Chocolate Cake for Breakfast Read online

  I got home from this happy outing just after eight and texted Mark: Have fun out there and don’t get broken.

  The reply, twenty minutes later, was, Will do.

  Hmm. Succinct. Well, no doubt he was busy. Although of course he might be both busy and irritated at being sent inane messages by some girl he’d kissed on impulse a fortnight ago.

  Text messaging really is a lousy way to communicate with someone you don’t know very well. You miss out on all the important cues, like facial expression and tone of voice, and if you don’t hear back you’ve got no idea whether the other person hasn’t got their phone on them or just doesn’t have anything to say to you. It’s enough to make you develop a stomach ulcer.

  I managed somehow to stay awake until the replay at eleven thirty. It wasn’t a very interesting game, at least for a rugby ignoramus; it was raining heavily in Brisbane and both teams spent most of their time kicking the ball from one end of the field to the other. The Wallabies won, and at one thirty, having heard nothing from Mark and unable to think of any comment he might possibly want to hear, I turned off the TV and went sadly to bed, to be woken at six with a calving.

  7

  MY FIRST ACT ON MONDAY MORNING WAS TO SMASH A full glass bottle of the most expensive antibiotic we stocked. Nick put his head around the door of the dispensary, closed his eyes for a second and said tiredly, ‘Jesus, Helen.’

  I knelt down to pick up the pieces, cutting my finger in the process. ‘You can charge it to my account.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a bloody martyr,’ he snapped.

  Then I went to a calving north of town – a live Jersey calf with one front leg bent right back. I tried for half an hour to get the other leg, and then called for help.

  Anita arrived in her briskest and most efficient mood, attached my calving jack to the leg that was coming the right way and winched the calf out without bothering about the other leg at all. ‘Alright?’ she said curtly, pulling the slimy little thing around for its mother to lick. ‘Think you’ll be able to manage that by yourself next time?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks, Anita.’

  ‘Don’t just stand there. Get yourself cleaned up. You’re late for those calf dehornings at Mulligan’s.’ And off she went, her ute screeching around the tanker loop and spraying water six feet in the air.

  I had two cat speys and an abscess to lance back at the clinic, and when I went in after a seven-minute lunch break to get started the surgery was a tip. I looked at it tight-lipped for a moment and went to find Zoe, who should have been cleaning it but was instead on the phone in the vet room, winding strands of hair around her finger as she talked. Seeing me in the doorway she swivelled in her chair so her back was to me.

  The blood of my Scottish ancestors, a warlike and disreputable lot whose favourite employment, I believe, was rustling English cattle from over the border, grew hot in my veins. ‘Zoe,’ I said. ‘Excuse me, please, we’ve got surgery.’

  There was no response.

  ‘Zoe!’ I repeated crossly.

  Zoe muttered something into the phone and slammed it down.

  ‘The surgery’s disgusting,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I have had things to do,’ she said. ‘You could help, you know.’

  ‘Seeing as I’ve been doing nothing all morning while you slaved? Clean it up, please, while I pre-med the cats.’

  ‘Bitch,’ she said and, bursting into tears, ran out of the room.

  I went wearily out to the front of the shop and leant on the counter beside Thomas. ‘What is her problem?’

  ‘Boyfriend trouble,’ said Thomas. ‘I’ll have a word with her.’

  ‘And in the meantime I’ll go and scrub the fucking surgery.’

  Thomas raised his eyebrows. ‘Not like you to swear. Are you having boyfriend trouble too?’

  ‘No,’ I said shortly.

  ‘You can tell Uncle Thomas all about it, you know.’ He bent towards me, and a gust of Lynx Out of Africa made my eyes water. ‘Haven’t you heard from your All Black?’

  ‘I’ve just got really bad period pain,’ I said. This was untrue, but proved a highly effective way of horrifying Thomas and distracting him from his line of questioning.

