Chocolate Box Girls

by Cathy Cassidy

  ‘But you work with your dad,’ I say, astonished. ‘You teach tourists to sail and you lead canoe expeditions to the smugglers’ caves, and take that crazy banana-boat thing out across the bay. He must be so proud!’

  Shay hunches his shoulders. ‘No, he’s not proud. He’s proud of my brother, Ben – he surfs and sails and plays football, he’s tough and strong and practical. He’s studying sports and leisure at uni, and he’ll probably go into partnership with Dad, one day. Not me. None of that outdoor stuff comes easily to me. Dad knows I hate it, that as soon as I can I will be out of here, to music college, somewhere – anywhere, I don’t care, as long as he can’t yell at me any more.’

  ‘Oh, Shay,’ I sigh. ‘I’m sorry. So … what will you do?’

  He looks at me, and his sea-green eyes rake through my soul the way they did the first time we met. The breath catches in my throat.

  ‘I guess I’ll do what I always do,’ he says. ‘Keep quiet and put up with it. I want a quiet life. I’ll keep on slaving for Dad … I don’t have a choice, do I?’

  ‘And … what about Honey?’ I whisper.

  Shay sighs. ‘I feel sorry for Honey,’ he says. ‘But I don’t love her. There are cracks the size of the Grand Canyon running right through our relationship, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who can see it. The trouble is, I am a coward. I like it here … on the beach, at the caravan … at Tanglewood.’

  He rakes a hand through the wheat-coloured fringe. ‘It feels like home. Charlotte has never made me feel like I wasn’t good enough – she accepts me. So do Skye and Summer and Coco. Paddy as well … and you. You especially … you care. Well, you used to. I don’t want to lose that.’

  ‘You won’t,’ I say softly. ‘And I still do care, you know that, Shay.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Shay sighs. ‘But everything’s so messed up now. Honey’s threat … well, it makes me wonder if I ever knew her at all.’

  I don’t know where I find the courage, but I take Shay’s hand in the dark and tug him down to the water’s edge.

  ‘Look,’ I tell him. ‘It’ll be OK. The chances are Honey’s all talk anyway, right? Forget it. Don’t be sad … smile! Let’s paddle!’

  I kick off my sandals and wade into the moonlit surf. Shay starts to laugh, pulling off his Converse, splashing in after me.

  Inside me, a curl of memory unfurls.

  ‘My mum used to tell me to make a wish when I went into the sea,’ I say, through chattering teeth, and the words come as a surprise, even to me. ‘She said that the ocean would take my dreams and make them real and wash them back up on to the beach …’

  ‘Did she?’ Shay grins. ‘Cool! Let’s wish then!’

  He holds my hand tight and I close my eyes, and way out there, just beyond my mind’s reach, I am sure I can recall this exact same feeling; closed eyes, laughter, a hand holding mine.

  I should wish for happiness, for a place I can belong. I should wish for friendship, family, for everything to work out here in Somerset the way I hoped and dreamed.

  Instead, I waste the moment on a wish that can never come true …

  I wish Shay Fletcher was mine.

  22

  Shay and Honey patch things up, and suddenly it’s like Honey has had a whole personality transplant. She starts turning up to breakfast, smiling, chatting, helping Charlotte with the waitressing. She even speaks to me – OK, so it’s only ‘Pass the jam’, but still, it’s kind of unsettling.

  ‘She’s up to something,’ Shay says darkly. ‘I don’t know what, exactly, but I’m certain she is!’

  Skye, Summer and Coco are less suspicious.

  ‘I think it’s because she’s arranged another trip up to London, to see Dad,’ Skye tells me. ‘Just Honey, this time. She’s travelling up the day after the Chocolate Festival, and staying for three days. They’re going to see a West End show, go shopping on Oxford Street, look at the art galleries … all of that stuff. Dad wants to spend some quality time with his eldest daughter, apparently …’

  Summer looks sceptical. ‘Since when?’ she says.

  ‘Since Charlotte rang and told him Honey really needs some support from her dad, I reckon,’ Skye sighs. ‘It’s not like he’d think of it on his own.’

  ‘Well, it’s cheered her up, anyhow,’ Coco says.

