The Chocolate Lovers' Club

by Carole Matthews

  Now the salon is run by a really flamboyant guy called Darren who gives me a free cut and blow-dry every now and again as I keep an eye on the place for him out of hours. I guess if I moved I’d have to start paying for hairdos, too. He gives me one of those funky, chippy cuts favored by children’s presenters on the BBC and I like to think that it keeps me looking young. Gamine. But maybe it just emphasizes my chubby cheeks. I really should introduce him to Clive and Tristan one day. Those boys might make fab chocolates, but they could both do with a revamp in the hair department. Their current styles favor an overindulgence in hair gel and some unfortunate bleached highlights. They would love Darren. Darren is skeletal—the bitch. He weighs about nine stone and has hips like a twelve-year-old girl. Clive and Tris would fatten him up a treat. Anyway, back to my family. Dad, conversely, is now married to a much younger woman who’s also a hairdresser. She has failed to do much with my father’s combover, but there’s a spring in his step which I put down to something other than her skill with scissors. Dad lives on the south coast and I see even less of him than I do of Mum.

  Unlocking the door, I throw my gym bag on the floor and head for the fridge without turning the kitchen light on. Sitting on the cold tiles with the fridge door open, I reenact the scene from 91/2 Weeks all by myself. A tub of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food Ice Cream from the freezer compartment is the first to go. I don’t even bother with a spoon, I just claw it out with my fingers and cram it into my mouth. All the way home on the Tube, I managed to stop myself from sobbing, but now fat, wet tears roll down my face and into my chocolate ice cream, making all the little chocolate fish and the marshmallows taste salty. When that’s gone, I start on the stash of Snickers Bars and devour three with as few chews as possible. A milk chocolate Bounty Bar is the next to go. Normally I ponder on the fact that Bounty is missing a trick by not putting one dark chocolate and one milk chocolate bar in each wrapper, to save all that troublesome choosing—but tonight I don’t care what color they are as I guzzle the sweet coconut down. I have a box of pure plantation chocolates from Chocolate Heaven in there too—though Clive would pass out at the thought of me eating their chocolates at anything other than room temperature—and, despite my pain, even I realize that they would be wasted on me at this moment. So, I opt instead for a bar of Cad-bury’s Dairy Milk, three Thornton’s Alpini bars, and a box of Celebrations which I can hardly unwrap quickly enough.

  All the time that I’m eating, I hardly think of Marcus and how shabbily he has treated me—once more. For now, it’s just me and the comfort chocolate. In the Celebrations go, one after another with no discernible gap— orange, coconut, caramel. I hardly taste them. But when I stop gorging, I feel sick. Sick to my stomach. So I stagger to the bedroom, strip off my clothes and head for my bed, where I lie on my back and wait for morning.

  Chapter Six

  NEXT MORNING, I’M AS WHITE as the driven snow when I look in the bathroom mirror, apart from the dark plugholes of my eyes. I lean heavily on the edge of the sink, feeling disgusted with myself. This is not the first time that Marcus has treated me so badly—it’s just the first time that I’ve actually been confronted with him in the very act of infidelity.

  I’ve given five years of my life to Marcus Canning. Five of my very best years. And I feel so stupid that I’ve squandered them on him. I keep hanging on in there because he insists that I’m the only woman in the world he couldn’t live without. Then, every now and again, he meets an obliging girl in the local wine bar or somewhere—someone thin and pretty like Jo—and decides he’d better check if I really am the only woman he can’t live without … or whether he’s mistaken. So, off he trots into the wide blue yonder without a backward glance. Until he decides that he can live without her, but not—after all—without little old me. Then he comes back. It involves begging on his part—and more each time—but invariably I cave in and take him back. It’s what keeps my consumption of single Madagascar chocolate on the excessive side. Well—no more! This time, Marcus and I are through.

