The Chocolate Lovers’ Wedding (2 page)

‘I thought we’d eat at the OXO Tower,’ Marcus says. ‘No.’ I stop stock-still. ‘No OXO Tower.’
‘It’s fabulous there,’ he insists.
‘And that’s exactly why.’ Plus it was the scene of my first

proper date with Crush and I don’t want to sully that memory. Well, no more than falling down the stairs and breaking my leg afterwards did. ‘You think you can ply me with fine food and wine and I’ll be putty in your hands. Well, it’s not going to happen.’

I’m so malleable?
‘OK. Whatever you say, Lucy.’
He looks so miserable, but I hold my ground. ‘We’ll grab a

sandwich. A quick one, mind you. I have things to do.’ Which reminds me that I should be on my way to the finance department right now.

Reluctantly, Marcus calls and cancels the table. He thinks I’m a pushover, I know. Well, I’ll show you, Marcus Canning.
We walk further down the South Bank until we come to a small chain café. Perfect. Scruffy enough and grubby enough not to impress me. Inside, every table is strewn with the detritus of the previous customers’ meals.
‘You really want to eat here?’
‘Yes.’
Marcus sighs in resignation. ‘Grab a table, then. I’ll queue up. Coffee?’
I nod. ‘Get me something low calorie to eat. I’m on a diet.’
He laughs out loud at that.
‘I am!’
I shrug off Marcus’s coat so that I can load up a tray swimming in tea with empty sandwich wrappers and crisp packets and move them onto the next table. Then I wait, twiddling my thumbs, until he returns.
He puts a latte and a plate with a giant slice of chocolate cake in front of me.
‘I said low calorie.’
‘Just inhale it then.’
‘I’m
seriously
on a diet.’
‘You look sensational exactly as you are. I like a woman with curves.’
‘You like a woman who
breathes
,’ I counter. As many and as varied as possible all the time we were in a relationship together, if I remember rightly. ‘Anything else is a bonus.’
He laughs. ‘Oh, Lucy. You can be so very cruel.’
Not cruel enough, I think.
While Marcus faffs with our coffee and sets the cake in front of me, I catch sight of my reflection in the window. I thought I’d melt away to a size eight after leaving the temptations of Chocolate Heaven behind. Truly, I did. But no. I’m curvier than ever. I think I’ve been comfort eating since I was cast adrift at Christmas. And who wouldn’t in my circumstances?
When Marcus bought Chocolate Heaven, I lost the best job in the world and nothing, not even a Wispa and a Bounty combo can make up for that. So I’m not just curvy, I’m heading towards the positively rotund. And no one wants to be a fat bride, right? No one wants to waddle down the aisle next to the man of her dreams. I want to be a sliver of my former self at my wedding and must keep this, at all times, at the forefront of my mind.
‘I’m losing weight for my
wedding
,’ I remind him.
‘Ah.’ He stirs his coffee thoughtfully. ‘To whatshisname? Still going ahead then?’
‘Yes, Marcus. Of course it is.’
‘No sudden change of heart?’
‘No. I
love
Aiden and he
loves
me. The date is booked. The venue decided. The invitations have gone out.’ Not strictly true, I admit.
‘I didn’t get mine.’
‘As if.’
He does his cutest lost-little-boy look. ‘Not for old times’ sake?’
‘No. You’re the last person I’d want there.’
‘You didn’t say that last time we were at a wedding together.’
‘That’s because you were the groom, Marcus. And I was the bride. This is probably a good time to remind you that you didn’t actually stay around for the ceremony.’
He frowns. ‘You’re never going to forget that, are you?’
I laugh, because what else is there to do? ‘No. I’m never going to forget that. Or forgive you.’ I get an unwanted flashback to the day Marcus jilted me and feel sick to my stomach all over again. It was the worst moment of my life and, frankly, there are a lot of worst moments to choose from. This time it will be different. I know it. Crush is not Marcus. And thank the heavens for that.
Picking up my fork, I toy with the chocolate cake Marcus has bought me. If I eat this and forgo the Twix then I’m really no worse off than I would have been. I could just eat half. That’s all. I’m thinking that I should order my wedding dress a size too small so that I can slim into it. All brides lose weight, right? I have about three months to shed a stone or so. Doable? Tomorrow, I’ll really get a grip on it.
Hmm. This chocolate cake is delicious. A moist, light sponge filled with rich ganache – even though we are in a place where I might have expected inferior quality chocolate treats. Marcus grins at me as I eat it.
‘What?’
‘Come back, Lucy,’ he says, earnestly. ‘Chocolate Heaven needs you. I need you. It’s not the same without you. It’s where you’re meant to be.’
That, if I’m brutally honest, is music to my ears.
‘I bought it for you. So that you could run it. That was the whole point of me owning it.’
He did. I have to give him that. But he bought it so that he could own me, too. I’m not a fool. ‘Who’s running it now?’
‘I’ve got a manager in.’
‘A woman?’ As if I need to ask.
‘Er . . . yes.’
‘Is she pretty?’
‘No, she’s French. A double bagger. Awful woman.’
A likely story.
His eyes go all gooey and he reaches out to curl a lock of my blonde hair round his finger. ‘Come back,’ he pleads. ‘Come back to me.’
‘Don’t do that.’ I slap his hand away.
Marcus is unperturbed. ‘She doesn’t have your way with the customers, Lucy. She doesn’t have the vision or the passion for Chocolate Heaven. Without you, it’s nothing. You know the business like no one else. You were born for it.’
All of these things are true. There is chocolate flowing in my veins. I wasn’t cut out to be a temporary secretary to a bad-tempered, not very green IT director.
That pulls me up short. Yikes! The finance department! All this banter with Marcus may have slightly sidetracked me.
As the realisation dawns, my phone rings. It’s my Mr Simmonds.
‘Hello.’ I try to sound as if I am in the quiet of the finance department and not in a noisy café on the Embankment.
‘Where exactly are you, Lucy?’ my boss asks somewhat tightly. ‘I have been down to the finance department to get the figures for myself and they say that they haven’t seen hide nor hair of you.’
‘I had to pop out. Urgently. I’ll be back in five minutes,’ I promise. Then I remember that I’m on the wrong side of the river and will have to run. ‘Make that ten.’
‘Make it that you don’t bother to come back at all,’ he hisses. ‘I’ll call the agency and get someone else who’s actually interested in doing this job. You’re fired.’
He hangs up. I’m left staring open-mouthed at the phone. When I look up, I see that Marcus is grinning.

