Sunshine at the Comfort Food Cafe: The most heartwarming and feel good novel of 2018!

Sitting in front of the desk, turning to face her, is a boy. Maybe a ghost boy, maybe a real one. She really can’t tell in the dimness. He’s older than her, with pale skin and dark hair, and eyes that are huge and brown and shocked over pronounced cheekbones. He has a screwdriver in his hand, and his gaze is almost as fearful as hers as he stares at her, blinking as the sudden light from the corridor floods in, drenching him in sinister shadow.

Even if he’s not a ghost, he looks haunted – and this is enough to send Willow over the edge.

She screams, loud and shrill, and slams the door shut again. She collapses on the floor in a shaking heap, and looks up at her brothers and sister, crowding around her.

They’re shaking too, she notices. With laughter. Auburn is pointing at her, and holding her sides, and Van seems to actually have tears running down his face. Angel, as ever, is copying them.

She climbs up onto unsteady legs, and runs away, humiliated and scared, knocking them viciously out of the way as she flees. She hates them right now – all of them.

Her little legs barrel her down the wooden staircase, and if the big door to the house hadn’t already been open, she might have crashed through it like a cartoon character, leaving a Willow-shaped hole in the oak.

She runs off down the gravel-topped path at the side of the house, and away to the wood, and the secret pond she likes. She collapses onto a moss-covered log, and kicks her trainer-clad feet at the shale and sticks and old leaves that have collected on the floor like a collage, catching her breath.

Being alone calms her down, and she knows she’ll be all right. He wasn’t really a ghost, after all. Ghosts don’t use screwdrivers and look scared when little girls burst into their rooms, do they?

She spends the rest of the morning playing quietly alone by the pond, still not quite ready to re-engage with the feral pack that is her family. Still, in her childlike way, haunted by that pale face and those big, dark eyes.

Chapter 1 (#u7d00e978-47d7-5028-adb4-20b750c72190)

The Present Day

My name is Willow Longville. I am twenty-six years old. I live in a village called Budbury, with my mum Lynnie. I work as a waitress at the Comfort Food Café, and I run my own cleaning business called Will-o’-the-Wash. I have a dog called Bella Swan, and I love my life. In the last twenty-four hours, the following things have happened …

1. My friend Cherie convinced us she was pregnant and expecting twins. This came as a surprise as Cherie is seventy-four. She told us she’d been to a fertility clinic in Montenegro and we believed her for about five minutes.

2. Bella Swan ate a frog.

3. The Comfort Food Café officially opened a bookshop. We celebrated with cakes decorated with pictures of famous literary characters like Oliver Twist, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Mr Darcy and the scary clown from It. That last one was my idea, and it was pretty creepy eating Pennywise’s face.

4. My mother attacked me with a frying pan when she thought I’d broken into the house.

5. I slept for maybe three minutes after that, as she’d also called the police.

6. I woke up to sunshine and it made me happy. Then I ate leftover Harry Potter cake from the café for breakfast, which made me even happier.

7. I came back to the House on the Hill, and even though it’s still scary, it seems a lot smaller now I’m not a kid. Technically at least.

8. I went for a walk to the pond first, and saw a naked man dappled in sunlight in the water, and his skin was shining like diamonds – I am now a bit concerned that I have conjured up a real life Edward Cullen.

I pause in my list making, and decide to stop. There’s really no way to top seeing an imaginary Edward Cullen in a pond, is there?

Instead, I sit, still and quiet, perched on the edge of the dried-up fountain, and enjoy the moment.

It’s the first truly warm day of spring, and Mother Nature has come out to celebrate. In fact, she’s downed a bottle of vodka and is having a full-on rave – the woods are swathed in new greenery, the grass is lush and thick, and carpets of bluebells are springing up in the clearings, waving their hands in the air like they just don’t care.

It’s all shockingly beautiful, and my spirits are flying so high they could almost touch the sun. You know, if they had fingers.

Today, I tell myself, is going to be a Good Day. It started off bad, then veered off into strange, and now it’s my job to make the rest of it good.

This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds, with the House on the Hill looming behind me in all its hideous glory.

I can’t shake the feeling that it looks like something from a horror film. One of those horror films where the parents think it’s a good idea to give their kid the creepiest-looking doll in the world, and you spend most of it yelling: ‘Just get out! Go and stay in a bloody Travelodge for God’s sake!’

Technically, this brick-built extra from Amityville is called Briarwood – but to all us locals, it’s also the House on the Hill. There are some devilishly complicated reasons for that nickname; A, it’s a house, and B, it’s on a hill. Yeah, I know – bet that foxed you. Nothing if not sharp, us country bumpkins.

Even the hill is pretty scary – a clutch-churning demon where you have to rev up the incline in first gear, hoping you don’t roll all the way back down again if you do something reckless like sneeze, or sing along to Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’ a bit too enthusiastically.

I haven’t been here for ages – not since I was a kid, in fact. That, both in years and experience, feels like several lifetimes ago. It’s getting on for twenty years now, which is a bit freaky. I gaze back at the building, and I suspect my face is looking a bit like my face usually looks when I’m scooping up dog poo and my finger pokes through the bag.

