How Not to Fall in Love, Actually

by Catherine Bennetto

  ‘There’s just no way I could . . . not after I’d seen it. It’s just . . . I just can’t . . . I’m having this baby and – and you’ll just have to get over the fact that it’s Ned’s, OK? And yes, there is a very good chance it will be freckly, but I want you to love it anyway. It’s my body and, well, you were a single mum for a while, and look how we turned out. Actually I’m fine, just pregnant and jobless, but apart from that, well. Alex turned out OK, she works with poor people. Anyway, you never even liked Ned. I just—’

  ‘OK,’ Mum said, putting a placating hand on my flapping one. ‘It’s OK. I’m your mother, and I just have to make sure you know what you’re doing.’

  I stared at Gwyneth. This shit never happened to her.

  ‘If you want to keep the baby,’ Mum took a deep breath. ‘Well then, we’ll be here to help every step of the way.’

  I looked up at her. She squeezed my hand tight.

  ‘And we will love that baby. Oh my gosh, how we will love it.’

  I smiled and rested my head on her shoulder. She picked up her whisky glass, took a dainty sip and returned it to the bedside table.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Hmm?’ She stroked my hand, checking my cuticles for signs of biting.

  ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘You’re going to be fine,’ she said, patting my hunched-up knees.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. And I’m very sorry about before. I’m proud of you, no matter what you do.’

  ‘But Mum, you don’t think I’ll forget to feed the baby, or accidentally wash it with bleach, or leave it at the shops in the pushchair like you did with me?’

  She shrugged. ‘Probably.’

  ‘What if I am so crazy with sleep deprivation I put it in the washing machine? You know you can’t open those things for, like, a minute after it’s turned on?’ I tossed my magazine aside and faced Mum. ‘What if I forget I have a baby and go out and leave it at home? What if I drop it down the stairs? What if I fall asleep while it’s in the bath?’

  ‘Because you are normal. Ish. And you just won’t.’ Mum considered me thoughtfully. ‘Lie down, darling.’

  I snuggled under the covers. Mum adjusted her position and her hand stroked the hair from my forehead.

  ‘When you were born I loved you so much I couldn’t bear it when I had to put you in your cot.’ She smiled, the lines round her eyes crinkling. ‘I would come into your room and kiss those gorgeous cheeks over and over and over and tell you how much I loved you and how beautiful I thought you were.’ I closed my eyes, yielding to the sense of comfort the sound of my mother’s (slightly slurred) voice gave me.

  ‘I would go and sit with your father on the sofa, but five minutes later I was back in your room, staring, watching your little chest rise and fall and your long, long eyelashes resting on your cheeks. I’d lean over the cot and breathe in your beautiful baby smell then kiss you again and again and again until your father came in and told me to leave you be.’

  ‘Then I’d sing you a song.’ Mum began to sing in a soft whisper. ‘Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you an exotic rare bird . . .’

  I giggled softly and felt myself inch towards sleep.

  ‘. . . and if that bird gets eaten by the cat, Mama’s gonna buy you a Marc Jacobs hat . . .’

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next morning, I entered the kitchen wearing my pink flannel pyjamas, my ponytail in a sleep-fashioned tumble on the side of my head.

  ‘Morning,’ I yawned to the room in general.

  Mum raised her coffee mug at me. She paced the kitchen, her phone to her ear, her black peep-toe heels click-clicking across the marble floor. A fitted white silk shirt and navy leather pencil skirt showed off the results of thrice-weekly ‘Viking Method’ sessions. Being ‘whisky-fied’ the night before never stopped my mother owning the day. Uncle Mike made trips from stove to dining table serving up a breakfast banquet and the kids sat at the table industriously stuffing their faces. The delicious but forbidden smell of coffee filled the air. I looked at the coffee pot as one would an old lover, then sat down next to Archie.

  ‘So what’s the plan for today?’ I asked, reaching for the juice.

  ‘I guess I’m going shopping for purple outfits for the children and myself,’ Sinead grumbled. ‘I can’t believe you two have organised the funeral for tomorrow. It isn’t enough time.’

  Uncle Mike let out an irritated puff of air.

  ‘Tomorrow? Purple?’ I looked at Mum, who was still on the phone. ‘Tomorrow and purple?!’

