A Wedding at the Comfort Food Cafe

by Debbie Johnson

  When I say it out loud, that last sentence is actually a bit of a humdinger. It even feels that way to me, never mind Finn – so I totally understand that yet another silence kicks in.

  ‘I see,’ he says, pulling away from me and sitting upright, gazing out at the woodland around us. ‘And what do you think about that?’

  I’m at such a loss here – completely out of my depth. I feel like a teenager again, trying to navigate my way through emotional currents I don’t understand. I want to reassure him – but I also want to be honest, like he asked. It kind of feels like whatever I do will be wrong.

  I sit up too, and hold his hand.

  ‘I feel … a bit off balance? I don’t love Seb, Finn. I really don’t – I can promise you that. I wouldn’t lie to you, ever. But I did love him once, and we never finished things off properly, and part of me thinks it would be healthy if we did. So I agreed to him staying, and spending some time with him, and then he’s said he’ll leave.’

  Finn nods, and is suddenly so fascinated by the activities of two woodfinches pecking at my bra on the tree branch that he can’t meet my eyes. I feel wretched, like I’ve somehow wounded him without even meaning to.

  ‘You said you were fine with this,’ I add, squeezing his fingers. ‘You said it would be a way to put him in the past, to prove he doesn’t have a hold over me any more.’

  ‘I did say that, you’re right,’ he replies quietly, finally turning to look at me. He’s smiling, but it looks sad on him. ‘I did say that, and I still think that’s true, but maybe I underestimated how much this would knock me for six. I believe you when you say you don’t love him – but I can’t help feeling … edgy. And I kind of wish you’d told me about this before we lived out that whole rom com scene.’

  I frown, confused now.

  ‘What do you mean? Before we had the wow sex?’

  ‘Yes, before we had the wow sex. Because the wow sex now feels a bit weird. Like you’ve come straight from seeing your ex-lover, and current husband, to me. I can’t quite get a handle on the logic of it, if indeed there is any logic, but it doesn’t feel good.’

  ‘I didn’t come straight to you from him! I went to the café first and threw tuna at Zoe’s face, then I went to the pharmacy and talked to Katie about her love life, then I visited an old man and his donkey! And anyway – all I did with Seb was sit in a beer garden and talk. We didn’t even sit on the same bench. No parts of us touched!’

  He shakes his head, and manages a little laugh.

  ‘I’m not suggesting otherwise. I know you too well to assume you’d have spent a steamy morning with him getting naked – I do trust you! I just … well, this is strange for me, but I can’t understand the way I’m feeling. All I know is thatI’m feeling it.’

  I sigh, and feel desperate to fix this – but I have no idea how to. I’m angry with Seb for turning up here and ruining my life, and angry with myself for not getting things right yet again, and if I’m honest, a tiny bit angry with Finn for reacting like this – which isn’t fair at all. He’s not a robot, he’s a man, with emotions and fears and anxieties. Maybe I’ve expected too much of him.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, blowing out a big breath that I wasn’t aware I was holding. ‘I’m sorry. The very last thing I’d ever want to do is upset you. But it’s hard to get a grip on some of this. You’re so … calm. Usually. If you’d ranted and raved and told me you didn’t want me to see him, I wouldn’t have seen him. But you didn’t even seem that upset … you were all calm and Bjorn Borg about it!’

  ‘Bjorn Borg was Swedish,’ he says, automatically correcting me in a way that I find infuriating.

  ‘I know he was!’ I snap back. ‘That’s not the point though, is it? Look, Finn … I love you. I want to be with you. I want to build a future with you. And just to be clear, again, I don’t love Seb. I don’t want to be with him, and I don’t want to build any kind of future with him beyond the next two weeks. Less than that, even, now, it’s, like ten days or something. But I want to work my way through this maze, and when I do, I want us to be even better and stronger than we were before. Does that make sense?’

  He stands up, and starts to gather his clothing.

