A Wedding at the Comfort Food Cafe

by Debbie Johnson

Lynnie carries on for a few more minutes, as if she’s there to give us a yoga class, and seems to expect us to leave – ‘before the children get home from school’. We don’t argue with her, but Willow asks her to look at the notebook.

  I try not to stare as the familiar process takes over – the slow spread of recognition and remembrance in her expressions – and instead am thankful that it works. Last year, when she was ill with the cancer, it didn’t; she was in too much discomfort, and it threw everything else out of kilter. Now, it does – although for how long, none of us can say. Pondering that particular question is likely to result in a migraine, so I don’t. Instead I smile and ask Lynnie if she can help me find my pink hairband.

  Willow sets off earlier than us, heading over to the Rockery to help Laura get ready. Matt’s staying at Frank and Cherie’s farm for the night, and I suspect he’s well off out of it. Laura was in a bit of a state the day before, when she called in to get her blood pressure checked. It was fine – a tiny bit up, which is to be expected – but she was definitely on the agitated end of the spectrum.

  Once Willow has left, taking Bella Swan and Mum with her, I potter around the house, joined by Van once he wakes up and drags himself out of the cocoon of his camper van. He staggers into the kitchen in his boxers and a T-shirt, scratching his groin and putting the kettle on, hair all tufted up and yawning so wide I can see his tonsils.

  ‘My God, Katie’s a lucky woman!’ I say, poking him in the ribs and darting away before he can retaliate.

  ‘I know, I keep telling her that,’ he replies, giving me a lazy grin and leaning against the countertop. He smells like a geriatric hamster.

  I take pity and make him a coffee, handing it to him as he yawns again.

  ‘Big day,’ he says, nodding in thanks. ‘Wedding.’

  ‘Yes, I had remembered. It’ll be fun! There’ll be booze and cake and dancing and a huge pregnant woman in a fancy dress … maybe it’ll be yours next, who knows? Looking at you right now, it’s hard to imagine that Katie could possibly resist your charms.’

  He rubs sleep out of his eyes and laughs.

  ‘Could be you too, sis, the way things are going with you and Finn … We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? Feels like one minute it was all backpacking and sweltering airports and sleeping in tents in far-off lands, and now we’re back here. With proper jobs, and proper lives. Almost like grown-ups.’

  He looks genuinely confused by this, and I know exactly what he means. Like myself, Van did a lot of travelling before Lynnie’s siren call pulled us homewards. He left his life in Tanzania to come here – and it wasn’t an easy transition for him.

  ‘Well, only one of us has a proper job,’ I reply patronisingly. ‘You’re only the random bloke who builds walls and cuts down trees. But … yeah. Kind of like grown-ups. I don’t regret it though, do you?’

  ‘Nah,’ he says, smiling, his eyes distant. I guess he’s thinking about Katie. ‘Not one bit. And we’re not that much like grown-ups …’

  He throws a soggy dishcloth in my face, splattering me with lukewarm water, before dashing off to get the first shower.

  ‘Bastard!’ I yell, chasing after him and arriving at the bathroom door in time for it to slam in my face. I hear him chortling away to himself as he locks it, and shout: ‘I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next!’

  ‘Are you quoting Gladiator at me?’ he shouts back.

  ‘Yes!’ I reply, threateningly. ‘And look how that turned out!’

  ‘Um … yeah, kind of–he died. Now, bugger off and let me get ready.’

  I pull some faces at the door for a while, then do as he says. I fill in a bit of time catching up on some emails, and flirting with Finn through a series of sexy emojis, and answer the phone to Robert, Willow’s dad.

  Robert is a new addition to our lives, but we don’t see him often. He lives in a commune in Cornwall, and we only very recently found out he was Willow’s dad. Long story, but my mum had a fling with him while he was a teenager, right after my dad died. It was all very scandalous, a kind of hippy version of the Jeremy Kyle Show. It took them both a while to decide what to do about it, but they’ve since been tested, and – it’s essential to say this in a Darth Vader voice – he IS her father.

  They speak to each other on the phone, and every now and then she drives over to visit him. He’s never been here though – Lynnie seems to have completely buried the whole thing under layers of Alzheimer’s and deliberate forgetfulness. It must run in the family, this whole pretend-it-never-happened-and-it’ll-go-away thing.