The red brick facade has scaffolding around it, but if there are any workmen, they’re invisible. The big, blue-painted wooden door is still standing, although it needs some TLC. The old windows still have their Gothic stone twirls around the frames, and the roof still looks like it needs a few gargoyles to complete its American Horror Story vibe. The fountain I’m sitting on has a stone-carved cherub in the middle, and is clogged with weeds and algae.

The gardens and shrubberies are overgrown and tangled, but someone seems to have been making some headway. Whoever it was must have had a machete, and possibly an army of Oompa Loompas to help him. I automatically start singing the Oompa Loompa song at that point, which isn’t quite as melodic as the background sounds of birdsong and the breeze ruffling the leaves of the oak trees.

It’s very strange to be back here, and it takes a lot to qualify as strange in my world. If I close my eyes, turn my face up to the sun, and stop singing the Ooompa Loompa song, I can almost travel back in time. I can hear the sound of my brothers and sister laughing; their footsteps scudding across the gravel; my mother chanting something insanely silly that she tries to convince people is a sign of deep spiritual awakening while a bunch of teenagers try to stifle their giggles.

That particular memory – the one of my much younger mum – makes me feel a tinge of sadness, so I try and put it away in a box and jump on its head. I’m wearing Doc Martens mentally as well as physically, so I give it a good old stomp to make sure it stays down.

It’s been a mad twenty-four hours, and getting no less mad now I’m here, after that brief and possibly hallucinogenic detour to the pond in the woods first. I know I’m tired, even if I don’t actually feel it – I’ve trained myself out of noticing fatigue in the last few years, but it still lurks inside me, like a jack-in-the-box waiting to spring up and catch me. And when I’m tired, my thought processes tend to trip over themselves, impossible to follow.

Yep. It’s been a weird start to the day – but now I have to make it better. Only I can do that, and I need to focus on the sunshine and the birdsong instead of taking a trip on a memory train that will deposit me in a lonely station at the end of the line.

I re-read the list, and think it’s a fairly good summary of my day. I also seem to have accidentally created my very own psychedelic acid trip without the need for any pharmaceuticals at all: the neon pink notepad and bright green gel pen are resting on my knees, and I’m wearing leggings with pictures of yellow Minions on them. Funky.

I stretch my arms, and glory in the feel of the sun on my skin. It’s like God has reached down to stroke my face – and He’s wearing really warm oven gloves.

It’s been a long, nasty winter, and I feel that sense of absolute amazement I get every year when the spring arrives. It’s odd, because it does happen every single year – but each time, I’m taken aback by it. Our quiet corner of Dorset has had a lot of snow over the cold months, and I’ve been used to wearing long johns and seventeen pairs of gloves every day. Now, much to my surprise, it’s warm again … who’d have thunk it?

‘What do you reckon, Bella?’ I say, to the dog sleeping at my feet. ‘Time to get to work?’

Bella doesn’t answer. Mainly because she’s a ten-year-old Border Terrier, and not exactly the chatty type. She doesn’t even bark, never mind talk.

She does get up though, making direct eye contact with me while she squats down and has a wee, as though that’s her way of replying.

‘Yeah. Well, I’m glad you agree,’ I say, as I walk towards my van to get my cleaning supplies.

My van is small and white and has a rainbow painted on the side. My mum painted the rainbow, and we’re both very proud of it. There’s a dream catcher hanging in the window, and Mum decorated the back with some ancient, yellowing stickers she found in a drawer – telling people to Ban the Bomb, Save the Whales and Hug a Tree. Sound advice, as long as you don’t get them confused and end up hugging a bomb, or banning the poor whales.

Whenever I drive it, it kind of looks like I should be giving hitch-hikers a lift to a festival in 1976, or protesting at Greenham Common, or going on tour with Led Zeppelin. It’s actually full of cleaning products, some of which I have to hide from my mother because they contain chemicals stronger than baking soda. My mother has Alzheimer’s, and often doesn’t know who I am – but she can spot a planet-killing detergent at 300 yards.

Bella, tired from her toilet efforts, lies on the grass. She stares with very little interest at a small flight of swallows who are also celebrating the unexpected return of spring, swirling and diving around the fountain. She lets out one very ladylike fart, then curls up into a furry ball. I remain unconvinced that any part of her genetic make-up is descended from a wolf.

I put my notepad down on the front seat, and realise I need to start a new one soon. I never expected to enjoy it so much, but I do. I start every entry with the same words – name, rank and serial number – before making my ‘What’s Happened to Willow Today’ list.

It’s a bit long-winded, but it’s become a habit – and as habits go, it’s not as bad as, say, crack cocaine or eating your own bogies in public (in private is a different matter – we’ve all done it).

I started the note-keeping when Mum’s case worker recommended she do something called Life Story Work. As by that stage my mum’s life story seemed to have stopped – in her mind at least – at about 1999, it seemed like a good idea.

It’s a way of helping her stay in touch with her memories and regain an element of control – reminding herself of who she was and who she is, I suppose. Sometimes I catch her reading it quietly, glancing up at me every now and then, and I know she’s trying to re-make the connections between her little girl and the grown-up woman standing before her.