Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (17 page)

Never had I greeted Monday morning with such relief. If I’d spent any longer alone with my thoughts I would have gone mad. At work I had to hold myself together and act like a professional, which meant I was forced to take a break from my new and all-absorbing pastimes of crying and throwing up. (Sometimes, just for variation, I’d been doing the two together, but I really wouldn’t recommend it. It makes breathing almost impossible, and you tend to end up with spew coming out your nose, which is not only disgusting but very painful.)

Thomas informed me that my eyes looked like piss-holes in the snow, but he didn’t feel any urge to find out why, and nobody else noticed anything wrong as far as I could tell.

At half past four on Tuesday afternoon, Nick turned from his computer screen, raised his eyebrows at me and said, ‘What are you doing here? Isn’t your boyfriend back in the country?’

‘I’m going up after work,’ I said.

‘Go on, then, bugger off. You can tell him that tackle just before half-time in that Welsh Test was poetry in motion, by the way.’

‘I will,’ I said, standing up. ‘Thanks, Nick.’

‘Blatant favouritism,’ Richard complained. ‘Just because she’s shagging an All Black.’

‘When you’re shagging an All Black you can leave early too,’ said Nick, turning back to his computer screen. ‘And in the meantime you can stop pissing around on Trade Me and go wash your ute.’

It was just on seven when I parked in the street outside Mark’s place, and late sunlight slanted golden through the wrought-iron fence bordering his driveway. I got out of the car and went slowly down the drive, counting the tall spiked dividers between sections of fence.
Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen – oh shit, oh
shit – twenty, twenty-one . . .

His door opened and he came out, wearing one of his elderly faded T-shirts and a pair of board shorts with holes in the knees. ‘Hi,’ he said, and smiled with such obvious pleasure that I ran the last twenty metres and threw myself at him headlong.

He picked me up and hugged me, and I clung to him with my face buried in the curve of his shoulder. His skin was very warm.
Don’t cry
, I told myself savagely
. Don’t you dare.

‘God, I missed you, McNeil,’ he said, carrying me back up the steps and inside. He removed one arm to shut the door, and put it back around me.

‘You too,’ I said into his neck.

‘Oi,’ he said, loosening his arms so I slid to my feet. ‘Look up.’

I did, and he took my face in his hands and kissed me.

‘I love you,’ I said when I could talk again, departing from my rehearsed script right at the start.

‘I love you too.’ He kissed me again. ‘I got you something.’ He dug in the pocket of his scruffy shorts and pulled out a tiny gauze bag, tied with a ribbon.

‘Mark . . .’ I said shakily.

‘Open it.’

And because I was a snivelling coward, and I couldn’t bear to ruin everything just yet, I undid the ribbon and tipped a gold chain and delicate enamelled pendant into the palm of my hand.

‘I found it in this tiny little shop in Cardiff,’ he said. ‘I’m not very good at jewellery, but I thought maybe it was your kind of thing.’

‘It is. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect.’ I shut my eyes, trying to scrape together a few pitiful crumbs of courage. ‘Mark, I have to tell you something.’

He rested his chin on the top of my head. ‘You’re leaving me for Hamish?’

‘I’m pregnant,’ I said.

Mark didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. He went very still, and I backed away from him. Something was hurting my hand – after a few seconds I realised it was the edge of the pendant, which I was clutching as if for dear life. I put it down on the table beside the front door, amid the junk mail and strapping tape and spare mouthguards, and said hurriedly, ‘It’s my fault. A cat bit me and I put myself on antibiotics, and I forgot that stuffs up the pill. I’m so sorry.’

‘How long have you known?’ he asked. His voice was flat and remote, as though it was coming from a long way away.

‘Friday. I did a test. I – Mark, I couldn’t tell you on the phone.’

‘Do you want to have it?’

‘No,’ I whispered.

‘You mean you want an abortion?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I could live with myself. It’s not its fault, it’s mine.’

‘Right,’ he said, and he sounded suddenly very, very tired.

‘This isn’t your problem. I mean, I won’t ask you for anything. It’s all my fault – we can get your lawyers to draw something up to say it’s my fault and you don’t owe me anything. I’ll –’ 

‘For fuck’s sake!’ he snapped, interrupting this torrent of selfless eloquence. ‘Just what kind of arsehole do you think I am?’

I had never seen him angry before, and I stared at him with my mouth open. ‘I – I
don’t
. But you didn’t sign up for this.’

‘Yeah, well,’ he said grimly, ‘neither did you. Come on, I made tea.’

A rich, meaty smell filled the kitchen. He had set the breakfast bar with two knives and forks, two wineglasses and a tea light in a glass dish. That tea light made the tears well up again, and I choked them back. He opened the oven door to remove a lasagne that looked to be all you could ever ask for in a lasagne, baked golden on top and bubbling at the edges. My stomach gave an ominous lurch, and I turned and bolted for the downstairs bathroom.

When, five minutes later, I crept back up the stairs, Mark had removed the lasagne from sight and was leaning against the bench with a beer in his hand.

‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘Morning sickness. It smells b-beautiful . . .’ And I burst into tears.

