How Not to Fall in Love, Actually

by Catherine Bennetto

  After a brief, grim-faced glance into Grandma’s faded floral bedroom Mum headed down the hall, her heels sounding out slow taps on the wooden floor. I followed, my Converse making squeaky noises. I stopped by some photos on the wall. There was one I loved of the family gathered round Uncle Mike asleep in a wicker pushchair. My grandparents beamed at the camera and Mum, nine years old and sporting a home-made smocked pinafore, looked contemptuously down on her new brother. It was the same look she’d used the other day when I’d shown her a pair of second-hand maternity jeans I’d bought on eBay.

  I arrived in the kitchen/living room and approached Mum, who stood motionless by the sofa. The kitchen was to the left, with terracotta tile flooring and a round pine table in the centre, the wooden edges softened with age. To the right was the living area, with a beige patterned sofa and two matching armchairs drawn up round the fireplace. Grandma’s knitting bag sat beside her favourite armchair. Double French doors led from the living room to the bricked terrace and the flat grassy garden beyond. I looked at the kitchen, cosy and comfortable. Recipe books sat in busy piles in the window above the sink. Mum made a whimpering noise and clasped her hands to her chest, her handbag dangling in the crook of her elbow.

  ‘Mum?’ I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’

  She nodded. ‘I look at this place,’ she fanned her arm round the room, ‘and I just think, why didn’t she let me decorate?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Those beige sofas. That ugly red carpet.’ She spun on her heel towards the kitchen, grimacing. ‘Varnished wood panelling. Why?’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘I’m all right, darling. I really can’t understand bad décor, I just . . .’ She picked up a hand-crocheted cushion of browns, yellows, magenta and turquoise and tossed it back down in disgust. ‘Can’t understand.’

  ‘OK . . .’ I stepped away as she ran a condemnatory fingertip over the back of the sofa.

  I walked towards the French doors and looked out at the cold garden. The trees were bare, the branches spiky and cruel-looking. In spring the garden was a riot of clashing colours. Fuchsia bougainvillea would tumble down the lefthand side of the pergola and honeysuckle would wind up the other side to greet it. Multiple pots with multiple patterns would be clustered together spilling over with multiple-hued flora. I was gazing at the side wall of the garden, where runner beans grew over the bricks in summer, when a wrinkled face appeared at the top of the wall. Untamed wisps of Antarctic-white hair had broken free from a low bun and hovered round the inquisitive face like tufts torn from a knot of candyfloss. Her eyes darted across the garden like the crazy tracks of a bee on a hot summer’s day. When her gaze landed on me, her eyes widened, her neck elongated and she ducked out of sight. Before I’d had a chance to blink she was back again with a loud-hailer in one hand and what looked to be a handycam in the other.

  ‘INTRUDER!’ her warbling voice and a shrill blast of feedback screeched through the megaphone. ‘INTRUDER, BE WARNED – I HAVE YOU UNDER SURVEILLANCE! YOU CAN TAKE YOUR CRACK PIPES AND PROSTITUTION ELSEWHERE!’

  Mum rushed to my side.

  ‘Who the hell is that?’ I said as Mum fiddled with the locks.

  The little old lady thrust her head round the side of the raised loud-hailer and scrunched up her face menacingly.

  ‘WHO’S THERE? THE POLICE HAVE BEEN ALERTED! SHOW YOURSELF!’

  Mum flung open the French doors. ‘Harriet!’ She took long strides towards the tenacious old lady. ‘Put that away! It’s me, Diana!’

  The lady lowered the loud-hailer and squinted.

  ‘Oh Diana, dear! I didn’t recognise you. How are you?’ Her face crinkled into a sweet smile as she took in Mum’s attire. Tight black jeans, impossibly high snakeskin heels and a Burberry trench. ‘That’s a lovely parka, dear. And who is this delightful young lady?’ The old lady looked down from the top of the seven-foot wall and her mouth curved into an expectant smile. The apples of her cheeks rose, arranging the wrinkles into numerous soft furrows. Her skin was lightly tanned, like a farmer’s wife or someone vaguely Spanish. She looked like a friendly walnut.

  ‘This is my daughter, Emma,’ Mum said, putting an arm round my shoulder. ‘Emma, this is Harriet Spencer. She moved in next door a couple of weeks before . . . before your grandmother died.’ She squeezed my shoulder.

