The Chocolate Lovers' Club (11 page)

Aiden stands up as I approach. ‘You look fabulous,’ he tells me earnestly, and his voice is filled with affection.

I kiss him and then slide into the seat opposite. He pours me a glass of wine and we chink glasses together. ‘To us,’ he says.

‘To us.’

‘Did you have a wonderful time, Gorgeous?’

‘It was great,’ I say. ‘It was the first time that we’ve all been away together and I hope we’ll do it again.’ I just feel sorry for Chantal, but I don’t want to tell Crush about that just yet. ‘The spa was lovely.’

‘I liked to think of you naked and smothered in chocolate,’ he lets me know, and I blush. I have to confess that when I was naked and smothered in chocolate, I thought of Crush a lot too. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

‘I’ve missed you too,’ I tell him truthfully.

‘And I’ve got some good news for you.’ He grins while I wait to hear it. ‘I’m not going back to Australia,’ he says.

I nearly spit out my wine. ‘You’re not?’

Crush takes my hand in his. ‘I don’t want to mess up this relationship,’ he says. ‘I realise that us being apart was putting a strain on things. This is too important to me.’

Having nearly spat it out, I now glug the rest of my wine down hurriedly.

‘Targa have agreed that I can be based in the UK. I’ve put a great deputy in place in Sydney. I’ll have to go out there on a regular basis, but most of the time I’ll be here.’ He spreads his hands jubilantly.

‘Wow,’ I say.

Crush frowns – as well he might. ‘You don’t sound overjoyed,’ he notes. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘I am,’ I say. ‘I’m really, really pleased.’ This is going a bit quicker than I imagined it and, if I’m honest, I’d quite liked the sound of going to live out in Australia. My heart goes into freefall. Crush, it seems, has given up a great opportunity for me. How am I going to tell him about Marcus now?

‘But?’

I sigh heavily. ‘There’s something I have to tell you. I’ve done something very bad and it’s eating away at me.’

‘How bad?’ Crush teases. ‘This sounds interesting.’

‘I don’t want us to have any secrets,’ I say, with wavering voice. ‘I want to be completely honest with you, so that you know even the most terrible things that I’ve done.’

He still doesn’t look convinced that I’m deadly serious.
I try to inject an air of solemnity and hang my head. ‘It has to do with me seeing you naked on the webcam.’

‘Not me,’ he corrects with a broad smile. ‘My brother. You’ve not yet had the pleasure of seeing me naked, Gorgeous. Though I hope we can correct that terrible omission very soon.’

‘Me too,’ I squeak.

‘So.’ Crush sits back like someone waiting to be told an entertaining story. ‘Are you going to confess this heinous crime?’

Clearing my throat, I begin, ‘I was alone at Christmas—’

‘I know,’ Crush says, ‘and I feel terrible about that. I’m going to do all I can to make it up to you.’

‘—
very
alone,’ I reiterate. ‘And I thought that you’d found someone else. I had no idea that you were in trouble. No one told me. I just thought . . . I thought you’d forgotten all about me.’ I’m on the verge of tears.

‘Hey,’ Aiden says. ‘That’s all behind us now. We know that it was a silly mistake.’

‘I made one other silly mistake too.’ I can feel myself gnawing anxiously at my lip while he waits for me to spill the beans. There’s a puzzled frown on his handsome face and I want to reach out and smooth it. Instead, I wring my hands together in the manner of the wretched fool that I am.

‘Tell me,’ he urges gently. ‘Nothing can be that bad.’ He even laughs a little.

‘I slept with Marcus,’ I say.

I see him recoil and blink a lot.

‘I slept with Marcus on Christmas Day, because I was alone and feeling sorry for myself.’

Crush’s face has turned ashen.

‘It was once,’ I continue. ‘Just the once and I’m deeply, deeply sorry.’

Aiden says nothing, but his jaw has set and his eyes have darkened alarmingly. Around us the jolly, amusing chatter continues unabated while we sit here in our bubble of misery. When Crush eventually finds his voice, he says, ‘How could you, Lucy? How could you do that?’

‘I was alone . . .’

‘And I was in the
fucking
desert,’ he snaps. ‘Worried sick. Not about myself, but about you and how concerned you’d be.’

‘I knew nothing about it.’

