Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe

Eventually, we follow the advice of the fishing gnome and follow the path back to the cottages. The sunlight as we emerge from the deep-green shelter of the woods is quite dazzling and I turn my face up to the sky. I like the sun. It makes me feel better. I remind myself to make sure the kids get coated in suncream before we come out again, it’s that warm.

Our cottage is right next to the swimming pool. We peek through the windows of the pool and see that it is small but perfectly formed. There is already a family inside, the water is bobbing with inflatables, and the dad is pretending to be a shark, chasing screaming primary-age children around while the mum looks on and laughs.

They look really happy and I quickly walk away. I don’t want to feel jealous. I don’t want to feel like I’m missing out. Not today. Today, I want to feel thankful and hopeful and strong. I want to feel like Katy Perry in the Roar video, although I don’t share that image with the kids – they might actually die laughing.

‘Mum, look!’ says Lizzie, bounding back towards me, returning from her advance scouting party beyond the path. The pool and our cottage are the only buildings at the back of the complex, which is actually really nice. We’re not just here for a week on holiday, we’re here for ages, and the location means we’ll have more privacy. You know, for when we have all our wild parties.

I follow her down the path, and back through to the central lawn we saw when we arrived last night. It’s much prettier in daylight, with a big circular bedding area in the middle that’s full of luscious flowers; deep red dahlias, multi-coloured begonias, delicate sweet peas, the purple trumpets of petunias.

There’s a water feature in the middle, some kind of mock-Victorian affair that looks like a shower for fairies and elves, and pretty lilac clematis is trailing all around it. It’s the kind of effortless-looking gardening that actually takes a huge amount of effort.

I’m all right at gardening. Ours back home isn’t huge, and I gave up on a decent lawn years ago due to Nate’s incessant footballing and Jimbo’s pee patrols, but we have lovely borders and beautiful hanging baskets and a few trees that produce more apples and pears than we need every year.

David was always my slave labour, doing the weeding and digging and turning over and hefting bags of fertiliser around, while I was the evil mastermind. One of my more realistic ‘moving on with life’ plans was to get an allotment. It’s still a good idea – I’m just doing the ‘insane relocating to Dorset’ plan first.

‘What?’ I ask, failing to see what’s got Lizzie so excited. It certainly isn’t a nice clematis, I know that much. I glance around at the cottages circling the lawn. Some are much bigger than others, and the tiny ones look quite higgledy-piggledy, but they all have features in common. Each has a little path leading up to the door, each has a name plaque, and each has a beautiful hanging basket in a riot of colour.

‘This!’ she says, as she points frantically at one of the cottages. ‘Look at what it’s called!’

I squint slightly in the glare of the sun, and try and make out the writing on the slate plaque adorning the pale stone wall of the cottage.

‘Lilac Wine?’ I say, looking a question at her. It’s a weird name, but I’m not sure why it’s got her quite so bothered.

‘It’s a song, by Jeff Buckley!’ she says, snapping a photo of it. ‘We were listening to it in our music class. By lots of other people as well, but his is the best.’

She skips over to the adjoining cottage, bats away a few bees hovering around the hanging basket, and takes a photo of that one as well.

‘And this one,’ she says, ‘is called the Cactus Tree … don’t you think that’s odd, too?’

I nod. Because it is. Hyacinths and lilacs I get as names for Dorset cottages – but cactus? Not so much.

We stroll along, Lizzie and Nate exclaiming at the weird names of the cottages, her taking photos of each and obviously planning a long session on google at some point or another to solve the mystery. We pass Poison Ivy and the Laughing Apple and Cherry Blossom Road and then Mad About Saffron, which immediately strikes a chord with me.

‘I think I know that one!’ I squeal, obviously more infected with the excitement than I realise. And yes, obviously, I need to get out more.

‘What is it?’ squeaks Lizzie, bounding back towards me. Her hair is loose and wild and untainted by product, and it makes her look about five years younger. It’s only the eye liner that reminds me she’s a teenager at all.

‘Is it a band?’ she says, practically pogo-ing on one leg.

‘It’s a song, by … by …’

She looks at me expectantly, and I feel the pressure mounting. This is my chance to prove I’m cool, and I’m about to blow it. I start to hum the song, fragments of the chorus coming back to me. It was on an advert, I’m sure.

‘I’m just mad about Saffron …’ I sing, badly. I can’t remember the next line, so I go back to humming, and Lizzie is looking increasingly agitated as I fail to fulfil her quest for knowledge.

‘It’s … it’s.… oh, lord, I can’t quite get it! It’s there in my brain, just give me a minute! It’s by …’

‘Donovan,’ says a voice from behind us. ‘Mellow Yellow.’

I whirl around to see Matt, the man from last night. He’s wearing a pair of faded denim shorts with big pockets on the side, and no top. Again. He clearly doesn’t own many shirts.

