The Chocolatier's Secret (Magnolia Creek, Book 2)

by Helen J Rolfe

  ‘Where do you live, in Australia?’ she asked. ‘Which city?’

  ‘I’m from Melbourne.’

  She felt it was safe to admit where she was heading. ‘I’m flying into Melbourne.’

  His eyes lit up. ‘I thought you weren’t going to tell me any specifics.’

  She smiled. ‘First stop is South Yarra.’

  ‘Nice place. Hotel?’

  ‘Short-term apartment – cheaper.’ She had the place booked for three nights to give herself time to recover from jet lag, time to digest what she was going to do. Then she’d hire a car, complete with a satnav, and make her way up to Magnolia Creek where Andrew Bennett ran his chocolaterie. Those few days would hopefully allow her feelings to settle before she went to find out whether he had any room in his life for her.

  ‘Are you ready to tackle Melbourne’s tram system?’

  ‘I think so.’ She was more than a little excited about getting on a tram for the first time. The idea of zipping around the city to go to the shops or see the sights – imagine going to work on one – fascinated her.

  The cabin crew cleared away the trays of food and Molly put on another film. She could see Ben was watching quiz shows, playing the interactive Millionaire game show and tutting if he got one wrong. Her eyes were heavy, with London time closing in on midnight, and tired of the TV screen she rested a pillow against the window, smiled across at Ben and shut her eyes. She tightened her seatbelt when the plane bumped a little. She blocked out any scenarios about turbulence she’d heard, and as she told herself she was going to be fine, as she thought about her birth father and maybe meeting him face to face, she drifted off.

  When Molly woke, the plane had nearly completed its descent and they were coming in to land. She smiled over at Ben, who looked like he’d been dozing too.

  ‘Well done,’ he whispered and she grinned from ear to ear.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Molly

  Ben hoisted his bag over his shoulder and walked alongside Molly as they moved from the plane and through the passenger boarding bridge when they disembarked. Molly was tired and felt grubby, but she was buzzing. The adrenalin of knowing she’d got on a plane, without freaking out during the thirteen hours they were up in the sky, flooded her body. It had been a smooth landing, and the only moment she’d felt panic rising was when the wheels were on the ground and the rush of noise got so loud it was as though the plane was heading straight for something. But then it had quietened and the plane had leisurely crawled along the runway, into its designated bay, and the flight was officially over.

  ‘How are you feeling right now?’ A huge smile spread across Ben’s face as they walked away from the gate.

  She couldn’t stop grinning. ‘Pretty pleased with myself.’

  Ben stopped and pulled his phone from the front pocket of his bag. ‘Selfie time.’

  ‘What? No way! I must look hideous.’ The air in the plane had left everything feeling dry, tight and like she needed a damn good shower.

  ‘Rubbish. You look fine, you look happy.’

  She accepted the compliment but held her breath when their heads tipped towards each other so they could both get in the frame. As well as a shower, she desperately wanted to clean her teeth. She hadn’t braved the miniscule cubicle on the plane to do it, but now she wished she had.

  She watched the tendons in Ben’s arms as he stretched out and positioned the phone and took the picture.

  He checked it. ‘No, wait, do it again. You’re not even looking at the camera.’

  Of course not. She’d been looking at his skin, his naturally tanned colouring, which seemed at odds after a visit to the northern hemisphere that had only just emerged from winter.

  ‘Say cheese!’ This time it worked, and he said he’d post it in the Facebook group.

  Ben turned over his palm. ‘I think my hand survived to tell the tale.’ The marks she’d made had disappeared now. ‘I think it’s only fair to warn the next person you sit next to though.’

  ‘Hopefully that won’t be necessary.’ She stopped, put down her holdall and removed her hoodie. The heat of Changi Airport left her no choice. ‘It’s boiling in here.’

  ‘I can’t wait to get some sun. I’ve had an Irish winter and an English start to spring. Bloody freezing.’

  She laughed. ‘And it’s Australia’s winter coming up. You didn’t time it very well.’

