Much Ado About Sweet Nothing

by Alison May

  I shake my head at him. ‘You’re crazy. If you’re serious about her, why don’t you move in properly?’

  ‘Don’t want to. She doesn’t want to.’

  ‘But it’s what people do. You go out with someone for a bit, then you move in. Some people even get married.’

  Now Ben looks really confused. ‘Good for people. We don’t want to live together. We don’t want to get married. We just want to be a bit more convenient.’

  I really don’t understand my brother. ‘But you’re crazy about her?’

  He doesn’t confirm it, but he doesn’t deny the fact, which for Ben is real emotional development. ‘Look, I think this is what’ll work for us. That’s what matters, isn’t it? Just be happy for me, mate.’

  I can’t really argue with that, can I? ‘Whatever works for you, mate.’

  I can picture the two of them when they’re ninety with him living in her basement and her banging on the floor when she needs seeing to. And there’s a mental image I’m going to be stuck with all day.

  Ben glances at the clock. I don’t know why. It stopped about three months ago and neither of us bought new batteries. We both still look at it out of habit though, like it might make a recovery.

  ‘What time’s your flight?’

  ‘Three. Two hour check-in though. I said we’d pick Henri up at half eleven.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Are you ready to go?’

  I nod. I couldn’t be readier. Last time, when I went out to Naples it was an adventure. I knew I wasn’t there forever, and I looked at it as a year in the sun. Now, it’s like going home. It’s been cool being back in the UK, but it’s felt like a holiday. This feels like getting back to real life.

  ‘What about Henri?’

  ‘What about Henri?’

  Ben shrugs. ‘Dunno. New country. Different language. Is she excited?’

  ‘Of course she is.’ I stand up. ‘Going to go pack my bathroom stuff.’

  Of course she’s excited. Why wouldn’t she be? We’ve not talked about it that much. She’s going to love it though. Once we get out there and she sees Naples, she’s going to get all happy and Henrietta-ish about it. I know she is.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Trix

  I never thought I’d say this but I wish Henrietta would get into her control-freaky super-organised mode. She finally admitted this morning that she’d barely started packing, so now we’re cramming stuff into her case any old way. Actually I’m cramming stuff into her case any old way. She’s sort of wafting around the flat, picking up one thing at a time, and more often than not, putting it straight down again.

  She’s been funny all morning. I suspect it started when I told her about Ben moving in here.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not cross with me?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘I mean, you’re moving out anyway. I didn’t think you’d mind.’

  She gazes at me. Sorry to be unkind, but she looks kind of vacant.

  ‘Did you drink too much last night?’

  She keeps wafting round the room. ‘No.’

  ‘Right. And you’re not cross about Ben moving in here.’

  She looks at me again, and shakes her head.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’

  She nods, but she’s still wandering around in her dressing gown, flitting from task to task. I know Henrietta. She’s moving to Italy this afternoon. She should be marching around the place with lists and schedules and perfectly labelled matching baggage.

  I go over to her and put my hand on hers. ‘You know it’s OK to be nervous. This is a big move.’

  She nods again.

  ‘Is that what it is? Are you nervous?’

  She shakes her head and puts her mouth into a smile. ‘It’s very exciting.’

  It sounds like she’s reading from a script, like she’s rehearsing someone else’s words. ‘It’s a big step. It’s OK to be a bit freaked out.’

  ‘I’m fine. Anyway, talking about big steps, you’re the one letting Ben move in with you.’

  I let her change the subject. ‘He’s not moving in with me. He’s moving in down here.’

  ‘Right. Of course he is, Miss Independence.’ She pauses. ‘You don’t worry that it’s a bit quick?’

  ‘It’s been ten years.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘It feels like the right thing to do.’

  She nods. She seems to have switched her brightness back on. ‘Like going with Claudio’s the right thing for me.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Exactly.’ She peers at the suitcase I’ve been packing, and wrinkles her nose. ‘You’re creasing things.’

