The Chocolate Lovers' Club (2 page)

I was supposed to be joining Crush in Sydney to start a new life of fun and frolics as a bona fide, signed-up, full-time girlfriend. We were going to live together and
everything. The whole Happy Ever After. But, as luck would have it, I broke my leg falling downstairs when some of the practice frolicking got a bit out of hand. Then, to add insult to injury, I was banned from flying for weeks due to my cumbersome plaster cast.

Crush had to zoom off to Australia without me – an important job waits for no man. But he was supposed to be getting things ready so that I could join him as soon as possible. However, now that my fractured limb is mended and the plaster has come off, I can’t afford the air fare out there at this time of goodwill and extortionately jacked-up prices. And, in the meantime, lovely overseas boyfriend Crush, it seems, has vanished from the face of the earth.

‘You don’t know if he’s coming home for Christmas then?’ Nadia says.

‘No. He did talk about it, but . . .’ But he hasn’t been returning my bloody phone messages, emails or anything. Instead of checking out the beer, barbecues and Bondi Beach, aforementioned boyfriend has gone walkabout. This definitely calls for more chocolate and a reinforcement of our policy statement. A bit of that fudge brownie looks as if it will just do the job.

Breathe. Count. Eat. Mmm. Ah, that’s better . . .

Chapter Two

W
hoever said money couldn’t buy you happiness clearly didn’t spend their cash on chocolate. After a lazy few hours with my friends consuming our favourite food – the fancies, truffles and fudge brownies are long gone – there’s a rosy glow to my cheeks and a warm fullness in my tummy. I’m feeling very mellow and am finally starting to allow in something of the Christmas spirit. Am I the only person who thinks Christmas should come along only once every five years? That would be great. Once a year is far too often. I’ve barely put my decorations away when, lo and behold, it’s deemed time to dust them off again. The only thing I’d miss are all the lovely special Christmas chocolates – selection boxes, chocolate coins, two-pound boxes of Milk Tray with snowflaked cellophane wrapping which it is technically possible to eat in one sitting.

Every year, despite vowing not to, I’ve somehow mega-maxed my credit card to buy Marcus my ex-fiancé something wildly extravagant that he probably didn’t need and, most certainly, never appreciated. It’s not much fun being in debt well into June just so that my once dearly-
beloved could go racing round a track in an Aston Martin DB9, experience the joy of hang-gliding or float serenely across the sky in a hot air balloon, glass of champagne in hand. But then he always bought me such wonderful Christmas presents that I felt as if I had to reciprocate, sometimes even compete. When he was buying me a day out at a fabulous health spa or a gargantuan box of Belgian delights, I couldn’t just wrap him a Greatest Hits CD and some cheap smellies, could I? Crush is a much more down-to-earth kind of guy and I’m sure that he will be more than happy with a small token of my love. Another great reason to be rid of Marcus.

Flopping down on my sofa, I undo the top button on my jeans and let my stomach sag comfortably. Controlling my chocolate consumption is a nightmare at this time of year; the temptation of all those tins of Quality Street, Celebrations, chocolate-covered brazil nuts and Terry’s Chocolate Orange by the ton, is more than one woman should have to bear. And what about the metre-long boxes of Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers that you
have
to eat to be polite because someone in the office thought it would be fun to buy you one? Mmm. One of those little suckers is never enough, is it? I bet I could get into the
Guinness Book of Records
with the world’s fastest consumption of a metre of Chocolate Fingers. Think of all the training I could do. My outlook suddenly brightens. Yes, maybe Christmas isn’t so bad after all.

For reasons best known to myself, I’ve made a bit of an effort to spruce up my rather shabby lounge. Perhaps it was because I hoped that Crush might be coming home
for a Yuletide visit. I’ve bought a real tree from Camden Market – not too much effort as the market is directly opposite my flat and the bloke, in a rush of unexpected seasonal goodwill, even carried it here for me. Though it did set me back nearly twenty quid. And I did give him a big tip. Now it’s draped with red chilli-pepper lights which are winking on and off festively and not a little soporifically. It’s supposed to be some indestructible strain of blue spruce or something, but already there’s a growing pile of pine needles on my carpet. At this rate, it will be bald as a coot before Boxing Day. Maybe I’ve been sold a pup. No wonder the guy was in a hurry to get rid of it. So much for goodwill to men – or women – and all that.

