A Wedding at the Comfort Food Cafe

by Debbie Johnson

  It’s early for lunch, and only a few tables are taken, mainly by older couples or young families trying to keep toddlers entertained with bowls of chips while they get a few minutes to sink a pint. This place – the Drunken Sailor – is a good twenty-minute drive away from the village, and mainly used by tourists and visitors.

  It felt a bit safer meeting him here, rather than anywhere local – a bit less likely to taint my home turf with his aura.

  It’s also in a very picturesque spot perched on the cliffs like the Comfort Food Café, but further along the coast, with views down over Lyme Bay, which is looking especially splendid in the sunlight today. The air feels warm and comforting, and it’s reaching the glorious stage of the year where everything is green and lush and it’s hot enough to start leaving coats at home.

  He stands up and leans in for a kiss. I dodge it with as much style and grace as a baby elephant, and sit opposite him on the bench, feeling a blush sweep over my cheeks. The fact that I’m blushing makes me embarrassed, so I blush even more. His little smile tells me he’s noticed, and I wonder if it would be possible to shove him off the edge of the cliff accidentally on purpose.

  ‘Hi,’ he says simply, gesturing at the wine. ‘I got you a drink.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll fetch a Coke in a minute. I don’t have a lot of time.’

  ‘That’s okay. Has the new Auburn given up on drinking as well?’

  ‘No, but the new Auburn is driving, and it’s only lunchtime, and she has a lot to do today. The new Auburn has a drink whenever she wants one … but she’s learned to control it.’

  She also, I think, seems to have started talking about herself in the third person, which is weird.

  ‘I’m a lot more in control these days,’ I say, putting third-person Auburn in a cupboard. ‘It’s intentional. I was a mess by the time I … by the time I came back to the UK. It’s taken me a long time and a lot of effort to get … well, less messy.’

  He nods, and leans back, stretching long legs out in front of him. I hastily rearrange my feet, worried about even our footwear connecting.

  ‘Maybe that’s where I should start,’ he says, fixing me with a no-nonsense look as he notices how nervous I am. ‘By telling you that I’m not here to mess you up again. I promise you, 100 per cent, that’s not what I intend.’

  I nod, and look away. He sounds sincere, but even if he’s being truthful, it doesn’t help that much – because whether he intends to or not, this is all making me feel a bit of a mess. I’d been strong and hopeful and optimistic before – and now I’m biting my nails and feeling nostalgic for the days when pubs used to have cigarette vending machines on their walls. It might not be intentional, but having him this close is unnerving.

  ‘So, a lot has happened since then,’ he says, when I don’t reply. ‘For both of us. Maybe we could start by sharing that?’

  ‘You go first,’ I reply quickly, not at all certain of how much I want to tell him about my life.

  He laughs, and one of the mums at the table next to us gazes at him, glass of lager paused halfway to her lips as she stares. He has that power, Seb – he draws in the admiring looks, and women behave like horny bees around a honeypot. The woman’s toddler daughter throws a chip at her face with perfect timing, and the spell is broken.

  ‘Right … well, there was rehab. My parents insisted on that, and I was in no position to argue. When they told me you’d left, that nobody could find you, I didn’t believe them. I thought maybe you’d gone off to party somewhere, forget all about me for a weekend, but that you’d be back. That we’d try again.

  ‘It was only when I got back to the flat and saw that your things were gone that I accepted it. I was still bruised from the crash, and you’d gone, and I guess I was having the mother of all comedowns … I kind of lost the will to fight them on the rehab front. So, I was in a residential place outside Madrid for two months. That was fun.’

  ‘Was it?’ I ask, refusing to apologise for my disappearance even though something very English in me automatically wants to.

  ‘No, it wasn’t. There was a lot of talking therapy, and group therapy, and family therapy. It was … hard. It made me see myself in a way I didn’t want to see myself.’

  ‘Did it work though?’ I say, knowing how hard that must have been for him. Heck, how hard it would probably be for any of us.

