Much Ado About Sweet Nothing

by Alison May

  That seems like a bit of a worry to me. I’m not sure how comfortable I am with Ben’s imagination being fired off into strange new directions. An image of Ben keeps insinuating its way into my mind. Somehow the maths isn’t engrossing me enough to make it stop.

  From the outset mathematicians struggled to make Zero conform to their usual rules. If you accept that Zero is one less than one, you have to ask yourself what is one less than Zero? Then you end up with a whole new set of numbers that aren’t anything to do with counting things. You can’t really divide by Zero. If you try to multiply by it, you end up with nothing.

  Accepting Zero means accepting that none of your rules for how numbers work are really rules at all. They’re useful guidelines for those numbers that are all about counting physical stuff, but in the realm of nothing and everything all those rules break down.

  And that’s the big surprise that Zero offers us. Learning about Zero isn’t learning about Nothing at all. It’s about Everything. As soon as you accept Zero, you also have to accept the possibility of the Infinite. Everything begins with Nothing.

  So even the maths doesn’t conform to the rules. If I was speaking to him I’d point that out. Zero, I would tell him, is just like art and beauty and love after all. Of course I can’t, because I’m not speaking to him or thinking about him at all.

  I slam the book closed. It’s not really as satisfying as shouting to his face is, but I feel I’ve made my point. The not thinking about him isn’t going quite as well, unfortunately. I keep remembering university, which is insane. It’s ancient history. Thinking about it is about as much practical use as … as writing a book about nothing.

  I used to wind Ben up by saying that he was doing a degree in ‘Sums’. That would make him go all pink and angry. Even then we argued a lot. I remember one time Claudio came to stay, and told Ben he thought I was scary, because we bickered about him drinking. It wasn’t even a proper row that one.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Trix

  Twelve years earlier

  I knock on Ben’s door. Normally I’d just walk in, but his brother is visiting and it would be just my luck to walk in on him in his pants. Given that he’s only about fourteen, and is open-jawed with wonder at the fact that any girl is prepared to have sex with his brother, that would be properly weird on very many levels for both of us.

  ‘Come in.’ Ben yells over the range of music that’s pervading the corridor. There’s U2 from Ben’s room (typical unimaginative man music), but in the corridor that gets mixed in with some sort of Bollywood thing from two rooms further down, and a hip-hop baseline thud pulsing the floor from downstairs. It’s brilliant, and it’s why I love living in halls.

  Ben’s room smells slightly of boy, so I lean over the bed and open the window. Normally we hang out in my room, which I have accessorized with tastefully cool posters and prints. Ben’s room always makes me feel slightly like I’m in a monk’s cell. There are hardly any personal touches. One picture of him and his brother and parents on holiday at Lake Garda, and one poster which proclaims: ‘There are 10 sorts of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.’ It’s not funny. I don’t even think Ben thinks it’s funny. It’s just one of those things that someone bought him, and he put it up rather than chuck it away. It could just as easily have been the other way around.

  Claudio is lying on the bed, and Ben is sitting in the one and only chair, so I lean on the desk, trying to look comfortable and at home. Claudio is playing with one of those handheld game things. I don’t really know what to say to him. I know I’m only five years older than him, but fourteen-year-old boys are a closed book. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and even when I was fourteen, boys only really talked to me to ask whether the carpets matched the curtains, and call me a Ginge. I was lucky to hit secondary school before ‘minger’ and ‘minging’ were common parlance. The rhyming possibilities would have made things even less bearable.

  I look at Ben for support, but social unease isn’t really something that he notices.

  ‘So, what are we going to do this evening?’

  Ben shrugs. ‘Takeaway?’

  Claudio perks up at this suggestion. ‘Can we get pizza?’

  Ben nods.

  Claudio grins. ‘Real pizza with orange cheese and processed ham, and thick white bread base?’

  Ben laughs. ‘Mum and Dad only ever let us have homemade pizza, with a proper Italian thin base, and lots of green stuff on it.’

  ‘Well, it’s good that they’re looking after your health.’ Weirdly, having Claudio there seems to be making me feel like I ought to be the grown-up.

  ‘It’s not our health they’re worried about. It’s our cultural heritage. Proper Neapolitan pizza only in our house.’

  Ben and I walk to phone for the pizza. There’s already a girl in the phone box so we wait outside. I take the chance to ask him what I ought to talk to Claudio about. He looks blank.

  ‘Well, what do you talk to him about?’

  ‘Dunno. Just whatever.’

  ‘Well, what’s he into?’

  ‘Rocks.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rocks.’

  ‘Rock music?’ Please God, let him mean rock music.

  ‘No. Actual rocks. Stones, pebbles, fossils, all that stuff.’

  I clasp a hand to my mouth. ‘Oh my god! There’s two of you.’

  Ben looks offended. ‘I’m not into rocks.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, obviously, there are some interesting elements in geology. Actually a lot of what we know about the early days of the Earth comes from mineral deposits in rock layers, and that’s fascinating.’

  ‘But you’re not really into it?’

  The girl comes out of the phone box and Ben gives me a we’re-not-finished-here look before he goes in to phone for pizza. I wait for him, and we continue without missing a beat when he comes out.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with a wide range of interests, you know.’

