Christmas at the Comfort Food Cafe

by Debbie Johnson

  ‘Which series?’ I mumble, between sips of tea. I am not a huge fan – but it’s the least I can do. She’s listened to my tales of woe, and if that means I have to laugh at Len Goodman joking about pickling his walnuts, it’s still a good deal.

  ‘I think,’ she replies, holding a box up triumphantly, ‘an old one – the one where Mark Ramprakash does that lovely rhumba and goes on to win it.’

  ‘Edie, you’ve spoiled the ending now!’

  She giggles like a schoolgirl, pops in the disc, and the show begins. Unlikely as it might seem, it turns out to be one of the most peaceful evenings I’ve had in my entire life. Edie provides an insightful commentary as we watch, talking about her glory days at tea dances and the way her dad taught her to waltz when she was little and making ‘ooooh’ noises at the more revealing outfits.

  She comes out with classic comments, like ‘Mutton. Lamb. That’s all I’m saying’, and ‘That Craig Revel Horwood must have been dropped on his head as a child’, and ‘I think Arlene’s been drinking her bitchy juice this evening’ – even though she’s obviously seen this a thousand times.

  She sighs over ‘lovely’ Anton du Beke every time he appears, and calls Len a ‘silver fox’, and generally makes the whole thing much more entertaining than I could ever have imagined it could be. Honestly, she’s so funny, they should have her on Gogglebox.

  Perhaps I am feeling extra relaxed after my big confessional. Perhaps watching Peter Schmeichel try and turn his rigid body into a dancer’s grace is especially cathartic. I don’t know what it is – but eventually, I drift off to sleep.

  I don’t realise this at the time, of course – I am too busy nodding off to acknowledge it happening. But as I come back to consciousness, spread out over the whole of the sofa, covered in the tartan blanket, face coated elegantly in snoring drool, I feel… wonderful. Rested. Relieved. Ready to face the day.

  It is the first solid stretch of sleep that I have had since David died and I decided to quit all my vices cold turkey. Perhaps this was the answer after all my struggles – get rid of the vodka and the men, and simply replace them with old episodes of Strictly Come Dancing. The way I feel, it should be made available on prescription.

  My eyes feel alert – as opposed to their usual dry, exhausted, stuck-together state – and my first thought isn’t ‘ugggh, I want to die, where’s the coffee?’

  My first thought, as I look around me at the darkened living room, light creeping through the now-drawn curtains, is ‘thank God for that.’

  I know having a good night’s sleep doesn’t sound that exciting. It’s not on most party girls’ list of Top Ten Things To Do. But for me, it feels amazing – like I can think again. Breathe again. Manage to not only get through a day, but try and even enjoy it. I feel like I could run up Everest and train-surf the roof of the Orient Express and beat Serena Williams on centre court at Wimbledon, all with energy to spare.

  I stretch my arms out over my head, which is a much bigger display of physical prowess than I can usually manage in the morning, and sit upright. I glance around, and see that Edie is still here with me. She is asleep in her big armchair throne, a matching tartan blanket over her frail legs, looking like she belongs in a home for elderly angels.

  She isn’t snoring, or drooling. She looks really peaceful, and totally still. This freaks me out as I suddenly remember that Edie is ninety years old and has definitely reached the stage in her life where waking up in the morning is something you should never take for granted. In fact, she is so still, so silent, so pale, that I could almost believe she was dead…

  I jump up, almost tripping over the blanket as it falls to the floor, and dash over to her. I’m not sure what I should be doing – checking for a pulse, holding a small mirror in front of her face, whipping out a non-existent stethoscope?

  I settle for shaking her slightly by her narrow shoulders and shouting: ‘Edie! Edie, are you all right?’

  Okay, it probably wouldn’t win me any Healthcare Professional of the Year awards, but I am swamped with relief when she shudders back to life and looks up at me, squinting in understandable confusion.

  ‘Yes, dear?’ she says, giving my hand a little pat. ‘Is it time for another cuppa?’

  Chapter 13

  I return to the Comfort Food Café to find Willow in the middle of a rush. At this time of year, a rush is anything more than three tables full of customers. The main tourist season runs from Easter to the end of summer, but plenty of people still come down for autumn and for Christmas – they just don’t necessarily want to visit a windswept café perched on the side of a cliff.

