Helen narrowed her eyes. We watched with nervous interest as Ned discovered his daughter for the very first time.
‘Hello,’ he whispered. ‘I’m . . .’ He took a steadying breath. ‘I’m your dad.’ He looked up in wonder. ‘She’s so tiny.’
‘I know,’ I said through happy tears.
Ned bent his head down and planted a kiss on Dixie’s forehead. Even Mum looked tempered by his reverence.
But then she broke it. ‘Darling, I’m so sorry but I really need to get home.’ She pulled at the seat of her jeans. ‘I’ve got Vaseline bum and it’s making my cheeks sweat.’
‘Diana!’ Uncle Mike said.
Alex laughed and dug her phone out of her bag. ‘Come on, everyone. Smoosh in.’ She stood in front of the bed holding up the phone. Everyone gathered round and grinned at the camera.
‘Say cheese!’ Alex said.
‘Say sweaty cheeks!’ Helen countered.
‘SWEATY CHEEKS!’
Alex checked the photo, passed it to me and went back to fawning over her niece. I gazed at the grinning faces in the photo while the assembly of people I loved gathered their bags, dolls, flip-flops and singular mittens, bobbles, iPhones and lipsticks and talked about dinner and hospital parking fees, and Helen told Sophie her skirt didn’t match her top, and Ned passed Dixie back to Joe, and Sinead asked Mum about babysitting, and Mum said she was going to East Africa, nowhere specific, just far away for a long time, and Jess snored on Uncle Mike’s shoulder, and Alice told Archie not to say ‘penis’ near a baby, and Douglas choked on a chocolate, and a male nurse poked his head round the corner and asked for Helen’s number, and Sophie told Alex about the new ice cream for lactose-intolerant people called ‘Ice Bean’ made entirely from Chinese red beans and Joe, still holding my beautiful daughter, moved through the fracas and kissed me on the lips.
And Ned noticed and smiled.
And my heart fused back together.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Huge thanks to my brilliant editor, Clare Hey, for her all round fabulousness.
Also at Simon & Schuster I’d like to thank Emma Capron for taking the reins, Richard Vlietstra for his tech teachings (which I’m still a bit rubbish at) and Pip Watkins for a fabulous cover.
Massive thanks to my agent, Alice Lutyens, for her dedication and spot-on advice. My children think she is a spy because we call her Agent Alice and she can lip read. Books are her cover. Get it? Books? Cover? Ok . . .
Thank you also to the team at Curtis Brown Creative: Anna Davis, Rufus Purdy, and to my tutor Chris Wakling. And to my classmates whose feedback was invaluable. In particular I’d like to thank Alice Clark-Platts, Heidi Perks, Alex Tyler, Grace Coleman, Dawn Goodwin, Elin Daniels, Julietta Henderson and Moyette Gibbons for the ongoing emails and support.
My family has given me many demands for this page. If I complied with them all I’d need another 400 pages and a big lie down.
My first younger sister wants a whole paragraph. I’m to use her full name, Andrea Lillian Cammell, and to tell everyone she is ‘my inspiration and without her the book would not have been possible’. I said ‘This isn’t about you, it’s about me!’ and she replied ‘What, are you going to acknowledge yourself? Loser.’ And I said ‘Quite right. But you’re not getting a full paragraph!’ And then I wrote this. And she did.
But she does deserve a big thank you for all the scanning, reading, couriering, texting and listening. And that goes for my other sister too, Stephanie Brown, who is very funny and has brilliant ideas.
Thank you also to my mother, Tricia Brown (Mum, are you Trish or Tricia? I just know you as Mum . . . ) for allowing the dog vomit story to go in. It was her folks!!
Thanks to my father, John Williams, for his constant encouragement and for being just the right amount of nuts. And to my cousins, uncles and aunts for allowing me to borrow pieces of their lives.
A big thank you to my darling sons, Jonnie and Wolfie, who are an endless source of inspiration. You are just so goddamned cute.
I’ve had a lot of other help along the way in the form of feedback, childcare, quiet places to work, caesarian accounts etc. – you know who you are so thank you!
And lastly I would like to thank my husband, Edd Bennetto. You’re wonderful and I love you very much. Even though you haven’t read the book yet. And you tell people you came up with most of the ideas. Thank you for everything.
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. How Not to Fall in Love, Actually is her first novel.
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016
A CBS COMPANY
This paperback edition, 2017
Copyright © Catherine Bennetto, 2016
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