How Not to Fall in Love, Actually

by Catherine Bennetto

  ‘OK then.’ Alex eyed me as if she hadn’t believed a word. Then she clapped her hands together and hustled me out the door. ‘Right, I have to go to bed.’

  ‘I’m really, really glad you came.’

  ‘Yes, yes, me too.’ She pushed me into the hall and shut the door. ‘Night!’ she called, and it sounded like she was already under the covers.

  I turned and jumped at the sight of Joe.

  ‘Well, I’m going to head to bed,’ he said, yawning and stretching.

  His t-shirt rode up and I caught a glimpse of the taut region below his belly button. Sparse tufts of hair peeking out from his waistband did tingly, fluttery things to my stomach. He smiled and rested against the wall opposite. With his softened, tired eyes and his end-of-day stubble he looked beautiful and familiar. I was shocked at the frisson of desire that suddenly tore through my chest and willed myself not to blush.

  ‘Thank you for . . .’ I tried to find the right words. Joe had listened, really listened, to me. If he’d known that my sister being here would bring me such a sense of security and stillness, then was he able to read how I felt about him? I felt exposed. ‘Just . . . just thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he said with a weary yet generous smile.

  We stood opposite each other, our backs to the walls. The gap between us felt charged. Opportunity to express our feelings hung in the air. I waited with rising tension in my chest. Joe’s features became intense. His lips twitched and his brow furrowed, as if he was on the verge of saying something. But his face relaxed and he smiled again with soft, tired eyes.

  ‘Goodnight.’ His voice sounded heavy in the back of his throat. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

  I sensed a note of resolution, of a decision being made. He opened his arms for a hug.

  ‘Night,’ I said, and buried my face in his chest.

  We lingered in each other’s arms, and somehow it felt as if we were saying goodbye. He was letting me go. A terrible sadness tugged at my insides. He kissed the top of my head then pulled away. He scuffed his feet up the stairs and I padded slowly to my bedroom with a lump in my throat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The aroma of sizzling breakfast-y foods drew me from my slumber. I wrestled into a maternity bra (nobody should be subjected to a loose boob at breakfast, especially not when trembling poached eggs were about), replaced my pyjama vest and tottered down the hall in pursuit of bacon. I found Joe in boxers and a t-shirt flipping and stirring, boiling and brewing.

  ‘Morning!’ he said in a cheerful boom. ‘Tea? Pancakes? Bacon? Hash browns? Eggs? I’m in a big breakfast kind of mood!’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘To what?’ He shook a pan on the element.

  ‘All of it.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Joe got busy with tea bags and kettles and spatulas and whisks.

  During one of the very wee hours of the night, one that no sensible person should be witness to, I had lain in bed informing the baby that it was an unacceptable time to thud me repeatedly in the spine and if this was an indication of its forthcoming behaviour we would be having stern words. In between the addressings, I mulled over my recently unearthed feelings for Joe. Having been expressed aloud by Helen and alluded to by Alex, the reality had slammed me in the chest and I couldn’t look at him in any other way. Affection pricked the hairs on my arms as Joe dropped an egg.

  ‘Bugger,’ he said.

  And then another.

  ‘Bugger mach two.’ He grinned over his shoulder then turned and concentrated on the next egg.

  I had decided, in those wee small hours that reason seems to avoid, that I must tell Joe I’d given him terrible advice. That he was not to give Katy another shot. Absolutely not. He needed to stay here with me and eat brownies. Indefinitely, if possible. Having found out the hushed phone calls behind closed doors were to my sister, and not to Katy, I knew I had to act fast. I’d made firm plans to raise this topic at breakfast. To come straight to the point. Lay it all on the table with not a dilly nor a dally. I was going to be precise and forthright and do it. Immediately.

  ‘What does erudite mean?’ I said, slipping into a chair with grace. That’s not true; I basically had to winch myself down. And, if I’m honest, a little fart came out. And if I’m honest, it wasn’t little.

  Joe shuddered his repulsion.

  ‘I think it means “good in the wind”,’ he said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You know, like those cycle racing helmets that make you look like a buzzard with its head on backwards.’

  ‘That’s aerodynamic.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ He poured milk, stirred, added sugar, stirred. ‘What’s the word you said again?’

