Catherine didn’t smile. Rachel always thought that her serious face was her most beautiful. Although that was like choosing which of Thornton’s Decadently Dark chocolates she preferred. All of them, obviously.
‘What’s this mean for you and him?’
‘As long as nothing changes then it doesn’t mean anything.’
Rachel could see Catherine retreating from her feelings. She rarely went off-kilter. You could detonate a bomb beside her and she’d carry on as normal. Maybe that’s what Richard did with his news.
‘You’re sure about that?’ Rachel asked. Just because Catherine called time on their marriage didn’t mean it was easy to hear this news.
‘Rachel, we just celebrated a happily divorced ten years. Of course I’m sure. As long as he doesn’t let this nonsense interfere with the business.’
‘Right,’ Rachel said. ‘That’s the business you own with your soon-to-be-remarried ex-husband. Whose fiancée you hate. What could possibly go wrong there?’
‘It’ll be okay,’ said Catherine. With that, she got up and went to check on Sarah.
Rachel couldn’t exactly throw stones at Catherine while she had James to deal with at work. She just hoped Catherine wouldn’t end up mixing business with displeasure.
Not everyone got to ignore their exes when their tolerance ran out. Sometimes children, social circles, mortgages or, in Rachel’s case, office space, made it hard to just delete his contact details and make your friends promise to forget all about that dark period. And sometimes people, like Catherine and Richard, actually wanted to stay in each other’s lives. Not only that, they built an entire business model around the idea that other people did too.
It definitely wasn’t for everyone, Rachel thought as she followed Catherine down to the kitchen. But after last night’s date she had to admit that it might be for her.
She just knew that Catherine was going to be smug about that.
‘This looks delicious,’ Catherine said as Sarah dished up their dinner – a huge salad of grilled halloumi, rocket, blood oranges and olives – at their battered, beloved kitchen table. It was big and comfortable and never divulged the secrets they shared over it. Like the rest of the house, it had seen better decades.
‘So, I’ve been thinking about RecycLove.com,’ Rachel said.
‘Oh?’ Catherine gave away nothing.
‘Because your date was bad? I want details!’ cried Sarah as she slid a tray full of shiny white meringues into the oven.
‘Please, not while we’re eating,’ Rachel said.
‘How did you meet this guy?’ asked Catherine.
‘At the pub last Friday. But it was close to last orders so I didn’t talk to him that much.’
‘That’s what you get for going out with someone you don’t even know,’ said Catherine.
Instead of answering, Rachel dug her phone out, opened Twitter and shared his photo round the table.
‘Ah, I see.’ Catherine smiled.
‘Nice one,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s pretty. I’d overlook a lot to snog him.’
‘That’s what I figured too. We’ve been tweeting all week. Just jokey messages, mild flirtation. He suggested a drink near the office. He did seem normal at first. Until he started flirting.’ She grimaced.
‘But you’d been flirting with him on Twitter.’
‘Not like this. At first it was hot.’ Her face started to burn. This wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to confess, even to friends. ‘We started talking about what we’d do to each other … in the bedroom.’
‘Rachel!’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘You don’t even know him.’
‘Well, obviously, Sarah, at that point I was hoping to change that! It’s been a while, you know.’
Both women nodded. The only man who’d been in their house in the last six months had come to fix the boiler.
‘So I said something fairly tame like …’ She lowered her voice. So embarrassing. ‘Like I’d wear a body stocking. He said he’d like that. Then he asked if I’d wee on him while he wore the body stocking.’
‘Wow,’ Catherine said, keeping a straight face, Rachel noted. She probably had a tick box on the website for such fetishes.
‘That’s sick!’ Sarah said. ‘You should have reported him to the police.’
‘For what? Wanting to wee on me? It’s not a crime. The crime was that I didn’t just get up and leave. But it seemed rude not to finish my drink. That’s when it got really weird.’
‘That’s when it got weird?’ Catherine said.
‘Did he start punching himself?’ Sarah asked.
Rachel shook her head.
‘No, no punching …?’
Sarah’s mind worked in mysterious ways.
‘It’s just that wanting to be dominated probably comes from low self-esteem, maybe self-harm,’ Sarah continued.
Then again, Rachel thought, she was a clever woman. She just didn’t feel the need to fill the rest of them in on the steps in her thought process. Sometimes talking to her was like being paintballed from all sides.
‘So,’ Rachel continued. ‘I said that weeing on people wasn’t really my thing. And then he asked if I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my saviour. Because otherwise I was going to hell.’
‘Because you didn’t wee on him?’ Sarah asked. ‘That seems harsh.’
‘That’s when I left.’ She turned to Catherine. ‘If I join RecycLove.com can you promise I won’t have to wee on anyone?’
‘I can’t make any promises,’ Catherine said. ‘But it’s got to be better than meeting randoms in bars. You’re really thinking of joining?’
Rachel nodded. She couldn’t believe it had come to this. A decade ago when she was just out of uni she’d never have joined a dating site. It had been too easy to meet guys then, and anyway, online dating reminded her of those WLTM adverts that everyone laughed over in the back of the papers.
But now, unless she developed a fetish or was born-again, she might need RecycLove. ‘I’m afraid it’s time.’
‘That’s great, Rachel,’ Catherine said. ‘Who’ll join with you?’
‘James, of course. He owes me.’
That was the rule with RecycLove. It was like a normal dating website but she could only join by bringing an ex to upcycle. New joiners gave their ex a romantic evaluation, which
