The Chocolate Lovers'' Club

  “You drive a hard bargain, Lucy Lombard,” he says with a shake of his head. “Be here at six o’clock on Saturday morning. We’ve got a minibus coming to collect us.”

  Six o’clock on Saturday morning? I didn’t know such a time existed.

  Now Crush is the one wearing a smug smile. He disappears back into his office and I swear there’s a bubble above his head with “Hee-hee-hee” written in it.

  I try to make up for my lengthy lunch hour by working hard. I try, but somehow concentration evades me once again. After I’ve fiddled about with some sales figures and have done a bit of filing, I eat a Daim Bar, or Dime Bar as they used to be called—a perfectly adequate name that didn’t need changing in my humble opinion—that I have in my desk with my cup of vending-machine tea and then stare into space for a while. Then, at four o’clock, when I am rapidly losing the will to live, Dirty Derek from the post room comes up to my desk. He’s called Dirty Derek not as a comment on his personal hygiene, but because he has a range of outrageously filthy jokes for all occasions. Today he’s bearing a huge bunch of red roses, wrapped in pink tissue.

  “For you, love,” he says with a wink. “Someone must have had a good time last night.”

  “They’re wonderful!” I exclaim as I examine the bouquet. “No card with them?”

  “No.”

  I wouldn’t put it past Dirty Derek to have lost it on the way up here. Dirty Derek taps his nose as he walks away. “Secret admirer.”

  I place the flowers on my desk. I can see that Crush is craning his neck to get a look at them. Even without a card I know exactly who these are from. They have Marcus stamped all over them. A few days with his new love, and already he is having a change of heart. Isn’t this always the way? Every time he leaves me, I think it’s for good—and then he comes crawling back. My throat goes dry. Now what to do? Should I call him and thank him? Or shall I sit back and wait for his next move?

  While I’m considering my quandary, my mobile phone beeps and there’s a text message for me. It’s from Chantal. CHOCOLATE EMERGENCY, it says. CU @ 6.

  Great. I sit back in my chair and sigh with relief. The girls will tell me what to do.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “WHAT AM I GOING TO do?” Chantal wails.

  She’s just told us the story of her very rude rumpy-pumpy and robbery. Quite frankly my red rose bouquet quandary pales into insignificance in comparison with Chantal’s traumatic experience. We’re huddled together in the corner of Chocolate Heaven on the squashy sofas. Our friend lifts her glass and sips her hot chocolate. Her face is white and she’s shaking. “I was robbed in a five-star hotel. This wasn’t some down-and-out city center dump. This was a first-class country-house hotel. I’ve spent enough of my life in New York to know a con when I see one. I’m supposed to be streetwise. How can I have been so stupid? So gullible?”

  I don’t add “so desperate.”

  Autumn doesn’t look much better. She’s clearly shocked by Chantal’s terrible news. She takes our friend’s hand. “You have to go to the police.”

  “How can I?” Chantal says. “If they started an investigation, then Ted would be sure to find out. How could I keep it a secret from him?”

  “My God, Chantal, you’re lucky this guy just robbed you,” I tell her. “He could have murdered you.”

  “It might have been better if he had,” she says bleakly. “Ted will kill me anyway if he ever gets a whiff of this.”

  “Then we’ll have to make sure that he doesn’t,” I say in as reassuring a way as I can manage. “Did you get the guy’s name from the hotel reception?”

  “No.” She hangs her head. “They wouldn’t give me any information about him. He could have used a fake name, for all I know. I’d be surprised if this was the first time he’d pulled this sort of scam. I’d like to bet he’s a professional conman. Christ, I was a sitting duck. I sat there with a bull’s-eye painted right on my forehead.” She looks as if she’s about to cry and Chantal never cries. This is the first time I’ve ever seen her so emotional.

  “Clive, Clive!” I shout. “We need more comfort food. In a hurry.”

  “I don’t want anything to eat,” Chantal protests.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “Chocolate isn’t really food. It’s medicine.” Besides, Autumn and I could do with some fortification. I wish Nadia had been able to make it, but she texted me to say that she couldn’t get away as she had no babysitter for Lewis. She’ll be gutted to have missed this meeting.

