‘A gentleman wouldn’t keep pointing it out.’
He grinned. ‘Well, I’d have thought a lady would smell better.’
‘It’s burnt hair,’ I said. ‘I’ve been dehorning calves. Come in and grab a drink while I have a shower. Have you been waiting long?’
‘Only about ten minutes.’
I climbed the steps and reached up for the key, hanging on its nail at the top of the doorframe. ‘You should have let yourself in.’
‘It’s just a bit creepy to get home and find some random bloke making himself comfortable in your house, don’t you think?’
‘Only if you were going through my knickers drawer or something.’
‘That’s usually the very first thing I do in someone else’s house,’ said Mark.
I left him making a cup of tea and went to have a shower, where I paid particular attention to my elbows. Satisfied that both they and my earlobes were clean, I pulled my wet hair back into a ponytail, and put on my favourite, bottom-flattering jeans and a green T-shirt that Alison said went nicely with brown eyes.
As I came back into the kitchen, Mark’s pocket started to ring. He took out his phone, looked at it briefly and turned it off. ‘Dad,’ he said, putting the phone down on the bench.
‘Shouldn’t you get it? It might be important.’
‘Nope,’ he said flatly. ‘He’ll be ringing to tell me I should have passed the ball wide and not tried to run it, and that I was sloppy in the lineout.’
‘You were not!’
He looked at me, amused. ‘How would you know?’
‘I watched. And they said on Radio Sport this morning that you were pretty much the only player on the field in that game who looked like he knew what he was doing.’
‘You listen to Radio Sport?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I had been an avid follower of the sporting news for nearly three weeks now.
He smiled and reached out a long arm to pull me closer, and a pair of headlights raked the side of the cottage as a car pulled in behind my ute.
‘Oh, dear Lord,
no
,’ I said, stepping hurriedly back.
‘What? It’s your boyfriend?’
‘Worse. Stepmother. And sisters,’ I added, as both rear doors opened too. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Sorry for what?’ Mark asked.
‘Whatever they’re going to say.’ I opened the kitchen door as Caitlin reached the bottom step. ‘Hey, munchkin, how are things?’
‘Good,’ she said, marching in past me. ‘We’ve been dancing. I was a fairy, but I had to take my wings off to get in the car.’
‘Very cool,’ I said. ‘Were you a fairy too, Bel?’
‘No,’ said Annabel, ascending the stairs with a stately, measured tread. ‘I was a rabbit.’
‘What sort of dance does a rabbit do?’
She ignored this frivolous question and fixed her eyes firmly on my visitor. ‘Were you cuddling Helen?’
‘Yes,’ Mark admitted.
‘Why?’
‘Annabel,’ said Em, following her in and closing the door behind her, ‘that is none of your business. Hello, sweetie.’
I kissed her cheek. ‘Em, this is my friend Mark. Mark, this is Emily, and the small ones are Caitlin and Annabel.’
‘I’m Helen’s evil stepmother,’ Em said. ‘How nice to meet you.’
‘You too,’ said Mark.
‘Are you a giant?’ Caitlin asked, looking him up and down thoughtfully.
‘No, I’m just tall.’
‘He certainly is,’ said Em. ‘Now, sweetie, I can see you’ve got things to do –’ she paused and winked at me in a way that was probably meant to be subtle but really,
really
wasn’t ‘– but I just wanted to drop in a wee something I bought for you last week. What have I done with it? Caitlin, please run back to the car and bring me the bag on the front seat.’ She opened the door for Caitlin, and turned back to Mark. ‘Where are you from, Mark?’
‘Taranaki, originally, but I live in Auckland.’
‘And what do you do for a living?’
‘I play rugby,’ he said.
‘You’re on TV,’ said Bel suddenly. ‘And you’re on our Weetbix packet. Helen, can I have something to eat?’
‘Is she allowed a piece of cake?’ I asked Em. ‘Or is it too close to teatime?’
‘Hmm?’ said Em. She sounded somewhat absentminded, no doubt because ninety-nine percent of her brain was attempting feverishly to recall the family Weetbix box. ‘Yes, alright then. Just a small piece.’
I opened the pantry and removed a large chocolate cake. I had found the recipe in Thursday’s
Broadview Broadcast
, labelled ‘Absolutely Superb Chocolate Cake’, and made it to see if they were telling the truth. They were. According to an article I once read in
Cosmopolitan
, every girl should be able to bake a good chocolate cake, use an electric drill and perform a striptease. I was currently sitting on one out of the three.
‘Wicked,’ said Bel. ‘I want a big bit, Helen.’
‘So do I,’ said Mark.
