Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

by Danielle Hawkins

  ‘– but you need to work on your confidence,’ he said, starting on a row of triangles, which he shaded carefully as he spoke. ‘Sometimes you come across as just a bit hesitant. I always remember the old vet I worked for as a new graduate. He was rough as guts and he never made any attempt to keep up with new treatments or techniques, but the cockies loved him. If he had no idea what was wrong with the cow he told them it had intestinal ringworm or malignant hepatitis or some other condition he’d made up on the spur of the moment, and they absolutely lapped it up. Used to drive me mad. I remember once I wanted to take bloods from a herd pre-calving, and the farmer told me that Bruce could tell if they were getting enough magnesium by just looking at their tongues.’ He looked up from his colouring-in to smile at me encouragingly.

  I smiled back. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll work on it. Thank you.’

  Nick bent his head and began drawing circles between his triangles. ‘And the other thing I wanted to catch up with you about is your parental leave.’

  ‘I put the form on your desk last week.’

  ‘You did,’ he agreed. ‘Thank you. You’re thinking you’ll be back in October?’

  I nodded. ‘I’m skipping the whole of calving. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine. We’ll be fine. But that isn’t very long. You’re entitled to twelve months’ maternity leave.’

  ‘Yes, but I only get paid for fourteen weeks of it,’ I said.

  Nick looked up at me and his eyebrows twitched in surprise. I realised that now he would think that Mark, who earned a cool half-million a year without counting sponsorship, wasn’t prepared to contribute anything towards the upkeep of his own child, and added quickly, ‘Mark would support me – us. I just don’t think it’s fair that he should have to.’

  My boss opened his mouth, thought better of whatever it was he’d been going to say, and shut it again.

  It was half past eight when Mark’s car turned in through my gate and parked behind the ute. I pulled my hands out of the sink and wiped them on the thighs of my maternity jeans, and went to the door to meet him.

  ‘Is the car alright there?’ he asked. ‘You’re not on call?’

  ‘No, it’s fine. How was the fitness test?’

  ‘All clear.’

  ‘Awesome,’ I said, reaching up to kiss him. ‘So you’re starting in Cape Town?’

  ‘No, I’m on the bench.’

  ‘Bob easing you back in?’

  ‘Mm,’ he said. ‘I hate the bench.’

  I had no problem with Mark being on the bench – it meant he wasn’t on the field, where he might get hurt – but I wasn’t quite stupid enough to say so. ‘Have you had tea?’ I asked.

  ‘I had something after training.’

  ‘There’s a chicken pie in the fridge.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well, in that case . . .’

  While he retrieved the pie I went back to my dishes. ‘My landlord came to see me last night,’ I said, scrubbing vigorously at the potato pot. ‘I have to be out of here by the end of the month so he can do the place up for his son to move into on the first of June.’

  ‘What, this month?’ Mark asked over his shoulder.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any idea where you’ll go?’

  I shook my head. ‘I haven’t even looked yet. If all else fails I’ll hang out at Dad and Em’s for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘You could come and stay with me for a while,’ he offered, putting the pie dish down on the bench and reaching for a plate.

  For a while. I hadn’t realised I still possessed the tiniest sliver of hope that one day Mark would go down on bended knee and beg me to move in with him so we could raise our child in the good old-fashioned, two-parent way. But the hope must have been there, because I felt it shrivel up and vanish, and the world became just a smidgeon darker and bleaker than it already was. ‘It might be a bit too far to commute to work,’ I said.

  A silence grew, during which Mark spooned chicken pie and mashed potato onto his plate and I attacked the cheese grater with a dish brush. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘the midwife is here, and the antenatal classes. And my name’s on the waiting list for the day-care centre here when I go back to work.’

  ‘When are the antenatal classes?’

  ‘It’s a whole weekend. Fourteenth and fifteenth of May, at the scout hall in town.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘Because you’re playing rugby in Brisbane,’ I said tiredly.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’m used to it.’

  ‘It is my job,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  Mark picked up a fork from the pile on the draining board and speared it into his pile of mashed potato.

