The One Who's Not the One: A feel-good, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

by Keris Stainton

  ‘Yeah?’ Cat said. ‘You work near here, right?’

  Shit. She’d got that off Facebook.

  ‘How do you know that?’ Harvey asked.

  He was doing the dimple-grin thing again, like he knew exactly how many times she’d been on his Facebook. Oh god, maybe he did. Was there some sort of app that showed you how many times someone looked at your profile? There was on LinkedIn, which Cat had only learned after looking at Nick’s page every day for a week (she’d told Nick it had been for work reasons when it had actually been for how hot he looked in his profile pic reasons).

  ‘Can’t remember,’ Cat said. ‘Someone mentioned it…’

  He was still grinning at her. It made her stomach feel weird.

  ‘Do you need to get back right now?’ Cat said. ‘Or can you join us for a cake? I’m sure Arnold wouldn’t mind getting his grubby paws on another one for you.’

  Harvey looked down at Arnold and then at his phone.

  ‘Yeah. Actually. I can stay for a bit. Want to grab a cupcake for me, Arnold?’

  ‘On a plate!’ Cat said.

  Cat didn’t think she’d ever seen Harvey interacting with a child before. She thought she’d probably remember if she had because he was so bloody cute. He was totally relaxed chatting to Arnold and asking him interesting things rather than the usual ‘Do you like school?’, ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’ nonsense. And Arnold was looking at Harvey like he’d looked at the cakes, all wide-eyed and love-struck.

  ‘So how’s things with you?’ Cat asked Harvey, once he’d finished doing an impersonation of a pirate that had Arnold in stitches. Cat had missed the inspiration for it, too busy trying to think of a way to have a normal conversation with Harvey.

  ‘Good,’ Harvey said. ‘Thanks. Great actually. You? You still working at…’

  ‘Yeah. Sort of.’ How she wished she could say no. ‘We merged with another company, but basically, yeah. For now, at least. It’s secure, you know.’ Shut up, Cat. ‘Which is important.’ She was more than aware that Harvey was likely to tell Sam he’d seen her. And Sam would ask what she was up to. And she hated the idea that Harvey would say, oh, the same. ‘Particularly cos I’m doing stand-up again,’ she said. SHUT UP, CAT.

  ‘You are?’ Harvey said, his eyebrows flicking upwards.

  Cat nodded, biting her lip. There was no way out of it. She couldn’t say, ‘Oh, did I say stand-up? I meant to say cos I’m doing Zumba again… how funny.’ She coughed. ‘It’s early days, but… yeah.’

  ‘God,’ Harvey said. ‘That’s great. I remember you were really good.’

  Cat nodded. ‘Thanks, yeah. I mean… I don’t know about that.’

  ‘No, you were. I always thought it was a shame that…’ He glanced at Arnold, who was very industriously biting the legs off his gingerbread person. ‘That you stopped. When… you know.’

  When Sam left you and fucked off to Australia, Cat filled in. In her head.

  ‘Yeah, it just wasn’t the right time,’ she told Harvey. ‘Now’s better.’

  ‘Well, that’s really good,’ Harvey said. ‘I’m proud of you.’

  Cat felt that cracking in her chest again and for a second she had to swallow hard, digging her fingernails into her thighs, so she didn’t cry. ‘Proud of you’ was her kryptonite. She picked up her brownie and took an enormous bite.

  ‘I’d really better get back,’ Harvey said then, pushing his chair back and standing. He was so tall. Taller than Sam. Cat gave him a tight-lipped smile, since she was worried about having brownie on her teeth. She wiped her mouth quickly, the memory of Nick and the KitKat still fresh.

  ‘Been really good to meet you,’ Harvey told Arnold.

  Arnold gazed up at him.

  ‘The pantomime starts next week,’ Harvey told Cat. ‘I could get you tickets? If you wanted to come?’

  ‘That would be fantastic.’ She kept her fingers half over her mouth. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘No problem. Give me your number and I’ll text you when they’re available and you can give me dates, etc.’

  Cat nodded, reaching for her phone. She was really glad she hadn’t set that sexy photo of Nick as her lock screen. The photo of The Rock cuddling an actual rock probably wasn’t much better, but she thought she’d been fast enough that Harvey wouldn’t even have noticed.

