The Chocolate Lovers' Club (12 page)

Chantal stared at her cell. That was a little chilly. She
finished her glass of tepid water. So what would she do with her tickets now? Sitting alone in a theatre watching a play about love gone wrong suddenly didn’t seem so appealing. Flicking through her contacts list, she located another number and pressed to dial. A moment later, the other cell was answered.

‘Hi, Chantal. Good to hear from you.’ The warmth in his voice was in stark contrast to her husband’s cool manner.

‘Are you busy tonight?’

‘Nothing that I wouldn’t drop for you.’

‘Could you get to the South Bank in half an hour?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have tickets for the National Theatre.
Othello
. Are you up for it?’

‘Sounds great.’

‘I’ll see you in the foyer, Jacob,’ she said. Then she hung up.

She wasn’t about to tell Jacob that she might be carrying his child, but if her husband couldn’t make time for an evening out with her then there was no reason for her not to enjoy someone else’s company.

Chapter Twenty-Three

N
adia and Autumn were sitting in Chocolate Heaven. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Nadia asked for the third time.

‘I don’t mind,’ Autumn repeated with a tolerant smile. ‘Not at all.’

‘I should go,’ Nadia said, nibbling at her nails anxiously.

‘We’ll be fine,’ Autumn assured her. ‘Won’t we, Lewis?’

Nadia’s son nodded, licking at the chocolate ring that had already formed around his mouth.

‘As soon as we’ve finished our chocolate milk and cookies we’ll go to the park,’ Autumn told him. Lewis’s cheeky face broke into a grin and he ate his biscuit even quicker.

Nadia frowned. She was unused to leaving Lewis with other people. ‘Make sure he keeps his hat and gloves on.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Autumn said. ‘It’s not that cold today.’

Perhaps it was a chill round her heart that was making Nadia feel cold, rather than the actual temperature. ‘I promise that I’ll be as quick as possible,’ she said.

‘There’s no rush. Really. I don’t have a class to teach until this afternoon.’

Nadia lowered her voice. ‘Toby should be out this
morning,’ she said so that Lewis couldn’t hear her. ‘I want to be in and out of the house before he comes home.’

Her friend looked at her, frowning her concern. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Nadia.’

‘I have to be sure,’ Nadia replied. ‘This is the only way.’ She kissed her son on the cheek. ‘Be good for Aunty Autumn,’ she warned him. Then she kissed Autumn too. ‘Thanks for this. I’ll see you later.’

Nadia took the Tube to the station at the top of her street. Her heart was pounding as she walked down the road towards her house. This was ridiculous, she told herself. All she was doing was having a look round what was still her own home. The only difficult point was that she didn’t want her husband to know that she’d been snooping here while he was out. He wanted her to trust him, but the fact was, she still wasn’t fully able to do that. It was concrete proof that she needed.

The estate agent’s For Sale sign was still in the garden, but they’d had no interest in the house over the slow Christmas period. Now Nadia wasn’t even sure whether she still wanted to sell the house or not. They’d had such a lovely time together over the holidays, was it wise to persist in breaking up the family unit? It would be so much better for everyone if they could make their marriage work again. If Toby really had managed to crack his internet gambling habit, shouldn’t she do all she could to support him? Lewis had missed him so much. Though her son was having immense fun at Chantal’s apartment because of the novelty value, it wasn’t the same as being
in his own home. However reluctant an ‘aunty’ Chantal might have been initially, she’d certainly now embraced Lewis as an important part of her life and was thoroughly spoiling him. Being a typical male, Lewis wasn’t objecting to all the attention – or all the chocolate. But it was still no substitute for having a dad around.

Thankfully, Toby’s van wasn’t parked outside the house. Nadia didn’t want it to look as if she didn’t trust her husband – but, essentially, that was what today’s little escapade was all about. It was much easier too, to do it without the ever-inquisitive Lewis in tow. At four years old, he was also the world’s worst keeper of secrets and she didn’t want to involve him in her cloak-and-dagger operation.

