How Not to Fall in Love, Actually

by Catherine Bennetto

  After watching four episodes of Friends back to back, I looked away from the TV, bored. That’s not to say I could ever be bored of watching Friends. It was a tonic, an elixir of happiness as accessible as pressing buttons on a remote. I picked up my phone. Eleven thirty in London, which meant it would be about five thirty in the evening in Dhaka. Alex answered after three rings.

  ‘Hel-looo,’ she trilled.

  ‘I’m blue,’ I said in the saddest voice I could muster.

  ‘Really? I’m a golden-brown colour.’

  ‘Ha ha.’ I moved positions on the couch, getting comfortable so I could have a long and distracting conversation with my sister. She sounded rather more chipper than when I’d spoken to her the day before and she’d found a family of rats (and by family she was talking distant cousins and six degrees of the rat version of Kevin Bacon) behind the sagging ceiling panels above her bed. ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘Noooo,’ she said seriously. ‘Just alcoholically enhanced.’ She giggled. ‘So what’s up? Why are you blue?’

  ‘I’ve watched every episode of Friends from the beginning to the very end when they all move out and Jennifer Aniston cries way more than necessary for the content of the scene.’

  ‘Right. And that has made you blue?’

  ‘No, not the fact that it’s ended; I can just press play from the beginning, of course. But it’s just, well, the crying isn’t realistic, you know? No one would ever cry that much over their friends moving house in the same city. I think they allowed Jennifer to get a little carried away with her own emotions over the series ending and not being true to “Rachel’s” emotions. Don’t you think?’ There was silence at the end of the phone. ‘Are you there?’

  ‘You have issues,’ Alex said. ‘Are you really talking about that Jennifer Aniston over-cry again?’

  I was worried Alex might curtail our conversation, so I scrabbled to come up with something else to keep her on the line.

  ‘OK, OK, we can talk about something else . . . Hey, you know Dr Phil?’

  ‘I gotta go,’ Alex sighed. ‘Seriously, Em, you have a freaky obsession with Dr Phil.’

  ‘He has such a great relationship with his wife, and—’

  ‘I’m going!’

  My shoulders slumped in defeat. ‘OK.’

  ‘Love you.’

  ‘Yadda yadda, whatever. Love you too.’ I hung up.

  I scrolled through the phone a bit before deciding to call Helen. She was always up for a lament on Dr Phil and the merits of dating a mega-rich psychologist with his own TV show. Helen’s phone went straight to answer machine. Of course it would. It was Saturday morning. She was probably still in bed, a doting and naked man at her side. Sophie! I dialled her number.

  ‘Hi Em!’ she puffed. I heard a muffled voice in the background. ‘What’s up? How are you? It’s so nice of you to ring—’

  ‘Soph. Chill.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ She exhaled. ‘Um, so how are you?’

  I heard the voice again. A male voice. Sophie covered the mouthpiece and shushed someone.

  ‘Do you have a guy there?’ I tried to hide my annoyance, as it was completely unreasonable.

  ‘Ah . . . no?’ Sophie had all the cunning of a 2-year-old with chocolate over their face, trying to blame the empty packet of biscuits on their stuffed Elmo toy.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s ah, he is, ah . . . there’s no one here. It’s . . .’ I could almost hear the cogs in her head making their slow rotation. ‘It’s . . . my cat. He has a cold.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Well I was just ringing to see if you wanted to go and get some lunch, but you probably have to look after your “cat”, I guess.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  After we said goodbye, I was left with a nasty taste in my mouth and a feeling in the pit of my stomach I couldn’t explain. I felt betrayed by my friends and couldn’t understand why. Dr Phil would have some insight, but his show didn’t start for another few hours so I decided to go into the kitchen and see if anything inspired me in there. I stood at the kitchen table looking out of the French doors to the diminutive back terrace soaked from a constant drizzle. I pulled out a chair, sat down and slumped, my head in my hands. An unoccupied mind and an occupied uterus.

  An insistent rapping at the door woke me. I lifted my head and realised I’d fallen asleep on my folded arms at the kitchen table. Wiping a dried bit of dribble off my cheek, I opened the front door. Alice and Jess flew in, attached themselves to my thighs and squealed ‘Hi Emma!’ in unison.

