Sunshine at the Comfort Food Café

by Debbie Johnson

  We were planning on redecorating it, but Mum’s diagnosis overtook us, and it remains much as it was back in the day. There are still two single beds, still two blue duvet covers, still a thick line in yellow duct tape down the middle of the room where Van and Angel demarcated their turf. Van’s side is draped with tatty-edged posters of grunge bands from Seattle, and Angel’s with his Cameron Diaz shrine. I’m not sure it’s possible that it still smells of sweaty socks and puberty, but somehow it seems to.

  I walk into the kitchen, and make each of us a mug of tea. Auburn follows me through, boots off, revealing feet clad in Little Miss Naughty socks.

  ‘I swear it still pongs in that room …’ she says, wrinkling her nose. A-ha. It’s not just me.

  She wanders around the cottage, holding her tea, investigating. I realise this must be very odd for her as well – being back here after so long. I don’t think much has changed – there’s just a lot less clutter. She stares at the framed family photos on the walls, smiles at Mum’s paper flower arrangements, and inspects our DVD collection.

  ‘This is weird.Since when did you guys become such big fans of Hannah Montana?’

  I shrug, and sip my tea.

  ‘She finds them relaxing,’ I say, glancing at our stacks of boxed sets. ‘What did you expect? That we sat at home watching Still Alice on repeat every night?’

  ‘I don’t know what I expected, Willow, and it wasn’t a criticism, okay? This isn’t going to work if you’re so bloody defensive all the time. I’m going outside to blacken my lungs. Come if you like.’

  It’s hard to storm off when you’re wearing Little Miss socks, but she does her best. I follow her through into the garden, and sit next to her on the bench.

  That almost-full moon is hanging low and yellow, casting an eerie glow over the vegetable patch and Frank’s fields beyond. Superwurzel is looking fine though, and I know he’ll keep us safe.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say eventually, as she smokes. ‘You’re right. I am defensive. But old habits die hard, and I’m used to needing to defend myself. It’s not like we had a dream relationship as kids, is it?’

  ‘No,’ she replies, tapping ash into the saucer she’s brought out with her. ‘I was a grade A bitch. But we’re not kids any more, are we? So maybe I can try being less of a bitch, and you can try not to snap into combat mode every time I open my mouth. How does that sound? And why have you got pink hair now? It looks weird as shit in the moonlight, and I’m actually a bit scared of you right now.’

  I pull a horror-movie face, and let out a villainous cackle. A small one, though, because I don’t want to risk waking Mum up.

  Auburn’s still waiting for an answer on the hair front, and I suppose it’s as good a time as any to start being the caring, sharing sister I ought to be. It’s a harmless enough story, but for some reason I’ve never told anybody.

  The day I walked into the café with neon pink hair, Cherie simply looked at me, nodded, and said: ‘Suits you, love – get some nice new lipstick to match.’ I suppose between the nose ring and the boots and my generally random wardrobe choices, people weren’t at all surprised when I changed my hair from its usual light brown. For sure, nobody asked me why.

  ‘It’s for Mum,’ I tell Auburn, as I watch the glowing red tip of her cigarette move around in the darkness. ‘So she knows who I am.’

  ‘What do you mean? Explain further,’ she instructs.‘And in simple words, as it’s possible that I’m slightly drunk.’

  I think she might be – she definitely drank enough wine in the café, once we’d rejoined the curious hordes – but she hides it well. I wonder how much practice she’s had at that, and it makes me sad for her.

  ‘Okay – well, I’m guessing you know something about Alzheimer’s from your training and your work?’

  She nods.

  ‘Then you know it’s very unpredictable. Some people struggle with physical coordination. Some have problems with speech. Pretty much everyone has issues with memory – sometimes just words, or actions, or finding their way around. With Mum, she tends to remember things from the past really vividly – but her timeframes get messed up. She’ll remember me as a little girl, but sometimes not know who I am as an adult. That’s not nice for me, but it can be terrifying for her – sharing her life with a person who can be a stranger to her.