  ‘The Rock, eh?’ he said, smiling at her in that annoying way again.

  ‘Shut up.’ Cat tapped open her contacts and handed the phone to Harvey. She stared at him as he put his number in, paranoid that he’d swipe and immediately be faced with something embarrassing like porn (even though there wasn’t any on her phone) (probably) or her Google history filled with searches for Sam.

  ‘There you go,’ he said, handing it back. His phone buzzed in his hand and he tapped it before saying, ‘Right. We’ve got each other’s numbers. I’ll text you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Bye, Harvey!’ Arnold said chirpily.

  ‘Bye,’ Harvey said, looking from Cat to Arnold and back again with the same expression that Cat didn’t quite understand.

  ‘So. See you soon,’ Cat said. And fled.

  Nine

  ‘Oh holy shit,’ Cat said, as her alarm went off.

  Without even moving she could feel that she’d hurt herself falling up the escalator the previous day. She winced as she reached for her phone – her neck and shoulder were stiff. Even her forearm felt a bit odd. She turned off her alarm and noticed she had a text. Scared to move, she held her phone up over her face. It was from Harvey and it said, Good to see you again. Arnold is great.

  ‘Typical,’ Cat muttered to herself, ‘liked Arnold more than me.’

  She opened Twitter and tried to shuffle her body up the bed while she confirmed that the world hadn’t yet ended (but things weren’t exactly looking positive). Her hips and lower back ached. And as for her inner thighs…

  Once she’d managed to shuffle enough that she was propped up against her pillows, she texted Kelly: I am broken. Come and look after me.

  Can’t, Kelly replied immediately. Got stuff to do. But I can pick you up and bring you to mine?

  Cat tapped the call button and Kelly answered straight away. ‘You’re on speaker,’ she said. ‘And Arnold’s here, so—’

  ‘Don’t swear, I know.’

  ‘Cat said “shit” yesterday,’ she heard Arnold say.

  ‘I know she did, darling,’ Kelly said. ‘But I think she had a good reason, don’t you?’

  ‘I do,’ Cat said. ‘I can barely bloody move. Sorry about the bloody.’

  She heard Arnold laughing and then Kelly told him to go and get his school sweatshirt on.

  ‘So if I pick you up after the school run,’ Kelly said, ‘you can come and lounge on the sofa here and I can come and have a coffee with you every now and then?’

  ‘Don’t hurt yourself,’ Cat said. ‘But yeah, that sounds great. You know you’ll have to carry me though? I can’t get out of bed.’

  ‘And I’m pregnant, so that’s not happening. Go and have a hot shower, that should help.’

  ‘Will you give me a massage on your lunch break?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will Sean?’

  Kelly laughed. ‘No. Get off the phone and in the shower and I’ll see you in a bit.’

  ‘OK, thanks. Love you. Even though your son tried to murder me.’

  ‘Saves me a job.’

  * * *

  ‘I feel like I’ve been beaten up,’ Cat said as she lowered herself gingerly into Kelly’s car. ‘Every single bit of me hurts.’

  ‘I still laugh every time I picture it,’ Kelly said, pulling out of the space in front of Cat’s flat.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it looked hilarious. But I felt like I was going to be ripped in half. Forced splits? On an escalator?’

  Kelly let out a bark of laughter.

  ‘How are you laughing? I left your child at the bottom! On his own! Anything could have happened to him!’

  �
��In John Lewis?!’

  ‘Bad things happen in John Lewis, Kelly. I got stuck in a knee-high boot once. Took two members of staff to free me.’

  Kelly snorted again. ‘That was Selfridges. I was with you.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘I still think you should’ve bought them.’

  It was Cat’s turn to snort. ‘They were super hot. But I had the imprint of the zip on my calf for weeks.’

  Cat turned to look out of the window as Kelly pulled out onto the main road.

  ‘So tell me about Harvey,’ Kelly said and Cat felt something flutter in her belly. That was weird.

  ‘Nothing to tell really,’ Cat said. ‘He was there. We had cake. He was really good with Arnold.’

  ‘Arnold’s in love with him. Has not stopped talking about him. He was so funny and nice and he didn’t tell Arnold he smells…’

  ‘Amateur.’