  ‘Hi girls.’ I prised them off. ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘In the car. Millie pulled Archie’s hair,’ Alice said disapprovingly.

  ‘Archie called Millie a little bitch,’ Jess added.

  ‘And Mum is on the phone to the movies.’ Alice summed up.

  I sent Alice and Jess to the kitchen and went outside. I found Sinead sitting in the front of her four-by-four on the phone, Millie in the back crying and Archie studying what looked to be a storyboard, a list of pictures put together by a director of the shots required for a day of filming.

  ‘Where’d you get that, Archie?’ I said, unbuckling him from his booster seat, rain trickling down my back.

  Sinead waved at me while ‘uh-huh’-ing on the phone.

  ‘The fat lady gave it to me.’ He pointed to a picture of a small cartoon boy next to a tent. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, putting Archie down on the cobblestones and wondering what the hell he was talking about.

  He trotted inside, shielding his storyboard from the rain. On seeing me, Millie stopped crying and extended her chubby arms. I pulled her from her car seat. She gave me a wide-mouthed grin and a river of shiny saliva escaped. Sinead stepped out of the car and followed us in, holding her bag over her head, still on the phone.

  ‘Well, can I appoint my own?’ she said, stalking inside and shutting the front door against the elements. ‘No, I can’t do it . . . because I have a life, that’s why . . .’

  I plonked down on the sofa with Millie on my lap. She lunged forward and began playing with my necklace. Sinead paced the floor.

  ‘He wasn’t trying to be offensive . . . she is fat . . . OK, fine, thick-boned . . . she needs thicker skin if you ask me . . . Fine. I’ll get one myself. Thank you.’

  Sinead threw her phone in her bag. ‘Shite. Got any baking?’

  While I made tea, Sinead sat at the kitchen table buttering cheese muffins for her ever-hungry children and explaining the reason for the storyboard.

  ‘Archie got a job in a movie.’ She got up, poured glasses of milk and handed them out.

  ‘A movie?’ I said, looking at Archie.

  He turned the page of his storyboard and studied it with his elbows on the table and his cheeks resting on his fists. His muffin sat untouched next to him. In stark contrast Millie had muffin in her hair and ears and Alice and Jess had milk moustaches and were unsuccessfully seeing who could be the first to fit a whole muffin into their mouth.

  ‘Yep. He plays a ghost. Or he sees ghosts. Or something.’ She sat down and nibbled on a muffin.

  ‘A proper acting part? With lines and everything? On a proper movie set?’ I stopped mid-tea-strain.

  Sinead nodded, her mouth full.

  ‘Great.’ I got back to the tea with a little more force than necessary. ‘I’ve spent the last six years of my life making shit TV with third-rate actors and my 4-year-old cousin gets a part in a movie. Please tell me it doesn’t have Emily Blunt in it.’

  ‘It doesn’t have Emily Blunt in it.’

  ‘Good. Who’s in it?’

  ‘I don’t bloody know,’ Sinead said, pulling the plate of muffins away from Jess and Alice. ‘They all look the same to me. Teeth, hair, boobs.’ She gesticulated wildly to show abundance. ‘Anyway, Archie’s chaperone just quit, so now I have to find one or go in myself.’

  ‘Quit? Why?’ I sat next to Millie and leant away as her sticky fingers reached for my hair.
r />   ‘She offends easily, apparently,’ Sinead said, shuffling primly.

  I raised my eyebrows but Sinead ignored the appeal for elaboration. She watched Archie affectionately, then her eyes widened.

  ‘You could do it!’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘It makes perfect sense!’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve got—’

  ‘Got what, exactly?’ Sinead said, frowning. ‘A date with daytime TV and more cellulite to cultivate?’

  I opened my mouth wide, offended to the core. How dare she? Sinead, with her busy schedule of squeezing out kids between lunches with her friends. Although I did have to concede that there was a rather large amount of cellulite gathering in the gluteus maximus region. If ever I were lucky enough to have a close encounter with a man again, an amorous butt fondle would feel more like caressing a flaccid old cauliflower through a plastic bag.

