The Cupid Effect

by Dorothy Koomson

Genres: Romance; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

There are four words Ceri D'Altroy never wants to hear: 'I took your advice'. She's all for following your heart and living your dreams, but not because she's told you to do so. Unfortunately, having moved away from London to become a psychology lecturer, all she seems to do is inspire people to change their lives. There's Ed, who's decided to ask out a woman who is way out of his league; Mel and Claudine, two people who are now tempted to start an illicit affair; and Gwen, the chain-smoking head of department who has a deep, dark secret she only wants to share with her new employee. No-one who comes into contact with Ceri is ever the same again. Could this unsuspecting young woman be a modern-day Cupid?

Release date: August 9, 2018

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 318

Sample

chapter one

Heart’s Desire

I blame Oprah.

This is all her fault.

I mean, if it wasn’t for her, I’d be waking up to ‘just’ another weekend, right about now. The usual: Saturday morning telly, wander round Bromley shopping centre, battle for food in the Savacentre.

Instead, I’m stood at Leeds train station with my worldly goods at my feet.

I’ve really done it this time, haven’t I? I’ve done some stupid things in my life, most of them either involving sex or money or shoes, but this time I’ve truly surpassed myself. And it’s all down to Oprah Winfrey.

Oh, it started innocently enough. I woke up one morning and I couldn’t get.

I couldn’t get up, get showered, get dressed, get to the station, get on a train, get to work. I couldn’t get, so I pulled a sickie and I saw Oprah. My life went pear-shaped right after that.

Up to that point, any doubts I had about my life were formless. Just floating around at the back of my consciousness. After my sickie, though, these doubts and insecurities had a voice. An American talk show host’s voice.

First, I was taping Oprah’s show. Every day. Next, terms like ‘heart’s desire’ and ‘you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge’ were never far from my lips. Then came the books. I became the Noah of self-help manuals. I was hoarding them two by two as though, instead of a flood, there was a predicted self-help drought coming and yea, verily, it was almost upon us. A few moments after that – or maybe it was months – I was headed for Leeds clutching a one-way ticket. Because that’s where my heart’s desire was. Supposedly. Two hundred miles away from everything I knew and loved.

I glanced down at my suitcase and holdall.

WHAT THE HELL HAVE I DONE?

I’ve given up everything to go back to college, that’s what.

Two hundred miles away, in London, I had a life. I had my own flat. Two televisions, a sofa, a wardrobe, bookcases, video shelves, a bed made from reclaimed antique wood. Not some cheapo self-assembly job. It was actually made for me from antique wood. How many people could say that? Not many, that’s how many.

And, down south, I had friends. Hoards of them. I couldn’t go down the end of my street without tripping over them. Up here, I had my best mate Jessica and . . . and . . .

The breath caught in my chest, my heart started flinging itself against my rib cage. Oh God. I’m insane. I’m actually insane. (That revelation was on a par with finding out I was never going to marry Arnold Schwarzenegger. Except I’d cried quite a lot then.)

This was what everyone said. My family, my friends, my colleagues. They’d all reminded me how I’d struggled to pay off my student debts and buy a flat and decorate it and become respected in my career. ‘And you’re giving it all up to go back to living out of one room? Why exactly?’

‘Because Oprah told me to,’ would’ve been the short answer.

I explained, though, that I was leaving because life is too long, not too short. What if I get to ninety with my memory intact? Wouldn’t I be more pissed off if I got to that ripe old age and realised I’d not had the courage to follow my true heart’s desire and do what I really wanted with my life instead of carrying on with the day to day because it was easier not to rock the boat? Life’s too long not to do it; not to be true to myself. Most people understood when I spelt it out like that. Either that, or they lost interest halfway through and agreed with me to shut me up.

But why didn’t anyone stop me? If I really thought someone was going to do what I’d done on the strength of an American chat show and a few self-help tomes, I’d have gone in for a spot of kidnapping and self-help deprogramming. But that’s just me, obviously.