  After a shower, I scrub at my teeth, letting the harsh mint hit take away the sour taste in my mouth. Why the hell don’t they make toothpaste in chocolate flavor? That would be so much better. Why can’t we have women toothpaste designers, then we’d get it in yummy tiramisu or fudge brownie flavor, not poxy spearmint. Yack. I get dressed, pulling on the clothes that I’d discarded on the bedroom floor last night. I forgo breakfast as I can’t bear to open the fridge again, and then head out of the flat, waving with forced cheeriness at Darren the hairdresser as he arrives for work. Then, instead of taking my usual route to the office, I jump on the Northern Line and head back to Marcus’s flat.

  Before I let myself in the front door, I take a very deep breath, but there’s no sign of Marcus or his paramour, Jo. As I hoped, he has already left for the day. The man is a complete workaholic and likes to be in the office at 7:30 A.M. He hates to think that his colleagues might arrive earlier than him and get a head start. Marcus’s morning begins at 6:30 A.M. prompt with a run and a cold shower, and neither I—nor, I suspect, a new lover—would make him change that routine.

  There are signs, however, that a good time was had by all last night. Jo might have found herself caught in the middle of a love triangle, but she clearly didn’t mind staying around when she thought that one of the angles had been dispensed with. The remains of dinner still grace the table—dirty dishes, rumpled napkins, a champagne flute bearing a lipstick mark. There’s even one of the Chocolate Heaven goodies left in the box—which is absolute sacrilege in my book, so I pop it in my mouth and enjoy the brief lift it gives me. I huff unhappily to myself. If they left chocolate uneaten, that must be because they couldn’t wait to get down to it. Two of the red cushions from the sofa are on the floor, which shows a certain carelessness that Marcus doesn’t normally exhibit. They’re scattered on the white, fluffy sheepskin rug, which should immediately make me suspicious—and it does. I walk through to the bedroom and, of course, it isn’t looking quite as pristine as it did yesterday. Both sides of the bed are disheveled and I think that tells me just one thing. But, if I needed confirmation, there’s a bottle of champagne and two more flutes by the side of the bed. It seems that Marcus didn’t sleep alone.

  Heavy of heart and footstep, I trail back through to the kitchen. More devastation faces me. Marcus has made no attempt to clear up. The dishes haven’t been put into the dishwasher and the congealed remnants of last night’s Moroccan chicken with olives and saffron-scented mash still stand in their respective saucepans on the cooker. Tipping the contents of one pan into the other, I then pick up a serving spoon and carry them both through to the bedroom. I slide open the wardrobe doors and the sight of Marcus’s neatly organized rows of shirts and suits greet me. Balancing the pan rather precariously on my hip, I dip the serving spoon into the chicken and mashed potatoes and scoop up as much as I can. Opening the pocket of Marcus’s favorite Hugo Boss suit, I deposit the cold mash into it. To give the man credit where credit is due, his mash is very light and fluffy.

  I move along the row, garnishing each of his suits with some of his gourmet dish, and when I’ve done all of them, find that I still have some food remaining. Seems as if the lovers didn’t have much of an appetite, after all. I move onto Marcus’s shoes—rows and rows of lovely designer footwear— casual at one end, smart at the other. He has a shoe collection that far surpasses mine. Ted Baker, Paul Smith, Prada, Miu Miu, Tod’s … I slot a full spoon delicately into each one, pressing it down into the toe area for maximum impact.

  I take the saucepan back into the kitchen and return it to the hob. With the way I’m feeling, Marcus is very lucky that I don’t just burn his flat down. Instead, I open the freezer. My boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—has a love of seafood. (And other women, of course.) I take out a bag of frozen tiger prawns and rip it open. In the living room, I remove the cushions from the sofa and gently but firmly push a couple of handfuls of the prawns down the back. Through to the bedroom and
I lift the mattress on Marcus’s lovely leather bed and slip the remaining prawns beneath it, pressing them as flat as I can. In a couple of days, they should smell quite interesting.

  As my pièce de résistance, I go back to the kitchen and take the half-finished bottle of red wine—the one that I didn’t even get a sniff at—and pour it all over Marcus’s white, fluffy rug. I place my key in the middle of the spreading stain. Then I take out my lipstick, a nice red one called Bitter Scarlet—which is quite appropriate, if you ask me—and I write on his white leather sofa, in my best possible script: MARCUS CANNING, YOU ARE A CHEATING BASTARD.