  She frowned and made a motion with her hand for me to be quiet. If we put aside the fact that one day couldn’t possibly be enough time to organise an entire (purple) funeral, tomorrow was also Christmas Eve. Could you even have a funeral on Christmas Eve? Would Jesus mind?

  ‘Yes, tomorrow, and, as per my mother’s final wish, yes – purple.’ Uncle Mike poured himself a coffee. ‘Diana is making the last arrangements now. If we don’t do it tomorrow we’ll have to wait until the New Year and, well, we’re all just a bit busy then.’

  ‘It’s far too—’ Sinead started.

  ‘And,’ Uncle Mike continued, ‘I do not want Mother sitting alone in a fridge on Christmas Day.’ He gave Sinead a single nod indicating the discussion was over, turned to me and softened his face. ‘Now, I have to pop to the surgery for a couple of hours and you, my dear, have nothing to do except relax and maybe get yourself something purple to wear that doesn’t make your blossoming shape look like an aubergine.’

  ‘See!’ Sinead exclaimed. ‘It is ridiculous! Emma will look like an aubergine, I will look like a corpse – please excuse the bad taste but I will – and Archie has already asked if he can go as Barney.’

  It took until lunchtime for Sinead to get all the kids showered, dressed and for us to make our way to Oxford Circus to attempt the mad task of finding a purple funeral outfit two days before Christmas.

  ‘Let’s split up.’ Sinead gathered the children to her on the crowded street. We agreed to meet later and she bustled off, absorbed into the Christmas crowds in seconds.

  Oxford Street had a coating of icing-sugar frost. Twinkly lights glowed and reflected in shop windows and a low layer of stone-coloured cloud created a cosseting effect.

  I quickly became disillusioned with clothes shopping. I was three months pregnant and had only a slight tummy, but everything I tried on made me look like a beer-swigging, football-watching chav who ate too many pies, not the blooming yummy-mummy-to-be I was aiming for. It was getting dark outside. I checked my watch and dashed into Topshop, determined to leave with something. I finally settled on a dusky lilac (that just about passed as purple) woollen shift dress. With a cleverly draped pashmina it would look quite cute – and, I hoped, disguise my ‘beer belly’ baby pouch. I’d not yet told anyone outside of Ned and my family. I didn’t think I was ready to come out of the pregnant, single and jobless closet just yet. And I especially didn’t want to come out of that closet at my grandmother’s purple funeral.

  I texted Sinead while I waited in the long queue, looking forward to getting home and having a hot chocolate by the fire.

  ‘Next!’ said the girl behind the counter.

  I hurried forward. The salesgirl glowered from under heavily painted eyelids.

  ‘Hello.’ I handed over my dress.

  The salesgirl rang up the item and flung it unceremoniously into a bag, all the while talking about how much she hated working during the Christmas period to her workmate at the next till. I smiled. There was a certain comfort in having a surly teenage sales assistant wearing too much make-up and tight jeans that bared more hip flesh than appropriate make you feel insignificant and annoying at Christmas.

  ‘Fifty-seven fifty,’ the girl said in my general direction.

  I punched in my pin. The salesgirl watched the card machine.

  ‘Denied,’ she said, rather too loudly for my liking.

  ‘What?’

  ‘De
nied? Your card?’ She looked at her spiky-haired teen colleague with inflated exasperation.

  ‘Uh, it can’t be. Could . . . could you try again please, I must have entered the wrong pin.’

  ‘Then it would have said “incorrect pin”, not “denied” and it says “denied”, yeah? See?’ She brandished the card terminal at me.

  I could feel the long line of irate Christmas shoppers behind me communally clench. I hesitated, my cheeks heating. I didn’t understand why the card would be denied. I’d hardly touched my accounts since leaving my job.

  ‘Can’t you just pay cash, yeah?’ She drummed her fake nails on the counter, eyebrows raised. The nail had fallen off her ring finger and the real nail was bitten down to the skin.

  ‘Uh, I don’t have enough,’ I said, looking in my wallet and weighing up my options.

