Chocolate Box Girls Page 11

  ‘Ignore her,’ Skye tells me. ‘She’s obsessed. We started lessons together, when we were four … but I didn’t last, I was useless. Did you ever do ballet?’

  I blink. ‘Oh … yeah,’ I hear myself say. ‘I did it for a while, but I wasn’t keen. I gave up a couple of years ago …’

  Why do I say these things? Stupid, stupid, stupid. The only dance lessons I’ve ever had were at school, in PE. They used to teach us Scottish Country dances with dodgy names like the Gay Gordons, in the run-up to Burns Night. I was hopeless. I usually got stuck with Frazer McDuff, who had bad breath and clammy hands and glasses that were always broken and held together with Sellotape.

  I was so bad that on Burns Night they made me a waitress, handing out plates of brown, speckly haggis to the parents at the class Burns Supper so that I wouldn’t have to be part of the dancing display. Kirsty McRae teased me for weeks, so eventually I told her my mum was actually a famous ballet dancer in Tokyo, just to shut her up.

  It didn’t, of course.

  She laughed out loud and told everyone I was a sad little liar. I shudder at the memory.

  ‘What grade did you get to?’ Summer asks, twirling into the bathroom with an armful of fluffy white towels. ‘I bet you were good! Can you do a pas de chat? Or a jeté?’

  ‘No!’ I bark, a little too quickly. ‘No … I can’t do … well, whatever you said. I never got that far. And I never did any grades. They … um … don’t have them, in Scotland. I think I had two left feet …’

  ‘Oh?’ Summer says, looking doubtful. ‘No ballet grades in Scotland? Are you sure?’

  The trouble with telling a little white lie is that one lie has a way of turning into more. You cannot back down. You end up digging yourself deeper and deeper, just to avoid detection.

  ‘Certain,’ I lie brightly, plumping up the pillows and smoothing down the duvet. ‘It’s a totally different system, in Glasgow.’

  Summer is leaning on the bathroom door, frowning slightly, and I can see that she has sussed me out. She knows I am lying, and her face betrays her feelings. She is confused, disappointed, faintly annoyed.

  I don’t really blame her.

  When will I ever learn?

  20

  The three of us are sitting on the grass in the sunshine, painting a rainbow-bright banner for the Chocolate Festival, when the little red minivan crunches back across the gravel just after one o’clock.

  ‘How did it go?’ I call out, running over to the car. ‘What did they say?’

  Dad looks at Charlotte, and his face breaks into a grin.

  ‘Well … I reckon it was the truffles that swung it,’ he says. ‘But … the bank people have approved our business plan! They’re giving The Chocolate Box a loan. The business is up and running!’

  ‘We’ve brought fish ’n’ chips to celebrate,’ Charlotte announces. ‘Go and find Coco and Honey, we’ll eat out here …’

  We spread a picnic cloth on the grass, and Charlotte brings out plates and cutlery and ketchup and a glass jug filled with orange juice and ice. Skye and I run in to fetch cushions to sit on and Summer tracks down Coco and Honey.

  ‘Chips,’ the eldest Tanberry sister sighs. ‘Well, at least we got something out of it.’

  ‘Got you a couple of pineapple fritters, Honey,’ Dad grins. ‘Your favourite, right?’

  Honey shrugs, unwrapping her chips. The ghost of a smile flickers over her features. ‘Yeah … I suppose. Thanks …’

  I have eaten misshapen Taystee Bars on Glasgow Green before, and cheese-and-pickle sandwiches on the steps outside the Gallery of Modern Art, even hot dogs at a folk music festival in the Borders … but this is the best picnic ever. Eating chips in the sunshine at Tanglewood House with the Tanberrys, Dad and Charlotte on a high about the chocolate business … well, the good mood is contagious. I can almost forget the blunder I made with Summer, with my stupid ballet story. It doesn’t seem important any more.

  I’m starting to realize that I don’t need lies to fit in here, anyway … I just need to be me. Maybe that’s all I ever needed?

  ‘We’re in business!’ Dad grins, spearing a chip and dunking it in ketchup. ‘The bank thought our plans were really exciting, that we’d researched the project well. All we have to do now is show them they were right to believe in us! I’ll get that workshop finished and then we can work flat out to get everything ready for the Chocolate Festival …’

  ‘We’ve got tons of ideas for that,’ Skye tells Dad. ‘Mum wants to do a chocolate cafe, and we think we can get a chocolate fountain too. I thought I could tell fortunes – you know, dress up as a gypsy or something and sit on the caravan steps and tell people what their favourite truffle would be, a bit like in Chocolat!’