  ‘Ah, very sad, that,’ Harriet said, pursing her lips and shaking her head. ‘Such a nice lady. We were looking forward to being her neighbours. Made us feel very welcome, she did. Made us some scones the day we moved in. I’ve kept my eyes on her cottage, I have. An empty place like this, you have to be careful of squatters.’

  ‘Harriet, what on earth are you doing with that?’ Mum said, pointing a painted fingernail at the loud-hailer.

  Harriet’s gnarled hands flew protectively to it. She reminded me of a squirrel.

  ‘For safety.’ She peered down at us, eyes narrowed. ‘A woman of my age cannot rely on her physical ability to protect herself from the murderers and the muggers and the sexual opportunists. I take it everywhere now that I live in the city.’ She finished with a brusque nod. ‘And!’ She perked up. ‘I find it quite useful around the house.’ She raised the loud-hailer again and faced it towards her own property. ‘ARTHUR DEAR, PUT THE KETTLE ON! WE HAVE GUESTS!’

  She lowered it and smiled, sweet as a choirgirl.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘Daddy tried to eat my bwains—’

  ‘Try to say “brains”,’ I said. ‘With an “R”. Brrrrains.’

  ‘Bwai- Bwai . . . Bwains . . . shit.’ Archie frowned. ‘Brrrrains.’

  ‘Well done.’ I returned Sinead’s mirthful look with a disapproving one.

  ‘What do I say in this picture?’

  Because Archie couldn’t yet read properly he’d learn his lines by studying the storyboard and memorising what to say in each picture. He remembered entire scenes better than some actors I’d worked with. But I guessed Archie’s brain wasn’t addled with cocaine or consumed by calorie-consumption maths. I twisted from the front seat of Sinead’s four-by-four to see the picture Archie was pointing to. It showed a lady running from a zombie, her dressing gown opening to reveal a gratuitous amount of cleavage, and ‘Billy’ holding a fire poker.

  ‘You say, “Run, Mummy, run!”.’

  Archie repeated the line a few times to himself, committing it to his astounding little memory, while Sinead pulled the four-by-four up at a line of orange cones, one with a sign saying UNIT BASE. A man wearing a padded parka with the hood pulled tight around his face and a rollie hanging out of the corner of his mouth directed us to a car park at the foot of a glass block of apartments. Sinead kissed Archie goodbye and squealed her tyres towards relative freedom for the next few hours.

  I guided Archie into the lift, bustling with anxious energy. I’d not worked for weeks, and when I had it had been with the same show for six years. I knew the actors; I knew the crew. I’d become safe in my little soap opera hell. I was nervous about being on a proper movie set. I’d read in Archie’s cast list that Scott Vander, a multi ab-ed actor who did a lot of undie and whisky commercials, was the main star. When I’d excitedly mentioned it to Sinead she’d had neither a clue nor a care. Helen demanded I take her to the wrap party as soon as I told her, then set about planning her ‘get sex’ outfit.

  I yawned one of those gaping yawns where the back of your head touches your shoulder blades. It was a shock to be up, clothed and out of the house by 7 a.m. Getting dressed had been most problematic. Parting with my pink leopard-print flannelette pyjamas had been upsetting. There’d been a moment where I thought I wasn’t quite ready for out-of-doors attire.

  The lift doors opened on to an enormous room in endless shades of cream and white thronging with busy bodies. Out on the balcony lighting assistants were hanging large swathes of black fabric, inventively called ‘blacks’, over the windows. Grips with muscled arms and overloaded tool belts laid track across the living room floor. A
member of the art department walked past carrying a box labelled ‘blood pouches’. People stood in clusters jabbing at scripts, discussing shots or jamming food into their mouths while sorting through equipment.

  ‘Hi Archie!’ A skinny blonde girl with early-twenties flawless skin jumped in front of us with far too much energy for such an unsociable hour. ‘How are you, sweetie?’

  She crouched, hands on her denim-covered knees. Ugg boots covered her slim calves and rather than looking frumpy and unkempt as I felt I looked in mine, she looked casually hip and off-duty model-ish. Her jeans were impossibly tight (how did she avoid camel toe? Was there some kind of insert on the market for camel-toe avoidance I’d yet to discover?). Her off-the-shoulder black t-shirt showed the strap of her hot-pink bra, which matched her nail polish. Mum would love her.

  ‘Hi Amy,’ Archie said with a small smile.