The house was tidy enough inside. She couldn’t fault Toby for his housekeeping skills since she’d been gone. In the kitchen, there was a single cereal bowl and a mug in the sink, and just seeing them sitting there looking so alone made her want to cry. She couldn’t bear the picture of Toby that it brought to mind – him sitting here by himself every morning.

On the worktop, the place where they dumped all of their post and their junkmail detritus, there was a pile of opened envelopes awaiting their eventual transport upstairs to the office in their tiny spare bed room to be dealt with. She slipped each of the contents out and examined them. A lot of bills – as usual – but all legitimate and mainly connected with Toby’s plumbing business. Nadia felt a bubble of relief rise within her; nothing untoward there.

Nearly forgetting that she was an intruder here, Nadia
almost took the bills upstairs for Toby. Instead, she left the pile as she’d found it and climbed the stairs empty-handed. In the cramped office, she searched Toby’s desk and rifled through the drawers. The more she tidily ransacked her own home, the more terrible she felt about having to do this in order to quell her doubts about her husband’s sincerity when he told her that he was no longer in the grip of this awful gambling disease that had blighted their marriage. If it wasn’t for Chantal’s selfless generosity, they’d now be facing bankruptcy, homelessness and who knows what else.

She logged on to Toby’s computer. Thankfully, he hadn’t changed his password. Was that a good sign? Did it mean that he no longer had anything to hide from her? She still had to look. Scanning Toby’s internet history files on the computer, she could see no evidence of the colourful names that caused otherwise sane human beings to part with their hard-earned cash. There was no Virtual Vegas or Cash Casino or Mansion of Millions or any of the other hundreds of sites that he’d been so keen on visiting. It wasn’t that he was alone. There was an online gambling epidemic across the globe. These days it was so easy to be ensnared by the promise of huge riches. There was none of the stigma of sleazy gaming clubs, none of the effort of evading the family to visit a casino, no need for late-night poker games – all of your gambling could be done on a credit card and at the click of a mouse. It was a secret, nasty and potentially destructive pastime that could be carried out in the comfort of your own home. Practically every day in the national newspapers there was a story of someone who’d lost thousands
of pounds on these treacherous sites. She sincerely hoped that her husband had managed to break free of his demons.

The USA was currently trying to ban its citizens from online gambling. Which on the surface seemed like a great idea, but Nadia wondered how that would succeed. Wouldn’t it simply serve to drive it further underground? Would all the people who were currently addicted to the flashing lights and empty promises simply shrug their shoulders and give up? She didn’t think so.

Logging off, Nadia went through to their bedroom. Now she was losing heart for her miserable task. This was unfair on Toby. If he said he’d cleaned up his act then she ought to believe him, otherwise there was no future for them. A cursory search of the drawers in the bedside table was also fruitless. As far as she could tell, there was no evidence in the house to show that Toby was still gambling. Was that because he really had quit? Or was it because he’d become more deceitful?

Nadia had left the house and scurried to meet up with Lewis and Autumn in the park. Now her son was currently working himself into a frenzy of excitement as a kind elderly lady had given him a stale crust of bread to throw for the shivering ducks. It was clear that her son had been perfectly happy during her absence and it made Nadia realise how accepting Lewis was to all the changes that were happening in his life. Children were extraordinarily resilient and it made her glow with pride when her son smiled across at her. She and Autumn sat on a bench overlooking the lake watching her son play happily.

‘How did it go?’ Autumn wanted to know.

‘Fine,’ Nadia replied. ‘I think.’ Then she smiled weakly at Autumn. ‘There was nothing in the house to suggest that Toby’s still gambling. Maybe he’s managed to get it under control.’

‘That’s good,’ Autumn said.

Nadia folded her arms across her chest and stared across the lake. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘Are you going to go back to him?’

‘I don’t know,’ Nadia answered honestly. She turned to her friend. ‘What do you think I should do?’

Autumn slipped her arm round her shoulders and smiled at her. ‘I think perhaps, for Lewis’s sake, that you should give him the benefit of the doubt.’

Nadia let out a sigh which was visible in the cold air. She looked across at her son, running up and down like a mad thing, scattering the quacking ducks. Pursing her lips, she said, ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking too.’

