Mum was now on the fourth draft of her ridiculous self-help book on how to navigate being the second family, complete with diet tips and recipes that help ‘heal the guilt in your gut’. Apparently ghee works wonders if you’re harbouring a deception. She was spending some time with Patrick, and while she would probably never have the sparkle in her eye she had when she and Dad were together, she seemed relatively content to go on long walks or take trips to the organic garden centre with him.
Dad was still going through counselling with his original family. Maryna had initially cut contact with him and stopped him seeing his grandchildren, but with therapy they were now on more cordial terms. There was vague talk of Annabelle and me meeting our half-sister, but I don’t think any of us were ready yet. Often, in quiet moments, I’d think of Maryna and wonder how she had felt when she found out. Maybe her self-worth had plummeted too. I felt terrible. I didn’t want her hurting. I didn’t want her to think she wasn’t enough for Dad. And as an only child she didn’t have a sister to turn to like I had. But I didn’t contact her. For some reason I thought that should be her decision.
Annika’s interiors business kept her travelling and Dad was attending a lot of the counselling sessions alone. She was still very, very hostile, apparently. It made me sad to think that Dad was so busy loving everybody that he might end up with nobody. Although, despite Annika’s ban on Mum and Dad seeing each other, I knew they still communicated. Sometimes Annabelle and I would walk into a room and hear them on the phone together. Mum would quickly get off and say, ‘Oh, that was just your father ringing to ask after Katie’, or ‘to see how Hunter did in his relay race’. She’d tap the phone with a wistful look then take a bracing breath and carry on.
Jimmy had finished his three-month course and was offered a job in the writer’s room. It was a junior role, yet highly sought after. But in the meantime his tutor had shown his script to a well-connected animator friend of his in LA, and the friend had shown it to a producer. The producer had asked if Jimmy was prepared to work on another couple of drafts because he thought he could get some investors interested. So Jimmy had turned down the writer’s room job, gone back to Cape Town, back to Sylvie’s restaurant and knocked out those other drafts. It was now with some execs in LA who were very excited about it.
And me? Well, I’ve been doing OK. I can still vacillate between total acceptance and total dismay. But I mostly settle with acceptance because it’s an easier place to live. My therapist says I’m doing really well and, surprisingly, my paranoia and anxiety have lessened, which makes me think on some subconscious level that I knew something was up. The three months Jimmy was in London were the happiest three months of my life. He’d pretty much lived at my flat. His SA tan had faded but none of his innate sparkle had, thank goodness. When he went back to Cape Town I’d stayed in London to continue with my producer training and we did the long-distance thing. I was keenly aware of the parallels with my parents’ relationship. Except we had FaceTime. And honesty.
I love Jimmy. I really do. I love his attitude to life and I love who I am when I’m with him. And I love that our children will have at least a 50 per cent chance of being able to sing in tune. Yes, I am talking about children. No HSBC sperm bank or millions of one-night stands with hot guys trying to get a sperm donor for me! Which was a real shame, but we all make sacrifices for the ones we love.
I’ve finished my training and have produced a handful of music videos by myself. Lana was very pleased and so was I. I loved my new role. But I wanted to be with Jimmy.
‘I always knew you weren’t going to be mine forever,’ Lana had said as we’d sat in her office and she pressed send on an introductory email to a contact of hers in LA.
‘Thank you,’ I’d said with proper fat tears rolling down my cheeks.
*
‘We’re going now,’ I called down to the beach, an hour after we’d returned from climbing Table Bastard Mountain.
Jimmy, freshly showered and with his SA tan restored, joined me on the balcony. On the white sand below Hunter and Katie were building a sandcastle with Pamela, who was wearing a giant multi-coloured sun hat and had already learnt a handful of baby sign words. Flora sat on her own deck chair under a brolly and Lucy lay next to her in a patchy bit of shade, half-covered in sand. Annabelle, Mum and Marcus sat in deck chairs nearby, drinking iced tea, luxuriating in the late-morning sun and listening to Diego and Ian explain the next day’s proceedings. They were getting married, and as Jimmy had predicted, Diego was having his loud, proud, ostentatious, colourful affair. Jimmy and I were heading to the airport to pick up his father. It had been hard at the beginning but in the end, Jimmy and his father had found a solid foundation to start from. And they’d built that new relationship from the ground up.
‘BYE!’ Hunter stood and waved, tripped on the sandcastle, knocked Marcus’s drink out of his hands and lost his grip on his plastic spade, which went flying and hit Mum on the head, coating her in a tsunami of fine white sand.
‘Kruzifix, verdammt und zugenaeht!’ she shrieked.
‘Grandma!’ Hunter said, getting up from his tangle of limbs and buckets with a stern look on his sand-covered face. ‘Wash your mouth out!’