  ‘So we’ve tried various techniques. Her nurse and psychologist have been really good, and suggested things to use. She has a notepad, and fills it with pictures and keepsakes and her life story. And in the notepad, she also fills in important stuff – addresses, phone numbers, that kind of thing.

  ‘One of the ways she seems to locate people in her brain is by association. Like, she sees a small child with curly blonde hair, and she thinks it’s Angel. Or people with red hair, she thinks they’re you. So I thought perhaps I’d try and use that to our advantage, by giving myself hair that nobody else has. In the front of all her notepads, she always writes ‘Willow is my daughter. Willow is the girl with the pink hair’. So when she looks at me, eventually, she’ll figure it out.’

  Auburn is silent for a while, as she thinks it through.

  ‘Does it work?’ she asks, eventually.

  ‘Not all the time, no. If she doesn’t look in her notepad, for instance. Or if she thinks I’m Joanna. But a lot of the time, yeah, it does. She knows I’m the one with the pink hair. It makes me different from everyone else, and that helps. I did make a bit of an error a while back, where I gave Cherie and Laura some pink tips, but luckily that didn’t result in her thinking a woman in her seventies was her daughter – that would have been confusing for us all.’

  Auburn sips her tea, and stubs out her cigarette, and nudges me with her shoulder.

  ‘That,’ she says, firmly, ‘is pure genius. And anyway – it really suits you. I think you should always have pink hair. Now, sis, I’m going to bed. I’ll probably dream of Cameron Diaz singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, so wake me up if I start screaming …’

  Chapter 18

  I am sitting in a pub. Drinking a pint of lager. With my friends.

  This might not seem overly exciting, but for me, it’s something of a revelation. I mean, I get out every now and then, but usually I have Mum with me, or I’m dashing around watching the clock.

  Tonight, I am not watching the clock. Well, I am – but only so I can keep track of when it might be last orders, so I don’t miss my chance for another pint. I seem to have turned into an alcoholic after two hours of freedom.

  This newfound freedom is one of the very nice side effects of my new circumstances. Auburn has been here for four days now, and we’ve started to settle into each other’s company. When I say settle, I mean we’ve reduced the bickering, and been at least partially united in our common goal – Mum.

  It’s not been easy for my big sister, and I’ll say this for her – she’s grown up a heck of a lot in the last few years. Way more than anyone should. I’m guessing some stuff has happened to her, some stuff she doesn’t want to talk about, and that’s fine by me. For the time being, we’re focusing on Lynnie, and life as it evolves. Maybe there’ll be time to catch up properly at some point but for now, it’s one day at a time, sweet Jesus.

  She’s been introduced to Carole and the team at the day centre, and even agreed to join in with their frantic fundraising activities; she’s met Jackie, the carer we sometimes use, and she’s talked to Katie in some foreign health-speak language I suspect they were making up to prove that nurses and pharmacists are special snowflakes.

  Mum, as usual, has had her up days and her down days. There was an almighty battle of wills over her medication, which she declared was poison – she even drew a skull and crossbones on the pill box.

  That one was eventually only won when Auburn persuaded her they were homeopathic, putting them in a new pill box and spritzing it with lavender oil. I felt bad about that – about lying to her, about manipulating her, about treating her like a child having a tantrum. She’s
my mum and it doesn’t feel respectful, but she needs to take the tablets. Auburn knows more about what they do than me, and she’s insistent they will be helping.

  Mum also lost her notepad briefly, which sent her into a downward spiral for hours while we turned the house upside down searching for it. She was convinced ‘that boy from the caravan’ had broken in and stolen it. We have no idea who the boy from the caravan is but to her, he’s very real, and obviously based on either a genuine memory or a jumble of snippets of memories. We found the notepad under her yoga mat, where she’d hidden it the day before.

  On the plus side, today had been a very good day. She spoke to us both completely lucidly at breakfast, asking about our plans for the day and laughing at our surprised expressions when she voluntarily walked up to her pill box, chose the right day, and took the right tablets. I did feel a twinge of guilt when she sniffed it appreciatively though.

