The Chocolate Promise

by Josephine Moon

  ‘Yes, we’re an item. He’s my beau. We have regular sleepovers at each other’s houses.’

  ‘Ah, that’s . . . nice.’

  Just then, Gordon Harding, Who Was Riding His Penny Farthing, rolled to a stop outside the shop, perched high on the big wheel and flicking the lever of the metal bell to make it click and clack.

  ‘That’s my call,’ Rosemary said. ‘After this morning’s ride we’re going to look up videos on YouTube for race tactics.’

  ‘That sounds like great fun,’ Christmas said. ‘But with all this training, will you no longer be coming in for chocolate consultations?’

  Rosemary placed her hand on her heart. ‘My dear, I simply could not live without your chocolate. There is nothing on earth that would make me stop coming.’ She positioned the bicycle helmet on her head, wobbling it from side to side to find the best fit, then did up the chinstrap with some difficulty under that rather wide jaw. ‘At any rate, I’ll be back soon, as I need to hear all about your adventures and your own love story.’

  ‘I’m not sure what the ending to that story is yet,’ Christmas said pensively.

  ‘Then you can still choose the final scene,’ Rosemary called over her shoulder, heading to the door. ‘I’ll be back for the encore.’

  Around midday, Bert and Ernie arrived, a cold gust of wind following them in the door. They welcomed Christmas home with smiles and a tip of their caps before moving to the coffee station for their free coffee of the day.

  ‘Off to canasta?’ she called to the back of the men’s trademark baseball caps as they sorted out their brews.

  ‘Yes,’ Bert said. ‘And those Henderson boys are going down today.’

  ‘They only won last time because of those four red threes. Can’t beat luck like that. But the stats would suggest they won’t get that lucky again today,’ Ernie said.

  ‘And that red canasta of aces.’ Bert shook his head. ‘I’d swear they were cheating.’

  Bert and Ernie took their places at the long table and ordered chocolate toast, and Christmas placed the bread, fresh from Jane’s bakery, under the cafe grill.

  Then, just as she delivered the plates to the men, a text message arrived from Emily, asking if she’d like to catch up for dinner, but Christmas didn’t have time to think about how to respond before Cheyenne came in carrying a bunch of sunflowers so large they almost dwarfed her short stature.

  ‘Hello!’ she called from behind the yellow heads and long green stems.

  Christmas rushed to help her get them onto the counter. ‘It’s great to see you,’ she said. ‘Abigail was a bit worried about you while I was away. What happened?’

  Cheyenne shot her left hand up into the air, the back of her hand facing Christmas, her fingers straight. A white gold and diamond ring sparkled under the lights.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Christmas took her hand and gazed at the beautiful ring, shiny with freshness and new beginnings. ‘How did this happen?’ Cheyenne wasn’t even seeing anyone as far as she knew.

  ‘His name’s Wilbur,’ Cheyenne said. ‘He lives in Melbourne and we’ve known each other since we were kids but we’d lost track for a decade or so. Then he looked me up on Facebook and we began chatting and it was as if we were best friends and always had been and should never have lost contact. He came to stay for a couple of weeks while you were away and I guess we fell into a bit of a . . . well, a consumed state of affairs.’

  ‘You’ve gone red to the tips of your ears!’ Christmas laughed.

  ‘The rest of the world just fell away, including, I’m afraid to say, your shop and my flower commitments. I’m very sorry.’

  Christmas waved a hand. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Abigail came knocking on the door eventually. She didn’t look very pleased. You know how she gets that horseshoe-shaped wrinkle between her brows when she’s grumpy.’

  ‘Yes, I do. She must be grumpy a lot, come to think of it, because I see it often.’

  ‘She told me off and said I’d let you down and you’d be so disappointed.’ Cheyenne tucked her left hand behind her back then, as though suddenly ashamed.

  Christmas pulled it back around to the front. ‘Not at all. I’m delighted for you.’

  ‘Really? Because I’d love you to be a bridesmaid. I mean, I know we’re too mature for that sort of thing, but I don’t really have another word for it. I can’t call you a flower girl. Or maybe I can!’ Cheyenne laughed—loud, joyous laughter that simply couldn’t be contained.

