How Not to Fall in Love, Actually

by Catherine Bennetto

  ‘Good.’ I handed the cereal box back. ‘We don’t want Harriet to film you and end up getting arrested for accidentally making a voyeuristic porn film. I’d be questioned about harbouring a paedophile, social services would take my baby away and I’d have to move house because Daily Mail journalists would camp outside my door trying to get a photo of the new internet porn sensation.’

  Joe beamed. ‘You think I’d be a sensation?’

  I threw the pillow back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ‘They’re what?!’

  ‘Moving in together.’ Douglas gulped down the phone.

  ‘When?’ I paced up and down the jetty.

  Archie and I had been back at Bradley Manor for a week. We were shooting a camping scene with the feral chihuahuas-as-cats in the forest by the lake and I’d stepped off set after receiving a text from Douglas saying Sophie and Ned were moving in together.

  ‘This weekend, I believe. They found a place in Norbiton.’

  ‘But this means it’s serious. You said it was just going to be a fling.’

  ‘Ah, actually, ah, Helen said that, I believe. Yes . . . ah—’

  ‘I don’t care who said it.’ I reached the end of the jetty and spun round. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. Are they going to get married and have freckly, pixie-faced babies dressed in stripes?’

  ‘Ah, well, I’m . . . not sure, really . . . I guess it’s a possibility.’

  ‘Douglas!’ I shrieked.

  I spun round again and was greeted by Martha’s reprimanding face. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Huh?’ Douglas said.

  ‘Not you, Douglas. I have to go. I’ll call you later. Sorry for yelling, really I am.’ I hung up and Martha pounced.

  ‘Archie needed to go to the bathroom and you weren’t there to take him.’

  ‘OK, well, I’m coming back now. Keep your knickers on.’ I pushed past her in the direction of the forest. ‘If you can manage it.’

  ‘I’ve taken him already. I had to leave my charge with Claire, who I do not think is a particularly good role model for small children. Her language is atrocious and she smokes like a train.’ Martha puffed along beside me as I strode back to set.

  ‘So it’s all fine then. What’s your problem?’

  Martha grabbed me by the arm. ‘You are my problem!’ she said a little too close to my face for my liking.

  She had large pores in her squashy nose and there was a strong waft of ham about her person.

  ‘You’re a terrible chaperone!’ Martha stabbed a stubby finger in my direction. ‘You’re lazy, self-involved and always on your phone. You don’t help Archie learn his lines or make sure he’s properly hydrated. You don’t support me by adhering to the official child hours, always offering the director another five minutes here, extra take there. You let the children play with intestines – it’s totally inappropriate – and don’t think I didn’t see you filming them with the torso, or detonating squibs. You think you’re better than this job because you used to be a Second AD.’ She walked ahead a few steps, then stopped and turned back.

  ‘I hope you were a good AD because you’re an awful chaperone, and I’ll be writing to your local authority to recommend they revoke your licence immediately.’ She glanced down at my baby bump with a pinched look. ‘God knows what kind of dreadful mother you’ll be.’

  And with that, she spun on her heavy legs and stalked towards the forest. I stood at the end of the jetty, stunned. Martha was going to get me fired. I thought about what that meant for me. For Archie. If I lost my job I’d have nothing to think about except Sophie and Ned and their freckly future. And I needed the money. I’d hardly put much away for when the baby came. All of Joe’s rent was going to Mum to pay off Ned’s pretend instalments. And I was absolutely not contacting Ned now that he was playing house with my ex-friend. No way. I couldn’t lose my job. I’d have to move in with Mum and start that teapot collection. And Martha thought I was going to be a horrible mother. Was I? I’d been quietly harbouring fears that motherhood was going to completely overwhelm me. I squared my shoulders. A new mature, responsible single mother-to-be was going to emerge, effective immediately. Well, as soon as I could convince Martha not to tell on me. I hurried along the jetty and caught up to Martha at the edge of the forest, only having the tiniest of panics that the brief jog had turned my baby into a milkshake.

  ‘Martha! Wait!’

  She turned, raising her chins. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please don’t get me fired! Please?’