  ‘Eventually. Not to start with though – going to rehab because you don’t have the energy to fight it probably isn’t the best of starts. There were … slips. I relapsed a couple of times. It didn’t quite take hold until I actually wanted it to. I’d go through the motions and pass all the tests and convince everybody that I was fine. But until I genuinely wanted to do it, it was all empty words. Short-term promises. I always fell back, was always looking for some way to fill the missing part …’

  I see him falter, and hope he’s not about to make some big claim that the missing part was me – because that simply isn’t true. I was as much a symptom of his problems as a cause.

  ‘To start with, I thought maybe it was you I was missing – but obviously, it wasn’t. And it’s not fair for me to have even thought that.I suppose things properly changed when I started my training. Initially it was physio, then I decided to specialise in massage therapy. I had a reason to get up in the morning, which give me a reason to go to sleep at night, and a reason to stay sober. I moved out of the flat and back home with my parents, and stopped seeing our old crowd.’

  ‘That was a good move. There’s no way you could hang around with the twenty-four-hour party people and live a normal life. And I can’t believe you stayed in that flat for so long …’

  He shrugs, and replies: ‘It was easy. Or I thought it was anyway. With hindsight? Not the brightest of decisions. So, once I’d moved, and was training, and working, and exercising, and drinking kale smoothies, and doing everything right, it became easier to say no to all the things I used to say yes to. And it became easier to be open with the people around me, to explain why I didn’t go boozing after classes, or join in with social events so much, or trust myself with anything stronger than a bottle of lavender oil for a while …’

  I have to laugh at the image that immediately pops into my mind, and I say: ‘Be honest – did you ever sniff the lavender oil?’

  ‘Hey, I’m only human!’ he replies, holding his hands up in guilt. He smiles at me, and for a moment – one tiny, teeny weeny moment – I remember how special a woman can feel when bathing in the brilliance of one of Seb’s smiles.

  I don’t smile back. It would be a step too far, too soon. Instead, I ask: ‘And that was it? You were miraculously cured?’

  ‘It wasn’t miraculous, it was a lot of hard work. And I know myself a bit too well to use the word “cured”. I view it as being in remission … hopefully for the rest of my life. It helped that I finally told my parents everything – about that night. The night of the accident.’

  I look away and study the child at the next table instead of meeting his eyes. She’s colouring in a printed sheet that has line drawings of dinosaurs on it. It looks peaceful, and I wonder if I could ask the staff for one myself. It would definitely be more calming than this conversation, or the memories it’s triggering.

  I don’t like thinking about all of this stuff. About the night of the accident. About the look on his parents’ faces in the hospital. The way they were so disappointed, so angry, so worried. It felt unfair at the time, and I suppose deep down, it always has. I had plenty of things to blame myself for, but driving that car wasn’t one of them. Accepting it had felt like a kind of penance, I suppose. A dumb way of making up for my mistakes.

  ‘Right. Well. That’s good. They hated me so much …’

  ‘I know. And it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t healthy – while they could hate you, they could let me off the hook again, couldn’t they? If they could blame all the bad things on the wife, they could allow me to escape the consequences. Even I started to see that, and I started t
o feel guilty about it.’

  ‘Guilty?’ I say, my eyes wide in disbelief. ‘You?’

  He nods. ‘It was quite the novelty for me. I didn’t like it at all – but once it started, I couldn’t stop it. It’s like after years of telling myself everything I did was okay, I suddenly realised it wasn’t. I realised how much I’d done wrong. How badly I’d behaved. How much I’d hurt you. The way I’d deceived my parents. The damage I’d done. So I told them – I had to.

  ‘My dad was furious with me. My mum … well, she did a lot of that shout-talking that she does, ranting away and waving her arms and crying, but she was always ready to forgive. That’s what mums do, isn’t it?’

  I nod. It is, I think – although in Lynnie’s case everything is a grey area.

  ‘I bet they still hate me,’ I reply, smiling bitterly, staring at the wooden grain of the tabletop, and wondering why I even care what his parents think.

