Coming Home to the Comfort Food Café: The only heart-warming feel-good novel you need!

So do I. I live in a Crazy Town without Kate. Without my best friend. Without the person who kept me sane for so many years. My shoulder to cry on, my confidante, my other half. Neither of us ever got married, or even had a serious relationship – and I think that’s partly because nobody could ever live up to what we had. Friends since we were six, through the good times and the bad. Joined at the hip, no matter what her parents did to try and discourage their golden child’s unhealthy attachment to the scruffy-haired foster kid from the council estate they viewed as one step down from hell.

Martha groans, and I kneel by her side. I have become adept at making sure her airways are clear, and putting her in the recovery position, just in case she does a Janis Joplin on me and chokes on her own sick.

Her dyed black hair is crusted to her pale cheeks, her skin splashed with purple that probably came from some kind of blackcurrant mixer. Her nose is pierced through with a ring, several more in her ears. Winged eyeliner that looked cool in a Tim Burton Batgirl kind of way hours earlier is now smeared beneath her eyes, and she looks like a corpse. She’s wearing deliberately laddered black fishnet tights, a black denim mini-skirt now hoisted up to her bum, and a Nirvana T-shirt. There’s a smiley face on the front, and on the back it says ‘flower sniffin kitty pettin baby kissin corporate rock whores.’

I can see words inked on one of her arms, and squint my eyes to read them: Fuk You. I hope it’s just magic marker and not a tattoo, especially as it isn’t even spelled right.

Her skinny legs are still on the sofa, one of her Doc Marten boots still on, one of them half off. I’m guessing she came in, tried to sit on the couch and get ready for bed, and became overwhelmed by the industrial amounts of alcohol she probably consumed tonight. Possibly by some drugs as well – in my day it would have been ecstasy or speed. In her day, they have all kinds of fancy names that makes them sound like cute schoolgirls from Japanese anime books.

I reach out and stroke a long strand of sticky hair away from her face. Her eyes pop open, staring up at me like something from a Hammer Horror film – bright, rich brown. Not so long ago, they’d have been sparkling with humour and the sheer irrepressible joy of life. Now, they simply register that it’s me hovering over her – not the person she wants it to be – and cloud with disappointment.

She closes her eyes again, and I see fat tears start to seep out of the sides, mixing in with the eyeliner, painting a dark, dirty streak as they roll sideways.

I murmur what I hope are comforting sounds, not sure if I even believe them myself.

I think about that letter again. About those words of advice from Kate, the woman we both loved so much. Written oh-so-long ago, and now seeming oh-so-wrong. I can’t do this. Martha is sinking, disappearing beneath an avalanche of grief and poor life choices, and I don’t know how to save her. I don’t know how to save myself.

I sit back on my heels, and start to hum the theme tune from Postman Pat. I don’t sing it with gusto, I don’t have any of that left. And besides, if there was a black and white cat in the room these days, I suspect Martha would sacrifice it to Satan.

Something needs to change. Something needs to give, before all is lost. Before I let my best friend down in a way that I will never be able to forgive myself for.

Chapter 2 (#u7783cca6-a73b-5e79-a111-cc4cacd263eb)

I wake up the next morning with two things: a headache, and a plan. A plan to change our lives.

The headache is predictable and understandable. I’d been in bed when Martha fell through the door in the early hours of the morning. In bed, but not really asleep.

I used to be a championship level sleeper. I had an undemanding job managing a book shop, lived in a tiny studio flat across the road from Kate and Martha, earned enough money to pay my mortgage, keep me in Ben and Jerry’s and set a bit aside. I avoided all stress, emotional, physical, or otherwise.

I’d cut off ties with my toxic past, and led a quiet life. Other people might have found it unambitious and boring – but not me. I’d had a lot of excitement in my early years, and was happier without it.

I thought I’d been so clever – constructing this little life for myself. Vicarious motherhood through Kate. No commitments I couldn’t handle. It was very pure and simple, as All Saints might have said, and I liked it that way. I liked the fact that the most stressful thing that had happened to me for years had been my Pot Noodle container splitting and making a chicken and mushroomy mess over the kitchen counters. At 38, I’d achieved my own personal nirvana: steadiness.

