Cuckoo in the Chocolate

by Chris Longden

  The policewoman had been nice, though. When I kept repeating different variations of the sentence; “this is all my fault for winning the toilet roll competition – I shouldn't have entered it. I never fancied the idea of a trip to South Africa,” she finally took my phone from me and called my parents to come over.

  The policeman, I was less partial to. He didn't take his shoes off at the front door. And he left the toilet seat up afterwards. Adam had been an all-rounder sit-downer. Men should always ask the lady of the household about their preferred bathroom etiquette, before they go and pee in your loo.

  I fought for air; a descent into blackness.

  But Michael was on the case. He hoisted me off the floor and back onto the bed. Then he ran to the other side of the room, bringing back a dainty paper bag, embellished in green and purple swirls of paint. The colours converged before my eyes as he thrust it under my nose, and for one dreadful moment I thought that I was either going to puke all over the expensive bedspread or be sick into the natty, little bag. (Big turn off, Rachael.)

  “Breathe in. Breathe into it. And out again,” he instructed. “You’re just hyperventilating. That’s all. Come on – you can do better than that. Big breaths,” he urged, whilst rubbing my back.

  After two minutes, the dizziness and nausea cleared. I crept back under the bedsheets, drawing them up to my chest. Excruciating embarrassment; shy suddenly - at the acres of bare skin that existed between us.

  I thanked him and wiped my nose with the back of my hand, because the dratted thing seemed to be dripping. He fished out a tissue from the box at the side of the bed and handed it to me. I dabbed at my face.

  “Well, it was… it’s just our bloody Vicky falling down the stairs. Done her ankle in… Liddy’s fine. She’s fine. God, I feel like such a... pranny now. Total idiot. Total numpty.”

  He smiled, with such grace. Rust-tinted eyelashes flickering downwards. And yet he was still naked, still clearly at ease with the conversation, the circumstances.

  “So, tell me. Does that happen to you a lot?” he asked. “Is this the normal course of reaction for you, every time your sister embarks upon something particularly... silly? I suspect that something else was going on for you there?”

  I nodded. The first time that I had seen this skill, this ability to talk so naturally about such monstrously massive issues, had been that evening in his cottage when I had recounted the tale of Adam’s death. My eyes blurred and I tried to focus on the beautifully embroidered eiderdown.

  “Well, Vicky isn’t the kind of person to spring this sort of thing on me – on anyone. She’s Ms. Independent. She doesn’t do the ditzy little sister act. And yes… this has never happened to me before. My reaction, I mean. Maybe all of that was some sort of a panic-attack thing.”

  He nodded.

  “I mean, if either of the children had been with me, I don’t think that I would have reacted like that. It’s just that this is the first time since Adam…Well, since I've been away from them and with... with someone else.”

  He rubbed my shoulders hard and I sighed, my stomach finally relaxing. The flash of nausea had passed and my insides were grumbling – but this was now with hunger. Michael poked my belly and commented;

  “We need to get something to eat before we go and rescue your sister. Sort your blood sugar out.”

  I was still clutching the crumpled-up bag, so I attempted to straighten it out and handed it back to him.

  He furrowed his brows. I liked the lines that lived there.

  “Hmm, well. Thankfully I removed what was in it before you started manhandling it…. Hang on.”

  He got off the bed again and ambled, naked, to the other side of the room. My eyes lingered on his body again. Broad in his shoulders and a more than pretty-fit physique. I knew that he went for runs and worked out regularly at the Westminster gym. But his body didn’t smack of vanity, thank God. Padding back towards me, I grinned lustfully, suffocating it into the duvet. It was hardly the given mode of behaviour; getting all hot and bothered again about another man, so soon after having experienced some sort of panic attack – a flashback – about the death of your husband.

  He placed a square, black case in my hands. And coiled inside it lay a thin, gold necklace; a tiny, delicate chain with an oval pendent. It glittered in the early morning light.

  “It's beautiful.” I paused. “Is it for me?”

  “Of course. It probably wouldn’t look so good on me, now, would it? Here, let me help.” He reached over for it and I dipped my head forward as he fastened it around my neck.

