I walk over to a nearby table, and within seconds my sister has joined me, Midgebo hot on her tail. He’s a big, overgrown lummox of a thing now – with the size of an adult dog, but the mentality of a puppy still. I notice that even he hasn’t escaped the Christmas craft onslaught, and his shiny black coat is glittering green and red. I smile as he snuffles my hands, licking and nipping as he does a thorough check to make sure I don’t have any food hidden about my person. Disappointed, he collapses at my feet with a big doggy sigh, and immediately goes to sleep.
Bella Swan, Willow’s Border Terrier, is snoozing with eyes half open at Lynnie’s side, wearing a tartan coat and a superior expression. She is one inscrutable dog.
Laura passes me a hot chocolate, the mug brimming over with cream and marshmallows, and I hold it between my hands to warm them up. It’s one of those gorgeous, fresh days you sometimes get in December – frosty and cold and clear, bright sunlight streaming down to collide with the sea, the only sounds those of seagulls and us.
Sam is wheeling the boxes up from the carpark on a trolley and unloading them. I look away from him. I’m not really in the mood for admiring his masculine hefting powers at the moment.
‘You all right?’ Laura asks, straight away.
‘I’m fine,’ I reply, for what feels like the millionth time that day.
‘Really?’ she says, concern tinging her voice.
‘Definitely,’ I answer. ‘Maybe.’
She raises an eyebrow at me and I have to laugh.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That’s my new thing. I answer all questions with the names of Oasis albums.’
‘That’s okay. As long as you don’t look back in anger…’
I pull a face, knowing this could go on all day, and trying very hard to think of a pun that involves champagne supernovas. I come up short, and just shrug. I could say something about cigarettes and alcohol, but that would be a bit too close to the bone right now.
I notice Sam opening the huge boxes with a Stanley knife, and Matt emerges from the café, wearing his Hunky Outdoorsman outfit of khakis and fleece. He’s carrying an air pump and a mallet, and looking quite macho. I don’t even have to look at Laura to know she’s grinning.
‘Stop drooling,’ I say, ‘it’s messing up your hot chocolate.’
‘I can’t help it,’ she admits with a giggle. ‘There’s just something about men with tools, don’t you think?’
‘I think most men are tools,’ I reply, sticking my tongue out at Sam in a way that can really only be described as childish.
‘Oh dear – trouble in paradise?’ she asks, sipping her chocolate and looking at me in a manner that makes me feel like I’ve just arrived in Guantanamo Bay. She’s going to waterboard me with cocoa.
‘Nothing to worry about. It’s just me and my Christmas allergy. You know how I get. What’s in those boxes anyway?’
‘I don’t know…’ she replies, narrowing her eyes at me to say she knows I’m changing the subject, and will not be distracted. Except, of course, she is. We both look on as Sam manages to open the box and holds up… well, a pair of shiny white wellington boots.
Each and every box seems to be full of them, in all kinds of sizes. Cherie looks on and claps her hands in glee, way more excited than I’ve ever seen anyone get about winter footwear.
‘Oh!’ says Laura, in a lightbulb-going-off tone of voice. ‘I think I know what it is… Frank says there’ll be snow for the wedding. And none of us argue with Frank when it comes to the weather; he’s like the unofficial Met Office around here. So, knowing Cherie, she’s bought everyone boots to wear…’
I shake my head at the sheer insanity of this place. Seriously, stuff happens here that would just never happen anywhere else – and everyone just acts as though it’s totally normal. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.
Cherie holds a pair of the boots aloft, shaking them against the sunlight, and sings, loudly and badly: ‘It’s a, nice day for a…’
‘White wellie!’ shout Willow and Sam and, uncharacteristically, Katie as well. Lord help me. We’ve moved on from Oasis to Billy Idol. Is nothing sacred?
Cherie laughs her deep, rumbling laugh, the one that seems to make her whole body shake and her grey-streaked plait ripple down her back, and starts to tear them out of their plastic packaging, passing each one to the arts-and-crafts table. Willow and Lynnie promptly get busy with glue guns and glitter and spray-on snow, starting to decorate each of the boots. There are a lot of boots and I suspect they’ll be at it for days. Again, I shake my head – I have no words left.