  ‘A couple of my friends will probably help out, if we need them,’ Summer chips in.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll need me,’ Honey says carelessly. ‘But … if you do …’

  We all turn to look at her. If we do, what? She’d rather die than get involved in the Chocolate Festival, surely?

  ‘What?’ she snaps, biting into a pineapple fritter.

  Charlotte laughs. ‘Nothing, love … but yes, of course we will need you, Honey. You’re so organized … we couldn’t manage without you! If I do try a kind of open-air chocolate cafe, then I’ll be stuck in the kitchen sorting all the orders. We’d need someone to keep an eye on things out here, someone reliable.’

  Honey raises an eyebrow. ‘I suppose I could do that …’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Charlotte says. ‘And I was going to ask Shay if he could rig up a sound system, get some music sorted. It’s going to be a fantastic day!’

  ‘Hang on,’ Dad cuts in. ‘There’s a little something special I left in the fridge to cool, just in case the bank came up trumps … I almost forgot. This is something to celebrate!’

  A few moments later, Dad pops the cork from a bottle of Tesco champagne and pours it quickly into the mismatched mugs and glasses we are holding out.

  ‘Here’s to The Chocolate Box,’ he grins, raising his mug in a toast. ‘To the bank, for coughing up with the loan, and to all of you for believing in my crazy idea. You won’t be sorry, I promise you!’

  ‘Whatever,’ Honey says, but the rest of us raise our glasses and drink. I have never tasted champagne before, and it tastes like happiness, like cool, fizzy sunshine. The bubbles explode on my tongue and make me want to laugh.

  ‘I wanted to say thank you too,’ Dad continues, raising his mug again. ‘To all of you, really … Skye and Summer and Coco and Honey … for welcoming Cherry and me into your family. For giving me – us – a chance. I know it can’t have been easy. To Cherry, of course, for putting up with me all these years, for taking a risk on a new life down here, and for going along with my mad schemes …’

  Dad looks at Charlotte, and his face breaks into a huge grin. ‘Most of all,’ he concludes, ‘I have to thank Charlotte, for bringing the sunshine back into my life, waking me up, making me see that dreams can come true, and that the best things in life are worth working for …’

  ‘Slush-y,’ Honey complains, but Skye nudges her and she subsides into silence.

  That’s when it all goes wrong.

  Dad puts a hand into the pocket of his suit jacket and fishes out a tiny, ribbon-wrapped box. He opens his palm and offers it to Charlotte. Her eyes open wide and she takes the handpainted box and opens it, carefully. Everyone is watching, everyone is quiet, and a trickle of foreboding unfurls within me, because there is something dramatic, momentous, about the gesture. Something slightly scary.

  No, I think. No, he wouldn’t …

  Then the box is open and I breathe a sigh of relief because inside there is just a chocolate, a heart-shaped chocolate with a swirl of white on top.

  ‘Oh, lovely!’ Charlotte says. ‘Thanks, Paddy!’

  ‘He’s given her his heart,’ Coco says, fluttering her las
hes, movie-star style.

  ‘Does this mean they’re sweethearts now?’ Summer quips. ‘Get it? Sweethearts?

  ‘Oh, please,’ Honey huffs.

  ‘You have to taste it, Charlotte,’ Dad is saying. ‘It’s a new flavour. I made it especially for you …’

  So Charlotte lifts the heart-shaped chocolate up, biting in gently, and then she frowns and takes the truffle away from her mouth and looks at it carefully. Time seems to slow as she picks at the chocolate shell, touches the fondant centre with a fingertip, and then I see the glint of gold, the shimmer of diamonds, and I understand.

  ‘Paddy …’ Charlotte says. ‘What the …?’

  ‘Oh. My. Days …’ Summer breathes.

  ‘I’m reading your chocolate fortune,’ Skye says slowly. ‘And I predict a happy-ever-after …’

  ‘Will you marry me, Charlotte?’ Dad asks, just in case she hasn’t got the message. ‘There is nothing I’d like more, nothing that would make me happier … and we can all be a proper family. Will you?’

