The Chocolate Run (17 page)

How on earth Martha knew, I had no idea. I didn’t keep a diary; didn’t send dodgy emails from the office; didn’t leave anything incriminating in my desk.

I kept my face neutral as I said, ‘Greg? What do you mean?’

‘Greg’s the complicated one you slept with, isn’t he?’

‘Erm . . .’

‘There’s no point denying it,’ Martha said. ‘You said it was complicated and Greg’s the only one who comes with complications that you still see. You wouldn’t tell me who he is because you know how much I hate him. You’ve got the glow of someone having regular sex. And, most damningly, every other word that comes out of your mouth these days is “Greg”.’

My eyes doubled in size as my hand flew to my mouth. ‘Am I really that bad?’ I said through my fingers.

‘Worse. But, bless you, I haven’t ever seen you so giddy.’

‘I can’t believe you guessed,’ I said.

Martha grinned, tapped the side of her Roman nose. ‘I can sniff out a good romance every time.’

‘Biscuits! Wasn’t sure which ones you liked so I bought a selection.’ Martha and I froze. Had Renée transformed into a psycho in the time it took her to get to the shops and back? It was all ‘Biscuits!’ now, but on the turn of a penny it could be screaming and dismembering.

From a flimsy white carrier bag she pulled out plain and milk chocolate digestives, rich tea, custard creams, fruit shortcake, shortbread, digestives and Jaffa Cakes. Each packet of biscuits she placed on my desk, then she grabbed her tea from her desk, scooted over to my desk on her chair. ‘What did I miss?’ she asked, her perfectly made-up brown eyes eager above her cup; her face excited and expectant. Renée could almost pass for one of the girls at that moment.

‘Amber’s sleeping with her best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend,’ Martha explained to the latest member of our gang. ‘You know,’ dramatic pause, ‘
Greg
.’ She said his name like it was the ‘c’ word. Because, I guess, Greg had become synonymous with that word over the past couple of years, not only because he shagged a lot but because he behaved so badly afterwards.

‘Fantastic!’ Renée replied. She put down her cup and clapped her hands in what could only be described as glee. If me skipping food for sex was unlikely, then Renée expressing glee was mythical. ‘I knew there was a man involved in her transformation.’

‘Transformation? What transformation?’ I asked.

‘You’ve changed. First it was that thing with that stupid journalist woman. No, no, it was the day you didn’t watch those films at the weekend. You’ve never done anything like that and I’ve known you years. Then the way you lied to that journalist woman. The Cannes thing proved it, though. Usually you’d go to stop the argument, but not this time.’

Even Renée had noticed.

‘Anyway, tell me . . . no, tell
us
everything.’

I glanced from the face of my colleague, to my boss, both watched me expectantly. With such a captive audience, I couldn’t help myself . . .

The good humour in our office lasted about six hours. When it got to eight-thirty and we were still in a meeting trying to find the right image for this year’s Festival, with no end to it in sight, we couldn’t even look at each other. The meeting table had the biscuit wrappers in the middle of it, each packet in various states of consumption. The Jaffa Cakes had gone first, followed by the milk chocolate digestives. We’d only picked at the rest. The longer we sat there, though, the more appealing the dry, sugar-topped fruit shortcakes became.

Martha was resting her forehead on the table, her brown locks falling forwards over her notepads; Renée sat right back in her chair, chewing on the end of her pen; and I had my feet on the meeting table, staring at the reflection of ourselves in the blackened window.

This year, Renée had given me the honour of running the Festival: coming up with a theme for it, scheduling, deciding which celebs and film-makers to persuade to come. I’d run through a multitude of themes and eventually settled on icons. Film icons. Past, present and future. ‘Where have all the icons gone?’ was the official theme. That would give us enough leeway to invite different classes of celebs. Our intellectual discussions would centre around things such as how film stars had stopped being the main icons of the day. What it meant to become an icon. Could films themselves become iconic? The whole thing was shaping up to be an event worthy of something Renée had conceived – if we ever found the right bloody image for the brochure cover.

We’d thought Audrey in
Breakfast At Tiffany’s
, but for posters, flyers and postcards on top of the brochure the copyright and reproduction costs would be too high, as Martha had pointed out.

Which meant holding our own photoshoot. But we wouldn’t get someone as unique as Audrey. I’d thought we should go ‘out there’, take the mick slightly. Have a couch full of icons, from Audrey to Sidney Poitier, James Dean to Halle Berry, slobbed out, eating popcorn, watching telly.

