A Wedding at the Comfort Food Cafe

It started well. He seemed to accept that what I was saying to him made sense – he seemed to mean it when he said he wanted to change. Then again, he always was convincing. His mum lent us her car, and we took off to a little village in the Costa Brava.

It was a beautiful place, all rocky coves and small sandy bays – not completely unlike home. We stayed in a small guesthouse, away from any tourists or commercial zones, and at the beginning I was hopeful. We ate good food. We took long walks. We talked and talked and talked.

I’d say it was like going back to the beginning of our courtship, but it wasn’t – it was like two people meeting each other for the first time, because we were both sober. I was excited by that – by the potential to discover my husband all over again, to start afresh. We even talked about maybe starting a family one day, and although I knew there was a long way to go until we could consider doing something so reckless, I didn’t rule it out. I even, in a fantasy future kind of way, liked the thought of it.

On the third night, though, things started to go wrong. We were out for dinner, and he seemed brighter than usual. More animated. He was talking too quickly, his hands were waving with every word, he was laughing at things that weren’t funny, he was treating the waiting staff like they were long-lost friends.

I suppose part of me knew what was going on. Part of me spotted the signs, and understood that the previous days had been an illusion. We’d both been play-acting. None of it was real – we’d never live happily ever after. We’d never move to a new life by the sea. We’d never have a baby together.

But I ignored that part of me – I just wasn’t ready to give up. I wasn’t ready to abandon him, and us, and our future. I wanted to cling onto that hope for a few more hours, to give the seeds a chance to grow. He was so beautiful, Seb – dark like his mother, but with the vivid hazel eyes of his father. He was like a sculpture, all hard planes and angles. I wanted to hang on to the fiction for a while longer.

That’s why I got into the car with him. That’s why I let him drive. That’s why we ended up crashing straight into the back of a parked van as we drove to the guest house.

Nobody was hurt, thank God – I’d never have forgiven myself if they had been. The van was empty, and we had our seat belts on, and all we suffered was a few bumps and scrapes and in his case a couple of broken ribs and a concussion.

His injuries didn’t stop him jumping out of the car as soon as we regained our senses, though, yelling at me to get into the driver’s seat before anybody came. We could see the lights coming on in the houses nearby, and the sounds of doors opening and people calling out to us, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the police were called.

And if the police were called, and he was caught driving, he’d be in a world of hurt. They’d find the cocaine in his system, and he’d be arrested.

Maybe I was an idiot, but I agreed – I pretended I’d been the one driving. My breath was clear, my blood was clean. Everything else about me, though, felt dirty – soiled and used and squalid. I sat beside him in the ambulance that had been called, holding his hand and telling him he’d be okay, but all the time I was on the edge of a meltdown.

I called his mum, and his parents drove straight down to meet us there. By the time they arrived, he was enjoying a morphine buzz, I’d been questioned by the police, and his mother and father were furious. With me.

From their perspective, I’d been my usual crazy self – crashed a car while carrying their precious son in the passenger seat. I suppose that was the last straw – getting blamed in his mother’s rapid-fire Catalan, the words pinging towards me like bullets, his dad laying one hand on her shoulder to try and calm her down.

I can’t blame them for thinking the worst. I’d not exactly been the model wife, and I’m guessing they were as disappointed as I was – like me, they’d seen this trip as some kind of fresh start. Now, in their eyes, I’d messed it all up, and almost killed Seb in the process.

I didn’t have the energy to argue, or defend myself, or tell them what had really happened. My own self-esteem was in the toilet by that stage in my life anyway – I’d wasted years, made so many mistakes, let Seb reach this stage of self-destruction. I hated myself, and I was past caringwhether they hated me too. There was plenty of room in that lifeboat.

So I let them rant and rave and take out all their anxieties and fears on me – it seemed easier than stopping them. I also knew that it might be the last kind thing I could do for them – because there was no way I could stick around and carry on living this life. There was no way I could get straight if I was around him, and no way I could trust him any more.