  ‘Erudite. I always thought it was either something to do with being Aryan and a little bit Nazi, or similar to that other word. You know, the French one. The one that means uniformly cut cucumber and carrots and such.’

  Tea arrived in front of me with hasty placement, the contents swishing back and forth like a toffee-coloured tsunami. Joe shot back to the oven and checked on something. I took a sip and continued to talk while Joe made hectic little tracks from fridge to stove to pantry.

  ‘I was talking to one of the dads at Archie’s party and he said Archie was an “erudite young lad” and I agreed, thinking they were saying it because he has blond hair and blue eyes just like Hitler always wanted. And then I wondered if he was comparing him to a cut-up cucumber, saying he was neat and organised or something. Then I realised he could have been calling him anything and I’d just agreed. He could have been saying he was a stuck-up little arse but using a big posh word, so I went to look it up but Sinead needed help getting Jess down from the neighbour’s roof and I forgot.’

  ‘How do you spell it?’ Joe said, picking up his phone, his finger poised.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Air-rooh-dyte’ Joe muttered, jabbing at his phone.

  ‘Seriously, you guys?’ Alex arrived in the doorway.

  She hobbled across the room stiff-legged and baggy-eyed.

  ‘It’s E-R-U-D-I-T-E. And it means to have great knowledge or to be well educated.’ She drew up a chair opposite me and sat down. ‘Oh, the early morning irony.’

  Joe gasped. ‘I take offence.’

  ‘It was being offered freely.’ Alex rested her cheek on her propped-up hand, her whole body sagging. ‘’S there coffee?’

  ‘For nice people, yes,’ Joe replied.

  Alex swung herself out of the chair and lumbered round Joe with lethargic limbs while he made observations about her bedhead hair, twisted pyjamas, the amount of sugar she put in her coffee, her morning breath, general attitude et cetera. I sipped my tea, listened to the two of them and gazed out at my sunny, bee-buzzing garden thinking lovely thoughts.

  Joe chatted during breakfast in an overly jovial mood. I wondered what had got into him. Perhaps his coffee-to-calorie intake was a little out. Alex and he seemed to have got to know each other extremely well over the past week of furtive ‘surprise Emma’ negotiations and laughed like chummy siblings. Upon hearing about Joe making cloak-and-dagger calls to Vanuatu, and Alex’s version of events leading up to my arrival in the hallway the day before, a mantle of happiness settled over me. I couldn’t have been more content if you’d delivered me Matt Damon (pre having kids and ageing two decades) on a plate.

  ‘More coffee?’ Joe said, clearing the table.

  ‘No thanks. I’m going to jump in the shower.’ Alex delivered her plate and a few breakfast-y items to the bench. ‘What’re the plans for today?’

  ‘Walk on the common, visit Sinead and the kids, late pub lunch or something?’ I turned to Joe. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Actually, I’m busy.’

  ‘Busy?’ Even the notion was ludicrous.

  He made brisk swipes at the tabletop with a cloth.

  ‘I’m . . . seeing Katy today.’

  A pause hung in the air.

  ‘I’ve taken your ad
vice.’ He stopped wiping, stood straight and smiled. It seemed forced. Or did I just want it to?

  ‘My advice?’ I was aware that my voice sounded weird and that Alex had stopped on her way to the shower and was studying my reaction.

  ‘Yeah; you said we should give it another go, and I thought about it for a while and realised you were right. I do need to move on. I can’t be your lodger forever.’ He turned away and fussed with some dishes in the sink. The word ‘lodger’ spiked at my chest. ‘So I called her this morning and we’re going to have lunch and . . .’ He turned back and fixed me with a strange stare. ‘And just see.’

  I couldn’t bear to look him in the eye, so I looked lower down then realised I’d focused on his groin and got in a bit of a flap. Heat rose up my neck. I looked out the kitchen window.

  ‘Well, that’s great,’ I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm but failing dismally.

  ‘Yeah.’

  I picked at my nails.

  ‘Great,’ I repeated. ‘I hope it goes well.’

  Joe fiddled with a tea towel. Alex hovered in the doorway.

  ‘You want first shower, or shall I?’ I said to her.

  She made an ‘all yours’ gesture. I glanced back at Joe, gave him a cursory smile and trundled to the bathroom.

