Christmas at the Comfort Food Cafe

As it turned out, though, the parentals have probably had just as many sleepless nights about Laura as they have about me now. Because her entire life fell to pieces a few years ago, when her husband, David – the beloved David of Myth and Legend, the boy who won her heart in primary school – died.

He died in a bloody stupid way that still makes me angry. He died falling off a ladder, while he was clearing leaves out of their guttering. It’s not glamorous, is it? Nothing involving guttering ever could be. Or death, now I come to think of it. But at least members of the 27 Club exited this world in a cloud of mystique and self-indulgence. They weren’t clearing leaves out of their damn gutters.

David was only thirty-three, the same age as Laura was at the time. He was too young to die, and she was way too young to be a widow. He left her on her own with their kids, Nate and Lizzie, and their dog Jimbo. He left her on her own, when she’d never been on her own before. While I’d lived my life on the margins of my own family, she’d gone off and created her own – one that revolved around the love story that she shared with David.

I can’t begin to describe the hell on earth that followed his death. Mainly for Laura and the kids, obviously, but also for the rest of us. You can’t see someone you love suffer like that and not go through it with them.

I watched her fade and struggle and fight and fade again, over and over, like some twisted Groundhog Day. I saw her try to be brave and I saw her collapse, and I saw her paralysed with pain so strong I honestly thought she’d never move again.

I saw her weep and I saw her tremble and, worst of all, I saw her silent – silent and withdrawn and empty, her face a blank mask, going through the motions of life and motherhood, living on automatic pilot, functioning without feeling.

I saw all of this, and I saw Lizzie and Nate go through their own agonies, and I saw my mum and dad snarled up with their inability to do anything, and I saw myself, quietly screaming inside.

It was the very worst of times – and it seemed to go on forever.

Until, that is, she got her second chance. Until she applied for a job at a café in Dorset and took the kids down to the coast for a long, hot, working summer.

Until she made a world of new and wonderful friends and got a new dog, and found her new home, and found a man who is helping her heal. Until she found the will to live again.

Until she found the Comfort Food Café.

Which is exactly where I am heading this month – December. Against my will, I am being dragged away from the comfortable urban buzz of my flat in Manchester, and my shallow-but-safe existence and, more importantly, my entirely Christmas-free lifestyle.

I don’t want to go, but Laura asked me to. And when it comes to her, I have no backbone. No spine. I simply can’t say no.

I really, really hate Christmas.

But I love my sister more.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_d38b7247-c23c-5485-883e-370bae026d6e)

‘Where are you?’ Laura says, over the phone, her voice sounding strained.

‘I’m in a Parisian brothel,’ I reply, ‘learning how to do a can-can that would make Craig Revel Horwood weep. It’s fab-u-lous, darling.’

‘I can hear lorries making that beeping noise they make when they’re reversing. Are you at a service station? And if so, which one? If it’s the one that sells Krispy Kreme doughnuts, can you bring us a box? And when will you be here? The kids are driving me nuts asking every five minutes… they won’t even start decorating the tree until you arrive…’

I make a small grrrr noise at the back of my throat, like a grumpy grizzly bear, and wonder how she saw through that impeccably plausible can-can story. My sister, the mind reader.

Although if she really was a mind reader, she’d know that I was sitting here, drinking coffee in the freezing cold, shivering my backside off, and trying to think of a good excuse to turn the car around and head back Up North. It might be grim, but at least I wouldn’t have to decorate a Christmas tree and pretend to be jolly.

Laura hears my little growl and laughs out loud.

‘Not thought of a good enough excuse to get out of it, yet, then?’ she says. Damn her. She is a mind reader.

‘Not yet,’ I reply, wrapping my hands around the paper of my coffee cup in an attempt to stave off frostbite. Christmas is not only annoying, it’s cold as well. ‘But I’m hopeful that there’ll be some kind of natural disaster that splits the world in two before I reach Bristol. You know, like in one of those earthquake films, where a huge gaping chasm opens up in the middle of the road and all the expendable extras fall into it? Or possibly a zombie apocalypse. Or a meteor shower. I’m not fussy.’

I can hear yapping at the other end of the phone and smile as the sound is inevitably followed by Laura muttering ‘hang on…’ as she scurries around, opening and closing doors, and otherwise catering to the needs of her newest baby – an eight-month-old black Labrador puppy called Midgebo.

He was originally Midge, and mainly still gets called that, but the ‘bo’ was added as tribute to all of David’s dogs – also black Labs, and all called either Jambo or Jimbo.

Jimbo, the late, the great, the sadly departed, had gone to the great sausage shop in the sky not long after Laura and the kids moved to Dorset.

