The Chocolate Run (8 page)

‘I like you. A lot,’ I blurted out, desperate to stop him leaving, ‘but . . .’

‘You think I’m a slag and that I’ll give you the runaround the second you start to trust me.’

Nicely put, even if you do say so yourself. ‘Something like that.’

‘Amber, since I realised how deeply I felt about you I’ve not been with anyone else.’

I raised an incredulous, disbelieving eyebrow. Had he forgotten who he was talking to? Had he forgotten that I’d once stared down a psycho woman and her equally psycho boyfriend in a pub because he’d started to flirt with her rather than get a round in as he’d been sent to do?

‘She didn’t count because she was insane, she thought I was going to marry her after two days and I learnt my lesson in a big way. That’s it.’

I hitched up my other, incredulous and disbelieving eyebrow.

‘I tried to make a go of it with her,’ he protested, ‘because I thought I just wanted a relationship, but I didn’t, I wanted a relationship with you. But that really is it.’

Had I another eyebrow, I would have hitched it up too. I settled for sticking my tongue in my cheek at him.

‘OK, but she didn’t count. She’d been coming on to me for ages and I felt obliged. It was a mercy shag.’

‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘How many other mercy shags are there going to be, Greg?’

‘None, if I’m with you.’

‘I believe you. I believe you mean that and that you wouldn’t intentionally cheat on me, but what if someone comes on to you? What if we have a row? What if you get drunk? There are too many what ifs when it comes to you and sex. I don’t want to deal with that.’

Greg sagged in shame as he squinted at the ground. Silence, not too dissimilar to the shroud we’d eaten in the previous night, slipped its folds around us. Eventually he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small book. ‘What if I gave you sole custody of this?’

He
never
had a proper little black book.

‘You get to keep it until we split up. If we make it to, say, six months, you get to burn it.’

Greg placed the leather-bound book on my lap, then sat back watching me with his bright, keen eyes, waiting for my reaction to his placing his whole sexual past, present and future in my hands.

My first instinct was to flick through it, see if I recognised any of the names. My second instinct was to flick through it, gauge how many names there were in it, see how many women had trodden the path I had. My third instinct was to ask: ‘Am I in there?’

Greg shook his head. ‘Even before I fell for you, you were too special for that book.’

‘In other words you knew I wouldn’t shag you so you didn’t waste your time putting me in there.’

Greg flopped his arms up and down. ‘I’ve just given you my former sex life and you’re bitching about if you’re in there.’

Fair point
. I turned the small black rectangle over in my hands, caressed the soft leather. It was warm and bent slightly from the curve of his bum, the pages well worn from overuse. ‘I can’t believe you own a little black book,’ I said.

‘I don’t any more, you do.’

‘I don’t know if I want this responsibility.’

‘It’s the only way I can think to prove to you that I’m serious about this. I don’t want any of the people in that book, I want you.’

‘What about the numbers in your mobile?’

In an instant the colour leached out of Greg’s skin. There was clearly a pecking order of people he’d shagged or wanted to shag. If he liked her, she went into his black book; if he reeeaally liked her, she went into his mobile.

I held out the book to him. ‘Let’s forget it. We can still be friends.’

I was trembling slightly as I handed him back his sexual freedom. And, what was this? What was stirring itself in my chest? A swirl of emotions I couldn’t quite pin down. Probably mostly jealousy and sadness. Jealousy, pretty self-explanatory. Sadness, because if he took the book back, our friendship would be based on me knowing that he didn’t care enough for me to give up shagging around; and him knowing that I was too petty to let him keep a few other women’s numbers.

‘OK,’ Greg said, but didn’t move to take the book from me. ‘I’ll write down all the relevant numbers from my mobile on a piece of paper, slip the paper into the black book and get them back if we split up.’ (The faith he had in me was astounding. If we split up, did he honestly think I’d give him back his sex life? I’d burn it. No messing.)

Not exactly, ‘I’ll delete them all’, but it wasn’t, ‘Oh, forget it’, either. So, the ball was back in my court. I had to decide if we were going to give it a go or not.

I couldn’t think under these conditions. I didn’t have any distracting TV noise, no chocolate in my hand . . . the last time I tried to work under pressure without these tools I ended up offering to call Greg a cab. ‘Don’t move. I’ll be right back. Just don’t move or leave, sit right there,’ I said to Greg.