Everybody cracked up. Mum scowled and pulled her sun hat lower. She had stopped mono-mealing and the night before had been quite happy to knock back one too many of Diego’s vodkas, once he’d told her the garnish was a local medicinal herb.
I laughed and turned away from Annabelle dabbing at a soaked Marcus with her towel, Katie clapping, Hunter telling Mum off, and Diego and Ian watching on in fascination. ‘Ready?’ I said, putting a hand on Jimmy’s chest, the sun catching the diamond on my left ring finger.
He’d given it to me in his bedroom five minutes earlier. Nobody on the beach knew yet; Jimmy wanted to tell his father first.
He looked at the diamond, then at me and he grinned. ‘Yep,’ he said, then put a tanned arm around my shoulders. ‘Back soon!’ he said to the rumpus on the beach.
As we walked away from the balcony I saw Diego and Ian exchange an extremely knowing look. My family on the other hand, and as per usual, had no freaking idea.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d like to start the acknowledgements by finishing off the dedication. It should have read:
For Mama (She will be SO mad if I don’t put
her actual name, so to keep Mama happy:
For Tricia Helen Brown) – for always
making our family feel unbroken.
But of course I couldn’t put that right at the beginning in case it gave away what was going on!
OK, so on to the acknowledgements: (My family have demanded lots of ‘airtime’ even if their only contribution was to send a sugar-free, grain-free coconut and chocolate slice that nobody liked.)
But first, I’d like to thank my agent, Alice Lutyens. She’s mad and fun and bloody good at her job. Knowing you’re there (on the other end of the email) gives me confidence, so thank you.
And big, big thanks to my editor, Emma Capron, for being brilliant and patient and always so positive. Sorry I make you have middle-of-the-night work panics!!
I’d also like to thank Sally Partington for her eagle-eyed copy editing and chatty, informative little notes down the side.
And thank you to Pip Watkins for all her hard work on the super-cute cover!
THANKS SO MUCH to the following people:
Janene Wolfe, for her expertise in how to deal with a naughty passenger who keeps trying to get up to business class.
Dave Scott, for sharing hilarious stories about his 999 job. And for being awesome.
Justine Barker, for answering all my really naive music questions. You’re awesome too.
Natalie Daglish-Cooper and Callum Campbell, for answering my South African and Afrikaans questions. Miss you guys!!
Gerhard Schiele, for helping with translations and providing me with German swear words. And for the borrowed last name.
Th
anks to my sister, Stephanie Brown, for responding to my panic attack by booking a flight to help me, and to Mum (Tricia Helen Brown – it’s in here THREE TIMES now, Mama!!) for paying for it.
And a ‘gee thanks’ to my other sister, Andrea Cammell (do not pronounce it camel – she doesn’t like it) for the yucky slice.
Mum, I’d also like to thank you for the ongoing inspiration – you know which parts are you. And Lithuania is in the next one! Keep being weird.
I have truly lovely neighbours who I feel so privileged to have met. They gave encouragement, wine, BBQs and a really delicious casserole that turned out to contain meat from the pet food aisle. Thanks Mia Taumoepeau, Sam Chapman, Amanda Neale and Campbell Read.
A huge thanks to the city of Cape Town. It’s such a wonderful, inspiring, spellbinding place that I couldn’t not set a book there.
And finally to my husband, Edd Bennetto, and my two spirited, weird and awesome sons, Jonnie and Wolf. You guys made finishing this book way harder, but your support and encouragement cancels out your disruptions and man, I love you anyway.
Catherine Bennetto has worked as an Assistant Director in the film and television industry, working on shows such as The Bill, Coronation Street and Death in Paradise. She can generally be found travelling the world and spends her time reading healthy cookbooks (not necessarily cooking from them) or at the beach. Make or Break is her second novel.
To find out more about
Visit her website: www.catherinebennetto.com
Or follow her on twitter: @cathbennetto
How Not to Fall in Love, Actually
CATHERINE BENNETTO
If you loved Make or Break, you won’t be able to put down Catherine’s laugh-out-loud debut.
Emma George’s life is not that bad, actually . . . She has a job in TV and lives with her boyfriend. Only she hates her job, her boyfriend hasn’t earned a penny in two years, and now . . . she’s unexpectedly pregnant.
Surrounded by her chaotic family, Emma makes the decision to go it alone, with hilarious results.
Funny and heart-warming, How Not to Fall in Love, Actually will make you laugh, make you cry and will reassure you that perhaps your life is not that bad, actually . . .
Available to buy now in paperback, eBook and Audiobook
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2018
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Catherine Bennetto, 2018
The right of Catherine Bennetto to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-6576-4
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-6577-1
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-6578-8
Audio ISBN: 978-1-4711-7333-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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