The Love Detective (2 page)

Then there’s Rachel. Squinting myopically into the camera, as she hates being photographed wearing her glasses, she’s still in her work suit as she’s come straight from the office. She’s a lawyer for a big firm in the City and always working on some case or other. Personally, I think she works
too
hard. She’s constantly stressed and travelling for work and never takes a holiday. Apparently she has so much annual leave due from work, Human Resources recently banned her from the office for a week. So she worked from home and put in
even longer
hours.

On the right is my little sister Amy, though you’d never know we were sisters. Whereas I’m a brown-eyed brunette, she’s blonde and blue-eyed. She’s also a whole ten years younger. She was what my parents call, ‘a happy accident’. Which describes Amy pretty well, as she can be a bit ditzy and is forever having accidents. As her big sister, I’ve always been responsible for her. From the day she was born I was told ‘look after your little sister’, and I’ve spent my whole life taking care of her and getting her out of trouble.

However, what she might lack in common sense, she makes up for in brains. Academically, Amy’s super-bright. She wants to be an archaeologist but, despite graduating with a first-class honours degree, she can’t get a job and has spent the past year sending out CVs whilst lurching from one temp job to another. She’s been a bicycle courier (she was terrible, she has no sense of direction), a waitress (terrible again, she can barely balance her mug of tea on her plate of toast, let alone carry four main courses and a side-salad) and dog-walker (worse than terrible, she ending up losing two dogs; thankfully they later found their own way home).

Then, six months ago, she decided she’d had enough of job-hunting and sleeping on friends’ sofas and opted to go off travelling, much to my parents’ consternation. If they didn’t have enough sleepless nights about her before she went, ever since she put on her rucksack and cheerfully waved goodbye at Heathrow, they’ve done nothing but worry themselves sick about her. I keep trying to reassure them – after all, she’s twenty-two now; she’s big enough to look after herself.

Plus, judging by her Facebook page, she seems to be having a great time. I mean, how much trouble can you get up to lying around on a beach all day in Goa?

Actually, on second thoughts, I don’t think I want to know the answer to that question.

Anyway, the good news is that one of the museums she sent her CV to has been in touch offering her a place on one of their research programmes. Not only that, but it’s the most prestigious archaeological research and archive centre in London and it starts in two weeks! So she’s coming home. I don’t know who’s more thrilled. Amy. Or my parents.

Which leaves me, Ruby Miller, squished up in the middle of the photo, arms draped around everyone. To be honest it’s not the most flattering picture of me. I’d bought some of that face illuminator after being convinced by the sales assistant in Boots that it was the only thing standing between me and the kind of dewy, shiny model skin you see on the front cover of
Vogue
.

Except when I got home and read the instructions, it said to just dab it on your cheekbones. Easy for them to say. I don’t
have
any cheekbones. So instead I rubbed it all over and ended up with a big shiny moon face. I’m not kidding. The flash is actually reflecting.

Single and thirty-something, I live with Heathcliff in a basement flat in a converted Victorian townhouse in West London. It’s not the biggest flat, or the brightest, but it has the cutest garden, with a real-life apple tree and a camellia bush that blooms all summer. Though in England, ‘all summer’ seems to amount to a week at the end of May. Still, Heathcliff likes to sniff around it even in the rain, and I like to look out onto it when I’m working.

Saying that, writing never really feels like work. Not just because I get to do it in my pyjamas, but because it’s more than just a job, it’s like stepping outside my world and into another. I get to meet all these new people, I get to laugh with them when they’re happy and cry with them when they’re sad. I get to make best friends with my heroine.

And –
this is the best bit
– I get to fall in love with my hero.

People always ask me what kind of books I write and I guess you’d call them love stories (unless you’re the evil journalist from the
Weekly Telegraph
who called them something unrepeatable), but I also think of them as mysteries.

After all, what makes two people fall in love? It’s a question people ask all over the world, in a million different languages. Last year,
What is love?
was the most searched query on Google. And yet no one seems to know. Even experts can’t agree. Scientists offer complicated chemical theories about pheromones and neurotransmitters, philosophers eulogise and psychotherapists analyse. But it’s impossible to define.

Like George Harrison said, it’s ‘
something
’. An elusive feeling that knows no rhyme or reason. No rules. No boundaries. It can be different for every person and yet for every person it feels the same. You can’t explain it. It’s like faith, or hope . . .

Or magic
.

I’ve written three novels on the topic and I’m still looking for the answers. I guess, in a way, I’m a bit of a love detective. Not in a Sherlock-Holmes-in-a-deerstalker type of way. I’m not out searching for clues to solve crimes, though I did once spend hours with my friend Rachel, trying to discover why her online date never called her again. Which is a sort of a crime.

As, trust me, she was a
million
times nicer than him.

My friends are always telling me about their love lives and I’ve lost count of the times I’ve spent with them dissecting an opaque text message from a guy or Googling someone to see if he really was divorced (and no, he wasn’t, there were photos of him with his wife all over his firm’s website; poor Harriet was devastated).

But it’s not just about being good at Google. When it comes to love I’m a bit of a detective because I’m fascinated by people’s stories of love and romance. I love discovering how they met and what brought them together, listening to how they talk about chemistry, whilst trying to figure out exactly what chemistry is, marvelling at how – by some incredible stroke of luck, timing, fate, or all three – two people fall in love.

And because detectives are always exploring mysteries, and what is love, if not the greatest mystery of all?

Seriously, just look at Charles and Camilla!

Or me and Sam.

At the memory of him, I feel a familiar knot in my stomach. Because that’s the irony. Whilst my heroines always fall in love and get a happy-ever-after, the same couldn’t be said for me. They say you should always write about what you know, but if that’s the case, I should be writing a horror story.

