The Cosy Christmas Chocolate Shop: The perfect, feel good romantic comedy to curl up with this Christmas!. Caroline Roberts

after the chunks get dunked in chocolate.’

      ‘I’d love it if someone brought me home a pack of that.’

      ‘Well, I think we can both think of a certain someone who you’d like to do that – and I’m not talking Tom now,’ Emma grinned.

      ‘Hmm. Do you think he’s got a girlfriend?’

      They both knew exactly who Holly was referring to.

      ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him the next time he calls in?’

      ‘Nooo. I couldn’t!’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘I’d look a right idiot if he has. After all, who’s he buying the chocolate for?’

      ‘But, if he hasn’t?’

      ‘Then I’d just feel daft and not know what to say next. I’d look too keen, apart from anything else.’

      Emma smiled. This girl had another huge crush by the looks of it.

      ‘What about you then, anyway?’ Holly was blushing furiously now, and was keen to divert the attention from herself.

      Hah, not another one trying to fix her up. She’d had enough of Bev’s meddling of late. The foursome with Nigel was looming ominously.

      ‘No one special in your life, then?’ Holly pursued.

      ‘Now stop getting cheeky, you. It’s none of your business, madam.’ Emma was still smiling, but sooo not prepared to divulge any information. Not that there was anything at all to divulge.

      Twenty minutes later Holly was out in the shop, keeping herself occupied dusting the shelves and the glass counter as it was that quiet, and Emma got around to opening the post. There was the usual junk mail, a bank letter, the quarterly electric bill – ooh, now that was a bit high. Oh well, it was the winter months, she mused. The fourth letter was handwritten on a thick white envelope. Emma opened it, drawing out a sheet of typed A4. It looked very formal. She recognised the name and address of her landlord.

      ‘I am writing to inform you …’ Emma stood there stock-still, the letter quivering in her hand.

      She was still staring into space when Holly popped back through to put the polish and duster back in the kitchen cupboard.

      ‘Everything okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.’

      Emma wished it had been a ghost. It would be far less trouble than the contents of the letter.

      ‘Ah, no, just a bit of a shock.’ She wondered whether to share the news, no point worrying the girl unnecessarily, but oh, she needed someone to talk it over with.

      As Emma began to read the words aloud, she felt like her heart was being squeezed. ‘I am writing to inform you that as from 1 March 2017 your monthly rent payment for 5 Main Street, Warkton-by-the-Sea, is to increase to the sum of £900. Nine hundred pounds! That’s a further one hundred and fifty pounds a month. I really don’t know where I’m going to find that, Holly.’

      ‘Oh no. That’s so not fair, Em.’

      It might not be fair, but it looked like she had no choice. Either pay it or get out; the landlord was giving her one month’s notice. Bollocks! She started reading again, her hand trembling: ‘This is due to the desirable nature of the village properties, and the increase in holiday trade.’ Basically, her landlord could turn this into a holiday cottage and make a mint, no doubt.

      ‘It’s not just my business, it’s my home too, Holly.’

      ‘Oh Em, it’ll work out somehow. It has to. Warkton just wouldn’t be the same without your gorgeous little chocolate shop, or you. It’s our little chocolate heaven – all my mates love popping in here. And, you’ve become a real friend to me. No, The Chocolate Shop can’t possibly go – nor you. There has to be a way.’

      But the massive implications were starting to sink in. Emma began to feel sick.

      For the rest of the afternoon Emma’s stomach was churning and her mind was on fast-spin. She could see all the dreams she had had, the business she had grown, her home and her new life here in this lovely village by the sea, all come crashing down. If she couldn’t meet the new rent payments, what then?

       9

      As soon as the shop closed that day, despite it turning dusky outside, Emma headed down for her usual walk past the harbour and towards the dunes to the sea. There was no one else on the beach, just a few terns who would soon be ready to go home to roost. Home … That thought, that word, made her heart sink even more. Where would home be, if it couldn’t be here?

      She could try and rent a new cottage locally, she supposed, but without the business, or a job, where would that leave her? And where else could she lease new premises that would work as a chocolate shop, have the kitchen space she’d need and offer accommodation; somewhere where the tourists would flow and she wouldn’t have to pay more rent than now? That seemed a challenge too far, and veered towards looking for a miracle.

      But she wasn’t a quitter, and she wasn’t ready to hand in her notice on The Chocolate Shop by the Sea just yet. There had to be a way.

      She strolled along the sands, Alfie trotting by her side. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, or the beach, or of being on her own – she’d done that for long enough, after all. But she was afraid of losing all the things she had built here, and that she knew, by the desperate, sinking feeling in her heart and soul right now, she had grown to love.

      She needed someone to talk all this over with. Someone she trusted, who knew her well, but who would also have a business sense, and be able to give sound advice. Her brother, James, was just that person.

      ‘Right, what’s up, sis?’ James confronted her as they sat in his kitchen.

      He knew her so well. She tried to keep her emotions in check in her daily life. In fact, some people might say she came across as slightly cool at times – but that had been a preservation instinct from those toughest of times when she had to try and carry on and keep a brave face. But with James it was different. She was his big sister, and as well as he knew her, she knew him inside out too – his moods, his light, his shade, which exact buttons to press to wind him up within seconds. She’d mastered that at the age of five! And he’d seen her through the very worst of times; held her as she sobbed, provided a sofa, chili con carne – the only meal he could cook back then – bottles of lager and empathy in his shared Newcastle flat when he was starting out as an accountant. He’d helped to bring her back from the brink when she was at rock bottom.

      Now he lived in a three-bedroomed house in a hamlet just outside of the market town of Alnwick. Her five-year-old nieces, Lucy and Olivia, had still been up when Emma had got there, so Emma hadn’t felt it was right to start chatting about her troubles straight away. Chloe, James’s wife, was upstairs with the girls now, settling them in bed as they had to be up for school in the morning. They’d loved the chocolate cat and dog figures Emma had brought for them. Just a small gift, but the hugs Emma had received in return were mammoth. It was nice that something so simple could make them so happy. She loved living near to them, being close enough to drop in. Would that still be possible in the coming months?

      ‘It’s not like you to phone and then want to come across straight away. So …?’

      ‘You’re right. I need to talk something over with you.’ Emma was sitting at their large wooden kitchen table. This room was definitely the heart of the house. James sat opposite her. They were similar in looks, with their red hair and striking green-grey eyes. Emma’s hair was a lot curlier, though she styled it to a more manageable wave nowadays. James’s was more of a sandy colour, going towards a strawberry-blonde. They’d both used to get teased for their red locks at school but James had just