He nodded as I unfolded my legs from under me, stood up and then exited the room. In the kitchen I went straight for the fridge, tugged open the door, pulled out the giant bar of chocolate Renée had bought me from Copenhagen a few weeks earlier. It was the good-quality stuff I’d been saving for when company came round – not the everyday chocolate I usually ate. I pulled open the thick, waxy yellow wrapper, did the same with the thick gold foil inside. I lifted the bar to my nose, inhaled deeply. The bitter smell of cocoa, tempered with sugar and milk powder and emulsifier, filled my senses.
Oh, yes, that’s better
. I took another two deep hits. Then I pushed the pieces between my fingers until a jagged, diagonal piece snapped off. I slipped it between my lips and bit down.
Oh, oh, oh, yes
. My whole body relaxed as the taste filled my mouth. Now, I could think. Really think.

Greg.

Greg and me. And possibly giving it a go.

It wasn’t a simple case of me not being interested. I was, a little. Only a little, though. Certainly not enough for me to risk everything. But, if I told him no now, he’d take it literally. I wouldn’t see Greg again, not in that sense. I’d become like Kristin Scott Thomas in
Four Weddings and a Funeral
, hanging around someone who went off with other women while I played the dutiful mate.

I crammed another piece of chocolate in my already full mouth.

Did I want that? Did I want Greg moaning another woman’s name as if it was the most delicious thing ever to enter his mouth?

The thought dawned slowly but clearly: no. Not at all.

Much as I might not want him right now, much as I might not want him at all, I didn’t want him going near anyone else.
Also, it’s not every day you get the biggest tart in Yorkshire offering you him. Exclusivit
y.
That’d be like a chocolate manufacturer making chocolate, only for me. Amber Nectar Chocolate. Just for me . . . OK, stop right there or you’ll implode with excitement. Get back to the matter in hand.

Greg. Exclusivity. I ate another few pieces of chocolate to be on the safe side.

I returned to the living room. Greg had done as I’d instructed: he hadn’t moved. Not a millimetre. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? He was already doing exactly as I told him. Get him to comply with the little things, and complicity with the big things – like not shagging anyone else – was sure to follow, no? I returned to my place on the sofa and crossed my legs under me again. ‘Go on then, put your numbers where your mouth is.’

Ten minutes later, Greg was left with fifteen (fifteen out of ninety-five) numbers on his mobile – I took great pleasure in watching him wince as he deleted each one – and I had three sheets of women’s names and numbers to slip into the book and destroy at my earliest convenience. ‘So . . .?’ Greg asked.

‘So, let’s take it really, really,
really
slowly, OK?’

A grin spread across his face, catching light in his Minstrelcoloured eyes.

‘And we mustn’t tell the other two until we’re sure we’re going to be together for a while. I went out with one of Jen’s boyfriend’s friends once and when it ended it was a total nightmare. It nearly split up Jen and her man, not to mention the trouble it caused between Jen and me. I don’t want us messing up what they’ve got. So, let’s agree, we say nothing about us for six months. At least six months.’

‘Six months,’ Greg agreed, and crawled across the floor towards me. As he did so, fingers of terror curled around my heart.

chapter seven

champagne buddy

‘OK, total honesty. What do you really think about me and Matt moving in together?’ Jen said, settling back on my sofa with a huge glass of wine. She could, it was half-term so she didn’t have to get up early in the morning for work.

Greg had left when the evening episode of
Neighbours
started. I could tell he was angling for an invitation to stay by the way he kept going on about how knackered he was. I’d told him it was Tuesday night, which was Jen night, so I’d handed him his jacket and bag and said I’d see him at the weekend.

Seven years ago I hit upon the idea to start over in London and lived with my mum and stepdad for nine months while I got myself together. It was perfect . . . for reminding me that I needed at least 200 miles between me and my family, so I returned to Leeds for good. Since then, Jen and I made sure we met up at least once a week on Tuesday nights for dinner. On alternate weeks we’d go to each other’s flat – one of us would cook dinner and the visitor would provide the wine and dessert. Often we’d stay over if we were up late talking.

However, this Tuesday, I’d ordered a curry. I hadn’t been shopping over the weekend – another result of having sex – (I’d forgotten how much was involved in sex. It wasn’t simply a meeting of two bodies, it was not having time or energy to buy food. Not having the inclination to do your work. And a hell of a lot of tidying up) so my cupboards were Old Mother Hubbard bare. We’d eaten so now it was down to the heavy talk. ‘To be totally honest, Jenna,’ I said gravely, then checked she wanted the truth by adding: ‘Total honesty, right?’

