The Chocolate Run (3 page)

I gazed up at Renée with what I hoped were big sorrowful eyes; pleading, beseeching if you will, for sympathy. Renée looked back at me with murder glinting in the windows to her soul.

She usually looked like a teen-actress-turned-producerturned-important-name-in-Northern-England’s-film-industry. She was head to toe sophistication: sleek black hair, carefully kohled and mascaraed eyes, expensively cleansed, toned and moisturised olive skin, neutrally coloured lips. Her clothes were always designer, and crease- and bobble-free, obviously. Her shoes always matched her bags. When she wore it, her nail varnish matched her lipstick.

‘I AM GOING TO LOOK TOTALLY STUPID IN THAT MEETING!’ Renée ranted. ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’VE DONE THIS TO ME.’ Like her body, her fingers were long and thin. Her fingers always reminded me of Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers, very little knuckle to spoil the length and shape of them. And wouldn’t you know it, those fingers made a very loud noise as they pounded on the desk, emphasising her words – probably the biscuit centre.

‘I REALLY [
bang
] CAN’T [
bang
] BELIEVE [
bang
] YOU’VE [
bang
] DONE THIS [
bang
].’

I didn’t need to glance around the room to know that Martha, the administrator, was staring hard at her computer screen, and the two work experience girls were digging escape tunnels under their desks. This was the usual drill when Renée lost it. Which, it had to be said, she was doing quite a lot lately. Usually, Renée was on the highly strung side of normal – it didn’t take too much to launch her into a full-on head spin. Recently, though, even ‘Good morning’ could go either way: a ‘Hello’ back or a rant demanding to know what was so good about it.

I knew this. Which was clearly why I said, ‘At least I didn’t sleep with your husband.’ This was classic Amber. When a situation begins getting serious, be it seriously bad or seriously good, I’m obliged to lighten it with some attempt at humour.
Obliged
, mind you. I can’t just turn it on and off. (That was where the whole ‘you’re a cab’ thing had come from.) Many a near war situation has been averted by me trying to make people laugh, or at least titter. I can’t help myself. I think it evolved from a deep-seated belief that someone’s less likely to batter you as long as you’re trying to make them laugh.

Except what I said was in no way funny. Mere moments after my quip Renée’s sensibilities nosedived over the edge of reason.

‘
What
.
Did
.
You
.
Say
,’ she hissed, too shocked to shout or bang on my desk.

‘It’s only a meeting, not the second coming,’ I said, then winced. There really was no need to keep antagonising a woman whose head was 198 degrees into a 360-degree head spin but I couldn’t seem to stop.

Renée’s flawless skin filled up to her hairline with blood-red anger. I wasn’t aware humans could go that shade of red without passing out.

‘HOW CAN YOU SAY SUCH A THING? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?’ she bellowed.

‘Oh, admit it, Renée, you know you wanna cancel the meeting anyway.’ We were in a ‘humour’ loop – the more incensed she became, the more I was trying to make her laugh, which led to more rage. Round and round.

‘I DON’T KNOW WHY I EMPLOYED YOU!’ Renée screamed.

‘Because the trained hamster turned you down?’

‘HOW DARE YOU. FOR TEN YEARS I’VE WATCHED YOU HANG ABOUT THE OFFICE, DOING NOTHING BUT EAT CHOCOLATE. WELL I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF IT. YOU ARE USELESS.’ With that, she grabbed her mobile and coat, and exited stage left. She shut the glass door with such force we all expected it to shatter in her wake.

Everything was silent and motionless after the slam of the door.

Renée had never gone for me like that before. She’d never gone for anyone like that before.
Ever
. Yeah, she shouted; yeah, she threw things, but in eleven years I’d never thought she was going to raise her hand to someone. And for one moment there I’d thought she was going to slap me.

Martha gave the two work experience girls one of her ‘looks’ until they realised they needed the loo – really rather desperately – and left. They too shut the glass door, which had a film reel and WYIFF frosted on it, behind them, but quietly.

Martha and I got up in unison then walked the length of our high-ceilinged office, which was filled with desks and filing cabinets and shelves of videos, to the windows. The expanse of windows took up almost a whole wall and had window sills wide enough for people to rest their bums on. Which is what Martha and I did. Out of all the offices in the West Yorkshire Council building, we had the best one. It had high white walls, the carpet wasn’t the regulation beige but royal blue. We even had framed film posters on the walls. When you worked there full-time you got to pick a poster. Renée had
The Big Blue
, Martha had
Pretty Woman
, and I had
Terminator 2
. Over the years other posters had come and gone, but the swimmer, the hooker and the cyborg had clung to the walls through thick, thin and Renée explosion.

