A Perfect Match Read online

  ‘I expected that. I read an article recently which said that something like 80 per cent of all adopted children in Western Europe are foreign.’

  ‘Well, next time don’t keep the statistics to yourself, share them with me so I don’t go making a fool of myself. So what do you think?’

  ‘About having ling Su Wong as a daughter? I dunno, but if she looks like Lucy Liu from Charlie’s Angels, I’m OK with it,’ he said, finding himself very entertaining.

  2

  A week later I called over to Lucy’s flat. Lucy is my best friend. We were in school and college together and she is an all round fab person. Until last year she was single and beginning to get a bit angry about it, but then I set her up with Donal – the captain of James’s rugby team. Donal is a bit rough around the edges – there is a touch of the caveman about him – but underneath it all he is a really good guy. After a rocky start they fell madly in love and have now decided to move in together.

  I arrived at Lucy’s apartment which looked as if a bomb had hit it. For someone who was normally so organized both in work – she had one of those ball-breaking management consultant-type jobs – and at home, Lucy was looking unusually frazzled. I sat down on her bed and watched her sift through her belongings.

  ‘I just don’t know what to bring and what to leave behind. What happens when you move in? Where do I put my Tampax? Do we have sex every night? Do I need to wear hot underwear every day? Help, Emma,’ said Lucy, as she sifted through her gorgeous La Perla underwear. Looking good was not going to be a problem for Lucy, I thought, as I picked up a beautiful midnight-blue lace bra. Apart from her gorgeous underwear, she was tall, slim and good looking with long thick black hair. Lucky Donal.

  I on the other hand was five foot four, ginger and a little chunky around the hip area. I’m not saying I didn’t scrub up well, but first thing in the morning I was not a pretty sight. Poor old James was subjected to my M&S cotton underwear and was lucky if the colours matched. As for suspenders, I hadn’t worn them since the first time we had sex to conceive – as opposed to ‘just for the sake of it’ sex. Maybe I should get new underwear. It couldn’t be pleasant to have to look at my big white ass in sexless cotton knickers. I’d have to make more of an effort. I’d look up the Ann Summers’ website when I got home and order some gear. Spice things up a bit. No sex toys or anything, just some hot lingerie to detract from my flabby thighs.

  ‘Relax, it’ll all be fine. You’ll just find your own rhythm. And no, you don’t have to wear suspender belts every day. Well, I don’t anyway.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ said Lucy. ‘Seeing someone twice a week is manageable. You get your hair blow-dried, you put on your best underwear and it’s all great. But on a daily basis it’d be hard to keep up. What about sex though? On the one hand I’m worried he’ll be gagging for it 24/7 and on the other I’m worried he won’t want it at all. I keep reading about couples who move in together and their sex life dies. They go from not being able to keep their hands off each other to only having sex once every few weeks.’

  ‘To be honest, Lucy, my sex life has been so regimented over the last two years I can’t remember what we were like before that. Maybe you should ask Jess?’

  Lucy looked at me and raised her eyebrows. We giggled. I had forgotten about the night Jess confessed to not having had sex for eight months after the birth of her first child. Jess was our other best friend. She was married with two children and was finding it hard going. The good news was that she had got back to having sex only three months after her second child was born.

  ‘I’m going to miss this apartment, it’s been a real haven for me,’ said Lucy, looking around her lovely cream and beige apartment. ‘Donal’s place is a bit smelly and bare. It’s a real bachelor pad.’

  ‘Just think of all the fun you’ll have doing it up and making your mark,’ I said, doing my best Pollyanna impression.

  ‘God, Emma, I’m really scared,’ admitted Lucy, in a rare display of vulnerability that made my heart melt. “What if it doesn’t work out and I end up on my own again?’

