The Ex Factor - Eva Woods MIRA

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Jeremy Paxman with eyeliner flicks. ‘Come on, tell us.’

      ‘Forty-seven,’ Ani whispered.

      ‘Christ on a bike,’ shouted Rosa. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Christians. I mean—just, wow.’

      ‘I want to find the right person!’ said Ani, still red. ‘And you know, it’s so easy online. You just click, and then if you’re free, why not meet up? It’s either that or let my parents set me up with Dad’s golfing buddy’s nephew from Leeds, who has his own mobile disco business.’

      ‘Exactly.’ Marnie slapped the table. ‘It’s too easy. It’s like going to Tesco. And it’s about as romantic. Whereas this way—well, we can have a man curated for us by our lovely friends, who know us so well.’ She beamed at them. ‘Think about it. It takes out all the risk—we get pre-screened, predated men.’

      ‘Curated,’ muttered Rosa, who seemed to be having trouble with the whole conversation. ‘I don’t know. This is all new to me. I’m still getting my head around being single.’ She bit her lip, and Helen could see her eyes were filling up. Most of their nights out recently had ended with a weeping Rosa. She looked round at her friends—Marnie flushed and determined, Ani scowling, maybe thinking of her forty-seven bad dates, Rosa on the verge of tears. And what if Marnie suddenly suggested someone take on her most dateable ex of all? No way. The subject had to be changed, and fast. And Helen, with conflict-defusing skills that Ban Ki-moon would be proud of, was the Official Difficult Subject Changer of the group.

      ‘Guys, it’s a lovely idea, but remember—I don’t date. Like, ever. So I’m afraid I’m out. Now, did anyone want dessert? They have an ice-cream sundae made with popping candy!’

       Helen

      Helen woke up the next morning not at 8 a.m, or even 9, but at the unconscionable time of 10.36 a.m. Her tongue felt like the bottom of the bin right before she washed it out with bleach and hot water (second Wednesday of the month). Bloody Marnie.

      The night had dissolved somewhere around one, with Helen being poured into an Uber. She never got taxis—she could afford the odd one, but she saw it as a sign you hadn’t planned your night properly. And she was always hearing horror stories from Rosa about their shady safety standards. Admittedly, Rosa herself had been fast asleep in the back of one heading north. Helen must have been drunk, because she’d asked if Marnie needed to stay at hers.

      ‘No, no,’ she’d said, putting Helen in the cab—she was always mysteriously sober, despite being so tiny. ‘I have somewhere sorted. It’s fine.’ She’d patted the side of the car and stepped back, holding her arms away from her cape to wave.

      Sitting up now and groping for her phone, Helen realised she didn’t know if Marnie even had the money to get home. Or where home currently was for her. In fact she hadn’t managed to find out anything about Marnie’s life for the past two years. Some friend she was. But at least, in all this talk of exes, there’d been no mention of Ed. She squinted at her phone. It glowed with message symbols, missed calls and voicemails, emails, texts, even WhatsApps. And her heart stilled.

      No. Not now. It couldn’t be her mum, after all this time—Oh, thank God! They were all from Logan.

      Logan Cassidy: internet mogul, entrepreneur, and owner of a vast network of shady businesses, from the dating/cheating website Helen reluctantly ran, to a cut-every-corner budget airline and a chain of underwear shops for larger ladies, More Than a Handful.

      MASSIVE EMERGENCY, the first email read. Helen scrolled down. BIG SECURITY BREACH CALL ME NOW. And the last one—WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?

      Helen closed her eyes for a second. It was going to be one of those days. She called Logan, clearing her throat again and again to try to sound like she hadn’t just woken up. ‘Hi! Sorry, I had an early doctor’s appointment. Er, women’s troubles.’

      ‘Whatever, whatever,’ he said hastily, in his South London growl. ‘Now I need you on this ASAP. I think we’ve been hacked. Like them that got into the Pentagon.’

      ‘What’s happened?’ Logan had an overdeveloped sense of the importance of bitontheside.com in global events. It was probably just a server glitch.

      ‘Someone’s replaced the profile pics. Instead of all that skiing and raising bloody glasses of wine, they’re bloody—well, have a look.’

      Helen felt panic bubble into her bloodstream. This wasn’t supposed to happen today. She was already behind on dusting the bookcases and brushing Mr Fluffypants, a job that was only slight less dangerous than being a UN weapons inspector. ‘They didn’t get into the personal data?’

      His voice softened. ‘No, that’s locked up tighter than a nun’s chuff. But the rest—the fences are down, the T. rex is out, ya know? So I’m gonna send in the T. rex wrangler.’

      ‘Er, what?’

      Logan was a big Jurassic Park fan. He reputedly had a life-size model of a dinosaur in the atrium of his mansion in Essex. He saw a lot of John Hammond in himself. ‘I’m sending a web guy to you,’ he yelled. ‘He’s meant to be good. Total geek. He’ll fix it, OK?’

      ‘OK. But what do you mean, to me?’ He didn’t mean to her flat, surely?

      ‘You’re still in that dump in Peckham, yeah?’

      ‘It’s Peckham Rye actually and it’s really up and coming—but Logan—Logan!’

      ‘Going into a tunnel. Bloody sort this for me, Helen. I’m counting on ya.’ His voice faded.

      Helen caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, eyes bloodshot, blonde curls sticking up, boobs falling out of her Frozen-motif pyjamas. Then she heard the cheerful trill of the doorbell. It really was going to be one of those days.

      She shuffled to the door of her basement flat, tying up her silk dressing gown—a present from Marnie when she’d worked in a vintage shop, and which for years Helen had felt too big to wear, preferring to hide inside massive towelling robes. A big man stood on her doorstep. Not fat, but very tall, very wide. Strapping. If you could call someone strapping when they wore a T-shirt that said ‘No I cannot fix your computer’ and combats with more pockets than a snooker table. He had flaming red hair and a red beard, like a Viking, and he glanced pointedly at a Casio watch.

      ‘Yes?’ she said, irritably, through the security chain.

      ‘You’ve got a bug,’ he said. Northern accent.

      ‘Um, no, I just—I worked late…’

      ‘In your website, I mean. I’m here to have a look.’

      ‘How do I know that’s who you are?’

      ‘Did your boss not say I’d be around?’ He scrabbled in one pocket, then another. ‘Bollocks,’ he muttered. ‘OK, here.’

      She glanced at what he’d handed her. ‘That’s a Blockbuster video card. Which expired in 2004.’

      ‘It’s not my fault the high street could no longer keep up with the increasing ease of pay-to-view websites. Speaking of websites, yours is borked.’

      ‘Borked?’

      ‘Yeah, it’s like—a technical computer term for up the swanny. Now let me in or it’ll only get worse.’

      ‘OK,’ she relented. ‘I’m not—this has taken me by surprise.’ He looked puzzled. ‘I’m not dressed,’ she explained.

      He looked her over. ‘You are dressed, i.e., you’re not naked.’ Helen stared at him. He stared back. ‘Computer… fixey? I’m sorry, you are employed by that dodgy South London geezer, yes?’

      ‘Yes.’ Helen snapped into action and held the door open. ‘I’m

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