Read Online Love Is a Four Letter Word by Claire Calman - Free Book Online

to his lips.
    â€˜The suspense is killing me, Nick. Have a fork.’ Viv half-turned towards Bella and gnashed her teeth silently. ‘He does this every time.’
    â€˜No, no. I’m getting the hang of it now.’ The prawn teetered dangerously as three pairs of eyes watched its unsteady course from bowl to mouth.
    â€˜You won’t get a gold star anyway, you know.’ Bella’s chopsticks threatened to snatch the prawn away deftly.
    The prawn fell with a soft plumpf into its nest of noodles. Nick went into the kitchen and started clattering about.
    â€˜There’s no point anyway. Even if I met someone, I never think I know how to do relationships. I can do the going out to dinner bit and the having lots of sex bit, then I get lost. There must be some secret formula that I don’t know about,’ said Bella. ‘Can’t you give me your top ten tips or something? You seem to have it sussed.’
    â€˜Viv, have you hidden the forks with the blue handles?’ from the kitchen. ‘I don’t like the other ones for Chinese.’
    â€˜Yeah, that’s right. We’re completely perfect.’ Viv shook her head and bellowed back. ‘In the second drawer – where they usually are.’
    â€˜No magic formula?’
    â€˜What, like my Scottish granny’s drop scones? If there is, no-one told me and, God knows, no-one bothered to tell Nick. I mean, Nick thinks mutual support means leaning on each other after a heavy session at the Tickled Trout. I haven’t a clue. Yes, I have. I s’pose talking’s the main thing – when you want to and when you don’t want to so that neither of you sits around seething for weeks over some piddly little problem that suddenly explodes into door-slamming, crockery-hurling and suitcase-packing. Oh, yeah – anda little love doesn’t go amiss. Gets you through the –’ she raised her voice, ‘ALL TOO FREQUENT CRAPPY BITS.’
    Bella stuck out her lower lip.
    â€˜Is that it then, guv?’
    â€˜I still can’t see them.’ A plaintive note had crept into Nick’s voice.
    â€˜No. You need huge dollops of luck as well.’ Viv got up and marched through to the kitchen. ‘Not that second drawer, this second drawer. And,’ she continued, ‘you need to be able to wade through all the pigs and creeps and mummy’s boys to find yourself a nice, only averagely neurotic male who can’t even find a fork in his own kitchen but who is at least prepared to have a proper go at all this stuff, too.’
    â€˜I might as well end it all now.’ Bella stabbed at her stomach with her chopstick.
    â€˜Wait till next week. Then it’s Nick’s turn to do the floor.’
    Leafing through the booklet of adult education courses from the library while she was supposed to be working, Bella thought she could do with lessons just to make sense of the brochure. Was there some logical reason for the range of subjects, prices, and locations to be encrypted in quite such a complex way? She was tempted to leave it till September. Maybe she’d have more energy for deciphering it after the summer and she could start afresh with the new academic year. But, knowing her, she would have forgotten all about it by then. For her, the saying ‘Why procrastinate today when you can do it tomorrow and have it to look forward to?’ was not a joke but a perfectly valid philosophy of life. She should definitely do it NOW. Her sole achievement in the last two days seemed to be making a lemon cake, hardly top priority, and hemming her bedroom curtains. She had even cheated byadding ‘Hem bedroom curtains’ retrospectively to the epic List, soon to be available as a ten-volume boxed set, just so she could relish the rare satisfaction of being able to cross something off.
    She waded back through the brochure again – perhaps she should do it by location? Just choose the one