  I could leave the dress behind the counter, try and get cash out of the machine that would probably be empty this close to Christmas and then line up in this hideous queue again, or head home without an outfit and suffer the funeral in Mum’s choice of purple torture. I didn’t like either alternative.

  ‘You ready?’ Sinead appeared at my side, kids and shopping bags trailing behind her.

  ‘My card is denied and—’

  ‘Kids! Stay close!’ she said as her motherly sixth sense registered her three children with the ability to walk begin to disperse in different directions. Millie slept in her pushchair, laden with shopping bags. ‘OK, well . . .’

  She was distracted. I was just about to abandon the dress when the salesgirl spoke to Sinead.

  ‘Can’t you pay for your daughter’s stuff?’

  Sinead snapped her head in the direction of the salesgirl. ‘Daughter?’

  Oh shit. Sinead was only forty-one.

  ‘Let’s just go,’ I said.

  The salesgirl gave a huge sigh and a theatrical roll of her eyes. ‘So I’m pressing void, yeah?’

  ‘Yes, that’s fine.’ I motioned to Sinead to go, wary of the fidgety customers behind us.

  ‘No. You are getting that dress. I’m not having Diana dress you as a purple snow leopard.’ She opened her wallet. ‘Archie, darling? Come here, will you?’ She narrowed her eyes at the unwitting sales assistant.

  Back at home, Sinead perched on the sofa, shopping bags at her feet, and recalled how Archie had helped bring down the salesgirl a peg or two by pointing out her muffin top, slapper nails and ‘hooker’ make-up. Uncle Mike was slumped next to her, sipping his tea, a harried look on his face. The kids played upstairs while Millie slept on in her pushchair; Mum was at Charlie’s, so, apart from Uncle Mike’s hand-wringing, the living room was peaceful. I sat in an armchair by the fire, checking my bank accounts.

  ‘Then Archie started pointing out other slappers, which was quite funny, wasn’t it, Em?’ Sinead said as she sorted through her purchases, holding the odd item up to Uncle Mike, who nodded distractedly.

  ‘It’s not funny. Honestly, what happens when—’

  ‘FUCKER!’ I yelled.

  Uncle Mike spilt his tea; Sinead blinked. ‘What?’ they said together.

  ‘That fucker!’ I stared at my laptop.

  ‘What?’ they said with more urgency.

  ‘My money’s gone . . .’

  I’d forgotten Ned had access to my accounts. We’d set up a joint account that only I’d contributed to. In fact, I didn’t just contribute, my entire wages went into it and it held all my savings.

  It was empty.

  Before anger could properly take hold, a sick feeling gurgled up in my throat as I realised the gravity of the situation. I was pregnant and single with no job. I’d always been fairly good with money. I didn’t spend loads on fashionable clothes, preferring instead to live in a uniform of jeans, slogan t-shirts and coloured Converse. I’d debated for hours with Mum over nature versus nurture during the occasions she would insist I go ‘boho’ to school and I just wanted to wear my trainers and merge into the crowd. I was only eleven at the time.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sinead said, dropping an item of clothing into a shopping bag.

  ‘Well my account says zero where it previously said a few thousand, and I don’t seem to have a few thousand in my wallet, so yes, I’m sure,’ I said, then immediately regretted it.

  Sinead had bailed me out of a very embarrassing situation not two hours before. She leant back in the sofa and looked at me, concerned.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said quietly.

  She shrugged, over it already.

  ‘Oh my god.’ I buried my face in my hands. ‘I have to call him.’

  I grabbed my phone and dialled his number. Straight to answer machine. I didn’t trust myself to leave a message without crying and/or flinging stuttered abuse, so I tossed my phone on the coffee table and fell back into the armchair, mentally numb. Not a thought went through my head for a full minute. The room was still.

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  ‘Shit,’ Sinead repeated.

  ‘Shit,’ Uncle Mike muttered.

  Sinead and I looked at him.

  ‘Well, you’re right.’ He shook his head. ‘He is a little fucker.’

  We sat in the room gazing at the fire as if it held a solution. Our silence was broken by the sound of the door slamming and Mum’s heels clacking down the floorboards. She floated into the living room carrying bags of wrapped presents.

