Coming Home to the Comfort Food Café

by Debbie Johnson

  She’d reached out and held my hand, squeezing my fingers as though I was the one who needed reassuring, and said: “100%. I’d trust you with my life – and I trust you with Martha’s.”

  Remembering that now, as I look at Martha – the child who has selflessly just offered to start smoking menthol to placate me – I wonder if Kate hadn’t been a bit of a nutter herself. Or whether she saw something in me that I couldn’t quite see in myself.

  “I think,” I say to Martha, who’d helpfully taken the first mug of coffee out of my hands and started drinking it herself, “that you need to stop smoking completely. You’re 16. You probably don’t have a raging case of the black lung just yet, so quit while you’re ahead. And as to Dorset … well, don’t throw one of your diva fits, sweetie, but you’re not doing so well, are you?”

  Martha opens her mouth to argue with me – in fact it’s usually the only thing she open her mouth for these days, other than to insert a menthol, presumably – but I hold up one hand to stop her.

  “Nope! Not listening! I’m not having an argument with someone whose face I pulled out of their own vomit last night, all right? You’re not doing so well, and that’s that. Neither am I. I think we need to make some changes. We need a new world order, because this one sucks.”

  I’m saved from the oncoming tirade by a knock on the door. We both stare at each other, momentarily taken aback, before we hear a familiar voice: “Coo-ee! It’s only me!”

  For once in complete agreement, Martha and I do a neatly choreographed eye-roll, and sigh in mutual exasperation.

  “It’s Sunday, isn’t it?” I say, glancing at my watch and seeing that it is dead on noon. Our common nemesis is nothing if not punctual.

  “Yeah. Shit. We forgot. How does Sunday keep happening so often?” she replies, looking genuinely confused.

  “I don’t know … it’s like we’re trapped in some kind of hell dimension, doomed to eternal knocks on the door and ‘coo-ees’, and …”

  “And the next line – any minute now …”

  We both pause, our heads on one side like curious budgerigars, and grin as we wait for the inevitable.

  “It’s only me!” shouts Barbara again, and I can just picture her on the doorstep, faffing with her scarf and checking her cameo brooch and sniffing the air like she’s a bloodhound on the track of moral iniquity. “Don’t like to intrude,” she trills, “but I’ll just use my key …”

  Martha stares at me. I stare back.

  “She’s lying,” says Martha, swigging down the last of the coffee. “She loves intruding. You should get the locks changed.”

  She strides off to go and get properly dressed, and I attempt to smooth my crazy curls down into something less likely to make Barbara make the sign of the cross when she sees me.

  It’s Sunday. Again. Which means that Martha gets the unrivalled joy of lunch with her grandparents – and I get a few more hours to plan our escape to the West Country.

  Chapter 4

  By the time Martha comes home, I have e-mailed the landlady of The Rockery, checked out the courses at the college, and looked for dogs at the nearest rescue centre. I’ve made notes, and looked at our finances, and pondered the idea of renting out my flat to make it all stretch a little further.

  I mean, it’s not like I need my flat any more. It’s across the road, the bottom half of a sandstone terrace, and is now more of a museum to my previous existence than a functioning residence. It’s full of books and clothes I’ll never wear again and cheap hippy jewellery I used to think made me look super-cool at festivals. I don’t need it any more – technically at least.

  And yet for some reason, I’ve kept it – probably because in the same way that Martha needs that ‘I’m 16, you can’t make me’ reassurance, I also need my ‘I can run away if it all gets too much’ reassurance.

  It has happened a few times – I’ve made the desperate dash over there, winding my way through the recycling bins and neighbourhood cats to let myself in. To lie on my own bed, in my own territory. In the end, I decide against it – I’ll keep the flat, and instead I’ll use my life savings. I’ve got an ISA – which Kate made me take out – that contains the less than impressive lump sum of just under £5,000. But I don’t need much, and that’ll keep me going for a few months at least, allow me to pay my way instead of just using Kate’s money.

