A Wedding at the Comfort Food Cafe Read online

  There is a general buzz and shuffle and sounds of interest as she passes the specs along to me. She’s right on one count – I am loved up at the moment. She’s also right that Finn is lovely. I might even, in the dim dark recesses of my primeval girl brain, imagine being married to him one day – but that process would not be a simple one. Frankly, nothing ever is with me.

  I scrape my chair back, gulp down the remainder of my espresso martini, and perch the glasses on my nose. I pause while they all refocus their attention. Might as well create a moment – show a bit of style. I’ve trapped myself in this moment, and this is the equivalent of the waiter hovering at my shoulder with his notepad – decision time.

  I glance around at the smiling faces, the expressions of warm curiosity, and realise that I actually want to be honest with these people. Friends, family, community – none of it should be built on a lie. And none of this lot are going to judge me – it’s not that kind of place. Deep breath, and in I plunge.

  ‘Well, ladies and gentlewomen, Willow raises a good point,’ I say. ‘My dream wedding would be an elaborate cathedral of sound and light; a lightning storm in a haunted forest; a shipwreck off the coast of Zanzibar; a magical fairy glade inside a mystical stone circle. All of these things and more.’

  I glance around at my audience – they’re hooked, so I decide to hit them with the punchline.

  ‘Sadly, none of these magnificent feasts for the senses are likely to take place. I won’t be marrying Finn – because I’m already married! Booooom!’

  I make a ‘drop the mike’ gesture, pass the glasses to a confused Edie, and give a low bow as they all stare at me – Willow, in particular, has eyes so wide they might break her face in half.

  I grab a bottle of cider, and head outside. I really need a ciggie now.

  Chapter 2

  I find a perch on one of the tables and take a swig from my bottle. It’s been brewed by our friend Scrumpy Joe, who lives up to his name by brewing cider professionally – his parents must have had amazing powers of premonition. Or maybe it’s a nickname, who knows?

  The garden of the café is higgledy-piggledy and laid out over uneven ground that makes balancing anything on the tabletops an interesting experience. I like sitting out here sometimes, waiting for people’s milkshakes to start to slip sideways.

  The café is on the top of a hill on the top of a cliff on top of the world. Or at least that’s what it feels like, especially on a day like this, when the spring sky is a clear, vivid blue and the sea seems to stretch on for infinity.

  The dogs let out a half-hearted woof when they see me, and I raise my bottle in acknowledgement as I count out loud. I’m counting because I’m curious to see how long it takes Willow to make it outside with her thumbscrews and eye-shining torch to interrogate me. I have a bet – with myself, so I’ll definitely win – that it’ll be less than thirty seconds.

  Sadly, I’m all the way up to one hundred and eighty before she emerges from the café, pink hair blowing around in the breeze, striding towards me in her spray-painted silver Doc Marten boots. Her hands are on her hips, which tells me she means business.

  ‘What took you so long?’ I ask, tapping an imaginary watch on my wrist. ‘What time to do you call this?’

  ‘I had to listen to Edie’s story,’ she says, reaching out to punch me on the shoulder. For no good reason other than we’re sisters. She’s the baby of the family and, if I’m honest, was always the butt of our practical jokes and general twattery when we were growing up. Now she takes every opportunity to prove to herself that she’s not the runt of the litter any more.

  The rest of us – me, Van and our other brother Angel – all took off when we were young, and she ended up at home with an ever-declining Lynnie, looking after her on her own until she told us what the situation was. Then two of us came back – and I suspect there’s part of Willow that thinks life was simpler without us.

  ‘What was that like?’ I ask, frowning up into the sunlight. Edie’s fiancé died during World War II, and she never married. She simply convinced herself he’s still alive, and talks about him in the present tense, and even takes food home for him from the café. I’m not one to judge – we’re all a bit barmy, if we strip away the layers, don’t you think?

  ‘It involved a swing band and the village hall and nylon stockings she’d been given by an American airman. But anyway … you’re married?’

  Her face is all screwed up, and I can tell she’s both intrigued and a bit angry.