  ‘Hey,’ I said, giving her a hug, ‘you’re going to be fine. Donal worships the ground you walk on. I’ve never seen you this happy with a guy. You’re made for each other. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not just the two of us, is it?’ said Lucy, referring to Donal’s niece Annie. Five years ago when Annie was ten, her parents – Donal’s sister Paula and her husband Tom – were killed in a car crash. Paula had named Donal as legal guardian to Annie. So Donal had moved back to Ireland from the UK, where he was playing rugby professionally, to look after his niece. She was in boarding school now and only got out one weekend in six, but little orphan Annie had reacted very badly when Donal told her that Lucy was moving in. She clearly didn’t want another woman taking Donal away from her, so Lucy was understandably nervous about dealing with a fifteen-year-old who hated her.

  ‘Don’t worry about Annie, she’ll come around. She obviously just has abandonment issues being an orphan and all that. She’ll love you when she gets to know you. Speaking of adoption, I called the Health Board and they told me I have to go overseas to get a baby, so we could end up with the united colours of Benetton!’

  ‘What happened to all the Irish babies?’

  ‘There are none. It’s weird actually that you will be kind of adopting Annie – well, being lumped with her – at the same time that I’m trying to adopt a baby.’

  ‘God, that is a bit weird. You can come over and practise your parenting skills on Annie if you like, she’s out in three weeks. Come on, I better get all my stuff moved in before she has a chance to change Donal’s mind.’

  A few days later Lucy was unpacking her boxes in Donal’s house when he strolled into the bathroom and saw his cupboard – the one that used to hold a bar of soap and a toothbrush – crammed full of products.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s just stuff for my hair. I’ll need to buy a new cabinet for my other products, there’s no room in here.’

  ‘Hair products?’ said Donal, gazing down at the numerous bottles cluttering up his sink. He picked one up: ‘Kerastase Aqua-Oleum, Nang-nutrition – nourishing recharge … What the hell does that mean? Is it in Chinese? Frizz-ease, mirror image heat-activated laminator,’ he read. ‘Laminator! For your hair? Whatever happened to shampoo? Ah, Jesus, Lucy, you’ve got to be kidding me. Is there one product for each hair on your head?’

  ‘Donal, it takes time, energy, money and good products for a girl’s hair to look good, so buzz off and leave me to it.’

  Donal shook his head and walked into his bedroom. Lucy heard a roar.

  ‘What the hell?’

  She followed him in and saw him staring at his wardrobe which was now filled with her shoes – just the fifty pairs.

  ‘How in God’s name could anyone in their right mind need all these shoes. You have – one, two, three … eight pairs of black boots in here.’

  ‘They’re all totally different,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Fifteen pairs of little strappy shoes! We live in Ireland, not Barbados.’

  ‘I wear my Jimmy Choos every Saturday night. I’ll let you in on a little secret – women suffer to look good.’

  ‘Jimmy what?’ asked Donal.

  ‘Choo, he makes amazing shoes.’

  ‘What’s the story with all the Chinese stuff? Hair products and now shoemakers. Whatever happened to Head and Shoulders and Clarks shoes?’

  ‘Some of us actually moved out of the seventies. It’s really quite liberating. You should try it.’

  ‘All the Chinese wear is those old flip flops, so why would I want them to make my shoes? Hey,’ said Donal, staring at the wall, ‘where’s my poster gone?’

  ‘If you are referring to that tacky picture of Pamela Anderson in a thong, it’s in the bin.’

  ‘What? I love that picture. It’s good for the soul to wake up to a beautiful sight every day. I
open my eyes in the morning and there she is winking at me. It’s fantastic. Where is she till I put her back up?’

  ‘You’re joking?’ said Lucy, looking appalled. ‘If you think that I’m going to have those plastic boobs staring down at me every morning, you’ve got another think coming.’

  ‘They may be plastic, but they look fantastic. Seeing Pammie helps me get motivated in the morning. She gets me going. Right, where’s the poster?’

  ‘Donal, it may have escaped your notice, but you are now in your thirties. It’s time to take down the teenage posters. Not to mention the fact that you are about to embark on a new living arrangement which includes me, your girlfriend, sharing your bedroom. If you want to look at someone’s breasts, look at mine.’