  ‘He said he’s going to get tickets for the panto?’

  ‘So he said, yeah.’

  ‘And you exchanged numbers? Arnold was very impressed that he rang himself from your phone.’

  ‘Oh Arnold. Get it together. Oldest trick in the book.’

  ‘But yeah. He works at a theatre? In lighting?’

  ‘Did Arnold remember that?’

  ‘Nah, I googled him.’

  ‘Ugh. There’s no mystery any more.’

  ‘Like you haven’t googled him – all of them – every day since we saw Sam.’

  ‘I have not!’ Except she had. ‘But I’ve stalked them all on Facebook.’

  ‘I bet you can add him now. After yesterday.’

  Cat had actually wondered the same thing. She’d sat in bed that morning, propped up on all her pillows because her neck felt like she had whiplash, and hovered her finger over the ‘add friend’ button. But how could she be Harvey’s friend and not Sam’s? Sam would see they were friends and would definitely find that weird. And if Jan saw, then she’d add her too. And then Cat would have to add Sam and how would that even work? She didn’t have any of her exes on Facebook as was right and good. And if she searched them all by name every time she had more than two glasses of wine, no one needed to know.

  * * *

  Cat lay on Kelly’s sofa, a cushion behind her neck, another under the small of her back, a cup of tea and a packet of biscuits on the table next to her and The Greatest Showman on the TV. Even her phone was charging.

  ‘How are you such a grown-up?’ she asked Kelly, trying to tip her head back to look at her upside down, but wincing with pain instead. ‘And why does every bit of me hurt.’

  ‘I think it’s cos you brace yourself against falling. It happened to me when I fell down the stairs carrying Arnold, remember?’

  Cat had seen it happen and been impressed at how her friend had curled herself around the baby with no regard for herself. Luckily she’d only scraped her elbow and bruised her little toe, but the following day she’d barely been able to move.

  ‘And how are you still not a grown-up?’ Kelly added, but she leaned down and kissed Cat on the forehead. ‘Text me if you need me. Don’t shout, cos I won’t hear you. And also please don’t text cos I’ve got work to do.’

  Cat watched the film over the top of her phone while she caught up on all of the internet. She spent the entire Bearded Lady song staring at Harvey’s Facebook and wondering about adding him. She could just add him, surely. That would be a normal thing to do. They’d bumped into each other twice now, they got on well – they’d always got on well. If he wasn’t Sam’s brother she’d have done it already. But. He was Sam’s brother.

  Maybe she should add Sam? She tapped over to Sam’s profile and the top post was the announcement of another stand-up show at a different venue. A smaller one. One that Cat had actually performed at too. It was the upstairs of a pub and known as a place where comedians workshopped or tried out new material. Sometimes huge names would perform there, unannounced. She and Sam had seen Gemma Jewell there once and she’d blown them both away. Just thinking about standing on that stage made Cat’s fingertips tingle.

  * * *

  ‘Now this is sponcon,’ Kelly said when they broke for lunch, sliding a white bowl in front of Cat. It was filled with greens along with chunks of orange and avocado and something purple Cat didn’t recognise.

  Although it wasn’t much of a break because Kelly had made the lunch and then photographed it on the floor with her lightbox. Cat had been amazed the first time she’d seen Kelly do it; she’d previously assumed her friend was just better at taking and filtering phone photos than she was, but no, it was a whole thing.

  ‘I thought you were doing beans on toast,’ Cat said, poking at the salad with her fork.

  Kelly rolled her eyes. ‘Just eat it. It’s good for you.’

  ‘Too healthy,’ Cat said, avoiding the purple stuff and popping a chunk of orange into her mouth. ‘Body might go into shock.’ She swallowed the orange and speared some avocado. ‘This is really good, Kel!’

  ‘Thanks.’ Kelly was poking at hers with her fork, but Cat hadn’t seen her eat any yet.

  ‘You feeling sick?’

  Kelly shook her head. ‘Not sick. I just don’t fancy it.’

  ‘What do you fancy then?’

  Kelly shook her head again. ‘I don’t even want to say. I’m too embarrassed.’

  ‘Is it Alan Titchmarsh?’

  Kelly snorted. ‘He’s got some lovely jumpers. Wait. I’ll show you.’