  “You have to stop doing this,” Autumn says to Chantal. She’s using her sincere voice. “You have to stop picking up men that you don’t know. It’s dangerous.”

  “I know.” Chantal shakes her head. “That was the last time. I promise. I’ve learned my lesson.”

  A very expensive one, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. Chantal doesn’t need me to point out the bleeding obvious.

  “We have plenty of money,” Chantal says with a shuddering sigh. “I’ll have to start moving some small amounts out of the account to buy replacement jewelry as soon as possible. It’s the only thing I can do.”

  “Won’t Ted miss it?”

  “I handle all the domestic finances,” she says. “He trusts me.”

  The irony of her comment isn’t lost on us. “Can’t you just say that you’ve lost it and claim it on your insurance policy?” Not strictly ethical, but if she was able to say that it had been stolen then surely she’d be covered anyway?

  “For that amount of money, they’d probably want to bring in the police or investigators or something. Ted would also want to know why I’d taken my most expensive jewelry away on a business trip. I don’t think that’s a solution. I have to cover this so he doesn’t even know that it’s missing.”

  Clive comes over with replacement supplies of hot chocolate and a plate of walnut and coffee brownies which we take gratefully. “This doesn’t look good,” he says, when he sees our glum faces, and slips down onto the sofa next to us.

  “Chantal has been shagged and shafted,” I tell him, and then we fill him in on the gory details.

  “Men,” he says, with a wave of his hand. “They’re pigs.”

  Which reminds me, I have yet to tell them about Marcus’s peace offering.

  “Did you tell them about the glorious boy who was hitting on you at lunchtime?” Clive continues.

  And I have yet to tell them about my hot date with Jacob Lawson. I quickly fill in the gaps. “We’re supposed to be going out next week.”

  “Fabulous,” Chantal says. “Just wear cheap costume jewelry.”

  I don’t like to tell my friend that cheap costume jewelry is all that I have. “He seemed really nice,” I say a bit sheepishly. “I hope he calls.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Autumn says earnestly. She is one of life’s optimists. Autumn’s glass is never half empty.

  “I have something else to tell you.” They’re all ears. “Marcus sent me a huge bouquet of roses today.”

  “I have them in water outside,” Clive chips in. “So they won’t droop.” Though Clive did comment that he hoped something else of Marcus’s would suffer from drooping.

  “What did he have to say?” Chantal asks.

  “Nothing. There was no card.”

  “How do you know they’re from Marcus then?”

  “Who else would send me three dozen red roses after cheating on me? It’s hallmark Marcus. Classic. I just want to know what I should do. Should I call him? Should I wait for him to call me?”

  “Promise me,” Chantal says. “If I have to give up sleeping with strange guys, then you have to stop taking Marcus back.”

  “At least Chantal only lets guys shit on her once,” Clive remarks.

  “Yes, thank you for that observation.” I sigh deeply. “So you think I should do nothing?”

  Everyone nods at me. That’s very easy for them to say, but to me Marcus is more addictive than, chocolate—he just has fewer calories.

&nb
sp; Chapter Nineteen

  AS AUTUMN REACHED THE DOOR of her flat, there was a man coming out. He wore a black leather jacket and mirrored sunglasses, even though he was indoors. His nose looked as if it had been punched a lot.

  “Hi,” he said, and then headed down the stairs past her at a brisk pace.

  A frown settled on her brow as she let herself in through the already open door. “Richard?” she called out as she entered the sitting room. “Who was that?”

  “Oh, just a friend,” her brother answered vaguely.

  Autumn followed the sound of his voice through to the kitchen where he was standing at the sink, filling the kettle with water. “Tea?” he said. “You look exhausted.”

  “A friend of mine is in a spot of trouble,” she told him. “I’ve been trying to help out.”

  “You always did attract all the lame ducks, Autumn.”

  “Does that include you?”

  “Now then, that’s a bit mean.”

  “Was he really just a friend, Rich?” She sat at the table while he made the tea.

  “I’m allowed to have friends, aren’t I? It’s going to be very dull living with you if you won’t let me bring anyone here.”

