This week’s it’s National Chocolate Week – no doubt the web will be awash with chocolate facts and famous name brands pushing their products on us…

I thought I’d mark the occasion by publishing an excerpt from book number two, Two Slices of Carrot Cake. My 16-year-old heroine Savvy struggles with an eating disorder. In this excerpt, she talks about walking into an office to find an open box of chocolates in front of her…

EXCERPT FROM TWO SLICES OF CARROT CAKE

And now there is a huge box of chocolates twinkling evilly at me.

According to the gospel of Moll, opened boxes of chocolates are fair game for cleaners. I worked with her once and she helped herself to two or three handfuls of them. (Thornton’s, if you are interested.)

“I’ve seen the skinny bitches who work in here,” she said to me at the time, “So I’m doing them a favour eating their choccies so they don’t get fat.”

Moll’s at least a size 24, I reckon. And she doesn’t seem to give a shit.

I glare at the box – it’s one of those ginormous ones of Miniature Heroes – my favourite chocolates in the whole, wide world. Hard to know which ones I would eat first. I put down my spray cleaner and duster, and take a handful out of the box as an experiment. I line them up before me on the desk in order of preference, from the ones I’d eat first to the ones I’d eat last (I always eat my favourite thing last):

1. Crème Eggs
2. Cadbury Caramels
3. Dairy Milk
4. Chocolate éclairs
5. Twirls
6. Fudge

A voice starts up in my head, “Go on, just one just one won’t hurt, lovely, sweet, vanilla chocolate, smooth caramel, chewy toffee yum yum yum,” and then I look them up quickly on myfitnesspal.

Miniature Heroes (each):

• Calories – 53
• Fat content – 3g
• Sugar content – 6g

Which really isn’t all that bad after all. Less calories than a lousy apple, I think to myself and my hand hovers over those beautiful wrappers, the purples, the yellows and purple, the shiny foils of the crème eggs and the orange glint of the fudge…

I hit the side of my head with the flat of my hand, hard. It won’t be one, I’ll keep going back to the box again and again until the whole lot are finished and then I’ll have to go out to the bloody supermarket to buy another box to replace it, remembering to take out just enough chocolates so it doesn’t look brand new.

Again.

I’m just putting the chocolates back in the box when I hear a sound – the sound of footsteps and a door opening. I put the lid back on the box of chocolates and start furiously polishing a table.

“Savvy – is that you?”

I spin round. It’s Sandy – Jan’s nephew.

“What are you doing here?” I snap at him. I’m kind of embarrassed he’s caught me cleaning, but he could have caught me stuffing my face with Miniature Heroes.

And that would have been much worse.