Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (22 page)

At quarter past five I let myself wearily into my kitchen and took two cereal bowls from the cupboard beside the fridge. I filled one with water and the other with jellymeat, and turned to see Murray watching me with accusing eyes.

‘Sorry,’ I said, pouring out Young Neutered Male cat biscuits (specially balanced for weight control, although the control becomes questionable when you’re doling out enough for the whole weekend, plus extra out of guilt at abandoning your pet). ‘I promise I’ll be back on Monday morning. You won’t even have time to miss me.’

Murray turned his back and stalked down the hall, stiff with outrage.

My handbag began to ring on the bench behind me. Hunting through it I found the spare keys to the garage, a tube of flea treatment I should have given Murray a fortnight ago and, unexpectedly, a green plastic turtle, before finally emerging with my cell phone. ‘Hello?’

‘Hey, Nell,’ said Lance.

‘Hi. What’s up?’

‘I was just wondering how things are with you.’

‘Fine,’ I said warily. Lance and I got on perfectly well these days, but we didn’t ring one another to chat.

‘Everything alright?’

‘Who told you?’ I asked.

‘Told me what?’

‘Lance!’

‘Vet nurse,’ he admitted. ‘She’s friends with yours. Is it true?’

‘Yes.’ If Zoe had fought a battle with her conscience before spreading my business far and wide, it must have been a short one.

‘Congratulations.’

‘Please don’t,’ I said.

‘How are you doing?’

I put the water bowl on the floor and straightened to pick up the jellymeat. ‘I’m sick as a dog. Morning sickness sucks.’

‘So I hear,’ said Lance. ‘Kate’s due in April.’

Lance’s older sister Kate was the kind of person I wanted to be when I grew up. She was smart and funny, grew her own vegetables, rode a motorbike and bought fabulous clothes for three dollars fifty in op shops. She also had a very nice husband, and was no doubt having a baby because she wanted one. ‘That’s great,’ I said, trying hard to sound properly enthusiastic. ‘Please give her my congratulations.’

‘Will do,’ he said. ‘Got anything planned for the weekend?’

‘I’m just on my way to Mark’s.’

‘You’re not driving while you’re on the phone, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, don’t.’

‘You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore,’ I said.

‘Old habits die hard.’

‘I’m actually fairly capable, you know,’ I said, which, considering my current predicament, was a fairly optimistic claim.

‘You can’t have changed
that
much,’ said Lance.

‘It’s unkind to ring people up and sneer at them,’ I said severely. ‘Especially when they’re feeling like death warmed up.’

‘Sorry. So, are you freaking out?’

‘Yep.’

‘Biting your nails again?’

‘Of course.’

‘What does Mark think about your bloody fingerprints all over his good shirts?’

I hadn’t actually made a habit of bleeding on Lance during our time together, whatever he might imply. I did, however, annihilate my fingernails in times of extreme stress, and it was true that the night before my equine medicine oral exam I’d left a fingerprint or two on his shirt. He had told me that biting your nails till they bled was a sign of mental illness, but he had also put plasters on my fingertips and spent an hour talking me through the diagnosis and treatment of colic.

‘He doesn’t wear good shirts, so it wouldn’t matter,’ I said.

‘Probably still best not to bleed on him. It’s a bit of a turn-off.’

‘Thanks,’ I said cordially. ‘I’ll take that on board.’

‘Is he – ah – okay with all of this?’

‘He’s being wonderful,’ I said.

‘That’s good,’ said Lance. ‘Otherwise I suppose I’d have to have a quiet word, and he’s a hell of a lot bigger than me.’

‘You do realise,’ I said, ‘that you’re an egg?’ But I said it fondly, because calling to check that his replacement was treating me right was really quite sweet.

‘You’re just wishing you hadn’t let me slip through your fingers.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s eating me up inside. Hey, thank you for ringing.’

‘That’s alright. You take care, okay?’

‘You too.’

‘Right,’ said Mark. ‘Let’s see this baby.’

I began to search through the handbag I had just dropped on his kitchen bench. ‘It doesn’t look like much. It’s not quite an inch long yet.’

He took the envelope silently and looked at the grainy black and white photo inside. ‘The uterus is the black circle,’ I said helpfully, ‘and the baby’s the little white tadpole in the middle.’

‘Wow,’ said Mark. Then, spoiling the poignancy of the moment ever so slightly, ‘Which end is which?’

‘That’s the head,’ I said, pointing. ‘There’s an arm, and there’s the umbilical cord.’

‘Yeah, okay.’

‘And the ultrasound technician said the tail will vanish in another week.’

‘That’s a relief.’ He put an arm around me, and I leant back against him.

‘Have you told your parents?’ I asked.

‘No, not yet.’

‘I told Dad.’

‘How did that go?’

I sighed. ‘Oh, alright. He was just sort of quietly disappointed.’

Mark said nothing, but his arm tightened around my waist.

‘At work everyone stops talking when I come into the room.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘They’ll find something new to talk about in a week or two.’

‘Have any reporters rung you up yet?’

‘No. I don’t think they will. Babies aren’t really big news.’

‘Even yours?’ I asked.

‘I think you overestimate people’s interest in my life,’ said Mark. ‘As long as I turn up on the rugby field and don’t arse it up completely, they couldn’t care less.’

