Christmas at the Comfort Food Cafe

I know Laura had been starting to fret about Lizzie not eating enough, and I’d started to fret about her turning out to be more like me, which I wouldn’t wish on any parent.

Her dad’s death knocked her for six, and Laura’s ensuing emotional collapse knocked us all for about a thousand. Seeing her like this – spry and bolshy and carefree – is an absolute balm for the soul.

I follow her in, suddenly swamped with the kind of glorious warmth that makes you realise exactly how cold you’ve been. It was as though I hadn’t even noticed my shaking hands and chattering teeth until I walked through that door, and was wrapped up in the atmospheric equivalent of a fluffy blanket embroidered with pastel-coloured kittens.

Laura, I suspect, would have seen that as some kind of analogy for the café as a whole; a place you go to heal without even knowing you’re wounded. Sometimes I think she attributes it with almost supernatural powers. Me? I’m a bit more cynical than her. Always have been, most likely always will be.

But… I have to say, that hug from Cherie was a classic. I’m so tired, if she’d held on to me for a few more moments, I might actually have just snuggled up in her bosom and gone to sleep, like a snoozy rabbit.

‘My, my! I can’t believe there are two of you!’ she says, pulling back and looking me up and down. I return the favour and realise that Cherie Moon in the flesh is even more impressive than the Cherie Moon I’d seen in photos.

She’s tall – very tall – and big. Not fat exactly, but large and solid, built like the kind of woman who could run empires and carry milk buckets and colonise vast continents.

I know she’s in her early seventies, but she looks timeless, her skin tanned and weathered, her wrinkles worn without any attempt at hiding them. Her hair is long, brown and grey, and slung over her shoulder in a fat plait. She’s wearing an apron that says ‘I’m Sexy And I Know It’, and she smells so good. Of vanilla and sugar and freshly baked deliciousness. I would ask her if she could adopt me, if it wouldn’t upset my biological parents.

‘Yep,’ I say, smiling, because it’s impossible to do anything else. ‘Two of us. Our parents were very, very lucky people.’

‘That they were… though you look like you need a bit more flesh on your bones, my love. A few weeks here will sort that out – get a bit of your Laura’s home-made cooking down you!’

I see Laura at her side, also smiling, so relaxed, and think for the millionth time how fantastic it is that she made this brave move. That she ignored all the doubters, ignored our parents, ignored every sensible piece of advice she got and did the Crazy Thing. Because sometimes the Crazy Thing is exactly what your life needs.

And looking around the Comfort Food Café, I see a very healthy dose of crazy – bookcases crammed with paperbacks and board games, insane mobiles made from random objects dangling from the ceiling, plastic fish, framed photos, rowing oars, life rings, fishing nets, posters with pithy messages, giant fossils. It’s like an eccentric Victorian collector’s dream.

There are also, I see, the beginnings of Christmas decorations starting to appear, and Cherie has an enormous cardboard box at her feet that has sparkly things oozing out of it. I hope she doesn’t expect me to be streamer girl. I don’t want to be adopted quite that much.

‘Can we take Aunt Becca up to the flat, Cherie?’ asks Lizzie, still fizzing in anticipation. Nate, I notice, has taken his traditionally more laid-back approach, has lobbed his padded jacket onto a table and is already sniffing around the cake counter eyeing up the world’s largest Victoria sponge.

‘Course we can, sweetie,’ replies Cherie, wiping her hands down on her apron and giving Lizzie’s hair a quick pat. It is testament to their relationship that Lizzie doesn’t immediately punch her in the throat.

‘Come on, Becca,’ she says to me. ‘Let me show you my des res. Sad to leave it, I am, but… well, life changes, doesn’t it? I’m heading off to live in sin with Frank – shocking at my age! At least ‘til we make it legal in a few weeks’ time… Laura, can you keep an eye on the place?’

Laura looks around at the completely empty café.

‘I’m not sure I can cope with the rush, Cherie,’ she replies, giving her a wink.

‘Less of your cheek, madam – you know how it can get. One minute it’s deserted, the next there’s a coach party in, all wanting scrambled eggs and mochas…’

‘I know. I’ve got a few ideas I want to try anyway, for the Christmas menu. I’ve been experimenting with cranberry ice cream, but even Midgebo wouldn’t touch it, it was that bad.’

We all pull a shocked face. If something tastes so awful that a Labrador won’t gobble it up, it must have been very special indeed.

I follow Cherie through the bright, shiny kitchen, noticing the very slight hitch in her stride that is the only hint of the hip replacement she had a few months ago. We continue up a very narrow flight of stairs, which I see are now decorated with fluorescent strips.

‘Frank’s idea of health and safety,’ she says over her shoulder. ‘After I had my fall. I told him I just see them as go-faster stripes, but he will have his jokes… might come in handy if you’re ever trying to get back up here after a few tipples though, eh?’

I see that my reputation has preceded me and know that Laura has undoubtedly painted me as a good-time girl not to be trusted with the sherry bottle. Little do they know.

We emerge up into what I can only describe as a very tiny slice of paradise. It’s not the brightest of days outside, but what sunlight there is is streaming through the attic windows, bathing the whole place in yellow stripes. There is one big room, which contains pretty much everything I could ever need.

There’s a bed, a TV, a squishy-looking sofa and a small kitchen area off in one corner. The walls are decorated with framed posters from classic rock albums, like the Velvet Underground and The Doors and The Who, and one of the sloping eaves is covered with a beautiful, exotic-looking red fabric that looks like Cherie haggled for it at a car-boot sale in Marrakesh.

