The Chocolate Run

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘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.

  Exit a hysterical Nina, enter her best friend. Literally. Nina’s best friend, by all accounts a scary redhead with violent tendencies, stormed round to give him a tongue-bashing, two days later. She hadn’t approved of Nina dumping her fiancé for Greg, and now Greg had emotionally battered Nina she was going to return the compliment. Greg, unable to take his tongue-bashing like a normal man, had seduced her too. Spent the afternoon having sex with her, then made it clear they weren’t going to be anything more than a get-out-of-atongue-bashing shag. And could she possibly leave now because he was meeting some friends down the pub and had to get ready. (Yes, I know, he is a total bastard.) Greg, bless him, was mystified why, when he got back from the pub that night, Nina was waiting in the bushes outside his house, carving knife aloft, ready to stab him in the head. They wrestled for quite a long time – she being endowed with a mad woman’s strength and him unable to hit a woman, even when she was trying to kill him – before he managed to disarm her and she came to her senses.

  He’d then driven round to mine. A smarter person would’ve gone to a hospital, Greg made straight for my place. Because when you’re bleeding from the head and shaken up, what you need most in the world is a Deputy Festival Director.

  I’d buzzed him in then opened my door to find him leaning heavily on the banister, white and shaken. I’d helped him in and sat him on the sofa. I’d done a bit of patching up in my time and went onto automatic pilot. Using my first-aid kit, I cleaned up his face, which was covered in bright red fresh blood and the darker, coagulated stuff but looked a lot worse than it was. He hadn’t flinched when I dabbed antiseptic on his cuts, didn’t notice as I stuck clear plasters on his wounds. He simply talked, telling me over and over what happened. I gave him beer for the shock and sat opposite him in my living room as he repeated in a trembling voice what happened. As he spoke, I was fighting the urge to run. Run and not stop running until I was far, far away from him. To leg it so I wouldn’t be drawn into this again. I didn’t want to be part of another dysfunctional trio. Didn’t want to be in another situation where I was wiping away blood, offering comfort, lying about cuts and bruises. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, leave him. There’s a ‘for better or worse’ clause implicit in genuine friendships and, if it was nothing else, our friendship was genuine.

  After a few beers and he’d stopped talking, I’d taken him to bed with me. He was resting his good side on my chest and held me like children held teddy bears after a nightmare. ‘Honestly, the things men will do to get me in bed,’ I’d said. His hold around his Amber bear tightened. ‘Next time, you know, if you wanna bed me, say so. Don’t go trying to get decapitated. It’s not attractive.’ That’d made him laugh. Only a small laugh, but it made his body relax. It was for times like this my situation-lightening ‘humour’ had been invented.

  Greg, Nina and I were the only people who knew about the attack. He hadn’t asked me to, but I’d kept it a secret. I knew how these things worked. When you were the person who cleaned wounds and patched up torn skin and offered comfort, your role in a dysfunctional trio was to keep shtum. We’d never talked about that night – not even the next morning when he walked around in a WYIFF T-shirt because I was soaking the blood out of the other one – until now.

  ‘I was freaked out at her being so near to me. Being so normal when she tried to stab me,’ Greg was saying as he slid his hand on my thigh. I glanced over the scar from the deepest cut, a v-shaped thing a fraction below his left cheekbone. It’d faded and been smoothed out over time. It was only there if you knew what you were looking for. ‘When Jen started going on about my mystery woman I thought she was going to glass me. If on top of al—’

  Greg snatched his hand away as Matt’s blond head appeared from the loos and started in our direction.

  ‘So, Amber,’ Matt asked, as Jen settled the tray of beers on the table, ‘did you ever meet Nina?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said, ‘can’t say I ever had that pleasure.’

  ‘You should have heard them at it,’ Jen said.

  Matt cackled. ‘She could scream.’ He put on a girly voice: ‘Oh, Gweg, oh, Gweg, oh, Gwweeeggg.’

  ‘Greg wasn’t that quiet either,’ Jen added. She deepened her voice. ‘Uh, Nina, uh, Nina, Nina, Nina . . .’

  OK, enough with the sex talk, boys and girls.

  ‘Is the sex as good with your mystery woman?’ Matt asked.