  ‘Well, of course I’ll be your person, whatever you want to call me.’ They hugged.

  ‘I’ve got to run,’ Cheyenne said. ‘We’re off to look at venues together while the kids are at school. But I wanted to get these flowers to you and say how sorry I am for falling off the radar. I promise I’ll get my head together soon.’

  ‘Go on. Have fun.’

  Cheyenne practically bounced out the door.

  Christmas took a deep breath and a moment to absorb Cheyenne’s wonderful change of luck and the new direction her life was taking. Life was full of surprises. It seemed as though the whole world was in love or getting married: Val and Archie; Lincoln’s friend Rubble; Dennis and Juliette; Rosemary and Gordon; and Cheyenne.

  Val appeared in the afternoon carrying a bag with the wedding shoes she’d just picked up for next weekend. She held them aloft and smiled sheepishly. Christmas was still annoyed with her, but Tiny Val was her sister. It was par for the course of sisterhood that you got annoyed, got hurt, but still kept going. It was the unwritten universal pact. And besides, Val was getting married in a week. Softening, Christmas held out her hands for the box to inspect them.

  ‘Have you come to see me here so I can’t make a scene in front of my customers?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Val said, taking a freshly baked gingerbread man from the jar in front of her stool at the counter.

  ‘Because I’m still cranky,’ Christmas said, setting out cups to make tea. She’d had quite enough caffeine for one day. Despite the promising start to the day her stamina hadn’t lasted, and for the past few hours she’d been fighting off random waves of jetlag, which felt like she was being dumped in the surf and smothered by the weight of the ocean as she scrambled for air. She’d changed the music in the shop to an up-tempo Beatles compilation to keep her going. But she was very much looking forward to the shop being closed tomorrow so she could catch up.

  ‘Oh, Val, these are gorgeous,’ she added, touching the soft white fabric flowers on the toe of the shoe.

  ‘And they’re actually comfortable too! And half price! I’m a lucky girl,’ Val said, biting the foot off the gingerbread man. ‘Here, I brought you this,’ she went on, handing over her offering.

  Christmas eyed the object uncertainly. ‘You brought me a rock?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Val shrugged. ‘We’d run out of packet mixes for any sort of cake, so I chose a rock from the garden. Count yourself lucky—the rock’s probably more edible than a cake would have been anyway.’

  Christmas looked at her. ‘You’re a bit odd.’

  ‘I know. Look, I really am sorry. It was an awful blunder of miscommunication and bad timing. You said so many times that you didn’t care about finding Gregoire, so when I didn’t hear back from you I assumed you were just ignoring me, but then later thought I should check just in case . . . But I’m still sorry.’

  Christmas turned the rock over in her hand. On the back, Val had painted a red love heart in nail polish.

  ‘We’re family, Massy, and always will be,’ Val continued. ‘Families are the foundations of life, just like rocks are the foundation of the earth, which is of course why it hurts you so much that you might have missed your chance to find your father.’

  Christmas lifted one shoulder—a partial relenting. ‘I think I’m old enough to know that there are many chances in life. They keep coming, like buses. If you miss one, you just take the next one.’

 
As Val took her hand, Christmas thought that her little sister might be right: family was the base of life and it was also the bedrock of happiness. If yours was a bit wonky to begin with, then you had to work harder to make it strong.

  ‘Okay, so I suppose I forgive you.’ She turned away to get the tea.

  ‘Hurrah.’ Val clapped.

  ‘Now, shall we follow the rules of making up after a fight and stuff ourselves silly with chocolate?’ Christmas said.

  ‘Pass me that bag of salted caramel drops there.’

  ‘This one?’

  ‘Yes. And get the slab of rocky road too.’

  ‘Sure. And while we’re on family, I want to start cooking classes with Nate. I should have done it before now. He’s been right under my nose.’

  ‘He’ll love that,’ Val said, biting into the rocky road. ‘Make sure you teach him how to make this first, though, because I plan on eating all of it.’