  Charlotte puts an arm round Dad’s neck and kisses his ear. ‘I will,’ she says. ‘Oh, Paddy, of course I will!’

  ‘That is just soooo romantic!’ Summer squeals.

  ‘A wedding!’ Coco grins. ‘Can I be bridesmaid?’

  Charlotte pulls the ring from inside the chocolate heart. ‘Oh … oh … wow! It’s beautiful … Paddy, thank you!’ She is grinning so much her smile could light up the national grid, and everyone starts to clap and cheer. I wonder why I feel so frozen, because I am happy for Dad and Charlotte, I really am … but … it hurts, all the same.

  And I’m not the only one who feels that way.

  Honey looks stricken. Her eyes are wide and her mouth begins to tremble, and the hands that cradle her mug of champagne are shaking.

  ‘No,’ she says, and her voice is a whisper at first, rising quickly to an anguished wail. ‘No! How can you, Mum? How can you even think of getting married when you already have a husband? Remember? My dad!’

  ‘Hey, hey, Honey …’ Dad says, holding up his hands in a gesture of peace. ‘Calm down …’

  But Honey is not calm. ‘Don’t you tell me what to do!’ she screams. ‘You’re not my dad, and you never will be! You think you’re so clever, don’t you? You talk about being a “proper family” but you can just back off, because we are a family already, and we don’t need you for that!’

  ‘Stop it!’ Charlotte yells at Honey. ‘Stop it … please! Why can’t you be happy for me? Why can’t you accept this?’

  ‘Because it’s wrong!’ Honey bites out. ‘It’s wrong! You don’t belong here, Paddy Costello! You worm your way in, sweetening everybody up with your nicey-nicey ways, your stupid chocolates … but you don’t fool me. I see you for exactly what you are. I hate you, OK? I HATE you!’

  She jumps up and runs away across the grass, blonde hair flying out behind her.

  Dad looks horrified. He has judged it all wrong, got his timing askew. Things were going pretty well, sure … but it’s still early days. And Honey will need a lot longer than this to even start to accept us. Like forever, maybe?

  ‘Should we go after her?’ Summer asks in a tiny voice. ‘Talk to her?’

  ‘No,’ Charlotte says, her voice a little wobbly. ‘Leave her, Summer. Let her calm down. We can’t keep running after her, placating her. She’s had this family walking on eggshells for long enough, afraid to breathe, just about, in case it upsets her … well, I’m sorry, but I can’t keep putting my life on hold for Honey. I just can’t. Why can’t she see that I have feelings too? Why can’t she be happy for us?’

  Charlotte squeezes Dad’s hand, smiling, but her eyes are bright with tears.

  21

  The fireworks don’t really start until later.

  Shay turns up, sunbrowned and smelling of the sea after a day at the sailing centre. Charlotte tells him to tread carefully, because Honey is upset, and Shay just rolls his eyes and shrugs and shoots me the kind of look most people reserve for child-murderers and kitten-stranglers. It’s the kind of look that makes me think he is finding this not-being-friends thing as tough as I am, and that he is blaming me for that. It is also the kind of look that says he is tired of treading carefully.

  I guess I don’t blame him.

  Anyhow, Shay and Honey don’t appear for tea, and the rest of us are halfway through spaghetti Bolognaise when there’s the sound of raised voices and a spectacular slamming of doors.

  ‘Lord,’ Charlotte whispers. ‘Let’s just hope all the guests are out this evening … or deaf. What now?’

  ‘Sounds like she’s having a go at Shay,’ Dad says. ‘I hope he remembered his bullet-proof vest.’

  ‘They never quarrel, usually. Shay’s so patient …’ Skye says anxiously.

  That’s when Shay marches through the kitchen, his face set in a scowl, the blue guitar slung over his back. ‘Sorry, guys,’ he says. ‘I just can’t do this right now …’

  Charlotte gets to her feet. ‘Are you OK?’ she asks. ‘C’mon Shay, whatever it is, it can’t be that bad … sit down … calm down …’

  But Shay just shakes his head and keeps on walking, slamming the kitchen door behind him.

  Much later, walking down to the caravan with Fred, I hear the sound of sad guitar music, so far away it is barely a whisper. I walk past the caravan, down across the lawn, breathing in the scent of freshly cut grass and darkness. No Shay.