  ‘Yeah. You want to say “WTF”, don’t you? Except you’re too old to use abbreviations, so you want to say the whole thing. I can see the battle raging within you.’

  ‘The battle raging within me isn’t about saying “fuck”, Auburn – I’m quite happy to say it! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!’

  I laugh out loud – because any word, when you say it repeatedly, starts to sound silly, doesn’t it? Especially one that rhymes with duck and muck and yuck and other similarly amusing words.

  I see her trying not to laugh, but that’s not really in her nature, and she cracks eventually. She sighs, and sits next to me, and steals my bottle of cider. That would normally be a strong reason for me to wrestle her to the ground and dribble spit in her face, but I reckon she’s had a shock, so I play nice.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asks, her voice quiet and a tiny bit hurt. I glance at her, shielding my eyes from the sun, and see that she is in fact hurt. I’d never considered that. When we were young, we weren’t close – in fact we were sworn enemies, forced to share a bedroom, where we re-enacted global conflicts every single day despite our lentil-loving mama urging us towards peace, love and understanding.

  Now, though, as adults – bonded over Lynnie and the fact that we each have our own room these days – we’re closer. Almost friends, in fact. The fact that I’ve kept this from her has dented her feelings, and I’m sad about that.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, patting her knee. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose. I think I just kind of … decided to forget about it. I realise that sounds insane, and it probably is, but it was in a different time. A different life. A long time ago, in a galaxy … well, at least a few hundred miles away.’

  ‘Well now you’ve remembered, tell me about it. I can’t believe you’re married! Does Van know? Does Finn know?’

  ‘Nobody here knows. Like I said, I chose to bury it. I barely knew myself. If it wasn’t for Becca and her Groucho glasses, I might have chosen to bury it forever. But … well. Here we are. Me, an old married woman, and you, my spinster sister. Sitting in the sunshine. Sharing a bottle of cider in a fair and equitable manner.’

  I reach out to grab it back, but she’s too fast, and holds it on the far side of her body so I can’t get to it without falling off the table. I shrug, and pull my cigarettes out of my jeans pocket instead. She crinkles her nose up in advance, and I say: ‘If you want to hear this story, you’ll have to tolerate the second-hand nicotine, okay?’

  I’ve been trying to stop smoking ever since I moved back to Budbury, our tiny corner of the Dorset coast. I’ve tried vaping, and patches, and exercise, but ultimately never seem quite able to shake off the habit. I’ll manage for a while, but then as soon as something vaguely stressful happens – like stubbing my toe, or discovering my mother has cancer, or pretty much everything in between – I start again.I’m a little bit broken, and the ciggies are an external sign, I suppose.

  I light up, and soothe myself with that first lovely inhale. I take two puffs, then stub it out on the tiny tin I carry around to use as a combined ashtray and butt collector. Nobody likes a litterbug.

  ‘That was quick,’ she says, blinking in surprise.

  ‘It’s my latest health kick,’ I reply, stashing the tin. ‘I only smoke a third of it. Expensive, admittedly – but you can’t put a price on good health, can you?’

  Willow rolls her eyes in a way that says she knows I’m stalling, and folds her arms across her chest. Very negative bo
dy language, that.

  ‘Okay, okay …’ I say, realising that she’s tucking her hands away to stop herself throttling me. ‘Well, it was genuinely a long time ago. Eight years ago, in fact, when I was young and carefree and often off my head on various pharmaceutical products. It was when I was living in Barcelona, before I came to London to do my studies and became a productive member of society.’

  ‘Is he Spanish?’ she asks, not unreasonably.

  ‘His mother is. His dad’s English. He’s called Seb – Sebastian, which in Spanish is almost the same, but kind of like “say-bass-ti-ann”.’

  ‘Okay. Say-bass-tian,’ Willow replies, trying it out for size. ‘So I know his name, and how to pronounce it. That’s a start. What about the rest – how did you meet him? Why did you marry him? Why didn’t it work?’