Normally, I’d perhaps find all this eccentricity endearing. But I’m not in the best of moods, and am half wishing I was back in Manchester, watching people puke up kebabs and getting yelled at by lads in souped-up Ford Fiestas who run red lights and listening to the gentle urban lullaby of car horns and sirens and a dozen different languages being gabbled at the same time. Right now, that would make a lot more sense to me.
Even when you’re surrounded by people in the city, you can still feel alone there – which I think is kind of what I need right now.
Matt and Sam are busy unfurling the snowmen, and Cherie is telling them where she wants them. I hope they’re going to be well weighted down, the wind gets vicious up here when it sweeps up from the bay. I’m also glad that the windows in Cherie’s apartment face out to the sea, rather than the garden – I can only imagine the nightmares I’d have if I went to sleep with giant grinning snowman faces looking in on me. The perverts.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ asks Laura again, reaching out to pat my hand.
‘Yeah. Honest. I’m just… really tired, you know? It’s making me a bit irritable. Well, even more irritable. Nothing to worry about.’
Even as I say it, I stifle a yawn. It’s true – I am tired. Exhausted in fact. Which is really odd, as I’ve been sleeping better than I have for years. Between the fresh air and the heart-to-hearts and the sex, I’ve been drifting off easily, and sleeping for whole nights at a time. I should be feeling pumped up and full of energy, and instead I feel like a big lump of play dough, with no shape of my own.
Laura nods and I smile to reassure her. I decide that I will take myself off to bed as soon as I’ve finished my hot chocolate, and leave this lot to their Christmas-themed madness. Lizzie and Nate will be here from school soon, and I have no doubt that they’ll happily spend a few hours spraying boots and helping out. Nobody needs me around, with my negative vibes and low-level misery. They might catch it. It’ll be like the Ebola virus of moods.
Partly it’s the depressingly unsatisfying conversation I had with Sam, and the way we have left it unresolved. Partly it’s just me… me being tired. Me being grumpy. Me feeling crowded. Me being me, basically.
We look on as Saul toddles over to Matt, holding out one glitter-glued hand to the half-blown-up snowman. He’s wide-eyed and unbelieving as he watches it get bigger and bigger before his eyes.
Matt gestures him closer, and lets him have a go on the air pump. Of course, Matt is doing all the work, but he lets Saul put his tiny foot on the pedal thing with him, pretending that he’s doing it instead. With each whoosh of air rushing into the snowman’s body, Saul gets more and more excited, squealing and laughing and clapping his hands together. Matt ruffles his tufty blonde hair and I hear Laura sighing next to me.
‘He’s so good with kids…’ she says, leaning her face into her cupped hands, looking completely blissed out. I bite back a retort and just nod. Because while I’m just being me, she’s just being her – and that’s the way her mind works. She’s all about the love and the family and the happiness.
Sam is using the mallet to nail down the long ropes that further attach the snowmen to the ground, and once Saul gets tired of pumping, he goes over to him. Predictably enough, Sam – being the all-round decent guy he is – squats down with the kid, and lets him hold onto the mallet with him. Together, they start banging the pegs in, with everyone cheeri
ng them on as they do it.
It is, of course, adorable. And it twists something up inside me so hard I feel like my guts are being tied into knots. If I’d had my baby, he wouldn’t be toddling around looking cute any more, obviously. He – or she – would have been practically grown-up by now. Who knows what would have happened? What they might have been like? I’ll never know, and suddenly I need to be alone even more than I did before.
‘Oh, look,’ says Laura, oblivious to my mental state. ‘Isn’t that sweet? Don’t you think Sam will make a lovely dad, too?’
It is exactly the wrong to say to me right now, and she unwittingly pushes me over a ledge I didn’t even realise I’d been teetering on. I feel suffocated, stifled, overwhelmed by all the imperfectly perfect people around me, by their happiness and their togetherness and their sugary-sweet niceness.
‘You know, Laura,’ I say, feeling my own face twist into something angry and unfair, ‘I don’t have kids. I’ll probably never have kids. And I am getting sick of people behaving as though the only way a woman can be judged is by what comes out of her vagina. I’m off to bed.’
