How Not to Fall in Love, Actually

by Catherine Bennetto

  ‘Do you not think, and I’m only saying this because as your friend I have to play the devil’s advocate, that she’s, you know, a giant whore?’

  Joe ignored me but the muscles around his jaw tightened. I wondered if I’d overstepped the mark but continued anyway.

  ‘Does she just think you guys will get back together and carry on as normal? I mean, how would you ever be able to trust her again?’

  Joe threw the stick again, then fell back against the bench seat. He looked ready to say something so I waited with all the open-mindedness I could muster. I was impatient for him to realise that Katy was scum; for him to quit ruminating over a relationship that didn’t deserve even mild contemplation so we could get back to the way things were. Him and me, the scorned ones, watching Love Actually with a packet of M&M’s.

  ‘She thinks . . .’ He paused for another lengthy moment. I nearly pinched him in the neck. ‘She thinks we should start couples counselling and then . . .’ He was like a slow-loading web page. I elbowed him. ‘And then announce our re-engagement.’

  I bit my tongue. I wanted to squeeze every swear and cuss word I knew into a spiky ball of vitriol and biff it at her symmetrical face.

  Eventually Joe lifted his gaze from his lap. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Surely you have something to say about that?’

  ‘Plenty,’ I said, bulging my eyes, but smiled to show I would hold back. ‘What do you want to do?’

  He bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees, letting his hands dangle between them.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He looked at the dusty ground. ‘Do I really want to be doing couples counselling when I’m twenty-nine? Before I embark on a lifelong marriage?’

  I let out a sad snort.

  ‘Doesn’t bode well, does it?’

  I shook my head. I watched Brutus, who’d abandoned his stick and was giving the place where his balls used to be a thorough washdown.

  Joe sat back. ‘I’m not cut out for dating. They’re all so young and predatory, and everybody wants to be a C4 presenter.’ He ran a hand over his stubbly chin. ‘With Katy, it’s . . . it was comfortable. She was my family,’ he said, his very aura burdened and battered.

  The force of his wretchedness sucked and pulled like a black hole. I lay a palm on his shoulder. He drew in a lungful of air and let it out with a saddled sigh. My heart ached for my friend. I wanted to tell him that she barely warranted his contempt, let alone his love. That counselling was absolutely not the right thing to be doing. I wanted to tell him that he should tell her to go and take a nice snorkelling trip in the Atlantic with a couple of anvils strapped to her slim ankles.

  ‘I think you should give it another go,’ I said instead. Rather maturely, I thought.

  ‘What?!’ Joe turned and looked at me properly for the first time that day. I wasn’t exactly convinced myself.

  ‘What?’ he said again.

  ‘I think you should give it another go,’ I repeated with more certainty.

  Joe’s face queried me but he seemed unable to find the words.

  ‘It’s just, you have so much history,’ I said, last night’s photo-snooping fresh in my mind. ‘It seems a shame to throw it all away over one mistake.’

  I waited for Joe’s response. His eyes flitted back and forth, mirroring his racing thoughts.

  ‘But what if it wasn’t just the once?’ He looked at me like the oracle I was most certainly not.

  I shrugged. ‘You may never know the answer to that.’ He slumped down the bench seat.

  ‘You loved her once,’ I said. ‘You might be able to again. Love conquers all, doesn’t it? “Love is the drug you’ve been thinking of”. “All You Need is Love”. “Love is an Open Door” – that one’s from Frozen.’ I forced a tinkle of laughter.

  Joe frowned.

  ‘Do you . . .’ I found myself needing to swallow. ‘Do you still love her?’

  Joe turned his gaze towards me. His eyes searched mine as if I held the answer. In my opinion, if you don’t have the answer to that question at the ready then you are most certainly not in love. I wanted to say as much. I wanted to tell him that I thought being in love should be easy. Black and white. Isn’t being in love just a graduation from being best friends? A big graduation, granted, one with sex and commitment and so on, but still, if you’re not best friends with the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with then what the hell is the point? Sex will lose its appeal when you both have hip replacements and a very small window where your bladders are strong enough to withhold any motion more vigorous than straining a tea bag. Games of backgammon, an afternoon slice of cake and conversation will be all you have left. Joe’s situation was complicated. Katy had slept with another man two months after getting engaged. Who knows what her reasons were? Maybe she was a sex addict. Or an alcoholic, and had no idea what she was doing. Or maybe she was freaking out about marrying her high school boyfriend and needed to put it out there one last time. ‘It’ being her vagina. Slut.