We, the members of the Chocolate Lovers’ Club, are sitting in a boring little café just off the Strand. I have a plastic-looking ham sandwich, Nadia is staring forlornly at a limp chicken wrap, Autumn is gingerly dipping a biscotti in a not-quite-hot cappuccino and, horror upon horror, Chantal is eating a salad. I feel faint looking at it.

‘Look at us,’ I say. ‘We are the good ladies of the Chocolate Lovers’ Club and there’s not a morsel of chocolate in sight. What’s happening to us? We are failing in our mission to embrace all things chocolatey in our lives.’

‘It’s just not the same without Chocolate Heaven,’ Autumn muses sadly.
‘But it’s our
raison d’être
.’
Nadia shrugs. ‘Lucy has a point.’
I’m on a roll now. ‘What, I ask, is the reason for lettuce?’
Chantal prods at her bowl of shrubbery and grimaces.
‘It is the most pointless foodstuff on the planet,’ I pontificate. ‘Even rabbits don’t really like it.’
‘It isn’t the lettuce that’s the issue, Lucy, is it?’ Chantal points out. ‘You’re just disenchanted with yet another substandard café.’ ‘You’re right,’ I admit, sagging. ‘It’s not Chocolate Heaven.’
‘This is OK,’ Nadia says. We all look around. It is a McCafé. We could be anywhere. Magnolia walls, wooden chairs, grubby vinyl floor. Not a comfy brown velvet sofa in sight. And, more importantly, very little in the way of chocolate goodies on offer. None, in fact. Not even a measly brownie for succour.
They have
plain
flapjack. What’s the thinking behind that?
To console myself, I look round at my lovely companions. These are my dearest friends. Friendships that were born out of our mutual love of chocolate. We used to meet at Chocolate Heaven, the finest of fine chocolate emporiums, every single day. We laughed, cried, gossiped, ate chocolate. Now we are homeless.
In spite of everything that has happened between us, Marcus, somehow, thought that I could carry on working there as if nothing had happened. Worse, he thought I’d be
pleased
! But I couldn’t, not in a million years, work for Marcus. He would have had me in his thrall again and there’s no way that I’d ever want that. It has taken me a long time – longer than I’d care to admit – to be Not in Love with Marcus anymore. And I don’t want prolonged close contact with him to threaten that.
Thus, it has left us ladies all wandering aimlessly through inferior cafés and, in my particular case, inferior jobs too. But, in times of darkness, I don’t know what I’d do without these girls in my life. They have gone from being mere friends to the sisters I never had.
Chantal Hamilton is the oldest among us and, more often than not, the wisest too. She’s currently in the throes of divorcing her husband, Ted – which, despite being reasonably amicable, is still taking its toll. She also has a delicious baby, Lana, who we all adore. She was previously a journalist on a magazine featuring stunning homes throughout the UK, though she’s not working at the moment as she can’t bear to leave Lana every day. I guess, after the divorce is finalised, that might have to change. Lana must be coming up to a year old soon and I have no idea where that time has gone.
Autumn Fielding is the youngest member, the earth mother among us. She is optimistic, idealistic and would have been far better working at Green IT than I ever was. She would have made them turn off the air conditioning. She would have made Mr Simmonds smile. Probably. Usually she’s the calm and laidback one but, at the moment, she’s got a lot on her plate too. She fluffs her unruly mop of auburn curls and my heart goes out to her.
What can I tell you about, Nadia Stone? She’s curvaceous, a real beauty with gorgeous caramel skin and a skein of dark hair. Her son, Lewis, is four now and she’s had a struggle bringing him up alone after the death of her husband, but I think she’s finally met someone to put a glimmer back into those stunning hazel eyes of hers.
Last, and maybe least, there’s me. I’m Lucy Lombard. I’m the wrong side of thirty, still a spinster – but not for much longer. I’m overweight, overwrought and if I can mess something up, then I invariably will. But I’m loyal and steadfast and I’m loved by the loveliest man on earth. And I may get a lot wrong – an awful lot – but I was good at running Chocolate Heaven. I really was.