  I spot movement from inside the café, and have the feeling that everyone is trying to lip-read our conversation without appearing nosy. The downside of our cosy and close-knit community is that everyone is supremely interested in everyone else’s life. It’s like an interactive soap opera, with a lot of cream teas.

  ‘Erm … well, look, Willow, it’s complicated. I was younger. I was … wilder, remember? I left home when I was young. I spent years in South America and Asia. I was the Queen of the Backpacking Tribe. And that had its consequences – this may come as a surprise, but I have something of an addictive personality you know …’

  She snorts in amusement, and I shoot her a mock-angry look. Mock because I’ve just smoked a cigarette and have drunk approximately seventeen martinis and half a bottle of cider. The boat of normality has well and truly sailed.

  ‘And?’ she prompts, passing me the cider. Attagirl.

  ‘And … I suppose I became addicted to Seb as well. I was living in a tiny apartment above a restaurant in the Gothic quarter, working in a bar, and never seeing daylight. When I wasn’t working, I was drinking. And when I wasn’t drinking, I was clubbing. And when I wasn’t clubbing, I was sitting on the roof of the building, smoking dope. And when I wasn’t smoking dope, I was … well, you get the picture. I’d been on the road for so long, I think I’d forgotten how to live like a normal human being.’

  ‘Those who knew you when you were younger,’ Willow says gently, ‘might say that you never learned in the first place.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I reply, nodding. ‘That’s fair. I was always a little on the savage end of the spectrum. And for sure, spending so long living out of a rucksack and dossing down in hostels and only knowing people who were as transient as me didn’t help. I only ended up in Barcelona because I could speak some Spanish, and because I was trying – in my own messed up way – to get home. I’d been in Ghana – don’t ask – and someone offered me a lift all the way to Morocco. And from there I got a ferry to mainland Spain, and then Barcelona. Have you ever been?’

  She gives me a sideways glance that tells me that’s a silly question, and I nod.

  ‘No. I suppose you’ve been busy,’ I say. She’s younger than me, and stayed at home, and became the One Who Looked After Her Mother. Not that the rest of us had any choice – we had no idea Lynnie was ill, and as soon as we did, Van and I returned to help out. All the same, I do feel slightly guilty about it.

  ‘So. You’re living the life of a twenty-four-hour party person in Spain,’ she says, recapping the narrative. ‘How does that end up with you being married? Were you drunk?’

  ‘A lot of the time, yes – but not when we got married, no. There was a lot of paperwork, it was actually quite a long, drawn-out process to make it all legal. Kind of wish I’d skipped it now, but such is life – if you’re going to make a hideous, life-altering mistake, you might as well do it properly …’

  ‘Why was it such a mistake?’ she asks, and Iknowthat her over-active imagination is working hard to fill in the gaps with all kinds of terrors.

  ‘He didn’t sell me into slavery or keep me chained up in a cellar, don’t worry,’ I reply quickly. ‘Bad things happened, but nothing like that. I met Seb in the bar where I worked. He’d come in every night, and we’d flirt and chat and he’d buy me drinks. I’d drink the drinks. Then eventually he started staying after closing time, helping me clear up, and drink more drinks, and then we’d go dancing, and we’d take some pills, and then … well, I suppose it was a relationship based on lust and highs. The problem with highs is that there has to be a low at some point.’

  ‘What happened, Auburn?’

  ‘Shit happened, Willow,’ I snap back. I hadn’t been prepared for this when I woke up this morning, and I hadn’t been lying when I said I’d buried it all. It’s an episode of my life that was so crazy, so out of control, that I can’t really cope with revisiting it.

  ‘Okay,’ she replies quickly, reaching out and slipping her hand into mine, squeezing my fingers as she senses my genuine anguish. ‘It’s all right. Is it why you came back? Why you went back to college?’

  I gaze off at bay, and chew my lip, and squeeze her fingers in return.

  ‘That’s over-simplifying it, but in a way, yes. When things fell apart between us – pretty spectacularly, as you’d imagine – it made me think about my life. It made me think I’d made a mess of it. That I needed to change. That I needed less excitement and less highs and less lows. I needed a plateau. So I ran away, back to London, where I dossed around for a while before I decided to go and study. The rest, you know. And I think that’s it for now … please don’t nag me for more, and please don’t feel hurt. I’m not talking about it because I can’t, not because I want to keep secrets from you, okay?’