  ‘Don’t worry, girls,’ she said, scribbling away on her pad of Post-it notes. ‘I’m feeling groovy today. Living the sweet life – like Zack and Cody. That’s spelled S-U-I-T-E, you know, because they live in a hotel and get up to all kinds of shenanigans! Anyway – here’s my little reminders all sorted.’

  With that, she leaned over the table, and slapped a Post-it note each on both our foreheads. I stared at Auburn, and she stared at me, and for a moment it felt like one of those weird party games where you have to ask each other questions to figure out what’s written on your face.

  ‘Am I male or female?’ asked Auburn, obviously thinking the same thing as me.

  ‘Yours says “Daughter Number One – Auburn”. What does mine say?’

  She screwed up her eyes, as though trying to decipher the writing, and replied: ‘Yours says “Daughter Number Two – Willow – the Inferior One”.’

  ‘It doesn’t say that, does it?’ I asked, flicking a spoonful of muesli at her face and watching it splatter on her nose.

  The day continued in a similar vein – quite a lot of fun, in other words. Auburn and Mum came with me to the café, but then went off to spend the day together, strolling the cliff pathways and doing some shopping and even going on one of Sam’s nature walks down on the beach.

  By the time I got home, they were both crashed out on the sofa, bare-footed, in various stages of snooze with an episode of Shameless playing on the TV. Definitely not Disney. Must be the Auburn effect.

  I crept around in the kitchen unpacking the leftovers that Laura sent me home with, making myself some tea and clearing up. Having Auburn here was strange – good in many ways, unnerving in others. It had also massively increased the amount of tidying up I have to do, as the woman seems incapable of putting milk back in the fridge or washing a mug.

  I try not to focus on such trivialities, because life is way too short to argue over housework, and because, I tell myself, she’ll be gone again soon, back to London, and her real life. This is just a visit, so there’s no point getting upset about what’s wrong – or relying too much on what’s right.

  I was drinking my tea, and reading a message from Tom on my phone when Auburn walked into the room, stretching her arms over her head and yawning loudly. Her shiny hair was tied up in a pony tail, and I reached out to swish it from side to side.

  ‘Your pony tail actually looks like it belongs on a pony,’ I said, closing my screen down. ‘A nice shiny chestnut. One of those ponies that shits a lot and bites people’s hands when they offer them apples.’

  ‘Yep, that’s me,’ she answered, baring her teeth and whinnying. ‘Who was on the phone?’

  ‘Nobody was on the phone. Somebody was on the text.’

  ‘Oooh. I bet it was Tom. If it was anybody else, you’d have said who. You’d have been, like “oh, it was Laura”, or “oh, it was Cherie”, or “oh, it was Brad Pitt”. You always go a bit moony-eyed and mysterious when it’s Tom.’

  I glared at her, and started wiping down the surfaces, giving some real consideration to slapping her across the smug chops with the soggy cloth. Mainly because she was right.

  ‘What did he want?’ she persisted, actually putting the milk away in the fridge. Probably just to annoy me.

  ‘He wanted to know if I was going to the pub tonight. Some of the others are and they invited him, but he probably won’t go if I don’t.’

  ‘Is he shy?’

  ‘Yeah, he is, actually. Do you have a problem with that?’

  ‘No,’ she’d replied, picking my phone up from the counter and running away with it. ‘But I do have a problem with you moping around the kitchen cleaning when you could be getting hammered with sexy geek boy …’

  I chased her through the kitchen, into the hallway, and out through the back door, Bella following us, tail wagging as she sensed a game afoot. We played a small instalment of dodge-the-scarecrow, and I almost caught her when she tripped over a potted lavender bush by the patio, but she was too nimble for me to get her in time. It was always the same when we were kids.

  After dashing around the garden shrieking and laughing, she finally came to a standstill, hands on hips, out of puff. She passed the phone back and said: ‘Wow. I’m knackered after that. I really need to pack in the ciggies. There – all sorted. You’ll meet them all there at eight. I’ll stay in with Mum. You’re welcome!’

  I snatched the phone back, and quickly flicked through to my messages. She’d tried to keep it simple, but I suspected had blown it with a giant row of alternating kisses, smiley faces and winky devil emojis at the end. Sure enough, a reply landed immediately: ‘Is this actually you Willow?’

