The Chocolate Run

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘We love you, Amber. If you really, really want to leave, we’ll cope. We’ll love you forever. I’d love a visit to Brighton.’ This was Martha.

  ‘Before you go, I’ll organise the christening. It’ll be a big party, you and Martha will have to buy new frocks. And hats. A lot of my film friends will come. But we can combine the christening with your leaving do. Make it bigger than the Festival.’ This was Renée.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said through my sobs. ‘You know I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ Martha said. ‘I hate the South.’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re staying,’ Renée said. ‘Because now, I’m going to ring up that bastard and give him a piece of my mind. Trying to steal my staff indeed.’

  ‘Here you go, love,’ Martha said. She dropped something clattery on my desk. ‘I’ve been keeping these in my drawer just in case. I know they’re your favourites.’

  I lifted my head to look at it. A packet of Maltesers.

  My stomach turned. I scraped back my chair and legged it to the loo to throw up.

  ‘what’s all the fuss about chocolate? give me a packet of crisps any day’

  chapter thirty-seven

  wedding nerves

  The invite stares at me.

  I stare at the invite.

  I’ve been sat here on my sofa, staring at it, turning it over and over in my hands since it was delivered.

  ‘What is it?’ I’d asked the courier who’d brought it to my door two hours ago.

  ‘A wedding invite,’ he replied as I put my moniker to his sheet. ‘I only know because it’s been in the office a few weeks but we were given specific instructions not to deliver it until tonight, love.’

  I’d given him a smile, took the envelope, headed straight for the kitchen. I’d then ransacked the place looking for chocolate.

  Since . . . since all that happened months ago, I’d stopped eating it. Stopped going out to sniff it. Stopped buying it. To eat chocolate was to be reminded I couldn’t read people. That I knew nobody. Not even myself. The closest thing I’d found to the real thing in my kitchen was cocoa powder right at the back of a cupboard. I’d snatched it from the shelf and shovelled heaped teaspoons of it into my mouth. It’d instantly absorbed the very little saliva in my mouth and set like cement, but I couldn’t stop. I carried on until it hit the spot.

  Until I was calm enough to sit on the sofa and stare at the invite.

  A lot has changed since . . . since. That’s what it’s become in my mind: since . . . since. A lot has changed in three months. Renée gave birth to a girl and called her Johanne Jayne. We hadn’t had the christening yet, but she was gearing up for it. There were so many film people down to come a celeb magazine had asked to cover it. Luckily, I got the phone out of Renée’s hand before she replied. (It was her home phone as well – things haven’t changed that much.)

  Martha found her wedding dress, and mine and Renée’s bridesmaids’ dresses – she was serious about us being bridesmaids. She let me know last week that she was planning on conceiving on her honeymoon (heaven help Tony’s sperm if it didn’t comply).

  And I finished my screenplay. I had so much time. Evenings stretched into nothingness. Sometimes I’d come home and lie on the sofa, stare at the Bahamas-shaped water stain on my ceiling and simply think. Hours would pass and feel like minutes. Minutes would pass and feel like hours. Everything was out of proportion. So I’d started to use that time, those hours and hours that stretched into infinity, constructively. When it was finally finished, I’d given it to Mr Chocolate Sniffer to read. (There was an immense attraction between Mr CS and me. The more we saw of each other, the more obvious it was. And well . . . well, I was different.) He and I spent a lot of time working on it. We spent a lot of time rowing over it. He was brutally honest and I was different. I stood up to him. It didn’t take much for me to passionately disagree with him. I felt deeply about my screenplay, it was my baby and nobody would insult it. Nobody would tell me this bit didn’t sound right, this bit wouldn’t look right. That bled into other areas of my life, too. I was different. If I still ate chocolate, if I still thought in chocolate, I’d say that I was the kind of chocolate they’d never sell because I was now such an eclectic mix.

  All the things I kept right down at the bottom of my soul, the nuts, the raisins, the honeycomb, had come rising to the surface. Hard bits – I got pissed off and said so and didn’t apologise and didn’t fret about it. Being the boss now meant I had to be hard sometimes and not worry about it. I had sweet bits, the raisins that made me giggly and girly. I had ultra-sweet bits, the honeycomb that made me cry at the end of the most ridiculous made-for-TV movies (all someone had to do was say, ‘I love you’ and I’d be in bits because I knew they’d be about to kick the bucket). I had caramel bits that made people want to stick to me – I noticed now that people approached me with the same respect that they went to Renée with. Yep, I was different.