  There’s a lot to sort out, and I’ll have to think about it later – because right now, I can hear the strained chatter of Barbara and her husband Ron in the hallway.

  I close the lid of my laptop, and hide the papers beneath it. Barbara has a keen eye for detail – especially any detail that backs up her belief that I am a terrible human being incapable of caring for her precious grandchild.

  Martha slopes into the room looking sheepish and borderline embarrassed. I suspect this is because her grandparents have spent the last few hours telling her how wonderful she is, and she played along. I don’t blame her – it’s definitely the path of least resistance.

  She left her nose and ear piercings out, and tied her hair up into a ponytail. To the casual observer, she could pass for a normal teenaged girl. ‘Normal’ in the sense that Barbara and Ron would use the word, anyway. I know that every time she does that, Martha hates herself a little. Tempestuous as our relationship can be, she can at least behave like herself when she’s at home – not the Stepford Teen version of herself that she presents to her grandparents.

  Barbara is wearing a smart tweed suit that makes her look like one of the presenters on the Antiques Roadshow. Her hair is perfectly bouffed and frosted with spray, and her make-up is suitably age-appropriate for a respectable woman in her early 60s. Her smile, as she stares at me with laser eyes, is almost as frosted as her hair.

  I suppose, if I were to look at myself from her perspective, I might feel a little frosty too. She’s never liked me. I was the bad influence, the wayward gypsy, the blemish in Kate’s otherwise perfectly managed childhood.

  Barbara was always convinced that every wild thing Kate ever did – the travelling after she got her degree, the crappy jobs she started off with, the boyfriends with names like Chili Pepper, the fact that she became a single mum – was because of me.

  It wasn’t true of course. There was a reason Kate and I clicked the minute we met.

  A reason that Kate – clever, pretty, popular, from a stable home – immediately took me under her wing, despite the fact that I was none of those things. The reality was different. Kate had a wild streak all of her own – sometimes it even put mine to shame. She was daring and bold and yearned to break free of the constrictions of her cloying home life. The travelling – where she met Martha’s father (a polite word for ‘had a one-night-stand-with-while-under-the-influence-of-weed-and-booze’) – was nothing to do with me. I wasn’t even there.

  The crappy jobs were just her way of finding out what she really wanted to do, before she settled on teaching. The boyfriends with names like Chili Pepper … well, to be fair, at least a few of those were down to me, and my borderline crusty pals with dogs on strings and only a passing acquaintance with personal hygiene.

  Barbara either doesn’t know any of that, or wilfully ignores it. It’s easier to have a scapegoat. A scapegoat who is now sitting at the kitchen table still in her dressing gown, rocking electric-shock-chic hair and wired on coffee.

  “Zoe!” she says, taking it all in. “How nice of you to make the effort! Late night, was it?”

  Yes, I think. A late night spent looking after your butter-wouldn’t-melt grandchild. I don’t say this of course – especially as Martha is shooting me imploring looks over her shoulder. I take a deep breath, and remind myself that Barbara is Kate’s mother. That she is a woman who has lost her only child, and will probably never recover. She covers it as well as her make-up covers her wrinkles, but it is still there – the pain, and the anguish. The loss.

  “Did you have a nice lunch?” I ask innocently, refusing to rise to the bait. I have m
astered the art of war when it comes to Barbara – and I win my battles by being relentlessly civil in the face of her poking and prodding. Frankly, it drives her nuts. When I was younger, I used to lock horns with her all the time – with the whole world in fact – but these days? Zen master in a dressing gown.

  “Lovely, thanks, Zoe,” says Ron, who is hovering in the background in his chinos and perfectly pressed polo shirt, his threadbare hair carefully arranged over his scalp. He’s not so bad, Ron. I once spent an impromptu night down the pub with him and he was a laugh. Sadly he’s one of those men doomed to be forever overshadowed by a far stronger wife.

  “Yeah,” chips in Martha, keen to avert the conversation from my late night and her shenanigans. “We went to that place outside town that has the really good onion rings.”