  When the door clicked shut behind Joe an hour later, Alex rounded on me.

  ‘There is something there.’

  ‘Where?’ I looked round the room.

  ‘Don’t play dumb with me. With you and Joe.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Have you seen the baby bag Mum bought me?’ I held up the offensive item. A bit too crocodile skin, a bit too gold detailing.

  ‘Avoidance is not the way to deal with issues.’

  ‘It’s worked for me so far.’

  ‘Oh it has, has it?’

  I thought about challenging her and giving her all the ways in which denial and avoidance had worked; you know, getting my money back from Ned, talking to Joe about how I felt, pushing him towards his ex, baby due in eleven days and no real clue as to what to do with it when it got here, my financial condition, the doughnut addiction, the lies to Mum, the lies to Uncle Mike, the now-resolved sisterly quarrel over something petty.

  ‘No, not really.’

  I dropped the baby bag; Alex dropped her stern expression.

  ‘Come on. We’ll talk about it on the common. I need to walk off that breakfast.’

  And talk we did. Alex began at the beginning. I was irresponsible to forget to take the pill; irresponsible not to notice my missing periods; irresponsible to quit my job and have nothing to move on to when I was going to have a baby; irresponsible to allow Ned access to my bank account. I was bloody lucky that Grandma had died (she worded it far less callously but I’m recapping quickly for your benefit) and left me half a cottage; bloody lucky I had got a job on Archie’s movie; bloody lucky Joe came into my life, a fool to push him towards his ex, a fool to think I didn’t have feelings for him; a fool for not getting Ned to sell the ice cream vans; a fool for not telling Mum about my financial situation and a fool for not realising my family only wanted to help. I think overall I came out predominantly as an irresponsible fool. I refuted everything and pointed out a cloud that looked like a cock and balls.

  In the afternoon we popped over to Uncle Mike and Sinead’s, where I endured a humiliating family discussion about my economic affairs. Complete with spreadsheets, austere expressions and solemn head-nodding. But at least me being poor, pathetic and pregnant meant Uncle Mike had put aside his anger over the Archie zombie guts-and-bra romance film deception and was instead focusing on solving my ‘situation’, as Mum continually referred to it. I kept trying to get the heat off me and onto the very real problem that was Jess’s new haircut. That morning Sinead had dropped Jess at the hairdresser’s, then taken the other three kids to a café and returned to find that, unsupervised, her 6-year-old daughter had requested a mohican. And the obliging yet dim hairdresser had given her a number two round the sides then applied electric-green hairspray to the remaining three-inch spike. But my efforts were fruitless, and everyone agreed that Jess did indeed look a bit like one of Gwen Stefani’s sons but it would grow back. And money doesn’t. So I should really be concentrating on more pressing issues. Impatient and wanting to get home to see how Joe’s lunch with Katy had gone, I agreed to putting in a call to Ned in the next couple of days (for which Mum would be present – oh cringe, oh humiliation) and to accepting a loan from Uncle Mike and Sinead I knew they had no intention of asking to be paid back. It made me feel pitiable and degraded and about fifteen years old. Alex’s attempt at rallying my spirits on the way home didn’t help either.

  ‘What’s this poem book Joe was telling me about? He thinks you could really go somewhere with it.’

  ‘He’s an idiot. It’s a bunch of silly poems I wrote when I was a teenager. I wish he would shut up about it. And you can too.’

  ‘All righty then.’

  We arrived home around five o’clock and an unashamed rummage through Joe’s room and belongings told me he hadn’t been home. Alex tried to engage me in conversation about baby names, breast-feeding and the environmental perils of disposable nappies, but sensing my distraction, suggested going out.

  ‘Go out where?’ I said, looking in the cupboards, uninspired.

  ‘Into town!’ she implored. ‘To dinner. To a bar. Just out!’

  I looked at her, looked pointedly at my stomach then back at her. Was she mad? I went back to cupboard-scanning.

  ‘Oh, come on, I haven’t been out anywhere that has required footwear for over a year. Every meal comes with rice and canned peas and the only drink we have contains fifty-per-cent-proof rum that can dissolve your nose hairs. Please take me out? It could be your last chance before the baby comes, you know.’