As a result, me and sleep were best friends. I used to wake up every morning feeling refreshed and with a smile on my face, looking forward to cycling to work and doing nothing more challenging than ordering in some extra paperback copies of the latest Dan Brown novel, and persuading my three customers a day to buy something by a local author.

These days, it’s all changed. I’ve become an accidental mother, and I suck at it. I miss Kate, and I’m crap at looking after Martha. I spend most of my waking moments wishing I was asleep, and most of my sleeping moments half awake. I always have one ear open, listening for the sounds of her either coming home, or sneaking out, or setting the kitchen on fire.

It’s been over six months since Kate died. Ten months since she first found the lump. I moved in part-time when Kate started chemo, full-time after she died.

Martha might think being 16 makes her an adult, and that’s definitely how I felt at her age, but she’s lumbered with me whether she likes it or not. And I’m lumbered with struggling through each day like a sleep-deprived zombie.

Martha is a 16-year-old girl with very definite ideas about how she wants to live her life. She’d always been what you could diplomatically call ‘strong-minded’, a description we saw as a positive but Kate’s mum, Barbara, thought was the personality equivalent of leprosy.

But Barbara, in all honesty, has lived her entire life with a whacking great stick shoved up her arse. She was always so worried about what everyone would ‘think’: the neighbours, the vicar, the headmaster, passing strangers, random people who saw us on Google earth … everyone’s opinion mattered to her, apart from ours. Apart from Kate’s. What she saw as a despicable streak of evil in Martha, we saw as a good thing.

We were proud of our little rebel. ‘You need a bit of attitude when you’re a woman in this world,’ Kate used to say, and I’d agree. We’d clink our glasses, and laugh at Martha’s antics.

These days, Martha’s less ‘strong-minded’ and more ‘absolute bloody nightmare.’ She’s punishing herself, and punishing me, and punishing the whole damn world – and doing it mainly by the light of the silvery moon. Martha’s a night owl – so these days, so am I.

She was supposed to be in by eleven last night. By midnight, I’d started the ring-round. Friends, places I thought she might be. The police woman who’d brought her home one night a month ago, and who I’d stayed in touch with. I’d even texted some of her friend’s parents.

She’ll be fine, I’d told myself, eyes sore and brain swollen with the familiar cocktail of anxiety and anger. No she won’t, I replied, sitting up on the edge of the bed and getting that letter out again. The letter from Kate, that told me I could do this.

I’d just reached the part about not forcing her into a shape she doesn’t fit when I finally heard the door open, and slam shut behind her. I heard the stomping of the boots, and the running of a tap in the kitchen, and a few F-bombs being dropped as she banged into the furniture. It’s only when it went quiet that I emerged to check on her, creeping down the stairs in my ancient Crocs and a ratty old dressing gown, still clutching Kate’s letter.

She had, of course, ultimately been fine. Teenagers are both scarily fragile and amazingly resilient. I’d got her into bed, made her drink some water, and left her with a can of Diet Coke and a packet of paracetamol on the bedside table. Not the kind of mothering you read about in magazines, but the best I had to give right then.

I should have done the same for myself, I thought, as I staggered into the kitchen that morning, so tired and with such a thumping headache that I regretted the fact that I’d not been drinking vodka myself. At least then I’d have deserved to feel like shit.

The headache is normal for me now. It’s my faithful companion to the dawning of each wonderful new day. The plan, though – the Plan to Change Our Lives – is new. New and drastic and, I think, completely necessary if I’m going to save Martha from herself.

It started with a dream. I must have had some residual memory of an episode of Countryfile or something, but in my dream, I was walking along endless coastal paths over endless cliffs. Looking out at endless sea. And feeling endlessly peaceful. That was what tipped me off that it was a dream – I’ve not felt that kind of peace for a very long time.

For a few moments, after I woke up, I tried to hold onto it. That way you do with nice dreams: like when you’ve been getting intimate with Daniel Craig and a can of squirty cream and don’t want it to end before the good bit, or when you’ve been flying like a bird.

This was one of those. I wanted to carry that feeling of peace into the real world. Into my day. Into my whole life, and into Martha’s life. More than anything, we both needed some peace – and in her case, possibly a stint in a drying-out tank.