‘Is that an excuse?’ he asks. ‘Is that any reason to jump straight back into bed with your ex-boyfriend? Your
bastard
ex-boyfriend as I seem to remember you referring to him on many occasions.’

‘I . . .’ What can I actually say that will vindicate this?

Crush holds up his hands. ‘Does this relationship mean so little to you?’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘I can’t believe that you’ve done this. Have you so little trust in me? Do you have so little self-respect? When Marcus has continually let you down, you still run straight back to him the minute anything goes wrong?’

I can’t really argue with that candid assessment of the situation.

‘I wish I was getting straight back on a plane to Australia.’ He rubs his hand over his forehead. ‘Now I’m going to be stuck here, thanks to you.’

‘I would never,
ever
have deliberately set out to cheat on
you, Aiden,’ I plead. ‘It was a moment of madness. I know exactly how it feels to be on the receiving end of this. I’d never do it intentionally. I was drunk . . .’

‘What a great excuse! Are you going to go out and shag another bloke every time you’ve had one over the eight? Is that what I have to look forward to?’

‘Of course not,’ I say quietly.

‘How do I know that?’ Then the fight goes out of his voice. ‘How do I know that now?’

Crush knocks back his wine and then he folds up his napkin.

‘Please don’t go,’ I say. ‘Forgive me. I want to give this another try.’

‘We spent so long getting together, Lucy, and now you’ve destroyed it all. I’m just so . . . so . . .’ He searches for a word bad enough. ‘So
disappointed
in you.’

Disappointed isn’t so terrible. Disappointed I could work with. ‘We could make it work, couldn’t we? If we wanted to.’

Aiden Holby looks at me and all I see is overt dislike in his eyes. Gone is the twinkling mischief that I’ve secretly loved for so long. Gone is the love that was growing there. ‘No. We can’t make it work. I don’t have the heart for it.’ He sighs at me. ‘I used to feel sorry for you, Lucy. I hated the way Marcus treated you. Now I pity you.’

I put my hand on his arm. ‘Aiden, please . . .’

He shrugs me off. ‘Go fuck yourself, Lucy,’ he says. ‘Better still, go fuck Marcus. You deserve each other.’

I’m shocked at his coldness, but perhaps I shouldn’t be. He’s hurt and I know exactly how that feels. Aiden marches
out of the restaurant and I sit there, face burning with shame, trying not to cry.

The waiter comes over. ‘Would madam like to order?’

‘Yes,’ I say shakily. ‘Could you get me a new brain, please? The one I have doesn’t seem to function properly.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

C
hantal looked at her body in the full-length mirror in the living room. She turned sideways and pulled her shirt tight over her blossoming bump. Currently, her stomach simply looked as if she’d been eating way too much chocolate over Christmas, but she knew it wouldn’t stay like that for long.

‘Aunty Chantal,’ Lewis said. ‘You’ve got a fat tummy.’

Nadia put down her magazine and gave her a wry glance over her shoulder. ‘Out of the mouth of babes.’

Chantal knelt down and cuddled Lewis to her. ‘Shall I tell you a secret?’ Her little friend nodded enthusiastically. ‘Aunty Chantal’s going to have a baby.’

‘Oh.’ Lewis wrinkled his nose. ‘Will it be my brother?’

‘No, honey. But I hope the baby will be your friend.’

‘Oh.’ He didn’t look too impressed at all. ‘Will he be able to play football with me?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. But the baby might not be another boy, it might be a little girl.’

Lewis looked as if he didn’t like the sound of that at all. ‘I think I might watch television now,’ he said, snaking away from her.

Chantal sighed. She sincerely hoped that she’d get a better reception from her husband when she broke her news to him. Well, she’d know soon enough, as she was due to meet Ted tonight to talk to him about their future. Her hands went to her bump. ‘I still can’t believe this is real,’ she confided to Nadia.

‘You’ll be a great mum,’ her friend reassured her. ‘You should try to enjoy your pregnancy, Chantal.’

But how could she, when for the next six months she’d be wondering who the father was. Would she be able to tell when the baby popped out exactly who it favoured? Would it have Jacob’s chiselled good looks? Or her husband’s strong, straight nose? She could barely even remember what the other guy she’d slept with looked like. Or would the baby come out looking like all of them did – like red, wrinkled, screwed-up old blokes – lovable only to their parents?