  ‘It does,’ he replies, as he pulls up his Levis. ‘It does make sense. And I think it’s the right thing to do, and I’m going to be waiting for you at the end of the maze, Auburn. But …’

  He pauses as he tugs his T-shirt over his head, his blond hair popping out the other side.

  ‘But what?’ I ask, standing up and facing him. Generally speaking, during a spirited debate like this, nothing good ever follows the word ‘but’.

  ‘But for me to get through this with myself intact, I think perhaps we need to leave the wow sex alone for the time being. It might not make sense to you – but I need you to accept it.’

  ‘Just the wow sex?’ I ask plaintively, as I follow suit and reassemble myself into knickers and jeans and trainers. ‘Can we still have mediocre sex, or downright rubbish sex?’

  He stops, and grins despite the seriousness of his mood, and says: ‘Since when did we ever have rubbish sex?’

  ‘Never … but I’d be willing to start if it meant we could be together!’

  ‘No,’ he says firmly, squashing the towels and blankets back into the rucksack with way too much force. He might sound steady, but he’s clearly not feeling it. ‘No sex at all. It’s too confusing. I want our sex to always be wow, and always to be followed by feeling great about life, and each other – not like this. So no sex at all. Anyway – like you say, it’s not long. I just need … a clear head.’

  He’s stopped what he’s doing, and is looking at me warily, like I’m a volcano that might pop at any minute. He might just be right.

  I’m bewildered and hurt, and feel cut adrift in a sea of conflicting emotions. He isn’t ending anything, and he says he loves me, and the sensible part of me knows that we can get through this – that it’s not the biggest deal in the whole wide world.

  Somehow, though, it feels big. It feels like a rejection, and it stings. I’m in pain and I’m frustrated and I don’t want to say anything that’s going to make this worse.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I say, striding off towards the path.

  ‘Don’t get lost’ he shouts after me, sounding concerned. ‘And you’ve left your bra!’

  ‘I’ll be fine!’ I yell back, stomping away through the greenery. I take a different path, because I don’t want him following me all the way back to Briarwood. ‘I know these woods like the back of my hand!’

  Chapter 16

  I soon realise that that is one of the most stupid phrases ever invented by humankind. I mean, who actually knows what the back of their hand looks like? Not me, that’s for sure.

  After angry-walking for twenty minutes, I also realise that I’m completely lost. I’m crying, and I’m tired, and I have a nasty scratch on my cheek from a vicious and totally unprovoked attack by a bramble bush. I keep swiping the tears and the blood away, and keep marching, convinced that I’ll soon emerge from the wilderness.

  After the best part of an hour, I’m starting to think that I never will. That I’ll be like one of those old soldiers you read about, who live wild in the hills and think they’re still at war decades after a peace treaty, sleeping under the stars with a billy can and a machete.

  My phone is no use at all, either flickering in and out of signal range or displaying a map made entirely of green. In the end I use it as a torch, helping me pick my way through the treacherous tree roots and through thickets of fern.

  Eventually, I reach the pond. Willow’s sex pond. This, at least, I recognise – though even then it takes me another half an hour to make it back to Briarwood. By the time I emerge onto the gravel pathway, I’m drenched in sweat and ready to climb into my van and sleep for a thousand years.

  I am, however, at the very least a lot calmer. Maybe the whole back-to-nature thing was cathartic – it gave me time to have a weep, do some sw
earing, kick some innocent tree trunks, and come to the conclusion that although life is hard and often sucks, it’s all the better for the thought of a hot shower and a slice of cake.

  I walk towards my van in the now mainly dark evening shade, and see that Finn’s lights are on. I stand still for a moment or two, then shrug and walk towards the house. I need to be a grown-up – and also to use the toilet.

  I push open the door to Briarwood, and make my way along the corridor to his apartment. I can hear the sounds of loud techno music competing with the sound of even louder Nirvana, and laughter and chatter floods from the rooms up the stairs. There’s a slight smell of sulphur on the air, which I put down to one of the inhabitants’ experiments, or possibly a Satanic visitation.

