Coming Home to the Comfort Food Café Read online

  A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  HarperImpulse an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2017

  Copyright © Debbie Johnson 2017

  Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com

  Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

  Debbie Johnson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008263713

  Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008263720

  Version: 2017-09-15

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One: Rebel Rebel

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two: Changes

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part Three: Modern Love

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Part Four: The Woman Who Fell to Earth

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Keep Reading

  Also by Debbie Johnson

  About the Author

  About HarperImpulse

  About the Publisher

  This book is for Helen Shaw – the Greatest of all the Gingers!

  PART ONE

  Rebel Rebel

  Chapter 1

  Dear Zoe,

  I don’t know why I’m writing this – a sudden fit of the black dog, I suppose. It’s one of the unexpected side effects of motherhood that nobody warns you about, the way your imagination can take hold of you like a Jack Russell terrier, swinging your mind about like a rag doll and leaving you in a crumpled heap of paranoia.

  For some reason, tonight, I started worrying about what would happen to Martha if I wasn’t around. Well, I say ‘some reason’ – I actually know exactly what the reason was. Princess Di. I was up late doing some marking, and got sucked into this documentary – ten years since she died and all that.

  It was seeing those boys at the funeral that probably did it – little Wills and Harry, trying to be all brave and grown-up and just looking like little lost souls wondering where their mum was. All I could think about was wanting to give them a big hug. I’m not exactly a raving royalist, but this is nothing to do with money or class, is it? Losing your mum – a mum who loves you to bits, like Diana obviously did with her babies – is a terrible thing.

  Between that and the wine and the lateness, I just ended up in a bit of a mess. You should have seen me, babe – I was just a great big pile of tear-stained mush, hugging the cushions and shaking with grief for a woman I never met, and her motherless little boys. Weirdo.

  After that, I lay awake for hours thinking about it all – and about you, and Martha, and what songs I wanted played at my funeral. I never did decide – I know it should be something dignified, but … well, we’re not that dignified are we, you and me? Never have been. I keep imagining it being something ridiculous like the Venga Boys, and everyone dancing to Boom Boom Boom as the coffin is wheeled out. Or maybe a bit of Pulp, so you could do Disco 2000 with all the actions.

  Anyway. In the end, I decided to get up, and write this instead. Tomorrow, I’m going to package it up with some other paperwork, and go and see a solicitor and make a will. Not cheerful, but I think it’ll put my mind at rest. It’s the responsible, grown-up thing to do – not my specialist subject, but it needs to be done.

  The main thing, of course, is Martha. Her dad’s on the other side of the world and she’s never even met him. My parents are uptight control freaks. The only person who loves her and knows her as well as I do is you, Zoe. I don’t know the legalities of it all, and whether you can leave someone a child in your will, like you would an antique ring or a complete set of Charles Dickens first editions. I’ll have to ask those questions, I suppose.

  But whatever the answers are, I know, in my heart – my squished up, Wills-and-Harry-sodden heart – that she needs to be with you. You’re her second mum. I know you’d get her through it all, just like you and me got each other through our crazy childhoods. Nothing was perfect – but because we had each other, we survived. You can do the same for her, I know you can.

  Hopefully you’ll never see this letter, Zoe. Hopefully, I’ll be around until we’re both 100, and wearing our dentures to Chippendales concerts and swigging gin in our care home. Hopefully we’ll be giggling away at how much we embarrass Martha, and reminiscing about when we could remember what day of the week it was.

  But … just in case … I wanted to write this. I wanted to tell you that I love you, and that you’ve been more like family to me than my own ever were. And that I need you to be there for Martha, if the worst comes to the worst. If I die in a car crash or fall out of a rollercoaster, or whatever. I know the thought will terrify you, and yes, I know that you even managed to kill that allegedly unkillable cactus we bought on holiday in Ibiza that time. I know you can’t cook, and drive like a nutter, and wear odd socks, and lose your keys three times a day, and go so long between brushing your hair that you get dreadlocks.

  I know all this, but I also know that where it counts, you have everything it takes to care for a child – because you’ll love her as much as I could. You won’t try and make her something she’s not, or force her into a shape she doesn’t fit, and you’ll love her no matter how messy her room is. That’s far more important than matching socks, honestly – so believe me when I say I know you can do this.

