Chapter 4
MEG
In the kitchen of her little flat in Kentish Town, Meg lined up the festive moulds which would hold the chocolate in the shape of Christmas baubles in one tray, stockings and Father Christmas formations in another.
She checked how much packaging she had left.
She’d been getting through it at a rate of knots with creativity and chocolate being her outlet when she was stressed and feeling down, but she still had plenty of the pink square and rectangular cardboard boxes with the white writing on top that reminded her of what had once been.
She ran her finger across the wording on top of a square box. ‘The Cocoa Cupboard.’
She shook away the sadness for now and got busy doing what she did best, making chocolate.
She’d saved long and hard to buy this one-bedroom solid brick-and-mortar flat and now it was her home, something she hadn’t felt she’d had half the time as a kid with all the moving around.
Her sister, Chrissie, had more than once, claimed that home was a feeling, not a place, but Meg hadn’t felt that way at all.
As she laid out strips of white ribbon that she would tie around the finished boxes, she thought about the fun times she and her sister had had growing up.
Some of her memories involved chocolate, and one that stood out was the day she’d come home from her part-time job at the chocolate shop in Winterbruck convinced she could easily be a chocolatier.
Chrissie had volunteered to be a taste tester of whatever she made.
Unfortunately, being a chocolatier hadn’t come as naturally to Meg as she’d thought it would.
She’d burnt the chocolate that day and added way too much peppermint flavouring to the mixture.
She’d not had a thermometer on hand to check the chocolate, and despite Chrissie not saying a word, the look on her face gave away her desire to spit the chocolate out the second it went in her mouth.
They’d ended up in fits of giggles and Chrissie had begged her to please take some lessons and get some training before she ever tried making chocolate again. She hadn’t though, not for a long time.
When Meg had first gone off on an adventure to London with the intention of studying and supporting herself, she’d ended up messing about, lacking direction, and as well as all that, she missed Chrissie like crazy.
She’d sent her younger sister and their parents postcards regularly, depicting the impression of an amazing life in England’s capital, which wasn’t quite the truth.
Every day she’d wished she still had Chrissie by her side the way she’d been when they were younger.
With every move, every readjustment, they’d always had each other.
What she would give to have Chrissie help her through her current troubles.
The shop was gone. No matter that it wasn’t her fault, it was yet another thing in her life that had ended up in a mess, the same way things had been left with Chrissie.
She’d failed her sister all those years ago by not respecting her decisions, by voicing her opinions as if they were gospel, by giving up trying to make peace.
And now it had been almost eight years since they’d seen each other, over two decades since they’d had a proper conversation.
She had a niece she didn’t know, a sister who didn’t want her in her world after what happened at her wedding and then at the funeral of the man her sister had fallen in love with. And Meg could only blame herself.
She measured out the correct amount of couverture chocolate. The high-quality professional-grade product, with its high percentage of cocoa butter, would enable superior melting, perfect tempering and a glossy finish as well as a smooth texture.
After melting the chocolate, she tempered some of the mixture on one of the cold marble slabs she had for the purpose. When she really went for it and made a massive batch of chocolates like she had the other night, she could cover every surface with these slabs.
Meg always embraced the tempering process.
It looked and could be messy. It seemed cumbersome to a lot of people, but not to her because she got to take the raw material and turn it into something new, exciting and special.
Tempering affected the cocoa butter crystals in the ingredients and allowed the magic to happen.
The process would ensure the chocolate wasn’t dull or bendy but rather glossy and with a snap.
It would also help her create chocolates that were free of spots or streaks.
The first few times she’d tried tempering she’d been terrible – she’d misread the temperature and overheated the chocolate.
She’d tried to work in the kitchen at the height of summer, which meant it was too hot for tempering to work well, and more than once she’d let water get into the mixture during the melting process.
Over time she’d got better, and now she found the tempering process to be therapeutic rather than stressful.