  Donal looked down at Lucy’s chest. ‘Lucy, it may have escaped your notice that two fried eggs do not have the same impact as two large melons.’

  Lucy’s first night living with Donal was spent alone in his bed, while he slept in Annie’s room. When she woke up the next morning Donal was standing beside the bed with a tray.

  ‘Breakfast in bed,’ he announced as he placed the tray on her lap. ‘As you will see to the left we have a mound of shredded paper which was formerly the lovely Ms Anderson with the horrible big plasticky boobs. To the right we have two perfectly rounded, beautifully shaped fried eggs and a rose. You have to say you forgive me because I can’t spend another night in that tiny bed. My legs were frozen. I’m an athlete and we sportsmen need our limbs to be kept warm at all times.’

  ‘You’re a world-class idiot all right,’ said Lucy, smiling. ‘You’re forgiven – this time.’

  Donal hopped into the bed and snuggled up to Lucy. Placing his hands on her fried eggs he asked, ‘Any chance of some action?’

  Lucy elbowed him sharply in die ribs.

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, sunshine. You’re lucky to be allowed to lie beside me. Sex is not on the menu this morning. You’ll have to do a lot more grovelling first.’

  Donal hopped up and knelt in front of her, ‘I’m so sorry, Lucy, I will never mention Pammie again. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world, not only have you a sensational body but you are also a beautiful person inside. You are the woman I have dreamt of meeting all my life. I had given up all hope of meeting someone special until I met you. You, Lucy, have changed my life. I cannot believe how lucky I am. Now can we have sex?’

  What die hell, thought Lucy. She was only depriving herself as well.

  3

  A week later I received an official-looking letter addressed to Mrs Hamilton. I still hadn’t got used to being called Mrs Hamilton. Mind you, I had been delighted to be able to change to Hamilton, because my maiden name was Burke. When your name is Burke, you have to try harder to fit in than other people with nice normal-sounding surnames. ‘Oi, Burke head’ was the highly amusing nickname that Sandra Teehan called me on my first day in senior school. The first day at a new school is difficult enough without being singled out during roll call and sniggered at by the entire class. Although Lucy, my best friend from down the road, joined the school at the same time as me, she was in a different class – the one with all the other geniuses. I was in the class with the just-about-average girls, only one class up from the real thickos.

  Sandra made my life fairly miserable in the first few months of school. She was the ‘cool’ girl in the class, in the way that at twelve years of age the loudest girl in the class always is. She had a group of mates who laughed at everything she said and a lot of their time was spent poking fun at me and my stupid name. Meanwhile, I was sitting beside the class super-swot Fiona, who constantly followed the teachers around, trying to befriend them, and regularly snitched on her classmates. The last thing I needed was to be lumbered with a snitch. I was desperate to be in with the ‘cool’ gang, but they were having none of me. Lucy meanwhile was hanging out with her classmates and having a ball. All the clever girls stuck together, even at lunch break. Lucy, I’m sorry to say, gave Judas Iscariot some stiff competition – she completely disowned me. As if that wasn’t bad enough, after blanking me during school hours, she’d call around to my house at the weekends to hang out with me.

  And so I spent my lunch breaks being ignored by my so-called best mate, trying to avoid Sandra and her gang and also running away from Fiona so as not to be tarnished with her super-grass reputation, which left me pretty much alone. I used to take refuge in the loo, and read Little Women, feeling a great kinship with the main character Jo. I, like her, was an outsider. I felt very sorry for myself indeed. I lay awake at night dreaming up different ways of torturing Sandra. I wanted to inflict pain on her, I wanted her to suffer. I agonized over how I could get out from under her when it suddenly came to me – if I studied hard every night and did really well in my Christmas exams, I’d be moved up a class. Sandra was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so the likelihood of her ever following me up a grade was slim to none. I lay in bed and grinned; all I had to do was study.

