The Dating Game. Carolyn Caterer. Короткие любовные романы. . Читать онлайн. Литмир. LITMIR.BIZ

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Chapter 1

“I could never be with a man who didn’t like the Beatles” Anna sighed with feeling.

“Well I could never be with a man who could remember them!” was Aleks’s quick response.

“To be honest ladies, I’m getting less picky by the minute and, musical preferences seem to be the least of my worries. How on earth do you meet guys these days when you are forty two years old and single?”

And that, dear reader (yikes I’m already sounding like that well-known spinster Miss Jane Austen) is how I came to find myself looking for love online………

My name is Jen and I seem to be suffering from an affliction that began in the noughties, or at least was first recognised by the media as hailing from this era; namely the excessive number of single women in their forties. It seems to be a crisis not seen since the end of the second world war when women outnumbered men and so many were left on the shelf.

Now, being left on the shelf wasn’t something I had ever planned and boy do I hate that expression, but I enjoyed my twenties and the freedom that gave me. Wasted a severe amount of time in my thirties on a man who seemed to be stuck in the nineteen thirties in terms of his attitude to women and their role in society, and then headed into my early forties flying the flag for independent women everywhere. I watched the entire series of Sex and the City to remind myself it was fabulous to be single (the trouble is I don’t think any part of Hampshire really matches up to New York). I did not have to bother with men at all when I had a rampant rabbit waiting and ready to go and it never farted, or snored afterwards.

Then suddenly it hit me: I was forty two and there were no available men anymore, or at least there didn’t seem to be. All requests to my girlfriends to set me up with their single male friends were met by the following responses:

“I think you’ve dated all my single male friends”

“All the single men I know are gay”

“I wouldn’t wish any of my single male friends on you – they’re a bunch of sad bastards”

This wasn’t exactly the response that I wanted to hear. After all if I was single and a good catch then surely there had to be some hot men out there looking for a soul mate? But it certainly seemed to be a case of very slim pickings as far as my friends were concerned.

I knew of course that there were decent men out there, but the question that had been running around in my head for more than a few months was how on earth do I find them? Actually, I had probably been mulling this over for a few years, but kept putting it to the back of my mind convinced that sooner or later someone decent had to appear on the horizon. It seemed however that walking off into the sunset with the love of your life wasn’t as easy as you had been led to believe in those childhood fairy tales.

I felt that if anyone uttered those words “Oh he’ll turn up when you are least expecting it” at me again, I would throttle them. I hadn’t been expecting it for the last three years, so either he wasn’t coming or my soul mate was useless at reading maps and, being a typical male, was refusing to ask for directions.

However, I wasn’t dissimilar to my friends and let’s face it they had all managed to meet someone and settle down and still appeared to like them a number of years later. So the question was, how had they succeeded where I had so far failed?

Let’s start with Anna; she’s my business partner. We run Jenna, a design agency and a very successful one at that, bearing in mind that we are not based in London. Been there, done that and happy to avoid the six thirty train to Waterloo in the morning I can tell you. We met when working for one of the big agencies in the city and it soon became clear that we worked well together and had a lot in common, so one day over lunch we decided to pool our resources and set up a business. We now employ eleven people, have a great client base and both of us are lucky enough to really love our jobs. Anna is great at bringing in the business and I am in charge of managing the clients.

Anna, as you have already gathered, is not a sad spinster of this parish, unlike me. She met her husband Ben at University and has never looked back. He is a veterinary surgeon and works at the equine hospital about ten miles from where they live. Personally I don’t know why someone would want to spend their time with an animal that seems to be dangerous from any angle, but he obviously loves it. Although not as much as he loves Anna. They really were made for each other, with lots in common and yet enough differences to keep the spark alive. Both adore their jobs and love to walk but also have independent interests; Ben likes football and Anna is a keen tennis player, so they either compromise or agree to go off on their own.

Then there is Erica. She runs her own bookshop and her husband of ten years is a Dentist (you can imagine what it is like when he and Ben are in the same room, comparing notes on anaesthetics and goodness knows what else). And yes this is really corny, but Erica met Matt when her Dentist was off sick and he got to gaze into her eyes as well as down her throat, which brings a whole new dimension to the phrase “tickling your tonsils” I can tell you.

Now they are like chalk and cheese; Erica is ultra organised and likes nothing better than rearranging her books after someone has had a browse and not lined them up quite right, while Matt can never find his car keys, has obviously not heard about filing systems and is incapable of putting anything away. You would think that this would be grounds for a divorce, but no, Erica loves tidying up after him as he creates chaos and he loves the way she organises him so that he appears to me efficient even when he isn’t.

Polly is married to Milo and they run their own Italian coffee shop. They supply the most divine cakes and chocolates as well as superb home made Italian cooking. They met while he was training to be a chef and she complained about her dessert. Good job it was love at first sight, as he came storming out into the restaurant in a manner that I understand would have seen Gordon Ramsay running for cover, but she obviously charmed the pants off him, which was just as well because her date at the time left the restaurant without paying, when he realised that she only had eyes for the head chef and no longer for him.

Working together was tough when they were building up the business but now they are in demand and Polly had a bit of a break from work, following the births of their two sons, now aged fourteen and twelve respectively. Luckily for Polly and Milo, Polly’s parents had set up a trust fund to pay for their grandchildren’s education and the boys are happily ensconced at boarding school, thus relieving Polly of daily child duties during term time. Hence she works like mad then so that she can take time off during the school holidays

And finally Aleks. Aleks always claimed she never wanted to settle down into cosy domesticity, but who ever listens to a teenager? Anyway that was before she met Dan when she was at Art College (and no she didn’t change her name from Alex, to Aleks when she got there. She was named after her Polish Grandmother and the quirky spelling really seemed to reflect her artistic leanings). Dan was head of the student union at the LSE. While Aleks had never shown any interest in politics she certainly did not hesitate in showing an interest in Dan with his passion for his work and his laconic manner outside of it and they married soon after they left university. He ended up working for a

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The Dating Game. Carolyn Caterer

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Chapter 1