  ‘Yes, Australia’s winters can be brutal,’ he joked, taking out an immigration card from the middle pocket of his bag. Molly already knew she didn’t need one as she was in transit. There was so much for her to learn! And besides, she’d managed to be asleep when they handed the cards out on the plane, something she never thought would happen.

  They smiled at one another until they realised what they were doing, and awkwardly, Ben said, ‘What’s your layover time?’

  ‘My what?’

  He grinned. ‘How long do you have until your next flight?’

  ‘Three hours, so I’ll stretch my legs, enjoy not being scrunched up in a seat.’ Clean my teeth and reapply my deodorant, she told herself.

  They were looking at each other again. Molly broke the silence. ‘And you get out there and enjoy the sunshine and heat.’ She wished she was joining him. He’d described Singapore to her during the flight and it sounded clean, neat, tropical.

  ‘Best of luck,’ he said.

  ‘With the flight? Or with meeting my birth father and possibly facing more rejection?’ The closer she got to Australia, the more real this was becoming.

  ‘Both.’ His eyes held hers for as long as they both allowed. ‘I’d better go. My mate’s meeting me at arrivals, and knowing him he’ll have left his car in a no-parking bay or on double yellows.’

  ‘Bye, Ben.’ Molly turned to go, but he pulled her arm and spun her round to face him. He looked about to kiss her, but instead he pulled her into a hug. He smelt cleaner than she’d expected, given the long flight, and the scent of washing powder still clung to his top. Perhaps he’d secretly used deodorant on the plane and freshened up when she was asleep. She hoped she didn’t pong too much as she hugged him back.

  ‘It was great to meet you, Molly,’ he said when they pulled apart.

  ‘You too. Keep in touch.’

  ‘I will, and I’ll see you on Facebook. Get on there as soon as you can and have a chat with everyone, they’ll want to know how you are. And if you find yourself at a loose end in Melbourne, we can always meet up when I’m back.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ She really wanted to leap at the chance. Now she’d met Ben in the flesh, she knew she hadn’t imagined the easiness of their banter, the feelings she’d begun to have despite hiding behind a computer screen.

  When Molly walked away, she turned back once and Ben was still rooted to the spot. She waved to him and then he turned to go, and for the next few hours she didn’t think much about having to get on another plane, she didn’t worry about turning up to see Andrew Bennett. All she really thought about was Ben.

  And she was still thinking about him as she boarded the second flight, this time on her own.

  *

  The flight from Singapore to Melbourne was better than Molly had thought it’d be. She had the window seat again, a spare seat next to her and then a woman who looked to be in her fifties sat closest to the aisle. The woman was Australian, and they made polite conversation – was it Molly’s first time? where was she off to? – and it distracted Molly from a slightly bumpy take-off.

  The woman eventually opened a magazine, and Molly took out her colouring book, turning to an ocean scene with shoals of fish, fronds of seaweed and oddly shaped shells. When the food came around, Molly smiled to herself. Ben was right. She barely touched a thing this time and started to realise why everyone moaned about airline food. It wasn’t that it was so terrible; it was just that after sitting couped up on board, each meal became less and less attractive.

  Halfway through the flight, Molly found herself listenin
g attentively to any out-of-the-ordinary sound the plane made, and her mind was beginning to go to all sorts of places. She’d read a tip from someone in the Facebook group who said fearful flyers listen for any little noise, convinced it could be a life-threatening problem, so instead she put on headphones and watched a movie, even though her eyes were sore and dry from the air conditioning.

  When the fasten seat-belt sign pinged on urgently and the plane bumped so much her tummy leapt up and down with it, Molly imagined Ben’s voice in her ear saying everything was okay.

  The turbulence was only mild, but Molly definitely wasn’t as relaxed as she was during the first leg to Singapore and she didn’t manage to sleep a wink. The descent was smooth, the landing bumpy, but before midnight local time they touched down in Melbourne, Australia, and Molly looked out of the window as the plane taxied along the runway. The lights from the aircraft flashed against the night sky, pooling all around them, and eventually they pulled into their allotted bay.