  ‘You’re too late. I’ve already written the email. I just have to get Production’s consent and press send.’

  ‘Just hear me out. Please?’ I decided the best approach was flattery, submission and a bit of begging. ‘You’re right. I’m a terrible chaperone. I’m awful.’

  Martha and her glucose sweats were nonplussed.

  ‘Let me have one more chance. I promise I’ll be better. Much better. I need this job. I want this job.’

  Martha considered me, and I had the completely unrelated thought that, with a little help from a Mac counter and heavily dimmed lighting, she could be quite pretty. Her eyes were a lovely cornflower shade of blue, and under the additional padding it looked like her cheekbones were rather well-defined. Her pores were extremely large – she could keep spare change in there – but Caroline could fix that with a flick of a brush.

  ‘Just because you “need” this job doesn’t mean you should have it.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Being a good chaperone means putting the child’s needs first. Something you seem incapable of doing.’

  ‘OK, I have a proposition for you.’

  Martha narrowed her eyes.

  ‘You don’t send that email and I spend the rest of the shoot learning from you.’ The idea was just formulating in my head. Hopefully it would appeal to her superior nature. ‘You become my mentor and I your . . . student, of sorts. You teach me everything you know.’

  Martha chewed on her lip.

  ‘I run everything by you and if you say jump I say when, for how long and do you want me to bake you a cake while I’m doing it?’ I threw her a little smile to show I was trying.

  Martha’s eyes narrowed. ‘You should be doing that anyway; I’m the senior chaperone.’

  ‘I’ll get your breakfast every day. And do every bedtime with the kids. And at the end of every week we sit down and you give me a performance review and tell me all the things I did wrong.’

  Martha’s eyes lit up. This was it. A chance to berate me at the end of each week with my full approval.

  ‘Deal,’ she said, wiping a bead of sugar-withdrawal sweat off her upper lip. ‘But one more slip-up and you are gone.’

  ‘Gone. Totally. Gotcha.’

  For the next week I was degradation personified. I supported Martha when she took the children off set after their official time was up, even though with one more 45-second ‘take’ the scene would be in the bag. I got her pastries every morning, bathed the kids every night and reapplied sunblock on the kids every hour even though it was cloudy. And we were shooting inside. ‘UV rays are extremely harmful to young skin and we are shooting near some pretty big windows,’ was what I said through gritted teeth, Martha nodding along in approval, when Claire asked what the hell I was doing. Each night I crawled into bed and hoped I’d survive the rest of the shoot without smothering Martha with her empty crisp packets. I’d spend my days trying to think of something, anything that could bring Martha down a peg or nine, but it was impossible to find something to pin on her. Martha was an excellent chaperone.

  I was lying in bed about to turn off my light when I heard Martha arrive back from dinner. By the sound of it she had company. Within minutes, grunts and moans vibrated through the wall. I switched off my light and pulled the duvet over my head. I tried to recognise the male from his grunts. It wasn’t Steve because he was more of a groaner, with quite a long ooooh in the middle. And it wasn’t Male Zombie Camper Number Three b
ecause his grunts were short and he blew a quick whoosh of air out of his mouth like a long-distance runner. The lighting guy with the tattoo of a Chinese fish on his shoulder was generally silent, only making one loud OH! when he came, so it wasn’t him either.

  This guy must be new.

  And then the chatter began and it seemed I wasn’t the only amateur poet.

  ‘Oooooh I want to tussle with your muscle,’ Martha said, her voice thick with desire. ‘Come on,’ she urged. (I really didn’t like hearing her ‘urge’.) ‘I want to be under your thunder. I want to be humpin’ your circumference.’

  ‘I want you anterior to my general area,’ replied Scott Vander.

  SCOTT VANDER?! Impossible!