  For the next five weeks I studied late into the night. My parents were surprised by the sudden turnaround. No longer was I interested in watching TV and listening to records, I dashed up the stairs after school and didn’t reappear. I sat the exams at Christmas, and for the first time in my life knew the answers to everything. My results shocked both my parents and me, and I was duly upgraded a class. I was now in the second cleverest class as opposed to the second thickest. My parents were delighted, as was I.

  When we went back to school after the Christmas holidays I felt like a new person. Over mince pies and cream in my house, I had confronted Lucy on her disloyal behaviour and she had promised to be an in-school friend as well as an out-of-school friend, provided I started behaving a bit more normally and stopped hiding in the loo at lunchtime.

  ‘I know it’s mean, Emma, but everyone thinks you’re a bit odd and if I hang around with you I’ll get slagged too. So just try to be more normal and hang out with the cool people in your new class. Jess Curran’s quite cool, so try and be in her gang.’

  Harsh words, but good advice. Jess was very cool – she had spiky hair and was going steady with a boy called Mark. We became great friends – so much so, that Lucy ended up being jealous of our friendship and felt decidedly left out. After letting her sweat it out for a few weeks, I eventually invited her over to hang out at my house with Jess and we became the Three Amigos. When Sandra tried to slag me, Jess told her that as she was both fat and ugly, she’d really need to work on her personality or she’d end up an old spinster with a dried-up fanny. Coming from a girl who actually had a boyfriend, this was a crushing put-down. Sandra never bothered me again.

  I still occasionally raise this Judas interlude with Lucy over a bottle or three of wine and she lurches from teary apologies to telling me to get over myself, reminding me that it happened over two decades ago and that she has spent the last twenty-three years making up for it by being a top friend – which is true.

  I opened the letter addressed to Mrs Hamilton. It was from the adoption board thanking me for my enquiry in relation to intercountry adoption and saying it would be processed in accordance with standard procedures. They enclosed two booklets to provide me with some information – James would be pleased with that – and an application form for assessment. Along with the applica­tion form we were required to provide originals of: long-form birth certificates, a long-form marriage certificate and any documents relating to previous marriages.

  The application form was accompanied by three pages of application guidance notes. I skimmed over them, most of them didn’t relate to us. They were things like – if we were not married then only one of us could apply to adopt, we had to be resident in the country for at least a year before adopting … but the last point caught my attention. It was about providing referees. The referees we chose had to know us both very well and know our families and at least one of the referees had to have children.

  Yikes. The only cou
ples we knew well who had children were James’s brother Henry and his awful wife Imogen who lived in England, and my friends Jess and Tony who had two kids. The only problem was that I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time with Jess’s kids. Truth be told, I had kind of avoided seeing them. I found it really difficult to be around babies, so I barely knew little Sally and Roy. As for Imogen’s children, her son Thomas was a brat, but I was fond of her twin girls, especially my goddaughter Sophie, although I hadn’t actually seen her since the christening, nearly a year before. By the looks of things, James and I would have to start hanging out at Jess and Tony’s to try to bond with their kids. The notes said that our referees would have to send in a written reference and be visited by a social worker to discuss the reference more thoroughly. Obviously that ruled out Henry and Imogen – I doubted somehow that the adoption board were going to fork out for a social worker to pop over to Sussex for a few days to interview them. It’d have to be Jess and Tony and I’d get Lucy to be the other referee.

  I filled James in about the letter and the need for two referees over dinner, and then told him who they were going to be. He looked up at me and shook his head.

  ‘Hold on, Emma. Deciding who our referees are going to be is not a snap decision. We need to think about it.’

  ‘What’s to think about? I’ve just told you who they’re going to be. We don’t need to analyse it for hours, it’s been decided.’

  ‘By you, without consulting me.’

  ‘For goodness sake, it’s no big deal, they’ll be great referees.’

  James picked up the form and began to read the notes on referees.

  ‘It says here that the referees should know both partners very well. Jess, Tony and Lucy are all your friends. We need someone who knows me and my family well.’