I knew she still missed him, but I also knew that Midge had helped to fill in the gap. As had Matt, the local vet who’d bought him for her. Matt, I suspected, was filling all kinds of gaps – and I was looking forward to meeting him. He looked a bit like Han Solo, so who wouldn’t want to meet him?

I was looking forward to a lot about this trip. Like seeing my sister again and checking that her apparent progress was genuine, not just faked for my benefit. Seeing my wondrous niece and nephew, who always made me feel glad to be alive. Seeing their new home. Meeting the famous Matt, and Laura’s legendary boss, Cherie Moon, who owns the Comfort Food Café. Being introduced to all her new friends.

Yep, I was looking forward to a lot of it. I just really, really wished it wasn’t at Christmas. It’s never been my best time of year.

‘Right. I’m back. Sorry about that,’ she says, and I can tell from the change of background noise that she is now outside, probably watching Midgebo have a pee in the garden.

‘That’s okay. When a dog’s got to go, a dog’s got to go. Anyway… I should be there before dinner.’

‘Assuming there isn’t an earthquake or a zombie apocalypse, that is.’

‘I think both of those suggestions are ridiculous,’ I reply, standing up and throwing my empty coffee carton into the bin. ‘But the meteor shower could happen. I think it was predicted on the weather last night.’

‘Actually it was snow that was predicted,’ says Laura, sounding distracted again. Having a puppy, I realise, is very much like having a baby.

‘So drive safely,’ she adds. ‘Don’t accidentally-on-purpose head back for Manchester. And don’t forget the Krispy Kremes.’

Chapter 4 (#ulink_a95fafcb-a14f-5212-89c8-9ac15181730d)

I arrive at the Rockery, where Laura now lives, just as evening is drawing in. The promised snow has arrived, coming in small ineffectual flurries, none of which has settled. Half-hearted snow, really a very poor effort.

I was tired on the journey, and almost hypnotised by the sight of white flakes landing on my windscreen and promptly getting squished away by the wipers. It felt wrong somehow, like I was committing some random and callous act of snowflake genocide.

I know, when I start to have thoughts like these, that I probably need a good sleep.

It is strange pulling into the gravel-topped carpark at the cottages; an odd feeling of déjà vu, even though I have never been here in the flesh. As soon as Laura and Lizzie and Nate arrived here over the summer, Lizzie started taking pictures and posting them on her Instagram account.

As a result of living those months vicariously through social media, I feel as though I have been here before. That I’ve already seen the smooth green lawn and the little fountain in the middle of it. That I’ve already strolled past the individual cottages with their odd names: Cactus Tree and Lilac Wine and Poison Ivy. They’re all named after bands or songs from the sixties and seventies, christened by Laura’s former rock-chick boss and owner of the cottages, Cherie.

I feel as though I have already stood in this very spot, looking around at the snow-dusted trees and little patios and the dark, rolling hills beyond, but on much sunnier days. It was a scorching summer – destined to become one of those famous ones, talked about in the way my parents still do about 1976 and 1977, when there was a hosepipe ban and the Queen’s Jubilee and Britain basically turned into the Med with strikes and bell-bottomed trousers.

Now, though, at the start of December, the sky is a dull gunmetal grey, patchy clouds marking it like bleach stains. The gravel is damp from the failed snow, and the cottages that are inhabited are lit up, bright lights shining from windows, curtains starting to be drawn.

It’s still beautiful here, but not the oasis of wildflowers and birdsong that I have been programmed to expect by my second-hand encounter with the place throughout July and August. Lizzie’s Instagram pics have slowed down since she started to live here for real, so for me, it’s a sudden jump from the height of summer to the bleak midwinter. It’s odd, like I’m in a movie and we’ve just done a huge flash-forward.

I heft my bag over my shoulder, lock the car and enjoy a few more moments of solitude before I enter the cauldron of life that I expect my sister’s cottage to be.

Don’t get me wrong – I love that cauldron of life. I’m thrilled to be diving into it for a while. But I have lived alone since I was eighteen years old and have never shared my space as an adult human being. Not even with a cat, or a budgie.

I am used to solitude and it is used to me. We understand each other, me and solitude. I don’t get annoyed when it keeps me awake at night with its echoing loneliness, and it’s always cool about me sometimes bringing friends home to chase it away for a while.

Like a grumpy but dedicated couple, though, we always come back to each other at the end of the day.

Now, I am voluntarily putting myself in a situation where I will be surrounded by people for a whole month. People I love, admittedly, but still… it’s not going to be easy. I have to be careful with myself, I know that. I have to watch my mental health, stay on an even keel, and try super-hard not to let things start to swamp me. Because not only are there all those people, but it’s bloody Christmas as well.