The Chocolate Run (29 page)

‘She stayed out of pity. She was convinced the baby wasn’t mine because she never used contraception with this other man. We’d been talking about having a child, so she came off the Pill and we carried on using condoms until we definitely decided to start trying for a baby. So, the baby wasn’t mine. She knew that. She’d wanted his child, didn’t want mine. It all came out that night. How she really felt. How she’d wanted to leave.’

Greg paused, rubbed his hands over his eyes.

‘And do you know what I did?’

‘You started sleeping around?’

‘No. Oh, nooo, nooo, noo. I begged her. I begged her not to leave me. I lost all self-respect. I didn’t care about self-respect, I cried and ranted and broke things and begged. She lost what little respect she had left for me and asked me to leave her flat.

‘It didn’t stop there. For months I practically stalked her. I wouldn’t leave her alone, I kept ringing her, writing to her, turning up at her place. Then, one morning, I woke up and decided no more. I stopped. Left her alone. Literally just left her alone. And began my life of serial shagging.’

I bit my tongue to stop myself asking which was better, Cornflakes or Weetabix, during his time of cereal shagging. Then I had to bite my tongue harder. I did feel sympathetic. Which was why I had to ruin things by getting sarky. It was my natural defence mechanism against things getting too serious.

‘I couldn’t . . .’ Greg began, ‘I couldn’t risk getting into that situation again. When you sleep around you can have that close human contact, connect with people, be intimate, but not have to risk getting as hurt as I was by Kristy. I’ve always needed that contact, so I got it but didn’t have to feel that pain and humiliation again. Five years of it until you.’

‘Did you ever see her again?’ I asked in a sensible, grown-up voice.

Greg laughed humourlessly. ‘Once I decided I wasn’t interested, she wanted us to get back together. I was tempted. I was so tempted, but I decided no. Weeks I agonised over it. I even slept with her again. She’d had a termination. Her dream man didn’t want to father her children after all. We talked and talked. And then, I said no. She moved to Dublin a few weeks later.’

‘Oh,’ I said.
Was it that bad a shag she had to leave the country?
I thought, then instantly hated myself.

‘And to answer your original question, no, her parents didn’t adore me, or even like me. It took six years and just when they were coming round to the idea of this lad who wasn’t good enough for their daughter being in their lives, we split up. Your family’s cool, though, very cool. You really think they like me?’

‘What’s not to like?’
Apart from that ridiculous hair
.

We fell silent. The car was suddenly too small and cramped for all those big confessions. All the information, all the exposure and soul-baring, should’ve been done somewhere bigger. And Greg, who wasn’t prone to such deep revelations, probably felt naked, emotionally vulnerable. I’d know how he felt if I’d ever done it myself.

‘Well, better be going back, they’ll be thinking we’re having sex down here – mainly because Eric will have told them that.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK, good night.’

‘Good night.’

‘See you tomorrow.’

‘See you tomorrow.’

Painful. Like we were on our first date and didn’t know if we should kiss or not. To be honest, I didn’t know if we should kiss or not. This revelation had altered the very fabric of our relationship.

‘Are you going to kiss me?’ I thought it, Greg said it. ‘You don’t have to. It’s just . . .’

‘Greg.’

‘Yes?’

‘Shut up and kiss me.’

Back upstairs, everyone had gone to bed. Mum had left a duvet on the sofa along with a couple of pillows. The side spotlights were still on, as was the TV. I sat heavily on the sofa, resting one arm on the pile of bedlinen.

Unexpectedly, sadness conquered me. Greg’s story made me so sad the corners of my mouth turned down. Sadness for what he’d gone through. Sadness for his pain. Sadness because he’d been in love before.

chapter twenty-three

good girl

‘Try this one on,’ Mum said, giving me an armful of dresses. We’d been out shopping for a good few hours and Mum had spent most of the morning pointing out nice dresses and pretty blouses and smart skirts. Mum had nightmares about my combats and jeans and jersey tops and didn’t realise I owned all the blouses I was ever going to own – none.

Even though Mum had been on a mission to reinvent me for the past few hours and even though I was surrounded by my family for the first time in six months, I couldn’t stop reassessing my boyfriend.

