Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

by Danielle Hawkins

  Danielle Hawkins grew up on a sheep and beef farm near Otorohanga in New Zealand, and later studied veterinary science. After graduating as a vet she met a very nice dairy farmer who became her husband. Danielle spends two days a week working as a large-animal vet and the other five as housekeeper, cook and general dogsbody. She has two small children, and when she is very lucky they nap simultaneously and she can write. Danielle’s first novel, Dinner at Rose’s, was published in 2012.

  Chocolate

  Cake for

  Breakfast

  DANIELLE HAWKINS

  First published in 2013

  Copyright © Danielle Hawkins 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Arena Books, an imprint of

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 87750 540 9

  eISBN 978 1 74343 586 1

  Typeset in 13/17 pt Garamond Premier Pro by Bookhouse, Sydney

  For Mum, who is awesome

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  1

  WHEN THE PHONE RANG ON SATURDAY NIGHT I WAS ON my knees in the shower, scrubbing grimly at a mould stalactite I had just discovered lurking under the shelf that holds the soap. I would have liked to ignore the phone – having started on the stalactite I wanted to finish the job – but I was on call, so I stood up and reached around the shower curtain.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘What are you up to?’ asked my cousin Sam.

  ‘Cleaning the shower.’

  ‘Are you coming to Alistair Johnson’s party?’

  I noticed that a medium-sized waterfall was coursing from the point of my elbow onto the clean clothes on the floor, and hurriedly turned off the water. ‘No, I’m on call,’ I said.

  ‘So what? It’s at the fire station. Miles closer to the clinic than your place.’

  ‘I can’t be bothered,’ I said feebly.

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ said Sam. ‘Come on. It’ll be good for you.’

  This annoyed me, mostly because I had a feeling he was right.

  The street outside the Broadview fire station was lined with cars when I got there, and there was a cluster of youths around the front door.

  Sam was watching the rugby on the big screen inside, and I went and leant on the table beside him. ‘Christ,’ he was saying, ‘just pass the freaking thing . . . Shit, he’s dropped it cold. Bloody idiot.’

  ‘Hey, Sammy,’ I said. Sam is my favourite cousin; he sells tractors and self-unloading trailers and other bits of serious farm equipment at Alcot’s Farm Machinery. He has a cheerful round face and sticky-up brown hair and exudes fresh-faced boyish charm, and he could sell ice to Eskimos. ‘Is Alison here?’

  ‘Was half an hour ago,’ said Sam. ‘But then I saw Hamish Thompson collar her, so she might have topped herself by now.’

  ‘Why didn’t you save her?’ But he had turned his attention back to the rugby, so I went to look for her myself.

  I had only gone about three paces when I spotted Briar Coles dead ahead. Briar was in her last year of high school and wanted desperately to be a vet nurse. She had spent every Wednesday for three months with us at the clinic, until the boss couldn’t take it anymore and asked the school not to send her back. She was very sweet, and very dim, and she followed you around telling you about her ponies and her dog and getting in your way until you wanted to throw something at the poor girl’s head.

  Her face lit up in welcome as she saw me, and taking prompt, if cowardly, action in the face of emergency I smiled, waved and ducked out through a side door.

  As I hurried around the side of the building into a handy patch of deep shadow (Briar being a persistent sort of girl), I tripped over someone’s legs stretched across the path. I lurched forward, and a big hand grasped me firmly by the jersey and heaved me back upright.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said breathlessly.

  ‘Helen?’ Briar called, and I shrank back into the shadows beside the owner of the legs.

  ‘Avoiding someone?’ he asked.

  ‘Shh!’ I hissed, and he was obediently quiet. There was a short silence, happily unbroken by approaching footsteps, and I sighed with relief.

  ‘Not very sociable, are you?’

  ‘You can hardly talk,’ I pointed out.

  ‘True,’ he said.

  ‘Who are you hiding from?’

  ‘Everyone,’ he said morosely.

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘Better give it a minute,’ he advised. ‘She might still be lying in wait.’

  That was a good point, and I leant back against the brick wall beside him. ‘You don’t have to talk to me,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  There was another silence, but it felt friendly rather than uncomfortable. There’s nothing like lurking together in the shadows for giving you a sense of comradeship. I looked sideways at the stranger and discovered that he was about twice as big as any normal person. He was at least a foot taller than me, and built like a tank. But he had a nice voice, so with any luck he was a gentle giant rather than the sort who would tear you limb from limb as soon as look at you.

  ‘So,’ asked the giant, ‘why are you hiding from this girl?’

  ‘She’s the most boring person on the surface of the planet,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a big call. There’s some serious competition for that spot.’

  ‘I may be exaggerating. But she’d definitely make the top fifty. Why did you come to a party to skulk around a corner?’

