How Not to Fall in Love, Actually

by Catherine Bennetto

  ‘He has to come back tomorrow while I’m at work and get his computer. He doesn’t have much stuff. Most of it’s mine.’

  ‘Was it awful?’

  ‘Not really. He doesn’t want to be a father. Too much responsibility, doesn’t have a job, blah blah blah.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘There was no fight or anything, and after a while he kind of agreed we’d . . . outgrown each other.’

  ‘I guess that’s good?’

  ‘Not good for the ego. I wouldn’t have minded a touch of “I can’t live without you” or some irrational pot-throwing. I feel a bit of a loser.’

  ‘It had to be done.’ Alex was pragmatic.

  ‘It had to be done,’ I agreed.

  ‘I’ll miss him, though. Do you mind if I still email him? He’s really interested in the work we do out here and—’

  I coughed my irritation.

  ‘Sorry,’ Alex said, contrite. ‘Well, you know what you have to do now?’

  ‘No.’ I did know, but I really didn’t want to do it.

  How do you tell your mother that, at age twenty-seven, you didn’t notice your missing periods for two months? That you’d had a scan, decided to keep the baby and broken up with the father? And were in danger of losing your job?

  ‘Tell her you’re a responsible adult and you know what you’re doing.’ Even Alex didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘I could tell her it was peer pressure.’

  ‘You could tell her it’s not Ned’s. Then she wouldn’t mind so much.’

  ‘Oh, yes! Whose could it be?’

  ‘I was kidding.’

  ‘There is a really gorgeous instructor at my gym. Maybe it’s his?’

  Alex snorted. ‘You don’t go to the gym!’

  ‘Yes I do, they have a Starbucks.’

  We sniggered together. Twelve thousand miles away and I felt like she was right beside me.

  ‘What’s the time where you are?’ I said through a yawn. I was exhausted. It was past 11 p.m. and I had to be back at work early the next morning. I’d told them I’d been having a family emergency. It wasn’t far from the truth. I was going to be personally adding to my family and it was throwing me into a state of emergency.

  ‘It’s about five in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’

  ‘No, you didn’t wake me. The guy who crashed his rickshaw into the night stalls at the bottom of my building did.’

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘He is. His rickshaw’s not. The stall isn’t. And now everyone is shouting at each other. Here, listen.’

  She held up the phone and I heard shouting, sirens, horns and traffic. Just like in Tooting. After saying goodbye, I switched off all the lights except the hall light, which I instinctively left on for Ned, and went to bed. When I realised what I’d done I went back into the hall and turned the light off. Then I got depressed at how life had changed so quickly and turned it back on. And off. And on again. After a good few minutes of lighting deliberation, I paused. Weary from the emotional past few weeks I decided to leave it on before the neighbours thought I was hosting a private midweek disco. I climbed into bed, pulled the covers up and looked at Ned’s empty side briefly before turning over and dropping off to sleep immediately.

  ‘Morning!’ I drifted into the office after the first seven hours of good sleep I’d had in a long time.

  Sophie jumped up to greet me. ‘Hey! Where were you yesterday? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Hi, Emma.’ Douglas smiled from behind his computer.

  ‘Hey, Douglas. Yes, everything’s fine.’ I walked round to my desk, Sophie at my elbow. ‘Just a few problems at home.’

  ‘Did someone die?’

  ‘Sophie!’ Douglas scolded.

  ‘No, someone didn’t die.’ I turned on my computer and sat down, making sure my scarf pooled in my lap and covered my stomach.

  ‘Oh.’ Sophie almost looked disappointed.

  Douglas frowned at her. ‘Well, you missed something very funny yesterday.’ He leant round his computer with a grin.

  Sophie looked enquiringly at Douglas, then remembered. ‘Oh, yes!’ She pealed into giggles.

  ‘Yeah?’ I started scrolling through my emails.

  One day off, and 157 unread messages. I opened the first one, a request from the producer that we try not to schedule any of the upcoming elderly lady scenes at night, as the actress they’d cast was really quite old and frail. A fair enough request, but maybe he should have thought about that when he approved the script about an elderly Alzheimer’s patient being found in a disused quarry in the middle of winter, in the middle of the night. I was going to enjoy passing that information on to Quentin. I clicked to the next email and realised Sophie and Douglas hadn’t answered me. I looked up to see Douglas, shoulders heaving and Sophie, bending over, silently cackling in the middle of the room.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Quentin . . .’ Sophie clutched her sides.