Staring down at my sandwich, I’m disconsolate. ‘Look at what we’re eating.’ I cast another particularly withering glare at Chantal’s salad. ‘This is not the stuff of life.’
‘I’ve lost
pounds
since we stopped going to Chocolate Heaven,’ she remarks. ‘This is the first time I’ve been pre-baby weight.’ She strokes her admirably flat stomach lovingly.
It’s true that Chantal is slowly regaining her pre-pregnancy glossiness. Now that Lana is a little bit older, she’s no longer cutting her own fringe with the kitchen scissors or nibbling her nails off instead of getting expensive manicures. Her hair is groomed and shiny once more, her nails slicked with pink pearl varnish. I think this has more than a little to do with the fact that she now has the lovely Jacob Lawson in her life on a more permanent basis. ‘I don’t like to remind you, but you’re supposed to be losing a little bit of bootilicious too, Lucy.’
‘Yes, but this is all wrong,’ I protest. ‘I’m having to comfort eat. This is not our spiritual home.’ I gesture inadequately at the equally inadequate café. ‘We are
meant
to be at Chocolate Heaven.’
‘But we are boycotting it because of Marcus,’ Nadia says.
‘It
was
your idea,’ Autumn chips in. ‘And we fully back you,’ she adds hastily.
‘We are wandering from unsuitable café to unsuitable café trying to find somewhere that you
do
like because you never want to clap eyes on him again,’ Chantal adds. ‘Remember?’
‘Ah.’ All heads swivel to look at me. I hesitate to tell them. I really do. Because I know what they’ll say.
They wait, mouths pursed, for the revelation.
‘I sort of saw him at lunchtime,’ I confess.
‘Oh, Lucy.’ Collective voice.
‘What? I didn’t mean to. He turned up outside my office and begged me,
really begged me
, to go back and run it for him.’
‘You didn’t agree?’
‘Weeeeeell.’
‘Lucy!’ More group gasping.
‘I got sacked today. Again.’ I sigh as the overwhelming knowledge that I’m once more unemployed hits me low in the stomach. I bite into my unlovely ham sandwich and it tastes like sawdust in my mouth. What comfort does that provide, for heaven’s sake? I could lie on the floor and weep.
‘What for this time?’
‘It was Marcus’s fault. I should have been doing important things in the finance department and he persuaded me to go out to lunch with him instead.’
They all look at me, aghast.
‘He offered me my job back.’
Shaking of heads.
‘I didn’t say I’d go back to Chocolate Heaven.’
They don’t look convinced.
‘I did say I’d think about it, though.’ And, if I’m honest, every fibre of my being is yearning to say yes.
‘Could you handle seeing Marcus every day?’ Chantal asks. ‘He’d be all over you like a rash. It wouldn’t stop at Chocolate Heaven, Lucy. You know what he’s like.’
‘I need the money.’ I gnaw my fingernails a bit. ‘This wedding is rushing up and Crush and I are trying to do it on a budget, but the bills are mounting already and we’ve hardly started. How will I manage without a salary coming in?’
They all exchange anxious looks, as well they might. They know I am a snowflake in a fan heater when it comes to Marcus.
‘There would be a plus side of me going back to Chocolate Heaven. We won’t have to try out any more rubbish cafés. We could re-stake our claim there, go back to the old faithful sofas.’
‘I can see the attraction,’ Nadia says. ‘I know you’re desperate to get back, but there will be a price to pay.’
I sigh. ‘I’ll have to chat to Crush about it. See what he thinks.’
‘Let’s hope he can talk some sense into you,’ says Chantal.
‘Go back to the agency,’ Nadia says. ‘Tell them to find you another job. Or I could ask if there are any vacancies at the call centre where I work. There’s a high turnover of staff.’
‘That’s because it’s hideous,’ I remind her. Nadia has only been there a short while and already she hates it.
‘Yes,’ Nadia agrees. ‘It is.’
‘Let’s not be too hasty,’ Autumn says. ‘Lucy loves Chocolate Heaven. We all do. Is there not a way that she could manage to make this work?’
‘That way danger lies,’ says Chantal. ‘You need to keep your distance, Lucy. Part of you will always be in love with Marcus.’
‘I’m not,’ I protest. ‘I’m over him. Truly.’
No one looks as if they believe me.
‘That might be so.’ The look she gives me is sceptical. ‘But Marcus can’t be trusted. We all know that. No one more than you, Lucy.’
And she’s right. He still knows exactly how to wind me round his little finger. There’s no way that I could ever consider working for him. Could I?