Chocolate Box Girls: Coco Caramel Read Online Free PDF Page B

about me?’ I protest.
‘I was the one who got hurt!’
    ‘You deserved it,’ he shrugs.
‘And after all that, you didn’t even bother to apologize or call the stables
to find out what was happening.’
    A flicker of unease stirs within me.
    ‘So … what is
happening?’ I ask.
    ‘Plenty,’ he snarls. ‘The
stables are selling Caramel. So, yeah, like I said, I hope you’re pleased with
yourself. It’s all your fault.’
    He turns on his heel and walks away. Me, I
stand very still in the playground, letting the waves of shame and guilt slide over
me.
    Then the school bus toots and starts its
engine, and I run down to the gates and scramble aboard, just in time.
    I am still upset when I arrive home. We
finish a little ahead of the high school, so I’m usually home before my sisters
and I’m planning to ask Mum if we can call the stables and ask them to hang on to
Caramel. It’s a long shot, but it has to be worth a try. When I walk into the
kitchen, though, I find Mum and Paddy dancing around with champagne glasses in their
hands. Fred the dog is leaping madly round their feet, and even Humbug my pet sheep has
made her way into the kitchen and is curled up on an armchair in the corner.
    The sight of this is enough to put a smile
back on my face, briefly at any rate.
    ‘So this is what you get up to when
we’re at school then?’ I tease.
    ‘Oh, Coco, love, we’re
celebrating!’ Mum laughs. ‘You’ll never guess what’s
happened!’
    ‘Don’t tell me – your three-month
wedding anniversary?’ I suggest. ‘A lottery win?’
    ‘As good as,’ Paddy says in his
cool Glaswegian accent. ‘We’ve only gone and landed a major order from the
Miller-Brown chain of department stores! They received my samples on Monday, and they
really loved them. They’ve offered us the chance to supply fifty of their top
stores with the option to expand into all of them if our chocolates do
well …’
    ‘And they will do well,’ Mum
laughs, taking another champagne glass from the cupboard, filling it up with pink
lemonade from the fridge and handing it to me. ‘They will do brilliantly because
they are the best truffles in the entire universe and now everyone will get the chance
to know that!’
    I clink my glass against theirs. ‘Was
my truffle in the box of samples?’ I want to know. ‘The one named after
me?’
    ‘Well, of course,’ Paddy says.
‘All the chocolates you girls have inspired were in the box. Marshmallow Skye and
Summer’s Dream and Cherry Crush and Coco Caramel. There’s even one called
Sweet Honey, although your big sister says she doesn’t like
chocolate …’
    I’m not so sure about that. My big sister
likes chocolate all right, she just doesn’t like Paddy.
    ‘The buyers at Miller-Brown loved
them, though,’ he continues. ‘The whole concept – the taste, the names, the
packaging, the fair-trade angle … all of it. This order is
big
. It
could take us off the breadline and into profit! It’s epic!’
    I blink. I wonder just how much profit a big
order like that could bring in? The seed of an idea forms in my mind, growing
quickly.
    Caramel is for sale. Well, OK, that’s
my fault, kind of – but maybe, just maybe, if we could actually buy her, the story might
still have a happy ending. It’s not such a crazy thought, surely?
    The possibilities bubble up inside me,
sweeter than pink lemonade.

8
    I bite my lip. ‘Are we going to be
rich?’ I ask. ‘Will we have lots of money?’
    ‘Rich? Well, I wouldn’t go that
far,’ Paddy says. ‘We should be able to pay off our business loans, at any
rate.’
    Ah. Business loans. I had forgotten about
them.
    ‘We might just have enough to stretch
as far as a takeaway curry,’ Mum teases. ‘By way of celebration. And perhaps
we can let the B&B run down a little and turn Tanglewood back into a real family
home.’
    ‘Right,’ I check.
‘That’s great. But … not enough to buy a pony, say?’
    ‘A pony?’
    ‘Mum, the