The Comfort Food Cafe

Copyright

HarperImpulse

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2018

Copyright © Debbie Johnson 2018

Cover illustrations © Hannah George/Meiklejohn

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

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: 9780008263737

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008263744

Version: 2020-01-23

Dedication

For Terry and Norm, with love

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

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

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

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Questions & Answers

Keep Reading…

About the Author

Also by Debbie Johnson

About the Publisher

Prologue

Summer Of The Year 2000

‘It’s haunted,’ says Auburn, poking Willow so hard in her skinny ribcage that she almost falls over. She rights herself by clinging on to her brother, Angel, who is almost as skinny as her, and trying to look completely unaffected by the whole adventure.

As part of his attempt at bravado, he pushes Willow away with both hands. She’s the youngest of the siblings by several years – always smaller, always quieter, always the butt of the jokes, always on the receiving end of the pranks. Always determined to prove that she’s not the weakest link, and usually getting herself into trouble along the way.

‘No it’s not,’ says Willow, staggering a few steps along the corridor and bumping into the wood-panelled wall. It’s an old building, this, all dark wallpaper and high ceilings and ornate plasterwork. It’s big, and filled with labyrinth-like corridors full of mystery. It’s also been, for this one summer, their unofficial – and slightly terrifying – playground.

‘It’s not!’ she repeats, glaring at Auburn in defiance. ‘You can’t have only one room haunted in a whole massive house. That doesn’t make sense!’

‘Course it does,’ says Auburn, looking to her big brother for back-up, red hair flashing in the dim lighting. Van is fifteen, and the oldest of the gang. He’s already six foot tall and has the musculature of a runner bean to go with his unfashionable Nirvana T-shirt and shoulder-length grease-bomb hair. He thinks he’s really cool, which doesn’t quite make up for the fact that everyone else thinks he’s a complete dork.

Willow gazes up at him from her significantly shorter eight-year-old’s height, frowning. She’s worshipped her big brother for a long time, but is starting to suspect that he might actually be evil. He definitely smells evil. She eyes the stains on his T-shirt, knowing that in a few years’ time, as soon as she’s big enough, she’ll be expected to wear it. Hand-me-downs are a way of life for the Longville family.

All three of the younger siblings stare at Van, waiting for his pronouncement. Auburn looks fierce; Angel is biting his chubby lip and trembling, and Willow has her arms crossed defiantly over her passed-down-several-times Barney the Purple Dinosaur T-shirt.

‘It could be …’ he says, creeping towards the door at the end of the corridor, ‘… that the evil spirit only resides in this particular room. Maybe something terrible happened there.’

‘Like what?’ asks Willow, trying to sound tough but wishing she could just run away and find her mum. She knows she can’t, though – Auburn would never let her live it down. Besides, her mum is leading some kind of meditation workshop out in the garden, and she’ll kill her if she interrupts it. Well, not kill her exactly – something a bit more zen than that, but it wouldn’t be good.

‘Like,’ says Auburn, whispering into her ear, ‘someone died in there. Maybe they hung themselves from the rafters. Or maybe they were bricked up in the wall and left to starve to death. Or maybe it was a little crippled boy whose parents were ashamed of him and kept him in there his whole life, until he wasted away.’

Angel looks on the verge of tears now, his blonde curls bobbling around his full cheeks. Van is nodding wisely, as though every word Auburn has just said makes perfect sense to his almost-adult mind.

‘That’s … crap!’ replies Willow, flushing slightly as she uses what she knows is a naughty word. Not sent-to-bed naughty, like the ones Van uses that start with F, but still naughty. Somehow, though, using it gives her the strength to do what she does next.

‘Prove it, then,’ taunts Auburn, pointing at the door. ‘Go and open it and see what’s inside. If you dare.’

The door in question, just minutes ago, looked completely ordinary, but now – after her 14-year-old sister has finished creating a whole myth around it – looks utterly horrifying. Dark wood, brass handle, empty keyhole. Practically the gates to hell.

It’s just a door, Willow tells herself, glaring at Auburn with the sort of hatred that only a younger sister can feel for someone she loves.

It’s just a door, to a room, that isn’t haunted. Because ghosts don’t exist, and even if they did, they might be friendly, like Casper.

She draws in a ragged breath, and tucks her straggly brown hair behind her ears. More than anything right now, she wishes they hadn’t started this game. They know most of the kids who live here, in this place – a place where kids with no mum or dad come to live. They know their names, and their stories, and they play with them while their own mum is working, doing art classes or yoga lessons or helping them with their reading.

They know most of them – but they don’t know who lives in that room. The door has never been open, the child who lives in there has never been seen, and the only evidence they have of his existence is the occasional shadowy glimpse through the window outside.