He’s a bit sweaty, as though he’s been working, and I notice things about him I didn’t notice the night before. Like the fact that his brawny shoulders and back are really bronzed, as though he spends a lot of time outside. Like the tiny crinkles at the corners of his hazel eyes, and his very long lashes. Like the way the sun glints on the chestnut shades in his hair. Like the fact that he has really, really big hands.

My pulse rate speeds up slightly as I notice all of these things, and it takes me a while to identify the feeling. It’s called fancying someone, and it’s not happened to me for a very long time. This, I decide, is even weirder than the cottage names, and far more disconcerting.

I don’t know how to cope with fancying someone. I mean, I met David when I was in juniors. And of course I noticed attractive men after that – I was married, not comatose – but certainly not since David died.

It’s as though that part of me shut down at the same time he did. I’d not mourned it, or sought it out, or listened at all when various members of my family started to make subtle references to the fact that I was ‘still young’. I knew what that was code for, and it seemed like a completely absurd idea to me. As far as I was concerned, that aspect of my life was over.

I now feel more than a little freaked out, as I look at Matt, to realise that my libido at least isn’t entirely convinced that’s true. I also feel a twinge of guilt, for all sorts of complex and uncomfortable reasons, and dart my eyes away from him as quickly as possible.

‘That’s it!’ I say, turning back to Lizzie. ‘Donovan. Your granddad likes him. 60s stuff. So, we’ve got Donovan here, and we’ve got Jim Morrison and the Doors in our cottage. And Lilac Wine. So there’s a theme?’

Lizzie makes a slightly ‘duh’ face, and nods.

‘What’s the name of your holiday cottage?’ she asks Matt straight away.

‘Well, the cottage is called the Black Rose,’ he replies, wiping one hand across his forehead. He looks hot. And thirsty. I notice gardening gloves hanging out of one pocket, and use my laser-like detective skills to figure out that he’s the effortless gardener who actually puts in all the effort.

‘But it’s not a holiday cottage,’ he adds. ‘I live there permanently. Well I have for almost a year now. I was only supposed to be here for two weeks while I found somewhere else, but Cherie and I came to an agreement.’

‘Black Rose …’ she says, frowning, and starting to tap into her phone.

‘It’s a Thin Lizzy song,’ Matt replies, saving her the effort. She looks a little bewildered.

‘Rock band, mainly big in the 70s. All the cottages are named after songs or bands, you’re right. There’s Sugar Magnolia over there, which is a Grateful Dead song. Poison Ivy is the Rolling Stones. Laughing Apple, Cat Stevens. Cherry Blossom Road is Heart. Cactus Tree is Joni Mitchell. You might not have heard of them, but they were all well known. Cherie’s idea of a joke. Nobody quite knows if it’s true or not, but there are rumours that she was either in a band herself, or toured with one, or was Jimi Hendrix’s girlfriend … I’ve never asked.’

‘Why not?’ says Lizzie, clearly fascinated.

‘Because that’s her business,’ he replies.

That is clearly an alien concept to Lizzie. It also reminds me of another issue, and I’m about to raise the subject of the Instagram affair when she pre-empts me.

Lizzie often does this neat mind-reading trick that occasionally makes me think she’s psychic. Or more likely that I’m very predictable.

‘Matt,’ she says, smiling sweetly. ‘I was wondering if you’re okay with me using a picture of you in a kind of school project? I’m keeping a record of what I do over the summer in an online photo journal. It’s on Instagram, but hardly anybody will see it, honest. I have all the privacy settings on, so it’s only for friends and family.’

Well, I think, some family at least. I’m momentarily taken aback by her description of it as a school project, and wonder if that’s true, or if it’s something she’s fabricated to make it sound more respectable.

Matt is gazing at a spot about three feet to the left of my head. I resist the temptation to turn around and see what he’s looking it, as I am starting to realise that it’s simply something he does.

He has a very slight disconnect going on that I recognise as the sign of someone not wanting to get too involved in a conversation or a social situation. I deal with mine differently – I smile a lot and pretend I have to dash off to the school/shops/doctor/library – but I instinctively know we’re coming from the same place. A place of entrenched solitude.

‘I’m not sure what Instagram is,’ he says eventually. ‘But as long as it’s not something likely to go viral, or embarrass me, or upset anyone, then that’s fine. Are you going to the café today?’

He’s changed the subject quite quickly, but Lizzie takes it as a win, and says her thank yous before disappearing off to take more pictures.

Nate spots another lad of about the same age emerging from Cactus Tree, kicking a bright orange football around, and starts to edge in his direction. The siren call of sport. I know that within minutes, they’ll be setting up penalty shoot-outs and having keepy-up contests and firing each other headers to practice, without even knowing each other’s names. Sure enough, even as Iook on, the boy raises his eyebrows at Nate, who nods, and they’re off.