  “I was worried that it was one of the guys you owed money to. I don’t mind you living here, Rich, but I don’t want you bringing trouble to my door.”

  Her brother went to place the tea on the kitchen table, but she noticed that the surface was covered with a film of white powder. Autumn went to sweep it away with her hand and then realized with a sickening feeling exactly what the white powder was. It wasn’t the residue of some cleaning product or a sprinkling of talc, it was cocaine. She was sure of it. Autumn wetted a finger and dabbed it in the powder. Goodness only knows why she did it. Despite working at the rehab center, her only experience of drugs was a few puffs of pot at the odd party when she was at university, just to be polite. She wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between talc and cocaine. But it was clear from the expression on Richard’s face that he could.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said petulantly. “I’m not some crackhead living on a sink estate. I’m not like the people you have to deal with. It’s acceptable in our class of society, you know that. I run with a crowd who like to snort a little coke. It isn’t the crime of the century. Everyone does it. Go to any of the nightclubs—it’s the way the scene is. It’s no worse than having a bottle of wine. It helps me to relax. Gives me a buzz.”

  She noticed that his pupils were dilated, his movements animated, and wondered how she’d missed the signs until now. “Is this why you’ve lost your job? Your flat?”

  He sniffed pointedly and wiped his finger under his nose. “I ran up a few debts, that’s all.”

  “How much are you using?”

  “Hardly anything,” he insisted. “It’s purely recreational.”

  “I wish I could believe you.”

  Her brother shrugged. “You should try it. We have some great parties. You need to get out—meet some people.”

  “Do some drugs?” she said sarcastically.

  “You could do worse than try a few wraps of Charlie.”

  “Think through the consequences, Rich. I see people every day who’ve ruined their lives with drugs.”

  “You have an addiction too,” he scoffed. “I’ve seen the way you eat chocolate. Stuffing it into your greedy little mouth.”

  Autumn shrank back. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t compare chocolate with cocaine.”

  “Can’t I? You’re hooked, just as surely as I am. Can you honestly say you could give your drug up?” he asked with a smirk. “It makes you feel great, doesn’t it? Nothing else gives you a high like it. The only difference being, sis, that your addiction is legal.”

  “And I don’t have to put all that I have on the line to feed it.” Her brother narrowed his eyes. “Wouldn’t you like to try some coke— just once? It could make you feel even better.” “It could also kill me.”

  “We all have to go sometime.” He laughed bitterly. “I could eat meat every day and die young of heart disease. What a boring way to shuffle off this mortal coil. I’d rather live the way I do than spend my life all tied up in a straitjacket. Cocaine is a glorious addiction. I feel that I could rule the world when I’m using. I’m bursting with confidence and everyone loves me. Don’t you want to feel like that?”

  “But the reality is that you’ve lost everything—your career, your home.” She wanted to add “your self-respect” but felt that would be pushing Rich too far. Cocaine seemed to be a drug that fed the addict’s ego and distorted their reality. It made the user selfish, immune to their own problems and insensitive to the feelings of others. She wanted to help him. She wanted to stop him ruining his life. But who would help her ?

  Chapter Twenty

  NADIA HAD PUT LEWIS TO bed early. The bath and story reading had, tonight, been conducted in double-quick time—much to her young son’s chagrin. She’d make it up to him tomorrow. This evening, she wanted to spend as much time with her husband as she could.

  Dinner was a meager affair, thrown together with the remains of a bag of generic supermarket pasta, a tin of tomatoes and a tin of cheap tuna which was barely one step up from cat food. It wasn’t the sort of meal she’d envisaged creating when she’d first become a full-time housewife. She’d had visions of whipping up nutritious Jamie Oliver…style feasts every night involving goat’s cheese, couscous and rocket. Now, as she and Toby sat opposite each other, she was pushing her penne listlessly around her plate while her husband was making a valiant show of eating his with relish.

  “Mmm,” Toby said, wiping his mouth on the piece of kitchen roll that Nadia used as a cost-conscious substitute for napkins these days. “That was delicious.”

  They both knew that it wasn’t.

  “I’m going to get back into the office, love,” he said next. “Crack on with some work.”