  Once Van’s done with the shower – sneaking back to the camper van so I can’t ambush him with a frying pan on his way out – I get changed into my wedding outfit.

  I have to say, as I stare at myself in the mirror on the back of the wardrobe door, that I’ve looked better. We went for a deep pink, which makes me look a little less like something out of a horror film, but it’s not good. The dress itself is okay – a kind of sixties vibe swing affair – but the colour? Not something I’d choose.

  I remind myself, slipping my headband on, it’s not about me. Today’s about Laura, and nobody will care what I look like. My hair, I think, looks good – I blow-dried it straight, and it’s almost to my waist now – but the pink strap holding it back doesn’t add anything other than nausea.

  I slip my trainers on, carrying my proper pink shoes in my bag to put on after the walk, and wait for Van to knock for me.

  When he does – dressed in his pink suit and pink work boots – we both stare at each other in horror. I mean, I look bad – and normally this kind of outfit would be enough for him to feast upon with a month’s worth of mockery. But he looks bad too, and he’s clearly not comfortable with it, and it seems that we cancel each other out.

  ‘Truce?’ he says, holding out a hand.

  ‘Truce,’ I say, shaking it. ‘Until the wedding is over and we both look like human beings again.’

  ‘Yes, he agrees, heading towards the footpath across Frank’s fields. ‘Once we look like human beings again, we can start acting like monsters.’

  The ten-minute walk to the café is sublime. The sun is shining, the breeze is gentle, and it’s so, so quiet. Right until we get to the pathway that leads up the hill to the café, we don’t talk, don’t make any noise, don’t so much as hum a catchy ditty. Van and I have both lived in big-sky places in Africa and South America, and sometimes being here can feel claustrophobic – but on days like this, with the sea sparkling in front of us and the gulls wheeling overhead, it just feels glorious.

  The pink theme for the wedding starts as soon as we reach the path. The handrail has been twined around with flowers made of pink paper, and rose petals have been scattered along all the steps. By the time we reach the top and emerge into the garden, the whole world turns pink.

  The small stage-like pergola where Matt is standing is painted a very pale shade of pink, its wooden roof overhanging with heavy boughs of blossom-like flowers. Matt himself is wearing the morning coat I’ve already seen, along with the felt-coated hat and the pink shoes.

  He looks a bit nervous, staring out at the small crowd in front of him without seeing any of them, Frank at his side as best man.

  Most people are here already, sitting on chairs that have been arranged around the existing tables, not quite in neat rows, but scattered in weird shapes and circles. Van heads straight for Katie, who – being a petite and pretty blonde – looks gorgeous in pink, damn her. I spot Zoe, wearing her pink trouser suit, fascinator fighting a losing battle to stay upright on her ginger curls, sitting with Cal and Martha.

  I meet her eyes and grimace. She returns the look, and shakes her head, gesturing down at herself in disgust. Gingers united. We should probably form some kind of support group.

  Becca looks alarmingly sexy in her tight pink sheath dress, and I see Sam’s gaze linger on her in a way that suggests he might have noticed too. Little Edie is a natural in pink, being a toddler girl, and big
Edie looks like a small cupcake sitting next to them.

  Cherie – dressed in a tie-dye kaftan and shiny patent leather boots – is up at the front, chatting to the lady who will be doing the service, and glancing into the café as she does it.

  Willow’s plan was to get Laura and Lizzie, her bridesmaid, here earlier than everyone else, and to blindfold her as she walked through the garden so she couldn’t see anything beforehand. She won’t be expecting all this pink, and I hope she likes it – some of us have sacrificed our dignity for her childhood fantasy.

  Laura, in fact, will be the only person here not dressed in pink – her gown is in a deep shade of magenta. An unusual choice for a wedding dress, to be sure – but it was a compromise. Initially she wanted to wear black, ‘because it’s slimming’. We kindly pointed out that there was nothing on earth bar a cloak of invisibility that was going to make an eight-month pregnant woman look slim, and she settled on this, with much humphing and moaning.

  I only hope she’s calmed down, and is able to enjoy the day. It’s actually rather magical, all of it – her story. The way she lost her first husband and came here to heal. The way she found love again when she never expected she would.