  By the late afternoon, Christmas had also caught up with Mary Hauser and her schnauzer (who came in for doggy chocolate); Abigail (who came to let Christmas know she’d be reducing her working days to just Saturdays because she was taking on more study); and Tu and Lien. The last pair had popped in on their way to hydrotherapy for Lien, and Christmas had told them to wait in the shop while she raced upstairs, tipped out the contents of her suitcase and skipped back down the stairs with the novel she’d bought in Paris. She handed it to Lien.

  ‘It’s in French,’ the girl said, puzzled.

  ‘I picked it up at a book stall beside the Seine. At the rate you read, I was worried you might get through everything ever written in the English language, and I wondered if maybe you might like to start taking French lessons with me, and then you could start on the French books?’

  Lien looked up, her eyes wide under the red woollen beanie on top of her long hair. ‘Together?’

  ‘Yes. I think it’s time I learned, but I hear it’s a difficult language and I reckon it would be much more fun with a friend. What do you say?’

  Lien looked at Tu, who smiled and nodded. A bright smile flashed across Lien’s face, quickly replaced by an attempt at teenage nonchalance. ‘Okay, sure. I could do that.’

  ‘Wonderful!’

  Tu had mouthed a silent thank you to Christmas while Lien was busy flipping through the book’s pages.

  Now, Christmas turned her thoughts to Emily, who was waiting for an answer about having dinner tonight. The problem was, though, that she’d pushed Lincoln and Emily together, and then Lincoln had up and left Tasmania and followed her to France. She couldn’t be sure until she spoke to Emily, but perhaps her friend might be—justifiably—upset about this. And since she didn’t yet know where she stood with Lincoln, it would make their conversation rather awkward. She felt guilt about Lincoln, but at the same time she was still hurt that Emily hadn’t told her about Gregoire herself. It was all a bit much for her tired and foggy mind to handle. So she sent a message in reply to Emily, saying she was horribly jetlagged and would get back to her when she felt better.

  26

  Elsa was still in hospital, much to her own disdain. She had improved but the doctors were very fussy with old people. She guessed it would look quite bad on their records if they discharged elderly people only for them to cark it. But it was tedious in the extreme. It was one thing to be old and unable to walk around by yourself but quite another to have people asking the same boring questions about food and bowels and breathing over and over again. And she detested these modern pulse clips they put on the end of your finger. It was far more human for someone to press their warm fingers against your papery skin rather than hook you up like a robot.

  Even worse, people kept asking her questions that were clearly designed to see if she still had all her faculties. Like this girl, with her ponytail swishing around her shoulders like some sort of hair commercial.

  ‘What did you eat for breakfast, Mrs van Luc?’ the ponytail asked. The girl knew the answer, of course; it was written on Elsa’s chart, clasped in the girl’s purple-painted nails.

  ‘Can you tell me which year the charts changed from wood to plastic?’ Elsa said.

  ‘Sorry?’ The girl was confused now, probably slightly anxious. Elsa could see a finger wandering towards the pen to make a note.

  ‘The piece of plastic you’re holding,’ Elsa said patiently. ‘Those charts used to be made of wood.’

  ‘No, they’ve always been plastic.’

  ‘You’re so young,’ Elsa said, a criticism, not an observation.

  The girl left, frowning, passing Elsa’s youngest son in the doorway.

  ‘Well, don’t hover over me,’ the old woman ordered, refusing to show surprise. ‘Sit down.’

  Tom half sat on the edge of the visitor’s chair. Elsa found it difficult to read his expression. Defensiveness, certainly. But maybe a hint of contrition? Or perhaps that was just what she wanted to see.

  ‘I’m taking it this visit is because your children have been to see you,’ Elsa said. ‘Probably got your hopes up I was about to die.’

  He had the decency to at least look a tiny bit ashamed at that.

  ‘Stop fretting,’ she said. ‘I know why you’re here. They told me about your investment issues.’

