Chocolate Wishes

by Trisha Ashley

  Grumps’ gift was different – a gold charm shaped like a cocoa bean sliced in half, on a chain. I’d never seen anything like it, so I’m sure he must have commissioned it, especially since it seemed to be hollow and rattled slightly when shaken…I put it on straight away, though I’d have to wait to thank him and Zillah later, at the birthday dinner.

  I’d already packed up the urgent Chocolate Wishes orders at the crack of dawn, so I could dash to the post office with them before driving out to Stirrups and picking Poppy up for our Day of Beauty.

  When I arrived, she looked terribly nervous. You’d think we were going to spend the day having major dental work done, rather than being glammed up!

  She needn’t have worried because when we came back several hours later, exhausted but happy, we’d had a wonderful time.

  It wasn’t something either of us could do on a regular basis – high maintenance we were not – but it would be fun as an occasional treat and we decided we’d repeat it every six months or so.

  I’d acquired a subtle new makeup and had my hair cut in a shorter, more feathery style, which suited me, though it was the same very dark brown as before, just shinier. And my eyebrows were reshaped, which made an amazing difference. I mean, I like them natural, but they had started to look too natural, like escaping hairy caterpillars.

  Poppy was the real revelation, though: her hair had been given golden highlights and now fell into long, natural curls rather than the damp-sand-coloured frizz. She had lots of new makeup too, though in different shades from mine, being so fair. But the most stunning difference was that her eyelashes and brows had been dyed brown, which made her eyes seem brighter and the blue much deeper.

  She has a good figure, even if it is a bit sturdier than the current fashion for lollipop-shaped women dictated, but her everyday garb of quilted jackets and gilets made her look top heavy and thick-waisted, which she really wasn’t. Her attempts to look smart usually involve bunchy skirts and pussycat bows but now, in slim dark jeans and a pretty jersey top, she looked lovely.

  It had taken us ages to find dresses we actually looked good in, the current fashion being all ruched and smocky, like baby clothes. What had happened to fashion for adults since I’d last looked? Did designers not think women over thirty bought clothes? This is why I subscribe to Skint Old Northern Woman magazine – it’s for real women who aren’t necessarily thin, teenage, rich, London-based or almost entirely self-absorbed. I now advertise my Chocolate Wishes in it too, since they’re the thinking woman’s after-dinner mint.

  Eventually we went to a shop known for having very individual stuff, and spent more than the rest of the day had cost us put together, on an outfit each. I only hoped Janey’s cash flow was up to it. I wasn’t sure about mine, unless the bank had inserted some elastic since I’d last checked.

  ‘I’ll see you in the Falling Star at eight,’ I said, dropping her off at Stirrups in the late afternoon, laden with shopping bags. ‘Don’t wash the makeup off, or brush the curl out of your hair, or do anything to your face before you come. And wear the dark jeans with the white and blue floaty top and the chunky necklace. We’ll save our dresses for something really special.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ she agreed, ‘but my hair feels funny.’

  ‘It doesn’t look funny, it looks great. You’ll have to keep using the conditioner and serum, because you can’t possibly go back to frizz, now.’

  ‘I do like the way it looks,’ she admitted.

  ‘OK, I’d better get off so I’m not late for the birthday dinner with the family, so I’ll see you and Felix later – and don’t forget, tonight is the blind chocolate tasting.’

  ‘Should be fun!’

  Janey, who had just come out of a loose box with a bucket, and the usual fag hanging out of the corner of her mouth, gave a scream at the sight of her daughter. As I drove away, I tried to decide whether it was from delight, or dismay that suddenly Poppy had turned into a younger, fresher version of herself. Or maybe it was a combination of the two?

  Back at the cottage, Zillah had taken in a flower delivery for me from David, one of those tortured arrangements featuring a couple of dark and diseased-looking orchids and a twisted sprig of bamboo. I don’t think he has any taste at all.

  Even when we were house-hunting, his ideal of a lovely home looked more like a factory unit than a cottage. If he bought something with original features it would be gutted like a fish in no time, so he might as well stay in his minimalist flat in the first place.

