Autumn is young—twenty-eight in physical years, but somehow much younger emotionally. She seems to have led a sheltered life—she was educated at a top-notch boarding school followed by a red-brick university, but still has a lot to learn about life. She’s from what’s called a “well to do” family—in other words, seriously loaded. This woman is as posh as they come, probably ninety-seventh in line to the throne or something like that. And I’m sure her life would have followed its destined path if she’d been called Fenella or Genevieve or Eugenie.
Autumn never has a boyfriend, partly because she is too busy doing good to have time to meet men and partly, I think, because who would want to go out with her while she’s dressed like that? She also likes to have long discussions on the merits of wind turbines as a source of sustainable power, and most normal men don’t. Her sole comfort is chocolate and for that, and many other things, I applaud her.
I, technically, work a nine-to-five job, but have a reckless disregard for the terms of my employment contract and simply disappear whenever I feel like it. I’m a temp—we’re supposed to be unreliable and who’s going to sack me? Crush, thankfully, seems to agree and gives me a large amount of leeway when it comes to my work ethic.
Chantal is the luckiest among us as she works for herself, even though she doesn’t need to as she is fabulously wealthy without having to lift a finger. So, like me, she is fairly disdainful of regular working practices. Whereas my friend’s disdain is founded in some sort of reality, I mistakenly live with the fantasy that I don’t need to work. Chantal’s husband, Ted, is from “old” money. They have a wisteria-covered pile in Richmond just near Mick Jagger’s old house—Chantal often bumps into “Jerry” at the local florists. They have a boat moored on the Thames which they never use, a villa in the South of France that stands empty for the majority of the year and a weekend retreat in Cornwall—which they do occasionally visit. How flash is that? Ted is astonishingly good-looking—not the usual chinless wonder who normally graces the upper echelons of our society. (I speak as if I have a lot of experience in this area, but I don’t.)
Chantal works as a freelance journalist, employed mainly by an American magazine called Style USA which features the homes of our American cousins in different countries throughout the globe. Chantal covers England, which means she gets to swan around the country, photographer in tow, interviewing people who are keen to have their homes spread-eagled on the glossy pages. She’s been living in England for ten years now and has even swapped her coffee-drinking habit in preference for a nice cup of tea. And she takes it with milk, not lemon. There’s someone who’s really abandoned their American roots.
Chocolate might be a well-known aphrodisiac, but nothing Chantal has tried reaches Ted’s nether regions. Even a night with a chocolate body-paint concoction that Clive lovingly hand created for her was a failure. It seems incredible that a wife who wouldn’t look out of place in a Hugh Grant film has a husband who can’t raise a glimmer of interest in his missus. Chantal has to beg her husband to shag her. Sorry that’s not polite but I can’t think of any other way to put it, and she puts it that way in her frequent downloads about the state of her nonexistent sex life. He blames pressure of work, pressure of golf, pressure of everything. We discuss all of his excuses in minute and rather exacting detail during our chocolate-and-counseling sessions—a fact that I’m sure would make him even more reluctant to sleep with his wife if he only knew about it. So, I guess we all have our troubles, is what I’m saying.
“Just call me if you need me, Lucy,” Nadia instructs. “I mean it. Chin up. You did great with Marcus.”
I give my chin a defiant little tilt in response. But I know that I didn’t do great. None of my friends have to know about my solo eating orgy. We’re all entitled to have our secrets, aren’t we? This is what Marcus has reduced me to. I’ve done so well to control my binge-eating recently, but one tiny bit of emotional turmoil and my self-esteem is dragging its belly on the ground again and I’m back on the gorging bandwagon. This is another legacy of going through my school years as Chubby Cheeks. Why couldn’t I have been Lucy Lastic? Because I had chubby cheeks rather than boys clamoring to get in my underwear, I assume.
Speaking of underwear that will come off at the drop of a hat, I thought that Marcus might have called me this morning—to say something, anything about this latest development, perhaps even proffer an apology … but he hasn’t. When he gets back to his flat tonight, I’m sure he’ll be straight on the phone, but I imagine that I’m not going to like what he says after he’s seen my customization of his wardrobe, his sofa and his rug.