  Greg was true to his word and didn’t call. Didn’t email. Didn’t text. Didn’t visit. Didn’t write, either. Technology was good like that, it helped remind you how much someone was blanking you.

  Jen called, emailed, wrote. But I screened calls. If I answered the phone at work and it was her, I’d say I’d call her back and not bother. There was no going back with me and Jen.

  Matt. I didn’t know about Matt. I didn’t care, either.

  I stare at the invite. A cream envelope, thick paper. Expensive.

  Maybe I should rip it in half, chuck it out unread. I can’t go to Matt and Jen’s wedding if I don’t get the invite. Or, maybe it’s Greg. I read a piece in the Sunday Chronicle the other month that he’d gone to Dublin. Dublin, where his ex, the infamous Kristy, lived. He’d apparently looked up old friends while he was there. Whether he meant it literally or not, I wasn’t sure. How would I deal with that? How would I deal with Greg getting married? It didn’t hurt like it used to any more. It wasn’t the first thing that came to mind in the morning, or the last thing I thought about at night. I thought about it now and again. Only four or five times a day.

  I slide my fingers under the flap of the envelope, tear it open. I pull the cream card out. OK, deep breath. Look at it.

  My heart stops. Physically stops. In that moment I’m struggling for breath, willing my heart to beat again, feeling all life drain from me. I’m actually having a heart attack. I clutch at my chest, trying to force air into my lungs.

  In my hands I hold:

  Eden Salpone

  and

  Leonard Hampton

  Request the pleasure of your company at their wedding

  I turn the card over.

  Tomorrow.

  Mum and Dad2 are getting married tomorrow. At three o’clock. At their local registry office in Lewisham. Tomorrow. TOMORROW.

  I race through every conversation I’ve had with my parents over the past few weeks. Nothing. No mention of nuptials. No mention of ‘going legal’. No mention of marrying a person you’ve already slept with. Hadn’t Mum said that wasn’t possible? Hadn’t we almost rowed about that?

  She hadn’t exactly said, ‘I told you so,’ when Eric told her I’d split up with Greg – there was no way in hell I’d tell them – but she hadn’t exactly said, ‘I thought it was going to last,’ either. In fact, she’d been, if anything, indifferent. It’d been Dad2 who’d tried to bully me into giving it another try with Greg. ‘Why don’t you call Greg, love?’ he’d say on a nightly basis. ‘Try again. You were so good together.’ Mum was obviously just relieved that I wasn’t going to be having pre-marital sex.

  I bet Eric knew. They’d all probably plotted to keep things from me because I was still in mourning for a relationship built on lies and deception. Well I’m going to give that Eric the fu—

  RING! My body lurches as the phone rings.

  ‘WHY THE HELL DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?’ Eric screams when I answer.

  ‘WHY DIDN’T I TELL YOU? WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?’ I
scream back.

  Pause. Heavy breathing. ‘So, they didn’t tell you?’ Eric says.

  ‘Eric, they never bloody tell me anything. Especially not this.’

  ‘Not even to cheer you up because you split up with Greg?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They sent me and Arri two airline tickets. They’re mad. Why now? Why keep it a secret?’

  ‘Maybe . . . I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

  ‘Let’s call them. You call Mum, I’ll call Dad on his mobile.’

  ‘OK, talk to you afterwards.’

  I hold the receiver in my hand, push the button to cut the line and RING!

  I almost drop the phone, then after a bit of struggling put it to my ear. ‘Have you got it?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Huh? Got what?’ I say, feeling dim and numb.

  ‘The invite,’ Mum says impatiently.

  ‘Oh, the invite to your wedding that you told me nothing about.’

  ‘We wanted it to be a surprise.’

  ‘Well, it was that.’

  She pauses. Obviously waiting for something. ‘I’m waiting for you to say it,’ Mum says.