  That’s more like it. ‘Well you shouldn’t have left it till the last minute should you.’

  Henri pulls the case towards her and starts re-folding. ‘Just because it’s done quickly, it doesn’t mean it can’t be done properly.’

  I resist the urge to laugh at her. She seems to be cheering up and I don’t want to discourage her. ‘What do you want to do with all the kitchen stuff?’

  Her brow wrinkles up again. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re not going to take all your pots and pans and things on the plane, are you?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Claudio’s rented a furnished flat to start with.’

  ‘So what do you want to do with all that stuff?’

  I can see her bottom lip starting to quiver, so I put my arm round her again. ‘It’s OK. What if I just box it up and put it in my loft for the time being?’

  She nods.

  I smile. ‘And then it’ll all be there, if …’ I tail off. It’s one of those sentences I shouldn’t have started. What was I intending to say? If, this all turns out to be a terrible mistake? If it doesn’t last the month? ‘… if you decide you want to ship it over, or anything.’

  I think I pulled it back. It’s the sort of thing Ben does all the time though. I’m beginning to understand how stressful conversation must be for him.

  I go into the kitchen and start taking things out of cupboards. I suppose this isn’t urgent. We can sort it out after Henri’s gone, but it keeps me busy. I keep going until the doorbell rings.

  I let Claudio and Ben in. Claudio hugs me effusively without me really needing to join in. ‘The big day! Is she ready to go?’

  ‘Just about, I think.’ I have no idea. I’ve been keeping out of her way so she doesn’t tell me I’m doing it wrong. She appears at the bottom of the stairs, and starts dragging a suitcase, which looks nearly as big as her, up the stairs. Ben runs down and helps her with it.

  ‘Bloody hell! What have you got in here?’

  Henri looks confused. ‘Well everything really.’

  Ben nods. ‘Fair enough.’

  Claudio and Henri hug. She looks absolutely tiny next to him. Not for the first time, I feel like her mum. I want to check that she’s got everything she’s likely to need, and give Claudio a lecture about how he has to look after her, and not let her run off on her own. Part of me still wants to kick him hard in the balls for the last time around. I don’t.

  We manage to gather Hen’s stuff up and troop out to the car. Once Ben’s wedged the luggage in, with Henri in the back, with Claudio’s bags packed around her there isn’t really room for me to go with them. I kneel on the front seat and manage to give Henri a sort of half-hug over the handbrake. ‘Phone me lots, and e-mail, and come back to visit.’

  She nods. I clamber out, and Claudio gets in. Ben gives me a quick kiss on the pavement. It’s amazing how quickly we’ve slipped into the habit of casual affection. He promises to be back in a couple of hours, and then they’re gone.

  I go inside and head downstairs into Henri’s flat. She’s left the wardrobe open, so I can see that her clothes have gone, but once I close the doors it feels like she’s just gone out for a bit. She’s left the bed unmade, and there’s rubbish in the bin. There are still a couple of books, and a big box of VHS videos in the living r
oom, and all the furniture is just sitting here, like it’s waiting for her to come home. She’s hardly taken anything from the kitchen at all. It’s probably the messiest I’ve seen the place since she moved in, which if Ben is going to be living here, is probably something I should get used to. It’s not that he’s actively gross. For a bloke he’s pretty good at the cleaning and laundry stuff, well better than me, but mess he just doesn’t really notice at all. Once he’s finished with something it gets discarded on to the nearest flat surface, where he will cease to notice it, until he needs to use it again.

  I go back upstairs to my living room and try to concentrate on watching TV, but my mind won’t settle. It’s another of those days, like the wedding, when you wake up knowing it’s a Big Day, and then when you end up with not a lot to do, and it makes you feel uncomfortable. In the end I run a bath, on the grounds that it should at least encourage me to sit still for a while, rather than just wandering from room to room. I always read in the bath. I can spend hours in there with a really great novel, or, if it’s all there is, a really bad novel. Today I have another book to finish off though. I lie back and start to read while I wait for Ben to come back. Correction – while I wait for Ben to come home.