  Thinking about it is making me feel a bit mushy, so I look around automatically for Finn. No sign of him yet. I take a seat next to my mum, who seems happy enough in her favourite pink feather boa, and Tom, who looks so embarrassed in his outfit that I fear his face out-pinks his suit. I pat his hand and tell him he looks gorgeous. Which he does, in his own sweet way.

  After a few minutes, the music starts – some kind of gentle violin melody that wafts around the garden from speakers set up on pink-painted poles – and we all turn our heads towards the café doors. The conversation dies, and after a false alarm where Willow sneaks out, bobbing her fashionably pink head in apology, Laura emerges on her dad’s arm.

  Her parents are from Manchester, but as both their daughters and all their grandchildren and grandchildren-to-be live here, they’ve settled in Applechurch, the next village over. Her dad looks proud as can be, holding her hand over his arm as they step through the doors, Lizzie by their side.

  Both Lizzie and her granddad are dressed in pink, which must have confused Laura no end when she saw them. Lizzie is usually a fully paid-up member of the black eye-liner emo clan, so this is quite the turnaround for her – a simple pale pink dress with lace sleeves, which looks gorgeous. Her dad is wearing a lightweight linen suit in pastel, which makes him look like he might have been a spy in a musical version of 1950s Vienna.

  Laura herself looks amazing, and a communal cheer goes up as she walks alongside the chairs and heads to the pergola. It seems to lift her spirits and she raises one hand and gives us all a wave as she makes her way carefully along the grass, grinning in surprise and amusement at all our outfits.

  Her dress is mainly satin, but with a little chiffon cape ‘to hide my fat arms and shoulders’, she’d said. She doesn’t look fat, though – she looks round and strong and magnificent, her curls pinned up and trailing around her face, her cheeks as rosy and pink as her dad’s suit.

  Any doubts she might have had, any insecurities she might have felt, seem to evaporate the moment she lays eyes on Matt. He’s stopped fidgeting, and stopped looking awkward, and stopped looking around as though he’s trapped in some kind of nightmare.

  He’s stopped doing anything other than look at Laura as she climbs the small steps up to meet him, then he holds his hands out to hers.

  They both smile, and it’s so lovely, so sweet, that I feel tears prick at the back of my eyes. They’re like living proof that happy endings are real, and even now – after almost three years together, and with twins on the way, they look at each other like they’ve only just met and fallen in love.

  As the registrar starts the service, I feel even more emotional. The part about the rings being a symbol of eternal commitment, and the tender way Matt places the ring on Laura’s finger, finally pushes me over the edge. I let the tears fall, glad to notice that I’m not alone as I gaze around at everyone else.

  Becca’s in floods, Laura’s mum’s a goner, and Cherie is holding her cheeks in her hands as she weeps.

  My mum passes me a tissue in a rare moment of traditional mum-like behaviour, and I’m carefully scooping off mascara as Finn finally appears. He’s snuck up from the back, and edges into the chair next to me.

  He slips his hand into mine, and whispers: ‘Sorry I’m late. Minor crisis back at the Bat Cave.’

  I nod, unable to quite formulate words amid the floods, and he looks at me.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he murmurs, gently wiping the tears from my cheeks and kissing my nose. ‘You look beautiful, by the way.’

  I stare at him incredulously, wondering how he can possibly think I look anything other than horrific amid all the pink and the snot and the blubbing. I see, though, that he means it. That he is looking at me in the same way that Matt looked at Laura. In a way that I don’t think anyone has ever looked at me before.

  ‘I love you, Finn,’ I say simply, whispering the words into his ear, only realising the truth of them once they spill out.

  He smiles, still calm, still steady, and places an arm around my shoulder to pull me in tight.

  ‘And I love you too,’ he replies quietly. ‘Even in pink.’

  I tear my gaze away from him – from this beautiful man who has helped me change, helped me grow, helped me face my past – and look back up at the wedding.

  Just in time, the registrar announces that Matt and Laura are now man and wife – and the whole crazy pink garden goes absolutely insane. There are hats and fascinators and hankies thrown up into the air amid the cheers, flying up and fluttering down like plus-sized confetti. There’s applause, and yelling, and everyone is on their feet.