  ‘Say what? Oh, sorry, congratulations. Despite the shock, congratulations. I’m really pleased for you.’

  ‘Not that, Amber. You’re very angry, I can tell.’

  ‘Angry about what?’ I ask.

  ‘Me marrying Leonard after everything I said about you and Gregory.’

  ‘Mummy, I’m very pleased about you marrying Dad2. I adore him. It was just a shock. I’m not angry. Why would I be angry?’

  ‘I wouldn’t change the last few years with Leonard for anything. I was happy with things the way they were, and that’s what I should have remembered about you and Gregory. You were happy with Gregory. Leonard told me what Gregory had said about you. How much he respected you. I didn’t know; I simply assumed he was using you.

  ‘I was so cross with myself when you split up with him because it might have been because of something I said. I was just worried that he was in your life so quickly. I thought you were going to get hurt.

  ‘I worry about you, Amber. I worry that you don’t realise how proud of you your father and I are. We’ve always been proud of you, whatever you do. But we are worried you are never going to get married or have children. You have spent so much time alone and I worry about that. We don’t want our marriage to put you off settling down.’

  Mum pauses to take a breath and I jump in. What Mum had said was big stuff, was like her walking naked down the street. And it was also the start of a big conversation that we weren’t going to have. Some people need that kind of emotional openness, but not me. Not with my mother. We were fine as we were, Mum and I. We didn’t need to force some kind of emotional bond between us when we had a bond. If I’d learnt anything in the past three months it was that you are responsible for your role in a relationship. You and only you. That how you respond to people is far more important than how people treat you. If you don’t like the way someone treats you, then you change it. If you carry on with it, then you’re telling that person it’s OK to treat you like that. Like, in my life. Mum, Dad and Dad2 always expected the best of me because I delivered. I was the good girl so they expected a good girl. Eric hadn’t lost their love because he was bad, because he did what he wanted. If I took a leaf out of Eric’s book, did what I wanted instead of fretting about who would hate me as a result, then I’d be happier. At a very basic level I’d have done what I wanted; at the very top level I would’ve found out who truly loved me, who’d stick with me. That’s why I loved Eric so: he’d always wanted me to be who I was. Why I’d loved Jen; I used to think she wanted nothing from me than for me to be me. And why I’d loved Greg more than anyone. Because, out of all of them, he pushed me – sometimes unintentionally with his outrageous behaviour that made me angry – to be me. Like every person on earth seemed to see – and say – I relaxed with Greg. Relaxed enough to be me. I had a moment of stillness. I could see where I was in this world. And it didn’t end when he walked out, either. All this realisation came from doing a lot of thinking. A lot of moving on. A lot of growing up.

  So, I didn’t need this conversation with Mum. I didn’t want her to strip off for me because she felt guilty. Didn’t need her to explain to me why she’d been so cold and unavailable when I knew why. Mum and I were never going to be best mates; I didn’t want to be her best mate. I wanted her to be my mother. To love me and be connected to me because we were related. No deep and emotional chats were required for that.

  ‘I wish you’d told me sooner about the wedding,’ I jump in. changing the subject. ‘I’ve got nothing to wear.’

  ‘I seem to remember buying you a dress for a special occasion,’ Mum says, smoothly taking up the subject change. I can hear the relief in her voice. She didn’t want a deep and emotional session, either. Like daughter, like mother.

  The heavens open and a chorus of angels sing as everything becomes clear. That’s why, at thirty, Mum had pushed that dress on me and that suit on Eric. That’s why they both had tears in their eyes when I came out of the changing room. They weren’t getting silly in their old age – they were getting emotional because the next time they saw me in it, it’d be on their wedding day.

  My parents are getting married. The crazy, fantastic fools.

  ‘I’ll get the first train down tomorrow morning. Hopefully I’ll make it down in time.’

  ‘You’d better do, my dear daughter, you’re my only bridesmaid.’

  ‘Of course I’ll be there. Let me speak to Dad2, I’m sure he’s talking to Eric.’