  ‘Let’s hope Dad doesn’t cancel this time,’ Skye says. ‘There’d be no living with her then.’

  That’s one thing we all agree on.

  Temporary or not, Honey’s bright mood lifts the cloud that has been hanging over Tanglewood House ever since we arrived. Everything seems easier, somehow, and less of a struggle.

  An electrician turns up to help run a power line into the workshop, and slowly the machinery begins to arrive, but Dad stacks it all in the old tack room. Mastering the whole process of making chocolate from scratch is something that will have to wait until after the festival. Instead, he focuses on picking out eight truffle flavours to produce for the festival. No beetroot or curry is involved, but there is a very cool truffle made with cherries from the trees that arch above the caravan.

  We pick out names for the flavours – Honey too – and come up with enticing names like Strawberry Swirl and Mocha Melt and Whisky Galore and Cherry Crush. That last one makes me blush, because it’s a little too close to the truth.

  There is just one week left until the Chocolate Festival, and things begin to get quietly frantic. Charlotte has almost finished the website, and the trees are strung with more fairy lights as well as miles and miles of home-made bunting.

  A huge crate of pre-cut and scored card arrives, which Dad and Charlotte decorate with splashes and swirls of acrylic paint. It’s Honey’s idea to use gold and silver fine-liner pens to add hearts and flowers and stars on top, plus words like taste and dream and chocolate heaven.

  ‘Perfect,’ Dad tells her. ‘You’ve got a talent, Honey.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ she asks sweetly. ‘Thank you! Whatever I can do to help …’

  I wonder why I still want to slap her. I must be a very mean and unforgiving person.

  I get stuck with putting the painted boxes together, and of course, that is the worst job of all. Skye and Summer and Coco and me spend whole days carefully folding and slotting tabs together, lining them with squares of gold tissue paper and stacking up the finished boxes ready to be filled with fresh truffles on the day of the festival. We cut a million lengths of red ribbon to tie them up with, fold a million colourful brochures telling people about The Chocolate Box and how they can order more truffles over the Internet. It feels like a million, anyhow.

  Dad starts working ten-hour days in the workshop, making batch after batch of chocolate fondant, dipping and decorating and freezing everything, ready for Saturday. He looks so happy, so hopeful.

  Skye has been working on her chocolate fortune-telling idea. She has filled Rover’s old fishbowl with silver foil, crumpled gold tissue paper and lavish handfuls of glitter sprinkles, and turned it upside down so that it looks like a crystal ball.

  ‘I will read their palms and gaze into my crystal fishbowl and tell them which truffles will make them happy,’ she explains. ‘And then, hopefully, they will go and order tons of them from Paddy!’

  ‘Genius,’ I say.

  ‘Should I dress up, do you think?’ she puzzles. ‘Big hoop earrings and a gypsy scarf?’

  Summer looks up from one of her ballet books. ‘What about a chocolate-fairy look?’ she suggests. ‘You could have a cream and brown net tutu with fairy wings and brown satin ballet shoes and a magic wand … in fact, we all could. That would be cool!’

  ‘Oh, let’s do it!’ Skye agrees. ‘We could have little brown velvet tops with ribbon straps and gathered net skirts, with the cream and brown net layered … I can make something, I’m sure I can!’

  ‘I’ve probably got enough old pairs of ballet shoes,’ Summer grins. ‘They
’re a bit worn, but we’d be dyeing them anyway …’

  ‘I’ve still got fairy wings,’ Coco says. ‘And there’s an old pair in the dressing-up box too. I bet we can borrow the rest …’

  I bite my lip. I can picture the Tanberry sisters dressed as chocolate fairies, with their tawny-blonde hair and their easy confidence. I just can’t quite picture me.

  I remember what Honey once said, about me never fitting in here no matter how hard I try.

  ‘What’s up, Cherry?’ Coco asks, noticing my frown.

  ‘I was just wondering … about the chocolate fairies. Do you mean me too?’

  Summer rolls her eyes.

  ‘Er, hello?’ she says. ‘Of course, you too! You think we are going to let you off the hook? We’re all in this together, right?’