The boys return with the truffles and we duly tuck in. Autumn is supposed to be a vegan, but her diet seems to consist entirely of chocolate. She believes that vegetables have feelings too. Though how sensitive spinach is or how caring cabbage might be, I don’t know. Chantal likes to use chocolate as a sex substitute, but currently it isn’t working.
“How are things with you, Chantal?” I ask, wanting to deflect the attention from my own relationship shortcomings.
“Oh, you know,” she says breezily. “Nothing that a good night in the sack wouldn’t cure.”
“Still no action from Ted?”
“We’re both so busy that we’re never in bed and awake at the same time. Let alone anything else. I’m away for three nights each week. When I’m there, Ted rarely gets home before midnight, by which time I’m asleep. I leave the house before seven, when Ted’s still out for the count. Even if we didn’t have problems, it wouldn’t make for great marital relations.”
“Chantal,” Tristan says. “Even I’d consider sleeping with you.”
“That’s so sweet.” Chantal kisses him on the cheek. “Until we can sort it out, I have to find other ways to scratch my itch.” She gives me a wink, but in my current mood my heart sinks. I know that the desperate state of Chan-tal’s marriage isn’t entirely her fault, but I can’t think that it helps when she jumps into bed with every available guy. Maybe I’m still smarting too much over Marcus to find my empathy button.
“Speaking of which,” she says, “I have a very hot photographer waiting for me and I don’t want him to go cold. I’m outta here. Are you sure you’re okay now, Lucy?”
“I’m fine. Really.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.” She picks up her Anya Hindmarch bag and leaves.
“I’m teaching soon,” Autumn says with a glance at her watch. “I’d better make a move as well. Don’t forget that this might all be for the best. The universe might have something better waiting for you just around the corner.”
I like the fact that Autumn believes the universe has everything mapped out for us and that this isn’t simply down to my boyfriend’s inability to stay faithful.
“Big hug,” she says, and then gives me a big hug.
I sigh and pop another truffle. One day I would like to have some sweetness in my life that isn’t a direct result of chocolate consumption. “I’d better head to work too.” I sound about as enthusiastic as I feel. “I’ll take the bill, Clive.” I feel it’s my turn to settle as it was my emergency.
“Wouldn’t hear of it, darling. You’re traumatized enough. Have this crisis on the house, courtesy of Uncle Clive.”
“You’re both angels,” I say. “If either of you ever get fed up with men, I’m very easy to love.”
Clive gives me a hug and a kiss. “Someday you’ll find someone straight who’s as sexy as I am. Someone who loves you just as much as you love him.”
“I think it’ll be a long day coming,” I say with feeling.
Chapter Eight
NADIA DECIDED THAT HER FRONT door needed painting. The house was starting to look really shabby and, although her husband Toby had been promising to get around to doing it, he wasn’t showing any signs that he was in imminent danger of picking up a paintbrush. Though, to be honest, the peeling door now blended in perfectly well with the rest of the street. This was an area of London that was s
till waiting for the development boom to hit. Estate agents kept promising it, but the majority of properties remained down-at-heel, shunned by renovators and young professionals alike. The chichi wine bars and cafés opened—giving brief hope that a resurgence was just around the corner—but they closed again within months when the customers failed to come. It did mean, however, that she and Toby could afford to live here rather than heading out to Northampton and Peterborough as so many of their friends had done, wandering further and further up the M1 in search of cheaper house prices, a better quality of education and cleaner air. As she looked at the litter on the pavements and the graffiti on the brick walls, she sometimes struggled to remember why they actually wanted to live here. Toby said that it was better for business, but she doubted it. Wasn’t there a shortage of plumbers everywhere these days? The good people of Northampton must have leaky taps like everyone else.