  I wander across King’s Cross station concourse, caught off-guard by how Christmassy it is. Decorations, carol singers, tinsel in all the shop windows. I’ve forgotten it’s Christmas. Next week. It was all around me, but I’ve been insulated from it. It’s something other to me. With my family, Christmas has always been a fraught time. A couple of times Jen and I spent it together, getting drunk and eating junk food, safe from the scarier elements of families at Christmas. This year, since I haven’t even noticed properly it’s Christmas, I haven’t even thought about where I’m going to spend it. Probably alone since Mum and Dad2 will be off on honeymoon, Dad1’s in Ghana, and Eric and Arrianne could probably do with time to themselves. Christmas alone, not as scary a prospect as it once would’ve been.

  I spent the best part of two hours yesterday on the phone to Mum and Dad2, going through the arrangements, being told what was expected of me, which relatives I had to take care of.

  ‘You’d better not have put on any weight,’ Mum had said before she hung up, ‘that dress fit perfectly when I bought it.’

  If anything, I’ve lost weight. Since . . . since, I’ve spent more time at my computer than eating. The dress is loose—

  A movement, the movement of a familiar figure walking across the station concourse catches my eye, stops my train of thought. Tall, broad, but the hair – black-black, bluey-black – is cut short. Almost a skinhead. I only see the back of the figure, almost a flash of its profile. Greg.

  GREG!

  I go to call his name, then remember Greg is no longer part of my life. So, even if this figure with his unusual-coloured hair and purposeful stride is Greg, what am I going to say? ‘Hi’?

  The figure disappears in the crowd, a flash of something almost familiar in the midst of this crowd of unfamiliarity.

  Maybe I’ll email Greg when I get back. I’m sure he’d want to know that my loca parents got married. Only to tell him that, though. Nothing else.

  I head for the Tube. I’ve got to stop off on the way to the house to buy some suitable shoes – Mum’ll freak if I walk down the aisle in trainers.

  Eric and Arri are at the registry office, greeting guests; I’m waiting for Mum to finish getting ready. I’m not allowed to see her until she’s finished. The house is full of Mum’s relatives, full of people I haven’t seen in a blue moon, and probably won’t see until the next blue moon. The ai
r is full of happy chatter, Ghanaian dialects, delivered in loud, cheerful voices.

  The doorbell goes. Before I can move to answer it, someone else has got it.

  ‘Amber?’ a familiar voice says a few seconds later.

  I freeze in examining my expertly painted nails. It can’t be. It really can’t be. I slowly ease my gaze up. It is. It really is.

  ‘Daddy?’ I say as I stand.

  My dad, my real dad, the loins of which I am the fruit, stands in the doorway. Taller than me but not much, lined face with greyed black hair, wearing a blue suit with cream shirt and navy-blue tie, much like the one my parents had bought Eric.

  Before I can ask why he’s here, a hush falls on the house. Silence has descended because Mum has appeared at the top of the stairs.

  A lump forms in my throat, tears sting my eyes. She’s stunning in a cream two-piece suit with a high collar, edged in gold embroidery. Around her hair is a gold and cream head-wrap.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ Dad says. He takes the words right out of my mouth and I almost fall over. Dad never said that sort of thing. Ever.

  ‘Amber, I forgot to tell you, your father is giving me away,’ Mum says blithely. As though it’s the most normal thing on earth for your ex-husband who – as far as your daughter knows – you haven’t spoken to in ten years to give you away.

  ‘IS IT ANY WONDER I’M SCREWED UP WITH YOU TWO FOR PARENTS?’ I want to scream. ‘IS IT ANY WONDER I’M AN EMOTIONAL FREAKSHOW?’

  ‘Here Comes the Bride’ plays as I lead my parents down the registry office aisle.

  Maybe I won’t tell Greg about this. It’s Grade A weirdness. My parents, the people who hated each other, the people who made my childhood hell are both here. Arm in arm, walking towards my mum marrying my other dad, Dad2.

  The look on Eric’s face shows he’s been kept in the dark too.

  I glance around at the sixty or so people in the registry office, check what their reactions are. My heart jumps. Lurches, then starts racing in my chest. There’s that man from King’s Cross again, the one who, from behind, looked like Greg. The man turns towards the bride, who is following me; his face is exposed because of his close-cropped hair. His eyes leave the bride and rest on me. Big shiny pools of Minstrel chocolate meet my eyes.