  She was here. She was in Australia. And everything was suddenly becoming real.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Louis

  He watched as Andrew’s face drained of colour. In all his years, Louis had never seen such a look of disgust, fear, anger and regret, all rolled into one.

  Andrew bashed a hand against the kitchen bench and the only sound to be heard was breathing. Louis thought it was his, but he wasn’t sure.

  Andrew picked up the bowls waiting for the soup he’d warmed for lunch and, one by one, slung them across the kitchen. He refused to look at Louis, and even though Louis understood, hadn’t expected anything less, Andrew’s fury still broke his heart.

  Louis sipped from the glass of water Gemma handed to him and his breathing calmed. If he hadn’t been sick, his breathing loud and sometimes laboured, he imagined his son would take a swing at him. He imagined those bowls would’ve been hurled his way rather than at the cupboards on the opposite wall.

  And after what he’d done, he couldn’t blame Andrew.

  The tinkle of china and the gentle swoosh of the brush were the only sounds between them as Gemma swept up the debris from the floor, and they all waited to see what would happen next.

  And then, Louis told his story from the very beginning.

  Louis – 1985

  ‘How was your day, love?’ Penny Bennett shook out the sheets she’d already dried on the washing line out back at their home in a small village in Surrey.

  ‘Busy.’ He set down his bag, took out the cinnamon twist he’d brought home for them.

  Penny looked up briefly before returning to the task of folding the sheets. As he always did, Louis went over to her and kissed her cheek. He patted her arm and went through to the kitchen to make them both a cup of tea. It’d been the routine, six days a week, every time he came home from the bakery where he worked as a pastry chef, for as long as he could remember.

  It was a particularly mild winter’s day for England, and locals were out in force, crammed into the local beer garden as Louis had driven past on his way home. Kids were skipping on the village green, and mothers were out walking with prams, trying to make the most of the weather before winter jumped out and reminded them that summer was a long way off yet.

  ‘Are the kids around?’ he asked as the kettle bubbled its way to the boil. ‘It’s awfully quiet.’

  ‘They’re doing their homework.’ She seemed troubled.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Louis stirred the tea, tapping the spoon against the china cup as he always did.

  ‘I’m worried about Andrew. He’s not himself.’

  ‘Girl trouble most likely.’

  ‘You’re probably right. But Julia seems like a nice girl, she’s good for him.’

  Louis harrumphed. ‘He’s young, Penny.’

  ‘I was only sixteen when we married.’ She didn’t wait for him to say she was right, or for him to refute her point. She smiled and then turned and took the pile of folded sheets upstairs to the airing cupboard.

  She was right about one thing: she had been only sixteen when they married, he’d been twenty-five, but there was so much to do before you settled down. He didn’t want Andrew settling for anything less than extraordinary. He’d been lucky himself. He’d known from an early age that he wanted to be big in the world of food. He hadn’t narrowed down what field it would be exactly, but he’d spent hours as a small lad studying his mum’s recipe books, doing what he could in the kitchen – not a common occurrence in the late fifties and sixties. His father had been killed in the war and his mum had four children to raise, so they’d all become pretty adept at mucking in where needed.

  By the time Louis was in his early twenties, he had a job at the local bakery, four days a week, baking bread and dealing with customers and using the accountancy skills he’d been pushed to acquire in school. He’d hated anything mathematical, but he’d knuckled down, eager to please his mother, and got qualifications to help him secure a job should he not be able to follow his dream of going into the cooking industry. He’d never had a girlfriend, not in the formal sense. He’d kissed a couple of girls in his late teens, after discos, behind the shelter at the bus stop. But nothing more.

  And then, at twenty-five he’d met Penny. She’d been in one day to buy a loaf of bread, back the next day and the one after that. And on the fourth day of her coming into the shop, he’d asked her how big her family was. ‘There are four of us, and my brothers eat like horses,’ she’d giggled coquettishly. She was younger than him; he’d seen her in a school uniform the other day. ‘Well, you sure do eat a lot of bread.’ He’d grinned, this time wrapping up two brown rolls in a paper bag for her. She went on her way.