  ‘My mum probably does … but then again, I suspect she’d hate any woman I brought home with me … Not my dad though. He didn’t hate you, Auburn.’

  I notice the use of past tense, and lift my gaze back to Seb.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask, feeling a swell of sadness at the look on his face, and the failed attempt at a nonchalant shrug.

  ‘Heart attack, a year ago. It is what it is.’

  I reach out and touch his hand, just once, just lightly, and say: ‘I’m sorry. I always liked your dad. How’s your mum coping without him?’

  He laughs, and squeezes my fingers before letting them go.

  ‘Oh, as you’d expect– wearing black. Going on a lot of holidays with her other merry widow friends. Constantly harassing me about the fact that she wants grandchildren.’

  She was always doing that, I remember – she even asked if I was expecting on the day of our wedding, her tone somehow managing to combine both horror and hope. Seb’s in his mid-thirties now – young for a man, but in her eyes, maybe time is running out. Being a matriarch to only one must be disappointing for her.

  ‘I can imagine. Does she … know you’re here? Doing this?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answers, surprising me. He sees my look, and continues: ‘No more lies. That’s kind of a rule with me now. So yes, I told her. And yes, she was about as happy with it as you’d imagine.’

  ‘Did she throw any plates?’

  ‘An ashtray. Kind of at my head, but aimed just far enough away to miss.’

  I laugh, and can perfectly picture the scene.

  ‘Why now, though, Seb?’ I ask, changing the subject. I don’t want to think about his dad, or his widowed mum. I don’t want to feel sorry for him, and sucked into his life again. ‘Why didn’t you try and find me earlier, if you were so sorry, and wanted to make amends?’

  ‘Well. That’s a complicated question.’

  ‘No it’s not.’

  ‘Okay, maybe it’s a complicated answer then … Look, I did consider it earlier. My therapist thought it would be helpful if I could track you down, say my piece, move on. But I never quite felt ready. I never felt strong enough.

  ‘Then my dad died, and that … changed me. Made me think about things even more. So when your divorce papers arrived, I took it as a sign. A sign that I should finally come and see you.’

  ‘You do realise that’s not the purpose of divorce papers, don’t you?’ I say. ‘Traditionally they’re issued to mark the end of a marriage – not as a cue to re-start one.’

  ‘Ah, yes – but I’m not a very traditional person, am I? Those who know me well might even say I can be deliberately awkward about these things. So, the divorce papers. My dad. Time. Therapy. All of it, I suppose – all of it combined somehow added up to me getting on a plane to London and coming here and finding you. To be with you again, to tell you …’

  He pauses, and runs his hands through his thick hair, and takes a deep breath. I should probably step in and make it easier for him, but I think I need to let him say his piece. Get it over with, for both our sakes.

  ‘I genuinely am so very, very sorry, Auburn, for everything,’ he says. ‘Not just that one night, but the whole thing. The way I manipulated you and lied to you and dragged you down with me when you were trying to change. I knew you were, and I resented it – I was a child who didn’t want anyone else to have the sweets I couldn’t have. All you were doing was trying to help me, and I even resented you for that.

  ‘Later, after the first few attempts at my own rehab, I still didn’t think it would ever happen for me. I still didn’t believe in my own ability to change, to be better. I still didn’t think it would ever stick. So I decided the very best way I could show I was sorry was to leave you alone. To give you a chance to live without me. To let you heal. Does that make any sense at all?’

  I have to admit, it kind of does. Even now, after all this time, sitting here with Seb is knocking me off balance. If he’d reappeared in my life a month after I left – heck, a year after I left – things could have gone very differently for me.

  I always found him so stupidly hard to resist, and it was only putting an ocean between us that allowed me to move on. If he’d done then what he’s doing now – turned up on my doorstep in all his glory, begging my forgiveness – then maybe I would have weakened. Maybe I would have plunged straight back into the whirlpool, and drowned for good that time.

  ‘Yes,’ I say quietly. ‘It does make sense. And … thank you. I needed that time. I needed to be away from you. I needed to see who I could be without you. I’m sorry I did it the way I did, but I felt like I had to escape. Does that sound awful? It probably does. But I think you get what I mean.’