  I thought I could see the beginnings of his first crush.

  ‘You must be Emma? Archie’s new chaperone?’ She stood and put her hand out. ‘I’m Amy, the Third AD.’

  I shook her hand. I knew the Third Assistant Director job well. In my not-too-long-ago life they would have reported to me. Now I couldn’t go to the bathroom without first checking with Amy if there was time.

  Amy rushed us into Wardrobe (back down the lift to a heated trailer in the car park), where Archie was greeted by a host of voguishly dressed males and females. I couldn’t understand it. When I’d been a Second AD the wardrobe department was at work at the same hour as me (ungodly) yet they found the time, and the inclination, to put together an outfit that contained non-essential decorative items. Like waistcoats or knotted scarves that were worn at non-neck-warming places like the left hip belt notch or round the wrist. Given the opportunity to look awesome or have an extra four minutes’ sleep and just wear a t-shirt and jeans from the washing pile and look like a reject from a Louis Walsh 90s band, I’d go for Louis Walsh every time.

  Once dressed, we were escorted through the apartment to Make-up, passing crew who were doing the name/job drop (‘Oh, I just came off blah with blah’), while members of the art department rushed around with harried looks on their faces adjusting paintings, taping down carpet edges and giving stern looks to anyone who was in the way. People were perched on sofa arms, kitchen stools or wooden camera boxes making notes in folders and having intense conversations with each other. Everyone held, or was in close proximity to, a paper cup of coffee.

  ‘That’s the children’s greenroom.’ Amy pointed to a closed door.

  She swished her slim hips down the hall past some muscled grips in snug vests and industrial-looking tool belts who flexed and made noises like ‘cor’, ‘orright?’ and ‘hey babes’. Her radio sprang to life, a bossy female voice – probably the First AD – asking for a time estimation on Melody. Amy unclipped the radio from her waistband, gave an efficient ‘checking now’ and opened a door to a gleaming marble bathroom. A console ran the length of the room, and it was here that two make-up artists had set up their stations.

  ‘Hi ladies!’ Amy said in a singsong voice.

  ‘Hey, Ames,’ said a friendly-looking make-up girl.

  She was tending to the tresses of a dazzling blonde woman who I definitely recognised. I had the feeling I’d seen her in a suit with a gun. CSI, maybe? Criminal Minds?

  ‘Guys, this is Emma,’ Amy said. ‘Archie’s chaperone.’

  ‘Oh, hi there, I’m Melody,’ the actress said in a Californian accent. ‘I play Natalie, the mother.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said, taking in her smooth skin and aquamarine eyes.

  ‘And this is Claire and Caroline,’ Amy said, indicating the make-up girls, who raised their bangle-laden hands respectively. ‘Claire does Archie’s make-up.’

  Claire would have been very much at home in a Sex Pistols music video. Her platinum hair sat in a teased quiff, blood-red lipstick emphasised her pout and rips in her grey jeans showed off a lot of pale but firm thigh. Archie trotted over to her and she helped him into the make-up chair. Bangles and studded leather straps took up the majority of her forearms, and I wondered if they doubled as some kind of resistance training.

  Amy turned back to me. ‘We usually do make-up in the vans, but it’s like two degrees down there today and the costumes don’t exactly provide much warmth.’

  ‘I’m already in my costume!’ Melody trilled, opening up her robe to expose her naked torso.

  Her suntanned breasts bounced gently as she did a little jiggle.

  ‘Melody!’ Caroline said, tapping her on the shoulder with the hairbrush and giggling.

  Claire smiled like it was nothing she hadn’t seen before. Melody tinkled a laugh and wrapped her robe back round her tiny waist.

  ‘Caroline, can I get a time check?’ Amy said, the impromptu flashing barely registering.

  I watched Archie chat comfortably with Claire, while Caroline and Melody discussed hair-parting options and Amy listened like she gave a fuck when she probably just wanted the actress out of the chair and on set because she knew any hair parting that happened now would be ruffled in minutes, on account of the actress being about to leap out of bed and run away from a zombie. Claire said she’d bring Archie back to the greenroom, so I stepped through the door and into the path of a gasp-inducing man.

  ‘Sorry.’ I moved round his well-proportioned frame as Amy bustled out of the make-up room.