  “I know the one,” I reply, smiling. Smiling, and now conscious of the fact that I’ve not eaten all day. My stomach lets out a huge grumble in response, and Barbara wrinkles her nose at me like I’ve just soiled myself in public.

  “Right, Ron,” she announces. “We better go. And Zoe? You might want to consider buying some bleach for this kitchen, you know. Cleanliness is next to Godliness and all that.”

  I nod enthusiastically, as though this is the best suggestion I have ever heard, and wait while Martha sees them to the door.

  When she comes back, she is quiet. Pensive. Thoughtful. None of which are words I usually associate with Hurricane Martha.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, reaching out to briefly touch her fingers. Predictably enough she snatches her hand away, but she does sit down opposite me at the kitchen table. She points at the laptop and the papers peeking out beneath it.

  “Are you still planning the great escape?” she asks, sounding hollow. Her face is paler than usual, and her dark brown eyes are pools of liquid sorrow. It’s not the way I want her to look, or feel, and I am overwhelmed with sadness at the shitty situation we’ve all found ourselves in.

  “Yes,” I say, firmly. “I know you’re not keen, Martha, and I understand why. But perhaps you have to trust me on this one. Or at least try to.”

  She is silent for a few moments, chewing the inside of her cheek so hard I know she must be drawing blood. Eventually she nods, abruptly.

  “I’ll try. Gran was … well, she was full on today, you know?”

  “In what way?” I ask, frowning. Barbara was, as you can imagine, deeply unhappy when Kate told her that Martha would be staying with me if the unthinkable happened. And I know that when it did, she considered some kind of legal action to get her away from me. It was only a letter left by Kate, as well as Martha saying she wanted to stay in her own home, that stopped her.

  She’s never stopped trying to persuade Martha, though. She lavishes her with gifts and cash and adoration, all in an attempt to convince her to go and live with her and Ron instead of the red-haired she-devil.

  “In a ‘we-only-want-what’s-best-for-you’ way,” replies Martha. “You know. The way where I live with them, and wear a lot of pink leisure wear, and learn to bake, and watch My Little Pony videos as a special treat at the weekend …”

  I burst out laughing. One of those unattractive snorty laughs, where you almost choke. Somehow the image of Martha dressed in a candyfloss velour tracksuit watching cartoons strikes me as so funny, I have to let it out. Almost against her will, I see a slight upward curl on her lips. For Martha these days, that passes as an uncontrollable belly laugh.

  “It’s not funny,” she says, not sounding convinced.

  “It is though,” I reply, still giggling. “Just a little bit. But … look, I know it’s hard. Your gran is … a strong character. But she loves you, you know that. And she loved your mum.”

  “I know she loves us! But she really doesn’t understand us, does she?”

  “Not even close. She never has. It doesn’t make her evil. But … it doesn’t make her someone you’d want to live with either. This is where we are, now, Martha. We all want it to be different. We all want your mum to still be here. I lost my best friend. Your gran lost her daughter. You lost your mother. None of us will ever be the same again – but we have to go on living. I’m worried about you. About school. About your social life. About the fact that you can’t spell ‘fuck.’ I’m worried about everything – and that’s why I think we need a change.”

  She nods again, and stands up. She’s not that tall, but she’s really slim and willowy and always reminds me a bit of Bambi, not quite knowing what to do with her legs.

  “Okay,” she says, turning to leave. “I’ll think about it. And don’t worry about me being able to spell ‘fuck’ – I can still say it properly, and that’s what counts.”

  Chapter 5

  The next few days come and go with relatively little drama. Martha is on her best behaviour, which is verging on the terrifying.

  She’s not mentioned the move again, and neither have I – I suspect she is trying to placate me, trying to prove that she can be a good girl after all, hoping I’ve miraculously forgotten all about it.

  I haven’t, of course. I’ve done nothing but think about it. Thinking that seems to involve chewing the ends of a lot of pencils, drinking a lot more coffee, and doodling pictures of rose-trellised cottages on the back of receipts from Bargain Booze.

  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.