  “… I hoped that you might like the whole… idea of it. But after buying it, I realised that I’ve never seen you wearing any jewellery - so I’ve been fretting a bit - that you might have an allergy or something. Or that you could have conscientious objections to precious metals… I know that you Up The Worker sorts can get a bit sniffy about where you buy things from.”

  I shook my head.

  “I did stop wearing jewellery when I had Matthew, because he had a good go at breaking every little bit that I’ve ever owned. But – oh. Michael. It's gorgeous.” I held the pendant between my finger and thumb. “It's so dinky! What is it? A yin-yang symbol… or something?”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Can't you tell, Rachael? I would have thought that you, of all people, would have realised.”

  It was a semi-circle. As though someone had spliced a tiny egg into two halves. With a slight dimple in the centre. I shrugged.

  “I can’t believe that you don't recognise it! It’s a cocoa bean, of course.”

  “Oh. Oh, wow. That’s so… that’s just so lovely. You found a shop that made these? That’s just…”

  I played with the bean between my finger and thumb and pulled it upwards in order to look at it again more closely. We had plenty of sample cocoa beans knocking about at work, and the walls of Sisters’ Space were plastered with photographs of the women in Ghana that we sourced our cocoa from, as they lugged enormous sacks of the fair trade beans about. But I had only ever seen the things in their varying shades of brown, mocha, tan. It was the gold that had thrown me.

  Michael heaved himself off the bed and began to pull his clothes on.

  “Ha, no. I didn’t find a shop that made them. I just happen to know this fantastic goldsmith. So, I asked him to design me one… you know… look up some photos and do it. And he’s made quite a natty little job out of it, don’t you think? But the only snag being… that I forgot about you and your evangelism for ethical trade. So - it might not be your right-on sourced gold or whatever. But you can always flog it on EBay if it doesn’t meet your human rights’ standards. Ha ha.”

  “Don’t even joke about that, Michael! It’s just… Well. It’s lovely.”

  “Goodo. Right.” He clapped his hands together. “Now – I’m going to get a few pieces of toast on the go. We’ll slap some marmalade on it and we’ll grab a quick bite and a strong cuppa before we set off to liberate your family from the clutches of the NHS.”

  He moved off to the kitchen, as I remained sitting on the bed, tracing my finger over the necklace. I was aware that it must have cost Michael more than double – perhaps even triple - the Russell household’s average weekly food shopping bill to buy this little giftie. But that wasn’t the element that shocked me.

  It was the inevitable comparisons.

  What had Shaun ever furnished me with?

  A second-hand book on research methodology, during the 1990's.

  And that pair of socks he once left at my house. By mistake.

  Mind you, he had sent me flowers for the first time ever, just the other week. But the bouquet had been sandwiched in between him trying to bribe me with a job and then informing me that he was going to pull the funding plug on Sisters' Space.

  So, the flowers didn't really count.

  Did they?

  CHAPTER 4

  Stepping into St Thomas’ A and E, I immediately heard my daughter’s not-so
-dulcet tones. Standing with one hand on hip and the other pressed up against a pane of glass, she seemed to be advising someone about the exploitative tendencies of vending machines. An elderly gentleman was attempting to feed money into the coin slot with his tremulous hand. Lydia was brassily directing at him;

  “Whatever you do, don’t go for B1. Its eighty blummin’ pence - for a packet of crisps! That’s, like, nearly a whole week’s pocket money! You’d be daft going for that one. And crisps won’t fill you up as much as a nice healthy snack would. You should have thought ahead today, shouldn't you? You could have brought something from home and saved your money. You just need to plan a bit better.” Echoes of my dad in her phraseology there; ‘Tightwad Terry’, as my mum referred to him, was never one to pay over the odds for anything.

  Rheumy eyes bulged in disbelief at Lydia. But she was unaware, squishing her face against the glass of the machine.

  “So, go for a C6 then. Flapjack, I think you’ll be wanting. Press C6. Go on. No! Don’t press that one, you daft...! That’s a B – you don’t want a B now, do you?”

  The old man looked around anxiously. Yearning for another grown-up to assist him with standing up to the tiny tinpot dictator. My daughter’s eyes followed his, flicking towards me.