Anyway, it’s too late now, isn’t it, Ceri D’Altroy? You’re here now, they’re expecting you on Monday, and someone else is living in your flat. Might as well get on with it. Start dealing with the now. (Dealing with the now? Dealing with the now?! I was even thinking like an Oprah guest. The pre-Oprah me would’ve said, ‘Right Ceri, move your bloomin’ arse.’)

I hoisted my holdall onto my shoulder, gripped my suitcase handle with renewed purpose and vigour then headed for the taxi rank outside.

As I staggered towards the station exit, I kept my line of sight firmly lowered, with my head down, my chin-length black hair hiding my face. I often walked like this, as though I had the weight of the world, as well as half my flat, on my shoulders. I wasn’t a miserable old cow, I’d actually trained myself to not look up. To not look anyone in the face or initiate eye contact. The last thing I needed at this stage of the game, when I was already fragile, was to make eye contact with a stranger. Catch someone’s eye and you soon found yourself signing up for a credit card, giving some freak a fake phone number or hearing about some old dear’s gall bladder operation. At least, that’s what happened to me. Regularly. More regularly than should’ve been statistically possible. Most people didn’t get on a bus and get off fifteen minutes later knowing the entire life story of the woman next to them. I did. There were whole bus routes where I knew most of the passengers by their ailments, not their names.

This was my talent; my gift. Unintentionally eliciting personal info from perfect strangers. I never did have the brass front to tell these people to get lost or even ignore them. The best I could do was not make eye contact in the first place. And I’d found it perfectly feasible to go about ninety-two per cent of my daily business without looking anyone in the eye.

I wrestled my slipping holdall back onto my left shoulder, ignoring how my rucksack lacerated that soft, fleshy bit between my neck and shoulders. I can do this. I can do this,I repeated in my head.

I hadn’t got past the entrance of Menzies when a body stepped into my path. Shite. This happened sometimes. The ‘no eye contact’ thing didn’t work. People approached me anyway. But, I could still get out of this if I kept my head down and moved on.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, and stepped to my left without looking up.

The body stepped with me.

I stepped to the right, the body stepped to the right.

Left, the body went left. We danced on – right and left, left and right – like this for a few more seconds, then I attempted a double-bluff, left step, but actually went to the right.

But my escape plan was foiled by a fiendish body block. This person had me bang to rights. And I was going to be signing up to be a Jehovah’s Witness in, oooh, three minutes.

With a silent sigh, I looked up.

I wasn’t greeted by a magazine promising to save my soul (but let me die if I needed a blood transfusion), instead, a cardboard sign with:

Kerry Dalboy

was thrust in my face.

My eyes shot to above the sign. Jess grinned back at me so wide I could hardly see her face.

‘Welcome home sweetie,’ Jess cried and threw her arms around my neck. As she did so, our combined weight tipped back onto my overstuffed rucksack and before either of us could do anything, we both went tumbling to the ground.

chapter two

Student Country

In the short-stay car park across from the station, Jess stood behind me as I struggled out of my black rucksack. Her legs buckled as she took the strain. We both then huffed and puffed as we pushed the rucksack onto the back seat of the car. We’d silently agreed never to mention again what had just happened in the station. Ever.

‘OK, one, two, three . . . hnnnugh!’ We both heaved my suitcase into the boot. I had, of course, managed to travel across London and nigh on two hundred miles with this stuff on my own, but the grunting and straining made my efforts seem all the more heroic.

‘I thought you’d be bringing more stuff,’ Jess said as she squashed my holdall on top of the suitcase. She knew I could-n’t pack light if my house was on fire. And I’d never packed a two bedroom flat into three luggage items before. Which is why I’d been up half the night packing and repacking and repacking. I’d finally fallen asleep at about three a.m., still wondering if I should take everything out and start again. I’d never had to pack for twelve months before. Not even when I was in college – it’d always been packing for a few months until I went back to London.