I watch the lights on the tree some more and start to send myself into a trance. Before my eyes close completely, I decide to phone Crush again.

It’s late afternoon here which makes it – oh, I don’t know, probably some completely unsociable hour in Crush’s world. It’s virtually impossible to find a time to call him when we’re both supposed to be awake and not at work. Australia, I’m sure, is a great country; I just wish it were a little nearer. Like just beyond Ireland, so that easyJet could get me there for less than the price of this rapidly moulting Christmas tree.

What will we do if Crush does manage to come home over the holidays, I wonder. I can see us taking long walks on Hampstead Heath, both wrapped up in soft, stylish woollies in primary colours – possibly from Gap – against the crisp, white frost. I can see us toasting marshmallows
in front of an open fire, even though I don’t actually possess an open fire and generally eschew marshmallows as inferior confectionery due to the absence of chocolate content. I can see us doing all kinds of furtively festive things on the floor beneath my fading fir tree and flashing chilli lights.

I nip into the bathroom to give my hair a quick rake with a brush. Let’s face it, webcams don’t generally show you in the best of lights and I want to give the air of not having tried too hard, but not looking too scruffy either. Casual glamour is a very hard look to achieve. Slicking on some lip gloss, I decide that I’m ready to meet in cyberspace with my loved one.

I log on to my computer and wait to see if my boyfriend is there waiting at the other end. But instead of Crush’s lovely face looming large in front of me on the webcam, there’s suddenly a very pretty woman on the screen.

‘Hi,’ she says at me, rather sleepily.

I can’t speak. I’m too busy staring at the slutty underwear she’s got on. It’s black and very lacy with bright pink embroidery on it. The sort of underwear you wouldn’t want to be caught wearing in the Accident and Emergency Department of your local hospital. The sort of underwear that doesn’t look good on women with cellulite.

She whacks the computer on the top of its head. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she complains. ‘Hello? Hello?’ Then the woman turns and speaks over her shoulder. ‘Did you leave this thing on? I think someone’s trying to get through.’ Whack. Whack.

Still my voice won’t come.

‘Ugg.’ She purses her lips. ‘All I have is the view of the inside of someone’s nose.’

I back away from the camera.

‘Here,’ she says. ‘See if you can make it work.’ Then she moves her wondrously trim figure out of the way and, frankly, the inside of my nose is nothing compared to the view that
I
now have.

Lying on the bed behind this . . . this
tart
. . . is a naked man. A very naked man. Bottom in the air. Not even a sheet covering his modesty. I must at this point mention that Crush and I have never been involved in an intimate situation of this nature, so I don’t instantly recognise the bare bottom. But who else’s bottom could it possibly be? I wonder if I’ve somehow managed to hook up with the wrong computer. Can I possibly have contacted the wrong person in cyberspace and this lovely, if rather underdressed, woman is not really in my boyfriend’s bedroom? Unfortunately, I somehow don’t think so. I’m sure this is Aiden’s computer. And those are definitely his curtains and his wallpaper. Which means they are actually in Crush’s bed. Her with her little matching bra and briefs and him and his buck-naked arse.

It’s a very fine bottom, I have to say. But I don’t really want to make acquaintance with it in this context. I’m blinking rapidly, as if one of the blinks will change the frame and will come up with a different and less disturbing image.

‘Maybe it’s for you,’ Miss Skanky Pants says over her shoulder. ‘Who would be calling at this hour?’

‘Here, let me look.’ The voice doesn’t sound an awful
lot like Crush, but then again that could be distortion due to the length of the airwaves or microwaves or something.

It’s definitely an English accent. No doubt about that. The naked man starts to move and I decide that I don’t want to see any more, that I’ve already seen enough. This is
such
a familiar scenario for me. I’ve been the victim of this kind of betrayal more times than I care to remember. Marcus was the past master at it. Now it seems that Aiden Holby has taken over the baton from him.

I don’t want Crush to see me, mouth gaping open, brain frozen, fatter and more frumpy than the woman he’s with, so I quickly log off. Then I sit staring at the computer, not knowing what to do. My palms are sweaty and my eyes are burning hot with tears. I dig my fingernails into my palms. I will not cry over this. I
will not
cry over this. I will calmly, and with a supreme degree of control that I never knew possible, carry on with my life as if this had never happened. I will not entertain any further thoughts of a lovely new life in Australia with a hunky man. I will leave him to get on with his new, ridiculously slim girlfriend without me. I will stop phoning or bothering Mr Aiden Holby in any way and he will simply cease to exist in my world. That’s what I’ll do.