  ‘I think you still love her,’ I said.

  Joe moved his head a fraction but kept his gaze on the pond.

  ‘And I think you should go to counselling and try to work through it because, as you said yourself, she’s your family. You’d been together since high school, bought a flat, got engaged, talked about children. Maybe she just freaked out.’

  ‘But . . .’ Joe said, turning to me with wide, worried eyes.

  ‘Look, you certainly aren’t cut out for the dating world. You were way out of your depth.’

  Joe opened his mouth to protest.

  ‘The last girl nearly crippled you.’

  I was trying to be light-hearted but I felt a sadness creeping in. I was convincing my friend to take steps that would eventually lead to the end of our friendship. If not the end, it undoubtedly wouldn’t be what it was now.

  ‘She clearly loves you. She wants to go to counselling. You owe it to yourself to at least try.’

  Joe sat motionless. He disappeared inside himself and I could almost feel the buzz of my words whirling round his mind. I was pretty sure I was doing the right thing. It was just the right thing felt so bad. Joe continued to sit in silent contemplation. I wanted to press him for a decision so I could resolve it in my own head. Where did I stand? And why did it matter where I stood?

  ‘Joe?’ I said. ‘What do you think?’

  He blinked out of his reverie. ‘Look at that blind man.’ He pointed towards the path by the pond. ‘Isn’t he sweet?’

  Avoidance was a tactic I knew well and I wanted to call him on it, but instead I decided to give him a break. I looked to where he was pointing. An old man shuffled along the path in – despite the steamy weather – the kind of heavy formal clothing I’d expect to see on a mothball-scented headmaster in a Roald Dahl story. One gnarly hand held the reins to a golden-coated guide dog and the other swished his blind stick from left to right. A cloth bag from the organic greengrocer’s hung weightily from his wrist with something kale-like sprouting from the top.

  I screwed my nose up. ‘I don’t see what’s so sweet. You only say that because he’s blind.’

  ‘Here we go again.’ He stood, brushed non-existent crumbs from his lap then offered me his hand.

  I accepted and hoisted myself off the bench seat, making unappealing grunting noises. Even Brutus looked ashamed.

  ‘I bet he’s a career criminal,’ I said, waiting for the crick in my overburdened hip flexors to disappear.

  ‘OK.’ Joe turned in the direction of home, seemingly wishing he were already there.

  ‘He’s probably blind from an explosion in his LSD lab where he makes drugs to sell to kids who have to rob their parents and turn to prostitution and gang violence to feed their habit. There’s nothing sweet about it. If anything, you should probably be calling the police.’

  Joe considered me. Then he grinned for the first time that day.

  ‘You have yourself some serious issues.’

  I patted my s
tomach. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The front door swung open revealing Sinead in large black sunglasses and a formerly white apron with wet patches round the bosom and a streak of green icing from chest to waist. A whiff of stale alcohol drifted from her.

  ‘Hi—’

  ‘Stay away from your uncle,’ she said, pulling me through the doorway.

  Joe followed, a large brightly wrapped present in his arms and an amused look on his face.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s very angry.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘You. Me. The entire British film industry.’

  Oh, shit. The official wrap party, the one all the London-based office staff and execs from LA attended, had taken place the night before. I’d declined my invite for two reasons. Very sophisticated reasons. Seeing Andrew again, seeing Martha again. I’d stayed at home with Joe and tried to find out where we stood on the Katy situation. He was reticent to the level of national security. It had been a week since I’d suggested he give his relationship another go and although he’d not actually gone out, except to the supermarket, the offie and one emergency trip to the plant store to resolve an aphid catastrophe, he’d taken some hushed calls in his bedroom, rather than in his usual manner of loud and cheerful at the kitchen table, which I assumed were with Katy. He was on his laptop a lot. And making a few calls that involved talk of print margins and colour saturation, so I gathered he had started working again. Which was good. But he still wasn’t himself. It was the most reserved I’d seen him, and I couldn’t help but think it was all a terrible idea. My terrible idea. I’d pushed him towards the she-devil with a complexion like a bar of luxury soap.