I stayed for the rest of the night, to make sure he was definitely all right and there wouldn’t be any complications, and then I left. I didn’t tell any of them – I just went to the police station to make sure it was okay and then got the first train back to the city.

I packed my bags, such as they were, and decided to leave. It’s not like a minor crash into the back of a van was going to result in Interpol being alerted, and I’d given the police my details – the insurance would cover the damage. To the van at least.

The damage to me was a bit more serious. I sat there in our flat, and saw it for what it was – nothing more than a squat. The cheap art posters tacked to the wall that I’d once thought were bohemian and charming now looked yellow and faded. The unmade bed we’d shared looked like a rat’s nest. The empty bottles from Seb’s last party with his pals were littering the room, making the whole place smell like tequila.

Everything I cared about fitted into my backpack – the same backpack I’d left England with all those years earlier. Over a decade of travelling and living; so many different countries, so many different friends and jobs and even a marriage – and I could still cram everything I needed into a backpack.

I left on the next flight to London, and that was the beginning of what I like to think of as my new life. I barely spoke on that flight, and I desperately wanted to buy every single one of those little bottles of booze the ladies with the trolleys wheel around. But I didn’t, which is maybe what saved me – I wasn’t an alcoholic in the physical sense, but I was addicted to using it as a crutch. If I’d turned to it then, I might never have stopped.

‘And what happened when you got back to the UK?’ Finn asks, his voice a whisper, barely heard over the clamour of all these memories.

‘I bummed around for a bit. Stayed on sofas, worked crappy jobs. Eventually got my shit together enough to decide to go back to college.’

‘And you never saw him again, after that?’

‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Although I briefly spoke to his dad, a few months later, to make sure he was alive and all right. His dad was quite English about it all, didn’t scream or shout or anything – I suspect he knew the truth, and didn’t want to push me into telling him more than he wanted to know.

‘Once I was studying, things changed – life calmed down. I had something to do, and a reason for doing it, and I started to live again. I knew I’d got enough balance to go on a night out, to go and see a band, to have a few glasses of wine – I started to trust myself again, I suppose.’

‘What about now? Do you trust yourself now?’

‘Up to a point,’ I say, looking up to meet his eyes. ‘If we’re doing this whole honesty thing, I trust myself up to a point. I’m happy here. I’m happy with you. I’m happy I can have a drink and a laugh and for it to enhance my life rather than rule it. But … well, I’m probably never going to be entirely normal, Finn.’

He leans down to kiss me softly, and replies: ‘I think we’ve had this conversation before, Miss Moneypenny. I never signed on for normal. I signed on for you, in all your crazy glory.’

Chapter 7 (#ulink_b12a06ea-64d0-5bb1-884a-0e7977a9e584)

I’m driving around Budbury and its beautiful surroundings in my little white van. It has a sign for the Budbury Pharmacy on the side, and I always feel a bit like Postman Pat when I do my rounds. I even asked Katie if I could borrow her cat Tinkerbell, but she put me off by reminding me that he was ginger, not black and white.

Despite the lack of a loyal and resourceful feline companion, I always enjoy doing this. It started small, dropping off a few prescriptions, but it’s expanded a lot. I think it was the thing with Edie last year that made me step things up.

When Edie developed pneumonia, it was only the fact that Katie checked up on her and had an instinct that something was wrong that saved her. We ended up breaking into her house in the village, and managed to get her off to the hospital with a supply of top-class antibiotics in the nick of time. If we hadn’t, it could all have ended very differently.

Edie’s lucky, in many ways, despite the tragedy that has touched her life. She’s lucky because she is at the heart of a watchful community, and because she has anextended circle of friends and family who love and cherish her beyond measure. We’ve all been keeping an eye on her ever since, through an unofficial Edie Watch rota that we all take part in.

Other people in our isolated little part of the world, though, aren’t quite so lucky. Sometimes its elderly people, like the man I’ve just visited – Mr Pumpwell. As well as having the most amusing name on the face of the planet, he also has type 2 diabetes, and lives on his own in a tiny freeholding miles away from any other human beings. That doesn’t bother him, as he views most human beings as well below a water vole on the evolutionary scale, and prefers his own company.

