The Comfort Food Cafe

Chapter 3

I grab a bottle of water from the fridge, and as the door closes I see – for the millionth time – the photo that’s stuck up on there with a gaudy ‘I Heart Bristol’ magnet.

It’s a photo of me, and Kate, and Martha. Taken on holiday in Dorset, maybe three years before – only three years, but an alternate reality. Most of my face is covered in a giant cloud of curly red hair, as usual; Kate is in the middle, blonde and pretty and full of life, Martha snuggling into her side.

She’s using her fingers to make the classic Black Sabbath-style rock sign, but it doesn’t look rebellious – just funny. Her hair was still its natural colour – dark blonde – and her eyes sparkled with happiness. We were a strangely-shaped family, but we were a family – and now it’s my job to keep us like that. I want to feel that again: that simple sense of freedom, for Martha to rediscover the innocence and security that her mother’s death stole from her.

Dorset. It could be perfect. Not too far away in miles, but a different universe. I stagger over to the laptop, and start to investigate.

Within a few minutes, fate – or Google, as some people insist on calling it – has intervened. I search for property to let, and am immediately attracted to one result in particular. ‘Stay with us in sunny Dorset,’ it says, ‘where life is simple and you can leave your cares behind.’

Wow. That would be good. I click through, and see a pretty holiday cottage complex called The Rockery near the village of Budbury. It looks idyllic, and within minutes I’m lost in the fantasy, imagining us both there – without our cares. I’m so lost in imagining this new life that I don’t even notice Martha coming into the room.

“Where the fuck is that dump?” she says, so suddenly that I jump, and knock a glass of water all over the table. I swear back, in a very mature fashion, and leap around like a loon holding the laptop in the air so it doesn’t get wet.

Martha leans back against the kitchen sink, smirking, as I create a glove made of paper towels and try to mop up the mess. I briefly consider punching her in the face, as I do most mornings, but talk myself out of it.

She peels a banana and starts to eat it, looking on at my efforts like I’m some kind of performance art installation.

“Thanks for your help,” I say, once I’ve finally cleared the table, my fingers now coated in soggy, mushed up kitchen towel.

“You’re welcome,” she replies casually, throwing the banana skin at the bin and missing. It splats onto the floor, where, given her teenaged angst and my superlative housekeeping skills, it might stay forever.

I sit back down, and squint through the sunshine at her face. It’s the third week in August, and the weather is still bright and gorgeous. The kitchen faces out onto our small patio garden, and the light streams through the window in vivid golden streaks, striping Martha like a tiger. I see that she’s at least managed a shower; her face is free of last night’s zombie movie make-up and her hair is hanging wet and clean over her shoulders. She’s wearing an old Glastonbury hoodie that I recognise as Kate’s, and that immediately softens my attitude.

I remind myself, as I seem to need to do several times a day, that she’s just a child. A child missing her mother. A child I love. I was there when she was born, screaming and bloody, and I was there when her mother died; and I’m still here now – right where I need to be.

“This,” I say, pointing at the screen, “is a place called Budbury. It’s in Dorset. And I thought we might … go there.”

I let the words float out casually, but hold my breath as I wait for her to respond. There’s a battle royale coming, and it’s one I intend to win.

“What, like, for a holiday or something?” she asks, screwing up her face in disgust as she looks at the photos. Budbury is on the Jurassic Coast, near to the border with Devon, and is absolutely picture perfect. There’s a small village with a hall and shops and even a pet cemetery; there’s a few pubs and a gorgeous-looking café perched on the side of the clifftops, and there’s a college just a few miles away. That was an important factor, the college.

We’d both received a letter the day before from her old school, ‘regretfully’ informing us that the sixth form courses she wanted to do were now full. I suspect that isn’t true – they just don’t want her back. I’m angry on her behalf, but kind of get it – she’s been a great big handful of trouble this year, and I’ve spent what feels like hours sitting across the desk from the head teacher, squirming on the naughty chair, listening to her witter on about Martha’s problems.

I’m not at all surprised that they’ve declined to have her back. Martha’s pretending not to be bothered by it, but I suspect the letter inspired last night’s binge. It was proof that everything has changed – and not for the better.

