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

I carry on my email conversation with the amusing Cherie Moon, landlady at The Rockery holiday cottages; I contact the college in Budbury, and I send a very immature message to Martha’s former head teacher saying we’re both happy to never be returning.

Soon, I’ve made progress. Cherie Moon – my new best friend – has confirmed that we can take one of her two-bedroomed cottages on a six-month let for what seems to be a very excellent price. She’s asked all kinds of questions I didn’t expect, and seems a lot more interested in why we’re moving to Dorset than my credit rating, which is unusual in a landlady.

I’m not sure why, but I told Cherie about Kate, and Martha, and the fact that we are looking for a fresh start. She’d made lots of sympathetic comments, and expressed views that Budbury, and the cafe she ran on the coast, ‘specialised in fresh starts.’

I do have brief and fleeting concerns that maybe she’s some kind of cult leader – she has the right name for it – trying to lure us into a quasi-religious community where we’d be expected to tithe our earnings and sleep with the high priest and make jam out of tea leaves and rat entrails. But then again, I always did have an over-active imagination.

I reward myself for all this progress with a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones – it could be worse, I think, Martha could be in Sansa Stark’s shoes – and a glass of wine. I may or may not have drifted off to sleep. Something definitely happened, because the next time I was aware of my surroundings, I had a red stain on my jeans, slobber on my chin, and it had gone dark outside. Classy.

Edging back into hazy consciousness, I wipe my face clean, retrieve the empty wine glass from the side of the sofa, and hide my eyes while I switch the TV off. I’d left Game of Thrones running and the episodes had been on auto-play – the very worst kind of spoiler.

I glance at my watch, and see that it is after eleven pm. I’ve actually been out for a few hours, in one of those deep and dreamless sleeps you have when you’re completely exhausted.

I can still hear the sound of a bass-line thudding through the floor of Martha’s room, like a sonic boom. It must be bone-rattlingly loud in there. She may have to face life without ear-drums if she carries on like this.

I do a bit of housework – and by that I mean cramming even more plates into the dishwasher and hoping for the best – and decide to try and turn in for the night. Or at least lie in bed with a good book. I sleep in what used to be the spare room of the house, which is quite small and looks out over the garden. I’ve never been able to bring myself to sleep in Kate’s room, even though it is by far the biggest. It’s still too much … hers. The whole house, to some extent, is a bit like a constant reminder of the life we used to have; the woman we loved, who filled it with energy and warmth and security. The woman we lost.

But we live in the rest of the house. We use it; we make meals, and mess things up, and wash clothes, and leave books lying around, and dump our bags in the hallway. The rest of the house has moved on a little – it’s evolving with us, around us.

Kate’s room, though? That’s still haunted. Still a no-go zone. Like there’s some kind of emotional cordon around it; crime scene tape for the mind. The door stays shut, although I do occasionally find myself standing outside, touching the handle, imagining she’s still in there. Getting ready for work, or a night out, faffing around with hair straighteners or using one of the seventeen different types of perfume on her cluttered dressing table, sniffing them all and usually deciding on the Burberry.

Sometimes I even go so far as to open the door, and the disappointment of seeing that neatly made bed; seeing the wires of the hair straighteners tangled in an unused heap like coiled snakes; smelling the seventeen different types of perfume … well, it’s a killer, I can tell you. Some doors are simply better off left closed – at least for the time being.

I amble up the stairs, feeling croaky and stiff, like an 80-year-old version of myself. I pause outside Martha’s room, lingering there as I debate whether to knock or not.

I don’t want to push her, or intrude … or, if I’m entirely honest, interact with her at all. I’m tired too, and we both need a bit of space. But I also really don’t want to be listening to death metal all night, while I try to concentrate on reading the latest Kate Atkinson book. Jackson Brodie deserves my full attention.

So I knock, practicing my super-friendly, no-conflict-here smile, and wait for her to answer. She doesn’t – possibly because of the ear-splitting level of the music. I knock again, my super-friendly, no-conflict-here smile possibly fading a little. I wait some more. Still nothing.

After that, I bang on the door double-fisted, yelling ‘Martha! Turn that racket down!’ at the top of my voice. God, the neighbours must absolutely love us.

The super-friendly, no-conflict-here smile has by this time well and truly done a runner. It has been replaced by its angry relative: the super-unfriendly I’m-going-to-kill-you face.