  I stopped. That was true. Visions of me stuck at home for the next eighteen years flashed through my head. London as I knew it might no longer exist. Commuters would travel via rocket boots; footpaths would be conveyor belts. Cars would be replaced with hover vehicles; there’d be floating juice bars and mini-meditation booths along the traffic passages. Roads would be turned into green spaces where children played and streams filled with spawning organic salmon could be paddled in. Alex was right. I had to get out in familiar grey London while I still could.

  ‘Oh my god, was London always so filthy?’ Alex asked for about the twentieth time since we’d left Wimbledon.

  ‘You wanted to go out,’ I said, picking my way along the busy Portobello Road. Heat rose from the pavement and the smell of beer and aftershave wafted out of the open pub windows and doors. It was an exemplary British summer evening where spirits were high and dress hems were higher. Helen and Douglas were meeting us for dinner. Douglas was bringing his girlfriend, Jemima.

  ‘I don’t remember it being this filthy, though,’ Alex said, stepping over what could have been a fallen kebab, chicken curry or early evening vomit.

  ‘You don’t have alcopop-laced vomit on the footpaths in Vanuatu?’

  ‘We don’t have footpaths,’ Alex said, skipping out of the way of four leery young males who were kind-hearted enough to grab their crotches and shake them at her so she felt attractive and worthy.

  Inside the restaurant friendly waiters and waitresses seated us with the others, asked when I was due, made sure I got an extra cushion for my back and said they could make any of the cocktails ‘virgin’.

  ‘Oooh, I’ll have a virgin piña colada then, please,’ I said with a grin.

  ‘And I’ll have a slutty one,’ Helen said.

  Alex ordered a complicated-sounding cocktail. Douglas and Jemima ordered a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Contrary to my earlier reservations, being out in London on a vibrant summer evening, pregnant and unable to partake in the consumption of slutty cocktails, was rather enjoyable. Jemima was an intriguing creature. Expansive grey eyes behind outsized, non-ironic glasses rested steadily on each person as they spoke, absorbing
the conversation and assessing it before pink, heart-shaped lips gave blunt, yet not untrue, observations.

  ‘I’m a lighting designer,’ she said to my ‘so what do you do’ question.

  ‘Like, for concerts?’ I said, trying to hide my surprise. She hardly seemed the type to chat to Steve Tyler about stadium gigs and where he’d like his shaft. Of light.

  ‘No. Private homes. Galleries. Installations.’ She sipped at her wine.

  ‘Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know there was such a thing.’

  ‘There is,’ she said.

  I was interested to ask more, but she turned to Alex and asked about the corrupt nature of fund allocation within the aid sector. I quite liked her. She was so blunt she went beyond offensive and became fascinating. Douglas was smitten.

  After a couple of food-, conversation- and virgin-cocktail-filled hours I was ready to go home.

  ‘Can we just have one drink at the bar before we go?’ Alex said.

  I gave her a look.

  ‘Oh please, please, please?’ she said, her hands taking up the begging clutch under her chin again. ‘The only bars I go to have no walls and broken banana pallets for furniture.’

  ‘That sounds better than here,’ Jemima said.

  Alex used her begging eyes again.

  ‘But I’ll look like a desperate pregnant chav if I hang out in the bar,’ I said. ‘I’ll be Katie Price or Kerry Katona or someone from TOWIE.’

  ‘You’re not orange enough to be any of them,’ Douglas said.

  ‘You will look out of place, though,’ Jemima said.

  ‘I could go another drink,’ Helen said, her eyes following a group of hot hipsters moving towards the bar area.

  ‘Please?’ Alex said, expanding her eyes in an eager plead. ‘Just one, then I’ll come home with you.’

  As soon as we hit the bar Helen disappeared into a clutch of hipsters-by-number, buttoned-up blokes. Alex wove a twisty-turny track through the crowd to the bar. I planted my feet firmly in the crowded space and took in our surroundings. It was like being in a 1980s Elton John hallucination. Heavy velvet drapes framed renaissance-style busts. Girls in short skirts perched on gilt-edged chairs upholstered in thick baroque, jewel-hued fabric. While Jemima pointed out lighting techniques to an adoring Douglas, I perused the bar taking in the young, the hip and the ‘working in PR’ when my gaze landed on a familiar face.