  I pause outside Finn’s door, catch my breath, and knock once before opening it. He’s not in his office, but before I can go into his rooms he emerges, looking concerned. His hair is damp but tidy, and he’s barefoot – so at least one of us has had a shower.

  ‘Auburn,’ he says, sounding relieved. ‘I was just considering coming to look for you. I saw your van still there, and was worried you’d been eaten by wolves or something. What happened to your face? It’s covered in blood.’

  My hand goes up to my cheek defensively, and I realise what a mess I must look. My hair is damp from effort and tangled around my face, and my skin is covered in smears of dirt, blood and tears.

  ‘Nothing. A nasty bramble, that’s all. Can I use your loo?’

  He nods, and gestures behind him, and I quickly go about my business. This might make me a very shallow person, but there are few better feelings in the world than finally getting to let loose a wee you’ve been holding in for too long, are there?

  I grimace into the mirror when I see that I look even worse than I imagined, and give my face a quick swill. The cut has stopped bleeding, and I know it’ll heal up nicely. If not, it’ll give me a jaunty pirate air.

  When I come back out, Finn is holding my bra towards me, having clearly retrieved it from the tree branch before he left the Bibber.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, with as much dignity as a braless woman can muster, taking it from him.

  ‘Did you get lost?’ he asks, smiling gently.

  ‘No! I … experimented with my sense of time and place. Anyway. I wanted to pop in and say I’m sorry. For whatever it is I’ve done. And I don’t want this to go wrong, and I don’t want things to be weird between us, and I don’t want us to be angry with each other. So I’m sorry, okay?’

  He nods, sits down on the sofa, and pats the space next to him.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I ask. ‘I smell really bad.’

  ‘Not as bad as a bull seal,’ he replies, which is fair enough. ‘Come and sit with me.’

  I sink gratefully onto the couch, and he slips his arm around my shoulders and snuggles me into him. I could very easily pretend everything is fine right now, and fall asleep.

  ‘You know that thing you said about me being like Bjorn Borg?’ he asks, making sure I don’t snooze off.

  ‘Yes. Sorry about that.’

  ‘No need to apologise. What do you actuallyknow about Bjorn Borg?’

  ‘Next to nothing,’ I reply, frowning in confusion. ‘He was a super-duper tennis player in the olden days. He was always ice-man calm and never shouted at bad line calls. And my mum fancied him.’

  ‘Seriously? Lynnie fancied Bjorn?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘I think it was the short shorts …’

  ‘Good to know. Or weird to know anyway. Well, Bjorn Borg was famous for being calm on court, and never losing his temper, right? The thing is, when he was younger, he was the opposite. He almost had to give up tennis because he couldn’t manage his anger, and got into trouble for shouting and smashing his racquet and that kind of stuff. He wasn’t always the ice man – he used to be so ferocious that at one point he got himself suspended from the game.’

  ‘Okay,’ I mutter, not at all sure where this is going. Maybe as well as the no-sex rule Finn’s now going to instigate a ‘no interesting conversations’ rule.

  ‘I’m telling you all this for a reason.’

  ‘Good. I was starting to wonder.’

  ‘The reason is this – when you called me Bjorn Borg, you were kind of right, on both counts. I wasn’t always this calm and steady version of myself, Auburn. This is the version of me that I’ve got now, after years of work and effort. The version of me that existed when I was a teenager, and into my early twenties, was wild. I had the world’s worst temper, and it got me into a lot of trouble.’

  I look up at him, my interest well and truly piqued, and reply: ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘It started when I was about fourteen or fifteen. I’ve told you the history of my parents – the affairs, the divorce, my life as a human pawn in their battles. I suppose all of that contributed, along with a hefty dose of incoming testosterone that was normal for that age. I’m afraid to say I was a bit of a monster – always getting into fights, rising to every bait, losing my rag at absolutely anything.

  ‘I was expelled from two schools, and it was only spending those summers shipped off to see my grandparents that kept me calm enough to finish my A-levels. I was always angry – sometimes on the outside, but always on the inside.’

  ‘That’s awful, Finn. What a horrible way to live. Did it get any better when you were older?’

