Love Is a Four Letter Word by Claire Calman Page B

is. I’d better transport it wrapped, I think. Then I can have it to look forward to when I get home.’
    â€˜Of course.’ Alessandra smoothed back a wisp of hair and folded her arms. ‘Well, safe journey then.’ She hovered forward, printed a bird-like kiss on Bella’s cheek.
    Gerald handed her an envelope once she was in the car.
    â€˜Not a big fat cheque, I’m afraid. Something for the garden.’
    â€˜Looks a bit flat for a cherry tree.’
    â€˜Be off with you.’ He bent down to kiss her goodbye. ‘The receipt for the other present’s in there too, in case you want to exchange it for whatever we should have got you in the first place. Feel free to invite us to your house-warming. If you’re not too embarrassed by your crumbly old parents. We’ll come early and lend a hand.’
    â€˜Don’t be daft, Dads.’
    No chance, she thought. She could imagine it now.
    Her sitting room. Friends standing and talking, doing the buffet balancing act with plates and glasses and napkins. Carefully manoeuvring themselves around the still-stacked boxes. The Arrival of the Parents, like the Entrance of Cleopatra into Rome, with much fussing and removing of scarves and gloves and coats and saying they’d left such-and-such behind then realizing they hadn’t, and where might one find the …? Her father worrying about the car, fretting like an old man, surely something could be done about the parking problem? And Alessandra sweeping into the kitchen, eyes flicking over the photograph of Bella and Patrick still in place on the pinboard, and saying how absolutely sweet the kitchen is – how convenient to have everything so close to hand – how much easier to manage – and gesturing at the drapes where they pooled deliberately onto the floor – of course, there was always so much to do in a new house, wasn’t there – never enough time for hemming curtains and all those dreary little jobs – oh and bare boards with rugs in the bedroom – Bella should have said – they’d have been quite happy to help out with the cost of acarpet – more than happy – or was that the thing to have nowadays? It was so easy to lose touch with what was in.
    Come early and lend a hand? Thanks, but no thanks.
    Bella gave a peremptory toot as she drove out of the gate. In the rear-view mirror she saw her father’s arm raised high, as if signalling from a desert island to a distant ship, her mother’s hand tentatively lifted, stretching out for something she couldn’t hope to reach.

6
    â€˜Why not do an evening class – that way, you’ll meet people and learn something at the same time!’ Bella had been leafing through a women’s magazine in the loo at work. The advice was always the same; whenever someone wrote in saying they wanted to meet people, the answer was predictably of the get-out-and-join-clubs variety. But did you ever meet likely men at an evening class? Bella sounded out Viv and Nick later while at their place for supper. Nick decreed it a rational approach (Viv: ‘Rational? Oh, well, that’s the main thing, of course,’) and asked what subject she planned to take: carpentry or car maintenance? Bella had rather fancied stained glass or patchwork; she whimpered at Viv, who would have none of it.
    â€˜Look, do you bloody want to meet men or don’t you? Go to patchwork classes if you want, but don’t come running to me afterwards whingeing that the best bet in the class is a forty-seven-year-old midwife because at least she’s got hair on her chin.’
    â€˜That’d do. I want to meet more people, otherwise I feel like I’m just a visitor here.’
    They sat round the dining-table eating garlic and ginger prawns with stir-fried noodles, trying not to laugh at Nick and his attempts to use chopsticks. Hedropped a prawn for the third time as he was trying to raise it