  The snow didn’t settle overnight, and the footpaths have taken on a muddy tinge, the beach a deep shade of beige as the tide sweeps in. It’s cold, and damp, and fairly miserable – but the weather does nothing to detract from the fact that I feel great.

  I walk into the café and see Cherie and Frank at one table. I can tell from the fact that Cherie is wearing her apron that she’s been helping out with the cooking and is now enjoying a cuppa with her sprightly fiancé. He might be eighty, but he’s fit as the proverbial Stradivarius and still a good-looking man. They make a handsome couple, like a cover shot for Saga or something.

  I know, from Laura’s stories over the summer, that Frank lost his wife a few years ago. She’d always made him burnt bacon butties and builders’ tea for his breakfast, and after he lost her, he started coming to the café – where his comfort food of choice, that exact same brekkie, was prepared for him by Cherie and later by my sister.

  Cherie, who was also a widow, had looked after him when he needed her. In the same way she looked after Laura, and Lizzie and Nate, and the way she looks after Willow and Edie and so many more people here. She’s a one-woman care machine.

  I wander over to their table, and give her a kiss on the cheek. Just because I feel like it.

  ‘Now, now,’ says Frank, winking at me with one sparkling blue eye, ‘that’s my wife-to-be you’re interfering with, there. Don’t be coming round here with your saucy city ways.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure Cherie could teach me a thing or two about sauce, Frank,’ I reply, glancing around at the rest of the ‘crowd’.

  There is another elderly couple two tables over, both reading different sections of the newspaper and nibbling on toast; Ivy Wellkettle, who runs the local pharmacy, with her daughter Sophie; a pair of teenagers who have huge backpacks and look like they might be Spanish or Italian, and a lone mum sitting with a resigned look on her face as her toddler throws his toast soldiers on the floor. She isn’t eating herself, just repeatedly picking up the bread, and trying not to look like she’s struggling. Poor thing, she looks knackered.

  ‘That I could,’ says Cherie, ‘but I don’t want to be sharing all my secrets now, do I? Not with Frank here. A woman’s got to keep some sense of mystery about her.’

  ‘You’ll always be a mystery to me, my love,’ answers Frank, standing up and preparing to leave. ‘Now, I’d best be off. I’ve left Luke on his own in charge of the farm and I fear for his safety. Some of those cows had wild eyes this morning. I’ll see you ladies later.’

  He leans down to kiss Cherie – it’s obviously her lucky day – and strides away.

  I am still looking at the young mum, as is Cherie, now. She has long, straggly blonde hair that hasn’t seen a salon in years, and looks utterly defeated by life. The baby is male, from his clothes, and is full of all the energy his mum seems to have lost. I’ve seen this before, this transferral of vitality from mother to child, like the kid is a super-cute parasite in a bobble hat.

  ‘Looks done in, doesn’t she, poor lamb?’ says Cherie, sipping her coffee and gazing at me over the steam. ‘Willow’s finishing off the breakfast orders for the young ones over there, and I’m resting my old legs. Be a poppet and see if she needs any help?’

  It’s the sort of challenge I’d normally shy away from. Apart from Lizzie and Nate, I’ve never had much to do with kids. I’m fi
ne with them once they can talk and appreciate sarcasm, but younger than that and they slightly freak me out. I don’t know how much of this is connected to the baby I lost, and how much of it is simply that I’m not a very maternal person.

  But this morning, pumped up and full of viv, I feel up to it. I nod, and walk over to the woman and her son.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, leaning down to pick up another discarded piece of toast from the floor and adding it to the pile on the table. ‘Can I get you something to eat? It looks like this little fella has had enough…’

  The toddler looks up at me from his high-chair prison and gives me a challenging glare that immediately results in me nicknaming him Damien. Silently, of course.

  ‘Oh! No! I… I’m sorry for the mess,’ his mum replies, looking horrified at me being near her. I try not to take it personally. She has the rabbit-in-headlights expression of the sleep-deprived and fragile.

  ‘Don’t be daft. Better he makes a mess here than at home, eh? How old is he?’