  He was clearly not a wellies-and-chicken-run sort of man.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Pure Criollo

  Zillah had stuck my birthday candles (way too many) into the top of a lemon cheese Pavlova, a recipe culled from one of her favourite magazines. It was…interesting, shall we say, but I appreciated the effort and thanked both her and Grumps for their presents too. I was wearing the little gold cocoa bean at the neck of my new black pleated chiffon tunic top and it went nicely with the low-slung chain belt around my hips. My new, big leather bag was gold too – maybe I should have married a man with the Midas touch?

  Poppy was feeling really self-conscious about her new image and so she called for me after dinner so we could go to the Falling Star together. Jake, who was just about to go up to Kat’s house, where he was staying the night, looked gobsmacked when he saw her. Mine can’t have been such an amazing transformation, since none of the family had commented on my changed appearance, except to hope I had enjoyed my day.

  When Poppy and I walked into the snug, Felix was standing at the bar. He looked up with his usual welcoming smile, then his jaw dropped and his eyes practically came out on stalks – and it wasn’t me he was looking at but Poppy, all pink, blonde and delectably feminine.

  ‘Poppy? ’ he gasped.

  She blushed. ‘Hello, Felix. I’ve had a makeover – we both have.’

  ‘I can see that,’ he said slowly, still gazing at her. I don’t think he’d looked properly at me once and I was so amused by this, that at first I didn’t even notice that Raffy was sitting in our usual window seat.

  Then Felix, recovering his wits with an obvious effort, asked him what he wanted to drink, then said to me slightly challengingly, ‘I invited Raffy. That’s OK now, isn’t it?’

  Before I could answer, Raffy was on his feet. ‘Actually, no, I’m not stopping, thanks. I didn’t want to butt in on your celebration, Chloe, only Felix mentioned that it was your birthday and I wanted to wish you many happy returns and give you this.’

  ‘This’ was a small, rectangular parcel and it’s hard to tell someone to go away when they’ve just handed you a present…especially when they’re standing looking down at you with grave, hopeful eyes, a bit like a large dog who knows he’s done something wrong, is not entirely sure what, but hopes to be forgiven anyway.

  ‘No, do stay,’ I said resignedly. ‘We’re going to have a blind chocolate tasting session in a bit. You can be an extra guinea pig. But you shouldn’t have bought me a present – you’ve already given me that lovely angel.’

  ‘Which lovely angel?’ Poppy asked, as we sat down around the table.

  I coloured slightly. ‘I forgot to tell you: Raffy gave me a carved wooden angel the other day, for my collection.’

  ‘Yes, you did forget to tell me that – how lovely,’ she agreed, looking at me strangely. ‘You should have seen the disgusting flowers David sent her, Raffy!’

  ‘They weren’t disgusting, just weird,’ I said. ‘I’d rather have had a pot of geraniums. Oh, and David has gone to have dinner at Badger’s Bolt tonight with some of his friends, and he invited me to go too! I told him what Mann-Drake was like, but he didn’t believe me. He’s met him at the Green Man a few times, I think.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was the type for that sort of stuff,’ Poppy said, but she was clearly distracted by the way Felix kept turning round from the bar to stare at her.

  She giggled: ‘Did you see Felix’s face whe
n we came in? I thought he was going to have a seizure.’

  ‘When you came in, you mean. He barely spared me a glance.’

  ‘You both look extra lovely tonight,’ Raffy said, amused.

  ‘We should do, we’ve spent practically the whole day having our hair done, and our faces retreaded, and bought new clothes,’ Poppy explained. ‘I didn’t think I’d enjoy it, but actually, it was great fun.’

  Felix came back from the bar and distributed drinks.

  ‘Orange juice?’ I said to Raffy.

  ‘It’s not that I’m a recovered alcoholic or anything, just, I think I mentioned, that I suddenly decided I didn’t much like alcohol, except beer. It only took me half a lifetime to realise – and now I’ve even given up beer, for Lent.’

  Then I saw what Felix had got for me and Poppy. ‘Why on earth Babycham?’

  ‘Closest thing to champagne they’d got,’ he explained.

  ‘I like Babycham,’ Poppy said, and smiled at him.

  He blinked, still staring at her in a puzzled sort of way. ‘I just can’t get over how different you look. It’s as though I’ve never really seen you before!’