  ‘Aren’t you going to warm it up?’ I asked as he retreated to the table.

  ‘It’s not very cold,’ he said, sitting down.

  I blinked fiercely as I started to dry the dishes. Yesterday had been awful, and today no better, and Mark was going away for a fortnight, and he didn’t love me anymore, if indeed he ever had, and –

  ‘You’re going to put the baby into day care five days a week?’ he asked suddenly.

  I looked up and saw him turn over the application form at the end of the table. ‘I’ll take ten weeks off when it’s born,’ I said. ‘At least.’

  ‘And then you want to go back to work full-time?’

  ‘My job is full-time,’ I said. ‘They’ve got no obligation to offer me a part-time position.’

  ‘Well, have you asked?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘So have you ever had any intention at all of giving me a say in any of this?’

  I looked at him sharply. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  He didn’t bother to reply in words, but lifted an eyebrow and ate a forkful of mashed potato. It was a move calculated to annoy, and boy did it succeed.

  ‘At what point, exactly, have you wanted a say in anything?’ I demanded.

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ he said, putting down his fork.

  ‘You said you wanted to just see how things were going to go. And you’ve been just seeing for the last four months, and I still don’t know if you’re in or out, and this baby’s arriving soon and I don’t even know where I’m going to l-live . . .’ My voice cracked and I swiped a furious hand across my eyes. For four months now I’d been holding my breath while he slipped away, misunderstanding by misunderstanding. Four months of constant worry, of sidestepping my family’s concerned or avid questions, depending on the questioner, and of guilt that the excited anticipation I should be feeling was entirely passing me by. You can become quite seriously bitter in four months. ‘This has stuffed up my whole life, and then you swan in and say you don’t want your kid in day care when you’ve got no intention of doing anything to help look after it yourself –’

  ‘That’s just bullshit, and you know it!’

  ‘You haven’t even got a car you can put a baby seat into!’ I cried. ‘You’re still just wandering around enjoying your perfect little playboy lifestyle and being World Cup pin-up guy. You haven’t had to give up anything, you’re –’

  ‘Yeah,’ he broke in icily, ‘well, I’m not the one who fucked everything up in the first place.’

  Snatching the grater off the bench, I flung it at his head. I missed, although he was only about three metres away, and it bounced harmlessly off a curtain without even having the decency to clatter.

  He gave a sarcastic snort of laughter.

  ‘Get out!’ I shouted. ‘Just get out!’

  ‘Oh, with pleasure, believe me,’ he said, shoving back his chair.

  I reached up and gave the chain around my neck a savage jerk. It broke, and I hurled his pendant across the room at him. Through sheer fluke it hit his chest, and fell in a small glittering heap at his feet.

  He looked neither at it nor at me. He opened the door, went out and slammed it behind him with a force that shook th
e house. The baby leapt beneath my ribs like a hooked fish.

  I didn’t move as his car started. There was a low, angry snarl as he revved the engine, a screech as the car turned onto the road, and he was gone.

  28

  MY HOT CHOKING FURY VANISHED ABOUT TWENTY seconds after Mark did, swamped by the appalled realisation that I’d finally lost him, and since people apparently don’t die of broken hearts I might have to live without him for another sixty years. Leaving the chicken pie on the bench for Murray to dismantle at his leisure I crept blindly up the hall and into bed.

  I suppose I must have got up the next morning and gone to work, although I have no recollection of anything that happened there. The day after that was a Friday, and at four fifty pm I looked at the clock on my computer screen and thought with exhausted relief that soon I’d be able to go home and cry.

  ‘Come on,’ said Keri, putting her head around the vet room door. ‘Drinks.’

  ‘Be there in a minute,’ Nick said, typing intently with one finger.

  ‘I’m just looking something up,’ I told her, with every intention of slipping out the back door and bolting for home as soon as they left the room.

  ‘Can’t you do it on Monday?’ She looked as though she would be more than happy to stand there and heckle, and I was far too fragile to withstand heckling. I shut down the computer and pushed myself up to stand.

  ‘What are we having, ladies?’ Thomas asked as we came into the shop.

  ‘Wine,’ said Keri.