Nadia had collected Lewis from his nursery school and now had a day of housework to look forward to. A small mountain of ironing awaited her. She had shopping to do too as there was no food in the house for the rest of the week. As she approached the house, Nadia noticed that Toby’s van was parked outside and her heart sank. It was just after midday and he should have been out on a job. If he was home at this time, there was only one thing that it could mean.
Opening the front door, she called out as brightly as she could, “It’s me, Toby!” Slipping off Lewis’s coat, she said, “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go and say hello to Daddy.”
Lewis raced up the stairs ahead of her as she shrugged off her own jacket. She felt dowdy in her worn clothes. Long gone were the smart business outfits she used to wear; nowadays her fashion sense had “mumsy” written all over it. She’d long given up her colorful saris and embroidered shalwar kameez for the lazy comfort of Western clothes. Anything that said “easy care” or “non-iron” on it was a surefire hit. Style came a poor second. Glancing in the mirror, she vowed to do something about her hair. Her once lustrous chestnut mane had lost all of its shine—probably due to using the cheapest supermarket own-brand stuff that she could find—and spent most of its time scraped up in a ponytail for low maintenance. This was the only way she could ensure that she didn’t go out with bits of Lewis’s lunch stuck in her tresses. It hung to her shoulders when loose and badly needed cutting. Perhaps she should consider a close crop and sell her hair to those who made hair extensions—but who would want it in this condition? It wasn’t only the front door that needed a total revamp.
Trying to force some lightness into her footsteps, she climbed the stairs after Lewis. Sure enough, when Nadia followed her son into the tiny spare bedroom that served as an office, Toby was sitting at the computer looking guilty. Nadia’s guilt would have centered on the plate of chocolate digestives that sat next to the computer. She’d spent—wasted—a couple of pounds of their rapidly dwindling funds on some biscuits, trying to convince herself that they were for Lewis, when she knew that they were really intended for her. Toby had no such thoughts. His guilt was for an entirely different reason.
“Thought I’d pop back and get some invoices out of the way while I had a bit of a gap,” her husband said.
If only she could believe him.
“Come and give your dad a big kiss,” he said and Lewis flew into his arms. Her son certainly wasn’t disappointed to see his dad sitting at home during the day.
Nadia tried to look over her husband’s shoulder to see if there were, indeed, any invoices on the screen, but he flicked the mouse and nothing more incriminating than the screensaver appeared. Goodness only knows, he needed to send out some invoices. The bills were piling up and there wasn’t enough money in the account to pay them.
“I thought you were working flat out this week,” she said, quoting him.
“I left Paul in charge for a while. He can manage.”
She stifled a sigh. “Do you want some lunch with us?”
“A quick sandwich would be great.”
“A quick sandwich is all it can be,” she said, more sharply than she intended and he looked up at her. “I need some money, Toby. There’s not a scrap of food in the cupboards. I’ve got to go to the supermarket today.”
Toby raked his hands through his hair. “Love, what on earth do you do with all the cash I dole out?”
“You didn’t give me any housekeeping last week,” she reminded him. “I’ve got five pounds in my purse. That’s it.” She’d felt dreadful in Chocolate Heaven this morning as she knew that she didn’t actually have enough money to pay her part of the bill. In her heart, she knew that she shouldn’t go along so regularly to meet the girls, but the Chocolate Lovers’ Club was proving to be her sanctuary, her only respite in what seemed to be an increasingly mad world. It was the one place where she could share her problems—but even then, the others didn’t know the half of it. Sure, her friends knew that her life wasn’t a bed of roses, but they didn’t know the full story. Still, none of them minded paying her share of the bill—even when, on the rare occasion, she did have the cash to spare.
“I’m a bit tight this week, love. Put it on plastic.”
She had a raft of credit cards. All of them maxed. “I can’t keep doing this, Toby. We can’t pay our bills. You really do need to be sending out some invoices.”
“I’m on to it,” he snapped. “I said I’m on to it.”
“Lewis,” she said, “go and play with Bob the Builder for a minute. I need to talk to Daddy.”
