Chapter 13
I fall into a rhythm over the next few days. A pleasant one. I get up with Martha, drop her in the village, and watch her get onto the bus, then go and walk, sometimes for hours. For two days in a row now, she’s actually gone and sat near Lizzie and her gang – not next to them, but close enough that they can talk, and lend each other their ear-phones. Small steps, but steps in the right direction at least.
And last night, we had a minor breakthrough on the domestic front. Martha cooked dinner. Only beans on toast, admittedly, but she did it voluntarily, and joined me at the dining room table while we ate. I learned a tiny bit more about her school life, and by the end of one stilted conversation, felt on top of the world. Things have been so uncomfortable between us recently that even that small gesture was enough to lift my spirits.
I even purposely instigated a minor tussle over ownership of the David Bowie T-shirt, just for kicks. There was a flash of her old fire, I got the T-shirt thrown in my face, and I was smiling beneath it – it felt more like old times. Even she was trying to hide a grin by the time she went to bed.
After I’ve dropped her off, I traipse across the clifftop paths, looking down at the sea from my hillside perch, breathing in the now cool air and watching life unfold on the beach. Sam, who is a coastal ranger, has given me a little spotters’ guide that details local plants and birds and wildlife, and I amuse myself by learning their weird names and figuring out the different types of gull and keeping a sharp look-out for migrating chiffchaffs and spotted flycatchers.
The weather is hovering between a few final sunny days, and full-on autumn. The sky can darken quite suddenly, and it’s fascinating to watch the changing shades out over the bay, sunlight sweeping into sulky grey, the colour of the water changing with it.
Today, it looks like all hell is about to let loose. The sky is already almost black, the wind is fierce, and there’s an ominous sense of pressure in the air. The rain is coming in short, vicious bursts, and the atmosphere has that pent-up feeling it gets before a humdinger of a storm. The ground is muddy, and I consider getting some proper walking boots. Maybe some of those fancy walking poles with spikes on the bottom – they’d make great murder weapons as well. Just in case.
I sit for a few moments at my favourite spot – a bench on the next bend along from the cafe – and survey my new empire. I’m genuinely excited to see the seasons unfold; to watch the colours shift and the nights close in and maybe, if we’re lucky, the snow come down and turn the whole place into a winter wonderland.
We’ve signed up for the cottage for six months, so should be here for Christmas … wow. Christmas. I’m actually sitting here, perched on my bench, wrapped up in three layers of fleece, imagining our first Christmas in Budbury. Not just our first Christmas in Budbury – our first Christmas without Kate.
Last Christmas had been awful. Kate had a mastectomy a week before, and as soon as she felt even marginally better after that, started chemo. Being Kate, she’d planned ahead, and there were gifts under the tree for both of us on Christmas morning. Kate herself had felt too sick to eat our festive lunch, or maybe she was just pretending – I’d cooked it, and discovered I could even ruin Marks and Sparks ready meals. What can I say? It’s a gift.
Now, I need to start thinking ahead. I mean, what would I get for Martha? What do you give the girl who has nothing? I start to turn a few ideas over in my mind as I pack up my mini-binoculars – also a gift from Sam – and make my way across the coastal path towards the cafe. The storm is coming in thick and fast, and I almost expect to see a Hollywood-style twister hovering over the bay.
I visit the cafe most mornings, spending time there with Laura and whoever else is passing by. Sometimes it’s tourists, or early-bird walkers. Sometimes it’s locals – often Katie and her little boy Saul; often Frank and Cherie, eating breakfast together while they browse the papers.
Sometimes it’s Scrumpy Joe, grabbing coffee and home-made biscotti before a busy day at work in the cider cave, and sometimes others – Ivy Wellkettle, who runs the local pharmacy, or Edie May, my book-reading buddy.
The faces change daily, but one thing always remains the same: I am welcomed there as though I am part of the family. It is taking a little getting used to – I’ve never been part of a real family, apart from mine and Kate’s strangely-shaped version of one – and at first, I was worried. Concerned that I’d outstay my welcome, that they were just pretending to like me, that it would all fall apart.