  ‘What’s it to you, Matthew? It’s not like you’ll ever find out, is it?’ Greg replied.

  In other words, no. That’ll teach me to sit there all smug about my sex life.

  ‘Is that a no?’ Jen smirked.

  ‘Yup, Jenna, that’s a no. The sex isn’t as good with her . . . it’s better. Every time I see her I want to make love to her. To seduce me, all she has to do is walk into a room. It’s the best sex I’ve ever had and, as you both seem to bring up at every given moment, I’ve had a lot of sex. Of course, it’s so good because I adore her. It’s always better with someone you adore, isn’t it?’

  ‘When do we get to meet her?’ Jen asked, ignoring his non-rhetorical question. I spoke Jen and, roughly translated, she was saying: ‘I don’t believe she exists.’

  ‘I wouldn’t inflict you lot on her. Look at the way you carry on. She’d dump me in five minutes.’

  ‘What, you’re not even going to introduce her to Amber?’ Matt asked.

  Greg shook his head. ‘Nope, because, unlike you two bastards, Amber believes she exists. Right, it’s tequila time. My round.’

  We spilled out of the pub when they physically prised the glasses out of our hands and stood over us, asking us to leave. In the street, I threw my arms around Matt, squished my lips against his cheek and slurred, ‘Hope you had a good birthday.’

  He didn’t reply; wasn’t used to such displays of affection from me, obviously. I then threw my arms around Jen. ‘You’re my best friend,’ I informed her. ‘I love you so much.’

  ‘I love you sooooo much,’ she slurred back. ‘Come to my house next week and I’ll make my boyfriend go to Paris. And then we can be best friends. All the whole weekend.’

  ‘Okkaaayyyyy.’

  ‘An—’ Matt cut Jen’s sentence short by pulling her away, put his arm protectively around her shoulders and his other arm around her waist. He eyed me in distaste. He didn’t like such behaviour from us two.

  I swayed so violently from how forcefully Jen had been wrenched away that I thought for a moment I was going to topple over, but then Greg’s strong hands were resting on my shoulders holding me upright and still. I almost stuck my bottom lip out as Matt held Jen against him. I’d enjoyed that silliness with me best mate. ‘I’d better see Amber home,’ Greg stated.r />
  I shook my head in big movements. ‘Noooo. You go shag your mystery woman.’ I poked him in the chest. ‘You go have the fantastic sex. I go home to my vibrator. It’s bri—’

  One of Greg’s hands clamped over my mouth as he said, ‘You’ll thank me in the morning.’

  I noticed Matt roll his eyes slightly at Greg. Obviously meant about me. Cheeky get. The things Jen had said in pubs when she was pissed made what I was about to say seem like a nursery rhyme. I almost scowled at him, but didn’t because our eyes met. For a brief moment his green eyes locked with my black-brown eyes like two pieces of Lego coming together, which weren’t going to be separated any time soon.

  Matt was taller than me, had bigger hands and feet than me, was a man (allegedly) but I could still take him in a fight. That was another reason why he didn’t like me. Why I didn’t need to scowl at him or what he did. We both knew that if we ever had a throw-down moment, there’d be a first round knockout, no messing. A muscle twitched twice in the side of his face before he broke the eyelock. See? I could take him.

  ‘See ya, mate,’ Matt said to Greg. ‘Amber.’ He steered Jen down the road, with her waving over her shoulder at us until they hailed a taxi, clambered in the back and disappeared into the night.

  ‘The bus is that way,’ I said, pointing towards the bus station. At least I thought it was in that general area.

  ‘There’s something we need to sort out first,’ Greg said and pulled me back into the alleyway that led to the pub. He pressed me against the brick wall with his body. ‘I want to make sure that you know that you are,’ he said.

  I paused. Screwed up my face, thought really hard. Had I missed an important bit of what he was saying? You are. You are what? ‘What is you talking about, Peck-Peck?’

  ‘I want you to know that you are the best sex I’ve ever had. I wasn’t just saying it to them two. I want you every second of the day.’

  ‘I know,’ I said ostentatiously. ‘I, oh yes, I, am the shag of the century. They all say that to me. All the men in the world say I am the shag of the century. I am v—’