Chocolate Wishes

Grumps had generously given me a cheque to buy anything I needed for my new home, but I was making it stretch as far as possible. Anyway, it’s much more fun (and a lot more ecologically sound) to search out stuff from charity and junk shops, though there wasn’t much time. It was just as well Stirrups was quiet at this time of year, so Poppy could get away occasionally and help me.

I wasn’t really expecting Grumps to be terribly interested in what I was saying, so I was surprised when he stopped scribbling on a bit of paper, looked up and said, ‘I seem to recall that there are one or two pieces of furniture stored in the attic. Perhaps there might be something you would want among them? In any case, someone should decide what is worth taking with us, or can be left for the Meerlings.’

‘Marlings,’ I corrected. ‘OK, I’ll sort that out, Grumps. And you’ve reminded me – that’s where I put Mum’s stuff, so I’d better go through it, hadn’t I? She isn’t going to want any of her clothes when she does come back now – they’ll be out of fashion – though I suppose I’ll have to keep her personal possessions.’

The day I put them up there was not a happy one. For some reason, Jake had been totally convinced Mum would turn up on the first anniversary of her disappearing trick and was correspondingly so deeply upset when she didn’t, in an angry, thirteen-year-old sort of way, that he took it out by trashing his bicycle with a tyre wrench and then vanishing for hours. In his absence I had shoved all her possessions into old suitcases and boxes, clearing the flat of any lingering trace of her presence, and I hadn’t thought about them since.

‘Label anything Lou might still want and it can be transferred to the attic of the new house,’ Grumps suggested.

‘OK. There shouldn’t be much.’ I paused. ‘Do you think she will ever come back? It’s been a long time.’

‘You would need to ask Zillah that, but I would much prefer she didn’t. Life is more tranquil without her, and Zillah assures me that she is alive and well.’ He held out the slip of paper he had been covering in his black, crabbed writing and added, ‘The ancient Mayan chocolate charm I gave you was, if you remember my saying so, incomplete. I think I have managed to translate a little more with the help of my friend in Cordoba. He wrote to me this morning with some suggestions. You might want to add the additional lines when you are preparing your chocolate.’

‘Since the ancient Mayan people didn’t have a written language, I can’t imagine how they could pass down a charm for chocolate making anyway, Grumps!’

‘There is such a thing as oral history, you know, Chloe, and no reason why such a thing should not have been written down by one of the early Spanish conquistadores – as it was – and carried back to Spain.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Just have faith. The last version worked, to a certain extent, did it not? Business boomed.’

‘My sales did rise,’ I admitted, though I was sure that had more to do with the excellence of the chocolate and the novelty of the concept, rather than the brief incantation of some probably spurious spell over the tempering pot.

Just out of curiosity, when he had managed to decipher the whole thing I thought I should try a sort of blind chocolate tasting session, with Felix and Poppy as the guinea pigs, to see if they thought it made any difference to the taste.

I found one or two dust-sheeted gems among the rolls of moth-eaten carpet and broken furniture up in the attic – a white Lloyd Loom chair and matching small ottoman that would be lovely in my bedroom. I put them to one side and labelled them for the removal men, along with a small mirror that some long-gone Victorian miss had adorned with a frame of shells. A few were broken or missing, but I had an old sweet jar full of seaside treasures that Jake and I had collected when he was a little boy, so I could easily replace them.

Other than that, there was just a sad huddle of Mum’s stuff. There weren’t any books (like Zillah, she didn’t read anything except magazines) and not much paperwork, since when it became clear that she wasn’t coming back any time soon, Grumps had taken her bank and credit card statements so he could settle her affairs, though I was sure he was under no legal obligation to do that. We thought escaping her spiralling debts was part of the reason she took off in the first place.

I’d packed up what was left, together with her costume jewellery, makeup and beauty aids. Most of her extensive wardrobe I’d crammed into a huge cabin trunk that was already up here.

Now I opened the lid, releasing a wave of Je Reviens and a lot of unwanted memories of when I had been a small child, convinced it was my fault that my mother didn’t seem to love me very much…

I’d brought a roll of strong plastic bin bags with me and began to fill them with clothes. There were a lot of expensive labels in there, and even though they were out of date I could probably have made some money selling them on eBay. But there was not much time and, besides, I just wanted to clear as much of her out of our lives as possible. Time for Jake and me to have a whole, fresh new start.

As I filled the bags and repacked the old suitcases, I carried them all the way down to the front hall and stacked them ready to go to a local charity shop, so I was getting tired, hot and grubby by the time I reached the last couple of boxes. The first and largest one was full of bric-a-brac, teddy bears and various trashy holiday souvenirs, so I labelled that for the attic and moved it over with the furniture that was going to the new house.

Finally I was left with just a large shoebox of old letters. I hadn’t looked at them when I was packing her stuff up, but now I found myself sitting under the skylight on the Lloyd Loom chair with the contents spread across the top of the ottoman. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to read them; I didn’t really think they would suddenly illuminate some depths that my shallow and self-centred mother had kept hidden because I was sure she hadn’t got any. What you saw was what you got.

There wasn’t a huge collection, though some dated back to just before I was born. My mother had scrawled remarks on a couple of the envelopes like ‘Yes!!!’ and ‘Result!!!’ so I started with those – and hit pay dirt with the very first one. Then, with horrified illumination dawning, I went through all of the rest, finishing with a couple of notes in Mags’ distinctive handwriting.