‘It’s not very glamorous,’ Renée had said, quashing my idea in four words. ‘We
are
about glamour.’ She added the other four in case I didn’t glean the meaning from her first four.

Every idea one of us had, only one of us liked at any one time. Again, I swallowed a scream. I was meant to be in the pub by now with Jen, Matt and Greg – it was Matt’s birthday and we were doing drinks.

‘What was wrong with the fake Audrey theme?’ I asked Renée. ‘It’s an image everyone instantly recognises.’

‘If you mention that again, I will kill you,’ Renée stated, not looking at me.

All righty then.

‘I like the couch idea,’ Martha mumbled from her facedown place on the table.

‘You hated it two hours ago,’ I reminded her.

‘I thought we’d be going home then,’ Martha said.

‘It’d not be glamorous enough,’ I said, parodying Renée. ‘We
are
about glamour.’

Martha lifted an arm. ‘See how many fingers I’m holding up?’ she asked. ‘That’s how long in seconds I’ve thought about your reply.’ She was showing me her middle finger.

‘Don’t make me angry you two, you won’t like it if I get angry,’ Renée threatened.

Ohhh
, I thought,
I’m so scared
.

Renée was a brandy liqueur truffle, made with genu-
ine
French brandy. Classy inside and out. Smooth, pure, dark chocolate. Bitter on the outside and covered in cocoa powder. Once you bit into it, though, the brandy startled you. It was smooth, warming. It gently heated your throat, then your oesophagus, then your stomach. Once it got to know you, this brandy liqueur truffle had no kick. It might threaten it by being brandy, but in reality it was smooth and loveable. You never forgot a real brandy truffle – its unusualness was always there at the back of your mind – and you never forgot Renée, no matter how hard you tried.

Right then, though, Renée was green chocolate. Not mouldy chocolate – more like Incredible Hulk chocolate. ‘Don’t make me angry, you won’t like to taste me when I’m ang—’

‘Chocolate!’ I blurted out.

Martha lifted her head hopefully; Renée stopped chewing on her pen.

‘Go on,’ Renée said.

‘Well, not just chocolate. We can have a cinema screen with the old-fashioned countdown reel on it with twenty-one – you know, because this is the twenty-first Film Festival. And a woman standing there with those old-fashioned boxes for selling cigarettes that they used to carry around their necks. And then, the cinema audience can be all our movie icons. Marilyn and Bogart and Chaplin and Audrey and James Dean. But, but . . . we can then have modern icons like Halle Berry,
Terminator
, and Keanu in
The Matrix
and Will Smith in
Men in Black
. We could also do things slightly differently and get it illustrated instead of using a photo so we don’t have to worry about getting good lookalikes. But the woman stood at the front, instead of selling cigarettes and ice creams she’s selling chocolate. Chocolate that’s got WYIFF on it.’

‘No, the chocolate has got “Star Bars” on it,’ Renée said.

‘That’s a brand name,’ Martha pointed out.

‘And a sponsorship possibility,’ Renée said.

‘And, because it’s the twenty-first one, we can have the last night party as a fancy dress ball and everyone can dress up as icons,’ I continued, warming to my theme.

‘On the opening night, we could have women dressed up like the original cigarette girls, handing out WYIFF chocolate or Star Bars,’ Renée said.

‘YES!’ Martha screamed, making us all jump. ‘I love that idea. I adore that idea. Let’s go with that idea. Please. Please!’ She was on the verge of prostrating herself in front of Renée.

‘Yes. Let’s do it,’ Renée said.

‘Home?’ Martha asked cautiously.

‘Home,’ Renée confirmed.

I left the glass fronted building and stepped into the outside world. The air wasn’t warm, but wasn’t cold. The sky was a darkening royal blue with very few stars – a perfect spring night for going to the pub with my mates and my secret lover. Walking quickly, I headed down along Wellington Street, then onto Boar Lane, then left up on Briggate, then up towards The Headrow. Halfway up Briggate I turned left into an alleyway, where the Black Prince’s Tavern was.

Black Prince’s was a long, narrow, cosy pub. Jen and I used to come here often when we were both single because we favoured comfort over pulling and a good night out involved Black Prince’s. I felt so at home at Black Prince’s I often had to remind myself not to kick off my shoes, undo my bra and openly pick my nose.

‘You’re sat in a chucked woman’s seat,’ Matt announced as I slipped off my coat. I’d made an effort clotheswise in proportion to how I felt about Matt – I’d put on a clean top this morning. I’d pulled my navy blue denim skirt from the laundry pile but, hey, clean blue shirt under a cleanish black cardie.