  She went pink and I said, ‘You’re embarrassing her. Give over.’

  ‘You’re both even more dazzlingly beautiful than before,’ Raffy said gravely. ‘I wish I’d worn my sunglasses.’

  Poppy laughed and said, ‘I don’t think I was ever beautiful, but Chloe always looks pretty, even when she’s not trying.’

  ‘So she does,’ he agreed.

  ‘Now you’re embarrassing me,’ I protested.

  Felix gave me his birthday gift – a Georgette Heyer novel in the original dust cover – and, since Poppy had given me hers earlier (a bamboo wind chime for my garden that made a lovely soft, musical clunking sound), that just left Raffy’s: a small, framed reproduction of one of those mysterious and magical Dadd paintings.

  ‘It’s Oberon and Titania, and I don’t know why, but I just thought you’d like it,’ he explained.

  ‘I do, very much – thank you.’ It was odd that Raffy, who I’d known briefly (if intensely) so many years ago, should instinctively choose something I would love, while David hadn’t had the foggiest idea and had probably phoned a florist and left it to them to choose.

  He drained his glass. ‘Good, but as I said before, I didn’t intend stopping, so I’ll leave you to it now and I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.’

  ‘No, don’t go – have a chocolate,’ I said, rattling one of the small plastic boxes I’d put on the table, a bit like Poppy does with oats in a bucket when she’s trying to catch Honeybun.

  ‘Really?’ He paused uncertainly, raising one dark eyebrow.

  ‘Yes, really. I need another guinea pig for an experiment.’

  So he went and bought another round of drinks, ducking his head to avoid the low beams and looking a bit like Gulliver in Lilliput. Through the hatch I caught sight of Zillah in the public bar, and she flapped her hand at me. If she was playing cribbage again, they had better watch out.

  When he returned, we got down to the chocolate tasting. ‘Right, I want to know which one of these three kinds of chocolate you like best. I’ve marked A, B, or C on little stickers on the foil, so you can put the wrappers in the preferred order. Right, off you go.’

  They started off fairly soberly, but pretty soon Felix and Poppy were feeding each other bits of chocolate and getting distinctly silly, in a way even two Babychams and a couple of pints of best bitter couldn’t account for.

  Raffy was taking it seriously, though.

  ‘You’re not eating any,’ he pointed out.

  ‘That’s because I know which is which.’

  ‘But you can’t have made up your mind which you like best, or you wouldn’t be having this test, would you?’

  When I opened my mouth to reply he snapped the heart he was holding in two and popped one half into my mouth. I couldn’t very well spit it out, even if I could hear Janis Joplin in my head helpfully belting out ‘Take Another Little Piece of My Heart’, so I chewed and swallowed. It was, if I say it myself, chocolate perfection. ‘Which one was that?’

  ‘B,’ he said softly, his eyes holding mine. ‘My favourite – dark, lovely, fragrant, delicious…’

  ‘It’s ours too,’ Poppy broke in brightly and, when I checked, all three of them had put their wrappers in the same order.

  ‘So it’s B, A and then C?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Raffy. ‘Are you going to tell us what the different types of chocolate are now?’

  ‘Oh, they’re all exactly the same, aren’t they, Chloe?’ Poppy said. ‘The only difference is that she’s said different versions of a Mayan chocolate spell over each pot.’

  ‘Yes, though I didn’t say anything over one batch – C. I said the whole of it over A, and then added an extra blessing for the last lot, the B batch, which Grumps and his Spanish friend have just finished translating.’

  ‘Is that really all the difference?’ Raffy asked. ‘That’s…surprising.’

  ‘To say the least,’ agreed Felix. ‘You must have done something different, or added a little extra ingredient?’

  ‘I didn’t, I used the same blend and amount of couverture chocolate drops, heated and tempered it at the identical temperatures and for the same length of time. I can’t understand it either.’

  I nibbled a bit more from the A and C boxes, absent-mindedly passing the remainder on to Raffy, and agreed that not only was B outstanding in flavour, it also looked glossier than the others and had a crisper snap when I broke it.

  ‘I find it impossible to believe that an ancient charm could change the taste of your chocolate,’ Raffy said.