  The revelation that Scott, the movie star with a manly jaw, white teeth and year-round I-have-my-own-powerboat-in-Barbados-and-it-gets-me-all-the-chicks tan was bonking Martha the who-ate-all-the-pies-oh-it-was-me-pass-the-pudding chaperone with a chip on her squishy shoulder was just too delicious a piece of prospective gossip. I needed to find out for sure, so I grabbed my pillow, duvet and phone and headed to the sofa in the living room to lie in wait. I’d see if it really was Scott Vander when he emerged, worn out and in need of disinfecting. I’d just settled down with the duvet covering my head when a door opened and footsteps padded down the hall. I shrank into the sofa as a toned figure walked across the dark room and headed to the fridge humming the tune to ‘Eye of the Tiger’. Scott-shagging-Vander. Unbelievable! By the light of the fridge I could see the outline of his willy (helmet, for those interested). I cursed myself for not having my phone ready to take photographic evidence of the extraordinary event. Scott grabbed a bunch of bananas and a pot of Nutella and strutted back down the hall. I contemplated where those poor bananas were heading. One day they’re hanging off a tree in the Philippines, the next they’re in chilly Wales destined for unpleasant terrain. The carnal endurance test started again but within a couple of minutes I heard a loud OH! followed by a dull thud and a shrill howl. An ‘oh-that-hurts’ howl, not a ‘Jesus-I’m-coming’ howl. Then, ‘Are you OK? I’ll get ice!’

  I grabbed my phone, navigated to the camera app, turned off the flash and waited. Helen was going to get her photo. Heavy footsteps pounded the hallway and Martha rushed into the room, naked with a smear of Nutella . . . well, I don’t really want to say where but it wasn’t pretty. I followed Martha with the phone. She gave me an intimate view of her naked buttocks as she fished ice out of the freezer then trundled back down the hall. I lay under my duvet, finger hovering over the camera button. A few minutes later Scott appeared, fully dressed, an arm slung over Martha (thankfully clothed in a dressing gown) limping painfully down the hall. It wasn’t quite what Helen had in mind but, stealth-like, through a teeny opening in my duvet, I snapped a couple of pics anyway.

  ‘What if it’s broken?’ Scott whispered as he hopped along beside Martha.

  Neither of them noticed the bunchy duvet on the sofa.

  ‘It’s just a sprain.’

  ‘It feels broken.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘I told you I couldn’t hold it any longer.’

  ‘I couldn’t hear you. Your face was—’

  And they were through the front door. I in no way needed to know where his face was that so muffled his cries.

  The next morning while everyone milled about the breakfast buffet the Second AD slunk into the room, bags under his eyes, a clipboard in his hands, and addressed the crew.

  ‘Everyone listen up, please. Everyone. Gather round, thanks.’

  People dumped sugar in their paper cups of coffee, another bagel on their paper plates and took their places in a drowsy semicircle around him. I still found it odd that zombies stood among us with their breakfast baps and their early morning yawns.

  ‘Scott Vander has been injured,’ the Second AD said bluntly.

  The crowd murmured; a few girlish gasps escaped from the female cast members.

  ‘It’s OK. He’ll be fine,’ he said, without anything approaching feeling. ‘He fell while on his run this morning and has a hairline fracture on his ankle. Or foot . . . bone.’

  The cast and crew threw each other shocked glances. What did that mean for filming? Could we continue? Was Scott OK? I think it was fair to say I was the only one, besides Martha, who was next to the pastries and had paled considerably, who knew how Scott really got his hairline fracture. Naked banana athletics with a certain Nutella-coated snack monster.

  ‘When will he be back?’ someone asked.

  ‘This afternoon, we hope. He’s having a cast fitted but will be cleared to shoot from tomorrow onward.’

  ‘But how can we shoot with a cast on his foot?’ The costume designer, a woman in her fifties with smoke-harried skin said through crimped lips. ‘None of his costumes will fit over a cast.’

  ‘How will he do the forest scenes?’ asked an art department guy.

  ‘Or the cabin sequence? Chippies start tomorrow,’ said another.

  Different departments voiced their concerns. Equipment was hired; cast had been booked. The big zombie camper attack was due to happen in two days. The stunt department were rigging harnesses (for the flying zombies – a huge flaw in the script, according to a very perturbed Douglas because zombies cannot fly), SPFX were rigging squibs, flame bars and all manner of retractable weaponry, and the make-up and art departments were working together to assemble severed body parts and silicone gut paraphernalia.