Things were bad, and getting worse. Worse than they’d ever been, and I have a lot of bad to compare it to. I didn’t have the most idyllic of childhoods. I grew up in and out of foster homes, with parents in and out of jail, and my sanity in and out of sight. I’d been wild. I’d been crazy. I’d done a lot of the things that I now saw Martha starting to do – and for similar reasons. Because of pain, and loneliness, and anger. Because of feeling that the world doesn’t give a shit about you, so why should you give a shit about it?

But when I was Martha’s age, I’d had Kate. That had made all the difference. It’s not an exaggeration to say that our friendship saved me. When others judged me – the shabby, smart-mouthed kid with the tough exterior, rejecting everyone she met as a pre-emptive measure to save them the bother – she didn’t. I wasn’t easy to like, I see that now – I was prickly and hard and wore my ‘screw you’ attitude with pride. Kate saw through that; she had x-ray vision. She was magic.

Now, I didn’t have Kate – and neither did Martha. It was no wonder we were both flying off the rails, plunging into the abyss, and basically making a great big mess of things. We’d both depended on Kate for so much – which was fair enough in Martha’s case; slightly less so in mine.

Kate had trusted me to care for her daughter – and much as I occasionally wanted to dunk Martha’s head down the toilet, could I honestly say that I would have been any different, without Kate? No, I didn’t think I could.

I had to take control, and find us both that peace we needed, and do it soon. Before one of us cracked – and frankly, it could go either way. She might be the one getting the piercings and listening to the death metal, but I’m just as close to the edge. If it was just me, that wouldn’t matter – but this isn’t about me. It’s about that precious little girl who loved Spongebob, and wore a Stephanie wig, and brought so much joy into our lives. It’s about saving her.

And now, after it came to me in a dream, I think I know how I am going to at least try: we will move. We’ll pack up, and leave. We’ll find a place to rest and heal. A place that isn’t surrounded by memories of what we’ve lost, or filled with ghosts, or littered with nightclubs who don’t care if teenagers have fake IDs or not. A place with endless cliffs and endless sea and endless peace. A place that brings us the comfort we need, as we don’t seem capable of giving it to each other.

She won’t like it, I think, downing some ibuprofen and walking towards my laptop. Of course she won’t. But then again, she doesn’t like anything – so I have nothing to lose.

Chapter 3 (#u7783cca6-a73b-5e79-a111-cc4cacd263eb)

I grab a bottle of water from the fridge, and as the door closes I see – for the millionth time – the photo that’s stuck up on there with a gaudy ‘I Heart Bristol’ magnet.

It’s a photo of me, and Kate, and Martha. Taken on holiday in Dorset, maybe three years before – only three years, but an alternate reality. Most of my face is covered in a giant cloud of curly red hair, as usual; Kate is in the middle, blonde and pretty and full of life, Martha snuggling into her side.

She’s using her fingers to make the classic Black Sabbath-style rock sign, but it doesn’t look rebellious – just funny. Her hair was still its natural colour – dark blonde – and her eyes sparkled with happiness. We were a strangely-shaped family, but we were a family – and now it’s my job to keep us like that. I want to feel that again: that simple sense of freedom, for Martha to rediscover the innocence and security that her mother’s death stole from her.

Dorset. It could be perfect. Not too far away in miles, but a different universe. I stagger over to the laptop, and start to investigate.

Within a few minutes, fate – or Google, as some people insist on calling it – has intervened. I search for property to let, and am immediately attracted to one result in particular. ‘Stay with us in sunny Dorset,’ it says, ‘where life is simple and you can leave your cares behind.’

Wow. That would be good. I click through, and see a pretty holiday cottage complex called The Rockery near the village of Budbury. It looks idyllic, and within minutes I’m lost in the fantasy, imagining us both there – without our cares. I’m so lost in imagining this new life that I don’t even notice Martha coming into the room.

“Where the fuck is that dump?” she says, so suddenly that I jump, and knock a glass of water all over the table. I swear back, in a very mature fashion, and leap around like a loon holding the laptop in the air so it doesn’t get wet.

Martha leans back against the kitchen sink, smirking, as I create a glove made of paper towels and try to mop up the mess. I briefly consider punching her in the face, as I do most mornings, but talk myself out of it.