The Chocolate Lovers' Club (23 page)

‘Have you thought about setting up your own stall to sell this stuff?’ he asked the girl. ‘It’s good enough.’

Tasmin shook her head.

‘Somewhere like Camden Market would be perfect.’

‘That’s a great idea,’ Autumn enthused.

‘Would you be interested?’

Tasmin shrugged.

‘Leave it with me,’ he said, taking her off-handed response as approval. ‘Let me see if I can get some more information and maybe some funding from somewhere.’

An uncertain smile briefly crossed Tasmin’s face, which they all knew meant that she was deliriously happy.

Autumn and Addison walked to the other end of the workshop. ‘I’m sorry I’ve not been around much,’ Autumn said. ‘I plan to make up for it.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. You didn’t think that you’d get rid of me that easily, did you?’ Addison replied. ‘If it means that I have to share you with your brother, then so be it.’

He brushed her chin with his thumb and threw a glance at her throat. ‘What happened here?’

‘I took a message for Richard.’

A frown darkened Addison’s brow.

‘I’m frightened,’ she admitted. ‘They came after me at my flat.’

‘I’m moving in with you,’ Addison said flatly. ‘From tonight. It isn’t safe for you to be there alone. I won’t hear any arguments.’

She hadn’t intended to offer any. It might not have been the most romantic discussion about the possibilities of cohabitation, but it worked for her.

‘Thank you.’ Autumn stood on tiptoe and kissed her gorgeous, thoughtful man on the lips.

Chapter Forty-Nine

J
acob has accompanied us all on a visit to the bridal department of one of London’s most famous stores. This man is proving to be an excellent wedding planner – not that I have anything to compare him to, but you know what I mean. He even went as far as checking our hands for chocolate-y residue after our trip to Chocolate Heaven on the way here. We simply
had
to fortify ourselves for the long haul ahead. Something so important needs a good solid foundation of chocolate on which to work, I think you’ll agree.

I’m already on my seventeenth dress. To be honest I’ve felt pretty indifferent to all of them, but Jacob has hated them with a vengeance. This one is sparkly – but not
too
sparkly. Despite our recent visit to Chocolate Heaven, my chocolate levels are, I think, dropping dangerously low. My mind is wandering to thoughts of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut far too often. Back to the job in hand, the assistant zips me up and I emerge from the changing room, once again. My friends are sitting in a row, waiting patiently and I give them a twirl.

‘No,’ Jacob says, stroking his chin.

‘I quite like it,’ Autumn pipes up. Perhaps their patience
is
wearing thin.

‘Me too,’ Nadia agrees. We are still managing to drag our friend to all of our assignations despite her grief and despite her protestations that she’s thoroughly miserable company. There’s no way that we’re going to let her sit at home on her own and brood.

‘Absolutely not.’ Jacob seems to be morphing into Stella McCartney.

Chantal purses her lips. ‘I’m with Jacob.’

‘The problem is,’ I say, admiring myself in the full-length mirror, ‘that I really envisaged myself on a beach at sunset, barefoot, in a shift of gossamer white fabric, clutching an orchid or two.’ Not that anyone seems overly interested in my opinion.

‘This is certainly a long way from that,’ Chantal says.

I sigh at my reflection.

‘It’s not too late to back out,’ she adds.

‘I don’t want to back out,’ I tell her. ‘But all of this . . .’ I lift up the billowing skirt. ‘It isn’t exactly me. I hate fuss. I’d rather have a very simple, low-key ceremony with just my best friends attending. I don’t even know half of the people who are coming. They’re all friends of Marcus’s mum.’

‘That’s why you have to look your very best,’ Jacob says. He hands the assistant another dress. ‘This is it. Last one.’

I shuffle off into the changing room and, with much disgruntled huffing and puffing, I cast off the previous one and wriggle into this one. And because I can’t risking touching any chocolate in this dress, I get out my emergency bar of Galaxy and slowly lick the wrapper all over,
gaining the benefits of chocolate consumption by osmosis or something. Out I go again.

This time, my friends gasp.

Now they’re making me very nervous. ‘What?’

‘Oh, Lucy,’ Nadia says. Her eyes have filled with tears. But then, Nadia is understandably a bit over-emotional at the moment.