‘Sorry?’ I replied, already not liking where the conversation was going.

It was Matt’s thirty-first birthday and I’d missed quite a lot of his drinks with it now being gone nine. I’d given him a card and even steeled myself to give him a birthday peck on the cheek. As time went on, the more it sounded as if I didn’t like Matt. I did. There was simply something about him . . . it was knowing how he’d have reacted if the pregnancy scare had gone the other way. It was knowing that he had ‘issues’ with me and Jen being so close. It was a hundred other unspoken, unacknowledged things. But I did like him. Mostly.

‘The famous Nina was sat there not five minutes ago.’

NINA?!
My stomach flipped.
What the hell was she doing here?

Nina was someone from Greg’s past. An important someone. Greg met Nina a little over a year ago at a wedding, where she was with someone who went under the moniker of ‘her fiancé’. The fiancé watched Greg like a hawk because Greg was a good-looking man talking to his girlfriend. Nina made no move on Greg. Greg, who was enjoying her company but also scoping the room for available talent, made no move on Nina.

As they left, she grabbed Greg’s hand between her hands and shook it vigorously, pressing a note with her number and ‘call me’ on it into his palm. Greg did as instructed by the note – after shagging someone else at the wedding.

He called Nina and, a few days later, they met in a pub in Cookridge, miles away from where either of them lived. They talked. They snogged. They touched. They availed themselves of the pub’s facilities. Ladies’ room, of course.

Greg explained that lust had got the better of them: they had nowhere to go, and couldn’t wait, so contorted themselves into a cubicle and did it standing up.

‘You’re a class act, you,’ I’d said to him. He’d come round to mine afterwards because Cookridge was within walking distance of Horsforth, where I lived.

‘I couldn’t help it, she was so huphmnargh. She had the tightest vagina . . .’

‘Shut up! Shut up!’ I screamed before he launched into a detailed description, which he was wont to do. Courtesy of Greg, I knew a lot more about other women’s anatomy than I did my own. I threw a towel at him. ‘Get in that shower, don’t want you sat around here, smelling of sex.’

Greg toddled off to do as he was told. ‘And no wanking in the shower,’ I called as he shut and locked the door. He laughed his easy, sunshine laugh, and I couldn’t help but laugh too.

At one point I’d thought Nina was The One for Greg. He’d gone out with her for three months. Three whole months. A minor miracle in Greg’s history. He’d even broken his ‘no women in my bedroom’ rule for her. I didn’t ever meet her, neither did Matt or Jen – they only heard them having sex when she stayed over.

This was the woman whose seat I was sat in. I swung towards Greg.

‘She just walked in the pub. I suppose it happens when you live in the same city as an ex,’ he said quickly.

‘She’s not just an ex, is she, though?’ Jen said. ‘She’s THE EX.’ Jen tapped my arm. I turned to her. ‘You should’ve seen him, Amber. Talk about weak in the presence of beauty. He was incapable. He could hardly look at her. She was gorgeous, though. If I didn’t know he was seeing this mystery woman, I’d say he still had a thing about Nina. She was stunning.’

Yes, all right, I get the idea.

‘She was all curves and long hair and smouldery eyes and p—’

‘Weren’t you getting a round in, Jen?’ Greg interjected, glaring at her.

‘Oh, yeah. Pint, Amber?’

I nodded. Matt got up to ‘go make a big deposit in the porcelain bank’. (Matt really said things like that, because that’s the kind of man he is.)

‘Weak in the presence of beauty, huh?’ I tried to sound jokey once we were alone. It didn’t work, I sounded like I was: jealous. You always think you’ve felt an emotion until you truly experience it. For example, when Mimi the mad journalist had called, I thought I was jealous then, didn’t I? That was a mere trickle of a sentiment compared to this. This was jealousy in all its choking, irrational glory.

‘Amber, I couldn’t look at her because the last time I saw her she was coming at me with a knife.’

Things ended badly with Nina and Greg. Very badly.

After being together for three-and-a-bit months, Nina thought they were in a relationship. Or at least on the crest of a relationship. She wanted to take another step forwards, for him to come meet her parents . . . In reply, Greg suggested they see other people. Greg, though, didn’t meet her in a public place to finish with her, nor did he even dump her via phone, fax or text. He had to sleep with her first, didn’t he? In fact, he chucked her when they were in bed. Lay with his arms around her, probably stroking her hair as he explained it wasn’t working for him and they should call it a day. And he didn’t want to see her again because he wouldn’t want her to think they’d get back together.