The Chocolate Lovers' Club Read Free

at the slutty underwear she’s got on. It’s black and very lacy with bright pink embroidery on it. The sort of underwear you wouldn’t want to be caught wearing in the Accident and Emergency Department of your local hospital. The sort of underwear that doesn’t look good on women with cellulite.
    She whacks the computer on the top of its head. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she complains. ‘Hello? Hello?’ Then the woman turns and speaks over her shoulder. ‘Did you leave this thing on? I think someone’s trying to get through.’ Whack. Whack.
    Still my voice won’t come.
    ‘Ugg.’ She purses her lips. ‘All I have is the view of the inside of someone’s nose.’
    I back away from the camera.
    ‘Here,’ she says. ‘See if you can make it work.’ Then she moves her wondrously trim figure out of the way and, frankly, the inside of my nose is nothing compared to the view that
I
now have.
    Lying on the bed behind this . . . this
tart
. . . is a naked man. A very naked man. Bottom in the air. Not even a sheet covering his modesty. I must at this point mention that Crush and I have never been involved in an intimate situation of this nature, so I don’t instantly recognise the bare bottom. But who else’s bottom could it possibly be? I wonder if I’ve somehow managed to hook up with the wrong computer. Can I possibly have contacted the wrong person in cyberspace and this lovely, if rather underdressed, woman is not really in my boyfriend’s bedroom? Unfortunately, I somehow don’t think so. I’m sure this is Aiden’s computer. And those are definitely his curtains and his wallpaper. Which means they are actually in Crush’s bed. Her with her little matching bra and briefs and him and his buck-naked arse.
    It’s a very fine bottom, I have to say. But I don’t really want to make acquaintance with it in this context. I’m blinking rapidly, as if one of the blinks will change the frame and will come up with a different and less disturbing image.
    ‘Maybe it’s for you,’ Miss Skanky Pants says over her shoulder. ‘Who would be calling at this hour?’
    ‘Here, let me look.’ The voice doesn’t sound an awfullot like Crush, but then again that could be distortion due to the length of the airwaves or microwaves or something.
    It’s definitely an English accent. No doubt about that. The naked man starts to move and I decide that I don’t want to see any more, that I’ve already seen enough. This is
such
a familiar scenario for me. I’ve been the victim of this kind of betrayal more times than I care to remember. Marcus was the past master at it. Now it seems that Aiden Holby has taken over the baton from him.
    I don’t want Crush to see me, mouth gaping open, brain frozen, fatter and more frumpy than the woman he’s with, so I quickly log off. Then I sit staring at the computer, not knowing what to do. My palms are sweaty and my eyes are burning hot with tears. I dig my fingernails into my palms. I will not cry over this. I
will not
cry over this. I will calmly, and with a supreme degree of control that I never knew possible, carry on with my life as if this had never happened. I will not entertain any further thoughts of a lovely new life in Australia with a hunky man. I will leave him to get on with his new, ridiculously slim girlfriend without me. I will stop phoning or bothering Mr Aiden Holby in any way and he will simply cease to exist in my world. That’s what I’ll do.
    Taking a Mars Bar from my emergency stash next to my computer, I sit and stare at it blankly. This is such a shame because Crush was really, really nice and I really, really liked him and I did so hope that things would be different this time. What’s so wrong with me that no onecan remain faithful to me for more than ten minutes? Fuck the flipping deep breath. And the poxy counting. I unwrap the Mars Bar and take a big bite from it. A humungously big bite. Then I think, Sod it, and I cry too.

Chapter Three
    ‘ D