‘She’s getting worse,’ Martha said, twisting slightly to see the panorama of Leeds we got from this height. Martha was far more human than Renée. She was my height with shoulder-length, mousy-brown hair, mousy-brown eyes, pale white skin – she even got the occasional spot. I liked Martha, but in a different way to how I liked Renée. Renée had employed me – eventually – and I’d helped employ Martha. Also, Renée had never invited herself to my place for dinner within a month of us working together like Martha had done. I was also pretty sure Renée wasn’t constantly rifling through my drawers looking for perfume, lipstick, tampons or other things most women should carry with them, like Martha was.

‘I know,’ I replied to Martha’s observation that Renée had got worse, then instantly felt bad. Renée was, all in all, a good boss. ‘I wonder why?’

‘Because she’s a mad French woman,’ Martha replied and yanked her black cardigan across her chest to emphasise how mad Renée was. Renée had shouted at Martha on Friday for not returning her stapler. And, despite Renée going out to buy us cake ‘because you’re both worth it’, despite a weekend’s hiatus, Martha hadn’t forgiven or forgotten. She wasn’t the F&F sort. At some point, very soon, Martha would be paying her back in kind.

‘No, Renée’s all right. I wonder what’s troubling her,’ I said. Even after that performance I was fiercely loyal to Renée.

Martha shrugged. ‘I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. I might go on a chocolate run, it feels like a bit of a Flake morning.’ She paused, thought about her chocolate choice. ‘Actually, sod it, I’m going to do a Renée, buy some cake and coffee and, hell, some caviar and champagne and put it through as expenses.’

‘She never did that!’ I said, turning to Martha.

‘Too right,’ Martha said. ‘She does it all the time.’

‘Clever, that,’ I said, not meaning Renée’s expenses violation. This was Martha’s revenge: letting me know Renée’s little secret so I’d do it and when Renée sees it, she won’t be able to say a word, and it’ll burn in her soul.

Martha’s face split into a wide grin as she realised she was rumbled. ‘All right, that was a bit obvious. But I’m going to get the bitch back. I’ll just have to be a bit more sneaky about it.’

Instead of replying, I stared out at Leeds. The rise and fall of the buildings, the colours and shades stretching on and on. A patchwork of lives. A stitch here or there to keep them connected. Some lives overlapping, others only touching through other pieces of the patchwork.

My eyes flickered over the panorama, but I knew if I stood in a particular spot, dislocated my neck and pushed my eyes out of their sockets, I could see Greg’s office from here. He worked ten minutes down Wellington Street in the
Yorkshire Chronicle
building, as Features Director on the
Sunday Chronicle
’s glossy supplement,
SC
.

‘You all right, love?’ Martha asked.

I returned my gaze to her, realising we’d been sat in silence for a while. ‘I’m fine. A bit concerned about Renée, that’s all.’

Martha nodded in understanding. ‘You had sex, didn’t you?’ she said.

I rearranged my face so as to not look:

‘Sorry?’ I replied.

‘You had sex, that’s why you’re acting crazy.’

‘Acting crazy how?’

‘How? What you said to Renée is how. Anyway, it’s written all over your face. You’ve been celibate for yonks and now you look like you’ve had a good seeing to. You’re actually glowing.’

I laughed. Martha was so fishing, but it’d caught her the big one.

‘You did, didn’t you?’ Martha encouraged. ‘You had sex.’

‘Might have,’ I replied.

Martha’s face lit up. She leapt off the window sill, her cardigan showing off her white blouse as it flew open. She bounced eagerly in front of me. ‘So, tell me more. Did he pass the Forty-Eight-Hour Test?’

She was referring to my theory that no one-night stand is a one-night stand until forty-eight hours after the act and he hasn’t called. Some people, like Jen, have suggested that men work on a different timetable, that I should give them seventy-two hours. Sorry, but any bloke who can wait three days after sharing something so intimate with you, well, he’s not interested. Because no man will wait more than forty-eight hours to call a girl – not if he really likes her.

Greg didn’t pass. Course he didn’t pass, but the long, yearning way he’d been studying me across the kitchen flitted across my mind as I said, ‘No.’