I nodded, although a bit doubtfully, and turned in his arms to hug him. ‘How was physio?’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Coming along nicely. How’s the morning sickness?’

‘I haven’t thrown up all day.’

‘Well done.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

He smiled and kissed me. It was a slow, serious, eleven-on-a-scale-of-one-to-ten sort of kiss, and it left me quite weak with relief that he still found me reasonably attractive. And then someone knocked on the front door.

‘Oh, piss off, whoever you are,’ muttered Mark.

‘It’ll be the first reporter,’ I said.

‘It’d better not be.’ Letting me go he went slowly downstairs and opened the door. ‘What are you doing here?’ I heard him say.

It must be so nice to be a boy, and therefore not to have to bother with social niceties when you’re not in the mood.

‘Came up to look at a car,’ said the visitor, coming in past him and taking the stairs two at a time. I slid the ultrasound picture under the fruit bowl and out of sight. ‘Piece of shit. 
Waste of fucking time.’ Reaching the kitchen he looked me briefly up and down, an exercise that appeared to give him very little pleasure. ‘Who are you?’

‘Helen,’ I said. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’ He turned away and opened the fridge, taking out two bottles of beer.

‘This is my brother Rob,’ Mark told me, catching a bottle as it skated across the granite bench top towards him. ‘Rob, Helen.’ His voice was flat and slightly wary.

Robert and Mark Tipene must have looked very much alike when they were younger: they had the same dark unruly hair and hazel eyes under eyebrows that slanted up at the corners, and the same rangy, broad-shouldered frame. Mark was a couple of inches taller and Rob was quite a bit thicker through the middle, with half an inch of beard and puffy dissatisfied eyes, and I thought that seeing them together was the best illustration I had ever seen of how people’s natures affect their looks. If Mark had spent the last ten years drinking too much and feeling hard done by he would have looked just like his brother.

‘You want one?’ Rob asked me as an afterthought, waving his beer bottle in my direction.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He turned back to Mark. ‘How was Dad’s?’

‘About the same as usual,’ said Mark. ‘How’s work?’

‘It’s a fucking nightmare. The boss is a tool. Hasn’t got a clue.’

‘Pretty much like the last place, then,’ Mark said drily.

‘I’m thinking of setting up on my own.’

‘Doing what?’

Rob shrugged. ‘Auto electrics, car stereos . . . all that shit.’

‘Right,’ said Mark.

‘I’ve got my eye on a workshop,’ said Rob, tipping beer expertly down his throat. ‘Do you remember Dennis Cope?’

Mark shook his head.

‘Weedy little bloke. Sparky. Had that place in behind the petrol station at the north end of town.’

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘He’s selling up. The place is a bit rundown, but the location’s good.’ He eyed his brother sideways over his beer bottle. ‘I’d put in an offer if I had the capital.’

‘Have you talked to the bank?’ Mark asked.

‘Wankers,’ Rob said. And then, in an entirely unconvincing portrayal of a man who has just been struck out of the blue by an idea, he added, ‘Hey, do you want to chuck some money in?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Hang on, it’s a really tidy business.’

‘No,’ said Mark again, with no particular expression in his voice.

‘Fuck,’ said Rob into his beer bottle. ‘It’s not like it’d be any skin off
your
nose.’ He turned to me. ‘You’re the vet, right?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You must be pretty smart.’

‘Not really,’ I said uncomfortably.

‘He failed sixth form,’ said Rob, nodding towards his brother. ‘Twice.’

‘So?’ I said.

He widened his eyes at me mockingly. ‘Settle down. Just making conversation.’

‘He’s a gem,’ I said as Mark came slowly back upstairs after accompanying Rob to the door.

‘Isn’t he just?’

‘What’s he like when he
doesn’t
want something?’ I said. If the last half hour had been a demonstration of Cajoling Rob, Hostile Rob must be something quite special.

Mark smiled tiredly. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘What d’you want for tea?’

‘Toast. It’s my new staple diet. How about you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Spaghetti on toast will do.’ He opened the pantry. Inside were two tins, one of beetroot and the other of four-bean mix. ‘Bugger.’

‘Macaroni cheese?’ I offered, sliding off my stool to look in the fridge. ‘Except you’ve got no cheese.’ Or bacon, or eggs, or in fact anything that looked even faintly like dinner. ‘Takeaways, then.’

Mark closed the pantry door. ‘No bread either,’ he said. ‘What takeaways do you reckon you might keep down?’

He had rogan josh with rice and naan bread, and I had rice. Apart from my daily folate tablet I don’t think I’d eaten a vitamin in weeks. The Huggies website was big on a healthy balanced diet during pregnancy, but the Huggies website could take a running jump. The thought of food that tasted of anything in particular was quite simply out of the question.

After my rice I showered and crawled exhaustedly into Mark’s big bed. The enamel pendant he had brought me from Cardiff was on the bedside table, and I sat up again to put it on.

I had just managed to do up the clasp – no easy task without fingernails – when footsteps crossed the room below. They didn’t reach the stairs but were followed by a squeak of leather as Mark lay down on the couch and then the sudden clamour of canned laughter from the TV. Every night we had ever spent together, up until the night I told him about the baby, we had gone to bed together as a matter of course.