That’s what started it all – this debate about whether he was real, or a ghost. It was fun to start off with – but now? Now it’s very scary indeed. Willow doesn’t really want to open the door. She doesn’t want to see the spirit of someone hanging from the rafters with their purple tongue bulging out, or encounter a half-starved child who’s sure to be a bit angry with the world.

But she wants Auburn to see her weakness even less. Auburn is always mean to her, and always manages to hide it from their mum, which makes Willow look like she’s always moaning about nothing. If she backs out now, she’ll never let her forget it. Right on cue, she hears her big sister start making chicken noises behind her, and within seconds, the boys have joined in, flapping their arms like wings and clucking away in a poultry-inspired chorus.

Willow wipes her face with Barney – she’s sweating now, even though the dark hallway is cool – and takes a couple of tenuous steps forward. Ignoring the clucks, she finds her stride, and treads across the threadbare carpet towards the end of the corridor. Towards the door, and either glory, or potential death – she’s not quite sure.

She pauses outside, and waits for a moment, her fingers resting on the handle. She glances behind her, and sees their faces; Van, looking amused, Angel, frowning, and Auburn staring at her like she just knows she’s going to break.

That spurs her on, and Willow, with trembling hands, finally turns the handle, and pushes open the door. It creaks, and stiffens, and finally – finally – swings back.

She freezes, a tiny, scared figure in a too-big Barney T-shirt, eyes wide with terror as she looks inside.

The room is dark, the curtains drawn but not quite meeting in the middle – the only light coming in through the window is casting pale stripes over a cluttered desk. A desk that is scattered with coils and springs and cannibalised pieces of machinery, which her young mind immediately associates with the project on medieval torture devices that Angel did the year before.

Sitting in front of the desk, turning to face her, is a boy. Maybe a ghost boy, maybe a real one. She really can’t tell in the dimness. He’s older than her, with pale skin and dark hair, and eyes that are huge and brown and shocked over pronounced cheekbones. He has a screwdriver in his hand, and his gaze is almost as fearful as hers as he stares at her, blinking as the sudden light from the corridor floods in, drenching him in sinister shadow.

Even if he’s not a ghost, he looks haunted – and this is enough to send Willow over the edge.

She screams, loud and shrill, and slams the door shut again. She collapses on the floor in a shaking heap, and looks up at her brothers and sister, crowding around her.

They’re shaking too, she notices. With laughter. Auburn is pointing at her, and holding her sides, and Van seems to actually have tears running down his face. Angel, as ever, is copying them.

She climbs up onto unsteady legs, and runs away, humiliated and scared, knocking them viciously out of the way as she flees. She hates them right now – all of them.

Her little legs barrel her down the wooden staircase, and if the big door to the house hadn’t already been open, she might have crashed through it like a cartoon character, leaving a Willow-shaped hole in the oak.

She runs off down the gravel-topped path at the side of the house, and away to the wood, and the secret pond she likes. She collapses onto a moss-covered log, and kicks her trainer-clad feet at the shale and sticks and old leaves that have collected on the floor like a collage, catching her breath.

Being alone calms her down, and she knows she’ll be all right. He wasn’t really a ghost, after all. Ghosts don’t use screwdrivers and look scared when little girls burst into their rooms, do they?

She spends the rest of the morning playing quietly alone by the pond, still not quite ready to re-engage with the feral pack that is her family. Still, in her childlike way, haunted by that pale face and those big, dark eyes.

Chapter 1

The Present Day

My name is Willow Longville. I am twenty-six years old. I live in a village called Budbury, with my mum Lynnie. I work as a waitress at the Comfort Food Café, and I run my own cleaning business called Will-o’-the-Wash. I have a dog called Bella Swan, and I love my life. In the last twenty-four hours, the following things have happened …

 1. My friend Cherie convinced us she was pregnant and expecting twins. This came as a surprise as Cherie is seventy-four. She told us she’d been to a fertility clinic in Montenegro and we believed her for about five minutes.

 2. Bella Swan ate a frog.

 3. The Comfort Food Café officially opened a bookshop. We celebrated with cakes decorated with pictures of famous literary characters like Oliver Twist, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Mr Darcy and the scary clown from It. That last one was my idea, and it was pretty creepy eating Pennywise’s face.

 4. My mother attacked me with a frying pan when she thought I’d broken into the house.

 5. I slept for maybe three minutes after that, as she’d also called the police.

 6. I woke up to sunshine and it made me happy. Then I ate leftover Harry Potter cake from the café for breakfast, which made me even happier.

 7. I came back to the House on the Hill, and even though it’s still scary, it seems a lot smaller now I’m not a kid. Technically at least.

