The Chocolatier's Secret (Magnolia Creek, Book 2) (13 page)

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.’

Louis pulled out a chair and sat down, his cup still full.

‘I don’t want the same life for Julia, I don’t.’ Kathleen pulled a tissue from her pocket. ‘She’s too young to have a baby. If she has this baby, she’ll never do anything else, you mark my words.’

Louis thought it sounded as though Kathleen had little faith in her daughter, but perhaps she was right. If Julia married Andrew and they had this baby, of course he’d help them financially to get themselves sorted, but his help could only go so far. He’d seen them together. They looked as though they were in love, but they were so young. Who knew what love was at their age? He certainly hadn’t.

‘Has Julia said she wants to keep the baby?’ Louis asked.

‘She hasn’t said much at all. She’s done a lot of crying, as though she thinks it’ll make the problem go away.’

‘I know Andrew would stand by her.’ He was sure of it, but it wasn’t what any of them wanted. But was it even their choice to make?

‘I’d better get back.’ Kathleen pushed out her chair, discarded the cup of tea she hadn’t touched. ‘Julia will be home from school soon.’

‘We’ll talk again,’ said Louis. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘Maybe.’ Kathleen didn’t look back, and Louis and Penny watched from their kitchen window as she walked down the path and turned past the gorse bush and out of sight.

*

Louis couldn’t get hold of Kathleen the next day or the day after, and Andrew shut them out the best he could by disappearing into his room to do homework, taking longer showers than usual, going out on his bike to goodness knew where until the late hours when the only thing to bring him home was exhaustion.

Four days after they’d first sat down with Kathleen Mason in their kitchen, Julia’s mother knocked at the Bennett’s door again.

‘Julia is adamant she will have this baby,’ she told them. ‘She’s sure she and Andrew will marry.’ She didn’t take off her coat.

Penny lowered herself into the floral armchair at the corner of the room.

‘Maybe we need to get them both together, here, tonight, and we can all talk this through. No misunderstandings,’ suggested Louis.

Kathleen pushed her hands firmly into the pockets of her red coat. ‘I have another idea.’

And so Louis and Penny Bennett listened to this woman’s suggestion, the way she wanted to tear apart the fifteen-year-olds and whisk Julia away from all of this, leave a life that had turned sour.

*

‘You can’t be serious!’ Louis’ voice boomed around the room after Kathleen told them her plan. Penny touched a hand to his knee, but he stood anyway, to get some height over this woman. ‘She’s your daughter, how can you be so … so—’

‘So what, Mr Bennett? So caring for her future? So sure I want more for her than what
I’ve
ended up with?’

‘This is sheer blackmail! And I won’t stand for it.’

‘Then you leave me no choice. Goodbye, Mr Bennett.’

Her red coat swung as she turned.

‘Wait a minute.’ Louis’ hand made contact with her shoulder, and he held up his hands when she spun back again, anxious to show he wasn’t a violent man. It hadn’t come to that, at least not yet. ‘Do you think Julia would thank you for this, if she found out?’

‘She won’t find out. Absolute discretion is part of the deal. You pay for my family’s airline tickets out of here, back to Ireland, and I’ll persuade Julia she needs to abort the baby. She’ll listen to me eventually. And if you don’t, then I’m afraid I’ll go to the authorities and tell them Andrew had sex with Julia and it wasn’t consensual. I’d say she was coerced into it. She’s still a minor, and I think the law would take a pretty dim view.’

Louis sank into the chair. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Even if I could prove you were wrong, you’d ruin him by doing that. You’d ruin this family. Are you telling me you’re happy to do that?’