I stomp away, not even looking back to see how she reacts. I don’t want to know how she reacts. I don’t want to see Sam looking gorgeous and fatherly. I don’t want to see Katie looking proud. I don’t want to see Willow laughing with her mum, or Cherie stalking around the garden like a happy hippie.
I don’t want to see any of it. I know I’ve been a bitch. And I know I’ll regret it. But God, I need some space.
Chapter 20
I wake up with what feels horribly like a hangover – but isn’t a hangover – and with what feels horribly like a dog licking my face. Which actually is a dog licking my face.
I screw up my eyes, and sit up. Midgebo takes this as an invitation, and jumps up onto the bed with me. He starts to burrow his way under the duvet, where he takes a very strange amount of interest in my toes. Hey, could be worse.
I let out the world’s longest yawn, and open one eye at a time. I’m extremely ashamed of my behaviour yesterday – at least I presume it was yesterday – and am not looking forward to facing the music. I have bridges to build, and apologies to make.
I also, it seems, have coffee to drink.
Sam is sitting on the edge of the bed, holding forth a big, steaming mug of what smells like the good stuff Laura brews up downstairs. I take it from him, and take a small sip before even daring to speak.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say straight after. ‘I acted like a complete cow yesterday. I was really tired and a bit messed up and I took it out on everyone else. I am officially a pain in the bum, I know.’
I am trying to look serious while I say this – because I do one hundred per cent mean it – but Midgebo is tickling my toes so much that I can’t help wriggling and grinning at the same time. Sam calls him, and his big, black head pops out from beneath the covers, a confused look on his doggy face. He jumps down off the bed, and goes off to have a good sniff around the room instead.
‘It’s okay,’ says Sam, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. ‘I already knew you were a pain in the bum. And I didn’t help matters, either. It was just our first row, that’s all. It happens to everyone. In fact it’s a magical moment, like the first time you fart in bed together, or unexpectedly belch in someone’s face just as you’re about to kiss them. All part of life’s rich tapestry.’
I smile, and wipe the sleep from my eyes. I glance at my watch and see it’s after 10am. I have slept solidly for almost twenty hours, and I still feel exhausted. Insomniac, I’m exhausted. Heavy sleeper, I’m exhausted. I just can’t win.
‘Thank you,’ I say simply. ‘That’s very kind of you. As is the coffee. Is Laura downstairs?’
‘She is,’ he replies, standing up and whistling to Midgebo, who has found something interesting to chew under one of the chairs. I grimace when I realise it’s one of my trainers. Sam follows my gaze, and tells Midge to ‘drop’. He does it immediately – some of Matt’s training is paying off – and looks up at me guiltily. Damn right he should be guilty. I love my Skechers.
‘I’m going down and taking this fella for a walk. I’ll give you five minutes to be out of bed and ready to stretch your legs, misery guts.’
‘Okay,’ I agree, gulping more coffee and shooing him away. If I get out of bed while he’s still here, I’ll be naked. And if I’m naked, things will start that will definitely take more than five minutes to finish.
Once he’s gone, I quickly pull on some jeans and a baggy woolly sweater, my trainers – one of them slightly soggy – and grab my scarf, hat and gloves. These dog walks on the beach are lovely, but bloody cold.
I make my way down the stairs, still slurping the coffee as I go, and emerge into the cafe. Laura is busy creating something that seems to involve 28 metric tonnes of demerara sugar, frowning as she goes. It’s her ‘mad genius’ face, and I know there’ll be something delicious waiting when I get back.
I walk up behind her, peer annoyingly over her shoulder, and take a big sniff.
‘What is it?’ I ask, ‘and can I stick my finger in that bowl?’
‘It’s going to be the sauce for my toffee pudding, and if you stick your finger anywhere near that bowl, I’ll chop it off and throw it in the stew.’
I back off quickly. You just never know with Laura when she’s in a kitchen state of mind.
