HOLLY’S MOTHER RANG HER once a week like clockwork. She had ever since her daughter left home. Sometimes Holly didn’t answer but those were the rare times. She would only have to handle a panicking parent when she finally got back to her, Anne Simpson being one of those people who assume if a phone isn’t answered, it’s because the person at the other end is in the middle of a coronary episode, rather than a TV show episode. Holly had quickly learned that no matter how busy she was, it was best to answer when her mother rang. She couldn’t handle the tears otherwise. “I thought you were dead,” Anne would cry out when she finally got through. “I was about to call the police.”

“I was in a lecture, Mum. You know I can’t answer in a lecture.”

“You could step out to speak to your mother, they wouldn’t stop you doing that, would they?”

By the Christmas holiday in her second year at university, Holly had been forced to impose rules. She gave her mother a timetable during her festive visit home, showing when she would be busy. “Ring during those free times and I’ll answer,” she said, pointing at the light blue blocks she’d coloured in on the timetable. “Okay?”

It worked, for the most part. Anne only picked up the phone during the blue periods as she took to calling them, though whenever Holly answered, she would have to spend the first couple of minutes reminding her mother that, yes, of course she still loved her despite not being able to answer the every any minute of the day. Yes she was safe. Yes she was eating well.

It was a small price to pay to ensure the rest of her study time was left uninterrupted.

“How are you?” Anne parroted back to Holly. “You want to know how I am? Your father is still in the garage. Does that answer your question? I swear he loves that ship more than me. He didn’t even bother coming in for lunch today.”

“How’s he getting on with the rigging?”

“How should I know? I just know I’ll be glad when the thing’s done.”

It had been like that for as long as Holly could remember. Anne would be furious while her husband worked on his latest model, a ship, a blimp, a working version of Stephenson’s Rocket. But then he’d be back in the house and she’d complain he was under her feet and end up buying him another model to send him back out to the garage.

She loved him. Holly could tell. The anger in her voice wasn’t real. Holly had only heard her being truly angry a couple of times in her life, once when Holly, aged four, had found a bottle of bleach under the sink with the lid loose and decided to take a swig to see what it tasted like. It tasted like a trip to hospital that she could still remember seventeen years later. Her mother hadn’t been cross with her but with her father for not tightening the bottle lid properly, ignoring the fact that she was the only one in the house that used the bleach.

The other time was when Holly had slipped out of her armbands in the pool and begun to slowly sink to the bottom, her mouth filling with water. She could remember that clearly too, sitting on the side of the pool and coughing up a lungful of foaming chlorinated water while her mother sat beside her, furious once again with Martin. “He should have blown them up so they couldn’t come off.” Her father had not come to the swimming pool with them, him being at work. Anne Simpson had blown up the armbands.

She deflected her own guilt at her husband but it bounced off with negligible effect. All he cared about was making her feel good and if she had to berate him to do it, so be it. Their dynamic might not have been the healthiest but Holly had to admit it worked. They’d been together twenty-five years and showed no signs of going their separate ways. Love was a funny thing, Holly reasoned. She could only hope she’d find someone to spend twenty-five years with, twenty-five minutes would be a start.

“Do you think he’ll have it finished by the time you move?” she asked when her mother finally paused for breath. They were relocating yet again over the summer. The house already had a buyer, they just needed to sort out the paperwork.

“He bloody better have. If he thinks I’m packing up all those tiny bits of wood and unpacking them at the other end, he’s got another thing coming. What about you though? Are you going to get back here before we go?”

It was a loaded question. Holly had left a number of possessions with her parents when she’d moved out and they’d duly taken the boxes with them whenever they moved, though with more hints each time that she needed to come and sort through it all, decide what she had to keep and what could go to charity. She kept planning to do it but the thought was more scary than she liked to admit. It would mean letting go of part of her childhood, throwing out the old dolls, the old books, not something she was ready to contemplate just yet.

“I’ll try and come over once I’ve got my dissertation out of the way, okay?”

“Great, I’m sure Lizzie would love to see you. She’s getting pretty big now.”

“I know, but I’ll see her at the wedding won’t I?”