I am at least old enough and ugly enough to recognise these paranoid thoughts for what they are: phantoms from my childhood, hangovers from years of being the odd one out. They have no place in my new reality, and I fight them off with the mental equivalent of flame throwers. Enough things can go wrong in life, I know, without creating crises of your own making.
Today, when I arrive at the cafe, soaked to the bone from the now-constant sheets of rain, I see the usual mixed bunch.
Laura waves from behind the counter, steam rising from the coffee machine and fluffing up her already enormous hair, and Edie is perched on a tall chair opposite her. She has a collection of felt tip pens and one of those adult colouring books spread out on the surface, and is concentrating hard on shading in a pattern made up entirely of Siamese cats.
Frank is at a small table alone, dressed in his usual farmer-about-town outfit of checked shirt and heavy gauge cords, his silver hair neatly trimmed and a burnt bacon buttie in front of him. He nods, and lifts one finger – the countryside equivalent of a full-on hug.
“Wicked storm on the way, mark my words,” he says, shaking his head wisely. I’m not impressed with his prediction – even I could have come up with that one, I think, as I hang my dripping coat up.
Becca is there, on her bean bag, vast and swollen and miserable looking. She gives me a small wave then goes back to her book, which I see is called Parenting for Dummies. She’s crossed out the ‘Dummies’ and scrawled the word ‘Becca’ on the cover instead, in black marker pen.
On another table, I see Willow, pink hair tied up in a short, scruffy pony, dressed in an outfit that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Star Wars, wearing silver spray-painted Doc Marten boots with untied ribbons instead of laces. She’s with her mum, Lynnie, who has wild grey hair and is wrapped up in her dressing gown. I glance at her feet and see she has muddy tartan slippers on.
I feel a tug of quiet sympathy, and go over to say hello. I can guess what’s happened, as Laura has already warned me about it. Lynnie, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, occasionally wakes up before Willow and decides to go walkabout. Sometimes she goes to the Community Hall, where she used to hold yoga classes, and sometimes she goes to a place only known to me as the House on the Hill, which was formerly some kind of private children’s home where she used to teach art and crafts and meditation. Other times, she heads straight for the cafe – as most people around here seem to.
Willow looks tired, and her eyes are red and puffy. Poor thing. She tries a smile when she sees me, and I pat her on the shoulder, nodding to Lynnie as well. I’ve never actually met her before, and I’m not sure what to expect.
I’m pretty sure that what I don’t expect is for her to reach out and grab my hand, and I jump a little as she does, luckily damping down my natural instinct to lash out at her surprise touch.
“Auburn!” she says, sounding way more delighted to see me than most people ever do. “Come and sit with us – this lovely girl here is telling me all about her dog, Bella Swan! Apparently, she’s named after some character from a movie about vampires, would you believe? And she’s a border terrier, just like our Pickle!”
I glance at Willow, who nods at me, exhausted. I do as I’m told, and sit, while Laura appears behind me and places a mug of coffee and a plate of buttered toast on the table. I see the remnants of the same in front of Willow and her mum. Outside, the rain is clawing at the window pane, as though it’s testing it for weaknesses and trying to find a way in. All the
lights are on in the cafe now, it’s so gloomy outside.
“This isn’t Auburn, mum,” says Willow, gently. “This is Zoe. She’s just moved here, with her … step-daughter Martha.”
I feel the familiar prickle of tension when she says that. Nobody ever knows how to define my relationship with Martha, including us.
“You have a sister called Auburn?” I ask, deflecting attention from the momentary awkwardness.
“Yes,” says Willow, smiling. “Mum had a tendency to name her children when they were born, depending on how they looked.”
“Not just how they looked, how their spirits felt,” adds Lynnie, looking confused, as though she’s trying to figure out how Willow knows all of this, and whether she should be alarmed by it.
Willow nods, pats her hand, and continues: “I was long and lean, you see.”
“You still are,” I add, pointing at her supermodel-long legs.
