The Chocolate Run by Dorothy Koomson Read Free Book Online

replied, frowning at me.
    Evidently it did. ‘No, I haven’t told Jen. Why, have you told Matt?’
    Greg’s complexion coloured up. Not a lot, just enough. Enough for me to know he’d blabbed. He’d probably said he’d finally opened the nut that wouldn’t be cracked; sowed his seed in the field that wouldn’t be ploughed; and other euphemisms that’d embarrass even the dodgiest estate agent.
    ‘I didn’t exactly tell Matt . . . Look, we need to talk.’
    I was about to say, ‘We so don’t,’ but my mouth, which was hotwired to my memories of Friday night, said, ‘OK, talk.’
    ‘Not now. Later. When we’re all leaving, I’ll say I’ll see you home and we can t— Oh, that’s easy. All you have to do is get a scart lead, hook it up to your hi-fi and TV. Simple. Surround sound.’
    Whaatt?! I thought, as Matt plonked four pints on the table. ‘Here we go,’ he said. ‘But wait for the other half, she’s got the aperitifs.’
    Jen returned from the bar with four tequila shots, four pieces of lime and a salt shaker on a black plastic tray. A movie line raced across my head as I stared at the tequila: Nobody gets out of here alive .
    ‘We’ve got a bit of an announcement,’ Jen said.
    We’d moved on to Jumbo’s, a posh Chinese restaurant tucked away in Vicar Lane. It had round tables with peachcoloured tablecloths and at the centre of each table sat soya sauce in white jugs and slices of ginger in shallow white dishes. Beside each place setting, on peach-coloured napkins, rested porcelain chopsticks with blue Chinese writing on the base. Our starters of prawn toast, spring rolls and dim sum had arrived by this point.
    I’d already stuffed two whole pieces of prawn toast into my mouth to stop myself speaking. To stop myself blurting out something that would tell them I’d had sex with Greg. That I’d been a bad girl. A slut. A veritable whore.
    As Jen spoke I realised what else had been niggling at my mind. Matt. He’d been fiddling with his heavy cotton napkin and chopsticks since we’d sat down. He hadn’t unfolded the peach napkin – he’d been worrying one of the corners, or picking up a chopstick, tapping it lightly on the table like he was playing the drums. These weren’t the actions of a man who was happy with the announcement.
    Matthew Shepherd had never struck me as the nervous type, but his angular features – visible cheekbones, thin lips and straight nose – were all more pinched than usual. Tense. Admittedly this was a big step. Leaving the comfort of the house he had shared in Hyde Park with Greg and another bloke, Rocky, since he was nineteen, to move in with his girlfriend in grown-up Allerton was terrifying. Knowing that your second childhood was coming to an end would scare you. It’d terrify me. But they’d been together three years, they were solid. Rock solid.
    I watched Matt rub at the napkin corner, his green eyes not resting on anyone or anything for long. He was toffee. I’d known that the second I clapped eyes on him.
    When we were little, my brother and I would play the Sweet Game. One of us would think of a person and the other one would say what kind of chocolate that person was. Like: ‘If Mum was a chocolate, what would she be?’
    ‘A Wagon Wheel, short and round.’
    In the following twenty years, Eric, my brother, had grown up. I had grown into the game. As I discovered the illicit pleasures of confectionery, my chocolate assignments became more detailed. You could tell so much about a person by your initial encounter, your initial ‘taste’ of them. Talk to me for three minutes and I’ll be able to tell you what chocolate you’d be.
    Which was why Matt was toffee. He was in no way chocolate and all the sensuous delights it brought. Inside him, at the very core of his being, was a lump of toffee. Something that had no depth. Under each layer was nothing but more toffee. Try as you might you’d find nothing but hard, unchanging, unadventurous