Annoyed, tired, and already feeling tomorrow’s headache coming on, I decide that her privacy is an over-rated commodity, and push the door open. I usually avoid doing such things – you never know what you’re going to find in an angry teenaged girl’s bedroom – but I’ve had enough.

The door slams backwards, and I storm into the room. I intend to rip the plug to the stereo out of the wall, and entirely possibly throw her awesomely cool record player (the kind we all got rid of in the 90s) out of the window. I might, depending on how that goes, snap her entire vinyl collection into tiny black smithereens.

Of course, I don’t do any of this. Not because I am cool and calm and restrained. But because I realise that there is a bigger issue to deal with than the music.

The room – smelling suspiciously ripe and herbal – is empty. Martha, adorable child that she is, has snuck out.

Chapter 6 (#ulink_761b4a5a-69ed-5ef0-bcab-25da12c93c2c)

It’s my own fault, I think, as I make my way towards town. If I hadn’t passed out in front of the goggle box, she wouldn’t have been able to sneak past me and into the night. I’d known she was more upset than she’d been letting on – about the letter from college, about life in general, the potential move to Dorset– but I’d let her escape to her room and fester in it.

I didn’t even bother doing the usual ring-round of her friends. She’d moved on from them. I did, however, ring Steph – the police lady who had become half a friend. After bringing Martha home that night, we’d bumped into each other a few times in town, and she’d always been kind, not only asking how Martha was, but asking how I was as well. So few people ever asked that, and I was pathetically grateful. Funny how you can present a tough front to the world, but a random act of kindness from a virtual stranger can bring on the waterworks.

So tonight, I took a chance, and called her, trying to sound light-hearted but feeling the weight of the world bearing down on my shoulders. The rational part of me knew Martha would be all right – but the part of me that read a lot of books was extremely concerned with serial killers, rohypnol in drinks, and strange European men who kept girls in sound-proofed cellars for years on end.

“Yep, I’ve just seen her,” Steph confirmed. “She was with the same people as before – that gang that hangs round the bus station – and it looked like they might have been heading for The Dump.”

The Dump is a local nightclub, on the edge of Bristol city centre, and it’s about as lovely as the name implies. The Dump isn’t its real name, of course – but it’s how it’s known to locals. It’s had about five different names since I’ve been old enough to pay attention, and seems to change it all the time in an attempt to revamp its slightly dodgy image.

It’s a squat 1970s building on the edge of a small strip of kebab shops and tanning salons, and it’s been there forever. Me and Kate used to go there, and it’s never once gone out of fashion. Probably because it was never even in fashion – it’s not a cool club.

Its floors are sticky with decades of sweat and spilled beer; it always smells of smoke despite the ban, and the fire exits are rickety old metal steps corroded by rust. I’d had many very fine nights there myself, in a different lifetime.

After I finish talking to Steph, I decide that I will simply go and find Martha, and bring her home. I don’t know why I’m freaking out so much – but some kind of instinct is telling me that this is important. That if I let this one slide, it will be followed by an avalanche. That I’ll never get her back again. I’m sure I’m over-reacting, but trust that instinct anyway.

Wearing flannel pyjama trousers, Kate’s Glastonbury hoodie and my Crocs, I march all the way to the club. I’m slightly out of puff as I arrive, and definitely out of patience. By the time I bump into Steph, I probably resemble a furious gnome who buys her clothes in a charity shop.

“Did you see her go in?” I ask, after we’ve said hello. “Because you know she’s only 16 … they shouldn’t be letting her in at all …”

“I know, I know,” she replies, placatingly. “And this place is overdue a raid. But I didn’t actually see her go in, no, so there’s nothing I could do. You know how it is.”

I nod. I do know how it is. When I was younger, I adored the fact that the doormen at The Dump didn’t pay too much attention to how old you were. I was coming here from the age of 15 onwards and nobody ever batted an eyelid. All it took was seventeen layers of foundation, a push-up bra, and a lot of attitude.

“Wish me luck,” I say, trying for a smile, “I’m going in.”

I stamp over to the doorway, and see a large, beer-bellied man with a shaven head, smoking a cigarette and looking at a video on his phone. I try to walk past him, through into the dingy entrance I know so well, but he holds out a hand and stops me.