  ‘I was dragged,’ he said. ‘Kicking and screaming.’ He turned his head to look at me, smiling.

  ‘Ah,’ I said wisely. ‘That’d be how you got the black eye.’ Even in the near-darkness it was a beauty – tight and shiny and purple. There was also a row of butterfly tapes holding together a split through his right eyebrow, and it occurred to me suddenly that chatting in dark corners to large unsociable strangers with black eyes probably wasn’t all that clever.

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I collid
ed with a big hairy Tongan knee.’

  ‘That was careless.’

  ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

  I pushed myself off the wall to stand straight. ‘I’ll leave you in peace. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘You too,’ he said, and held out a hand. ‘I’m Mark.’

  I took it and we shook solemnly. ‘Helen.’

  ‘What do you do when you’re not hiding from the most boring girl on the planet?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m a vet,’ I said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I play rugby.’

  ‘Oh!’ That was a nice, legitimate reason for running into a Tongan knee – I had assumed it was the type of injury sustained during a pub fight. ‘Professionally, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Auckland,’ he said.

  ‘For the Blues?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s really great,’ I said warmly. ‘Good for you.’

  He smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  I went right around the building and in again through the main doors, back past the cluster of youths. Sam had turned his back on the rugby and was talking instead to my friend Alison. ‘Hi, guys,’ I said.

  ‘Where did you vanish to?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Briar Coles spotted me,’ I explained, ‘so I went and hid for a while. Sammy, do you know someone called Mark who’s about eight foot tall and plays rugby for Auckland?’

  ‘You mean him?’

  I followed his gaze across the room to where a big, dark, powerful-looking man with extensive facial bruising was standing flanked by one teenage girl while another took a photo on her cell phone. ‘That’s the one,’ I said.

  ‘Helen, you moron,’ said Sam. ‘That’s Mark Tipene.’

  I looked again, and went hot all over with embarrassment. It was indeed Mark Tipene, and I was indeed a moron. ‘I just asked him what he did for a living.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Alison asked.

  ‘He said he played rugby for Auckland.’

  ‘Well,’ said Sam, ‘he does.’ When not playing for the All Blacks, where even I knew that he had for years been regarded as the world’s best lock. Whatever it was that locks did.

  ‘What on earth is Mark Tipene doing here?’ I asked. You just don’t expect to find random All Blacks loitering behind the fire stations of small rural Waikato townships.

  ‘Apparently he’s Hamish Thompson’s cousin,’ said Alison. ‘Poor bastard.’ Hamish was a strapping young dairy farmer, whose advances she had been resisting ever since he moved into the district, and her patience was wearing a little thin.

  Across the room Mark farewelled the teenage girls and was instantly accosted by my uncle Simon, who was Broadview’s mayor and took his position very seriously. The poor bloke should have stayed lurking in the shadows.

  ‘There you are, Helen!’ said a voice from behind my left shoulder.

  ‘Hi, Briar,’ I said weakly, turning around. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Really good. Guess what?’

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Dad’s getting Millie in foal to an Arab stallion over in the Hawke’s Bay!’

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  ‘And he says I can school the foal all by myself.’

  I had heard all about Briar’s father’s horse-training methods and quite a lot about Briar’s new western saddle when my cell phone buzzed in my jeans pocket. ‘Sorry, Briar, this’ll be a call . . . Hello?’

  ‘Helen? Fenella Martin’s got a cat needing a caesarean,’ said the after-hours lady, who never wasted time on small talk.

  This was not, it seemed, my night. Fenella Martin bred Siamese cats and was the Client from Hell. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll see her at the clinic in five minutes.’ I shut the phone. ‘Sorry, Briar, I’ve got to go.’

  Scanning the crowd for Sam or Alison to let them know I was leaving, I saw Mark Tipene still deep in conversation with Uncle Simon. It didn’t seem to be his night either.

  Fenella, a particularly unpleasant woman in her fifties with long red straggly hair and long black straggly skirts, was dancing up and down on the doorstep when I reached the clinic. Breeders are often a bit eccentric, but Fenella was as mad as a hatter.

  ‘It’s Farrah,’ she said (all Fenella’s queens had names starting with F, just like their mummy). ‘It’s her first litter. She had two in my bed about four this morning, but nothing since then.’

  In her bed. Lovely.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll open up while you get her out of the car.’

  ‘You’ll have to carry the cage,’ said Fenella. ‘My back’s playing up.’

  Poor Farrah was only a kitten herself, undergrown and underfed. She lay on her side on the consult room table, panting. ‘Shh, baby,’ Fenella crooned. ‘Mummy’s here. Mummy won’t let anything bad happen to you.’