  ‘You’ll have to grab a glass. Helen? Ginger beer?’

  ‘No thanks, I’m good.’

  The printer in the corner whirred, and Nick sauntered out of the vet room behind us to collect a few sheets of paper from its tray. ‘Right, chaps,’ he said, handing them round. ‘New roster.’

  We perused it in silence for a few moments before Richard said, ‘You’re fucking joking.’

  ‘I never joke,’ said Nick.

  ‘Every other weekend, two nights a week and no lieu days? That’s slave labour!’

  ‘It’s only for a couple of months,’ said Nick. ‘I’m reasonably confident you’ll survive.’

  ‘Survive what?’ Keri asked, coming back down the hall with a dusty-looking wineglass in her hand.

  ‘Spring,’ said Thomas. ‘Blame Helen – it’s all her fault for having unprotected sex.’ He was doubtless hoping for a reaction, but I was too miserable to oblige.

  Keri picked up a copy of the roster and looked at it. ‘Bloody hell, Nick, couldn’t you get a locum?’

  ‘Why pay good money for a locum when you can just work your existing staff to death?’ said Richard bitterly.

  ‘Listen here, you whining Gen Y brats,’ said Nick. ‘I’ve been looking for a locum since Christmas, and there aren’t any. So how about we all just stiffen our upper lips and get on with it?’

  ‘If that was supposed to inspire us, it failed,’ said Keri.

  ‘I was thinking about paying you some sort of bonus to make up for losing your lieu days, but I may yet change my mind.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, that would be a nice gesture.’

  Just then a small red car pulled up outside and Mrs Dobson-Hughes got out, the horrible Pierre clasped to her bosom.

  ‘Aren’t you on call?’ Richard asked Nick.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hah! She’s all yours.’

  Nick sighed as the automatic doors opened. ‘Hello, Maggie,’ he called. ‘What can we do for you?’

  ‘Pierre’s been sick twice since yesterday,’ she said. ‘We’re supposed to be going out tonight, and I couldn’t leave him without having him seen.’

  ‘Come on into the consult room and I’ll look him over,’ said Nick.

  ‘I’d prefer to see Richard.’

  ‘Of course,’ Nick said graciously. ‘Dr Fleming?’ And as the consult room door closed behind the three of them he sank into a chair and beamed at us. ‘There you go,’ he murmured. ‘Proof that karma does exist.’

  It started to rain just as I reached home, which seemed appropriate. It would be twenty to eight in the morning in South Africa, and Mark would be getting up. He would not, however, be calling to ask how my day had gone, tell me about his trip and complain about sharing a room with Sione Brown, whose hair-care products overflowed the bathroom sink to lie in piles on the floor. Unhappiness rolled over me in a great cold wave.

  My phone beeped and I pulled it out of my shorts pocket. The message was from Alison, and read, 6.30 ok 4 u?

  Oh, good God, no. I could no sooner go out this evening and act like a rational human being than I could have grown wings and flown to the moon.

  Sorry really shattered going to stay home and have early night.

  Ok hope ur better 2moro x

  Thanks have a good one.

  I put the phone back in my pocket, dropped my head onto the steering wheel and cried.

  Sobbing in the dark while the rain beats against the windscreen certainly is marvellously atmospheric, but eventually I tired of it, climbed laboriously out of the ute and went inside. I changed into pyjamas, fed Murray and sat down at the kitchen table to write a list.

  Place to live

  • Check in Broadcast

  • Ask Em

  • Aunty Deb?

  • Real estate agent?

  Although if I did find a new place I would have to pack, cut off and reconnect the electricity and phone, clean the oven . . . Seeing as getting up and dressed in the mornings was almost more than I could manage, my chances of achieving all that seemed, frankly, slim. I put down my pen and got up to put the kettle on.

  A car turned in through the gate, its headlights raking the shadowy kitchen. At least, I thought crossly, homelessness would prevent people from popping in unannounced to spoil my Friday night plans of eating a kilo or so of pasta with cheese and crying myself to sleep. I stamped across the kitchen to open the door.