  And then I hear it again, the sound of guitar in the distance, drifting across the night garden. I creep out through the gate, right to the top of the cliff path, following the sound. Shay is on the beach, a dark figure crouched on the rocks, looking out to sea.

  I don’t know exactly why I begin to climb down. It’s dark and the steps are uneven, and I am supposed to be staying away from Shay Fletcher. But somehow I am on the beach, my feet sinking into soft sand, my hair lifting in the breeze from the ocean.

  Shay is sitting on the rocks, his skinny legs folded up in front of him, the blue guitar cradled in his lap. He turns and looks at me, and for once he doesn’t seem pleased to see me at all. His face is tight and closed and angry.

  ‘You,’ he says tiredly.

  I flinch in the moonlight. ‘Yeah … me,’ I whisper.

  ‘Come to laugh?’ Shay asks. ‘Say I told you so?’

  ‘Er … not exactly,’ I say. ‘I was worried about you.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  Shay chucks his guitar down in the sand.

  ‘I don’t know why I bother,’ he sighs. ‘I try my best to do the right thing, please everybody. I work hard. I see Honey every night. You tell me to stay away from you and I do as you say, even though it’s the stupidest idea I ever heard … but nobody, nobody, ever bothers about how I feel. What am I, a machine? People can yell at me and tell me I’m rubbish and I just have to stand there and soak it all up? I don’t think so!’

  Shock and anger curl inside me. I wish I had the courage to reach out to him, the way he did when I was telling my kimono story and got all sad and tearful. I don’t, though. I just sit down on the soft sand beside the rocks, shivering.

  ‘Seriously, Honey is one mixed-up girl,’ he says. ‘She has a mean streak. I’m not even sure what I’m doing with someone like that.’

  ‘You love her,’ I say, even though the words stick in my throat. ‘She’s your girlfriend.’

  ‘I don’t love her,’ he says into the dark, and, in spite of myself, my heart leaps.

  ‘She doesn’t even know me,’ Shay goes on. ‘She never asks how stuff is going in my life. She doesn’t care – everything is always all about her. And sometimes … well, sometimes I’d like to be able talk about stuff too. You know more about me than Honey does!’

  My heart thuds in the darkness.

  ‘So Paddy and Charlotte got engaged,’ he goes on. ‘Well, good. It’s not the end of the world, is it? They make each o
ther happy. Is that a crime? I know Honey is sad about her dad, but surely after three years she should start to accept that the marriage is over? She still thinks he’s coming back, and the man can barely be bothered to send her a text half the time. He’s an idiot, but she just won’t see it!’

  Shay tilts his head back and looks up at the stars.

  ‘Anyway … Honey’s got a plan, the worst plan I ever heard in my life. It’s like a kind of blackmail – she wants to make Charlotte choose between her and Paddy.’

  A heavy feeling settles inside me, a sense of dread. If Charlotte had to choose between my dad and her own daughter … well, that kind of choice is just plain cruel. There could be no happy ending there, not for Charlotte, anyhow.

  ‘She can’t do that!’ I argue.

  ‘Honey doesn’t play by the rules, or haven’t you noticed?’ Shay says. ‘Don’t worry … I told her it was a lousy idea … I don’t think she’ll go through with it. I hope not.’

  He sighs. ‘She agreed to put the plan on hold, but she got so angry – told me I was a liar, a loser, a traitor. I’m sick of it, Cherry. I have enough people in my life telling me I’m rubbish …’

  He gets up suddenly and walks to the water’s edge, picks up a flat stone and skims it across the rippling surface. It bounces three, four, five times before vanishing beneath the water. I pick up a stone of my own to skim. It splashes once and sinks without a trace. Skimming stones is not the kind of skill you perfect, living in a place like Glasgow.

  Shay skims a few more, then he shrugs and puts his hands in his pockets and we walk along the shoreline together.

  He looks like the kind of boy who has had whatever he wanted, from birth, just about. He looks like one of the lucky ones, but I don’t think he feels that way.

  ‘Who else tells you you’re rubbish?’ I ask quietly.

  Shay laughs, but it’s a harsh, empty sound. ‘My dad,’ he says. ‘My dad thinks I’m useless. He tells me all the time. He hates me – everything that makes me me. He has never once been to one of my school nativity plays or concerts. In middle school, I had the lead role in Grease, but he said that kind of stuff was for wimps. He hates my music, hates my hair, hates my clothes. Whatever I do, it’s never good enough.’