  Tom muttered under his breath and wiped his hand across his mouth. She looked at his rumpled shirt. Gracious, did the man never iron? She waited to hear what he would say, though she doubted it would make any difference to her decision. Mr Nettle from the solicitor’s practice down the road was on his way so she could change her will.

  ‘Then you know why I need the money,’ Tom said.

  ‘And why should I bail you out?’ she said.

  ‘Because you owe me. You ruined me,’ he said, and the words struggled to emerge from beneath years of resentment.

  ‘Ruined you?’ That was surprising. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘I had plans and dreams. I’d worked hard to save that money to go to America and you just’—he puffed a few times—‘just took it!’

  Elsa looked down at the white cotton blanket pulled up to her armpits, frowning, casting her mind back to pluck at the memory Tom had stirred. In due course she found it. That was one benefit of getting older. The distant memories came back again, because just as you were finishing your lap around the circle of life you met up again with the parts at the start.

  ‘To pay the creditors?’ she clarified, remembering now that she’d counted out her son’s notes and been impressed he’d saved so much.

  ‘Yes, to pay the creditors,’ Tom said, his voice heavy and slow, laden with decades of contempt.

  ‘But we were going to lose the house,’ she said, incredulous that her quick thinking that day could be so ungratefully condemned.

  ‘That wasn’t my problem. I was out of there anyway. I was on my way to America and a new life.’

  She shook her head sadly, wondering how Tom had turned out so dense. ‘But that wasn’t the end of your life, Tom. You’ve lived a long time since then. You’ve had plenty of opportunities to get whatever life you wanted. Bad things happen to people all the time. People lose their homes, their livelihoods, their families. People lose their children!’ She choked up then, unexpectedly, and looked away. She’d lost a child. A grown man by then, but still her child, always. And out on the terrifying battlefields where she couldn’t even say goodbye.

  ‘Money is seasonal, Tom. It comes in like the tide and it goes out again and then it comes back. To lose a bit of money . . . it’s nothing. Nothing,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘But you betrayed me,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, I see. Now a sense of betrayal is a powerful emotion. I don’t believe it’s justified here. Your father was in trouble and that put all of us in danger. I did the only thing I could do to save us as a family. You were a part of that family and you had the resources in that moment to help. That’s what families do.’

  ‘But you didn’t even ask.’

  Elsa opened her mouth to s
ay that she didn’t have time, it was their only chance, that that was what she’d had to do time and again throughout their lives but Tom had mostly never seen it, and sometimes she’d had to make choices and sacrifices she didn’t like. Ebe made their life hard. But you didn’t get divorced back then; you just got on with it.

  But something made her stop. There was a slow-moving feeling of heaviness travelling through her body. There was something wrong with her recollection of that event. She felt herself automatically try to resist it, to defend her actions. Instead, she closed her eyes to search inside for whatever was trying to surface.

  And there it was.

  The truth of the matter was that she did have enough money tucked away to pay the creditors that day. But if she’d taken it, they’d be left with no reserves, and she didn’t ever want to be without reserves. Ebe’s erratic choices meant she never felt truly safe and secure. The rug could be ripped out from beneath her at any moment. So she couldn’t just have enough for one financial catastrophe; she needed more. And in keeping her focus on the big picture, in ensuring they could meet the next inevitable crisis, she’d overlooked her son’s smaller picture—his dream, his plans.

  Now here he was telling her she’d ruined his life. Whether or not she agreed with that belief, or thought it was reasonable, she did accept that she’d acted that day without thinking it through. She’d acted without considering Tom’s feelings. And now? Well, she was certainly old enough to admit her mistakes.

  ‘You’re right, I didn’t ask and that wasn’t fair. I’m sorry.’

  Tom stared at her, his lips twitching, his fingers worrying at the seam of his pants. Her words had affected him.

  ‘And now I might lose my house,’ he said. ‘I’m in the same predicament you were in.’

  She raised her chin and looked at the ceiling. Ah, she hadn’t really considered it like that. She supposed her little speech about families still applied, then, and she should take heed of her own self-righteousness. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me about the investment and why you needed the money instead of trying to bully me into selling the house?’