  Nothing & Everything

  Zero and infinity, far from being opposites are, in fact, one and the same. This relationship is hinted at in some of the most basic questions humanity asks about our universe. Has the universe always been here? If the answer is yes, then you have to embrace infinity. The universe is eternal, never beginning; it is infinite and has always been. If your answer is no, then what came before the beginning of the universe? That ‘No’ implies a starting point, and before that starting point, nothing. Zero or infinity? In this case, it looks as though one denies the other, but it’s actually so much more complicated, and so much more beautiful than that.

  So what do we mean by infinity? Infinity doesn’t just mean everything. It means everything that ever was or will be or (and if this doesn’t blow your mind you need to adjust your dosage) ever could be.

  You can subtract anything you want from infinity and you won’t make a dent. Infinity minus 1? Still infinity. Minus 47 million? Still infinity. Infinity doesn’t get smaller, no matter how much you subtract. You can try to take away from it, to subtract from its wholeness for a lifetime, for a million lifetimes, but infinity is what it is. No matter what you try to take away, it remains all encompassing.

  If you have something, and you break it, somehow you take a piece away, and it becomes less, then that something wasn’t infinite. It was finite. However big it might have looked or felt, it had a beginning and an end. However hard you tried you wouldn’t be able to make it infinite by continually adding one. The infinite and the big may look the same, may sometimes act and feel the same, but are as different in their nature as infinity is from the smallest least significant single grain of sand.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Henrietta

  I quite like being wedged in the back of the car, with Ben and Claudio chatting away to each other in the front. I can’t really hear their conversation well enough to join in, but their voices are forming quite a pleasant background lull. I’m sort of perched in the seat surrounded by bags. It makes me feel like a little girl, all packed up for a family holiday.

  I look out of the window most of the way. We drive through the city, and then out into the suburbs. We pass the turning for my dad’s house, which I wave at, just a small little wave, so that the boys don’t see and laugh at me. My dad said last night that he wasn’t going to come and wave me off. He said it would be too upsetting. I can imagine him at home now. He’ll be mowing the grass, or doing something involving his toolbox, I bet. He always comes over all Mr Handyman, when he wants to take his mind off stuff. It’s like the summer after Mum died, he built a set of swings and a climbing frame for me for the garden, and then in the winter he made this massive doll’s house for my Christmas present.

  We had a little chat during the party though. We sat on the end of my bed, just like we did before, before the wedding thing. He said I’d done very well to get everything back together. He said he was sure I was going to be a wonderful wife for Claudio, like I’ve always been a wonderful daughter to him, which was nice of him to say. Wonderful wife. Wonderful daughter. The words feel nice and warm. I my head I can see myself wrapping those words around me all tight and safe.

  Then he said that he was proud of me for being so courageous, and going all the way to Italy with Claudio.

  ‘You’re very brave to follow your heart,’ he said. He said it must have been a very hard decision to go, which it must have been I suppose. I keep trying to think about that, but I can’t really remember actually deciding. That’s a strange thought, so I put it away, and think about being a wonderful wife instead.

  The car moves out of the town and on to the dual carriageway. Now Ben isn’t having to stop and start for traffic the constant sound of the engine is quite restful. It makes me want to close my eyes and be still. The stillness is really pleasant for a moment. But then the idea of just being still makes me think of being at Dad’s house the day after the wedding, and I can almost feel the duvet on top of me, and I have to force myself to turn my head so that I don’t become paralysed here forever.

  I try to lean forward to listen to Claudio and Ben talking but I still can’t really hear them over the engine noise, so I sit back again. I close my eyes, but keep tapping my fingers against my thigh so I’m not completely still. The thoughts in my brain run to the rhythm of the engine noise. Wonderful wife, wonderful wife.