She moved the chocolate back and forth, checked the temperature, and then mixed it back into the rest of the melted chocolate.
The smell was incredible. Even after working with chocolate for years, she never lost pleasure in the way it assaulted your senses.
The taste, the smell, the sound when it snapped in half, the silky feel of it.
She added in the extra ingredients. Into one batch of dark chocolate she dropped finely chopped cranberries; into another she added lavender; and into a third she added sea salt for a bitey flavour. She poured the mixtures into the awaiting moulds, already happy with how the chocolate looked.
The chocolate would harden quickly at room temperature and Meg turned her hand to clearing up.
As the sink filled with water she closed her eyes.
Had it really only been two weeks since The Cocoa Cupboard had closed its doors, and instead of making chocolate in state-of-the-art facilities out the back of the Camden shop, she was doing it in her tiny kitchen at the flat?
Was it possible to fall asleep on your feet?
Maybe it was when you were this exhausted.
She hadn’t got a decent night’s sleep since the day her partner – or ex-partner – Grant gave her the devastating news that he was closing the chocolaterie.
And every day she asked herself whether she should have seen it coming, whether she ever should’ve relied on him for anything, let alone her stability in her dream career.
She’d been approached by other chocolateries a few times over the years but had always turned them down.
She’d already contacted them over the last few days to put her name out there again, see whether there was any interest, but as predicted their lead chocolatier positions had been filled a long time ago.
Meg had met Grant just after she turned forty-four six years ago at an event in France dedicated to chocolate and cocoa.
Chocolate enthusiasts as well as industry professionals could attend to meet the five hundred or so exhibitors, which included top chocolatiers and cocoa producers, and revealed trends in the industry, techniques and flavour ideas.
Meg and Grant had got talking near one of the most impressive exhibitors who had sculpted wild animals, including a leopard and a giraffe, out of chocolate.
They’d hit it off from the start and they had so much to talk about.
When Grant said that he owned The Cocoa Cupboard in Camden, Meg had been wowed.
She’d never imagined the man with tattoos covering both arms from wrist to shoulder, big hands, and long, unkempt hair could be a chocolatier, but that’s exactly what he was.
When they both returned to London after the event Grant invited her to meet him at The Cocoa Cupboard.
The shop had been undergoing some renovations at the time, and he was preparing to reopen.
He’d been interviewing chocolatiers for the last few months and that day, after she made him a variety of chocolates including dark chocolate with a hint of chilli, a bar of hazelnut praline and a lime cheesecake-flavoured chocolate, he’d offered her the position of lead chocolatier.
He said he intended to remain involved with the chocolate making but he wanted more time to manage the business side of things and he was keen to investigate possible expansion.
He wanted Meg to take the reins at the shop, oversee daily activities when he wasn’t there.
He wanted her to maintain quality control and lead the less experienced staff.
Meg had waited such a long time for this sort of position to come up, and she hadn’t hesitated to say yes.
And Grant had done exactly what he’d said he would and opened a second premises in a sleepy Buckinghamshire village.
Before too long, not only did Meg work for Grant but they also started dating, and when he needed more money to plough into the business, he’d sold his property in Hertfordshire and moved into her flat.
They both seemed on the same wavelength; they both had a love and joy for chocolate, Grant was fun and full of enthusiasm, he was daring and took risks, and his risks seemed to have paid off.
The chocolaterie in Camden continued to be a roaring success. They were continuously busy and it had been a joy for Meg the whole time. The Cocoa Cupboard in Buckinghamshire hadn’t been quite so lucky though, and a year ago Grant had closed it down.
Ever since then he’d retreated into himself a bit.
The financial stress had shown in his moods which went from hyper to melancholy, a change Meg found both disconcerting and confronting.
The fun times with Grant, the long nights spent discussing techniques and flavours to introduce disappeared, and along with it their relationship faltered.
They’d kept going through the motions. Their home life was strained, but Meg had her escape with her job.