Page 28 of The Match Faker

Although she hadn’t done it professionally, my maternal grandmother, Eleanor, had been famous for her skills. She’d probably matched hundreds of couples in her lifetime. Including my parents. And I was lucky enough to inherit her gift.

She’d always told me to look out for that ‘sparkle’. It wasn’t something you could touch. It was the magic you felt and saw when two people who were meant to be came together.

Granny E., as I called her, was one of the few people in my family who hadn’t been fooled by Boris’s charms. She’d said she never saw that sparkle between us. Of course, at the time, I was in denial. I should’ve listened.

Before she died, three years ago, Boris and I were going through a rough patch. He was being a dick about my plans to set up the agency. She told me I’d make a success of it and not to worry about Boris because one day, the right man would come back to me.

I remember thinking that didn’t make any sense, because it was just a blip between me and Boris. We’d get back on track once the business was up and running. I was wrong. Granny E. was too because I hadn’t made a success of the business and I was still as single as a Pringle. Hence why I was stuck here, having to listen to bloody Liam talk shit about my job.

‘Look at the statistics. Most marriages end in divorce. Fact. As a child that was trapped in the middle of my parents’ war, I know that forever stuff is BS.’

‘It’s not! My parents are still together!’ I snapped.

‘But are they really happy, though? Most so-called ‘perfect couples’ just stay together to keep up appearances or avoid an expensive divorce because they weren’t smart enough to get a prenup. Or they stay for convenience because they can’t be arsed to start again.’

‘Pessimistic, much? My parents are happy. You know nothing about their marriage!’

‘And you probably don’t know the full story either.’

I took a deep breath, ignoring what he’d said. Whether he believed in love, marriage or relationships was irrelevant. He just needed to pretend he did. He was an actor. He could do this in his sleep.

‘As I was saying, I’ve been entered for the Happily Ever After Awards…’

Liam snorted.

‘Look, if you’re just going to make fun of me, let’s just forget it!’

‘Sorry. Go on. I’m listening.’

‘And although they don’t explicitly state it in the rules, candidates stand a better chance if they’re in a relationship. And I’m… not. But I am good at my job, so I don’t want to be held back just because I don’t have a partner.’

‘So you need me to put on the performance of my life by pretending that we’re together.’

‘Basically.’ He could’ve left out the performance of my life bit, but I supposed I would be doing the same. Just being in the same room as Liam and not wanting to scream was a big enough ask as it was, so he wasn’t wrong to say that we’d both need to pull out all the stops to be convincing.

‘And when’s the finals for this competition?’

‘October.’

‘Could be worse. They could’ve held it on the most commercialised bullshit day of the year.’

‘What?’

‘Valentine’s Day.’

‘I think you meant to say the most romantic day of the year.’

‘No. I meant what I said: it’s a bullshit day.’

‘I’m going to need you to show a bit more enthusiasm for romantic things in front of the judges. And when we go out.’

‘Yeah, so about that…’ He rubbed his chin. ‘How many times do you think we’d actually need to be seen out together?’

‘As little as possible,’ I replied quickly. ‘They’ll want to interview us together at home in the next couple of weeks, then there’s the ceremony.’

‘As little as possible sounds good. We could go somewhere public for the first date. So we could be photographed together, do the interview, go out one more time after that to make it look legit, then lay low until your awards ceremony and that’s it.’ He sipped his water.

‘Photographed together?’ My eyes widened. ‘Like, papped?’

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