  Laura and Matt turn around and face us all, holding hands, grinning like teenagers, and take a bow.

  There are more cheers, and Cherie fires off a confetti cannon and showers everyone with pink fluff, and the dogs bark along, and we’re all swept along on a wave of joy.

  Finn stands up and pulls me to my feet. He ignores the crowds, ignores the cheers, ignores the confetti, and takes me into his arms. He kisses me long and hard and so well I feel giddy, and have to sit back down again afterwards.

  My mum pats me on the arm, looks at me approvingly, and says: ‘The Angel of Light has pink confetti stuck in his hair.’

  Chapter 10

  The party gets properly started once Matt and Laura have completed all their paperwork, and the tables of food are unleashed on a hungry crowd. It’s still only lunchtime – Laura insisted she had to do it early because she’d be ready for bed by five, and nobody argues with the bride. Especially a bride in her condition.

  Cherie, as she tends to do for events, got somebody else in to do the catering – weird for a café, but it means they all get to enjoy themselves rather than spend the whole day replenishing salad trays and topping up trifle bowls.

  What she did make, though, is the cake – an utterly splendiferous thing that is wheeled out from the kitchens on its own trolley. There are indeed ten layers, and it is indeed very pink. Laura gasps in amazement when she sees it, her eyes going wide and her hands flying up to her cheeks as she takes in the ever-decreasing circles of iced sponge and the tiny figures of her and Matt on the top, accompanied by a miniature version of their black lab Midgebo.

  ‘Oh my goodness!’ she says, as a thousand phone cameras click photos of her. ‘It’s absolutely perfect! The cake, the outfits … all of it!’

  She turns around and smiles at us all, eyes suspiciously wet, and adds: ‘I can’t thank you all enough. This is all so brilliant!’

  Matt nods in agreement, and looks happy because she’s happy. I’m fairly sure getting decked up in a pink top hat and tails was never part of his life plan, but sometimes these things just sneak up on you and you have to go with the flow.

  Distinctly uncomfortable with all the a
ttention, he takes off his hat, gazes around, and finally settles his eyes on his new wife.

  ‘Yes, thank you, all of you,’ he says, smiling at her. ‘And most of all, thank you to Laura – the most beautiful bride the world has ever seen.’

  She blushes, and harrumphs, and wiggles her huge body around, and yes – looks truly beautiful. And truly happy.

  After many more photos, mainly orchestrated by our own semi-pro photographer, Lizzie, we all descend on the groaning buffet tables and fill our boots. And our plates.

  The food is luscious, as you’d expect, and Cherie and Sandra are busily going around with trays of champagne to hand out.

  Finn picks up two glasses, and hands one to me. We’ve not had a minute to discuss our mutual dropping of the L-word earlier, which is probably a good thing – it also means I haven’t had time to over-think it.

  He raises his glass in the air and says, for my ears only: ‘To Matt and Laura. And to us.’

  I clink my glass against his, and we both down them in one. I have no idea why we do that, but it clearly seems appropriate, and makes us burst out laughing during the ensuing head rush.

  We wander back outside, where people have pulled the chairs to huddle around the existing tables, and listen to Ponk as she launches into ‘Get the Party Started’. Clever. Ponk is actually called Jackie, and lives on the outskirts of Bristol with her husband Kevin, a very round man who does a Meatloaf tribute act. They must have some terrific karaoke nights round at their house, I reckon.

  We take our seats at a table with Mum and Lynnie and Big Edie. Bella Swan is curled up in a ball beneath us, managing to look dignified despite her pink coat. Bella is an elder stateswoman of the dog world, and pretty well behaved. The other two – Midgebo and Tom’s multi-breed hybrid behemoth Rick Grimes – are prone to acting like hooligans, especially around tables of food, so they’re safely away in the doggie crèche field, sadly poking their snouts through the fence trying to see what all the fuss is about.

  Laura had refused to do a ‘first dance’, on the grounds of her bulk, but we all cheer as she manages to trundle up to the front, dragging Matt behind her, and bop around to the song. Becca and Sam join in, and the ensemble mass of the village teenagers throw themselves into it with mosh-pit abandon. The party is well and truly started.