I haven’t brought that much with me, have I? Maybe I’d been a bit too ruthless in deciding what I couldn’t live without. Clothes, shoes, books, videos, my photo albums, my beloved iBook, toothbrush, beauty shelf or two. But not enough for twelve months away from home. ‘I’ll probably go back next weekend for more,’ I said.

‘Oh Ceri,’ Jess said, she paused in the driver’s open doorway, ‘that’ll cost you a fortune.’

‘It won’t cost that much, I’ll get an Apex,’ I said.

‘You’ll be knackered though.’

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘Oi, watch it, Cockney.’

‘That’s the sort of thing you’d say to your kids, isn’t it? “You’ll be knackered.”’

‘I don’t know, you show a person a bit of concern and she just flings it back in your face.’ Jess sounded hurt. ‘Well, if you don’t want my concern . . .’

‘I’m surprised you ain’t got fake tears to go with that fake upset.’

She laughed and started the car. ‘You’re all heart, you.’

‘I learnt it from you, Teach.’

My life path had crossed with Jessica Breakfield’s life path when I was a first year psychology and media student at college in Leeds and she was a psychology lecturer. So that should be, Dr Jessica Breakfield. She hated me calling her that, though. ‘You use it like mothers use middle names,’ she’d once said. ‘It always sounds vaguely insulting or like I’m in trouble.’

She terrified me when I first met her. Jessica was the first woman doctor of psychology I met who looked and was under thirty-five. She had theories to her name, she was young and she made lectures interesting.

Jess remembered me as prone to hiding behind my waist-length hair and not talking very much. Probably something to do with me staring at her in wide-eyed, nineteen-year-old awe.

I’d done a comedy gulp when she was assigned as my personal tutor, but as I got to know her and began to relax around her, she began to see my face because my veil-like hair got shorter and shorter. (The shortest being the crop, and cleanly shaved at the back, which resulted in my parents not speaking to me till it grew back.)

It was at the end of college, though, when I decided to do a PhD that Jess and I became proper mates. She helped with my PhD proposal and the more time we spent together, the more we found that we had loads in common: a love of television, a worship of chocolate and an almost fanatical obsession with not getting out of our pyjamas on a Sunday unless we really, really needed to buy food. But these were only the tips of the icebergs floating in our sea of similarity.

Our connection went far deeper than was first visible to the naked eye. It was as if Jess and I were separated at birth – twelve years apart. She had a husband – Fred, teenage twin daughters Sharon and Colette – and grew up in Harrogate. I didn’t. She was five foot ten, slenderish with waves and waves of auburn hair and a Yorkshire accent. I was five foot four-and-a-bit, nearly five foot five, actually, curvyish, with a shiny black bob and a posh Sarf London drawl. (Yes, that sounded like an oxymoron, but there I was, saying ‘scowns’ (scones) and ‘cheeky caaa’ (cheeky cow) in the same sentence. Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve said them in the same sentence.) We were definitely the odd couple on the outside. Had you to pick out the two partners in crime in a line-up you’d never put the two of us together. Age, height, looks, background, nothing went together. But when Jess and I were together we were one person. We thought alike, we argued alike, we were scathing on demand. Under it, though, was a deep understanding. Jess was the only person who hadn’t said, ‘You’re mad you’ when I told her what I was doing. She’d been extremely supportive. Actually, what she said was, ‘Awww, honey, that’s fantastic! I knew you could do it. But you can’t live with me. And you can’t live within walking distance of me. I’ll never sleep if you do.’

I never did get on that PhD course, but I did get the most honest, caring, strangest best mate known to womankind.

Jessica parked Fred’s metallic blue Mondeo outside the orange-brick house, slap bang in the middle of Stanmore Vale, Burley Park. I’d lived near here, in Burley Park, when I was a Leeds student the first time. This area was unofficially Student Country.

