn’t here, the more I miss her. The more I want to be like her.

So, I’ve made up my mind to do just that.

Dear Diary, I’ve decided to drop out of university to go traveling for a year.

There, I’ve put it in writing now, so have got to do it.

Yes, I’ve completed two years of my business studies degree. Yes, I’m scoring A’s and have made some great friends. Yes, I know I’m usually Miss Cautious and that Jess really misses me when I’m away at university, but she isn’t a kid any longer and there will never be a perfect time for me to go traveling. I just feel like there’s something or someone out there, beckoning me. Call it intuition or a sixth sense, but I have to explore what it is and throw caution to the wind for once. I think it’s what Mum would have wanted.

And who knows? Maybe there is a special person waiting for me so I can prove our family curse wrong, once and for all.

Wish me luck!

One

Fortune

Present day

There was always a foot-high pile of statistics reports on Carla Carter’s desk and dozens of thank-you cards and wedding invitations pinned to her office walls. All the bouquets sent to her by happy clients made her office look and smell like a flower shop, and she loved to nurture the blooms, trimming the stems and changing their water each day. It was a great feeling when she opened cards from couples that said, “We’re such a great match, thanks to you.”

The old saying goes that you can’t choose your family, but Carla thought that actually you could. If you were looking to meet someone special, hoping a relationship might lead to marriage, weren’t you technically auditioning that person to be part of your family or perhaps wanting to start a new one? Therefore, wasn’t it foolish to select a partner based on their blue eyes making your heart skip a beat, or because you both loved watching old movies on rainy Sunday afternoons? Surely, there had to be more substance and certainty to such matters.

People made plans and decisions each day of their lives—where to go on holiday, what college course to take, even whether to have ketchup or mustard on a hot dog. However, love was something often left to chance. Was it really likely you’d meet your ideal match while reaching for a can of soup in the supermarket or when ordering a glass of Merlot in a busy bar?

Someone who made you sing like a Disney princess while hanging out your washing was all very well, but you could spend weeks, months and even years getting to know someone, only to discover they were still hung up on an ex, believed in UFOs or were related to a serial killer.

When Carla had married her first husband, Aaron, love (or was it lust?) had skewed her sensibilities, making her jump into marriage feetfirst. And then look what had happened. Her subsequent, devastating divorce appeared to validate her family curse even more. From then on, Carla had made it her mission in life to help prevent others from going through a similar energy-sapping, emotion-wrenching, soul-sucking, crushing experience.

And that was why she’d set up her matchmaking agency, Logical Love.

Her business ethos was framed and displayed on her office wall.

Logical Love

Meet your match, scientifically

We’re a different kind of matchmaking agency, helping you to find your perfect partner in a logical way. We don’t believe in swiping a screen to dismiss someone within seconds. Instead, we employ a much more in-depth approach. You’re likely to be pragmatic, maybe even a little jaded, and your head probably rules your heart.

Don’t worry, we’re exactly the same!

Through our comprehensive range of questions and unique algorithms, we help to take away the uncertainty of finding your soulmate, making it more practical to meet your right match. Love can become a decision rather than a chemical reaction.

Join us—you’re in safe hands.

Carla was living proof that her business model worked. She and her fiancé, Tom, had met through the agency, scoring an overall suitability factor of eighty-four percent. It was one of the highest figures ever recorded at Logical Love and she was delighted (and somewhat relieved) that her search for Mr. Right was over. In one month’s time, she’d become Mrs. Carla Taylor, finally putting an end to her family’s jinx/spell/hex (or whatever it was her gran, sister and aunties believed in) forever.

She smiled as she sat down in her office chair, perusing a list of that week’s love matches, when her sister barged into her office.

“You’ve got mail,” Jess sang, tossing two pink envelopes in front of her.