  Anyway, I’m pretty knackered now, so I’m going to take some Night Nurse, pretending it’s absinthe, and go back to bed and hope for the best. It’s Martha’s class assembly tomorrow, and she’s playing a Ninja Fish. Don’t ask. I need to be bright eyed and bushy tailed and pretend that I enjoyed all the other kids’ performances as much as hers (which is a lie all parents have to tell – in realit
y you’re just waiting for your own magical superstar to appear).

  Now, I know this is random, but a few things to mention. Her favourite food is fish finger sandwiches, squashed onto soft white bread and butter. You have to really squish the bread together, so hard you leave thumb prints.

  Her favourite TV show is still Spongebob, but she secretly also loves In The Night Garden, even though she thinks it’s a bit babyish. She likes dressing up as Stephanie out of Lazy Town, and will try and wear the pink wig to bed if you let her. Don’t – it leaves her real hair in terrible tangles, and then you have to use the No More Tears, which in my experience isn’t that accurate a name.

  If she can’t sleep, she likes to listen to a CD of those stories about talking hamsters while she drifts off. Her favourite outfit is currently her Shaun the Sheep pyjamas, which she even likes wearing in the day. I don’t have a problem with that and I know you won’t.

  If she’s upset about anything at all, try singing the theme tune to Postman Pat out loud. You have to do it with gusto, or she’s not convinced. If you do that, even when she’s angry she can’t help joining in at some point, and before you know it she’ll be more interested in words that rhyme with ‘black and white cat’ than whatever’s bothering her. Even though she doesn’t watch the programme any more, it’s like there’s a folk memory in her brain that makes it soothing, no matter what else is going on.

  And on that helpful note, I shall bid you farewell. Yeah, I know, I’m being nuts – but then again I always was, wasn’t I? Poor Princess Di.

  Don’t forget – Postman Pat theme tune. Out loud, and with gusto. It cures all ills.

  Love you loads,

  Kate xxx

  I read the letter through for what feels like the millionth time, and fold it back up into familiar squares. It’s starting to tatter and fray, and I really need to do something about that. Like get it laminated maybe; anything to preserve the precious words, the precious hand-writing, the precious connection between me and my now-dead friend.

  The main connection between us is just as precious. Well, more so, obviously, as she’s a human being and not a piece of paper – but she’s nowhere near as easy to protect. I glance at Martha, who is lying in a heap on the living room floor, covered in vomit, and wonder if I can possibly get her laminated as well. It would definitely cut down on the amount of washing I have to do.

  That letter was written years ago. What feels like millennia ago, now. Back in the days when Martha was a happy-go-lucky, ultra-lovable little girl. She used to dress up in her Stephanie wig and I used to pretend to be Sportacus, and we’d eat satsumas together and lick the juice from our fingers like we were sampling the nectar of the gods.

  Now, Martha is 16, and I could marinate her in a whole bathtub of No More Tears and it wouldn’t help. In fact, she’d probably just drink it, in an attempt to find a new high. Martha lives in a whole different type of Crazy Town now.

  So do I. I live in a Crazy Town without Kate. Without my best friend. Without the person who kept me sane for so many years. My shoulder to cry on, my confidante, my other half. Neither of us ever got married, or even had a serious relationship – and I think that’s partly because nobody could ever live up to what we had. Friends since we were six, through the good times and the bad. Joined at the hip, no matter what her parents did to try and discourage their golden child’s unhealthy attachment to the scruffy-haired foster kid from the council estate they viewed as one step down from hell.

  Martha groans, and I kneel by her side. I have become adept at making sure her airways are clear, and putting her in the recovery position, just in case she does a Janis Joplin on me and chokes on her own sick.

  Her dyed black hair is crusted to her pale cheeks, her skin splashed with purple that probably came from some kind of blackcurrant mixer. Her nose is pierced through with a ring, several more in her ears. Winged eyeliner that looked cool in a Tim Burton Batgirl kind of way hours earlier is now smeared beneath her eyes, and she looks like a corpse. She’s wearing deliberately laddered black fishnet tights, a black denim mini-skirt now hoisted up to her bum, and a Nirvana T-shirt. There’s a smiley face on the front, and on the back it says ‘flower sniffin kitty pettin baby kissin corporate rock whores.’

  I can see words inked on one of her arms, and squint my eyes to read them: Fuk You. I hope it’s just magic marker and not a tattoo, especially as it isn’t even spelled right.

  Her skinny legs are still on the sofa, one of her Doc Marten boots still on, one of them half off. I’m guessing she came in, tried to sit on the couch and get ready for bed, and became overwhelmed by the industrial amounts of alcohol she probably consumed tonight. Possibly by some drugs as well – in my day it would have been ecstasy or speed. In her day, they have all kinds of fancy names that makes them sound like cute schoolgirls from Japanese anime books.