But why was I so freaked, unsettled, disassembled by this revelation? This was good news, no? The unveiling of Greg ‘Tart Face’ Walterson as someone who had a heart, who had layers, who was indeed a selection box rather than a lump of milked down, solidified cocoa was cause for celebration. He’d always defied classification before. He had Minstrel eyes, sure, but he was always changing, altering. In the three years I’d known him he’d been practically every type of confectionery made. He’d started off being one of those showy, tosser chocolates that was shiny and tasty-looking, but when you ate it, it went straight to that tooth with a tiny piece of exposed nerve and caused the kind of pain you never fully recovered from. Before I’d slept with him he’d become a Twirl – something I’d buy if I couldn’t get my favourite chocolate. The second choice on my list.

The unveiling of him as a possible Flake, something that crumbled and disintegrated, that fell apart under pressure, was only positive. Showed the ability to love. Showed he had a heart, one that could be broken. One that had been broken. He knew how to hurt. This meant I wouldn’t be the woman he tried out his emotions on.

It’d never bothered me before when boyfriends had experienced that mythical thing called ‘love’ pre-me. Which begged the question, why did I feel so weird about it? Why did I feel any way about it? The answer, of course, was blatantly clear. Was facing me every time I caught a glimpse of myself in a reflective surface. It was one of those answers I didn’t want to acknowledge.

If I acknowledged why I was so upset – upended, disturbed – then I would have to admit that I wasn’t as pure of thought and deed as I liked to suppose. I would be admitting that I, despite appearances to the contrary, had an ego the size of Ghana’s last cocoa harvest. I didn’t want to think of myself like that. It was like thinking of your parents having sex – you knew it happened, but if you didn’t think about it, you didn’t get upset by it. I didn’t want to be an ego woman who had a problem with someone loving someone before me.

While I’d been wrestling with my ego and reassessing Greg, Mum had been emptying the rails of dresses.

‘I can’t afford them,’ I said, relieving her of the bundle, then almost keeling over under the weight. ‘Not even one of them.’

‘We are paying,’ Mum said. ‘Just go and try them on.’

I turned towards the changing rooms. ‘Don’t forget to come show us,’ D2 called after me.

‘Why don’t you just call me Gerbil in front of Greg and be done with it,’ I mumbled.

In the changing room I took a proper gander at the dresses. All variations on a theme – Mum trying to get me to be more girly. She was fighting thirty years of comfort dressing. Besides, I was incompatible with dresses because they’re mostly made for right-way-up pears – small breasts, big hips – and I, with my big breasts and smallish hips, was an upside-down pear. Despite what Jen had said, I had lost weight. Not enough for me not to have a big chest, but my tummy was less round, almost flat in parts, and my hips more slender . . .
Stop it, stop it, stop it. Stop thinking about your weight
, I ordered myself.

I hated worrying about my weight, wondering about my inches. Since Jen had made that comment, even though I knew she was wrong, it kept coming to me. I was always thinking twice about eating anything. Had started reading the calorific value on things in the supermarket. (It drove Greg up the wall because checking the values in everything I normally bought added another half an hour to our shopping time. He’d taken to snatching things out of my hand and slinging them in the trolley, giving me the scowl of a man not to be messed with.) Maybe I am fat, I often mused as I got dressed in the morning. Maybe it was immoral how much I weighed. If my best mate, the woman I loved and trusted, thought I was fat, then maybe I should reconsider how I looked. Your friends are the ones who are meant to tell you these things. As if there wasn’t enough in my life to be neurotic about, onto my list had been scrawled ‘fat knacker status’ and ‘Greg being in love before’.

I checked through the dresses hanging on the chrome hooks in front of me until I found the least offensive and most likely to fit. It was the palest blue in soft shiny material with long sleeves and a scooped neck. I pulled it on, the folds falling gently over my curves, caressing my skin.

I looked into the mirror, twisted slightly. It didn’t look too bad. I was quite presentable, in fact. It felt gorgeous on. For one moment I felt like a princess.

I stuck my head out of the curtain into the corridor to check it was clear, then dashed the short distance to the entrance to the changing room. As a bloke, D2 and Greg’s jaws dropped open as I stepped into view. Tears sprang into Mum’s eyes. Eric smirked.