Taking a Mars Bar from my emergency stash next to my computer, I sit and stare at it blankly. This is such a shame because Crush was really, really nice and I really, really liked him and I did so hope that things would be different this time. What’s so wrong with me that no one
can remain faithful to me for more than ten minutes? Fuck the flipping deep breath. And the poxy counting. I unwrap the Mars Bar and take a big bite from it. A humungously big bite. Then I think, Sod it, and I cry too.

Chapter Three

‘
D
oes this mean that Crush won’t be coming home for Christmas?’ Autumn is wide-eyed with shock. But then Autumn is often wide-eyed with things.

What would we all have to talk about, I wonder, if my love-life wasn’t such a disaster zone? I stare morosely at my cup. ‘I guess not.’

Barely twenty-fours hours have passed since our last meeting and already I’ve had to text my best girls with a
CHOCOLATE EMERGENCY
. As always, they came running as fast as they could to my aid.

It’s still effectively brunch, so Clive has served us with some warm, homemade
pain au chocolat
and some necessarily strong coffee. A selection of festive hits are playing on the stereo and, to be honest, I’d like to smash the speakers. Bing and his flipping ‘White Christmas’ is currently doing my head in. I’m not dreaming of a white Christmas, I’m dreaming of a very drunken one. And I’d like it to start as soon as possible.

‘Do you think Crush realised that it was you on the other end of the webcam?’ Nadia wants to know.

‘If he did, then he hasn’t tried to contact me.’ Which is
a good job for Aiden ‘Bare-Bum’ Holby. There are approximately seven thousand swear words in the English language and I know virtually all of them. I would have shared that knowledge with him. Very loudly.

‘You’re not going to be alone over the holidays?’ Chantal asks.

‘No. No.’ I shake my head vehemently. ‘No, no, no.’ Actually, I am.

The thing with expecting Aiden Holby to come home and sweep me into his arms beneath the mistletoe is that I’ve turned down all manner of exciting invitations simply to keep my time free to be with him. Well, I turned down an invitation from my dear mother to go to Spain to stay with her and her ageing, balding man, The Millionaire, and watch them cooing over each other like teenagers. Particularly horny teenagers. And one from my dad to go to the South Coast to spend my time watching him and his peroxide paramour, The Hairdresser, press themselves up against each other at inopportune moments. Frankly, with those choices I’d rather it was just me, bad telly and a family-size tin of Cadbury’s Roses. And it looks as if that’s exactly what I’m going to get.

‘Hey, maybe you could come over and have your Christmas lunch with me and Ted?’

‘I’ll be fine. Really.’ Chantal and Ted are still on very shaky ground after their recent acrimonious split. He wants kids – she doesn’t. She wants loads of sex – he doesn’t. Not sure how the possibility of procreation is going to fit in with that scenario – which is, I guess, the crux of the matter.

Chantal, as a sort of empty revenge for her husband’s lack of libido, has been extensively continuing her sex-life with all comers. It’s led her into some very tricky situations, I can tell you. Frankly, Ted doesn’t know the half of it. He has no idea about Jacob The Male Escort or, even worse, Mr Smith The Gentleman Thief who had a one-night stand with our libidinous friend and then relieved her of thirty grand’s worth of jewellery. Who says that the sex-life of a married woman can’t be exciting, eh? Unfortunately, the only person it seems that Chantal
wasn’t
sleeping with was her dear husband. But that’s all in the past. Sort of. Now they’re trying to make a go of their relationship, but Ted is blowing very hot and cold. One minute he thinks that they can repair their marriage, the next he’s not answering Chantal’s calls. I’d imagine that when your husband has found out that you’ve been indiscriminately sleeping with all and sundry – including one of my boyfriends – it’s not going to be an easy wound to heal.

Chantal is still living separately from Ted, but they’ve agreed to spend the time together over Christmas. Which has to be good, right? But I
so
don’t want to be a gooseberry in between those two. No way, Jose. Can you imagine it?