  ‘Okay. I get it. That’s fine. You can talk to me about it when you’re ready. Just one more question …’

  I nod, giving her permission to ask, and already knowing what the question is going to be.

  ‘Why,’ she says, calmly, ‘if it’s all over, and you haven’t seen him for years, and it’s all in the past … why haven’t you divorced him?’

  I was indeed right. That was the question I’d been expecting. And to be fair it’s one I’ve asked myself hundreds of times over the years. One I’ve never been able to answer. It’s complicated, and many-layered, and fraught with emotional and practical potholes. I could explain all of this to her, but I can’t bring myself to go there. Not yet. I need to keep it simple, for both our sakes.

  ‘I think,’ I say, eventually. ‘it’s because I’m a bit of a knob, sis.’

  ‘Ah,’ she replies, wisely. ‘The bit of a knob defence. Well … I can’t argue with you on that one …’

  Chapter 3

  Willow eventually rejoins the ladies inside the café, and I decide not to. I feel shaken and stirred, much like my martinis, and can’t face the thought of them all looking at me in that concerned and curious way. I feel like enough of a freak as it is, without parading it in front of the cake collective.

  None of them would judge, or push too hard, or be anything other than kind and understanding. They’ve all had complicated lives, with ex husbands and dead husbands and imaginary husbands and loss and pain and damage, and they’ve all managed to somehow rebuild. Here, in Budbury, where the rebuilding of shattered lives seems to be something of a regional speciality.

  I know that if I fell, they’d spread their arms out and catch me like a big fluffy mattress. I care about them, and I like them, and I trust them. I’m just not 100 per cent sure I feel the same way about myself, at least not all the time. I’m trying to be a better person – staying rooted, staying with a family that needs me, doing a job that matters. Trying not to flake out and run. Trying to be my best self, as they might say on an American panel show.

  But my best self is feeling somewhat battered right now, and wants to sneak away. In the Olden Days, I’d have snuck away to another continent – but my life is here. Lynnie is here. Willow is here. Finn is here.

  I’ve been sitting on the table, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine on my face in that way you do when it first comes back after winter, wonder
ing what to do next. The pharmacy is closed for the day in honour of Laura’s party. Lynnie’s away. I don’t want to go back inside. I have a very rare free afternoon ahead of me, and until I think about Finn, have no idea what to fill it with.

  As soon as I do think about Finn, I smile. This is a strange new feeling for me – the very thought of a man making me grin. Not just in a ‘phwoar, he’d get it’ kind of way – though that’s there as well. But also because he’s funny and kind and patient and strong in all manner of ways. Physically, yes – he’s a bear of a man – but also in subtler ways. He’s one of those people everyone pays attention to, even though he never raises his voice. A natural leader, I suppose, who might in an alternative reality have been some big cheese in the army, or elected as Boss of the Entire World.

  In this reality, he runs Briarwood, Tom’s school for grown-up brainiacs. It only opened last year, and initially he tried running it himself, but there were too many problems – like the fact that supremely clever people are sometimes also supremely stupid. There were fires, and meltdowns, and minor explosions, and crises involving re-enactments of famous Jedi battles using real glass light tubes.

  Eventually, Tom – who is silly rich because he invents things I don’t understand and have no interest in – decided to get someone in to manage the place. And the people who lived there.

  I was involved in the interviewing process, mainly because I insisted, and Finn got the job. That was months ago, and we’ve been together for two of them. Two whole months, and so far, not a single crack has started to show – which is all the proof you need that Finn Jensen is indeed some kind of superior life form. If he’s put up with me for this long, he’s possibly eligible for sainthood.

  I set off on what I know will be a long walk – Briarwood is outside the village, at the top of a hill, surrounded by the kind of wilderness Bear Grylls would find a challenge. I can’t drive though, due to my alcohol intake, and anyway the trek will do me good.