  ‘I’ve never been a chaperone. I wouldn’t know what to do.’

  It was a lie. I was fully capable of doing it. It was just . . . I didn’t know, exactly.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Sinead said.

  ‘I’m not CRB checked.’

  ‘We can get that done on Monday.’

  ‘I’d have to do a course.’

  ‘It’s a one-day seminar.’

  ‘It can take ages to get a chaperone licence. All the paperwork . . .’

  ‘Dad has contacts; we’ll get it pushed through in a day.’

  ‘But . . .’ I searched for another excuse.

  ‘But nothing,’ Sinead said, triumphant. ‘It’s a perfect way for you to get off your arse and back into the real world.’

  I picked up my muffin. ‘Irish bloody princess. What do you know about the real world?’

  Alice and Jess had been following our exchange like spectators at a ping-pong tournament. With the banter over, Jess picked up her milk and gulped, most unladylike.

  ‘Mummy,’ Alice said. ‘Archie’s storyboard has a bloody head on it.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Archie’s storyboard did indeed have a bloody head on it. Because Archie was starring in a B-grade zombie movie that, if my predictions were correct, would go straight to the DVD bargain bins. Archie was playing a young boy, Billy, whose father, while on a camping trip, gets bitten by a zombie virus-ridden cat and becomes ‘infected’. From what I could deduce with my brief skimming of the entire script (a skill I had picked up after years of having to read the most mundane scripts known to the world of celluloid), Billy and his twin sister Bella had to find their way out of the woods, taking care to avoid the zombie cat pack, some zombie campers (including Daddy) and get back to Mummy in London and convince her to return to the woods and kiss her zombiefied husband. Because Daddy was only a ‘beating heart’ zombie, not a full undead, with his wife’s love he could become human again. Apparently. (I wasn’t sure how the specifics would go down with zombie fanatics. I’d have to ask Douglas, a Comic-Con-attending, Lord of the Rings costume-owning, Game of Thrones forum-debating weirdo.) As the twins moved through the woods they’d encounter other campers fleeing the zombies (both the cat and people variety). It was a tongue-in-cheek slasher/zombie/romance/ family film. If that is even a thing.

  I put down the script and looked at Sinead. We’d moved to the living room where the girls were building a cushion fort and Archie sat studying his storyboard.

  ‘Did you even read it?’ I said after explaining the basic storyline.

  ‘Er . . . no,’ she said with a guilty smile.

  ‘Well, he has quite a big part, you know. And it’s zombies, not ghosts. Zombies.’ I looked over at my cousin. Mature for his age, but nevertheless he was only four. ‘There are scenes with girls running around in bras too. And one where a zombie gets chopped up in a deli salami slicer. The script actually says “guts fly across the room”.’ I turned back to Sinead and gave her a good hard stare. ‘Guts, Sinead. Guts and bra.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ she said, noncommittal.

  ‘How’d he get the job?’

  ‘He was spotted in Regent’s Park a couple of weeks ago,’ she said. ‘This lady came up to us and said she was scouting for a replacement because the original “Billy” had broken his leg two days before the movie started. All the other children were running around screeching and Archie was sitting on a bench watching a lame pigeon trying to eat another lame pigeon.’ She looked over at Archie with his storyboard. ‘What do you call that? Life imitating art?’

  ‘I don’t know what you call it,’ I said. ‘What did Mike say?’

  ‘Oh, you can’t tell him,’ Sinead said, her green eyes wide. ‘You can’t. I forbid it.’

  ‘You can’t forbid me!’

  ‘Yes I can, I’m your aunt. And as your aunt, I forbid you from telling my husband that his son is starring in a zombie guts-and-bras movie.’

  ‘Are you listening to yourself?’

  We looked at Archie, so innocently perceptive.

  I exhaled. ‘Well, the least I can do is be his chaperone.’

  Sinead’s head shot up. ‘Seriously?’ Her eyebrows were in excited little points. ‘You’re going to do it?’

  ‘Someone needs to make sure he isn’t comprehensively corrupted by the time he’s five.’ I smiled.

