When it is easier to pretend chocolate is delish and kiwifruit too

A self-confessed pernickety eater envies the straightforward lives of non-allergic omnivores.

Some of the loathsome chocolate Susan Kurosawa avoids.

Fibs can easily turn into fantastical lies, and I say that from long-held experience. I am a pernickety eater, a flexible vegetarian who gets stuck into fish and even lamb on occasions when there’s no latitude to decline, which doesn’t really qualify me as a committed non-flesh eater, but there you go. Sometimes it’s easier to bend your beliefs and just pretend to go with the flow while simultaneously lying your socks off. And so it is with chocolate.

I am one of just 10 people on the planet who hates the stuff, and I am pretty sure the other nine are fibbing. Chocolate gives me a headache, makes my tummy turn. It’s not an allergy, as such, but a horrid, unfathomable secret that sets me apart like a leper.

And so I have learned to roll out white lies about this embarrassing predicament rather than cause the shock-horror reactions of those well-intentioned souls waving this sickly sweet confection in my ­general direction.

“Chocolate has been known to make me faint,” I say, as a colleague passes around the Cadbury’s assortment.

“No way!” she snorts. “Well, it’s true,” I reply.

“Maybe only the once … but it was ages before I regained consciousness.” She sniggers and rolls her eyes, “Well, who’s the drama queen, then? Next you’ll be saying you get hives from Lifesavers or some such nonsense.”

I am fine with Lifesavers, as it happens. Let’s segue to kiwifruit. This is epi-pen territory. I am ancient enough to have known kiwifruit as Chinese gooseberries and to have first encountered one as a fully formed adult.

It was at a Cantonese restaurant. How sophisticated and exotic, I thought at the time. The rest remains a blur. I came back to consciousness in ICU after going into anaphylactic shock. And so I do not ever tell white lies about that particular fruit except when the ­tables are turned.

After several emails to and fro with a Bangkok hotel where I’d booked a room to attend a friend’s wedding, I decided not to mention my allergy. I had stayed there twice before and all my details were on file. I imagined the dossier with NO KIWIFRUIT blaring in bold black ink. But then popped up an online questionnaire for my choice of “guest amenity”. I’d seen enough Asian towel art in my time, so plumped for the “surprise tower”. No more contorted towelling elephants with alarming bow ties and button eyes for me.

On being ushered into the suite, I began to feel dizzy. The air seemed hazy, my throat tingled. In pride of place in the living room stood a tiered wooden stand as tall and embellished as a temple offering. I peeled aside the lurid yellow cellophane to be greeted by a pyramid of kiwifruit. The assistant manager bowed and proudly gestured toward the VIP amenity.

“Please enjoy!” she trilled. “We know of your special love for this fruit!”

Kiwifruit is epi-pen territory for Susan Kurosawa.

I thanked her profusely, lying my head off while simultaneously clutching my throat.

How to dispose of at least 20 kiwifruit without actually touching the darned things and causing a small international incident that could result in staff losing their jobs?

How could “no kiwifruit” have become “only kiwifruit”? Could I dash to the market, procure a pair of rubber gloves and hurl the lot off the balcony? What if I hit someone on the noggin. “Pedestrian killed by flying fruit” seemed an extravagant headline, even for the Bangkok Post.

So I rang a fellow wedding guest and he promptly appeared from down the corridor. I pulled him into the room, gesturing wildly at the offending tower.

“Wow! That’s epic!” he hooted. They must think you’re a kiwifruit addict or something. Can I have some?” Before I could reply he lurched towards the top tier and a few tumbled off. I screamed. He leapt in alarm. Kiwifruit rolled underfoot and I fled to the ­bathroom. It wasn’t easy to explain my problem through a keyhole but I managed to whisper a relatively harmless white lie and said I thought there might be fruit flies. You know. Ones that carry things. Horrid things, like diseases. He laughed long and loud. “Kurosawa, you’re a classic!”

I crept back to centre stage. Having decided I was barking mad, he had gathered up all the kiwifruit with rather unseemly haste into a laundry bag he’d nicked from a wardrobe and proceeded to stroll out and back down the hallway with it over his shoulder. I hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob. I was now in total disgrace. No housekeeping service and fruit replenishment visits for me.

He has never revealed how he disposed of the haul. Did he actually scoff the lot? Roll them up and down the corridors like tiny bowling balls, or fill his suitcase and lie his socks off to quarantine inspectors at Sydney airport?

To this day, I can’t watch Border Security on telly without ­imagining him being interrogated in a small room and summarily handcuffed for crimes against Australian orchardists.

Back to chocolate, which continues to dog my existence. Chocolate is everywhere, which includes places it has no business being. On hotel pillows, nestling unbidden on saucers of coffee cups at posh cafes, lurking at the bottom of desserts that look like perfectly acceptable citrus confections, until they’re not.

“Do you like the lemon meringue, Susan? It’s a new recipe with a surprise ingredient!” The hostess is beaming. Another white lie surfaces. It comes naturally. I could lie for Australia.

“I love it! Oh wow, who would have thought of adding chocolate? You’re very clever.”

She’s so pleased she packs me a helping to take home. Yes, home to my household where no one but me has an exotic allergy or a ridiculous chocolate phobia and I doubt would tell a white lie even if their enviably straightforward lives depended on it.