 8. I went for a walk to the pond first, and saw a naked man dappled in sunlight in the water, and his skin was shining like diamonds – I am now a bit concerned that I have conjured up a real life Edward Cullen.

I pause in my list making, and decide to stop. There’s really no way to top seeing an imaginary Edward Cullen in a pond, is there?

Instead, I sit, still and quiet, perched on the edge of the dried-up fountain, and enjoy the moment.

It’s the first truly warm day of spring, and Mother Nature has come out to celebrate. In fact, she’s downed a bottle of vodka and is having a full-on rave – the woods are swathed in new greenery, the grass is lush and thick, and carpets of bluebells are springing up in the clearings, waving their hands in the air like they just don’t care.

It’s all shockingly beautiful, and my spirits are flying so high they could almost touch the sun. You know, if they had fingers.

Today, I tell myself, is going to be a Good Day. It started off bad, then veered off into strange, and now it’s my job to make the rest of it good.

This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds, with the House on the Hill looming behind me in all its hideous glory.

I can’t shake the feeling that it looks like something from a horror film. One of those horror films where the parents think it’s a good idea to give their kid the creepiest-looking doll in the world, and you spend most of it yelling: ‘Just get out! Go and stay in a bloody Travelodge for God’s sake!’

Technically, this brick-built extra from Amityville is called Briarwood – but to all us locals, it’s also the House on the Hill. There are some devilishly complicated reasons for that nickname; A, it’s a house, and B, it’s on a hill. Yeah, I know – bet that foxed you. Nothing if not sharp, us country bumpkins.

Even the hill is pretty scary – a clutch-churning demon where you have to rev up the incline in first gear, hoping you don’t roll all the way back down again if you do something reckless like sneeze, or sing along to Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’ a bit too enthusiastically.

I haven’t been here for ages – not since I was a kid, in fact. That, both in years and experience, feels like several lifetimes ago. It’s getting on for twenty years now, which is a bit freaky. I gaze back at the building, and I suspect my face is looking a bit like my face usually looks when I’m scooping up dog poo and my finger pokes through the bag.

The red brick facade has scaffolding around it, but if there are any workmen, they’re invisible. The big, blue-painted wooden door is still standing, although it needs some TLC. The old windows still have their Gothic stone twirls around the frames, and the roof still looks like it needs a few gargoyles to complete its American Horror Story vibe. The fountain I’m sitting on has a stone-carved cherub in the middle, and is clogged with weeds and algae.

The gardens and shrubberies are overgrown and tangled, but someone seems to have been making some headway. Whoever it was must have had a machete, and possibly an army of Oompa Loompas to help him. I automatically start singing the Oompa Loompa song at that point, which isn’t quite as melodic as the background sounds of birdsong and the breeze ruffling the leaves of the oak trees.

It’s very strange to be back here, and it takes a lot to qualify as strange in my world. If I close my eyes, turn my face up to the sun, and stop singing the Ooompa Loompa song, I can almost travel back in time. I can hear the sound of my brothers and sister laughing; their footsteps scudding across the gravel; my mother chanting something insanely silly that she tries to convince people is a sign of deep spiritual awakening while a bunch of teenagers try to stifle their giggles.

That particular memory – the one of my much younger mum – makes me feel a tinge of sadness, so I try and put it away in a box and jump on its head. I’m wearing Doc Martens mentally as well as physically, so I give it a good old stomp to make sure it stays down.

It’s been a mad twenty-four hours, and getting no less mad now I’m here, after that brief and possibly hallucinogenic detour to the pond in the woods first. I know I’m tired, even if I don’t actually feel it – I’ve trained myself out of noticing fatigue in the last few years, but it still lurks inside me, like a jack-in-the-box waiting to spring up and catch me. And when I’m tired, my thought processes tend to trip over themselves, impossible to follow.

Yep. It’s been a weird start to the day – but now I have to make it better. Only I can do that, and I need to focus on the sunshine and the birdsong instead of taking a trip on a memory train that will deposit me in a lonely station at the end of the line.

I re-read the list, and think it’s a fairly good summary of my day. I also seem to have accidentally created my very own psychedelic acid trip without the need for any pharmaceuticals at all: the neon pink notepad and bright green gel pen are resting on my knees, and I’m wearing leggings with pictures of yellow Minions on them. Funky.

I stretch my arms, and glory in the feel of the sun on my skin. It’s like God has reached down to stroke my face – and He’s wearing really warm oven gloves.

It’s been a long, nasty winter, and I feel that sense of absolute amazement I get every year when the spring arrives. It’s odd, because it does happen every single year – but each time, I’m taken aback by it. Our quiet corner of Dorset has had a lot of snow over the cold months, and I’ve been used to wearing long johns and seventeen pairs of gloves every day. Now, much to my surprise, it’s warm again … who’d have thunk it?

