Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (7 page)

‘
Again?
Sweetie, it’s slave labour!’

‘No it’s not,’ I said, letting Bel slide to the floor. ‘I swapped weekends so I can go to Mary-Anne’s hen’s weekend in August.’

‘Mary-Anne,’ Em repeated. ‘Which one is she?’

‘The short one with curly dark hair who manages to say “my fiancé” at least twice per sentence.’

Em nodded. ‘Ah, her. Now, I need a favour,’ she said, giving her cheese sauce a brisk stir, then putting down the wooden spoon and tilting her chin up towards the ceiling. ‘I can feel a nasty bristly hair, and I can’t see it in the mirror. Can you get it for me?’

I peered obediently at her neck. ‘No, you’re good.’

‘Look harder,’ she ordered. ‘I’m having lunch with Christine Marshall tomorrow, and she’s got eyes like a hawk.’

I looked harder. ‘There?’

Em’s hand flew to the spot I had touched. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even
notice
that one. That’s it; I’m going to have to start waxing my neck.’

‘No, you’re not. It’s minute. You’d practically need an electron microscope to see it.’

‘Annabel, fetch my tweezers. Or maybe I should just go straight for your father’s razor.’

‘Daddy doesn’t like it when you use his razor,’ said Bel.

‘She was only teasing,’ I said.

‘She
does
use his razor. It makes Daddy sad.’ She shook her curly blonde head mournfully. ‘
Poor
Daddy.’

‘Annabel! Tweezers. Now,’ Em ordered. ‘Helen, love, Monique Ledbetter’s having an Intimo party next week. Why don’t you come with me?’

‘What, another sex toy thing? No
way
,’ I said, leaning against the bench beside her.

‘Honestly, Helen, I don’t know where you developed all these hang-ups.’

‘I think I got most of them at that sex toy party.’

My stepmother smiled a small and wicked smile. ‘Sweetie,’ she said, ‘grow up. Anyway, this one isn’t sex toys, it’s really lovely lingerie. Just gorgeous – very feminine and flattering. And she’s putting on wine and nibbles.’

‘What night is it?’ I asked. Not that it mattered, because if it was on a night with no prior commitments I was going to invent an engagement on the spot. I love Em very much, but her idea of feminine and flattering and mine are poles apart.

‘Wednesday.’

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’m going to the movies with Keri.’ It’s so nice not to have to lie. ‘Where’s Dad?’

‘At your grandmother’s. Apparently she’s got no water.’

‘Poor Dad,’ I said.

‘He shouldn’t be far away,’ Em said. ‘You’ll stay for tea, won’t you, sweetie?’

At ten that night I was reading in bed with Murray on my feet when my phone buzzed beside me. It was a new message received from Mark T (not to be confused with Mark M, a tubby and cheerful classmate currently doing a residency in equine medicine in Ohio). I gave a happy squirm as I opened the phone, and Murray opened one golden eye and glared at me.

How many calving cows tonite?

None so far. How is Dunedin?

Cold. Sleep well x

I squirmed again, and Murray bit my toe through the duvet. ‘But he sent me an x,’ I explained.

Murray looked completely unimpressed.

After four minutes of intense thought I sent back:
You too x

I picked my way through the gumboots and empty swap-a-crates at the back door of Sam’s flat (where they subscribed to the Sky Sport channel) just after seven the next evening, and went into the kitchen to find his flatmates playing cards at the kitchen table.

‘You cheating bastard,’ said Will, whose back was to the door. Will was a thoroughly nice bloke. He was thoughtful and courteous and painfully shy, and he could only just bring himself to talk to me.

Dylan, who was loud and inconsiderate and thought he was far more attractive to women than was in fact the case, lifted one buttock off his chair and farted in greeting. ‘Evening, Helen.’

‘Cheers for that, Dylan,’ I said, looking at the floor and deciding not to remove my shoes.

‘Better out than in.’

‘Dear God,’ I said faintly as the smell reached my side of the kitchen. It was the sort of odour that is depicted in cartoons as an evil green mist. ‘What have you been
eating
?’

‘Beans and eggs,’ said Dylan. ‘Grab me a beer while you’re next to the fridge, would you?’

‘Get your own beer, you low-life,’ Will said, getting up. ‘Come into the lounge, Helen, before you pass out.’

Sam was lying full length on a battered couch, reading a rugby magazine, a beer on the floor beside him. ‘Here you go, Hel,’ he said, folding it open and passing it over.

The article was headed
Locked and Loaded
, with a picture of Mark taking up the rest of the page. It was one of those artistic publicity shots taken from so close up you can see the individual hairs in the subject’s designer stubble and the faint creases around his eyes as he gazes into the middle distance.

He’s worn the number four jersey for over ten years, and the farm boy from Taranaki who made the All Blacks on the strength of just one season at provincial level has never looked more dangerous. Kurt Wallis talks to Mark Tipene about the impending Tri Nations series, composure under the high ball, and that mysterious blonde hottie.

I lifted Sam’s legs and sat down on the couch, letting them fall back across my lap.

‘Comfortable?’ he asked, just a trifle sarcastically.