  ‘So you went, then?’ I said, handing Sinead the requested tray of cupcakes decorated with various icing bugs.

  Archie had become bug mad since the beetle-on-log/missing-near-lake incident. Of which Sinead and Uncle Mike and the rest of the family knew nothing about, so shush.

  ‘I tried everything to not go.’ With the tray in one hand she pressed the door shut and drifted down the darkened hall, placing a steadying free hand on the wall at various points. Kid’s party noise wafted from the rear of the house.

  ‘I lied about what day it was on,’ she said. ‘He found the invite. I pretended I had gastro; he gave me a foul-tasting suppressant pill.’ She stopped in the kitchen next to a bright green monstrosity strewn across the kitchen table. I think it was Archie’s birthday cake.

  Joe shot me a look of horror and mouthed, What the hell is that?

  Spider? I mimed.

  ‘I even contemplated pushing one of the kids down the stairs,’ Sinead continued. She picked up a shambolic bowl of green icing and began unskilfully spatula-ing great hunks of it onto the . . . thing. ‘Jess, probably.’

  ‘So what happened?’ I prompted.

  Joe walked the length of the table, contemplating the cake, cocking his head to the side like an art critic.

  ‘I came up with a plan,’ she said, hitting the side of the thing with more icing. ‘Get really, really drunk and talk over everyone so Mike never got to ask about the movie. Make a total arse of myself and have to be taken home early.’

  ‘And that genius plan didn’t work?’ Joe mouthed the word Grasshopper?

  ‘No,’ Sinead huffed. ‘Because I hadn’t factored in the blooper reel.’

  ‘Oh. And?’

  ‘Blood, gore, stuffed zombie cats, girls in bras running out of tents and tripping up, a whole horde of chihuahuas chewing what looked like a blood-covered organ (I’m assuming it wasn’t real), a zombie with guts coming out of his stomach doing the running man (that was actually quite funny), Archie saying ‘fuck’s sake’ when he got his lines wrong. More bra/running shots and a crew member pretending a severed arm was his penis.’ She tossed the spatula into the bowl and stood back, assessing the insect cake. ‘I thought he was going to have a heart attack.’ She extracted herself from her soggy apron. ‘He’s been trying to call Supernanny again; he’s booked a family therapist. He even phoned the producers this morning and tried to get Archie’s scenes deleted. He was unsuccessful. And now he’s not talking to me. And very disappointed in you.’ She tossed the apron on the bench.

  ‘Why me? You’re the one who signed him up for the movie. I was just helping you out. Did you tell him that? Did you stand up for me?’

  ‘No, I was too drunk.’

  ‘Well, did you say something to him today?’

  ‘Too hung over.’

  Joe sniggered and swiped some icing with a fingertip, licked it then puckered his mouth in disgust.

  ‘Great,’ I muttered.

  Outside I found Uncle Mike standing in the shade chatting to some parents and looking at Archie as if he were damaged goods. He greeted Joe pleasantly but avoided eye contact with me. Every time a parent asked about Archie’s movie Uncle Mike coughed, took a swig of his soda water and said he had to check on the sausage rolls. Sinead kept out of the way in the kitchen putting the finishing touches to the terrible bug cake. Kids raced around the flat sunny lawn in fancy dress hitting each other with balloon swords. A bubble machine blew football-sized bubbles towards the cloudless sky and adults stood gripping champagne flutes while being knocked from all sides by thigh-height children with too much sugar in their systems. Helen, in a floaty, low-cut summer dress, perched on a sun lounger entrancing a couple of fathers while Mum ferried drinks and plates of canapés.

  ‘Happy Birthday to Yooo-OOOH-oooo,’ Joe warbled.

  About thirty other people were gathered in the sunny garden, singing, but I could only hear Joe’s deep, tuneless version. I giggled as he exhausted the last lengthy note and sucked in a lungful of air.

