It's Got to Be Perfect: the memoirs of a modern-day matchmaker Read Online Free Page A

pirouette before the advancing dildo sent it plummeting down the drain.
    The sound of the tiny splash it made when it hit the water echoed in my mind for months. With each memory, the tears would come. Tears laced with grief for Robert’s strong arms and the white-gloss kitchen that would never be realised. Ricocheting between cocktail-fuelled nights out with the girls, inappropriate dates and wallowing in bed watching reality TV, I gradually began to piece my life back together. A new bar job. Another flat-share. A different hair colour. Every day I reminded myself that the aching void inside would pass, just as soon as fate delivered “The One”. My Mr Right. The man my friends and family assured me was out there somewhere and would come along when I least expected it.
    Two years on and I was still waiting.

Chapter Three
    It was a bitterly cold November evening, when I found myself in All Bar One on Regent Street, sitting opposite a man whose head was too small for his body. Below a gelled curtain fringe were squinty eyes, shiny skin and bushy hair sprouting from one nostril.
    ‘You’re the only girl I’ve met online who isn’t a porker,’ he said, getting up from his seat and then sidling up next to me. ‘But I’d put you more as a size twelve than an eight.’
    I forced a smile.
    ‘I don’t mind a bit of meat though,’ he said, his fingers creeping onto my thigh, tongue edging out in anticipation. His breath smelled of coffee and pickled onions.
    I stood up. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, before offering what turned out to be a rather long-winded excuse, involving a 24-hour veterinary surgery, a fictional cat and implausible bowel surgery.
    The bar’s heavy door slammed shut behind me and the icy air hit me like a slap in the face. I pulled up my scarf and began the familiar trudge to Waterloo Station.
    Lured by the promise of meeting thousands of “like-minded singles”, I’d embraced online dating with gusto, imagining it to be like shopping for a husband: ooh, add to basket. But after four months of intensive participation, my disappointment was mounting. The slick profiles – comprising impressive credentials and enticing photos – often omitted pertinent details such as a clubbed foot, sexual deviance or, just as in Robert’s case, a wife. Occasionally, I’d find one who walked and talked like a normal boyfriend, only to reveal a deep dark shadow that would have sent even Dr. Phil running for the hills. And after tonight’s offering of a misogynist with hair from the Nineties, I knew it was time to call off the online search.
    But as I traipsed towards the Thames, it seemed that while I was being groped in All Bar One, London’s entire population had paired off, and then gone on to organize some kind of flashmob snog-a-thon. Couples crisscrossed my path and flaunted their love.
    Enter besotted duo from the left. Cue loving gaze in restaurant. Candlelight, please .
    Despite auditioning for roles such as “happy bride” and “woman in love”, it felt as though I had inadvertently secured the lead in a new blockbuster entitled: Everyone finds love … except for you . And when a taxi, transporting a mess of entwined limbs, ploughed through a muddy puddle and splashed water up my leg, I felt more alone than ever before.
    When I eventually arrived home, I found Matthew, my long-term friend and short-term flatmate, lounging on the sofa, glass in one hand, wine bottle in the other, a wildlife documentary flickering in the background.
    ‘So, how was the six-foot-two international entrepreneur?’ he asked, sitting up to pour me a glass.
    ‘He used to sell t-shirts in Thailand,’ I said and then awaited his obligatory sarcastic response.
    He smirked. ‘Well, there are around seventy million people in Thailand and they all need t-shirts …’
    ‘Yes, but I suspect they know better than to buy them from a guy on a beach working to pay off his drug debt.’ I unravelled my scarf and collapsed