‘Yep. Thanks.’

He’s twice been awarded New Zealand Sportsman of the Year, his picture graces the International Rugby Hall of Fame, and opposition forward packs almost wet themselves at the thought of facing him on the field. His name has been linked to a selection of the country’s most luscious females – among them the delectable Tamara Healy, no mean sportswoman in her own right.

A selection of the country’s most luscious females.
Oh,
man.
I might, with the light behind me and in the eyes of a particularly fond observer, pass as quite cute in a girl-next-door kind of way, but in my wildest dreams I could never achieve lusciousness.

This is a man whom opposition coaches label a cheat, while in the same breath urging their players to model their game on his. A man who raises money for victims of domestic violence, who has had a beer with the Prime Minister and drunk tea with the Queen of England, and yet who recently refused a lucrative book deal on the grounds that his life wouldn’t make very interesting reading.

‘Do you think that perhaps the guy who wrote this has a bit of a crush on him?’ I asked. The way this article was going, Mark would be leaping skyscrapers and rescuing people from burning buildings by the bottom of the page.

‘I got the impression he wants to marry him and have his babies,’ said Sam.

‘Mm.’ I bent over the magazine again, in search of further references to this mysterious blonde hottie. There was more fulsome praise to wade through, and great screeds of rugby jargon. I think the writer even said something about ‘good clean ball’. As opposed, presumably, to all that nasty dirty ball that is such a blight on our national game. The hottie didn’t make her reappearance until the last paragraph.

And the blonde with whom he was snapped at Auckland’s waterfront last week? Tipene frowns and scratches his chin. ‘Sorry,’ he says finally, ‘which one was that?’

I handed Sam back his magazine and rested my head despondently against the back of the couch.

He laughed. ‘And you used your sock to show him how to put a prolapsed uterus back in.’

‘The sock was a high point,’ I told him. ‘
Then
I took him to a calving at Joe Watkins’ and covered him in rotten afterbirth.’

‘Awesome,’ said my supportive cousin.

‘Who’d you cover with rotten afterbirth?’ Dylan asked, ambling in and throwing himself into an armchair.

‘Mark Tipene,’ said Sam. ‘You know – him.’ He waved a hand towards the TV, where in the pre-game ad break an admiring crowd of All Blacks was clustered around a dinky little car I doubt any of them would have been seen dead driving. ‘The reason behind Helen’s sudden interest in rugby.’

‘Mark Tipene?’ Dylan repeated, eyeing me sceptically.

‘It’s true,’ said Sam. ‘She met him at Alistair Johnson’s party last weekend and asked him what he did for a living, and he asked her out on the strength of it. I suppose he thought it made a pleasant change from girls drooling on him.’

On screen the players ran onto the field. It was a clear, still night in Dunedin and the men’s breath steamed in the cold. A pair of chilly-looking
New Zealand Idol
finalists sang the Australian and New Zealand national anthems, with added quavery bits to prove that they were serious musicians. Mark’s face in the line of black-uniformed men was grim and handsome, like a storybook hero’s, and my stomach gave an uncomfortable little lurch.

‘Beer, Hel?’ Sam asked, prodding me in the ribs with a sockclad foot.

‘Yes, please.’

‘What’s the difference between a ruck and a maul?’ I whispered ten minutes later.

‘In a maul they’re passing the ball back from one to the other, and in a ruck the ball’s on the ground and they’re tickling it towards their side with their feet,’ said Sam.

‘Cool. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. Be quiet.’

Mark, in the middle of the All Black lineout, reached up as his teammates lifted him and swiped the ball casually from the hands of the Australian jumper. Then he promptly disappeared from sight under a boiling mass of black and gold jerseys. I stiffened in alarm. How on earth was
that
legal? He’d be trampled to death if the ref didn’t blow the whistle . . .

The whistle blew. Well, I thought, better late than never. Presumably now one of those stomping brutes would be sent to the sin bin. In the top left-hand corner of the TV screen a little picture of a whistle appeared, with
Not rolling away
beside it. Mark was getting to his feet, and a gold-shirted player had the ball.

‘
What?
’

‘You’ve got to roll away when you’ve been tackled,’ Sam explained. ‘You’re not allowed to kill the ball like that.’

‘How was he supposed to roll away with ten enormous thugs lying on top of him?’

Sam shrugged. ‘Those are the rules. And he probably
could
have rolled away – they all try to make it look like they couldn’t help it. You get away with as much as the ref will let you.’

‘I still don’t see how getting squashed flat can be his fault.’

‘Helen, shut up,’ said Sam.

Great try. You legend.

Not the most inspiring of text messages, but its composition occupied the entire drive home and the removal of a rabbit’s large intestine from the kitchen floor. Murray, the soul of generosity, always left the bits he didn’t want for me.

The phone buzzed.
Thanks. Any calving boys?

I was still frowning at the screen when it was followed by,
Or
even calving cows
. Ah yes, of course. The pitfalls of predictive text.

None of either
, I wrote.
How many bones broken after that game?

None. All good.

Thats a relief. Goodnight x

And I only agonised for two minutes about the x, which was definitely progress.