I took a knife from the block on the bench and handed it to him. ‘Em, would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No, we’d better not stay,’ she said, to my profound relief. ‘I haven’t done a thing about dinner, and your father will be home by now.’
Caitlin stormed back up the steps, plastic bag in hand. ‘Cake!
Mean!
’
‘Is that a big enough piece?’ Mark asked Bel, indicating a very generous wedge with the carving knife.
‘No,’ said Bel.
‘About half that,’ said her mother firmly, taking the bag from Caitlin. ‘Helen, I ordered these for you at the Intimo evening.’ She pulled a couple of wisps of scarlet lace out of the bag and handed them over. ‘That’s such a gorgeous colour on you. Just let me know if I got the sizing wrong, and I can swap them.’
‘Oh,’ I said faintly. ‘Thank you.’
‘Perhaps your friend Mark can give you a second opinion,’ she suggested.
‘
Em!
’
‘Have fun, sweetie,’ she said, laughing and patting my cheek. ‘Come along, girls. You can eat your cake in the car.’
‘Beautiful cake,’ Mark said, taking a large bite.
Em was backing her car around at high speed, no doubt in haste to get home and scrutinise the Weetbix packet.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘She’s nice.’
‘Yeah, she’s lovely.’ I spread the scarlet wisps on the bench for closer inspection, and began to laugh helplessly. ‘These are
awful
.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They look alright to 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 it was my move. Gathering up all of my courage, I got up and sat down again across his lap, straddling him.
‘Hi,’ he said softly.
‘Hi.’ And then we stopped talking and just kissed each other instead, which was far better.
AT HALF PAST NINE MARK, WHO HAD BEEN LYING FULL
-length on my couch with his head on my lap, sat up and stretched his arms above his head. ‘You’ve got something on this weekend, haven’t you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I’m going to Taupo to play drinking games and make wedding dresses out of toilet paper.’
‘That sounds like fun.’ He stood up in one fluid movement and reached a hand down to me.
‘You reckon?’ I asked, taking it and letting him pull me up.
‘Actually, it sounds hideous.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ I preceded him into the kitchen and rummaged in the drawer under the microwave for plastic wrap with which to cover half a chocolate cake.
‘I don’t need all that,’ he said.
‘I was going to take it in to work, but Keri’s on a diet and she’ll be mad at me. Please take it.’
‘Oh, well, in that case, okay.’ He accepted the cake and bent his head to kiss me. ‘I’d better go home and let you get to bed.’
‘You could stay,’ I said impulsively. ‘If – if you want to . . .’
He looked at me, startled, and my cheeks burnt in shame. Hurriedly I added, ‘But you’ve probably got an early start or something.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean yes, I want to.’
‘Okay, um, cool,’ I said, going abruptly from hot with embarrassment to cold with terror as I realised that, in fact, this was all moving way too fast for me. I didn’t really want him to stay; I wanted him to kiss me goodnight and go away. Then I would be free to lie awake half the night, reliving every second of the evening, overanalysing his every word and agonising about how much he really liked me. The lying-awake-and-obsessing stage is an important one in any new relationship – you’re not supposed to just skip it.
But I must have done a reasonable impression of one of those uninhibited, self-confident girls who view sex as merely a pleasant form of exercise, because Mark put down his cake, pulled me closer and kissed me, sliding his hands warmly up my sides under my T-shirt. I lifted my arms obediently and he tugged the shirt off over my head.
‘You are so lovely,’ he said against my mouth.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered, and because there didn’t seem to be anything else to do in the circumstances (as well as because I had never been so attracted to anyone in my life), I twisted away from him and took his hand, pulling him up the hall to my bedroom.
He sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at me, and with shaking hands I reached behind my back to undo the catch of my bra. I couldn’t; I was so nervous I had lost all feeling in my fingertips.
‘Here,’ he said softly, pulling me up between his knees and reaching around me to undo it himself. And then he sat me across his lap and kissed me with a single-minded concentration that completely changed my mind about this being a bad idea.
Ten minutes or so later he sat up and said, ‘Crap, wallet’s in the car.’
This remark seemed to have no relevance at all. ‘W-what?’ I asked unsteadily.
‘Condom.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some.’ Getting up I crossed the room and felt around in the bottom of my wardrobe until I found a plastic grocery bag, from which I extracted one of about twenty small cellophane-wrapped boxes.
Mark was watching me in the dim light from the hall with a bemused expression on his face. ‘Did you get some kind of discount for buying in bulk?’ he asked.
‘What? No.
No!
Alison gave them to me – my friend – she’s a nurse – they’re for this weekend. I mean, not to
use
; they’re for the hen’s party. For some stupid party game. The medical centre had about a pallet of them, and they’re almost expired. Oh God, now you think I’m a crazed nymphomaniac.’