There’s a vast collection of vinyl, which Lizzie immediately gravitates toward and various foreign-looking objects that again don’t seem to be have been picked up at the local Ikea. There’s a hint of incense in the air – or possibly something stronger, if Laura’s description of Cherie’s smoking habits are to be believed – and an entire book-case filled with pictures of the lady herself, over the years.

I stroll over and pick one up; it’s in that fuzzy technicolour that was once considered glorious, and now looks faded and dated – the kind my mum and dad have in their photo album, from the pre-digital age.

I see Cherie, a good forty years younger, still tall and imposing, but a lot more lithe, barefoot and wearing a bikini. She’s lying at the side of a pool with a man with a lot of long, black hair and furry sideburns. They look impossibly glamorous, poster children for the seventies.

‘That’s me and my Wally,’ she says, standing next to me and smiling at the memory. ‘St Tropez. Some kind of showbiz event, it was. Lots of bands there. You couldn’t move for the TVs that’d got thrown out the windows.’

I snort, suspecting she is joking but not quite sure. It does look like the kind of place you’d see Janis Joplin sipping a margarita. I think, with Cherie, that the mystery adds to the fun – I’ve been told that half the village still thinks she was Jimi Hendrix’s secret girlfriend.

‘You look really happy,’ I reply, stroking the glass clear of a speck of dust and standing it back up again.

‘That’s ‘cause we were, my love. We had a great life together, we did – and now it looks like I’ve been lucky enough to find someone who’ll put up with me second time round. Just like your Laura has.’

‘That is lucky,’ I say, gazing at the rest of the pictures – a long, rich life captured in film. ‘I’m still waiting to find the first.’

I’m not really sure why I say such a thing, and I’m certainly not sure why I say it with the melancholy tinge I hear lacing my own words as they leave my mouth. I’ve always been happy being a lone wolf. At least that’s what I tell myself when I’m howling at the moon.

‘Well who knows, eh?’ answers Cherie, giving me a nudge so hard I take several steps to the side and almost collide with a wooden hat stand that’s topped with a carved dragon’s head. ‘Maybe you’ll find him here. Stranger things have happened at sea.’

I automatically look out of the windows and down to the coast, where the sea is churning up against the sand.

Somehow, I doubt there is anything stranger out there than me.

Chapter 6 (#ulink_f7c942d6-fe1f-5c0a-8575-f60eb585bf7c)

Matt is, as promised, every bit the young Harrison Ford. He’s tall, on the brawny side, and has floppy chestnut brown hair that needs a trim. He’s quiet, softly spoken, and seems to truly come alive when he’s talking to Laura.

My sister, sitting next to him at the big table, surrounded by friends and her new family, looks just as vibrant. She and Matt are chatting to other people, but I can tell by the way they’re sitting that beneath that table, their legs are crushed up against each other’s. Like they can’t bear to break contact.

I’m struck again by how gloriously different she is now. This time last year, she was functioning, but still crippled by grief at David’s loss. Those first Christmases without him were pure torture, for everyone involved.

The kids got the best and brightest presents out there, simply because she blew a small chunk of her insurance money on them, in an attempt to make up for the life she knew they were lacking. I remember her nibbling at a few mouthfuls of her turkey, the kids quiet and withdrawn, my parents desperate to find a way to reach her.

They couldn’t. All we could do was play along with the fake smiles and the charade of familial unity she chose to present to us, and help out with the kids as much as we could. The real Laura, the one that was suffering, was buried beneath the school runs and the domestic-goddess cooking and the relentless walking of an old, fat dog.

Now, though, Matt had managed the impossible – he’d reached her. They all had, all of these people, here, gathered around this table, in this café. Closed to the public now, open just to us, celebrating something odd – my arrival in Budbury. The prodigal sister, joining in the feast.

Cherie is at the head of the table, sipping her wine and laughing joyfully at something Frank has just whispered to her. Frank himself – always known as Farmer Frank to me – is also grinning, his weather-worn face a road map of lines and experience, his blue eyes shining almost as brightly as the silver of his hair. His grandson, Luke, is with him – an eighteen-year-old sunshine kid who grew up in Australia, but is staying with him for a while, doing work experience with Matt on his gap year.

There’s the Scrumpy Jones collective, as they’re nicknamed. Joe, the dad, lean and dark and speaking with a Dorset accent so thick I can barely understand him. Joe runs the Cider Cave, and his wife, Joanne, is a frosted piece of eighties hair who looks unhappy to be out in company. Their son, Josh, is Lizzie’s boyfriend – a lanky beanpole of a sixteen-year-old, wearing a beanie hat and a checked shirt that looks like it needs a wash.

Lizzie is by his side, doing something with her phone, occasionally flashing him a smile that tells me he is the absolute centre of her entire world. Scary, that look – I used it once before, myself, when I wasn’t much older than her. When a boy like Josh was the centre of my entire world too. He’s a manager at the local Aldi now, Shaun, and I sometimes bump into him when I’m shopping.

We both pretend we haven’t seen each other – him bustling away to make an announcement at the check-out, me taking a sudden interest in the sweet potatoes. Even after all these years, all this life, it still cuts. Still stirs up thoughts and feelings that I know will derail me if I let them. I can only hope that Lizzie has a happier ending than I did, and be there for her if she doesn’t.

Willow, the pink-haired supermodel from the future who works at the café, is sitting with Nate. She has tattoos and piercings and generally looks like a handful of trouble. I’m pretty sure we’ll get on well. The two of them are playing noughts and crosses, and the bet seems to be for who loads the dishwasher once our feast is over.