  Her face immediately lights up as she starts to talk about the baby, telling me that he’s eighteen months old, called Saul, and that he’s ‘quite the character’. This, I understand, is a euphemism for ‘a complete bloody nightmare’ – but the mother code doesn’t allow her to say that out loud.

  ‘Well,’ I reply, once she’s filled me in, ‘you’d be doing us a favour if you at least had some toast for yourself as well. We’ve got too much bread in today, and it’ll only get thrown away if we don’t use it. Go on, let me get you some – on the house.’

  She still looks wary and nervous, but eventually nods her head and gives me a little smile. Saul is now happily mashing up his boiled egg with a spoon, tiny bits of shell ricocheting around him like shrapnel after a land mine’s exploded.

  I smile at them both, narrowly dodge a glob of egg yolk, and make my way through to the kitchen, where I greet Willow.

  Willow is dressed in black today, modelling a very dustbin-chic outfit that uses a lot of netting and torn lace. Her pink hair is wild and free, and she has three sets of studs in one ear and none in the other. She’s plating up food for the tourist types, and looking confused by it.

  ‘They wanted tuna paninis,’ she says, frowning. ‘At this time in the morning! And they took about sixteen of the little pots of cream for their coffee.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I say, casting a glance back out into the café. ‘Maybe they’re were-cats?’

  Her whole face changes, as though I have just solved all the mysteries of the universe at once.

  ‘That must be it! You okay to help out for a bit if we get anyone else in? Laura’s off sorting something for Cherie’s hen night, and we’ve been busier than usual. I have to get straight back to my mum as soon as lunch is done.’

  ‘Of course,’ I reply, putting a couple of slices of home-baked granary bread into the industrial-sized toaster. ‘Not a problem.’ I really am Miss Congeniality today.

  By the time Willow has delivered supplies to the Euro were-cats and the toast is done, Cherie has also decided to introduce herself to the young mum. I see that she has the demonic toddler in her arms and is walking him around the café showing him the various strange items hanging from the ceiling and letting him grab hold of mobiles with his pudgy hands.

  I put the toast on the young mum’s table, with some jam and butter and a coffee refill, and let her be. She looks like she needs a bit of time on her own, and even though she is watching Cherie and Saul as they make their slow turns around the room, I can see her visibly relax. Her breathing comes slower and deeper, and she stops biting her fingernails.

  I make myself busy in the kitchen, carrying out tasks that Willow sets me, preparing salads and slicing up cheesecakes and checking the supplies for the monstrously large and decadent hot chocolates that seem to sell so well in this weather. I only eat a couple of the Flakes, which I think is quite restrained of me.

  The mum and her baby, after about twenty minutes of peace that seems to have recharged her batteries, eventually leave. She straps him up in his pushchair, so bundled in a padded jacket and his hat that only a few inches of his face are peeking through, and waves as she goes.

  Cherie brings the plates over, and passes them to me to stack in the dishwasher.

  ‘Poor thing,’ she says, grabbing a cloth to wipe down the table with. ‘Exhausted, she is. She’s called Katie, and she’s just moved here from Bristol. Doesn’t seem to be a dad on the scene, and I suspect, from the state of her nerves, that there’s something not very pleasant gone on there. Didn’t get the whole story – but she’ll be back. We’ll make sure they’re all right. Found out she has a bit of a thing for school-dinner puddings, roly poly and the like… maybe they remind her of simpler times. We’ll get on the case and make sure there’s some spotted dick waiting for her next time she calls in.’

  As she says this, Cherie gives me a brilliantly saucy wink, which makes me laugh out loud. This, I think, watching as Katie and Saul make their way carefully down the hill, is what the Comfort Food Café is all about – helping people. And feeding them cake. Which, now I come to ponder it, pretty much amounts to the same thing anyway.

  ‘And how are you getting on, love?’ Cherie asks, leaning on the counter and raising her eyebrows at me.

  ‘I,’ I reply, pausing in my kitchen duties to give her a grin, ‘haven’t felt this good in years, to be honest, Cherie. I went round to see Edie and we ended up having a party. Stayed up all night.’

  ‘Strictly Come Dancing marathon?’ she asks, knowingly. I see I am not the first person to be trapped in Edie’s evil glitterball web.