‘So you’re worried you’ll never see him again?’ Martha asked.

‘Oh no, I’ll definitely see him again. I’ll be seeing him tonight, actually, with some friends at a birthday do.’

‘What’s the problem, then?’

‘Who said there’s a problem?’

‘Well you’re not exactly dancing on table tops, are you?’

‘I guess not.’

‘And anyway, Amber, with you, there’s always a problem.’

‘Oi!’

Martha rolled her eyes. ‘Well, there is, isn’t there? It’s not your fault, you just think too much.’

‘Look, it’s just . . . I don’t know, it’s complicated.’

‘Complicated as in he’s your friend’s bloke?’

‘No.’

‘He’s married/attached/gay/serial-killer material?’

‘None of the above.’

‘So what’s the complication?’

If I hadn’t told Jen I could hardly tell Martha, could I? Besides, Martha knew Greg. A bit too well. Once you got to know Greg you found out he wasn’t a nice person. Fundamentally good? Yes. Kind-hearted? Absolutely. But nice? No. Martha knew that. She – and for that matter Renée – thought he was the spawn of Satan. If I told her she’d be ordering up an exorcism faster than I could blink. One time she’d picked up my phone and Greg had said, ‘Oi, bird, I’m gonna put you over my knee and spank your bottom for being late,’ thinking he was talking to me. She’d immediately offered to get a few of her fella’s rugby mates to batter him. Even when I’d said he was joking she’d reassured me she wasn’t. Martha and Renée were both gagging for an excuse to give him a good kicking and this would be it.

I shrugged my reply to Martha’s enquiry about the complication.

‘See, I rest my case,’ Martha said, ‘you think too much.’

She could be right – Greg was always accusing me of that too, but if I’d thought enough on Friday night, I wouldn’t be in this mess, would I?

Friday night.

Friday night wasn’t the culmination of years of flirting and longing and waiting for me. I don’t know about Greg, but I’d never thought of him in that way. Ever. Nobody would believe me now, of course.

After I’d thought ‘tosser’ about him, I’d made it clear I wasn’t the bonus or booby prize he got for letting my best mate date his best mate in peace. I constantly ribbed him and refused to flirt with him. At all. He tried, because he couldn’t help himself, and in response I’d roll my eyes or tut. Even the lightest double entendre was met with irritable derision. When I started going out with someone, Sean, a few months after I met Greg, he got the message: I wasn’t interested. We could get on with being friends. Friday night, then, was just another night for me.

I’d met Greg at the bus station at about seven o’clock. He’d been to Sheffield for the day doing a special report for the magazine. I spotted him the second I turned the corner from New York Street to the bus station. He had his bag across his body, his knee-length black coat was buttoned up, the neck of his blue jumper peeking out of the top. His hands were buried in his pockets, the tip of his nose was red from the cold and his exhalations curled up and away as white wisps. He’d obviously been waiting a while but didn’t seem to mind.

If Greg being free on a Friday night hadn’t told me how the evening was going to end, maybe what happened next should have: he put a tender, almost protective, hand on my waist and gently pulled me towards him as he leant in to kiss my cheek. His kiss lasted a fraction of a second longer than necessary, as though he was trying to hang onto the moment. Then he buried his face in my cheek-length black hair and his grip around me tightened as he inhaled deeply.

‘Are  . . . are you
sniffing
my hair?’ I’d asked. Someone had once jokingly said I smelt and I’d been paranoid about it ever since. Jokes were always jokes until your boss was taking you out for a quiet chat about personal hygiene – I wasn’t going down like that.

Greg laughed. ‘Just checking if you need to get your roots re-straightened. If I can’t tell you, who can?’

I’d smacked him good-naturedly on the back, shaken my head at him, then led the way to the private cinema in West Yorkshire Playhouse.

After a free film screening for work (my work, not his), we had a few drinks and dinner, then found ourselves on the pavement outside the restaurant. ‘Do you fancy coming back to mine for a bit?’ Greg asked.

I actually fancied going home. Didn’t want to walk up to his house in Hyde Park (and he always made us walk there), then sit about making small talk with his other, non-Matt flatmate. I wanted my pyjamas, to watch some telly and then to bed. I couldn’t say that, obviously, so made a big show of looking at my watch, discovered I wasn’t wearing it and snatched my wrist out of sight before he could spot what I was doing. ‘To be honest,’ I said, ‘it’s late, I should be heading back. I’ll get the bus.’