  Summer returns from her afternoon ballet lesson with metres of cream and golden-brown net and soft chocolate-coloured velvet, and we start work right away. Skye makes five little velvet vest tops with ribbon straps and Coco makes five fairy wands from garden sticks painted silver and cardboard stars dipped in glitter glue. Me, I end up gathering layers of cream and brown net to stitch on to thick bands of elastic while Summer paints her collection of old ballet shoes with glossy brown dye and stitches on new satin ribbon the colour of chocolate.

  ‘We’ll look great!’ Skye grins. ‘A whole bunch of chocolate-box sisters!’

  I think she could be right.

  23

  I wake to the sound of sad guitar music outside the caravan and the smell of woodsmoke. I push the door open. Shay has lit a tiny, crackling bonfire, and set skewered marshmallows to toast in the embers.

  ‘Hey,’ he says.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Honey is doing my head in,’ he says, turning the marshmallows gently. ‘I think I preferred her when she was all strung out and psycho. She is definitely acting weird. Seriously, I’d go nuts if it weren’t for you. It’s a relief to hang out with someone who isn’t living in a fantasy world.’

  I almost laugh out loud. ‘Me?’ I grin. ‘You mean me? Honest, Shay, you don’t know me at all. I’ve lived in my own little fantasy world for years.’

  He grins. ‘But I like your world. And I know lots about you, Cherry. About your parents, and your childhood, and … well, what makes you you.’

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ I tell him. ‘Maybe it’s all a story.’

  ‘Maybe it is,’ Shay shrugs. ‘So what?’

  We eat the toasted marshmallows and Shay plays his guitar some more, and I ask how work is going and he says it’s the same as always, which is miserable.

  ‘Dad made me scrape barnacles off the hull of a sailing boat for two whole hours, this morning,’ he says. ‘I had to paint it too, with this protective paint that stinks like crazy, and then I had to take a whole gang of grockles over to the smugglers’ caves …’

  ‘I’d like to see them,’ I say. ‘The caves, I mean. Skye’s told me about them, but they’re quite difficult to get to by land, aren’t they? A steep path through the woods, or something.’

  ‘It’s a long way too, on foot,’ Shay says. ‘I’ll take you by boat, one day.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  He hangs his guitar from a tree branch and chucks another log on to the bonfire.

  ‘Do you ever sleep?’ I ask him. ‘Or do you just work and play guitar and sit by bonfires in the dark? I think you’re nocturnal. Like an owl, or a fox or something.’

  He laughs. ‘I’m going home,’ he says. ‘I promise. Dad’s already losing the plot because I’ve stayed out late a couple of times. He’d go nuts if I stayed out all night, seriously. He still hasn’t agreed to let me help at the Chocolate Festival … he seems to think it’s some sort of rave, not a gimmick to sell chocolate. You can’t explain anything to him.’

  ‘I hope he relents and lets you help …’

  ‘He’d better,’ Shay sighs. ‘Seriously, though, I wanted to hear the rest of your story. What happened to Sakura?’

  I wrap the quilt round me in the darkness, and I look into the flames.

  ‘Sakura’s dad was unhappy,’ I begin. ‘He was alone, with a small child to look after. He took Sakura home to Scotland, on a jet plane. Above the clouds, the sky was blue, and Sakura began to hope that there would be colour in her world again – but when they landed, the skies were grey.

  ‘Paddy got a job at the chocolate factory and Sakura started school, and everything was different. Sometimes, Paddy had to work early shifts, but he was always there in the afternoon to meet her, with a misshapen Taystee Bar in his pocket for them to share.

  ‘One morning, the lady from the flat next door was getting Sakura ready for school. It was raining, and Sakura ran into Paddy’s room and took the paper parasol Kiko had used at festival time. The old lady frowned and asked if that was what umbrellas were like in Japan. Sakura said they were, but really she just wanted to feel grown-up, holding the bright painted parasol that had belonged to her mum.’

  I sigh. ‘Sakura didn’t know much about Scottish rain, of course. It soaked the paper parasol, loosening the varnish, softening the paper. By the time Sakura got to school, her face and hands were streaked with red and pink and turquoise paint, and the parasol was ruined …’

  ‘Ouch …’ Shay says. ‘What did your dad say?’