You had to leave your maturity, dress sense and need to keep regular hours at the various border checkpoints around here. Student Country was made up of Hyde Park, Headingley, Burley Park and Kirkstall; it was where most of the students who went to Leeds Uni, Leeds Met, All Souls and the other colleges in Leeds lived, loved and drank. It’d occurred to me more than once that you could wipe out at least seventy per cent of the student population by napalming that relatively small area of West Yorkshire.

Three streets over was the last student house I’d lived in. Now that was a student house. 98 Stanmore Avenue. I’d never forget that address. So much had happened to me in the year I lived in that house it was hard to believe it was only a year. I’d got pneumonia in that house. I’d met the love of my life when I lived in that house. I was dumped by the love of my life in that house. I had what turned out to be my last shag in Leeds in that house (and hadn’t had another one for about two years after that). I got my finals results in that house. It was a very momentous house. I was hoping that 17 Stanmore Vale, the house I was about to move into, would be far less dramatic. I’d grown out of student dramatics.

I’d been clutching my Leeds A to Z and a borrowed copy of The Itchy Guide To Leeds when I first knocked on 17 Stanmore Vale. It was the first time I’d been back round these parts in well over six years and I’d needed a little help in finding my way around.

Jess, who taught at Leeds Metropolitan University (‘The Met’ to most people), had seen the advert for a double room and thought it’d be perfect for me: I knew the area (ish) and it was living with two post-graduate students as averse to first-time-away-from-home, freedom-insane undergraduates who’d want to party all night and slob all day as I was. And it was a good twenty-minute drive from her home. So, she’d noted the details then went round taking down all the flyers she could find so I’d have a chance to look at it before anyone else did.

The front door had been opened about two seconds after my knock by a lad with messy, rust-coloured hair and a pierced eyebrow. He was casually clothed in baggy jeans and a plain white T-shirt. I say lad, he was more a bloke. But could pass for a lad because he was younger than me. (Not that I was old. He was twenty-five, twenty-six and I’d almost left my twenties. But only almost.) His light eyes sparkled as he said, ‘Hi, you must be Ceri,’ and grinned. His whole face relaxed into that grin and I fell instantly in like with him. I was a relatively simple creature like that. You were nice to me, I liked you. Hell, I’d been out with blokes on the strength of them being nice to me as opposed to any kind of attraction.

‘And you’re Jake?’ I replied, grinning back.

‘Yup, that’s me. You’re right on time. Come in. Have you just come up from London?’

Is it that obvious? I wondered. I glanced down at myself. I did indeed look like I’d just crawled away from a three-hour train journey. My jacket and jeans were travel-creased, my Walkman, crisp packets, spare jumper, notebook and reading material all bulged in my bag. ‘Yeah. I’m going back straight away as well,’ I said, looking back up at Jake. ‘I could only get the afternoon off work. They’re not too happy about me leaving so want to get every second out of me.’

‘Oh, right, better get on then. This way.’

My feet bounced slightly on the ruby red carpet of the hallway. Quality carpet, and from the cushioning effect, it probably had underlay. Clever colour choice, I thought, as I followed Jake. Subconsciously you felt important, like VIP material, because you’d come into a place where they’d laid out the red carpet, literally. Or it could be a way to get a murdered body out of the house without the worry of blood stains on the carpet (but that was the kind of thought that plagued my mind).

Opposite the stairs lay the living room. I stepped in after Jake and my mouth fell open. It was straight out of a homes magazine: porridge-coloured carpet, cream walls and two squashy, tan leather sofas. Standing guard over the fireplace was a professionally-framed Dali print – The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. At the other end of the room were two huge bay windows with net curtains and everything. This was a proper sitting room, not a hashed together, student job. I’d steeled myself when I knocked on the front door for threadbare carpets, limescale plumbing and tales of a nightmare landlord.