  Chapter Seven

  “AND THEN I CALLED YOU.” My lip is wobbling now that I’ve brought my dear friends up to date with the latest installment in the soap opera that is my disastrous love life. When I pick up my hot chocolate, my hands are shaking. I hold the mug tightly until the warmth starts to relax my fingers.

  “Goodness me,” Autumn says, wide-eyed.

  “Bloody well done,” Nadia chips in. “Bloody well done to you. What a git Marcus is.”

  The revenge-by-prawns felt like a perfect touch when I did it. Now I’m not so sure. “I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me for this,” I mumble.

  Chantal snorts. “Why should you think about him forgiving you! He’s the one who put you in that terrible situation. He’s the one who should be looking for forgiveness. Toughen up, Lucy. It’s time you stopped being his doormat.”

  “What if he has me arrested for criminal damage?”

  “He wouldn’t dare,” Nadia says.

  Clive and Tristan have joined us at the table and nibble furiously at their own feuillantines. There’s nothing they like better than a good gossip.

  “What do you think, boys?”

  “You did great,” Clive assures me with a pat on my hand. “Sublime blend of drama and outrage. You could be an honorary gay.”

  Tristan and Clive watch over their most precious clients with a proprietorial air. They regularly chip in to help us solve our problems, but as they are both campier than Eddie Izzard, I’m sure that their advice is sometimes skewed. Plus, it wouldn’t do if they solved all our relationship dilemmas anyway, because then they’d both be out of business. Their profits would drop by a minimum of 50 percent if I didn’t come here for a week. But then that’s a stupid thought. I couldn’t last a week without coming here at least once.

  Tristan, a former accountant and fully practicing chocoholic, is supposed to be the entrepreneur. He’s aiming for a chain of Chocolate Heaven cafés reaching across the land, nudging their elbows into the ribs of Starbucks. Clive is the master chocolatier, having started his career as a pastry chef at one of the top hotels in London, indulging his lifelong passion for chocolate in fabulously exotic desserts. When he and Tristan got together, they both quit their day jobs and set up Chocolate Heaven. Clive now spends his time creating the most exquisite concoctions known to man—or should that be woman? And although both of these guys are as gay as they come, they both know exactly how to keep a girl happy.

  “Did you phone Crush?” Chantal wants to know. “If you haven’t been in to work yet, they’ll all be wondering where you are.”

  “No,” I say with a tearful sniff “I didn’t even think about the office.”

  “Give me your phone,” she instructs. “I’ll call and say you’ll be in at lunchtime.” Which she does. As I listen to Chantal’s earnest and evasive explanation of my absence, I try to blank out thoughts of this story doing the rounds of Targa when it gets out, as these things always do. “He’s worried about you, Mr. Aiden Holby,” Chantal says when she hangs up. “He sounds cute.”

  Chantal thinks that everyone under forty, who is breathing, sounds cute. But in this case she’s right. Hang on—how can I even be thinking that, when I’m so recently devastated? I force myself to say brightly, “He is cute.”

  “Good girl,” Chantal says. “There is life after Marcus. Just hang on in there. Hey, Clive, we need more chocolate.”

  Autumn and I nod our agreement.

  “Truffles,” he says wisely, a finger stroking his neat goatee. “That’s what we need. Ideal for a crisis.” He scuttles off to replenish our stock.

  “Not for me,” Nadia says, standing up. “I’ve got to go and pick Lewis up from nursery. My freedom for the day hath ended.” She throws up her hands in a resigned gesture.

  The rest of us, never having had much to do with kids other than going to school with them when we were kids ourselves, simply nod in the right places when Nadia pours out all her concerns about her shaky parenting skills. Getting Lewis onto solids was a particularly lengthy topic—although we did point out that chocolate is a solid, and who could resist that? Now he’ll happily eat pizza, sausages and chocolate—good boy! These days, Nadia comes to our regular get-togethers whenever possible to try to stop her brain from rotting. Her words, not ours, although we do agree with her. Sometimes she forgets herself and starts telling us about how her son likes to explore the contents of his nose—a topic of conversation that we’re very quick to knock on the head. But we have weaned her from her worse excesses and keep her conversation in the world of grown-ups as much as we can.