  That was the perfect moment to back out, of course. All I needed to do was answer, ‘no, my sister stole my phone, sorry I can’t make it tonight.’

  My fingers were hovering over the keypad when Auburn spoke.‘Don’t. Don’t cancel. Go to the pub for goodness’ sake. You deserve a night out, Willow, and we’ll be fine here. I know it doesn’t come naturally, but try and trust me – if there are any problems, I’ll call you straightaway. Go on. Have a shower, put some nice smellies on, treat yourself to your favourite Docs. I’ll hold down the fort, I promise.’

  I think it was the thought of the smellies that did it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a really long, luscious soak. With bubbles and oil and maybe even one of those bath bombs that sheds fragrant petals in the water. These days I’m usually more of a quick shower kind of girl, always keeping an ear out for what’s going on in the rest of the house.

  But with Mum dozing, and Auburn here, I could actually make a bit of time for myself. Maybe even – drum roll please – shave my legs. The weather’s hotting up, and I didn’t want people to mistake me for a St Bernard when I wear skirts.

  So, fully buffed, polished, exfoliated and coated in lovely shea butter body cream, I was waiting for Tom to collect me at 8 p.m. at the end of the lane. We’d changed the arrangement to that because he wanted to show me his new car, which he’d bought to avoid cramming the camper van around narrow country lanes.

  I’d asked him to collect me away from the cottage to avoid Mum and Auburn looking at us out of the window, and my sister running outside singing ‘Willow and Tommy, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G …’

  Tom’s new car was a shiny red Fiat 500, and he looked frankly ridiculous driving it. He could barely squeeze his head in beneath the roof space.

  ‘Hello Noddy!’ I said, as I climbed in.‘Busy day in Toytown?’

  ‘Very busy, thank you Big Ears,’ he replied, sniffing and staring at me as I fastened my seatbelt.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s the smell of clean woman. You’re probably not used to it.’

  ‘It’s lovely. I feel a bit giddy. I’m not sure I’ll be able to drive.’

  ‘Man up, Mulligan – I am in need of beer.’

  He’d given me a little salute, and done as he was told. Now, two hours later, I am on my fourth drink, and feeling decidedly tipsy. I don’t drink very much, to be honest – at parties,
and every now and then at the café if we’re all feeling sociable, but not at home, and rarely in the pub.

  I find that I’m enjoying the novelty. Enjoying being here, in the Horse and Rider, surrounded by chatter and warmth and the hustle and bustle of human companionship. The village pub is packed, as usual, its long wooden-topped bar surrounded by men in cords and plaid shirts perched on stools; its various nooks and crannies filled with tables of locals and tourists.

  Our own corner of the room is especially convivial. Cal and Zoe are squashed together, holding hands and celebrating the fact that Martha’s teachers have suggested she should apply for Oxford. This is quite a turnaround for Martha, who until only quite recently was bunking off school and skulking around Bristol with squatters. Understandably, the two of them are pleased – and in Cal’s case, amazed. He’s a clever bloke – one of those men who can build sheds and fix engines and, as we saw with Becca last year, actually deliver babies.

  He’s not, however, ‘book’ clever, as he puts it. Martha’s mum, who died before they moved here, was by all accounts book clever enough for both of them – and they’re thrilled that Martha seems to be following suit. Or, as Zoe said, ‘doing anything at all that doesn’t involve me being on first-name terms with the local police’.

  Laura and Matt are here, and Matt has been talking to Tom about Rick Grimes. He thinks the issues with other dogs will be helped by neutering, which makes all the other men at the table gulp down some of their ale and look uncomfortable.

  He’s also going to try some obedience classes, so that Rick will respond more readily to ‘sit’, ‘heel’ and ‘down’, even when another dog is around. He even has a plan to borrow some very calm, non-aggressive dogs from a friend, and do sessions where Rick is given a treat and encouragement every time he sees them, so he starts to associate other dogs with good things that taste of bacon, rather than bad things that need destroying.