“That’s two months away, Holly.”

“I know that, Mum.”

“I just thought we’d see you before then, that’s all.”

“How’re the plans coming along?” she asked, changing the subject quickly.

“Well there was a nightmare with the caterers. Did Lizzie tell you they had double booked with another wedding?”

“She put it on Facebook. But it’s sorted now, right?”

“Until the next thing crops up. It’s so stressful, Holly.” Anne sighed down the phone, sounding suddenly very old. “Who organises a house move and a wedding at the same time? Only your father would do something that stupid.”

Holly didn’t point out that the move was taking place in August and the wedding at the end of September. She also didn’t point out that Lizzie had chosen the date for her wedding, not Martin. “I’ll be through as soon as I can,” she said instead. “Look, Mum, I need to get on with this essay. Can I call you in a couple of days?”

“Too busy for me? Everyone’s too busy for me.”

“It’s not that, Mum. I just need to get this done.”

“I know what that means. You need to go partying.”

Holly rolled her eyes, Fiona was back on her chair, glancing up from her own phone in time to catch the look. “Mothers,” she mouthed. Holly nodded back at her.

“I’ll call you tonight, okay? A couple of hours and we’ll have a chat then.”

But by that evening, Holly had forgotten all about calling her mother back. She was too busy having a conversation with someone else, someone whose first message was still blinking at her when she hung up the phone and flicked back to the Match Up screen. “Everything all right?” Fiona asked as Holly tapped the message to open it.

“Same as ever,” Holly replied, reading quickly. “I’m going to have to go and see her before she has a heart attack or a stroke or something.”

“Not until you have a date sorted, you’re not getting out of it that easily.”

“I might have a date lined up by the looks of this. Hello sailor.”

“Oh, really?” Fiona stood up and came back over to the sofa, peering down at the phone in Holly’s hand, the message still open. “If you want to try something new, maybe try me. Now that’s more my kind of message. What does he look like?”

Holly scrolled back up to the photo. “Like that.”

“A black suit, a black tie, a white shirt. He’s a funeral director, right?”

“It says he runs his own business.”

“Take that with a pinch of salt, Hols. He is hot though.”

“Is he? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yes you had, you little liar. Are you going to reply then or what?”

“I don’t know. What should I say?”

“Tell him you’re naked and ready for him.” She was already reaching for the phone.

Holly snatched it away. “I am not putting that.”

“I’m kidding. Just ask him if he fancies meeting up sometime.”

“But I don’t know anything about him.”

“You know he’s rich, you know he’s got eyes that look like they could melt your panties at five hundred feet. You also know he’s into you.”

“How do I know that?”

“Because he wouldn’t have matched with you if he didn’t.”

Holly noticed her laptop, still open, still accusing her of ignoring it. “I’ve got to get some work done,” she said, switching off her phone’s screen. “I’ll reply to that later.”

“You better,” Fiona said, leaning over to the coffee table to grab the remote control. “Or I’ll do it for you.”

Holly waited until she was in bed to read the message again. She had gotten two paragraphs done by then, deleted, then done again. She wasn’t happy with them but at least they were done, the references formatted in the proper style ready to go in the appendix at the end. That was the one thing she hated about her choice of degree. She wasn’t free to have her own opinion on anything. She always had to reference someone else who’d thought it first. It wasn’t quite the freedom of expression she had expected from undergraduate level education. But none of that seemed very important when she opened the app and saw a second message from her match.

Playing hard to get?

She lay in bed, the curtains tightly shut, the door closed. Her bedside light was on, illuminating a pile of battered paperbacks, old friends each and every one. She composed and deleted her reply four times, none of the responses sounding right. In the end, she settled for, maybe, her heart pounding as she hit send and watched the single word vanish and then reappear in a speech bubble. It was sent. She had begun to talk to him. Now all she had to do was get him to agree to go on a date with her. She told herself she’d only sent the message to keep Fiona from doing it for her. But she knew the truth, the truth that made her smile as she closed her eyes to sleep later that night, smile despite the flicker of nervous anxiety as a question whispered inside her. What if he was the one?