  ‘Yes. That and a lot of tea. She’s… amazing, isn’t she?’

  ‘That she is, darling. Can’t imagine this place without her. Ready for the hen night this weekend?’

  I wrinkle my nose up as I consider that question. The hen night and the stag do are taking place at the same hotel, a country house type of affair out in the wilds of nowhere. This is, of course, an unorthodox set-up – but unorthodox is very much Cherie’s way.

  Scrumpy Joe Jones, who runs the cider cave where Lizzie works, will be coming, but his wife Joanne – who is anti-social and proud of it – isn’t, so Lizzie and Nate are staying there for the night, along with Midge. As Joanne is possibly the most frighteningly stern woman I’ve ever met, I have no doubt at all that Josh and Lizzie will be doing no illicit sneaking around rooms in the night.

  We – the Hens – will be having spa treatments and champagne teas, and the menfolk will be shooting clay pigeons and doing archery and drinking themselves stupid.

  I might be feeling good today, but I am still slightly overwhelmed by the thought of being trapped in a building with so many people – even if one of them is my sister.

  ‘Truth?’ I ask, giving the surface a vigorous wipe over, Cherie holding her arms up so I can reach it all.

  ‘Always,’ she replies.

  ‘Bit freaked out. I mean, you’re all lovely and everything, but…’

  ‘But there are a lot of us? And we’ll all be drunk and leery and dancing to Christmas songs in a big circle in a tinsel-coated function room?’

  ‘Well, I hadn’t even considered that possible scenario, but yes – I’m not a very Christmassy person.’

  ‘I’d noticed that,’ Cherie replies, looking out at her customers rather than directly at me. Giving me a little space, I think. ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘Long story. Long story, combined with natural grumpiness.’

  ‘Well, maybe you’ll tell me one day, eh?’ she asks, giving me a confident smile that leaves me in no doubt at all that she thinks I will. And she’s probably right. But there are other people to tell first – like my sister.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says, standing up straight and running her hands over her apron. ‘I best go and check on Ivy and the others while Willow has a break. Plus you’d better get a Pot Noodle out – Surfer Sam’s about to ask you for one…’

  ‘How do you know? Are you
using your sixth sense?’

  ‘No,’ she replies, smirking as she walks away, ‘one of my original five. I just saw him jogging up the hill.’

  Sure enough, seconds later Sam bursts through the doors in a cloud of steam. He’s wearing a gilet over that lycra running gear that keeps you warm in all weathers, and which also, I can’t help but notice, clings to absolutely every visible muscle in his body. Which is quite a lot of muscle.

  He looks super-fit and super-tall and so all-round super that I suck in a bit of air as he approaches me, a broad smile on his face, blue eyes sparkling. His blonde hair is damp, from the drizzle and from his exertions, and he looks tired but happy. I’m told exercise can do that for you, but so far in life I’ve never been tempted to find out.

  ‘Yo! Becca!’ he says, his attempt at an American accent completely swamped by his natural Irish. ‘Get the kettle on, woman – I’m needing me a big old pot of noodles!’

  I laugh and roll my eyes, and get a chicken-and-mushroom flavour from the cupboard, where Cherie keeps a stash of them just for Sam. Pot Noodles are his comfort food, I know from Laura – a reminder of home, where he and his multitude of sisters used to have them as a Saturday treat to give his mum a break from the endless cooking.

  I smash it up a bit with a fork, and add the boiling water. It smells alarmingly good, and I decide that I’ll have one for my tea tonight as well.

  Cherie bustles over towards us, and sniffs Sam experimentally.

  ‘No hugs for you today, my sweet,’ she says, heading back behind the counter.

  ‘Ah, come on – give a man a break!’ he says, giving her big, fake sad eyes. ‘I’m just staying in shape for you, Cherie – it’s not too late to dump Frank, you know, and go cougar!’

  Cherie guffaws at this, and shoos me out of the kitchen.

  ‘Go. We can cope just fine for a bit. Take this man away from me before I give in to temptation.’

  Sam flexes his arms to make his biceps pop, which I know is a comedic move, but still makes me close my eyes and count to ten. Maybe it’s my good night’s sleep. Maybe it’s pouring my heart out to Edie. But I am feeling incredibly… frisky, this morning.