Jeez, what’s this all about?
‘Is it that bad?’ I asked. Were they all horrified by the curves bulging in the dress? I wrapped my arms around my waist to hide them.

‘Stand up straight,’ Mum ordered, pulling my arms away from my waist and adjusting the position of the dress’s shoulders, blinking back her tears until they were a memory.

‘You look lovely,’ Dad2 said, tears in his eyes too.

‘My sister’s a girl,’ Eric smirked once more.

Greg clutched my black leather rucksack in front of his lap as though his life depended on it. He was a slight shade of pink. I’d know that shade of pink anywhere. I pressed my lips together to hide a laugh: he had an erection. And with my mother stood not two foot away. When he saw that I’d spotted what he was doing, he blushed deeper until he glowed.

‘I don’t know why you want me to get this,’ I said to my parents, ‘it’s not like I’ve got anywhere to wear it.’ Yes, it felt nice on, but that didn’t mean I’d wear it – especially when my mother had chosen it.

‘Well, the next time Gregory takes you out somewhere nice,’ Mum said, looking pointedly at Greg, ‘you will have something nice to wear.’ What she meant was: ‘I may not be able to stop Gregory having his wicked way with you, but he’d better at least treat you like a lady.’

Greg, under Mum’s scrutiny, blushed a deeper maroon. Any more blushing and he was going to pass out.

Eric laughed, obviously finding this highly entertaining.

‘I don’t know what you’re laughing at, lad,’ D2 said, ‘we’re buying you a suit next.’

Ha!
I thought as I poked my tongue at Eric’s scowling face.

Eric fought harder than I did.

Even though he must’ve known it was a losing battle from the moment Dad2 mentioned it, he still fought and fought. With our parents together on something, there were no ifs or buts. If they asked you, ‘Wouldn’t you like fish, it’s better for you,’ they weren’t asking your opinion, they were stating a fact. They were telling you that you would indeed prefer fish, what with it being so good for you. And you may well have been salivating over that moist sirloin steak, cooked slowly in its own juices, smothered in mustard, but you would prefer that nice bit of poached cod.
OK
.

I was path-of-least-resistance woman. In most things, but particularly with my parents. All three of them. (Mrs H, Dad1’s wife, did not count as a parent.) The path of least resistance for Eric would’ve been to try on the navy-blue suit with cream shirt and blue tie and be done with it. No. Eric argued. He wanted black, if anything. If not black, then brown tweed. If not that, then kooky green. On and on. We left with the blue suit, blue tie and cream shirt.

On the way back to mine Eric sulked. I did mention to him at one point that my dress had cost £60 while his suit, even though it was off the peg, had come in at £300. That’s five times more fiduciary love they had expressed for him, but you didn’t see me bealing on about it.

‘Sod off, Gerbil,’ had been his reply. He’d rooted in my bag for my mobile, took it and stomped off along the train platform to call Arrianne. If anyone would understand his outrage at being forced to own a blue suit it would be Arrianne.
Oh well
, I thought as I watched him dial,
at least it’d made him call her
.

I hadn’t pushed him on it, but Eric hadn’t called her since he’d arrived. He didn’t own a mobile – ‘They’re the work of the Devil’ – and when I reminded him to call her to say he’d arrived safely, he’d replied he’d do it later. And hadn’t. Before our parents arrived I’d asked him if they’d rowed before he left and he’d half shrugged and started questioning me about Greg. It was a blatant diversionary tactic that had worked because I didn’t want to upset him.

While the rest of us sat on the train, waiting for it to leave, Eric walked back and forth along Platform 1a as he talked. The scowl on his face relaxed with each passing minute. His face slowly came alive. His jaw unclenching, the knot of a frown on his brow smoothing itself out. I hadn’t realised until now how aggravated and tired he’d looked since he got here. I wished there was something I could do to make it OK for him. I couldn’t bear to see him suffer. Not emotionally or physically. What hurt him hurt me, deeply. He was like my twin. Greg shifted in the seat beside me, pressing his thigh close to mine as I watched Eric walk and talk.