  At five twenty pm I turned down Rex’s tanker track, lined up the first pothole wrong and crashed with a brain-jarring thud into the second one. It seemed a fitting conclusion to a thoroughly crappy day, unbroken by any form of communication from Mark. He’d been back in the country for more than twenty-four hours, and surely if he’d had any interest in me at all he would have been in touch by now. I had read He’s Just Not That Into You one rainy weekend at my ex-boyfriend’s parents’ bach, and it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t. I wondered whether Thomas would mock or commiserate, and which would be harder to bear.

  Monday was yoga night, but I was in no mood for being a vessel filled with clear white light. I would have a long, hot bath with a glass of wine and a Georgette Heyer novel instead, followed by poached eggs on toast and bed by eight o’clock.

  That small self-righteous inner voice whose sole job it is to make you feel guilty piped up, You should really go to yoga.

  Oh, sod off, I told it.

  Turning in through my gate I nearly hit a sleek, dangerous-looking sports car parked in front of the garage. Now that was unexpected. Mark was sitting on the back doorstep with Murray on his lap, and suddenly, although three seconds ago the only good thing about today had been that it was nearly finished, life was a wonderful thing.

  I turned off the ute, got out and shut the door. Don’t say um. Don’t you dare say um . . . ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Mark, tipping Murray lightly off his knee as he stood up. ‘Sorry to just turn up.’

  ‘You’re the first nice thing that’s happened all day,’ I said, going across the lawn towards him.

  He put his arms around me and kissed me for quite a long time, and I realised that, contrary to all expectation, today was the best day of my life to date. ‘You still smell,’ he said when we broke apart.

  ‘A gentleman wouldn’t keep pointing it out.’

  He grinned. ‘Well, I’d have thought a lady would smell better.’

  ‘It’s burnt hair,’ I said. ‘I’ve been dehorning calves. Come in and grab a drink while I have a shower. Have you been waiting long?’

  ‘Only about ten minutes.’

  I climbed the steps and reached up for the key, hanging on its nail at the top of the doorframe. ‘You should have let yourself in.’

  ‘It’s just a bit creepy to get home and find some random bloke making himself comfortable in your house, don’t you think?’

  ‘Only if you were going through my knickers drawer or something.’

  ‘That’s usually the very first thing I do in someone else’s house,’ said Mark.

  I left him making a cup of tea and went to have a shower, where I paid particular attention to my elbows. Satisfied that both they and my earlobes were clean, I pulled my wet hair back into a ponytail, and put on my favourite, bottom-flattering jeans and a green T-shirt that Alison said went nicely with brown eyes.

  As I came back into the kitchen, Mark’s pocket started to ring. He took out his phone, looked at it briefly and turned it off. ‘Dad,’ he said, putting the phone down on the bench.

  ‘Shouldn’t you get it? It might be important.’

  ‘Nope,’ he said flatly. ‘He’ll be ringing to tell me I should have passed the ball wide and not tried to run it, and that I was sloppy in the lineout.’

  ‘You were not!’

  He looked at me, amused. ‘How would you know?’

  ‘I watched. And they said on Radio Sport this morning that you were pretty much the only player on the field in that game who looked like he knew what he was doing.’

  ‘You listen to Radio Sport?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I had been an avid follower of the sporting news for nearly three weeks now.

  He smiled and reached out a long arm to pull me c
loser, and a pair of headlights raked the side of the cottage as a car pulled in behind my ute.

  ‘Oh, dear Lord, no,’ I said, stepping hurriedly back.

  ‘What? It’s your boyfriend?’

  ‘Worse. Stepmother. And sisters,’ I added, as both rear doors opened too. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Whatever they’re going to say.’ I opened the kitchen door as Caitlin reached the bottom step. ‘Hey, munchkin, how are things?’

  ‘Good,’ she said, marching in past me. ‘We’ve been dancing. I was a fairy, but I had to take my wings off to get in the car.’

  ‘Very cool,’ I said. ‘Were you a fairy too, Bel?’

  ‘No,’ said Annabel, ascending the stairs with a stately, measured tread. ‘I was a rabbit.’

  ‘What sort of dance does a rabbit do?’