  I reach out and stroke a long strand of sticky hair away from her face. Her eyes pop open, staring up at me like something from a Hammer Horror film – bright, rich brown. Not so long ago, they’d have been sparkling with humour and the sheer irrepressible joy of life. Now, they simply register that it’s me hovering over her – not the person she wants it to be – and cloud with disappointment.

  She closes her eyes again, and I see fat tears start to seep out of the sides, mixing in with the eyeliner, painting a dark, dirty streak as they roll sideways.

  I murmur what I hope are comforting sounds, not sure if I even believe them myself.

  I think about that letter again. About those words of advice from Kate, the woman we both loved so much. Written oh-so-long ago, and now seeming oh-so-wrong. I can’t do this. Martha is sinking, disappearing beneath an avalanche of grief and poor life choices, and I don’t know how to save her. I don’t know how to save myself.

  I sit back on my heels, and start to hum the theme tune from Postman Pat. I don’t sing it with gusto, I don’t have any of that left. And besides, if there was a black and white cat in the room these days, I suspect Martha would sacrifice it to Satan.

  Something needs to change. Something needs to give, before all is lost. Before I let my best friend down in a way that I will never be able to forgive myself for.

  Chapter 2

  I wake up the next morning with two things: a headache, and a plan. A plan to change our lives.

  The headache is predictable and understandable. I’d been in bed when Martha fell through the door in the early hours of the morning. In bed, but not really asleep.

  I used to be a championship level sleeper. I had an undemanding job managing a book shop, lived in a tiny studio flat across the road from Kate and Martha, earned enough money to pay my mortgage, keep me in Ben and Jerry’s and set a bit aside. I avoided all stress, emotional, physical, or otherwise.

  I’d cut off ties with my toxic past, and led a quiet life. Other people might have found it unambitious and boring – but not me. I’d had a lot of excitement in my early years, and was happier without it.

  I thought I’d been so clever – constructing this little life for myself. Vicarious motherhood through Kate. No commitments I couldn’t handle. It was very pure and simple, as All Saints might have said, and I liked it that way. I liked the fact that the most stressful thing that had happened to me for years had been my Pot Noodle container splitting and making a chicken and mushroomy mess over the kitchen counters. At 38, I’d achieved my own personal nirvana: steadiness.

  As a result, me and sleep were best friends. I used to wake up every morning feeling refreshed and with a smile on my face, looking forward to cycling to work and doing nothing more challenging than ordering in some extra paperback copies of the latest Dan Brown novel, and persuading my three customers a day to buy something by a local author.

  These days, it’s all changed. I’ve become an accidental mother, and I suck at it. I miss Kate, and I’m crap at looking after Martha. I spend most of my waking moments wishing I was asleep, and most of my sleeping moments half awake. I always ha
ve one ear open, listening for the sounds of her either coming home, or sneaking out, or setting the kitchen on fire.

  It’s been over six months since Kate died. Ten months since she first found the lump. I moved in part-time when Kate started chemo, full-time after she died.

  Martha might think being 16 makes her an adult, and that’s definitely how I felt at her age, but she’s lumbered with me whether she likes it or not. And I’m lumbered with struggling through each day like a sleep-deprived zombie.

  Martha is a 16-year-old girl with very definite ideas about how she wants to live her life. She’d always been what you could diplomatically call ‘strong-minded’, a description we saw as a positive but Kate’s mum, Barbara, thought was the personality equivalent of leprosy.

  But Barbara, in all honesty, has lived her entire life with a whacking great stick shoved up her arse. She was always so worried about what everyone would ‘think’: the neighbours, the vicar, the headmaster, passing strangers, random people who saw us on Google earth … everyone’s opinion mattered to her, apart from ours. Apart from Kate’s. What she saw as a despicable streak of evil in Martha, we saw as a good thing.

  We were proud of our little rebel. ‘You need a bit of attitude when you’re a woman in this world,’ Kate used to say, and I’d agree. We’d clink our glasses, and laugh at Martha’s antics.

  These days, Martha’s less ‘strong-minded’ and more ‘absolute bloody nightmare.’ She’s punishing herself, and punishing me, and punishing the whole damn world – and doing it mainly by the light of the silvery moon. Martha’s a night owl – so these days, so am I.