  ‘He said it was still beautiful,’ I tell him. ‘Even though the edges had torn, and the colours had run. The parasol wasn’t ruined, he said … it had just changed, lived a little.’

  Shay laughs. ‘Your dad is cool,’ he says, and that makes me smile.

  ‘Things were changing for Sakura,’ I conclude. ‘In Scotland, everyone called her by a different name – Cherry – and talked to her in the language her dad used, never the one her mum had spoken. Slowly, she began to forget. She forgot about Kyoto, and the cherry blossom in the park, and the language everyone spoke and the clothes they wore on festival days. She forgot about the shrines and the pagodas and the neon signs that lit up the city at night. But she never, ever, forgot her mum.’

  Shay hugs his knees in the firelight. ‘That’s beautiful,’ he sighs. ‘But so, so sad …’

  I sigh.

  When Shay first called round to the caravan, a few weeks ago, the stories were a way of fobbing him off, keeping him at arm’s length. A little chunk of story to make him go away … it seemed like a fair trade. Things didn’t quite work out like that. The stories are too personal, too powerful. They didn’t push Shay away, they drew him closer. They have spun a web around us both, and breaking free seems impossible. I don’t even want to break free, not any more.

  I am tired of fighting this.

  I look at Shay and he looks back at me through the firelight, his face lit with flickering orange. I have to look away because my cheeks are burning, and it has nothing at all to do with the fire.

  24

  The next few days rush past in a blur.

  Charlotte borrows crates of cups, saucers, plates and cutlery from the village hall in nearby Comber’s Tor, plus ten trestle tables and a whole stack of folding chairs. We set up four tables under the trees on the flat part of the lawn, to make the stalls, and arrange the rest down by the wall so the visitors can have their refreshments while looking out over the beach.

  Shay helps Dad to rig up an outdoor sound system, complete with dodgy sweet-themed playlist as promised.

  Shay’s dad still wants him to work on the Saturday, which is a bit of a disaster. Weekends are the sailing centre’s busiest time, he says, especially this particular one, when more tourists than ever flood into the village because of the Food Trail.

  ‘He won’t budge,’ Shay tells us gloomily. ‘I’ve explained how important this is – but no. I’m not a son, I’m a slave, to him. It sucks.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Shay,’ Charlotte says. ‘We’ll manage.’

  Everyone is working like crazy.

  We f
inish off the chocolate-fairy dresses and hang them on the top landing, ready for the big day, along with matching wings and wands and shoes. Charlotte makes some simple menus for the outdoor chocolate cafe and handpainted signs with the truffle names and prices. Wind chimes and strings of bells are hung from random tree branches, and an unused sketchbook is turned into a visitor book to collect comments and addresses so we can mail out brochures to happy customers once the big day is over.

  Endless trays of finished truffles stack up in the giant fridge in Dad’s workshop, and begin taking over the big fridge in the house. Charlotte is baking chocolate gateaux, fudge brownies and mountains of glossy profiteroles, and the rest of us make two big Cherry Chocolate Cola Cakes and enough chocolate fridge-cake to feed the whole of Somerset.

  Even Honey joins in. The trip to London to see her dad is going ahead, the coach tickets bought and paid for, her bag packed … and that means she is helpful, efficient and almost fun to work with. She takes charge in the kitchen, dividing up jobs and keeping an eye on everything so that we stop messing around and actually begin to produce tray after tray of gorgeous, chocolatey treats.

  ‘Team work,’ she says firmly, apparently forgetting that she has not been a part of anybody’s team but her own for quite some time. ‘And good leadership. Summer, how is that new batch of chocolate melting down? Skye, have you finished the vanilla icing? Coco, can you load up the dishwasher again and stack those plates on the side …?’

  ‘What did your last servant die of?’ Coco huffs.

  ‘Nothing, you’re still alive,’ Honey grins. ‘Wait a second, Cherry, you’ve got chocolate on your face …’

  She wipes my cheek gently with a square of kitchen roll, and I back away slightly, expecting a sharp dig or a nasty comment, but nothing comes. I think I could almost get to like this new, improved version of Honey – if only it didn’t make me feel so guilty.