Free Chocolate Cake for Breakfast by Danielle Hawkins

me.’
    ‘Then they’re all yours. They should be a good colour on you, too.’
    ‘Tempting, but I don’t think they’d fit.’
    ‘I should be used to it by now,’ I said. ‘When I was in sixth form she rang the mothers of all the boys in my class to get me a date to the high school ball.’
    ‘Ouch.’
    ‘It was pretty bad,’ I agreed. Although it was nothing compared to being told, at the tender age of seventeen, that my father was a tiger in the bedroom. That probably caused permanent psychological damage.
    ‘This is really good,’ said Mark, taking another bite of cake. ‘Does your mum still live around here?’
    I shook my head. ‘She died when I was ten.’
    ‘Oh. I’m sorry. What happened?’
    ‘Car crash,’ I said.
    ‘God, that’s terrible.’
    ‘She got into the loose gravel at the side of the road and crashed into a power pole. She was probably putting on lipstick – she always did her makeup in the car.’ That morning she had made my sandwiches and Dad’s, done my hair in a French plait and reminded Dad not to forget the milk on his way home. I was late for the school bus and ran out without kissing her goodbye. (I always kissed her goodbye, and for years I used to wake in the middle of the night wondering if she’d still be alive if I hadn’t forgotten.) And then that afternoon a shaking, grey-faced Aunty Deb came to get me from school, and Dad’s and my world fell apart.
    Mark was wearing the alarmed expression of a man who finds himself dropped without warning into the middle of a deep and meaningful conversation, and taking pity on him I changed the subject. ‘Would you like to stay for tea? I have venison steak.’
    ‘How did you manage that?’ he asked.
    ‘Sam’s flatmate shot a deer last week.’
    ‘I haven’t had venison steak for about ten years. Yes, please.’
    We cooked dinner companionably and ate at the kitchen table, Murray supervising from the bench. ‘You’re a great cook,’ said Mark, finishing his second pile of roast potatoes.
    ‘It’s the garlic salt,’ I said. ‘One of the great inventions of our age. Cake?’
    He shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t fit.’
    ‘You can take some home with you, if you like.’
    ‘That’d be great,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘I thought you professional athletes were only supposed to eat health-giving and nutritious foods like steamed vegetables and brown rice?’
    He grinned. ‘Yeah, but they’ll never know.’
    We retired to the couch, a great big squashy plum-coloured thing I bought from my second cousin Kevin for twenty-four bottles of Steinlager. If my aim had been to find the piece of furniture that was going to look as hideous as possible against an orange nylon carpet I couldn’t have done better, but it was very comfortable.
    ‘Are you very sore from Saturday?’ I asked. To my uneducated eye it had seemed that Mark had spent the whole eighty minutes being stamped on by big men with spiky boots. Many of whom, to add insult to injury, were on his team.
    ‘Yeah, a bit. A few knocks; nothing major,’ he said, pulling up the hem of his shirt to show me.
    ‘Nothing major ? How many ribs did you break ?’ He looked like he’d been run over by a truck, and any pride I might have had in a few measly elbow-bruises evaporated completely.
    ‘Not even one,’ he said.
    I reached out and put a hand gently over the livid stripes on his chest. ‘It’s frightening.’
    He didn’t answer, but covered my hand with his. His skin was very warm and I could feel his heart beating through his chest wall. It seemed fast, for an athlete’s.
    Please don’t stuff this up , I told myself desperately. Just for once, depart from tradition and don’t stuff it up . . . ‘You wouldn’t consider a change of career, would you? How about playing something safer, like lawn bowls?’
    ‘I could, I suppose, but the money would be lousy.’
    There was a short silence, which neither of us dared to break. Then it occurred to me that