  “Mummy! You’ve come to rescue us! They’ve put a pink potty thing on Auntie Vicky's leg. It stank to high heaven when they wrapped it up with that wet stuff. And she’s in a wheelchair too.” Lydia pointed to a corridor. I couldn't get a word in edgeways. “It was a little bit scary when she fell down the stairs. With no other grown-ups about to help us - and she wasn’t even drunk, you know!” Two nurses strolled past us and sniggered.

  Lydia turned her attention back to the machine, but the man had seized the moment and deposited his coin. His purchase fluttered to the bottom of the vending machine and he began to push open the plastic flap on the machine. Lydia was there in a flash;

  “No - not that one! I told you not to get the crisps! Honestly! You’ll be all hungry and grumpy again in an hour!”

  She snatched the packet off him. He tried to take it from her, but she held them behind her back - out of his reach. I flinched;

  “Lydia Russell! How dare you be so rude! Give those back - right now!”

  The pensioner looked at me wearily. Not angry. Just resigned to his fate.

  I thought; imagine this for three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, my friend.

  But Lydia had changed her mind. She suddenly tossed the crisps back at the man and grabbed between her legs with a howl;

  “Ooooh! I need a wee!”

  I stabbed my finger towards a door marked ‘Ladies. ‘As she made a fast exit, the old man shook his head, opened the packet, crunched a crisp and eyeballed me.

  “Right funny little ‘fing. Full of it, ain’t she?”

  I smiled, always grateful for small mercies where social embarrassment induced by my kids was concerned. At least he hadn’t called my daughter an ‘arsey, precocious little sod.’ Even if he was thinking it.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Well, she’ll be runnin’ the country this time next year, the way she carries on. An' she’d no doubt do a better job than this government. Bunch of shysters that lot are. Bunch of…”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s very fair,” came Michael’s clipped tones. He had caught up with me after trying to help Trevor with finding a space in the hideously busy hospital car park. “I beg to differ,” he continued. “We’re not doing a bad job, given the mess that the previous lot left us with.” Arms folded and standing next to me, he nodded towards the hospital exit; “Although I’m now thinking that perhaps we should be helping the NHS out a little bit more with its parking problems, eh?”

  The old man gaped, mouth open. Half-chewed crisps on display. A Michael-recognition moment.

  “Hey! Ain’t you – that – Cheesewick bloke? That Minister of… of whatever?” he asked, spitting soggy potato fragments in our general direction.

  Michael nodded indulgently. “Yes. That would be me. Minister of all-things potholes and council tax. How do you do?” He held his hand out to the old man, who wasn’t quite sure what to do. Fingers greasy with crumbs, he proffered a wavering hand to Mr Politician.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Michael nodded again. “Now. I need sugar. Excuse me whilst I purchase a rather unhealthy snack.” The older man continued to gawp but as Michael moved towards the coin slot, the lavatory door burst open and all a flurry, Lydia dashed back towards us. Michael was saying;

  “So, I’m afraid that it’s going to be chocolate. Do you want some too, Rachael?”

  My daughter flung herself at the machine, barricading it with her arms.

  “Oi - no! You can’t have any of the chocolate in there! It’s all bad chocolate. Children in Africa are put down chimneys for that stuff. Just so that people like you can get even fatter!”

  “Ah. It’s Lydia.” Michael looked down at her, pausing with his pound coin a few inches from the machine.

  Lydia narrowed her eyes, trying to fathom out where she’d seen him before. Michael pursed his lips and nodded.

  “You’re rather like your mother, aren’t you? With that chocolate fixation. During one of the first conversations we ever had, she presented me with a gift of her ethically-traded chocolates and then condescended to warn me off eating them. Fearing that I was already treading the path towards obesity, no doubt.”

  I smirked, remembering that encounter on Michael’s doorstep, only a few weeks ago. But Lydia glowered. She hated not to be in on the grown-up information. She was now slowly sliding down the front of the vending machine, her eyes half-slits of suspicion. But then it dawned on her.

  “Oh.” A gruff whisper. “You’re the man off my fridge!”