“Indeed I am. So I got Willow. Auburn had hair exactly like yours, even in the baby photos she looks like her head’s on fire. My brother Angel looked like a cherub, so that’s fairly self-explanatory. The oldest had a weird ear, I’m told – he got a bit squashed during the delivery – so he ended up with Van, after Van Gogh.”
“Right,” I say, nodding as though all of that makes perfect sense – which it does, in its own way – “and where are they all now?”
“On their journeys to self-enlightenment!” pipes in Lynnie, looking proud. Willow just raises her eyebrows, and I decide that’s a conversation for another day. They might be climbing Machu Pichu or finding their zen in a Tibetan monastery, or they could be working in Matalan. Who knows? Either way, poor Willow has, for some reason or another, ended up staying here, caring for her mother alone. It is a stark and painful reality, and my heart contracts for her – my mum just acted as though I didn’t exist; Willow’s doesn’t even seem to know who she is. I don’t know which is worse.
I eat my toast and drink my coffee, and we chat about the weather and plans for Halloween, and make suitably ‘ooh, it’ll be Christmas before we know it’ noises, trying to behave normally in the most abnormal of situations.
Frank occasionally snorts about something he’s read in the paper; I can hear Edie chirruping away to Laura, and Becca … well, she’s pretty quiet, apart from the odd moan and groan. I glance over after one especially audible grunt, and wonder if she’s all right. She’s holding her sides with her hands, and her face is screwed up with pain. She’s dropped the Parenting for Becca book on the floor, possibly in disgust.
I walk over and pick it up, noting that several of the pages have been scrawled over with highlighter pen and tabbed with fluorescent post-its.
I squat down next to her, and hand her back the book. She clutches it so tightly I hear a few of the pages tear.
“You all right?” I ask, gently, not wanting to draw attention to her. She’s clearly trying to become invisible, which will be quite the task as she is the size of a baby elephant.
“Yep,” she puffs out, as though even speaking is tricky. “Just having some of those practice contraction thingies … Braxton-Hicks, I think they’re called …”
She bites her lip, and I see that her pale face is coated in a light sheen of sweat. Her long dark hair is tied back into a messy pony tail, loose tendrils escaping and tumbling over her shoulders.
“Okay,” I reply, casting my mind back all those years ago, to the day Kate went into labour. We were only kids ourselves – 22 – and thought it was all an exciting adventure. Right up until the moment the screaming agony hit, and then it became ever-so-slightly less fun.
Becca is starting to turn slightly green now, wriggling around on the bean bag as she tries to find a comfortable spot for the bowling-ball shaped wedge in her stomach.
“Do you mind me asking, Becca,” I say, reaching out to tuck damp hair behind her ear, “how often you’ve been having these practice contractions for?”
“Um … I don’t know. Not long. It’s nothing to worry about. It’ll pass.”
“I’m sure it will. But when did they start?”
“About two this morning. Sam was fast asleep so I went downstairs and drank milk. Felt like punching him in the face when he got up, all bright eyed and bushy tailed and … thin!”
“Yeah. I can imagine. You showed amazing restraint. I’d probably have decked him. So, have they carried on since then? And are they … I don’t know, getting closer in time or anything?”
I try to keep my tone even as I ask this question, but she is a sharp cookie. She glares up at me, and snaps: “I’m fine! I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not in labour! I can’t be – I’d know if I was! I’m … I’m not ready!”
As she shrieks that last word, there is a terrific rumble of thunder as the storm finally breaks, a deep, vibrato cracking sound that is followed almost immediately by a sharp flash of lightning. It illuminates Becca’s pained face, and I realise we are in the eye of the storm in more ways than one.
She grabs hold of my hand, and squeezes my fingers so tightly I know for sure I’ll never play the violin again. The wave of pain whooshing through her is clearly so intense she momentarily loses control, and lets out a small howl.
Frank looks up over his paper, his bright blue eyes concerned; Edie and Laura stop their chatter and stare at us, and Willow and Lynnie turn around to get a better look.
I see Laura wipe her hands on a tea towel before she scurries over. She’s wearing an apron with Superman’s body on it, and a slogan that says: “Supercook.”