  She ignored this frivolous question and fixed her eyes firmly on my visitor. ‘Were you cuddling Helen?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mark admitted.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Annabel,’ said Em, following her in and closing the door behind her, ‘that is none of your business. Hello, sweetie.’

  I kissed her cheek. ‘Em, this is my friend Mark. Mark, this is Emily, and the small ones are Caitlin and Annabel.’

  ‘I’m Helen’s evil stepmother,’ Em said. ‘How nice to meet you.’

  ‘You too,’ said Mark.

  ‘Are you a giant?’ Caitlin asked, looking him up and down thoughtfully.

  ‘No, I’m just tall.’

  ‘He certainly is,’ said Em. ‘Now, sweetie, I can see you’ve got things to do –’ she paused and winked at me in a way that was probably meant to be subtle but really, really wasn’t ‘– but I just wanted to drop in a wee something I bought for you last week. What have I done with it? Caitlin, please run back to the car and bring me the bag on the front seat.’ She opened the door for Caitlin, and turned back to Mark. ‘Where are you from, Mark?’

  ‘Taranaki, originally, but I live in Auckland.’

  ‘And what do you do for a living?’

  ‘I play rugby,’ he said.

  ‘You’re on TV,’ said Bel suddenly. ‘And you’re on our Weetbix packet. Helen, can I have something to eat?’

  ‘Is she allowed a piece of cake?’ I asked Em. ‘Or is it too close to teatime?’

  ‘Hmm?’ said Em. She sounded somewhat absentminded, no doubt because ninety-nine percent of her brain was attempting feverishly to recall the family Weetbix box. ‘Yes, alright then. Just a small piece.’

  I opened the pantry and removed a large chocolate cake. I had found the recipe in Thursday’s Broadview Broadcast, labelled ‘Absolutely Superb Chocolate Cake’, and made it to see if they were telling the truth. They were. According to an article I once read in Cosmopolitan, every girl should be able to bake a good chocolate cake, use an electric drill and perform a striptease. I was currently sitting on one out of the three.

  ‘Wicked,’ said Bel. ‘I want a big bit, Helen.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Mark.

  I took a knife from the block on the bench and handed it to him. ‘Em, would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, we’d better not stay,’ she said, to my profound relief. ‘I haven’t done a thing about dinner, and your father will be home by now.’

  Caitlin stormed back up the steps, plastic bag in hand. ‘Cake! Mean!’

  ‘Is that a big enough piece?’ Mark asked Bel, indicating a very generous wedge with the carving knife.

  ‘No,’ said Bel.

  ‘About half that,’ said her mother firmly, taking the bag from Caitlin. ‘Helen, I ordered these for you at the Intimo evening.’ She pulled a couple of wisps of scarlet lace out of the bag and handed them over. ‘That’s such a gorgeous colour on you. Just let me know if I got the sizing wrong, and I can swap them.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said faintly. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Perhaps your friend Mark can give you a second opinion,’ she suggested.

  ‘Em!’

  ‘Have fun, sweetie,’ she said, laughing and patting my cheek. ‘Come along, girls. You can eat your cake in the car.’

  ‘Beautiful cake,’ Mark said, taking a large bite.

  Em was backing her car around at high speed, no doubt in haste to get home and scrutinise the Weetbix packet.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘She’s nice.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s lovely.’ I spread the scarlet wisps on the bench for closer inspection, and began to laugh helplessly. ‘These are awful.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They look alright to me.’

  ‘Then they’re all yours. They should be a good colour on you, too.’

  ‘Tempting, but I don’t think they’d fit.’

  ‘I should be used to it by now,’ I said. ‘When I was in sixth form she rang the mothers of all the boys in my class to get me a date to the high school ball.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘It was pretty bad,’ I agreed. Although it was nothing compared to being told, at the tender age of seventeen, that my father was a tiger in the bedroom. That probably caused permanent psychological damage.

  ‘This is really good,’ said Mark, taking another bite of cake. ‘Does your mum still live around here?’

  I shook my head. ‘She died when I was ten.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry. What happened?’

  ‘Car crash,’ I said.