‘Do you want some toast or something?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

‘Drink?’

‘No, I – can I have a shower?’

‘Of course.’

I stood under the hot water for a long time, but I couldn’t get warm. At last I gave it up and got out, and a parboiled, wretched specimen with dark hair plastered down over its scalp and huge dark-circled eyes faced me in the bathroom mirror.
Bloody marvellous
, I told myself bitterly.
You could be Gollum’s
twin sister. This’ll really encourage him to keep you on.

A hair dryer might have helped, and some serious, industrial-strength makeup. I had neither, so I bundled my wet hair up in an untidy knot, took a sweatshirt from the suitcase lying open across Mark’s bed and went slowly back downstairs.

He had removed all traces of food and cleaned the kitchen, and as I approached he tossed the dishcloth into the empty sink and said, ‘Think you’d keep down a cup of tea?’

I nodded, and he turned to make it. ‘Any idea when this baby’s due?’ he asked, filling a mug from the amazing boiling-water tap.

‘Middle of July, I think. I’ll have to have a scan and find out exactly.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘You don’t have to,’ I started, and then saw his face and stopped. ‘Thank you.’

‘Biscuit?’

‘No, thanks. I don’t think it’d stay down.’

‘How long’ve you been throwing up?’

‘About a week,’ I said. ‘Throwing up and crying. Hormones, I guess.’

‘Sounds like a riot,’ he said, passing me my tea.

‘Yeah, it’s great.’ I took a cautious sip. ‘I don’t know why they call this
morning
sickness; it’s constant.’

Mark stretched himself out on the couch, and I curled up in one of his enormous leather armchairs with my tea. We didn’t talk as the light faded from golden to pink to silver, and at last I unfolded myself and crept upstairs to bed.

He came up twenty minutes later, shed his clothes without speaking and got into bed beside me.

‘What’s your middle name?’ I asked, watching the shadows move across the ceiling as a car passed beneath the French doors with a throaty expensive purr. Mark’s neighbours’ cars all sounded like that.

‘Russell.’

‘What’s your favourite colour?’

‘I don’t know – blue. Why?’

‘We don’t know each other very well, do we?’

He was silent for a minute, and then he said, ‘Your middle name is Olivia.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It’s written on your degree. Helen Olivia McNeil, Bachelor of Veterinary Science with Distinction.’

‘Full marks to you,’ I said. All of our degrees hung on the wall behind the front counter at work, in order to try to convince the public that we knew what we were talking about.

‘Thank you.’

‘Olivia was my grandmother’s name.’ Mum’s mum, my nice grandmother.

‘Apparently I was conceived in Russell,’ said Mark. ‘Yuck.’

I gave a small, watery gulp of laughter.

‘That’s better,’ he said, rolling over and putting his arms around me.

I hugged him back tightly. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

Mark wiped my eyes with a corner of sheet and said, ‘Apologise again, McNeil, and you’re sleeping on the floor.’

17

‘
WHAT NOW
?’
I ASKED
. ‘
DOCTOR
’
S APPOINTMENT
?’

‘No,’ said Alison, ‘you need a midwife. Eloise Morgan’s lovely, and she’s been doing it for twenty-five years – I’ll get you her number.’

‘Thank you.’ We had abandoned our lunchtime walk and were sitting cross-legged on the grass in front of the Broadview War Memorial, Alison with a Tupperware container of salad and me with a Vegemite sandwich. Bread was good, I had discovered; it tended to stay down.

‘You told him?’ she asked, carefully spearing a cherry tomato.

‘Yep.’

She glanced at me for a moment, and then turned her attention back to her tomato so as not to pry. Very tactful girl, Alison.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘he hasn’t broken up with me yet. And it must have been fairly tempting, when the first thing I did was burst into tears and throw up.’

She smiled. ‘Did you really?’

‘Yep.’

‘I’m sure he’s not going to break up with you.’

‘It’d be a miracle if he didn’t,’ I said morosely.

‘I think you’re being just a tad pessimistic,’ said Alison.

‘You try starting the day by spewing out the bedroom window, and we’ll see how optimistic
you
feel.’ The alarm on my phone had gone off at five that morning, and then to make absolutely sure Mark was awake I had stumbled to his bedroom window (that being closer than the bathroom) and thrown up copiously into the garden below. There may be a better way to dispel the mystery and romance of a relationship, but I can’t think of it offhand.

‘I haven’t done that since I was seventeen and Leah Koroheke and I drank about twenty of those revolting Purple Goanna things,’ she said.

I shook my head. ‘Fine behaviour from the head girl, I must say. So, when were you planning to tell me about you and Sam?’ It would be impossible to compete with Alison for tact and reticence, so I don’t try.

‘Soon. When the moment was right.’ She foraged through her salad and added, blushing a delicate shade of pink, ‘He – I really like him.’

‘I’m so glad,’ I said. ‘And you could have done a lot worse. I was starting to worry that Hamish would grind you down.’

‘Never.’

‘You’d have gone drag racing with him if Sam hadn’t rescued you,’ I pointed out.

‘I would
not
,’ said Alison. ‘I would have developed a terrible stomach bug the night before and been forced to stay home.’