She nodded, bit her lip, her eyes cloaked in apprehension and terror: we had this habit of asking for total honesty of each other and then being struck with fear because we knew we’d get it.

‘I never thought he’d do it. I never thought he’d make such a bold move, it’s so unlike him. I know, I know, I’ve spent two years telling you I thought he would but that’s because it was what you wanted to hear. Deep down, I thought he’d never do it. But he did, so that’s great. Fantastic, even.’

Jen tossed her wavy blonde hair, exposing her beautiful face. I didn’t think she was beautiful simply because she was my best friend, but because she was. Her skin was naturally blemish-free, her slightly prominent cheekbones only needed a hint of blusher. And her eyes were such an unusual shade of blue you could never be sure what colour they really were. Sometimes they were pale blue, sometimes sapphire blue, sometimes topaz blue, and other days, like today, they were summer sky blue. If anything let her down, though, it was the shape of her eyes. They, no matter how well she shaped her eyebrows, seemed slightly too big. They were oval and not pinched enough at the ends to make them perfect, like the rest of her face. I often wanted to lend her my eyes – mine were the shape of bay leaves with finely tapered edges and huge, black-brown pupils – because she’d be ‘finished’, 100 per cent perfect with them.

Jen sipped her wine. ‘Neither did I,’ she replied and pulled her legs up under her on the sofa. ‘I never thought Matt would settle down because he’s like you.’

‘
Excuse me?!
’ I replied. If someone was going to fling the ultimate insult at me, that was it. Me, like Matt. Me, like that proverbial lump of toffee?

‘You and Matt are so alike it’s scary. Whenever the future’s mentioned you both get cagey. You’ll either clam up or make a joke out of it, anything to avoid thinking or talking seriously about settling down. It used to infuriate me because I never knew where I stood when it came to getting a house or booking a holiday, but then I was glad you were like that when I met Matt. I realised he wasn’t going to run away because even though you made no plans for the future you stuck around.’

‘You know what, I’ll let you off because you’re my best mate, any other person would get kicked out for that.’

‘Oh, you want examples?’ Jen said. ‘Sean.’

‘We do not talk about Sean,’ I reminded.

‘I have never known a man adore a woman like he did you,’ Jen continued as though she hadn’t heard the warning note in my voice. ‘He was sooooo in love with you, the way he gazed at yo—’

‘We are
not
having this conversation,’ I cut in.

Jen observed me long and cool, trying to calculate if she could say what else was on her mind. She opened her mouth.

‘And if you do try to have this conversation you can piss off home.’

She shrugged, sat back on the sofa. ‘I reckon it’s because your family’s as deformed as mine,’ Jen said.

‘Listen, teacher features, just because you sort out five-yearolds’ problems, don’t think you can analyse me. I’m the one with the psychology degree, remember?’

‘Doesn’t mean I don’t know a thing or two about it. Or, for that matter, Ambs, that I don’t know you.’

Jen and I met in the first year of college. I was in Room 29, she was in Room 30 in our halls of residence.

I remember the exact moment I saw her walking from her room to the kitchen on our floor: she was tall, wearing a stone-washed denim skirt and sensible black polo neck. Her hair, pinned back with an Alice band, cascaded down her back, stopping at her waist. She had a perfectly oval face with cheekbones that threatened to make an appearance the older she got. She walked with the kind of straight-backed poise they taught in finishing school. Everything about her screamed sophistication, which immediately intimidated me. I’d been wearing baggy jeans with a long-sleeved T-shirt and had a nineteen-year-old’s slouch, my plaits were pulled back into a ponytail with a towelling scrunchy. I was everything that Jen wasn’t.

I’d watched her return to her room from the kitchen and decided she wasn’t like any chocolate or sweet I’d ever encountered. She was one of those new chocolate bars that you spotted as you walked into a shop. Its wrapping was so effortlessly classy it made everything around it seem gaudy and cheap. This chocolate was unique. It was a real white chocolate. Not the creamy colour most white chocolate is, but snow white. It had lots of cream and milk and white sugar, but minimal cocoa. It was soft around the edges, very quick and easy to melt so you had to be careful how you handled it. And because of that, because of the element of risk involved, most people would ignore it, going instead for what they knew. Grabbing their Mars, Twix or Dairy Milk because, when it came down to it, most people tended to stick to what was familiar.