  ‘Oh, hi Andrew,’ she said, adjusting her facial muscles so her cheeks hollowed and her lips pouted. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Do you have a room I can put these lenses in?’ He held an industrial-looking black case. ‘I don’t want them knocked.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Amy said, eyelashes aflutter.

  Andrew was quite a sight. His strong shoulders were apparent even beneath his fleece. At least six foot two, he stood as straight as a Corinthian column. His dark hair was dishevelled in a practised way. A day or two’s stubble grazed his jaw and tanned skin set off his blue eyes.

  ‘You can put them in the master bedroom,’ she cooed. ‘No one’s allowed in there. Just don’t tell anyone I let you, OK?’ She grinned and walked off, forgetting I even existed.

  ‘Thanks.’ Andrew followed Amy’s lithe figure down the hall without so much as a glance in my direction.

  ‘How was your weekend?’ she asked, disappearing round a corner.

  ‘Great. Went to the Cotswolds. Yours?’

  And they were gone. I stood, incredulous, then trudged along the hall looking for the door to the greenroom.

  ‘This is Emma. Oh, hi Emma, how are you, what do you do here?’ I mimicked Amy and Andrew childishly. ‘Oh, me? I’m a chaperone. You know, nothing important. You can totally ignore me if you want. Oh OK, Emma, we’ll do just that. Oh my, Andrew, what big muscles you have, oh, and Amy, you have such small hips, do you mind if I grab them tightly while I shag you from behind? Of course, I will be looking at myself in the mirror while I do you, is that OK? How does my jaw look? Strong and manly?’ I opened the door to the kids’ greenroom, still muttering to myself, and was greeted by a man in glasses, a woollen vest and tighty-whities, jogging floppy-limbed from one side of the room to the other.

  ‘Aghhh, a zombie,’ he read in a toneless voice from a script in his hands, his sagging white bottom jiggling with each footfall. ‘Aaaah. Aaaah.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ I coughed back a snigger. ‘I was just . . . I have the wrong room. Sorry.’ I shut the door and scuttled away.

  ‘I’ve also chaperoned on Harry Potter. That was really hard work. But the absolute best was a movie I did with Clive Owen. He’s sex on a stick, don’t you think? What other jobs have you chaperoned on? Any I’d know?’ The verbally and physically well-endowed other chaperone, Martha, sloshed another spoonful of chicken curry onto her avalanche of rice.

  I stood beside her abundant frame waiting for my turn at the steaming bain-marie. We’d spent the morning shooting ‘Billy’, ‘Bella’, ‘Natalie’ and ‘Neighbour’ (the guy in his pant
s) running around the apartment trying to get away from a zombie (who was an extra named Peter I’d once booked to be an overdose victim). We’d broken for lunch just before ‘Natalie’ harpoons the zombie with a fire poker. So while the majority of the cast and crew ate lunch, the art department, SPFX and Costume were rigging Peter’s chest with squibs – small remote-controlled exploding devices filled with fake blood – and testing the retractable poker.

  ‘This is my first chaperone job, but I—’

  ‘O-M-G. Really?’ Martha stopped, mid-spoon. ‘Well, I can teach you everything.’ She turned back to the food and resumed fervent ladling. ‘I’ll lend you my revised Filming with Children handbook; I’ve made additional notes. Always, always have it with you. You cannot let the ADs push you around.’

  ‘Actually I’m a—’

  ‘They have absolutely no regard for the child. Oh look, poppadoms.’

  The serving spoon was relinquished, with a nauseatingly sweaty handle, and Martha progressed down the line stacking her plate and preaching about never going over the legal child hours and how to read a call sheet, her deep-set eyes flicking in my direction, assessing my rapture.

  ‘Hey. Going OK?’ Amy arrived in the lunch line and grabbed a plate.

  ‘Yes thanks,’ I said, glancing in the direction of the crew eating their lunch. Andrew was sitting with the director having a deep, hand-gesturing discussion. He’d turned out to be the DOP/Camera Operator.

  ‘It’s a big crew. I haven’t been on a shoot with this many people before.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, walking past the rice and spooning the tiniest amount of curry onto her plate. ‘Do you mostly chaperone for TV?’

  ‘No, this is my first chaperone job.’ I looked over at Archie and Tilly, the girl playing his sister, ‘Bella’. They sat side by side eating mini-burgers and fries and looked just like a real brother and sister. Martha was fussing with Tilly’s burger, trying to cut it into toddler-sized bites.