  I was actually quietly thrilled. I’d been out of work for only five weeks, but when you were used to working twelve- to fourteen-hour days, five weeks was a lifetime. On a Monday, Friday night would seem an unreachable eternity away. And I did have to admit, eating doughnuts and watching Oprah reruns was losing its appeal. Mum would return home, and I’d follow her round the house chittering and chattering about Dr Phil and Oprah and Jeremy Kyle like they were my chums. And although I felt Dr Phil really did care, I missed having 3D friends.

  An hour or so later, after Sinead had organised the fast-forwarding of my chaperone licence, Mum and Charlie walked in followed by Uncle Mike and a few minutes later Grandma’s lawyer arrived with his briefcase, his three-piece suit and his big words and we sat round the fireplace with cups of tea. The lawyer opened his briefcase, rustled papers and said things I didn’t understand. There were specifics about certain paintings and jewellery. And other things with no real monetary value: Uncle Mike got recipe books, Mum a scarf collection, Sinead got a fur coat she’d always coveted. Certain first edition books went to the kids and Charlie was given her gardening books with handwritten notes in the margins. After what felt like forty days and forty nights of legal speak, the lawyer turned his austere gaze to me.

  ‘Emma.’

  I straightened in my seat. My body was used to having an afternoon nap and the man’s dreary voice was just the right tone to lull me to sleep.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, my voice croaky.

  ‘Your grandmother left you something.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘To you and your sister, Alexandra.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I said, trying to sound interested.

  ‘A three-bedroom cottage in Wimbledon.’

  ‘Uh-huh – what the fuck?!’

  The lawyer straightened his glasses. Mum, nestled against Charlie, grinned.

  ‘You knew?’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘Mum had it written into her will after your father left.’

  ‘Does Alex know?’

  ‘No, I thought you’d like to tell her.’

  Charlie kissed her forehead. I sat quietly, processing the news. Just this morning I didn’t have a penny to my name. Now I had a job and had become a London property owner. The cottage was round the corner from Sinead and Uncle Mike’s house. Uncle Mike had decided to move close to Grandma when it became apparent Sinead was not going to stop chucking out kids. It sat in the middle of a lovely row of five other cottages on the edge of the common. Grandma had her one painted a soft lavender about twenty years ago and the neighbours had followed suit, painting theirs in various sherbet shades. Roses lined the front garden and wisteria grew over the archway at the front gate. Rhubarb grew in clumps in the back garden and ended up in a crum
ble served with home-made custard. And now the tiny cottage with the mosaicked sundial I didn’t know how to read was mine. And Alex’s, of course, whenever she chose to leave her philanthropic lifestyle.

  ‘So,’ Sinead said, clapping her hands together. ‘Looks like we have a new babysitter round the corner.’

  The next morning we stood shoulder to boobs (Mum in her snakeskin Louboutins, towering above me in my Converse) on the footpath outside Grandma’s cottage. It was freezing but the sky was clear and the low-slung January sun reflected off the cottage windows. Young families wrapped in puffa coats like sleeping bags headed onto the common taking the opportunity to get some vitamin D while it was on offer.

  ‘You open it,’ Mum said, putting her own set of keys in her Chanel handbag. ‘It’s yours now.’

  It hadn’t taken much for the property to be handed over to Alex and me. We signed a few things, Alex doing it digitally from afar, and I was ceremoniously given the keys. Mum and I were there to check what needed to be done before I moved in. Which couldn’t happen soon enough. Mum had banned anything high-carb from her house, and I’d started hiding pastries in my knicker drawer. I’d ended up with an ant problem and crumby smalls.

  ‘It’s going to be weird, her not here,’ I said, walking under the bare knotted branches of the dormant wisteria.

  ‘Hmm,’ Mum said.

  I slid the key in the lock and opened the leaded-light door. Sun flooded down the hall from the French doors at the back of the house. It was as if she had just popped to the shops. Her purple wellies sat next to the front door and her winter coat hung on the coat stand. On the half-circle table sat a small pile of unopened mail. Mum squared her shoulders, shook her hair into position and stepped inside. The stillness was unnerving. Grandma’s talcum-y perfume still hung faintly in the air. The cottage was a simple square with a central hallway. Two bedrooms, a bathroom and a narrow staircase led off the hall, which then opened out to the kitchen/living room at the rear.