  Seeing as Mummy had left the poor cat in second-stage labour for fourteen hours before bothering to bring her in I was underwhelmed by this statement. I inserted a gloved and lubed fingertip gingerly into the little cat’s vulva and met a nose, jammed tight against the pelvis. ‘I can feel the kitten’s head,’ I said, ‘but it’s huge and her pelvis is pretty narrow. I don’t think it’s going to come out that way.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Fenella. She fished a balled-up tissue out of her cleavage and blew her nose wetly. ‘Get on with it.’

  Caesareans are usually quite fun, but this one wasn’t. Fenella insisted on being present right through the surgery and she questioned my every move.

  ‘Why are you putting her on fluids? Nick never puts my cats on fluids.’

  ‘Just to make sure her blood pressure doesn’t drop. And if I need to give her anything IV we’ve already got the vein.’

  ‘Well, I’m not paying extra just because you’re not up to speed.

  Nick doesn’t have to put my cats on fluids.’ The reason Nick didn’t put her cats on fluids was that she paid her account off at about five dollars a month, and he disliked spending money he knew he wasn’t going to get back.

  Fenella adjusted her knickers and asked, ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’

  It would have been nice to reply with, ‘Well, I’ve never done an operation before, but I’ve seen heaps on Grey’s Anatomy and I’m really keen to give one a crack,’ but the only time I manage witty repartee is in the privacy of my own bedroom, when I’m imagining how the conversation might have gone if only I was brave. ‘Yes,’ I said gravely, drawing anaesthetic into a syringe. ‘I’ve done lots of caesareans. My last job was at a small-animal practice in England.’

  ‘I just adore my animals,’ said Fenella. ‘The cost doesn’t matter.’ The cost never matters to bad debtors, because they’ve got no intention of paying anyway.

  There was only one kitten left in the uterus, wedged so tightly into the pelvic inlet it was quite hard to retrieve. I handed it to Fenella, who wrapped it tenderly in a towel and rubbed it. This didn’t help the kitten, which was well and truly dead, but it helped me quite a lot. I managed to suture the uterus and the muscle layer before she looked up again, and thus only had to endure comments like ‘You should be using thicker thread than that’ and ‘Those stitches are too close together’ while I stitched up the skin.

  2

  ‘OOH LOOK,’ SAID JOHN SOMERVILLE HAPPILY. ‘A WOOD pigeon. There he goes.’ He turned his head to watch it, slackening his hold on the leg rope, and the steer attached to the other end of the rope kicked me in the face.

  It was a good, solid kick, and it sent me sprawling backwards into the mud. There was a sharp stabbing pain in my front teeth and something warm trickled across my cheek – I suspected it was blood, and reached up to touch it. It was.

  John looked at me in mild surprise. ‘Are you alright, my dear?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said a trifle shortly, exploring my teeth with the tip of my tongue. They were all still in the right place, and I pushed myself up to sit. ‘I think we’ll sedate him, John.’<
br />
  He sighed and adjusted his towelling hat. ‘If you must,’ he said.

  The steer in the race tried to kick me again as I sidled up to inject him – an impressive, double-barrelled kick. You don’t often meet such hostility in cattle. (Horses, now, are different, and shouldn’t in my opinion be trusted for a second. I was soured early in life by the small and evil Shetland pony my parents borrowed for me from the neighbours, which specialised in pulling children off its back with its teeth.) I gave him a fairly hefty dose of sedative, and eventually he grew sleepy enough to let me tie his leg back up and unwind the wire that was cutting into his fetlock.

  ‘Could you give him a long-acting antibiotic?’ John asked, tearing his attention very briefly from a cluster of white puffy clouds drifting across the afternoon sky. ‘I might not manage to get him in again.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course. And an anti-inflammatory, and then we’ll just have to keep a bit of an eye on it and hope the blood supply to his foot hasn’t been too badly damaged. I’ll give you a ring in a few days to see how it’s going.’

  ‘How kind,’ he murmured. ‘How very kind.’ He picked up my drug box without fastening the lid, and syringes, needles and bottles of penicillin showered down around his feet.

  ‘What happened this time?’ Thomas asked. When you first met Thomas you just got the impression of bad skin and more Adam’s apple than any one person could possibly need, but he manned the front desk of the Broadview Veterinary Centre (Your Partners in Animal Health Since 1967) with military efficiency.

  ‘Kicked by a steer,’ I said, jumping up to perch on the desk beside him. ‘Pretty cool, eh?’ A blood vessel in my right eye had burst, and the white of the eye was now bright red.

  ‘You look kind of evil.’

  ‘Imagine if it was both eyes. People might think I was a vampire.’

  ‘I read one of those books,’ said Thomas. ‘It’s the coloured bit of the eye that’s red. And aren’t vampires supposed to be incredibly beautiful?’

  ‘Are you saying I’m not?’

  ‘It might help if you washed the cow shit off your ear, for a start.’ He pulled the accident book out from under the counter and shoved it towards me.