‘What do you reckon, Bella?’ I say, to the dog sleeping at my feet. ‘Time to get to work?’

Bella doesn’t answer. Mainly because she’s a ten-year-old Border Terrier, and not exactly the chatty type. She doesn’t even bark, never mind talk.

She does get up though, making direct eye contact with me while she squats down and has a wee, as though that’s her way of replying.

‘Yeah. Well, I’m glad you agree,’ I say, as I walk towards my van to get my cleaning supplies.

My van is small and white and has a rainbow painted on the side. My mum painted the rainbow, and we’re both very proud of it. There’s a dream catcher hanging in the window, and Mum decorated the back with some ancient, yellowing stickers she found in a drawer – telling people to Ban the Bomb, Save the Whales and Hug a Tree. Sound advice, as long as you don’t get them confused and end up hugging a bomb, or banning the poor whales.

Whenever I drive it, it kind of looks like I should be giving hitch-hikers a lift to a festival in 1976, or protesting at Greenham Common, or going on tour with Led Zeppelin. It’s actually full of cleaning products, some of which I have to hide from my mother because they contain chemicals stronger than baking soda. My mother has Alzheimer’s, and often doesn’t know who I am – but she can spot a planet-killing detergent at 300 yards.

Bella, tired from her toilet efforts, lies on the grass. She stares with very little interest at a small flight of swallows who are also celebrating the unexpected return of spring, swirling and diving around the fountain. She lets out one very ladylike fart, then curls up into a furry ball. I remain unconvinced that any part of her genetic make-up is descended from a wolf.

I put my notepad down on the front seat, and realise I need to start a new one soon. I never expected to enjoy it so much, but I do. I start every entry with the same words – name, rank and serial number – before making my ‘What’s Happened to Willow Today’ list.

It’s a bit long-winded, but it’s become a habit – and as habits go, it’s not as bad as, say, crack cocaine or eating your own bogies in public (in private is a different matter – we’ve all done it).

I started the note-keeping when Mum’s case worker recommended she do something called Life Story Work. As by that stage my mum’s life story seemed to have stopped – in her mind at least – at about 1999, it seemed like a good idea.

It’s a way of helping her stay in touch with her memories and regain an element of control – reminding herself of who she was and who she is, I suppose. Sometimes I catch her reading it quietly, glancing up at me every now and then, and I know she’s trying to re-make the connections between her little girl and the grown-up woman standing before her.

Yes, it’s sad – but it’s happy too, in its own way. Celebratory. And she’s really good at it. She’s always been one of those craftsy people, my mum, and her book is a beautiful patchwork collage of photos and postcards and old ticket stubs and even those little plastic bracelets they put on babies in hospital. It’s part life story, part diary, part practical – amid the reminiscences and memories, she’ll add in little reminders, like her address, and my phone number, and the name of the dog. We’ve had a series of Border Terriers, and she sometimes gets them confused.

At first, I started up my own notepad just to keep her company and make it all feel a bit less weird. But I’ve got into it – and who knows? Maybe one day I’ll need it myself. Scary diary. For the time being, it’s a bit of free therapy at least.

I usually make lists in it, as I don’t have a lot of time on my own to sit and indulge in stream of consciousness rants. Lists keep it simple and usually make me laugh when I read them back. I once wrote the words ‘sausage rolls are brilliant’. On ten separate lines. I guess I’d really enjoyed a sausage roll that day.

Today, though … well, today, I had lots to report, didn’t I? Especially about the imaginary Edward Cullen, who may or may not be real, and may or may not be the new owner of Briarwood.

There has been much talk in the village about this new owner. About who it might be, and when he or she might get here, and whether they’ll be part of the gang or just play lord of the manor. About why they wanted to buy the place at all, given the state of it. We’ve spent literally hours debating it in the café. What can I say? Not much happens round here.

Frank, Cherie’s husband, reckons it’s some foreign investor who’s going to tart it up as a posh corporate retreat for stressed executives. Frank is a farmer, but he has a vivid imagination. Edie May, who is almost ninety-two and has an even better imagination, reckons it’s been bought by Tom Cruise as a holiday home – but she’s not been quite right since her niece bought her a Mission: Impossible box set. Laura, who manages the café and is a bit of a soppy romantic, is convinced that it’s a young couple looking for a dream home to raise a family in.

I’m here at Briarwood because I’m being paid to clean the place, by an estate agent in Bristol. My mum is safe and snug with Cherie at the café, and they’ll all be waiting for me to get back – desperate for me to spill the beans and fill them in on what I’ve seen.

The problem is, as things stand, I’m going to have to tell them all that the House on the Hill has, in fact, been bought by an eternally teenaged vegetarian vampire. That should raise a few eyebrows.