  ‘God, that’s terrible.’

  ‘She got into the loose gravel at the side of the road and crashed into a power pole. She was probably putting on lipstick – she always did her makeup in the car.’ That morning she had made my sandwiches and Dad’s, done my hair in a French plait and reminded Dad not to forget the milk on his way home. I was late for the school bus and ran out without kissing her goodbye. (I always kissed her goodbye, and for years I used to wake in the middle of the night wondering if she’d still be alive if I hadn’t forgotten.) And then that afternoon a shaking, grey-faced Aunty Deb came to get me from school, and Dad’s and my world fell apart.

  Mark was wearing the alarmed expression of a man who finds himself dropped without warning into the middle of a deep and meaningful conversation, and taking pity on him I changed the subject. ‘Would you like to stay for tea? I have venison steak.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’ he asked.

  ‘Sam’s flatmate shot a deer last week.’

  ‘I haven’t had venison steak for about ten years. Yes, please.’

  We cooked dinner companionably and ate at the kitchen table, Murray supervising from the bench. ‘You’re a great cook,’ said Mark, finishing his second pile of roast potatoes.

  ‘It’s the garlic salt,’ I said. ‘One of the great inventions of our age. Cake?’

  He shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t fit.’

  ‘You can take some home with you, if you like.’

  ‘That’d be great,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I thought you professional athletes were only supposed to eat health-giving and nutritious foods like steamed vegetables and brown rice?’

  He grinned. ‘Yeah, but they’ll never know.’

  We retired to the couch, a great big squashy plum-coloured thing I bought from my second cousin Kevin for twenty-four bottles of Steinlager. If my aim had been to find the piece of furniture that was going to look as hideous as possible against an orange nylon carpet I couldn’t have done better, but it was very comfortable.

  ‘Are you very sore from Saturday?’ I asked. To my uneducated eye it had seemed that Mark had spent the whole eighty minutes being stamped on by big men with spiky boots. Many of whom, to add insult to injury, were on his team.

  ‘Yeah, a bit. A few knocks; nothing major,’ he said, pulling up the hem of his shirt to show me.

  ‘Nothing major? How many ribs did you break?’ He looked like he’d been run over by a truck, and any pride I might have had in a few measly elbow-bruises evaporated completely.

  �
��Not even one,’ he said.

  I reached out and put a hand gently over the livid stripes on his chest. ‘It’s frightening.’

  He didn’t answer, but covered my hand with his. His skin was very warm and I could feel his heart beating through his chest wall. It seemed fast, for an athlete’s.

  Please don’t stuff this up, I told myself desperately. Just for once, depart from tradition and don’t stuff it up . . . ‘You wouldn’t consider a change of career, would you? How about playing something safer, like lawn bowls?’

  ‘I could, I suppose, but the money would be lousy.’

  There was a short silence, which neither of us dared to break. Then it occurred to me that it was my move. Gathering up all of my courage, I got up and sat down again across his lap, straddling him.

  ‘Hi,’ he said softly.

  ‘Hi.’ And then we stopped talking and just kissed each other instead, which was far better.

  8

  AT HALF PAST NINE MARK, WHO HAD BEEN LYING FULL-length on my couch with his head on my lap, sat up and stretched his arms above his head. ‘You’ve got something on this weekend, haven’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m going to Taupo to play drinking games and make wedding dresses out of toilet paper.’

  ‘That sounds like fun.’ He stood up in one fluid movement and reached a hand down to me.

  ‘You reckon?’ I asked, taking it and letting him pull me up.

  ‘Actually, it sounds hideous.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ I preceded him into the kitchen and rummaged in the drawer under the microwave for plastic wrap with which to cover half a chocolate cake.

  ‘I don’t need all that,’ he said.

  ‘I was going to take it in to work, but Keri’s on a diet and she’ll be mad at me. Please take it.’

  ‘Oh, well, in that case, okay.’ He accepted the cake and bent his head to kiss me. ‘I’d better go home and let you get to bed.’

  ‘You could stay,’ I said impulsively. ‘If – if you want to . . .’