  It’s a relief when we arrive at the airport and I can finally get out of the car. I hug Ben goodbye while Claudio goes and gets a luggage trolley. Ben leaves us outside the airport. It’s a two hour check-in, so we all very sensibly agree that there’s no point him waiting around. Claudio hugs him and does a lot of very Italian cheek kissing which Ben pulls a face at. Then we sort of stand for a moment and look at each other, before Ben makes a sort of muffled. ‘Well, then’, noise and gets back in the car. It’s very sensible that no one is actually going to see us off. I don’t think you’re even allowed through security now if you’re not flying anywhere. But seeing Ben drive away still feels anti-climactic.

  At least now there’s lots of activity to concentrate on. There’s finding the right check-in and then queuing and finding all our paperwork and checking-in. Then we have to go through all the security stuff, which involves another queue, and then taking our shoes off, and Claudio getting sent back about three times until he’s finally emptied his pockets properly and taken his belt off. We manage to fill nearly an hour just doing the stuff you have to do before they’ll let you near the aeroplane. Once we’re finally through security, Claudio puts his arms around me. ‘This is it then. We’re on our way.’

  He drags me over to some free seats and manages, rather uncomfortably to keep his arm around me, despite the fixed plastic armrest in between us. He looks at me. ‘Are you excited?’

  I nod. He keeps looking at me. ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Claudio smiles. ‘Good. It’s going to be brilliant.’

  I know it’s going to be brilliant. I’ve looked at pictures of Naples on the internet. It looks lovely. Claudio rubs my back. Come vá l’Italiano?’

  I just look at him. He repeats it in English. ‘I said, “How’s the Italian coming along?”’

  I shrug. ‘Still lots to learn.’

  To be honest, I’ve not really tried since we got back together. I started before the wedding a bit, but not really since then.

  ‘Never mind. You’ll pick it up once we’re out there.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Anyway, you’ll have me. You’ll barely need to speak Italian at all, and the children will be bi-lingual.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘I thought you wanted kids.’

  ‘I do.’ Well, I do. It’s just not something we’ve talked about recentl
y.

  Claudio squeezes me a bit tighter. It makes the armrest dig into my side. ‘Well, why wait?’

  I close my eyes. So this is it. This is what I’ve been dreaming about. I’m going to be Mrs Claudio Messina. We’re going to live in a beautiful place, and raise our beautiful children.

  When I open my eyes I notice that there’s a big sticky dirty patch just opposite me on the floor. It looks like someone’s spilt coke or something and it’s not been cleaned up. I pull my feet in closer to me so I won’t get contaminated by the grime. I try to force myself to keep thinking about the future.

  I’m going to marry Claudio. I’m going to have the chance to make all those promises that I didn’t get to make last time. No. Don’t think about last time. This is all new and all perfect. I’m going to become Mrs Messina at a lovely service in an Italian registry office. Then I notice the dirty floor again and I can’t stop the thoughts from coming any more. I’m going to make different promises that I won’t understand in a service in a foreign language. I’m going to be stuck in a rented flat, apparently full of screaming children, while Claudio is out at work all day. And when he does come home he’ll be able to talk to my children in their own special language, and I’ll be all on my own. And however hard I try and however clean I make it, I won’t ever be perfect enough. I feel sick.

  Claudio is still talking. ‘I’ve always imagined that we’d have a boy first, and then a girl. I think three or four is better than one or two though. You said you wanted a big family?’

  I nod. It’s true. I loved growing up just me and Dad, but I always wanted a sister. Maybe it was because Mum wasn’t there, but I used to imagine what it would be like to have a sister to play with and gossip with. What I really wanted was someone I could get into trouble with and share secrets with, and not have to try to be good. I swallow the nausea and try to find the right thing to say. ‘Maybe having children straight away is a bit quick though?’