Well, how else do you describe walking in on your fiancé having sex with another woman, a week before your wedding?

I know. It sounds like such a cliché, and it was. But just because something is a cliché, it doesn’t make it hurt any less. It just means you’re humiliated
and
heartbroken.

But anyway, that’s all in the past now.

Grabbing the carton of milk, I close the fridge and turn back to the kettle. It’s doing its usual thing of boiling away merrily and refusing to switch off, filling the kitchen with clouds of steam that are rapidly turning to condensation on the cold window panes. Which reminds me, that’s another thing I need to add to my to-do list.

Snatching up a pen I scrawl
‘Buy new kettle’
on one of the bits of paper on the fridge door.

I’m a big fan of lists. I love that feeling when you get to cross something off. It makes me feel all super-organised. In fact, I have a secret to confess: I sometimes even put things on there I’ve done
already
, just so I can draw a line through them.

Like, for example,
‘Lunch with Diana. Friday
@
12.30.’

See, I can just take my pen and cross it straight off.

Wait a minute . . . I pause. Working from home makes every day roll into the next and I quickly scroll through the calendar in my head. Oh crap, Friday’s
today
! I glance across at the clock on the microwave. And is that the time already?

Double crap.

Abandoning the half-made coffee, I dash back into my bedroom, throw on some clothes and attempt to drag a brush through my hair, before giving up, sticking on a woolly hat and grabbing my coat.

Heathcliff starts yapping; he hates it when I go out and leave him. ‘Heathcliff look! There’s the pussycat!’ I fib, to create a distraction. As he races over to the French windows, I race out of the front door.

Honestly. Lying to my own dog. What next?

And, taking the steps two at a time, I reach the street and begin hurrying towards the Tube.

Chapter 2

Outside it’s a typical January day in London. Cold, grey and damp, the city feels grumpy and lethargic. Even the weather can’t be bothered to make the effort to pour with rain, and instead is just lazily drizzling. But I don’t have time to go back and hunt for an umbrella and, even if I did, it would probably only blow inside out. I grimace, pulling up my collar and dipping my head into the wind.

I take the Tube to Baker Street, then walk to Marylebone High Street. Diana’s my agent and we’ve arranged to meet at a little Italian café on the corner. Before I was a writer, I thought lunch with an agent would be terribly glamorous, all fancy restaurants and big business deals, but in reality we meet in cafés and spend the whole time gossiping about men over the house white.

Only, in all the rush I’m actually a few minutes early, and Diana hasn’t arrived yet, I realise, glancing in the window. In which case I’ll just pop next door and buy my parents a card – it’s their wedding anniversary in a few weeks.

Next door is my favourite bookshop in all of London. In all the world, probably. Feeling a rush of pleasure I push open the door and walk inside. An original Edwardian bookshop, with beautiful floor-to-ceiling oak shelves, a creaky wooden staircase, and books organised into their different countries, it’s more than just a bookshop, it’s like taking a trip around the world.

Heading past Malaysia and Africa, I reach the rack of cards and, twirling it around, find the perfect one for Mum and Dad. Pleased, I make my way towards the till.

Then pause.

Hang on . . .

In the shadowy depths of the bookshop, a statuesque grey-haired woman, wearing a Columbo-style mackintosh raincoat with the collar turned up and oversized sunglasses, is acting very suspiciously over by Great Britain. Grabbing several books from a shelf, she’s nervously chewing gum and looking from side to side to make sure no one is looking.

That’s Diana, although she hasn’t noticed me. What
on earth
is
she doing?

I’m about to call out her name when suddenly, in a swift and seamless move, she swipes the books quickly up inside her coat.

Oh my god.
She’s shoplifting!

I watch in horror as she starts heading towards the exit, head down, avoiding the eye of all the sales assistants. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. For a moment I’m frozen to the spot in disbelief, then abruptly I come to. I can’t just stand here; I need to take action. I have to stop her before she gets caught. Diana isn’t just my agent, she’s also a dear friend.

I suddenly see the news headline flashing before my eyes:

SUCCESSFUL LITERARY AGENT ARRESTED FOR

SHOPLIFTING IN A LONDON BOOKSHOP.

‘I don’t know what came over me,’ wept disgraced agent Diana Diamond as she was led away in handcuffs. ‘My reputation and career are now ruined!’

Prompted to act, I charge towards her like a rugby player. She might be six foot tall, but I’m prepared to tackle her to the ground if need be.

‘Diana!’ I say her name out loud, blocking her path.

She looks up in surprise and, seeing me, creases her face into a huge smile. ‘Hey sweetie!’ she cries in her strong New York accent. ‘You’re looking great as always!’

‘So are you,’ I smile, trying to avert my eyes from the large bulge under her mac. I don’t know what to say. It’s like the time a girl at school had terrible halitosis and no one knew how to tell her. In the end I bought her a packet of Polos and hoped she’d take the hint.

But this is going to take a lot more than a breath mint.

‘I just thought I’d pop in, check out the competition,’ she laughs. ‘It’s a habit.’

Maybe she’s a kleptomaniac. Maybe she can’t help it. Maybe it’s a bona-fide medical condition she’s never told me about.

‘But hey, listen, let’s go next door and get some lunch and catch up.’

Shit. I have to stop her. But how?

She goes to step forward and there’s nothing else for it: I block her.

‘Oops,’ she laughs as we almost bump into each other, and steps to one side. I do the same. She laughs again and steps back. I mirror her move. Back and forth we go like we’re doing some kind of dance, until finally she gasps with impatience. ‘Ruby, is everything OK?’ she asks, pushing her sunglasses onto her head and peering at me intently. ‘You’re acting really weirdly.’