  ‘Oh, but the Chocolate Wishes business only really took off when Chloe started saying it over the melting pot,’ Poppy said, ‘and that was just the first part of it! So obviously the complete thing must make a difference.’

  ‘I think the Chocolate Wishes taking off was due more to the internet and getting a mention in Country at Heart magazine,’ Felix suggested.

  ‘Yes, and now I advertise regularly in Country at Heart and Skint Old Northern Woman, I get even more orders.’

  ‘But they do all taste completely different,’ Raffy said slowly.

  ‘Yes, and it can’t all be in the mind if you and I didn’t know they were the same chocolate,’ Felix said.

  ‘That’s right. So we’ve proved magic really works!’ Poppy announced. Her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks now so flushed that I wasn’t sure she should be driving home afterwards.

  Felix, I noticed, had his arm resting along the back of her chair…while Raffy was still looking at me with a hint of that dog-waiting-to-be-forgiven expression in his eyes, sort of puzzled and hopeful together.

  We didn’t stay late, and when we came out into the cool night air it was a magical sort of evening: there were a lot of stars in the velvety sky and everything smelled crisp and clean and hopeful.

  ‘Anyone want to come back to Marked Pages for a cup of coffee, or something stronger?’ Felix offered hospitably.

  ‘I’d love to,’ Poppy said. ‘I haven’t had a whole day off for yonks.’

  ‘Actually, I think I’ll call it a night. I seem to have packed a lot into today,’ I said.

  ‘Me too, and I’ll walk you to your door, seeing I’m going that way,’ Raffy said.

  It was hardly likely that I would get mugged in the few paces between the corner where the other two left us and my cottage door, but it only took me half that distance to make my mind up that there was something I needed to do – and do tonight.

  ‘Come in,’ I said, cutting Raffy off in mid-farewell and unlocking the door. ‘That is, if it’s OK for vicars to be seen vanishing into single women’s houses straight from the pub at night?’

  ‘I got ordained, not elevated to sainthood, and I don’t think they excommunicate as long as the vicar is single too.’ He looked down at me in a puzzled sort of way. ‘But Jake will be
there to chaperone us anyway, won’t he?’

  ‘No, he’s staying up at his girlfriend’s house tonight. I think her parents now want to adopt him.’

  I led him through the workshop to the sitting room, flicking on lights as I went and dropping my coat and birthday presents on the nearest chair. Then I turned to face him.

  ‘What is it, Chloe? Do you want me to try and get your boyfriend out of Mann-Drake’s clutches?’ he asked, puzzled.

  ‘What? Oh, you mean David? No, it’s nothing to do with him. It’s just…well, there’s something I haven’t told you – something about us.’

  His eyes on my face, he said slowly, ‘You know, I had an idea there might be something more, but I couldn’t imagine what.’

  By now I was feeling my resolution starting to drain slowly away, but having started, I was determined to finish. ‘Poppy said recently that I was putting the blame for everything that had gone wrong in my life onto you, and she was right.’

  ‘Well, some of it probably was my fault and, if it’s any consolation, I don’t think there have been many weeks that have gone by since we parted when I haven’t regretted losing you, Chloe.’

  ‘It didn’t make you live like a monk, though, did it?’ I snapped, forgetting the whole forgiveness bit for a minute.

  ‘No,’ he said evenly, ‘it didn’t do that.’

  I turned away and paced up and down, then swung round and faced him. ‘Look, Poppy thinks I’ll only be happy if I come to terms with everything, so here goes: as I told you, I realised as soon as I got back from university that I couldn’t leave Jake again. But I also discovered something else – that I was having your baby.’

  He looked stricken and his already pale complexion completely blanched. ‘That explains a lot…it explains everything. Oh, Chloe!’

  ‘We were a bit careless that last week, weren’t we? All that arguing and making up,’ I said ruefully, though the tears were pricking painfully at the back of my eyes. ‘It wasn’t something I could put in a letter, but I thought when you came to find me I could tell you about the baby and somehow we could work it all out. I can’t imagine how – I couldn’t have left Jake behind, and you wouldn’t have wanted to be saddled with two children when you were just starting off on your career!’