  ‘I got better at hiding it. I didn’t go off to university, though, because I couldn’t handle the thought of communal living. I started working on a farm in Northumberland, which helped – being outside helped, as did being physically tired. But it didn’t ever quite go away, and it’s the main reason things didn’t work out with Cara, the ex I told you about.’

  He has mentioned Cara before, but not in any detail.

  ‘Tell me,’ I urge, placing my hand on his thigh. ‘You’ve never told me much about her.’

  ‘Ha!’ he says, snorting with amusement. ‘I don’t think you’re in any position to comment on that, as you didn’t tell me much about the fact that you were married!’

  ‘That is a fair point. But tell me anyway – just because I’m rubbish doesn’t mean you have to be.’

  ‘Okay – well, we met when we were twenty-one. She was the daughter of the family who owned the farm, but she’d been away at college for years. We were together for about four years, I suppose, on and off. We lived together for the last year of that. I can say with the wonderful power of hindsight that we were disastrous for each other – we were too much alike.

  ‘She had as much of a temper as me, and we argued all the time. It was never a happy or settled kind of relationship. And the more things were going wrong at home, with her, the more things went wrong elsewhere – I’d go to the village pub and end up having a fight with some other macho young farmer type, or I’d get drunk and start one with a stranger. On one memorable occasion I even managed to get into a scrap at the village fete, and crash-landed in the middle of the prize jam table.’

  ‘Good lord!’ I say, in almost mock-horror. ‘What did the vicar say?’

  ‘The vicar was none too pleased, now you mention it – his wife had won first prize for her Damson Delight. Anyway, it took a while for everything to fizzle out between us, and I’m not proud of the fact that it took her to finally have the courage to end it. We never fought physically – although there was the occasional flying teapot – but the verbal rows were enough, it was draining for both of us, and eventually she sat me down and said she couldn’t live like that any more. That she wanted to have a family of her own, and we just weren’t ever going to be in the right place for that to happen.

  ‘I have no idea how long I’d have carried on like that. Until some disgruntled clergyman did me in with a candlestick in the library, I suppose.’

  I nod, and try to imagine that Finn. The reckless Finn, fighting his way through life, so miserable and raw with inner pain that it constantly spilled out into violence. I struggle with that, becaus
e he’s so different now, but I’m forever grateful that Cara had the strength of mind to finish it. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be with him now. Funny how many stars have to align to bring two people together. I only hope it takes even more stars to break them apart.

  ‘So what happened after that?’ I ask. ‘How did you get from there to here, both physically and, you know, mentally? Because you’re describing someone I don’t recognise. I know the old me – the old me I told you about, who travelled the world and randomly got married and was a complete fuck-up – is different than the me I am now. But at least I think I’m probably just about recognisable?’

  ‘Only the good parts,’ he says kindly, kissing my head. ‘The parts that are spontaneous and fun and adventurous. Well, it didn’t happen overnight – it wasn’t like a film, where I had some revelation and went on a retreat to live with Buddhist monks in Tibet or anything. I just … moved away. Saw a counsellor. Had some long overdue conversations with my parents. Spent a lot more time in Denmark. Went back to college to get my qualifications – basically, I looked at where I was, and where I wanted to be, and got help to make it happen.’

  ‘Actually, that does sound a bit like something out of a film …’

  ‘It does a bit, doesn’t it? Or some kind of hideous self-help book. But the sessions with the counsellor helped. At her suggestion I took up boxing for a while, which was a good way to release a lot of anger. And eventually, after a lot of talking, and a lot of thinking, and a lot of listening to my wise old granddad, I let go of my anger. I didn’t even notice it happen – but I finally realised one day, when someone cut me up at a roundabout in Bristol, that I wasn’t furious. In the old days I’d have wanted to get out of the car and beat them to a pulp with a baseball bat.’

  I shake my head, and feel super impressed. I’ve been on my own journey of self-improvement, but I’ve never done anything sensible like see a counsellor, or take up a sport. I just kind of floundered my way through it all, smoking fifty cigarettes a day.