After that, I just sat there unconscious of time passing, my lap full of secrets and lies, until I heard the unmistakable thumping of Jake’s big boots on the wooden attic stairs. Hastily bundling all the letters together, I thrust them back into the box and crammed on the lid, wishing what I had learned could be as neatly packed away and forgotten.

‘What on earth are you doing up here?’ Jake demanded, ducking his head to get through the low doorway. ‘The lights and radio are on in the flat, but Zillah hadn’t seen you for hours. I thought you’d vanished.’

‘Like Mum’ was the unspoken inference. I’m sure that’s why he had always got rid of my boyfriends – every time I’d gone out with one of them, he’d been afraid I wouldn’t come back.

‘Sorry, Jake. Grumps asked me to sort things out up here ready for the move, and I lost track of time.’

‘You look a bit pale.’

‘I’m tired, I’ve been up and down stairs with bags of stuff. But I’ve just about finished now and I found this lovely Lloyd Loom furniture for my bedroom. What do you think?’

‘It’s a bit girly,’ he commented, his attention clearly elsewhere. ‘But I like that huge trunk with all the travel stickers on it! Do you think Grumps would let me have it?’

‘It would take up an awful lot of floor space in your room, you know.’

‘Maybe, but I could store loads of stuff in it, so the rest of my room would actually be much tidier,’ he suggested cunningly.

‘I suppose it would fit at the foot of your bed, if you really wanted it, and Grumps won’t mind because he said I could have anything from the attic.’ I handed him the roll of labels. ‘Here, write “Cottage – front bedroom” on this and stick it on top.’

He did that and then I asked him to carry the last boxes and bags down to the hall.

‘OK,’ he said, grabbing two heavy bags in each hand as if they weighed practically nothing, ‘but I really came to find out what’s for dinner.’

I passed a weary hand across my forehead. ‘Oh, I don’t know…I haven’t thought about it yet.’

‘Zillah says she’s doing steak and kidney pudding, mushy peas and crinkly chips, but you have to say now if you want any, before she starts cooking.’

‘You have that, if you fancy it, Jake. I’m meeting Felix and Poppy this evening, and by the time I’ve showered all this filth off, there’ll only be time for a snack. What are you doing tonight?’

‘I promised Grumps I’d help him with something,’ he said mysteriously, and then laughed at my expression. ‘No, I’m not about to become part of the coven, cavorting about with a lot of wrinklies, or do anything else daft! He just wanted me to research someone called Digby Mann-Drake on the internet for him.’

‘Digby Mandrake? That sounds even more bogus than Gregory Warlock!’

‘Mann with a double “n” and it’s hyphenated. I expect he made the Mann bit up, since he seems a bit Aleister Crowley – all fancy robes and “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”,’ said Gregory Warlock’s grandson, casually knowledgeable. ‘In fact, he sounds a nasty piece of work altogether and he’s been sending veiled threats to Grumps, because he wanted to buy the Old Smithy, only he fell ill at the crucial moment.’

‘Opportune,’ I commented, thinking that this sounded awfully like the plot of Satan’s Child. Could this Mann-Drake possibly be the Secret Adversary, both of the novel and in real life? The man who had tried to prevent Grumps realising the significance of the Old Smithy’s magical position? The plot thickened. ‘Do they know each other, Jake?’

‘They were at Oxford at the same time, but I don’t think their paths have crossed since, until now. Grumps wants to probe Mann-Drake’s weak spots so he can protect us if he tries any mumbo jumbo,’ he said with cheerful irreverence. ‘That’s why he wanted the information. I’ll see you later.’

I carried the shoebox of letters down to my room, then dashed back up to the attic one last time in order to blast the inside of the cabin trunk with Jake’s very overpowering Lynx aftershave, which entirely vanquished the scent of Je Reviens. There was no need for both of us to wallow in miserable memories.

I showered quickly, so I had time to do an internet search for one of Mum’s correspondents, who turned out to be an actor, printing out his photo and some information to take with me to the Falling Star, where I was meeting Poppy and Felix.

Zillah must have come into the living room just after I’d finished that and gone back into the bathroom to apply a bit of slap, because there was a plate of dinner on the table covered by a hot, inverted soup bowl. I hadn’t thought I was hungry at all until I lifted the bowl off and the aroma of steak and kidney pudding and chips hit me, but I ate it in five minutes flat, standing up, before dashing out.

Indigestion was on the cards – if I could tell heartburn from heartache these days.

Chapter Six Stupid Cupid (#ulink_a782f4f2-cd25-57b2-912b-7bf0440f6ba5)

We were all sitting round the table in the snug at the Falling Star, Mum’s collection of letters and the computer printouts spread over the table between our glasses.

‘So, let’s get this straight, Chloe,’ Felix said, making a valiant attempt to untangle my incoherent narrative. ‘When Lou got pregnant with you, she didn’t just tell Chas Wilde that he was your father, she told another man he was too?’

‘Yes, as a moneymaking scam. Since they were both married, once she threatened to tell their wives they agreed to pay her to keep quiet about it. She had quite a little racket going.’

I hadn’t thought I could feel any more disillusioned about my mother, but this sank my perception of her to whole new depths and I’m not sure anything could survive down there, certainly not love.