  Nadia is only my age, but she seems so much older. Her responsibilities sometimes weigh heavily on her. She has a lovely home, a lovely husband and a lovely baby, but to be honest—as she is with us—sometimes she’s bored to tears with her life.

  The main fly in the ointment is that Nadia is Indian and her husband isn’t. Her family disowned her because she shunned her arranged marriage to her third cousin Tariq, or something like that. She was cast out of her cozy, extended family and, to this day, she’s never clapped eyes on any of her relatives since. Which means, on the upside, that she’s been spared a thousand visits by sundry well-meaning aunties bearing Tupperware containers filled with onion bhajees, but it also means, on the downside, that she has to cope with everything pretty much alone.

  When Nadia became pregnant she hoped that it would, at least, spark a reunion with her two sisters to whom she’d been so close. But it never happened and I guess we, the Chocolate Lovers’ Club, have become her surrogate sisters.

  Having wanted to escape a traditional Indian marriage, she now seems to have found herself lumbered with a man who’s regressed fifty years. After the baby was born, Toby insisted that he didn’t want any wife of his working, and now Nadia stays at home with Lewis—which is a luxury they can barely afford. Toby has his own plumbing business and we all know how lucrative that can be, but children—like good chocolate—are extremely expensive. Nadia has complied, but it means that she’s given up a career as a publicist for a trendy publisher which she thoroughly enjoyed, and I can’t help but feel as if there’s some resentment simmering there. I try to console her by convincing her that her job was “so last year.” But, secretly, she knows that I’d saw off one of my arms for a gig like that.

  Nadia kisses me on the cheek and grabs the last chocolate from the plate. “Maybe I’ll catch you later in the week.”

  “Thanks for coming.” I do appreciate it as I know how hard it is for Nadia to get time by herself.

  Autumn works weird and wonderful hours, so she can normally duck in here for an hour or so when required. She “does good” as a job, working in a rehabilitation center for young druggies—I’m sure there’s a more politically correct term. The program’s called something trendy, like KICK IT! or STUFF IT! or FUCK IT!—something like that, I can’t remember. She teaches creative glass techniques, which I’m sure must come in terribly useful when you’re trying to quit heroin. But I shouldn’t scoff, she’s very earnest about it all and cares about all her charges—probably far too deeply. Having been blessed with the name Autumn has somehow landed her with an overactive-conscience gene—something normally missing from the upper classes, I find. We all love her, despite her eccentricities, because we are bonded together by our shared addiction.

  Autumn is the archetypal English Rose an
d she’s a lovely, warm human being. Her only apparent flaw is that she thinks cheesecloth is a cool fabric. I’d describe what she’s wearing, but I couldn’t bear to. It’s dreadful—all sort of hippy and mismatched. Floaty chiffon skirt with denim jacket and … well, cheesecloth. That’s as far as I’m going. We may be joined by our mutual appreciation of all things chocolaty but we certainly don’t share a fashion sense. I, being a secretary-aspiring-to-be-an-executive, wear smart clothes— suits and tailored dresses. The fact that I buy them all from Primark is neither here nor there. At least I’m not at the charity-shop level that my friend prefers. Autumn is also the most principled among us. She recycles things (other than her clothing), and she rides a bike in preference to driving a car and not because she can’t afford one. Autumn also favors scuffed Dr. Martens boots over Jimmy Choos, and she can afford those too. You can tell she’s not normal. I keep trying to convince her that she should buy Jimmy Choos and then pass them on to the less fortunate when she’s worn them a couple of times—like me, for instance. Autumn uses Eco washing powder and environmentally friendly bleach and has been known to shun Dr. Hauschka’s Rose Day Cream in favor of washing her face in her own urine. It was, thankfully, an experiment that didn’t last long because it made her smell funny—even though she denied it. There’ll come a time in our lives when we’ll all smell of wee, and my view is that it’s best not to hasten the process.