  “Am I?”

  I groaned inwardly. Let this be a lesson to you, Rachael Russell. Newspaper clippings of random people that you might – one day, end up sleeping with – should never be attached to your kitchen white goods.

  “Yes,” scowled Lydia. “And you Skyped us. I remember. You said that you were at a very boring party-thing at the seaside. With just a lot of very ugly, old men and no ice-creams or donkeys.”

  Michael’s mouth twitched. “Well, I do remember that I Skyped you from our party conference in Brighton last week. Although I don’t quite recall using that turn of phrase. But, still. She’s got an impressive memory though, hasn’t she?” Unfortunately, this only served to annoy Liddy further.

  “Who’s she? The Cat’s Mother?”

  “Lydia!” I barked at her. Michael attempted to dampen down the atmosphere.

  “Quite right, Lydia. One should always address the person that one is speaking to. Now, I really am desperate for something to eat. But I would hate to purchase an ethically-unsound snack. So why don’t you furnish me with some discerning advice, as to which product possesses the most principles?”

  Lydia – although being Ms. Verbally Gifted herself – was knocked a little off-kilter by Michael’s use of language. I wondered whether he was just doing it deliberately or whether he really was hopelessly unskilled in the art of communicating with small children. Either way, Lydia had now stopped sliding down the glass and was, instead, pointing out the flaws in the contents of the vending machine, demonstrating to Michael an example of leftie parental-brainwashing.

  “… And really - we should buy the chocolate that the ladies at Mum’s place make. ‘Cause they get the cocoa things in it straight off the ladies in Africa. And Mum pays them a proper nice price and doesn’t rip them off or turn them into slaves, or whatever. But this machine doesn’t have any of my mum’s stuff in it… Hey! Why’s that, Mummy?”

  Michael answered for me;

  “I imagine, Lydia, that your mother’s social enterprise hasn’t yet reached sufficient economies of scale to be able to start marketing their products effectively to large-scale contractual — ”

  “Right,” said Lydia. “But whatever you’re on abo
ut, I don't think that no one should go for the chocolate in here. Or the crisps.” Here she looked pointedly at her elderly friend; “You want to watch that crisp-eating stuff, you know. You’ll end up having a heart coronation…”

  Michael tried to bring her back to the task in question;

  “How about a nice flapjack? More nutritiously balanced, I suspect.”

  “A flapjack would be okay,” said Lydia. “If it were a nice flapjack – but those ones in there aren’t nice. They’re from the health food shop places where Auntie Vicky goes. And they taste like poo.”

  Michael shrugged. “Well, this really is a dilemma, eh, Lydia? We’re faced with examining both quality of product and corporate social responsibility criteria. Bit of a palaver, I’d say.”

  Lydia nodded. Palpably clueless for once. But then Michael performed the coup de grâce.

  “So. Given all of this. And that we all want to scoot off home and away from these premises ASAP. I say this; why don’t I just get one of these bars of chocolate here after all. You can have some, eh? And we simply won’t tell anyone about our purchasing habits of today.”

  “Okay,” Lydia agreed. “But you’ll be wanting two quid, won’t you? Rather than one… if you’re going to be buying me some chocolate too…”

  Michael searched in his pocket for another coin and looked at me, commenting;

  “Clever little thing.” With a slight twist of forbearance. Or was it sarcasm?

  After grabbing both bars and handing Michael his with a ceremonial flourish, Lydia flipped a casual “Adieu - and remember your fruit and fibre intake!” to the old man. She led us down the corridor and to where Vicky was parked up in a wheelchair. My sister had been busying herself with her phone but looked up on hearing her niece’s voice. She gave me a relieved grin and reached from the wheelchair for a hug. I kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled like pomegranates.

  “You daft sod. What’re you like?” And then I began to snigger. The much more stylish sibling was, today, clad in a pair of purple sweatpants, bright pink bed socks, a ‘Little Miss Naughty’ t-shirt and a lime green cardigan which our Auntie Jan had knitted for her. And which I knew, for a fact, she used as a blanket for the cat’s basket. She cast her eyes down at the leisure-wear and smiled apologetically;