  ‘Rewrites are happening as we speak,’ the Second AD said over the collective panic attack.

  Rewrites this late in filming were a massive undertaking. Forthcoming scenes, with their props, actors, animals, stunt coordinators and equipment already booked and paid for might get deleted from the script. Some scenes we’d already shot might not make sense and may have to be discarded. The sex-damaged ankle was going to have mammoth repercussions. I glanced at Martha, who was chewing her fingernails.

  ‘Can’t we just delay shooting till the cast comes off?’ asked the silver-haired art director. ‘Everything we’ve done is going to be compromised.’

  ‘The manor is booked solid from the last day of shoot for the rest of the summer. Weddings every week. Overrunning is not an option,’ the Second AD said. ‘This is the only way. Or the film doesn’t get finished.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Back in the barn house, Martha was all a-fluster.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she barked. ‘We should be running lines with the children.’

  Tilly perched on the edge of the sofa while Martha paced the floor gripping a disorganised script in one hand and a packet of chocolate buttons in the other.

  ‘What for?’ I handed Archie a bunch of grapes, eased myself into an armchair and circled my ankles. ‘The schedule’s changing. We have no idea what scenes to practise.’

  ‘Exactly! It’s disastrous. We should be prepared for all of them.’

  I affected a yawn and stretched my arms. ‘Nah. Let’s just hang.’

  Martha stopped pacing. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  I picked up my phone and feigned bored texting. I found the picture of Scott and Martha. It was grainy and dark and at a jaunty angle but there was no doubt it was the two of them. And no doubt it was a clandestine encounter. Martha watched, her nostrils splaying wide and tense, wide and tense, while I exaggerated my carefree phone-twiddling.

  ‘Here,’ she said, tossing her script on the seat beside me. ‘I’ve folded over all the scenes we’ve already shot. But that’s not to say we won’t need to relearn them. We may have to reshoot any one of them. Start running them from the beginning. I’m going to see if we can get more information. We can’t work like this. Children need time to prepare.’ She moved towards the door, her hoggish eyes squinting in my direction.

  I picked up the script, pretending to acquiesce to her demands, then dropped it to the floor.

  ‘No thanks.’

  Tilly and Archie popped grapes into their mouths and w
atched. Martha stopped by the door.

  ‘Oh, I think you’ve finally done it,’ she said, her face spreading into a malevolent grin. She stalked back into the middle of the room. ‘I was always going to send that email. I’ll send it today, and with any luck you’ll be removed from the position immediately.’ She stopped. A flicker of agitation crossed her face. ‘Why are you smiling?’

  ‘Because I know something you don’t know.’

  ‘I doubt that.’ She straightened and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Her sports watch sank into the skin of her wrist like it was wrapped around a doughy loaf of bread. I pushed myself out of the armchair, took a step towards her and held my phone inches from her braying nostrils.

  ‘I. Know. Something.’

  Barely detectable stages of panic traversed her face, peaking in fury before settling on hostile realisation.

  ‘Tilly, take the iPad and go and play in your room,’ Martha said, her voice steely. ‘Educational apps only.’

  Tilly and Archie obediently left the room. Martha and I remained face to face, the phone held up between us.

  ‘I sense you want something,’ Martha said.

  ‘You sense right.’

  She gave a reluctant nod.

  ‘I want you to back. The hell. Off.’ I shook my index finger with each word. ‘I want you to stop talking to me like I’m an imbecile. I want you to let the kids watch cartoons once in a while. I want you to give the director another ten frigging minutes if he needs it. Stop waking me up at 6 a.m. to run lines. Stop the loud goddamned orgasms – they’re keeping me awake!’ For this Martha had the decency to colour. ‘Stop taking all the chocolate croissants, stop pretending to be so offended by the “offensive” script when you run a one-woman brothel out of your bedroom, stop taking the children’s temperatures, stop bossing me around and stop being such a fucking bitch!’ I paused to catch my breath. ‘And share your snacks!’

  Martha’s chest heaved. She studied me, hatred pinching her face. ‘OK,’ she said through tiny lips.