  And they also both knew that it wasn’t what Toby was going to do in the office.

  Nadia pushed her plate away. “We can’t go on like this, Toby,” she said. “I went through the bills today. We owe thirty thousand pounds.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s nothing like that.”

  Nadia went to the sideboard and pulled out a sheaf of bills. She put them on the table in front of her husband. “We’ve already remortgaged the house twice to clear our debts, Toby. I phoned the bank this afternoon, but they won’t lend us any more money. I don’t know where else we can turn.”

  She didn’t tell him that she’d even been trawling through all those adverts for dodgy loan companies in the back of the newspapers. It was getting to the point where she could really see no other option and, if they went down that route, they’d never be able to climb their way out of debt.

  “I’m onto it, Nadia. It’s not a problem. Just don’t nag me.”

  “I’m not nagging, dammit! I’m trying to get you to face reality.” She felt close to tears. “I don’t have money for food, Toby. Lewis needs clothes. He grows out of his shoes every couple of months. We’ve got red bills for gas and electricity.”

  She’d sold most of Lewis’s old clothes and a good proportion of her own wardrobe on eBay to bring in a few extra pounds. The house was sparsely furnished as it was, they had very few assets and there was simply nothing else to sell. All she had left were a few family heirlooms—a couple of carved wooden statues that had belonged to her great-grandparents in India—and nothing on earth would make her part with those. She couldn’t sell her heritage for a few hundred pounds. Sometimes she felt it was the only link she still had with her absent family. She could never bring the girls from the Chocolate Lovers’ Club back here now, she’d be too embarrassed for them to see her threadbare home. When she’d first met Toby, she had a great job in publishing and they might not have been exactly flush with cash, but they could manage, could pay their way. How had it all gone so wrong?

  “I could go back to work, bring some money in
,” she said. “That would help us.”

  “We’ve been over this a hundred times. The money you earned would be spent on child care. What would be the point?”

  It was something she’d already worked out for herself, but even if she cleared a few pounds, it would be worth it.

  “I could go back to my family,” she suggested. “Tell them that we’re having difficulties. They might help.” Even Nadia knew that it would be a long shot. From the day she’d decided to marry Toby they’d completely ostracized her. It would be humiliating for her to ask them for any favors, but she was running out of places to turn. Better to go begging to her family than get in bed with a loan shark—but it was a close-run thing.

  “That would be great,” Toby said sarcastically. “Go and tell them that your husband can’t provide for his family. They’d just love that.”

  He was right. They might help, but they’d gloat over his misfortune. Her father was a successful businessman with a small and very profitable chain of jewelry stores. He would like nothing more than to have it proved right that Toby Stone had been the wrong choice of husband for his eldest daughter.

  Her husband shook his head. “I don’t want them to get their claws back into you, Nadia. Especially not your father. If that happens then I’ve lost you.”

  “If you don’t stop this gambling, you could lose me anyway.”

  “If that’s the way you feel, then there’s no point discussing this.” Her husband stood up and headed toward the door.

  “I want to help you, Toby. I want us to get through this together, but if you can’t even see that it’s a problem, then I’m fighting a losing battle.”

  “I have things to do,” Toby said and left the room.

  Nadia picked up the plates and carried them into the kitchen as the tears began to fall. What on earth was she going to do? Opening the kitchen cupboard, she searched until her fingers curled around what she was looking for. She pushed aside the packet of McVitie’s chocolate digestives. If only they were enough to blot out her pain—but sometimes, chocolate simply wasn’t the answer. Hidden at the back, behind a little-used flour crock, was a small box of tablets. Watching the door, she pulled out the packet and popped one of the tablets from its foil bubble. She’d started taking these for supposed postnatal depression a year after Lewis was born. Nadia had gone to the doctor and sat there in floods of tears. Her normally acerbic GP had been amazingly sympathetic and had readily written out a prescription for antidepressants to get her through the day, sleeping pills to get her through the night. But she hadn’t been able to admit to her doctor what her real problem was. She hadn’t told anyone. No one knew that her husband was addicted to gambling. She swallowed the antidepressant with a glass of water, but it was getting to the point where the tablets were no longer helping.