Chapter Twenty-Four

A
utumn was watching two of her favourite clients who were currently working side-by-side on differing projects. Fraser, a teenage heroin addict and occasional dealer, had been coming to the Centre for two years, as had Tasmin who had a lot in common with him in terms of drug usage, but little in terms of talent with stained glass and mosaics.

Seeing Fraser flirting tirelessly, and unsuccessfully, with the disdainful object of his affections was making her smile. Tasmin had attitude to spare, and no callow youth, however streetwise, was going to persuade her to drop that. They say that love is blind and, in Fraser’s case, that must certainly be true. There was no doubt that Tasmin was a pretty little thing, but she managed to disguise it quite well with heavy layers of Goth clothing, dyed black hair and a thick coating of eyeliner. They’d make an oddly matched pair – if Fraser ever managed to persuade Tasmin to go out with him – but Autumn hoped that they would one day make a couple.

Fraser was ham-fisted and his work with stained glass had more to do with enthusiasm than skill. Sometimes she wondered why he’d kept coming back for so long; most
of their clients were of a much more itinerant nature, sometimes attending just one lesson, never to be seen again. Perhaps this was the only place where Fraser could be certain of kindness and respect. Perhaps it was simply to see his future girlfriend. Whatever it was, Autumn was certain that it wasn’t his love of arts and crafts.

Tasmin, however, was a different kettle of fish. She was a budding artist in the making. Eschewing the usual suncatchers or basic candleholders, the girl had very quickly shown that she had an exceptional eye for colour and style. Clinging to the only thing that she’d ever been praised for in a short life that had been full of degradation and destruction, Tasmin had progressed to making highly commercial pieces of jewellery from kiln glass, bound with delicate silver wires. When the budget from the KICK IT! programme threatened to dry up, Autumn often funded the glass and other materials for the kids to continue their projects out of her own pocket. She would love to do more for these two, to try to make sure that they ended up in a safe, secure environment and weren’t tempted back to a life of drugs and crime simply because no one cared enough about them.

‘That looks great, Tasmin,’ she said, always careful to praise the girl. A large glass pendant with a Japanese design lay on the workbench while Tasmin meticulously fashioned a decorative holder from threads of silver.

There was a tentative knock on the workshop door and, as she moved towards it, her brother Richard poked his head inside. Instantly, her heart sank. He was the last person she’d expected to see here, and it must mean that he was in trouble once again.

‘Rich,’ she said. ‘What’s happened now?’

As she moved closer to him she could see what the trouble was. He touched the livid bruise on his cheek gingerly. There was a cut across the bridge of his nose and his lip was swollen. ‘Slight skirmish,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

Autumn steered them both away from the students so that they could talk more freely. ‘Does this mean that the people you were running away from have caught up with you?’

Richard shook his head. ‘I wasn’t running away, sis. I was merely absenting myself from the scene for a short period.’

Running away couched in another language, Autumn thought with a sigh.

‘I came to ask a favour,’ Richard said. There was always a catch with her brother. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d paid her a purely social visit. ‘Any chance in taking up my old bedroom in your flat? Until I get on my feet again.’

Until he’d made enough money from drugs to buy his own place, more likely.

‘Are you still with Mummy and Daddy?’

‘Yes.’ Richard toyed with a shard of glass from the bench. She wanted to warn him not to cut himself, but had to remind herself that he should be more than aware of the dangers of broken glass. ‘But I can’t stay there,’ he said. ‘They’re killing me.’

‘No quicker than your drugs habit is,’ she retorted.

‘I can’t move without them asking where I’m going,’
he complained. ‘At my age. Can you believe it? They treat me as if I’m fifteen.’

‘Perhaps it would help if you didn’t behave as if you were,’ she suggested.

Her comment fell on deaf ears. ‘Can I move my stuff in tonight?’

Autumn felt torn. She’d always been the one to help Richard. Who else could he turn to? He might be infuriating, but he was her brother. Didn’t she owe it to him?

Her train of thought was interrupted by Addison coming into the room. As they were at work and there were students present – who were currently taking more interest in her conversation than their creations – he didn’t kiss her, but they exchanged a glance that said they would make up for that shortfall later. The look didn’t go unnoticed by her brother and his face darkened.