  ‘Flasher.’ Douglas removed his glasses and wiped at his eyes.

  ‘What?’

  The pair of them writhed with restrained hysterics.

  ‘Worried about his friends seeing him!’ Sophie hiccuped.

  ‘Will you just tell me what happened!’

  Sophie leant against her desk and waved at Douglas. ‘You tell, you tell.’

  Douglas replaced his glasses and gathered himself. ‘They were shooting the scene where they find out the hospital flasher is the janitor,’ he said, his voice still a little squeaky.

  I nodded. I’d booked the janitor the week before, spending ages choosing the perfect guy from the extras agencies’ websites.

  ‘Well, the extra you booked to be the hospital janitor was too young, or something. The director didn’t like him.’

  I groaned. Typical of that anally retentive, lentil-eating, yoga-posing director. Bring on my final warning, then.

  ‘The director stomped around for a bit, apparently, then looked Quentin up and down.’ Douglas’s voice wobbled. ‘Quentin got quite mad, I’m told.’

  Sophie ran her wrist under her running nose.

  ‘No way.’ I knew I was going to be in trouble but it was too dreadful not to enjoy.

  ‘One of the actors ran around telling everyone what was happening and the entire building went down to set.’ Douglas began to lose his recently regained self-control. Tears trickled down his flushed face.

  ‘The whole building was there,’ Sophie said, her voice squeaky.

  ‘Everyone had their phones out taking pictures.’ Douglas removed his glasses again.

  ‘Quentin had to run through the hospital corridors in tighty-whities with the nurses shouting “Flasher! Flasher!” and throwing rubber gloves at him!’

  We erupted into convulsions.

  ‘They had to do fifteen takes because Quentin kept tripping on the rubber gloves!’ Sophie squealed. ‘One of the actors put it on YouTube!’

  When we’d recovered some self-possession, Sophie and I asked Douglas to cover for us while we went outside, Sophie to smoke and me to pretend I was on a detox.

  ‘How come you’re detoxing then?’ Sophie took a deep drag of her Camel Light.

  I pulled my jacket tighter round me. ‘Dunno, really.’ I looked at her cigarette. I didn’t even feel like one. ‘I’m kind of detoxing my entire life. I broke up with Ned.’

  Sophie raised her triangular eyebrows. She looked like Tinkerbell. Tinkerbell with a fag hanging out the side of her mouth.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yup.’ I nodded, surprised by how at ease I felt.

  ‘Oh man, that’s so sad,’ she said, her eyebrows sloping. ‘I like Ned.’ At my look, she reddened. ‘But . . . ah . . . remember . . . remember when he found those orphaned baby foxes and brought them home and you guys both caught mange?’

  ‘I do,’ I said, giving her a ‘what-the-fuck-are-you-doing’ look.

  ‘Or what about that time he tried to make home-cured prosciutto and hung that
pig leg in your wardrobe and everything smelt like rotting bodies and you had to buy new clothes? Remember that?!’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ned had read the list of preservatives on the back of my favourite prosciutto with disgust. He decided he could do it with far fewer chemicals (and experience) but was proved incorrect by the putrid ooze that dripped onto all my shoes and permeated every item of clothing we owned with a stench so bad we’d contemplated moving flats.

  ‘And remember that pigeon he brought home with the club foot that shat everywhere then died in your bathtub?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Or what about the time—’

  ‘I remember them all, Sophie.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, sheepish.

  ‘It’s OK.’ I looked at my watch. We began shooting in fifteen minutes; Sophie and I really ought to be sat at our desks, radios at the ready. ‘Let’s go inside and look up Quentin on YouTube.’

  ‘Oh god, yes!’ Sophie threw her cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with her pink Converse.

  We rounded the corner of our office and saw Quentin drumming his tobacco-stained fingers on top of my computer screen.

  ‘Oh, no,’ I whispered to Sophie, but she was already scuttling past me to her desk.

