Guilty secret

Square after milk chocolate square, shiny and oozy from a day's basking in the kitchen, the room with one wall almost all window. She crammed them into her mouth, hot sun trapped in the sugar, the long day's sun that she tried to savour and to swallow all at once, squishing sweet cheap cocoa between her fingers like rich sin, as a car crackled up the gravel drive.

(Breath mint. Grab your purse and leave, even as the horn pip-pips its summons.)

Breathless she ploughed her way to the car, house door pulled shut by the air she dragged along. Sweaty she sat on the passenger seat, glancing in the sun-shield mirror for traces of brown lipstick. Sheila said, "whoof, you're eager!" and pulled arcingly away, smoothed chippings forward onto the pavement, and was suddenly part of the traffic again. Hatchbacks bustled around them like housewives; a sporty coupé swung in the two-second gap left behind them by a trusting fool, then swung away again as the fancy took it.

"Good day, Als?" Sheila never called her Alison or Ali or, as Posh Pat had once experimented with at school, any variations on Lisa. Always Als, rhyming with pals or kilocals. She'd never done the equivalent with anyone else's name, so Alison had resolved to take it like the endearment it was probably meant to be. Whatever currently might be making her want to ditch Sheila for good, being called Als would always make her forget about it.

"Yeah, OK." Alison shrugged. "David Bond is back in the Swindon office, so I was mostly cleaning up his mess. He's only been here a week and he's already tried to sack three people. I can't believe that man."

Sheila nodded throughout the above, interjecting "God!" wherever she could, but keeping her eyes on the road. She always was the one careful owner, Alison thought. "I'm so glad I'm out of it," Sheila said unnecessarily. "Print&Run can be pretty bloody awful sometimes, but at least I'm free of Martin Dulwich and David Bond and all their bloody cronies."

It was Alison's turn to nod. "I haven't seen you since the last sesh, last week. Been up to anything exciting?"

"Not done too bad," Sheila chirped, answering a different question. "Stuck to what Jennifer told us to do. More or less, anyway. Quite proud of myself!"

Sheila's pride always had something to bolster it. Alison thought back to when she'd first met Sheila, at a Weight Watchers meeting. Alison was fatter than Sheila; Sheila lost weight quicker; Alison regained her losses later on anyway. Everything Sheila did, she organized and ran it like a military campaign. Nothing half-hearted, but then never swept away by the impulse or the love of it either. Sheila would never lose her heart to Jonathon, or fall head over heels in love for that bloody waiter in Faliraki, but she'd doubtless have worked out how to marry either of them. Both of them, probably.

It began to rain, spits and spats on the windows. Suddenly it was clear that there was an outside and an inside, the vehicle a boundary between the two, as early spring pressed on the unseasonal bubbles that motored through it. Tap-tap turned to patter out of the gloom of early evening and Sheila turned the lights and the wipers on in one movement round the wheel.

"You done OK, Als?"

Alison grunted.

"That good, eh?"

She screwed up her mouth to one side, then said: "I don't think I've got your staying power, Sheila."

"Aw, don't be daft, Als. Give it time. You'll surprise yourself eventually, I'm sure."

The indicator went tick-tick deep in the dashboard and, through a gap in the oncoming, Sheila swung the nose of her car into the square in front of the community centre. The building loomed ahead of them, then off to one side as Sheila turned the wheel. Lights glowed in the porch, an awning really, that fronted the length of the centre. Alison saw that the Karate Kidz were being picked up, as Sheila circled the car park, swooping on the space she always took. Identical fourbyfours lay in wait for two tribes of offspring, those changed into dark jeans and winter coats, or those that, shivering, still wore their white pyjamas as they ran through the approaching night into the warmth of their mothers' cars. If the Kidz were there, Alison reasoned, then they'd arrived early. Jennifer would probably want to talk before the rest of the class turned up. What was Alison going to do? Discuss 40% cocoa solids with her over the ubiquitous glasses of fizzy mineral water, while Sheila looked on, saddened and pitying?

Sheila switched off the engine and they both got out, the doors shutting with identical clump!s behind them. Alison realized Sheila was telling a giggly story about her fiancé Derek, and she tried to be giggly but was feeling apprehensive inside. It was clearly a slyly dirty story too, because she stopped telling it as they both pushed gently between straggling Kidz towards the room Jennifer booked each week.

Alison shuddered when she saw the row of aprons by the door, on temporary hangers Jennifer brought along each week. She had to fight a rising distaste to get into hers, which made it hard to concentrate on Sheila's story, or was it a joke now?

Wine-tasting, Alison had weathered. You learned the vocabulary and how to spot if something reminded you of battery acid or Ribena. Even cheeses she could bluff on, only blue bries and weird Spanish hybrids catching her out. But Sheila's latest craze.... Alison simply wasn't sure why they were bothering. Week after week she failed to tell any difference, was getting nowhere and paying for the privilege. And between lessons she always welched, crushing any nascent taste-buds with economy own-brands. Who would want to train to be a chocolatière, sampling the most expensive products of that versatile bean, when the cheapest stuff you could find, lingering on her tongue even now, tasted so good?