He’s a tough old bird and has lived that life for decades, making the land work for him, largely self-sufficient, never marrying or having kids, and only occasionally venturing into the big bright lights of the village itself. He’s almost eighty now, and still on his own, despite the offer of a place in sheltered accommodation.

He dismissed it, saying it was ‘for old people’, and stayed where he was. I suspect he’s got a point. He’s active and proud and he’d probably fade and wilt if he was uprooted, like a wildflower that can only exist in certain soil.

I understand that, and respect his choice, but also worry for him. For him and the surprisingly abundant amount of people in his situation.

Some rural communities can be like this – the young ones get frustrated at the lack of opportunity, or the hard battle of farming, and move away. The older ones are often left keeping the flame alive. They’re not always old, either – one of my clients is a woman in her fifties, living in a cottage in a vale so green and fertile it looks like something from one of those old Technicolor films from the olden days.She’s a widower, living with her adult son with Down’s Syndrome, who has complex needs and various health problems.

Then there’s a couple of new mums, out on farms where they don’t have access to baby groups or day centres or places like the Comfort Food Café, struggling with a double dose of motherhood and loneliness. There’s also a man called Charlie, whose seventy-seven-year-old wife has Alzheimer’s, coping alone after the unexpected death of their daughter.

All of this sounds a bit grim, but it isn’t any different than anywhere. I know from working in London that life in the big city can be just as isolating, just as much of a struggle, especially with the added pressures of urban poverty and air quality that suck the life out of you.

Here, though, I do at least feel like I can make a difference. It wasn’t entirely intentional – I didn’t sit down and make an action plan – unsurprisingly – it simply happened when I started delivering prescriptions. Katie’s learning to drive now, but until she can get behind a wheel on her own, she keeps the shop open while I do my visits.

In the early days, I’d stick to filling the prescriptions that the GPs sent over, then either popping them through the letterbox or dropping them off with a quick hello. Bit by bit, though, it changed and grew and became something much more time-consuming but also much more satisfying.

It started with Mr Pumpwell offering me a cup of tea, and me staying for a chat. Then one of the young mums asking me to take a look at some nappy rash. Then I began talking to Charlie about his wife’s condition, and about Lynnie’s, and suggesting ways he might be able to get more help.

Over the months, it’s become something of a lifeline – not only for the clients but for me as well. I’ve always struggled with being stuck in one place for too long, and doing this helps me to get out and about, spend time both on my own and with other people, and to feel useful. I’ve only recently started to realise the importance of that – of feeling useful.

Coming back here - helping look after Lynnie, starting the pharmacy, making friends - has changed the way I view the world. Before, I’d have been horrified at the idea of being trapped here, in this situation, with all these responsibilities. I’d have done anything to escape such a terrible fate.

But now? Now I see that it took me a long time to grow up. I’m not all the way there yet, but I’m doing my best – and I’m coming to understand that being useful isn’t a death sentence where joy and fun are concerned. It’s something we all need – it’s the reason why Laura freaks out about not being able to work full-time at the café, and Lynnie insists on trying to cook for us, and Zoe’s getting worried about her step-daughter Martha going off to university this year.

So, yeah, I might have started late, after decades of utter uselessness, but now I’m trying – and these rambling visitations in the depths of Dorset are a big part of it.

They also mean that I have a chunk of time to let my mind wander. My life is busy, with Lynnie and family and Finn and running a small business. There’s not a lot of unscheduled downtime. I’ve learned over the years that my brain works at its own pace – there’s no use trying to force myself to pay attention, or fix something, or come to a conclusion. It simply doesn’t work.

But if I give myself a bit of space, and let the thoughts and events percolate through the many layers of illusion and mazes of procrastination, I get there in the end. I see things more clearly and make decisions, or simply amuse myself by planning practical jokes I can play on my siblings. Nothing keeps the spirits up like cling film on the toilet seat, does it?