Coming Home to the Comfort Food Café. Debbie Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 mastered 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 СКАЧАТЬ