She wipes her hands down on her apron, and turns to face me. One strand of curly green hair has escaped its bobble, and lies at the side of her warm face like an alien tendril. She raises her eyebrows, and waits for me to speak. It’s not like we haven’t done this before – we’ve done it many times. I mess up, she tolerates it, I apologise. It’s one of our favourite sister-act routines. I’m getting tired of it myself though, and resolve to at least try and stop doing things I need to apologise for.
‘I know,’ I say, holding my hands up. ‘I was a prime bee-atch. I didn’t mean it, and I’m really sorry. I genuinely was very tired, I’d had a minor disagreement with the surfer dude, and I’d had to go through the doors of Christmas Blunderland to buy giant snowmen. It was… Things That Annoy Becca Overload. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, and I really am sorry.’
She is quiet for a moment, biting her lip as she thinks about what I’ve said.
‘That’s all right,’ she eventually replies. ‘You know I forgive you. But are you okay? Really? I mean… do I need to be worried about you?’
‘Of course,’ I answer, grinning. ‘What else would you be? I live to keep you on your toes. But no – I’m perfectly fine. And I have a hot date with a black Labrador. Save me some of that sticky-toffee pudding.’
She nods, still not looking completely convinced, but goes back to her baking as I head out to the garden to catch up with Sam and the dog. The dog is busily peeing on one of the snowmen. Luckily Sam isn’t.
We make our way down to the beach, and Sam lets Midgebo off the lead. We walk in a straight line along the edge of the water, and Midge runs around in giant squiggles, attacking sticks, pouncing on seaweed, and on one occasion having a romantic interlude with a toy poodle that struts past looking fancy.
Sam and I are quiet-ish, mainly laughing at the dog’s antics, occasionally throwing his ball for him, and dodging especially fast-moving waves that sizzle up the sand with surprising speed. It’s another freezing-but-glorious day, and quite a few people are down at the beach, with dogs and kids and kites.
It is peaceful and beautiful and perfect, and I make a very unlike-me decision to simply enjoy it all. After about half an hour, we take a break, sitting on a big boulder by the cliff edges and breaking out the coffee flask that Sam, ever prepared, has brought with him.
‘Gorgeous, isn’t it?’ he says, nodding out to sea.
‘It is. I can see why you love it here.’
‘Can’t imagine being anywhere else now. But… it won’t be quite the same when you’ve gone.’
‘No,’ I reply, ‘it’ll
be even better. You’ll definitely get a lot more sleep.’
‘True. And I won’t have to watch any more episodes of The Walking Dead.’
‘What?’ I squeal, laying a hand on my heart as though I’m offended. ‘I thought you were loving it?’
‘No. I’m secretly terrified every time I have to go and use the loo. And the other day, I saw this guy shuffling around on the beach when I was mending some fences on the coastal path, and I was convinced for a moment he was a zombie.’
‘Was he?’
‘No. He was just drunk and trying to walk it off before he went home, but I was this close to smashing his brains out with a hammer…’
He makes a not-very-far-apart shape with his fingers, and I have to laugh. I’d kind of already known he was scared – he spent most of every episode with his face behind a cushion or making tea – but didn’t want to challenge his sense of macho by mocking him for it.
‘Well,’ I say, slipping my arm around his waist and snuggling up to him. ‘You’ll get used to it when I’m gone. I suggest you go round to Edie’s – she has every series of Strictly Come Dancing ready to go, you know…’
‘Yikes. I think that might be even worse. So, when exactly are you going back, anyway? I’m getting the last flight out to Dublin after the wedding on Christmas Eve.’
‘I think… some time in the week between Christmas Day and New Year. My mum and dad are coming down for the wedding, which will be an utter delight, so I’ll probably stay on a few days after that. But cheer up – I might come back at Easter. I’ll bring you an egg and everything.’
‘Just Cadburys, please,’ he replies, his arm gripping my shoulders. ‘I have very common tastes. None of that posh chocolate for me. And I hope you do come back. It’ll be something to look forward to.’
‘You mean on those long, lonely nights – the ones where you’re not down the pub with Matt, or out with Scrumpy Joe, or doing your night-time nature walks, or watching Anton du Beke with Edie?’
Christmas at the Comfort Food Cafe Page 14