I look at myself in the mirror and I gasp too. ‘Is that vision of loveliness really me?’

We all giggle. Then Nadia takes out a tissue and sobs noisily into it. Autumn puts an arm round her to comfort her.

‘Perfect,’ Jacob announces.

And he’s right, it is perfect. I look fabulous. Truly the blushing bride. The dress is a sheath of shot silk in a rich shade of white chocolate. It gives me curves where I’m supposed to have curves and has gentle pleating to hide those little areas that show a life-long friendship with chocolate. I never knew that a simple dress could imbue this degree of sophistication on a person who has previously been so lacking.

‘We’ll take it,’ Jacob says.

Then I look at the price tag and gasp again. ‘I can’t possibly pay this for a wedding dress!’

‘Feel the pain and bend the plastic anyway,’ Chantal says.

‘I can’t.’

‘Marcus will love it,’ Nadia says, sniffing her tears away.

‘But if I buy this, then we’ll have to get your bridesmaids’ dresses from Primark. You’ll be wearing something cheap and nasty in lime green.’

‘It’s paid for,’ Jacob says. He avoids meeting my eyes and there are two high spots of pink on his cheeks. It makes him look very cute. ‘It’s my wedding present to you.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘You’re very special to me, Lucy,’ he says. ‘I’d like you to accept it.’

‘You can’t do that, Jacob. It’s far too much.’ I look round for someone to back me up. ‘I couldn’t possibly accept.’

Chantal nods to me that I should. Clearly she thinks that Jacob can afford it. I have no idea what it costs to hire his services, but maybe his new profession is even more lucrative than his last one.

‘And I’ll pay for the bridesmaids’ dresses,’ Autumn says. ‘Just so long as they’re not something that clashes with my hair.’

Now I’m crying my eyes out too. Nadia is back on the tissues as well and she hands one to me. My friends all come to hug me. Even Jacob joins in.

‘Thank you,’ I tell him gratefully through my sobs. ‘Thank you, Autumn.’

Everyone is being so kind to me. Despite the nagging doubts that are still assailing me, perhaps my wedding day will turn out to be the most wonderful day of my life.

Chapter Fifty

T
oby’s family were Catholics. The funeral service had been arranged in their local church as Nadia knew that it would please them. She could hardly bear to look at Toby’s weeping mother. Although there were no accusations in her tearful glances, somehow Nadia thought she would have felt better if there were. His mother viewed her son’s suicide as the ultimate sin. Nadia thought the biggest sin was for him to leave his own son at such a tender age. Toby had never gone to Mass, neither had she, but Nadia knew that it mattered to his mother and she wanted to offer what comfort she could to the red-eyed grieving woman.

Had Toby meant to let go of the rails at the top of the Stratosphere Tower, or had he been intending to climb back to safety, to her? There was a moment, the briefest of moments when she felt she’d connected with him again, seen the old Toby, but then she’d watched him drop backwards into oblivion. Perhaps it had been a figment of her imagination, a fantasy born out of false hope rather than reality. It was something that she could never be certain about.

What would she be feeling now, if Toby had stepped back over those railings and into her arms? She’d still have a husband who was addicted to gambling, still have a mountain of debts, still have a future just as uncertain as her current circumstances. Would she have hated him, or would she still have been able to cling on to her love for him? It was an unanswerable question. The maelstrom of conflicting emotions refused to be calmed no matter how hard she tried. Even the cocktail of potent drugs she was taking to blunt her senses were only helping so much.

The service was entirely alien to her. There were flowers everywhere and, it was a truly bizarre thought, but she considered the expense that such a lavish funeral was piling on top of everything else. There were prayers she couldn’t recite. Hymns that she didn’t know the words to. Ritual chanting that meant nothing to her. There was much standing up and kneeling down and Nadia followed it all with robotic movements. It felt as if the whole thing was happening to someone else. She was dry-eyed and hideously detached. There was no way she was even able to picture her husband lying, his body horribly broken, in the oak casket adorned with lilies that had been placed by the altar. Toby was gone. He wasn’t here. It might as well be empty for all she cared. Perhaps she’d done all her crying for Toby when he was alive. Was some part of her glad that he’d taken this way out and had given them some form of relief from his destructive addiction? Only time would tell. Even though she’d laid the unhappy soul of her husband to rest, the spectre of his debts would
continue to haunt her. All she could do was try to get through each day without breaking down, for Lewis’s sake.

