Chapter 1
Bridesmaid Gael Hemmings, already bored from the dreariest church wedding that she'd ever attended, listened to her friend and the chief bridesmaid Ruby Evans, struggle to say uplifting things about the bride, their unspectacular fringe-friend, Betty Smith.
Betty's father had abandoning the family thirteen years earlier and the bride's mother, affected by dementia and appearing rather lost at the wedding, thinking she was attending her older sister's wedding that had occurred 28 years earlier.
As Ruby finished and collapsed into her seat, not bothering to conceal her look of huge relief, Gael winked at her, unable to think of a better way to communicate sympathetically, and Ruby sucked in air and smiled appreciatively.
Well, that was something uplifting.
Betty took the option to speak, leaving Ruby and Gael unconcerned because they knew the bride was a natural motor-mouth.
Unexpectedly, the final part of the mostly predictable speech left Gael in deep thought.
In thanking everyone, right down to Mrs Owens the church's special events booking clerk, Betty then said, "Finally, in thanking Stephen for loving me to bits and becoming my husband, my special thanks go to the Rev. Thomas for opening the pathway that eventually brought Stephen and me together. In our case, it only needed a simple invitation for Rev. Thomas to invite me to dinner and for his partner Brett to invite Stephen to make up the foursome. At that dinner, Stephen kept staring at me in my full make-up and by the time after-dinner coffee was served, Stephen was already a goner."
"At our engagement party, Brett had told me something and I now share this with you all. He told me Stephen had now bought together couples that ended up in thirteen marriages. Wow, hasn't our Minister excelled as a matchmaker! Thank you."
The applause was loud and Gael glanced at her mother who smiled at her and Gael guessed she would be told to talk to Rev. Thomas on Monday about her failure to connect with a suitor. Gael look at her father, who eyed her and probably thinking that his elder daughter didn't need a matchmaker. She needed to be handcuffed with a ball and chain to some poor unmarried guy.
That night, arriving home after midnight after being banged by two guys on the floor of the unlit kitchen at the church's fellowship hall, and noting unconcerned that one of guys had sounded suspiciously like Betty's new husband Stephen, Gael had huddled in bed after vaginal douching with apple cider vinegar in the shower. She reviewed her situation.
She'd turn 30 in seven months and was mindful that her paternal grandmother, who'd been one of her best friends since Gael was around seven, had occasionally mentioned that Gael should be married before she turned 30, otherwise, she could be left on the shelf.
Gael sighed, thinking she'd had perhaps fifty boyfriends since she turned eighteen. Many had indicated they thought she was a great lay but none had partnered for much longer than three months. And (a huge sigh), most of those 50-plus guys were now married.
"It's just the way the cookie crumbles," she said plaintively.
"Go talk to Rick Thomas," she muttered, when falling asleep.
* * *
Mrs Owens took Gael to the minister's office. The skinny woman with her hair in a bun and makeup-free, asked conversationally, "Are you unfortunately pregnant?"
"I wish but appear to be pregnancy intolerant," Gael said creatively, fluttering her eyebrow extensions, possibly initiating a new wild-fire rumour within the congregation and beyond on the following Sunday.
"Ah, Mrs Hemming's elder daughter," said the lean Minister, who appeared to be in his mid-fifties.
"Welcome, Gael and call me Rick in informal situations like this. Twenty-one years ago, your mother abandoned this church, taking her family with her, after that scurrilous local newspaper stirred the pot to reveal that the incoming replacement minister, meaning me, was in a homosexual relationship."
Gael thought ah, that's why she wasn't attached to a religion.
She smiled, tempted to ask Rev. Thomas was he aware that her mother and her two closest female friends were much closer that friends? Probably not, she had already unintentionally given Mrs Owens ammunition to spread a negative rumour about Gael Hemming's alleged infertility.
"I'm sorry," Gael said, demurely.
"That thoughtfulness and prejudicial decision of your mother, and I guess your father although he didn't sign the letter of formal resignation from the church, was not your fault. You would have been... um..."
"Nine."
"Thank you. How may I be of assistance to you, Gael?"
"Are you aware that I'm general manager of that 'scurrilous newspaper'?"
"Yes, I recall reading the wide-acclamation you received for achieving that post at your age of um..."
"Twenty-five and it's actually a regional newspaper rather than a local newspaper."
"Ah, thanks for that information."
Gael said she was willing to become a member of his congregation providing he undertook one challenge for her.
"What, to provide you with a pathway to heaven?" Rick smiled.
She said no, the request was something that should be much easier for him.
"I wish to take advantage of your match-making prowess."
"Ah, of course. We first connected when you turned up with those two other bridesmaids for wedding rehearsal, you being friends with both the bride Betty Smith and her cousin Ruby Evans, who are both regular attendance members of my congregation. You are here after hearing Betty attribute me with the distinguished title of a successful matchmaker that I'm not so sure I deserve."
"Yes."
"And?"
"I need your help. I have this growing fear of being left on the shelf, so to speak."
"What you?"
"Yes, me."
Rick told Gael to sit.
She did so, he stared at her, and circled her chair, came in close and sniffed by her left ear, and muttered lovely, and sat in the chair opposite her.
"Do I get a rating?"
He said as a result of that limited appraisal and replying on her appearance, she appeared to be top shelf.
Gael raised an eyebrow sharply and the Minister said carefully he would emphasise the word 'appeared'.
"I can also go further and say in confidence that there is something of a gap between you and Betty, for instance. By that I mean in slimness, posture, body shape, facial appearance, native intelligence and probably total intelligence and, in comparison with Betty, you have natural congeniality. You even smell great and I'm left wondering, what more could a young woman ask for?"