  ‘You’ve nicked one of his jumpers? Get it, girl.’

  Kelly rolled her eyes again and climbed down off the stool, crossing the room and opening the door to her enormous hidden larder. Cat had been over to the house dozens of times before she even knew it was there – she’d thought the doors along the back of the room were ordinary cupboards. And then one day Kelly had opened one and disappeared. If it had been Cat’s house, she’d have turned it into a karaoke room or put in a flotation tank – something unexpected anyway – but, because it was Kelly, it was actually simply lined with shelves stacked with ‘store-cupboard staples’ and apparently ever-replenishing boxes of basics like loo roll and teabags. Although there was a corner drawer of biscuits and chocolate that Cat and Arnold had been known to raid whenever Cat babysat.

  When Kelly reappeared she looked shifty, her cheeks pink. She had a bright yellow can in each hand and as she approached Cat, she held them out to her.

  ‘Macaroni cheese,’ Cat said, bemused.

  ‘Not just macaroni cheese,’ Kelly said, already reaching for a tin opener. ‘Really shit stuff. The cheapest, most disgusting, kind. Full of colourings and E-numbers and nothing found in nature.’

  ‘So?’ Cat said.

  She actually quite fancied a bowl herself, but she had to admit she was enjoying the fancy salad more than she’d thought she would. She’d even eaten some greenery.

  ‘So I’m meant to be eating healthily for the baby,’ Kelly said, almost writhing with embarrassment as she poured the contents of the can into a bowl and pushed it into the microwave. ‘The midwife told me that before I eat anything, I should ask myself if it’s the best thing for the baby, no, the best bite. Three Bs: Best Bite for Baby.’

  ‘That’s BBfB,’ Cat said through a mouthful of lettuce. ‘Best bite baby seems like terrible advice to me.’

  ‘I’ve tried,’ Kelly said, ignoring her. ‘But every time I make something healthy it makes me gag. The only stuff I want to eat is garbage.’

  ‘So.’ Cat shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t you just eat what you want? Or what you can? It’s not actually going to affect the baby, is it?’

  ‘But what if it does?’ Kelly said. ‘What if it comes out all pasty and glowing like those fish in The Simpsons.’

  ‘From macaroni cheese?’

  ‘From shit, canned macaroni cheese, heated in the microwave.’

  Right on cue, the timer pinged and Kelly sighed as she removed the dish and sat back down.

  ‘A couple of weeks ago,’ she said,
lowering her face to sniff the steam rising from the plate, ‘I woke up in the night with cramp in my leg. And I had a banana on the bedside table because they’re full of potassium and that’s good for cramp.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me that. Cos if I’d seen a banana on your bedside table it would have made me look at Sean in an entirely different light.’

  ‘I peeled it,’ Kelly said. ‘But I couldn’t even get it near my mouth—’

  ‘We’ve all been there.’

  ‘So I came downstairs and had macaroni cheese. Cold. From the can. I didn’t even properly take the lid off, just folded it back.’

  ‘You’re a monster,’ Cat said. ‘I don’t think we can be friends. Can I tell you something mad?’

  ‘Oh god,’ Kelly said.

  ‘I told Harvey I was doing stand-up again. Or planning to. I can’t remember.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  Cat sighed. ‘I think because I didn’t have anything good to tell him, you know? Like I didn’t want him to go to one of the big family meals and say he’d seen me and when they asked how I was he’d have to say “oh, you know, the same, living in a shithole, working in a shithole, still not even doing stand-up”.’

  ‘Your hair’s better though,’ Kelly said. She’d already eaten about half of the bowl, sighing with happiness the entire time. ‘And you mean Sam. You don’t want Sam to think you’re still stuck in the same job you were back then.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Cat said, even though she knew Kelly was right. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘You know you can.’

  ‘Why did I stop doing stand-up? In your opinion?’

  Kelly put her fork down and stared across the table at Cat. ‘And I can answer this, right? Without you losing your shit?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘You say that, but we had this conversation once before. Or at least I tried to. And you did a runner.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Cat said. ‘You threw me out.’

  Kelly shook her head. ‘I haven’t got the strength for this argument again.’

  ‘OK,’ Cat said. ‘But I’m going nowhere this time. My thighs aren’t up to it.’