  ‘Hi,’ said Sam, coming in past me and unloading a plastic bag full of styrofoam containers onto the table. ‘We brought food.’

  ‘Um, thanks,’ I said stupidly.

  Alison ran up the porch steps behind him. ‘Nice PJs,’ she said.

  I looked down – this evening’s pyjamas were very old and very threadbare, and gaped in a most unladylike fashion where the fly buttons had come off. Mark, on seeing them, had suggested it might be time to throw them down a deep hole and buy a new pair. I was just pointing out the breathtaking hypocrisy of this statement when he sat me on the edge of the table and started taking them off, and I sort of lost the thread of my argument.

  ‘I’ll go and change,’ I muttered now, hurrying up the hall.

  When I came back into the kitchen, dressed more respectably in sweatshirt and jeans, they had set out the food and found an assortment of plates. Murray was watching with interest from the end of the kitchen bench.

  ‘It’s the Stockman’s Arms’ new sharing platter,’ Alison explained. ‘It sounded quite nice. Sorry to just turn up.’

  ‘No, it’s lovely to see you. And the food looks great – what would you like to drink?’ I opened the fridge. ‘Beer?’

  ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to be drinking, in your condition,’ said Sam.

  ‘It’s Mark’s,’ I said, and my voice hardly wobbled at all. ‘It’s been there for months. Help yourself.’

  ‘Where’s he playing this weekend again?’ Alison asked.

  ‘Cape Town. And then Pretoria the weekend after.’

  ‘Tomorrow night will be a tough game,’ said Sam, plucking his beer of choice from the fridge. ‘The Stormers haven’t lost all season. How does Mark feel about Reuben Scott starting?’ Reuben was the third lock in the Blues squad, a pleasant young man with a slight shortage of chin, but more than ample nose to make up for it.

  ‘Not all that thrilled. He hates the bench. Ali, would you like a beer?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘Come and eat before it gets cold.’

  ‘Have you guys
heard of any places to rent?’ I asked, tickling Murray between the ears on my way to the table.

  ‘Not that I can think of,’ said Alison. ‘Why, are you thinking of moving?’

  ‘I have to. Rex wants the cottage for his son and I’ve got to be out by the end of the month.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sam. ‘This place is grim.’

  ‘Not as grim as moving back in with Dad and Em.’

  ‘Why on earth don’t you get your act together and move in with Mark?’ Then he jumped, as people do when kicked under the table.

  I tried to tell him why not, found that my throat had clamped shut and shook my head instead.

  ‘Oh, Helen,’ said Alison, leaping up to come around the table and hug me. ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Well, it’s not really a s-surprise – sorry . . .’

  ‘Arsehole,’ said Sam.

  ‘No he’s not,’ I gasped, lifting my head from Alison’s shoulder.

  ‘Yeah, he is,’ he said coolly. ‘Only arseholes leave their pregnant girlfriends.’

  ‘He tried. You c-can’t make yourself care about someone just because they’re having a baby.’

  ‘Well, if that’s how he feels I suppose you’re better off without him,’ said Sam, frowning.

  And I came to the conclusion, lying in bed later in that state of desolate calm that you reach when you’ve temporarily cried yourself out, that he was right. There’s no point in just wishing indefinitely for someone to love you when they don’t – eventually you’ve got to give up and start building yourself a new life.

  ‘Well,’ said Em a few days later, putting her bottle of nail polish down on the coffee table and looking critically at her handiwork, ‘personally, I never thought he was much of a rugby player.’

  Seeing as Em’s knowledge of rugby was probably somewhere on a par with Kim Kardashian’s, this was not a particularly damning condemnation.

  ‘He’s big and strong,’ she continued, ‘but all he does is run into people and try to rip the ball off them.’

  ‘Em, that’s pretty much the job description,’ I said. Rugby’s really fairly straightforward – the forwards try to pulverise each other, and then the backs skip lightly through the holes in the opposition’s defence to score the tries. Forwards can score tries, but it’s not their key role and they like to pretend it’s no big deal. A manly nod of acknowledgement once the ball is planted over the line is acceptable, but victory dances, like fancy hairstyles, are left to the backs.