  ‘Hello, Emma.’ Quentin stood by my desk, his mouth curled into a sneer. ‘Decided to come to work today, I see.’

  Bitchy sarcasm looks ugly on a grown man.

  ‘Uh, hi Quentin.’ I rushed to my desk. ‘I am so sorry about yesterday – I promise it will never happen again. I am totally one hundred per cent not going to make any more mistakes. It’s just that I’ve been—’

  ‘I feel the need to check you’ve actually booked everything for after the Christmas break.’

  His patronising tone made me want to shove a stapler up his flaring nostrils.

  ‘Right.’ I grabbed my file. ‘Really, I can assure you—’

  ‘And I can assure you that the next mistake you make will be your last.’ His eyes narrowed.

  I was opening my mouth to defend myself when an actress so vile we’d called her ‘Devil’s Armpit On A Hot Day In Hell’ (‘bitch’ just didn’t seem enough) stormed round the corner clutching a script, her jowly face contorted with fury.

  ‘Where is that nitwit Emily?’

  Philomena (her real name) was a masculine-looking woman of around sixty with saggy pouches under her eyes like a couple of well-used leather satchels and an expression that showed it pained her to be surrounded by us non-famous people. So much so, she never bothered to learn anyone’s name. Therefore I was sometimes Emily, sometimes Eleanor, sometimes Emma and sometimes Rebecca.

  She threw the script on my desk sending schedules, pens, scripts and my desktop light-up Christmas tree flying. The production coordinator and her secretary arrived in the doorway clutching paper cups of coffee and chatting, but on seeing Philomena swivelled on their heels and scuttled away. I scrambled to clear up the mess, a fierce heat rising to my cheeks.

  ‘What can I do for you, Philomena?’

  I didn’t dare look her in the eyes lest I be turned to stone.

  ‘Are you such an idiot that you cannot do your job?’

  Well, how does one answer that? Ah, no, I’m just a minor idiot, thank you. It doesn’t get in the way of my job at all.

  Two young runners appeared, each carrying a stack of colourful script amendments. They headed towards Douglas’s desk, giving Philomena a wide berth.

  ‘Sorry, Philomena, I’m not sure what the problem is,’ I said with as much confidence as I could muster.

  ‘Nobody phoned my answer machine last night and read out the changes to today’s script. Am I expected to go on set not knowing my lines?’ She rotated her hefty bosom towards Quentin. ‘It’s not a hard job, is it? All they have to do is ring us each day with the changes. A monkey could do it.’

  Quentin shook his head, the corners of his mouth curling.

  Not a hard job? Philomena got a driver to and from work each day; her script was read out to her over the phone and the publicity department diarised her entire life. I’d even had to organise her grandchildren’s Christmas presents. I wanted to shove something up her nostril too.

  ‘Let me just check the original script,’ I said, getting my folder.

  Philomena folded her arms across her chest. ‘If you could.’

  My cheeks burned and a light sweat settled behind my ears. Sophie and Douglas peeped out from behind their computer screens and the runners looked as if they wanted to dissolve into the carpet. I flicked through the pages of my original script till I’d found the scene she’d thrown at me, then ran a finger down each line of dialogue checking it against Philomena’s script. When I got to the end I looked up.

  ‘It’s – it’s only one word, Philomena.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Excuse me? Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?’

  ‘Well, it’s only one word. Instead of “It’s malignant, sir”, you say “It’s benign, sir”. Also I wasn’t actually here yesterday—’

  ‘Enough!’ She placed her liver-spotted hands on my desk and leant close to my face, the sharp tang of her cigarette-and-coffee breath making my oesophagus contract. ‘The whole tone of the scene is different! You can let the director know that I have to go to my room and relearn my lines.’ She pushed her huge frame off my desk, snatching her script pages.

  As she stalked off I looked at the official ‘shooting clock’ on the wall.

  ‘OK, but you’re due on set in four minutes,’ I said.

  She turned back, her expression warped and nasty.

  ‘That’s your problem. I will need at least twenty minutes to relearn this scene, and if anyone knocks on my door I will not come to set at all!’ She turned on her heel and marched towards the doorway.

  ‘It’s only one word. Jeez, a monkey could do it.’ I muttered as I tidied my files and willed my face to stop blushing.