Her son unwound himself from Toby’s lap and raced off into his bedroom to find his beloved toy.
She knelt down beside her husband and rested her hand on his thigh, stroking it absently. “I’m scared, Toby,” she said. “This is getting out of hand.” She flicked her eyes at the computer.
“I can handle it,” he replied tightly.
“But I can’t.”
Until he’d gone to his best friend’s stag weekend in Las Vegas, her husband’s only experience of gambling had been buying a weekly lottery ticket for a pound. If it was a rollover week, he might splash out and spend a fiver. That hardly made him a high-league player. But on that trip he’d won a thousand dollars—and something had pushed the buttons of a latent addiction. It was “easy money,” he’d said. Since then, he’d been hooked on the online gambling sites. For three years he’d ploughed all their income, their savings, into trying to win “the big one.” Every roll of the dice, every flip of the cards, every spin of the slot machines was pushing them further and further into debt.
Nadia had always thought that the stereotypical gambling addict was a big, fat man with an equally big, fat cigar gracing the casinos of Europe, risking his yacht, his Roller, his Rolex, his reputation at the roulette wheel. She didn’t think that gambling addicts were home-loving family men—ordinary men with hair that needed cutting and mischievous eyes, hardworking plumbers who spent their evenings locked in front of a computer monitor risking their sanity, their happiness, their marriages … to feed their compulsion. Now she knew better.
“I want you to stop this, Toby. I want you to get help.”
He clutched her arms. “I don’t need help, Nadia. I’m that much away from a big win.” He showed her a fraction of an inch with his fingers. “It could all be ours. A big house, a big car. Designer clothes. Fabulous holidays. We could take Lewis to Disneyland. Every year if we wanted to.”
“I don’t want all those things,” she said. “That’s not real life. I want you. I want my husband back, not sitting in front of a computer every waking hour squandering everything we’ve ever worked for.”
His jaw set and his eyes darkened. “I could remind you that you don’t work, Nadia.”
“I could,” she said. “I could try to get a job again. That would help to pay some of our debts.”
“I want you here for Lewis,” he said. “You know that. Look at all the stories you see in the newspapers about kids getting neglected at their nurseries. A couple of mornings is bad enough.”
“That accounts for a tiny fraction, I’m sure. Lewis loves his nursery. They’re really good with him.”
“I don’t want him looked after by strangers.”
“But there isn’t enough money, Toby. We can’t go on like this.”
He stood and pushed her away from him. “Don’t you think I know that? That’s why I’m doing this.” He banged his fist on top of the computer. “I’m doing it for us, to bring us a better life. I don’t want to be a plumber for the rest of my life. Tied to a phone twenty-four hours of the day seven days a week. I want to live. This could give us that chance. Do you have any idea how much I could win?”
“But you don’t,” she said. “You don’t win.”
“I can’t discuss this with you, Nadia. You just don’t understand. Oh, what the hell. I’m going back to work.” With that he slammed out of the room, his feet thundered down the stairs and the front door banged behind him.
Her son appeared at the door clutching Bob the Builder. “Has Daddy gone?”
She nodded as she slid onto the computer chair and pulled Lewis to her.
“He didn’t say goodbye.”
“Daddy’s got a lot on his mind,” she said as she ruffled his hair.
The sad thing was that she fully understood the pressures on her husband. He’d taken it upon himself to be the sole breadwinner and Nadia could appreciate how difficult that must be. She would dearly love to go back to work to help them out, but the truth of the matter was that even if she got a job again, the cost of paying for a full-time nursery would just about eat up her salary and, given the situation with her family, it wasn’t as if she could rely on any of her relatives to help with her child care. It wasn’t only the cost of a day nursery that was sky-high. The price of everything today seemed to have rocketed. Normal families were almost bankrupted simply to provide a roof over their heads. Clothes and shoes for Lewis cost just as much as they did for adults. Even before this addiction had really started to take hold, Toby had been working longer and longer hours simply to keep their heads above water. Her heart went out to him, but she just wished that her husband could find another way to deal with it.