  Slowly Louis and Penny got talking more and more, and before long he’d asked her to the dance at the village hall and they’d started seeing each other: a picnic on the village green, a walk through the Surrey countryside. Her parents disapproved, which, he suspected, was part of the excitement. She was sixteen and wanted to experience life, and they laughed their way through countless weekends, through long summer nights and rainy autumn days.

  Then, in the early winter of 1969, she’d kissed him longer than usual as they parked down the road from the cottage she lived in with her family. She’d kissed him for so long that in the end they’d run from the car, through the fields beyond her house and to the old barn that housed two old classic cars belonging to her dad. And it was there they’d both lost their virginity. It’d been tender, exciting, thrilling and a moment of weakness, but it had also been the moment everything changed for Louis.

  ‘Louis.’ It was Penny, calling from the laundry now. ‘The back door’s stuck again, I can’t shut it.’

  Things were forever going wrong with this house. They’d lived in it for thirteen years – the first two years of their lives spent with her parents in her childhood bedroom, all three of them crammed in together, as if being married in the first place wasn’t enough to contend with – and Louis did his best to keep everything shipshape, but things broke quicker than he could fix them. The door had warped at the bottom, and whenever it rained hard and got wet and they opened it, it’d get stuck and take forever to wedge shut again.

  Louis fixed the door, and by the time he came back to the kitchen, wiping the dirt from his fingers on an old rag, Andrew had come downstairs.

  ‘How was school, son?’

  Andrew looked to the floor. ‘Good.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound it. You didn’t get in trouble, did you?’

  Penny’s ears pricked up. She was a good mother, loving but firm, and their three children had discipline instilled in them but the right amount of childhood to balance it. ‘What’s happened, Andrew?’

  Andrew couldn’t look at either of his parents. His dark hair had recently been cut, and he could no longer hide behind the fringe that had flopped over his eyes until last week.

  ‘It’s Julia,’ said Andrew.

  His mother drew in breath. ‘Is she all right? What’s
happened?’

  Andrew scuffed a foot against the floor, his foot tracing the beige and brown hexagons on the old seventies carpet.

  ‘She’s pregnant,’ he blurted out.

  Penny slumped down at the table.

  Louis looked at his son. ‘You’re sure? She’s definitely pregnant, with your baby?’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Sorry, son, I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.’ His mouth was bone dry, he looked around for a water. He’d rather have a beer.

  ‘She’s seen a doctor. We’re sure.’ He chose to ignore the other implication.

  Penny sat at the table in stunned disbelief, her tight fawn curls perfectly in place.

  Louis’ mind flashed back almost sixteen years to the kitchen of his own home, telling his own parents much of what Andrew was saying to them now. But at least he’d had a job, he was older, he had a foundation with which to bring a family into the world.

  Louis and Penny barely slept that night and the next morning, when Andrew left the house for school without saying a word, Louis didn’t make it into work.

  ‘He can’t get married,’ Penny sobbed as she sat at the kitchen table. ‘He’s too young.’

  Louis watched his wife with fondness. She was a good mother, the best mother he could ever have imagined her to be.

  ‘We need to sort this mess out,’ Louis decided. ‘God knows what we’ll do, but this can’t happen.’

  He picked up his keys and went straight over to Julia’s house. He tried to talk to Julia’s mother, Kathleen Mason, at the rundown cottage where she lived with her children, but Kathleen ushered him away. It seemed she was about as impressed with this latest development as he was.

  The next afternoon, as Louis and Penny wrestled with what to do, Kathleen came to their home. She accepted the cup of tea offered by Penny, and all three of them nursed their china teacups with the rose pattern on them as though their lives depended on it.

  ‘I want more for my Julia,’ Kathleen said after a while, and Louis didn’t miss the tears spring to her eyes. ‘I married a man I was infatuated with. I was young and foolish. I had no qualifications, no prospects, and when Brian left us, it was hard. It was almost impossible to make ends meet. I struggled to put food on the table when my kids were babies, and I’m only just starting to get myself sorted. The house is falling apart at the seams, I miss my family in Ireland but can’t even afford a ticket home to see my sister, who has cancer, and isn’t expected to live through the year.’