  ‘A wide range of interests. Hmmm … what A-levels did you do again? Physics, Maths, Further Maths, and what degree? Maths with Physics? I can see how you’re broadening your horizons.’

  ‘This from the woman who won’t read a book that isn’t make believe!’

  ‘Did you just describe the wonders of the English fictional canon, as make believe?’

  ‘You know what? I think I did.’

  We’re back at Ben’s room now. Claudio is still lying on the bed, and we make an effort to simmer down as we go in. Ben hits him across the legs.

  ‘Shift. Let someone else sit down.’

  Claudio wriggles upright and I sit on the edge of the bed next to him. He’s still playing with his console thing, so I feel morally excused from talking to him. I look over at Ben, and find that he’s looking at me. I look straight at him. He is actually quite sexy. It surprises me every time I realise that. In my head, he is a proper geeky boy. I’d never say it out loud, but sometimes in my head when I have to introduce him to people I can feel myself wanting to apologise, to explain and excuse him. But actually he is more than presentable. He’s not trendy, but that’s OK. I can’t stand boys who look like they try too hard. I like clean and clean-shaven, but anything beyond that I consider to be excessive vanity in a man. His dress sense has improved quite a lot since I first met him, mainly because I threw away most of his wardrobe as a condition of agreeing to have sex with him the fourth time. It seemed like reasonable behaviour to me.

  Anyway, I’m looking at him now, trying to make my eyes tell him how beautiful and gorgeous I think he is. It’s a lot to get into a look, but I’m having a good shot at it.

  ‘What?’ Ben pulls a face at me, and sadly, it’s not a ‘Yeah baby’ type of face.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then why are you looking at me funny?’

  ‘I’m not looking at you funny.’

  ‘You were.’

  ‘Wasn’t.’

>   ‘Were.’

  Claudio has looked up from his game thingy to see what we’re bickering over. I hope he’s impressed with the level of argument a university education allows you to achieve. I feel that we are probably making him uncomfortable and should therefore stop, but if we stop now, Ben will have had the last word, and I can’t allow that.

  ‘Wasn’t.’

  Ben looks at his watch. ‘I’m going to see if the pizza’s here.’

  This is the only downside of living in halls. When you order takeaway they deliver it to the porters’ desk, so you have to go over there and loiter waiting for it to arrive. I have had conversations with porters in the past where they’ve sworn that no delivery guys have been in when you could actually smell the pizza in their office.

  As Ben heads out of the door, I hear him mutter. ‘Were.’

  Being distracted by the bickering meant that I missed the opportunity to go with Ben, so now I’m stuck on my own with the fourteen-year-old rock boy.

  ‘So Ben says you like geology?’

  He makes an affirmative sounding grunt, which probably counts as advanced communication if you’re fourteen.

  ‘Any areas in particular?’ I have no idea if there are different areas of geology, but at least I’m trying.

  ‘Volcanoes.’

  ‘Right. Good. That’s interesting.’ I mean, it might be interesting. I don’t know. I sense that he’s not going to tell me much more though. ‘Well, I might get a drink then?’

  I stand up. ‘Do you want anything?’

  ‘Sure. Wine.’

  Wine? Can I give a fourteen-year-old wine? Is that normal? If it’s not, is it really up to me to police this particular fourteen-year-old? And most worrying of all, am I proving myself to be horribly uncool by wondering whether it’s OK? Claudio is still looking at me.

  ‘It’s OK. Mum and Dad let me drink.’ He grins. ‘Italian thing.’

  That sounds plausible. I head off to the kitchen, feeling foolish, for having been made to feel provincial by a child. I fill three glasses with wine from the box in the fridge with the huge ‘B’ on the side in marker pen. It’s not good wine, but it is cheap.

  When I get back I put one glass down in front of Claudio. I would hand it to him, but that would involve him letting go of the games console and that doesn’t look likely.

  ‘It’s not very good wine.’ Now I’m apologising to him for the quality of the alcohol on offer. I suspect that his wine-swilling cosmopolitan Italian parents probably have slightly more expensive tastes than our student budget runs to though.

  ‘It’ll be fine.’ He puts down the console, and picks up the glass and takes a big swig. He pulls a face. Ben walks in with the pizza.

  ‘Food’s here! Who gave you drink?’

  Showing reactions clearly honed by hours playing computer games, Claudio is pointing at me before Ben has even finished the question.

  ‘He said your mum and dad let him.’

  Ben grins. ‘Did he?’

  He looks at Claudio, who is starting to look guilty. ‘Well, they do. It’s an Italian thing.’

  ‘No. They don’t. I’m your brother. They’re my parents too. If you’re going to lie, at least try to come up with an intelligent lie.’

  Ben flips open the pizza box. ‘Just don’t get drunk. I don’t want to end up delivering you home with a hangover.’

  Claudio is clearly much taken with this new permissive society, but I’m less impressed.

  ‘He lied to me.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, shouldn’t we do something about that? Aren’t you supposed to discipline children?’

  ‘I’m not a child.’