  ‘Hello, my lovelies, I’ve picked up some—’ She stopped by the sofa, detecting our sombre faces. ‘God, now what?’ She looked from me to Uncle Mike, to Sinead and back to me again.

  I covered my face with my hands, too embarrassed to reveal the news.

  ‘Ned has emptied Emma’s bank account,’ Uncle Mike said in a grave voice.

  ‘What?’ Mum dropped her bags. ‘Are you sure?’ She strode round the sofa and perched on the edge of the coffee table.

  I removed my hands from my face and gave my Mum a ‘don’t go there’ look.

  ‘That little fucker!’ she spat.

  I smiled weakly. It was unanimous, then. Ned was a little fucker.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I stood in front of the mirror, a shapely aubergine ready for my grandmother’s funeral. I’d spent most of the previous night drafting what I was going to say to Ned. I’d left a message early that morning when his phone, again, went straight to voicemail. I remained calm when I told him my mother was going to hunt him down and de-male him. I did not cry when I told him his child was going to be left starving and naked, and I did not wail when I asked his messaging service why he was so selfish and such a goddamned wanker. Then I’d cried and wailed in a high-pitched voice telling the message service I had to go to my grandma’s funeral and that he had better call me later and explain himself; and that’s when Mum grabbed the phone from my shaking hands and said she was going to rip his ginger whiskers out and make him eat them and Sinead stood in the background and called him a fuck-knuckle.

  I pulled my hair back into a loose ponytail.

  ‘Can I kill it in Africa?’ Mum stomped up the stairs, barking into her phone. ‘When I requested animal print samples I meant leopard, zebra, cheetah. You know – the usual. I did NOT mean grim, greige Welsh fucking field mouse.’ She stopped in my doorway. ‘I do trust you . . . Fix it for me. Please, I said please, didn’t I?’ Mum tossed her phone on my dresser. ‘Lovely,’ she said, scanning my outfit and smiling her approval.

  Mum’s smile could lift a room. She was charm personified, even on the day of her own mother’s funeral.

  ‘You think?’ I twisted, scrutinising my bum in the mirror.

  I was definitely plumper now that I was three months pregnant and I couldn’t have cared less. My cellulite looked like the top of a crumpet.

  ‘You have such lovely hair. I wish you’d wear it out sometimes,’ she said, looking at my standard scraped-up bun.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re going to have to get over it. This is me. Hair up, no eyeshadow. And my underwear doesn’t match.’

  Mum gasped a
nd her hand flew to her chest. ‘Have I hurt you?’ she said, feigning shock. ‘Why you feel you need to say such things . . .’ She shook her head and her smile returned. Her hands rested on my shoulders. She was a good foot taller than me, helped by the lofty heels she lived in. We looked at each other in the mirror. Her face dropped its bright facade.

  ‘I’m going to miss her.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Even though this purple funeral has given me exactly fourteen new grey hairs, I will still miss her.’

  I gave an understanding nod.

  ‘Now I’m an orphan.’ Her eyes dampened. ‘And I am stuck with that bloody cat of hers that does not go with my décor at all.’

  She glanced at my rounded belly. ‘We’ve lost one life, but we’re gaining another.’ She checked her mascara in the mirror. ‘I feel too young to be a grandmother.’

  ‘I feel too young to be a mother.’

  ‘I had two children by the time I was your age.’

  ‘You were married. And that was the olden days.’

  Mum’s lips tightened and she gave me a stern look.

  ‘I’ll wash my mouth out,’ I said.

  Mum checked her watch. ‘You’ll think about my offer, won’t you?’

  In light of my recent monetary discovery Mum had offered to lend me the exact amount Ned had taken and had asked me to move in with her till I got back on my feet. I was hesitant. If I took money from my mother it would be an admission of my failure as an adult. It would be the beginning of a downward spiral, culminating with Mum and I at home wearing matching slippers and knitting scarves for characters on Corrie because ‘they looked like they might catch a chill last night on the telly’.

  I smiled, not willing to commit to anything. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  It took only five minutes to drive round the corner to the local crematorium. The car park was crammed with zippy little elderly-people cars and I wondered how my mother had managed to contact this many people and get them to attend a funeral on Christmas Eve at such short notice. To say she was a capable woman was like saying Gandhi once went on a diet.