Jake explained that he was in fact that nightmare landlord, that he owned the house, as he showed me round. ‘My parents lent me the money for a deposit on this place and acted as guarantors when I first came to college here just over four years ago. I was a mature student, I mean, not that mature, but I couldn’t stand the thought of a normal student house, so I talked them into it. They also lent me the cash to do it up properly. That’s why I rent out the other two rooms, it covers the mortgage and pays back my parents.’

I was only half listening to him; I was far too busy falling in love. The red carpet and living room were like passing someone attractive in the street and glancing back to get a second look. The rest of the house was like getting to know someone, dating them, sharing with them and finding out that everything about them is wonderful. Finding no reason not to fall in love with them.

We wandered down the narrow corridor to the kitchen and my heart fluttered. It was another large space, this time with real wood flooring. A chrome and beechwood dream, white cabinets with real wood worktops that, Jake explained, needed special oil rubbing into them – ‘we take that in turns’. A breakfast bar divided the room, and around it stood four high, padded stools. The kitchen had stainless steel appliances, a blender, a real coffee machine, canisters that had ‘tea’, ‘sugar’, ‘coffee’ and ‘biscuits’ on them. (I had a sneaking suspicion that each jar was filled with what was written on the outside of it.)

‘There’s a little bit of a garden-patio area that we sometimes sit on, but me and Ed don’t use it that much,’ Jake added as he nodded to the back door. ‘Do you want to see upstairs now?’

‘Oh yes,’ I whispered.

The soft-pile redness of the corridor went all the way up the stairs, both flights of them. The room on offer was right at the top of the house.

I trailed behind Jake as he swung open the white painted door to the attic room, my heart pounding hard in my chest, my breath short with anticipation. I fell completely head over heels as the door revealed the mysteries of the attic.

Part of the ceiling was slanted, with two skylights set in it. The cream walls made the room seem even larger. It had a double bed, a grey metal-framed desk, an oak wardrobe, and rather thoughtfully, a window had been installed in one of the walls so you could look out at the treetops and into bedrooms of the opposite houses when you lay on the bed.

I was speechless with lust as I turned to Jake and said, ‘And you don’t want to move in here now that it’s free?’

Jake shrugged and shook his head. ‘It’s too far to stumble if I come home drunk or stoned or both. Bill, that’s the lad who lived in this room before, would often sleep on one of the sofas downstairs cos he couldn’t make it up here when he was pissed. It’s a long way.’

‘And what about the other lad?’ I added, just as breathlessly. ‘Doesn’t he want a bigger room?’

‘All the rooms are quite big. But Ed? Nah, he doesn’t want it. He’s a boy, and to him more space equals more to clean.’

‘I see,’ I said in a small, small voice. If I don’t get this room, if I end up in a hovel in Hyde Park with bars on the windows and doors, then I was Attila the Hun in a former life. ‘So, do you need references or something if I want to take it?’

‘Um, no. I mean, there’s a standard six-month contract and I’d need a month’s deposit and a month’s rent in advance, but no references,’ Jake said. ‘But you’d be interested in moving in?’

I almost nodded my head off. ‘Oh yes.’

‘Right. Well, there’s no one else waiting to see it. It’s weird, actually, no one else has rung up about it. I don’t know why . . .’ Jake went off into a stare. ‘I put up loads of flyers and no one’s called.’

‘Really?’ I replied, sympathetically. It’ll have absolutely nothing to do with Jess taking down the posters all round the college campus, I’m sure. ‘That is weird.’

I reached into my bag, pulled out my cheque book, rummaged around for a pen. ‘So, that’s £600, is it?’

‘What?’ Jake said. ‘Oh, yeah. You can make the cheque out to Jake Halder. We can set up a standing order after that.’

I was already writing at the speed of light, just in case he changed his mind and decided to investigate the case of the disappearing flyers more closely.