  ‘What did you say?’ Philomena spun round. Her eyes glinted like Chinese meat cleavers.

  ‘Yes, Emma, what did you just say?’ Quentin smirked.

  I felt a gear change occur deep in my body. Like that scene in Titanic where they see the iceberg and have to throw the forward-moving ship into a grinding reverse. I looked at Quentin and Philomena and they were already in my past.

  I stood, took a step towards Philomena and met her challenging gaze. ‘I SAID, IT’S ONLY ONE FUCKING WORD! A MONKEY COULD DO IT!’

  Sophie clamped her hand over her mouth. Douglas adjusted his glasses. The runners’ lower jaws dropped.

  Philomena’s eyes turned to little slits. She spoke through bloodless, stiffened lips. ‘How dare you. How dare you!’

  ‘And before you worry about “having my job”, or telling me I’ll “never work in this industry again”, you can shut that wrinkled old pie-hole because I would rather clean the sewers at Wandsworth Prison – naked – after Curry Night – than have to work with people like you ever again!’ I jabbed my finger at a dumbstruck Quentin and a horrified Philomena. I unclipped my radio from my jeans waistband and shoved it at Quentin’s chest. ‘Hopefully the only time I ever see you again is on YouTube in your pants.’

  Quentin paled. Sophie grabbed my coat for me and gave the tiniest of thumbs ups before returning to the safety of her desk. Douglas gave a brief nod of solidarity.

  ‘Well then,’ I said, grabbing my handbag and looking cheerily from Sophie to Douglas. ‘See you guys later!’ I turned and floated towards the door, raising a silent middle finger to Philomena on the way out.

  I trotted down the long halls past producers and editors, writers and assistants saying ‘hey’, ‘hi’, ‘morning’, ‘all right?’, ‘yes thanks’, and bounced out of the studios into the chilly early morning. I looked at my watch. Only 8.17 a.m. I did a quick mental calculation of the time in Dhaka; 2.17 p.m. Alex would probably be sitting in her stinking office fanning herself with an audit report. I dialled.

  ‘Mmm?’
/>   ‘What’s wrong?’ She sounded sick.

  My mind filled with horror images of her dying alone, drenched in sweat from diphtheria or malaria or another third world disease ending in ‘ria’.

  ‘Nothing. You rang me; I answered.’

  ‘Yes I know, but you sounded sick when you answered – are you sick? Do they have a hospital there?’

  ‘Emma, I’m fine. Sweaty and covered in mosquito bites the size of buttons, but fine. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing. But you’re all right? You’re not sick?’

  ‘Emma! I’m fine, for god’s sake.’

  ‘Oh. All right then. Guess what!’

  ‘What?’ She yawned to show her extreme interest.

  ‘I quit my job!’

  Silence.

  ‘Alex?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  She didn’t sound nearly as excited for me as I had hoped, and my adrenaline was seeping away. I needed encouragement or I’d curl up on the footpath and fall into a deep denial-shaped sleep.

  ‘That is the best news I have heard from you in ages. Apart from you having a baby, of course. How come?’

  I beamed into the phone, happy to have my little sister’s approval.

  ‘Remember that horrible actor I’ve told you about?’

  ‘Horse Lover?’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘One Brain Cell Guy?’

  ‘No, the—’

  ‘The one who you have to speak to through his PA? Oh! The one who leaves porn on in his dressing room?’

  ‘No! Remember the one who got that runner fired for spilling tea on her laptop, even though it was actually her who’d spilt the tea? And the runner wasn’t even in the room at the time?’

  ‘Ah, yes. She sounded delightful.’

  I regaled her with the Philomena/Quentin exchange. ‘I don’t know what came over me but I just got so . . . so mad!’

  ‘Hormones.’

  ‘Guess so.’

  ‘So what are you going to do for money? You need a job; you’re having a baby.’

  Trust Alex to bring reality so quickly into the conversation.

  ‘That’s true. I hadn’t really thought about it.’ I had a brief panic but decided to do a Scarlett O’Hara and think about my problems tomorrow. ‘I’ll get something. Anyway I have my savings, so I’ll be fine for a while.’