  He nods, and smiles gently, and replies: ‘I get it. You needed to leave. I know that, and even though it hurt at the time, it was the only thing you could have done. For both of us. And who you are without me seems … good. Better than good. You have your work, your home, your family. This beautiful place where you live. You seem … a lot more together.’

  ‘Ha!’ I say, snorting. ‘Well, I could hardly be less together, could I? But yes … I am. It’s not been easy. It’s taken time. There are complications – family stuff. Me stuff. It’s probably never going to be easy – I’m not made that way – but I’m making it work. I am.’

  ‘And are you happy, Auburn? Here, with this life?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say firmly, not willing to give him an inch for fear of him taking quite a few miles. The new Seb might not be as reckless as the old one, but he could potentially be every bit as dangerous.

  ‘I am,’ I repeat.‘Very happy. With my family, and my job, and my boyfriend.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. The boyfriend … is it serious?’

  ‘It is,’ I reply. ‘He’s … calm. And steady. And kind.’

  ‘That sounds exciting,’ he replies, a touch of sarcasm tinging his words.

  ‘And gorgeous and ripped and looks like a Viking warrior and is brilliant in bed,’ I add. For balance, you understand.

  He laughs, and I have to join in. This is so very, very weird – extolling Finn’s virtues to my estranged husband in a beer garden.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ he says, grinning. ‘I’m happy for you.’

  ‘Good. Not that I’d care if you weren’t. What about you? It’s been years. I assume your libido hasn’t been in rehab as well. Any sign of those grand-babies your mum wants so much?’

  He gives me a crooked smile, and a feral look in his eyes tells me that no, his libido is still very much intact. He replies: ‘Of course there have been other women. As you say, it’s been years.’

  I can’t think why I asked the question, or what I hoped I might gain by it. Why I was even interested in Seb’s love life.

  Whatever my motivations or expectations, what I actually get is a sudden and blinding lightning bolt of jealousy that comes from nowhere, and leaves me feeling raw and jagged. Feeling jealous is wrong, and it’s inexplicable, and it’s completely inappropriate, so I try very hard not to let any of that momentary surge of emot
ion show on my face.

  The look he gives me tells me I haven’t quite managed, and he adds: ‘Nobody special though, in case you were wondering.’

  ‘I wasn’t!’ I say emphatically. ‘You could have shagged your way around the whole of Europe for all it matters to me!’

  Clearly, I’m protesting too much, and I hate the slightly smug way he raises his hands in surrender. I hate the fact that I felt jealous, even for a nano-second, and I hate that he knows me well enough to read it.

  I hate everything – but mainly the fact that Seb still has this power over me. We’ve sat here, and had this conversation, and it’s taken around twenty minutes. During that twenty minutes, I’ve felt sad, scared, anxious, amused, challenged, and jealous. All of the stuff is here, and a lot of it is completely unrequited.

  This is one of the things about Seb and me that made it so hard to get away the first time. He makes me feel so much, almost against my will. Nobody has ever been able to pull my strings quite like this man, and it looks like I haven’t quite cut all of them yet.

  ‘I’m getting a drink,’ I announce, standing up abruptly and stomping off to the bar inside. I need a few seconds away, to decompress and level out. I need a large Jack Daniels and Coke, but I settle for the latter half only, taking my time before I go back outside again.

  When I do, I see that the little girl from the next table is standing by his side, showing him her colouring in. He’s making appreciative noises, and ooh-ing and aah-ing at a bright pink T-rex, and it’s all disgustingly sweet. She waddles back over to her watchful parents as I sit down, and I deliberately make no reference to it at all.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, stretching the word out and hoping I sound calm and in control. ‘So now we’ve caught up. I’m genuinely glad you’ve sorted your life out, Seb, and I’m so sorry about your dad. And I appreciate your apology. But ultimately, it changes nothing – I still want a divorce, and I don’t think there’s any need for you to stay here any longer.’