‘You’re not a psycho, are you?’ he asked as he led the way back down to the ground floor, my HSBC cheque peeking out of the top of his jeans back pocket. ‘The lad who lived here before, Bill, turned out to be a bit of a nutter. Me and Ed were well pleased when he got chucked off his course and had to move. You’re not one, are you?’

‘I’ve been told I’m a bit strange sometimes, but not a nutter.’

‘Cool,’ Jake said. And there was me thinking I was easily pleased. ‘Anyway, let me know when you want to move in and either Ed or I will be here. Then I’ll give you your own set of keys and you can sign the contract. Do you want a cup of tea before you go?’

And that was it. I’d got myself a place to live. The only bind I could see would be trailing down to the second floor to the bathroom or to use the loo. But that bathroom had floor-toceiling blue and white mosaic tiles, a power shower and squashy rubber floor tiles – it was the kind of suffering I could handle.

‘Hi,’ I said to the stringy lad who answered the door of 17 Stanmore Vale this time around. He was about twenty-two, looked like he’d been elongated on a rack, had long blond hair and wasn’t there when I’d looked around the house. And there ended the list of things I knew about him. I couldn’t even remember his name. Eric or something.

He in return cast an eye over me, my luggage, the woman technically old enough to be his mother behind me. Then he made no secret of his confusion: his forehead knitted together, his green eyes tried to calculate what was going on. ‘You all right?’ he asked, vague flirtations with a non-Yorkshire accent lilted in his voice.

‘I’m Ceri D’Altroy. I’m moving into the room? Upstairs?’

‘Ah, right,’ he replied. ‘I’m Ed.’

Ed. That was it. ‘Hi, Ed. This,’ I indicated to Jess with a slight nod of my head over my shoulder, ‘is my best mate Jessica.’

‘Hi?’ Ed offered cautiously, his face blanking out completely. He made no move to let us in. He stood guarding the doorway like one of the guards outside Buckingham Palace; we were one moment away from him putting on his bearskin hat, picking up his rifle and totally ignoring us until his shift was over.

‘OK Ed,’ Jess said, ‘are you going to let us in, or do we have to break in round the back?’

Ed, blankness aside, was polite and friendly. He made Jess and me a cuppa, even though I rarely drank proper tea. I’d been hoping he had herbal, but when I mentioned it he’d got that glazed-over expression he’d got when I introduced Jess as my best mate so ‘Ordinary’s fine,’ I’d said, quickly.

Jess gulped hers down the second he set it down on the coffee table. While gulping, she twiddled locks of her auburn hair around her fingers. She was gagging for a cigarette. She’d abstained all the way from the station (Fred, her husband, didn’t allow smoking in his car) and she didn’t want to light up in what was so blatantly a smoke-free environment. It was painful to watch; I twisted in my seat so I wouldn’t have to. Watch, that is.

After making the tea, Ed said he’d take my stuff up to my room.

‘You don’t have to, I’ll do it later,’ I’d said.

‘It’s no trouble,’ Ed replied. ‘I’m going upstairs anyway. Getting ready to go out later.’

‘If you’re sure . . .’

Ed shrugged his whole body. ‘Course.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll make you dinner one day as a thank you.’

‘Yeah, she does a fantastic Pot Noodle,’ Jessica chimed in.

I elbowed her, hard.

Despite his slender frame, Ed picked up the rucksack, suitcase and holdall effortlessly. We watched his progress up the stairs with admiration. He must’ve been muscle and bone, rather than skin and bone as he looked.

Jess hopped up on the sill of the left bay window the second he’d gone, swept back the net curtain and opened the window. One cigarette went down in frantic silence – with each puff she visibly relaxed. The second cigarette was smoked slower, she could even talk. And, ‘I’m glad you’ve got a nice place,’ she said. ‘Ed seems all right. I hope you’ll be happy here.’ Most best-est friends in the whole world would’ve been reassuring, possibly offered a hug, not Jessica. She called it like she saw it, even if . . .