What would she have done without her friends? Lucy and Autumn had been fabulous – they stood along the row from her now. But Chantal had really come through for her, once again; she had been a complete brick. Chantal had chosen the flowers, Nadia’s outfit, and they were all going back to Nadia’s house after the service to eat food and drink wine that Chantal had organised. Her friend clutched her hand. Somehow it felt good to be close to Chantal now, Nadia thought, as if the life growing inside her was a kind of compensation for the life that had been so prematurely lost.

Lewis stood next to her on the other side. It was his first outing in a man’s suit and her heart squeezed painfully. How would he cope without his father? Had he any concept that Toby would never be coming back? She’d told her son about the whole heaven scenario – even though she wasn’t sure if she believed in any of it herself. If there was a God, why had He made her husband with such a tragic and fatal flaw? She hadn’t told her son of the fall through the air of a wonderful husband who couldn’t live any longer with his terrible addiction. One day she would – when he was much, much older and could understand. She sincerely hoped that gambling wasn’t an hereditary condition.

At the end of the service, Nadia was glad to be out in the fresh air again, leaving the cloying scent of the incense
behind. Chantal looked fabulous in her smart black suit and was attracting the attention of one of Toby’s more rotund and red-nosed uncles. Nadia smiled to herself. Chantal was sure to be loving that.

Now she was busy shaking the hands of a line of damp-eyed people whom she didn’t even know. Toby’s death had made all of the red-top national papers, run alongside articles about the increasing dangers of online gambling and the imminent introduction of Vegas-style Supercasinos into Britain. Nadia had turned down all the invitations to give interviews to the press. Her family must have read all about it, yet she hadn’t had so much as a phone call from them. In her case, it wasn’t true that blood was thicker than water. She’d been cut off from her family because of Toby, and even his untimely demise hadn’t brought any kind of sympathy or softening of their attitude.

A mobile phone rang nearby and she saw Autumn reach into her handbag to answer it. A moment later, her friend’s hand touched her arm.

‘Nadia,’ she said, ‘I have to leave. I’ve just had a call from the hospital. Richard’s taken a turn for the worse. I have to go to him.’

Nadia nodded.

‘It was a lovely service,’ Autumn said.

‘Thanks. I’ll catch up with you later.’ As she squeezed the hands of more strangers, Nadia watched her friend as she ran down the road, searching for a cab. Autumn had to go to Richard. She was needed elsewhere. And Nadia realised that there was only Lewis who needed her
now. She pulled her son to her side and hugged him. This four-year-old boy was going to be her reason for living. From now on, she was going to have to face everything alone.

Chapter Fifty-One

R
ichard’s lung had collapsed, the hospital staff told her. An array of expensive equipment was keeping him alive. More seemed to have been added every time she visited. It beeped, hissed, sighed and functioned where her brother’s body couldn’t. A tube drained fluid out of the side of his chest and into a container which bubbled as Richard laboured to breathe. The nurse fussed around, taking Rich’s blood pressure, changing the dressing around the canula in the back of his hand and smoothing down his sheets. Frowning, she took his temperature. He’d developed a fever and his brow was damp with sweat.

‘Comfortable?’ the nurse asked.

‘Never better,’ he said sarcastically, and Autumn wondered why her brother couldn’t be more gracious to those who were trying to help him.

The nurse bristled and stomped away. When she’d gone, Richard turned to his sister. ‘This is a very bad development,’ he said softly, wheezing noises accompanying every word. His voice was dry with dehydration and Autumn wondered why the heating was always so high in here. It was absolutely sweltering. How much did hospitals
contribute to global warming? It was just as well she hadn’t brought him a box of chocolates, otherwise they’d be a sticky puddle on the floor.

‘It’s just a setback,’ she reassured him. The collapse in his lung had been caused by his chest injuries, the doctors had told her, probably aided and abetted by his weakened immune system due to his drug abuse. In the end it always came back to that. ‘If you rest, I’m sure it will only delay you going home by a couple of weeks.’

Richard reached out and gripped her wrist. ‘I don’t
have
a couple of weeks.’