“What’s going on?” she asks, sounding understandably concerned. “Becca, are you all right?”
“No, I’m not bloody all right!” her sister screeches back at her, all pretense at quiet gone now. “I’m having these stupid Braxton Hicks things and it kills!”
I meet Laura’s eyes, and shake my head.
“She’s been having these Braxton Hicks things since the early hours, and they seem to be coming every couple of minutes,” I say. Laura rolls her eyes, and squats down on the floor next to Becca.
“Sweetie, you’re in labour,” she says calmly. “The baby is coming, and we probably need to get you to hospital.”
“I don’t want to go to hospital! I want to stay here. And I want Sam. And … oh shit … oh no … Laura, I think I’ve just wet myself! What’s happening to me?”
“Your waters have broken, love. It’s perfectly normal, don’t worry. You’re going to have to take those leggings off, all right? We don’t want your baby’s first view of the world to be a lycra-mix gusset now, do we?”
The small crowd in the cafe draws closer, and I feel a rush of sympathy for the poor woman at the centre of it all. I know, from talking to Laura, that Becca has a chequered history with drugs and health.
Since she quit drinking, smoking and pretty much everything else a few years ago, she’s instead been addicted to abstaining – refusing to even take a paractemol for a headache, or a Strepsil for a sore throat. I can completely see why she’s been ignoring the signs, and avoiding going to hospital, where she fears they will pump her full of lovely drugs and spoil her track record. As a result, she’s left it too late – and we all know what is going to happen next.
Edie has been on the phone already, and jumps down from her stool in an astonishingly limber way for a woman of her age.
“There’s been a pile-up near Dorchester, because of the storm,” she says, frowning so hard her entire face becomes one big crease. “Tractor overturned. Ambulances might be scarce to come by, so they suggested we get her into a car and take her to the hospital as soon as we can – as long as it’s safe to drive. It’s not looking that safe out there …”
We all glance at the windows, at the blackened sky, the gushing rain, and the whole world feels like it’s shaking from the power of the wind. It doesn’t feel safe – it feels like we might all wake up in Oz.
Becca reaches up and clasps hold of Edie’s papery-thin hand. I hope she doesn’t sque
eze hers as hard as mine, or her bird-like bones will turn to dust.
“Edie! I can’t do this!” she whispers, as though nobody else can hear. As though she’s not the star attraction, surrounded by worried faces. As though tiny little Edie May is the most powerful being in the entire universe.
Edie leans down and kisses the side of Becca’s sweaty face, and pats her damp hair.
“Of course you can, child,” she says, reassuringly. “You’re my beautiful Becca. You can do absolutely anything, can’t you? Think of everything you’ve gone through. Everything you’ve survived. And think of this gorgeous new life you’re bringing into the world, for you and for Sam and for all of us. And think about the next episode of Strictly – by then, this will all be done with, and we’ll be watching it together, tucked up under a blanket with a nice mug of tea!”
Becca mutters something dark and threatening about Anton du Beke, and let’s go of Edie’s hand. The pep talk seems to have calmed her down a little, and she gulps in some fast breaths.
I’m aware of the group huddling around us now, and wonder if we should be doing something like boiling water or fetching towels, like they always seem to do in TV shows.
“Can you get to the car?” I ask, looking at Becca doubtfully. “We could probably carry you, between us …”
“NO!!!” yells Becca, loud enough that the word probably reaches all the way to Cornwall. “No! I can’t walk, and you’re not carrying me, and I don’t want to go to hospital! I never wanted to go to hospital … I’ll be fine … I’ve read all about this …”
Laura is shuffling around at the bottom end of things, tugging Becca’s leggings off as discretely as she can.
“I know you don’t want to go to hospital,” she says patiently to her sister. “And I’m not bloody surprised that it’s come to this. You were never going to do this the easy way, were you? Now, for God’s sake, what do you expect us to do?”
“I expect you to help me have this bloody baby!” grunts Becca, rolling around, holding her stomach. “Where’s Matt? He can do it!”
Coming Home to the Comfort Food Café Page 9