  ‘Yes. You are.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m a young adult.’

  Ben looks at him. ‘Shut up and drink your wine.’

  ‘No, don’t drink your wine.’ I glare at Ben. ‘That’s just rewarding him for lying.’

  ‘It’s only wine.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s the whole principle of the thing.’

  Ben shakes his head and bites into his pizza. ‘I’m his big brother. I’m supposed to lead him astray.’

  ‘I think he should have to apologise.’

  Ben laughs. ‘OK. Claudio, apologise to Trix for lying.’

  ‘Sorry, Trix.’

  It is actually quite funny now. I can remember being about the same age and getting caught fighting at school. There’s a particular tone in which the forced apology is muttered that is just loud enough for you not to be in trouble for failing to do it, but not clear enough to be seen as a real apology. I peer down my nose at him. ‘I can’t hear you.’

  Ben is sniggering behind me. Claudio pulls a face. ‘Sorry, Trix.’

  I nod primly. ‘That’s better.’ I pick my glass up and take a swig. ‘Now drink up. If we’re going to lead you astray I don’t want to get accused of being half-arsed about it.’

  The next night, after a slightly grey looking Claudio has been delivered back to the bosom of his family suffering the effects of a sudden and apparently Claudio-specific stomach bug, Ben and I are in bed in my room.

  ‘I’m not sure if your brother liked me.’

  ‘He loved you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. He did think you were a bit eccentric though.’

  ‘I’m not eccentric!’ I’m offended now. How can a teenage boy who thinks rock formations are a leisure activity think I’m eccentric? ‘He didn’t really say that?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Good. You shouldn’t make things up. It’s mean.’ I roll over and look Ben very seriously in the eye. ‘You are a mean boy.’

  ‘He didn’t say eccentric. He said completely, fucking mental.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you said he liked me.’

  ‘He did.’ Ben pulls me down on top of him. ‘He’s fourteen, Trix. That’s high praise.’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Ben

  I’m not sure what to do when I realise that Claudio didn’t make it home last night. In my analysis there are, essentially, three possibilities. Either he finally managed to get as far as speaking to Henri and everything’s OK again and he stayed there, or he didn’t get as far as talking to her and sat in his car outside her flat all night, or he did talk to her and it didn’t go well and then I’m not at all sure what he would have done.

  I ring his mobile, and hear it ringing in his room, so that’s no help. I’m wondering whether ringing Henri to see if he’s there would be overly dramatic. Actually, my main concern about that idea is that I don’t know what I’d say to her. I don’t know if it’s long enough since the wedding to just ring her and act normally or whether I’d still be expected to say something about what happened, and what would I say? I have a sense that asking if I can have back the towels I bought them would be wrong, but now it’s in my head I can’t think of anything else.

  I decide that the best course of action would be to have a cup of tea and then think about it. Halfway through my tea I decide that if I had some toast as well, the situation would inevitably become clearer. Procrastination is a particular skill of mine. I’m in a state of prolonged procrastination at the moment. I’ve pretty much finished the active promotion for the book. I’ve got a couple of speaking things set up in the next couple of months, but basically no work on at all. I should, at this stage be writing my next book. After the first one did well I signed a three-book deal, and number two should be getting underway this summer, which means that I should have definite plans for what it’s going to be about by now, probably even a first draft. What will actually happen is that, in a couple of months’ time people will start hassling me, and I’ll think about it then. I should also be writing articles for papers, and putting myself out there to comment on anything and everything vaguely maths related that hits the news. Part of me thinks that self-employment doesn’t really suit me, but then I realise that the alternative would involve having to get out of bed and drag my arse into an office e
very single day, and I decide impoverishment through lack of motivation is a small price to pay.

  And, demonstrating that procrastination works, and that you really should never do today what you can put off till tomorrow, just as I’m washing up my mug, Claudio walks through the door, with Henrietta in tow. ‘In tow’ seems like the right description. She’s huddled under his arm. It’s not clear whether he’s unwilling to let go of her or vice versa. He bundles her into the kitchen. Claudio, at least, has a big grin on his face.

  ‘So you finally got as far as talking to her?’

  Claudio nods. ‘And everything is sorted. My beautiful girl is going to come with me to Naples, and we’re going to have a quiet little wedding in Italy, aren’t we?’

  Henri nods. I’m not an expert in this area, but I am surprised that everything’s back on so quickly. Having said that, if I only have to deal with calm and rational people in my kitchen, that’s not a status quo I’m keen to disrupt. I hope she gave him hell though. He deserved it.

  Claudio sits down at the table, and pulls Henri down on to his lap. ‘Now we just need to sort you out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think that there should be romance for everyone. Danny too!’ Claudio seems to have decided that sorting his own life out is insufficient and he’s going to have a go at everybody else’s too.

  ‘I don’t think Danny would particularly appreciate you interfering.’

  ‘Right. Maybe leave that a while.’ He pauses. ‘That just leaves you then.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re lonely.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You miss Trix.’

  ‘What?’

  He shrugs. Smug little shit. I give him a look which I intend to be the end of the conversation, but I can’t quite let the subject drop. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t miss stuff you never had, well not never, and …’