“Do you have ID, love?” he asks, with half a smile. He probably thinks he’s being funny. On a normal night, I might think it was funny too.

“I’m 38,” I snap back, glaring at him. I’m feeling angry now – angry at the whole world. Me and Martha have more in common than she’ll ever understand. “And I’m looking for my … my daughter. She’s only 16, and I think she’s in there. Bet you didn’t ask her for ID, did you?”

The bouncer takes a smart step back, and I realise I’ve been right up in his face. Or his chest at least, which I’ve also been poking with my finger as I spoke. I’m not a tall woman, or a big one – truth be told I could fit into Martha’s clothes if I was so inclined – but in my experience, most people are a little bit afraid of an angry ginger. Especially an angry ginger who looks like she’s just got out of bed, and could explode like a nuclear missile at any moment.

This man is almost a foot taller than me, and probably weighs in at twice the amount. But I am not in the slightest bit concerned – I have the eye of the tiger, and he’s going to hear me roar. It’s funny how easily I slip back into this: the tough girl; the angry girl; the girl who takes no shit and is always ready to rumble. The old me, in other words.

“Okay, okay, calm down …” he says, now completely backed up into a corner, holding his ham-sized fists up in a gesture of surrender. “Go in and look for her. I won’t even charge you. And if she is 16, I’m sorry – I do check IDs, honest, but the quality of the fakes these days is unbelievable …”

I back away, and clench my fists at my side. His co-operation has taken the wind out of my sails, and I realise that I’m more angry with myself than him. It’s not his job to keep Martha safe – it’s mine. And I’m not doing it very well.

I walk in, and despite its many revamps, it still somehow smells and feels the same. I know where Martha will be – the freak show dancefloor. The place for the indie crowd, the rock crowd, the retro crowd.

I clomp down the narrow stairs, passing clubbers wearing Vans and DMs rather than Crocs, all of them sporting very fine eyeliner, even the boys. There’s a lot of black, and facial furniture that makes Martha’s few piercings look tame. They stare at me with a mix of confusion and hostility, and I realise that I must look insane: my age marks me out as someone’s mum, but my random clothes and crazy lady hair mark me out as someone who needs a crisis intervention team. I smile and wave just to scare them more. Young people, eh? They always think they invented weird.

As I descend, I hear the music change from the thumping rhythms of hip-hop to the thrumming guitars of a Muse track. I recognise it immediately: Uprising. An absolute killer of a song, all that clapping and beeping and ‘screw you world’ chorus-ing.

The room is dark, and only half full. It’s a Wednesday night, after all. Most Goths and emo kids are safely tucked up in bed. The ones that are there, though, are going wild – the dancefloor is throbbing with shuffling bodies, dark hair being swirled around, arms waving in the air, a steady stomp of feet on wood beating in time with the song. A strobe light plays over them, picking the dancers out in individual flashes: a pair of excited eyes beneath black eyebrows; a grinning face singing along; a dark fringe swinging from side to side; fists pumping the air in communal rebellion as the chorus grinds on: we will be victorious…

I have a moment of pure excitement: some kind of emotional muscle memory, or maybe a flashback to simpler times. Times when this was my tribe, too – when I would be out there stomping and swirling and bursting with the thrill of it all. With the music and the dancing and the sheer amazing possibility of what the night might hold. Of knowing that no matter how bad it all was in the outside world, here, with my people and my songs, it could still all be okay. Better than okay. It could be amazing.

The song draws to a triumphant close, and I scan the crowd as it does that weird between-tracks pause, where everyone waits for a second to see what the next choice is going to be, and whether they want to dance to it or not.

I spot her, standing in a small circle of shadows, arms thrown over each other’s shoulders. The strobe passes, and for a split second it focuses on Martha’s face: glistening with sweat, grinning, eyes ecstatic. 16 years old, and drunk. High on life, and God knows what else. 16 years old, dyed hair, piercings, surrounded by older kids who are more extreme versions of her. 16 years old, but to me, forever a little girl.

I want to rush over, and wrap my arms around her, and sing the Postman Pat theme tune with gusto. I want to take her home and feed her fish finger sandwiches, and let her sleep in her Stephanie wig and her Shaun the Sheep pyjamas. I want to tell her I love her, that I will always love her, that she is my whole world. That I would die for her. That I would do anything to protect her and keep her safe.