  ‘You really threw yourself into that,’ I said.

  We shuffled backwards as keen-for-icing children surged towards the cake. Which was a praying mantis. Obviously.

  ‘If ever there was a song to give your all to, it’s “Happy Birthday” for a little kid,’ he said, self-righteously.

  ‘And “Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves” when you’ve been dumped,’ I replied.

  Joe indicated his affirmation.

  ‘Or “Take On Me” when you’re in the shower,’ he offered.

  ‘You gotta do the keyboard bit for that, so it’s better if you’re a passenger in a car then you can do it on the dashboard.’ I mimed a 1980s synthesiser action.

  ‘True,’ Joe said with an earnest nod. ‘Oh, and “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow”, but only when you’re at home alone.’

  ‘You need to keep that to yourself.’

  ‘I said home alone, didn’t I?’

  ‘You guys talk such crap,’ Helen said, knocking back champagne.

  We turned towards the knot of children and watched Sinead cut the cake and hand it out. Having made the huge cake eyesore on the kitchen table, she’d realised it was impossible to transport. So she’d flung open the French doors and five of the dads and Joe had carried the entire farmhouse table into the garden. Sinead had then conceded that kitchen duties, including birthday cakes, would remain Uncle Mike’s domain and she would stick to what she did best. Which we’d struggled to define, so had lit the candles and sung

  ‘Happy Birthday’ instead.

  ‘So, do you have a birth plan? Who’s going to be your birth partner?’ Sinead took a long sip of her extra-long Long Island Iced Tea. The first hangover gone, she was attempting another.

  The mass of shrieky, sugared children had departed to give their parents hell at bedtime; the lawn had been cleared of chunks of uneaten cake and Sinead, Mum and myself sat round the garden furniture under the brolly relishing the afternoon serenity. Archie’s birthday party was to transition into a family (plus Helen and Joe) baby shower for me. We were going to barbecue some bangers, open some gifts and discuss baby names. Uncle Mike and Joe battled to untangle a rope ladder for a new kitset tree hut while Helen perched on a chair near them gabbing away and swilling cha
mpagne.

  ‘I dunno,’ I sighed. ‘And no, it can’t be you,’ I said as Mum opened her mouth. ‘I want the nurses to like me. And to give me drugs.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t want drugs,’ said Sinead, who was a madwoman and had given birth four times without any pain relief. ‘You don’t know what it does to the baby.’

  ‘It’s Ned’s,’ Mum said. ‘It’s going to be peculiar anyway.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  Mum grinned. ‘Wasn’t Alex going to come home for it?’ She lowered her sunglasses, her perceptive blue eyes flashing. ‘Is that not happening?’

  I averted my gaze and shook my head.

  ‘What happened with you two?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I rubbed my stomach, feeling the taut skin over what I thought was the baby’s pointy backside. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, OK?’

  ‘Fine, but I really think you—’

  ‘Mum.’

  She raised her hands in a gesture of surrender, exchanged a she’s-reacting-just-the-way-we-said-she-would look with Sinead, and pushed her glasses back in place. We turned our attention to the men; watched them pick up a panel of wood and a glassless window frame, consult the instruction sheet then put the bits back down and take swigs of beer. Helen cackled her enjoyment and left them to it. She flung her bare limbs into a seat beside me then, spying some champagne resting in a silver ice bucket, reached across the table and topped up her glass.

  ‘So, when are we going to open the baby shower presents?’ I said, eyeing the little pile of pastel-wrapped gifts on the table.

  ‘I guess we could do it now,’ Mum said. ‘Let me just get mine from inside.’ She stood.

  ‘Oh yes,’ slurred Helen. ‘I’ve put one in the freezer from Sophie and Ned. Don’t let me forget.’

  I stiffened.

  Mum turned round. ‘Why’s it in the freezer?’

  ‘Ahhh because it’s ice cream.’ Helen’s champagne flute made a swaying journey towards her lips. ‘And it would melt out here in the . . .’ She trailed off at my silencing look. ‘What?’

  ‘Why are Sophie and Ned giving you ice cream, Emma?’ Mum said, realisation hardening her voice.