Chantal had been on the internet visiting all the paternity-testing sites, so she knew that she could have a pre-natal DNA test to determine who the daddy was, but there was a risk to the baby going down that route: tests on the foetus were invasive and potentially dangerous. This little tyke might not have been planned and the exact circumstances of the baby’s conception might currently be vague, but he, she or it was most certainly wanted, and there was no way that Chantal would consider anything that could possibly harm the child.

An abortion wasn’t even an option, even though it might well have solved some of her problems. Now that she was pregnant there was no doubt that she wanted this
baby – no matter whose it was. A fierce, protective instinct had already kicked in as soon as her pregnancy had been confirmed. First and foremost, the baby was
hers
– and that was all that she cared about. The DNA test could wait until after the child was born. Then it was simply a matter of taking a hair or saliva sample and sending them off to some anonymous laboratory with the appropriate fee. There was no choice as far as she was concerned. She’d have to wait until after the birth to find out for certain whose genes Baby Hamilton had inherited.

She and Ted had gotten tickets for the theatre tonight – a modern and controversial performance of
Othello
at the South Bank. Chantal couldn’t imagine why she’d bought seats for such an emotive play, other than the fact that it was the hot ticket in town. If she’d been thinking straight, she would have gone for something with a more neutral subject-matter. Perhaps it was true that pregnancy reduced your brain cells. Ted loved his Shakespeare, though; he’d been looking forward to the performance for weeks and she didn’t want to spoil it for him. She just hoped it wouldn’t put any ideas in his mind about killing his unfaithful wife.

Their relationship had been even more strained since they’d been away together at Christmas, but Chantal was determined to make it work. She wondered why they hadn’t noticed then the way her ‘love handles’ were developing. Maybe it was their failure – once again – to get naked with each other. Let’s face it, as much as she wanted their marriage to continue – albeit in a stronger form than it currently was – this news could be make or break for
them. Could Ted live with the fact that the child could be another man’s? What would this do to their already shaky status?

So when to drop her bombshell on him? They were meeting in a bar for a drink – strictly soda for her from now on. Would that be the best place to tell him? Or should she wait until the interval in the show? Or maybe it would be best to broach it when they were enjoying a little late supper afterwards. If the play was as good as they said, Ted would be in a mellow mood. She hoped that the critics could be relied upon. Her marriage might depend on it.

Chantal spent the afternoon window-shopping, browsing mother and baby stores, trying to fix in her mind that this title was about to become appropriate to her. Then she’d taken herself along to her hairdressers for a blow-dry and a manicure to make sure she was looking her best for the evening.

They were meeting at one of Ted’s favourite bars near his office. By the time she arrived, the bar was already busy with City types enjoying an after-work drink mixed with a sprinkling of theatregoers, but Chantal had managed to find a bar stool and perched on it while she sipped slowly from her tumbler of mineral water. She’d always drunk lots of water, but suddenly it didn’t seem so great now that it had been foisted on her. Bizarrely, her body was craving a chilled glass of Chardonnay. And a cigarette. Even though she’d never smoked. There was nothing quite like being told that you couldn’t have something to make sure that you wanted it.

Chantal glanced at her watch. It was nearly seven o’clock and she was getting worried about Ted’s continuing absence. He’d said he’d meet her at six-thirty. They’d need to be leaving for the theatre soon as the play started in half an hour. She’d called his cell phone several times, but it had gone straight to voicemail. Maybe she should call him and tell him that she’d leave his ticket at the box office if he’d been delayed. Punching in his number once again, she was surprised when Ted answered.

‘Hi there,’ she said brightly. ‘I was beginning to worry that I’d been stood up.’

There was an uncomfortable pause at the other end of the phone. ‘Chantal,’ Ted said. ‘Something’s come up at the office. I’m not going to make it tonight.’

‘Oh.’ She couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice. There was always some impending crisis in his office; she shouldn’t be surprised.

‘Sorry, honey,’ he said. But Chantal thought he said it rather glibly. ‘Maybe another time.’

Maybe
another time?

‘Ted,’ she said calmly. ‘I have something I need to discuss with you.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘It’s important. Shall I wait for you and we can have dinner instead of going to the show?’

‘No. No,’ he said distractedly. ‘You go along. I don’t know how long this will take. I’ll call you.’

‘Well, okay,’ she said reluctantly.

But Ted had already hung up.