She’s staring at my screen now, frowning. The scenery around the village is astounding – a million light years from our admittedly cosy little corner of Bristol. Even looking at the beaches and the tiny little coves and the pathways clinging to the sides of the cliffs makes me feel better – makes me yearn to be there, in the fresh air, walking and breathing and just … being. Maybe I’d get a dog, and learn to surf, and write beautiful poetry and drink scrumpy.

I’m guessing, from the look on Martha’s face as she flicks through the slideshow, that she doesn’t exactly feel the same.

“Looks like something from a horror film,” she says, dismissively. “Like the Village of the Damned. I bet it’s stuck in a time warp as well – they probably don’t even allow gingers in because they think they have no soul. Which might be a valid point.”

I self-consciously tuck a tangled strand of red curls behind my ear, and bite the inside of my lip. Here we go…

“I’m not suggesting we go there for a holiday,” I say, getting up and depositing the banana skin into the bin. I’m that nervous. “We’re going there … for a while.”

It’s now almost midday, and I’ve been up for hours, planning our new lives. Lives full of happiness and laughter and recovery – building up, moving on, going forward instead of backward. For some reason – possibly desperation – it’s become a symbol of everything I think we need. This major life change is, though, news to poor Martha.

“No way. No way! I wouldn’t even go there for the weekend, Zoe, never mind to live. And you can’t make me. I’m 16, and you can’t make me.”

I fill the kettle. I need another coffee – I’ve only had seventeen so far today. I stay silent, gathering my thoughts, listening to Martha fizz and pop in the background. She’s so loud I fear for the safety of my eardrums. For a moment, I fear for the safety of my laptop as well, but I realise she’s just closed the lid, with a thud. Like that’s the end of it, and Budbury will now fall into the sea and float out into oblivion.

She is 16. And I can’t make her. This is a replay of a conversation we’ve had many times. It is her ultimate weapon – and one I need to let her keep, because she really doesn’t have many left. If I take away her ability to harm me, she will revert fully to harming herself.

I remember myself at 16: sofa surfing at friend’s houses, hiding in Kate’s garage with a sleeping bag until her parents found me and kicked me out, no money, no job, no home. All I had was my spirit – and the determination that I would escape the world I’d grown up in, and find my own way in life. If someone had taken that away from me, that hope, that belief in my own independence, I’d have been left with nothing.

Martha isn’t me. She still needs me, no matter how much she refuses to acknowledge that. Inside, beneath the make-up and the piercings and the attitude, she’s still a baby – still bloody and screaming – and I have to remember that.

“I know I can’t make you,” I reply, my face clouded in steam from the kettle, “but I can at least talk to you about it, can’t I?”

“You can talk about it, but don’t expect me to listen!” she yells, arms crossed over her chest in what she thinks is defiance but actually just makes her look scared and defensive. “My home is here. My friends are here. My life is here – and you’re not dragging me away from it all just because you’re having some kind of mid-life crisis, all right?”

I pour the water onto the coffee, splashing my hands with scalding liquid. She may have a point there. I think I’m doing this for her – but is it actually me who needs to get away? To escape from the pressures of this place, and all its memories; from a past that makes me cry and a future that makes me panic?

“Look, Martha,” I say, in as quiet a voice as I can manage, “I know I can’t make you do anything. And I know you don’t even want to listen to me. But your mum asked me to look after you, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

I know immediately from the look on her face that I’ve said the wrong thing. It has always made her angry, and probably sad: being left to me in a will. Being trapped here with me, without access to any of the life assurance money or the profits selling the house would bring, without the independence she thinks she wants.

“And anyway. That’s not why I’m here,” I add quickly, before she can start a rant. “I’m here because I love you. Feel free to mock, or spit in my eye, but it’s true – I love you. I’ve known you since you were a baby, and I will always love you. I know I’m not your mum, and never will be, but please don’t ever think I’m only here because a lawyer asked me to be. I’d be here anyway.”

I see tears spring into her eyes, and she angrily swipes them away. Crying is a sign of weakness to Martha, and seeing her fight against it fills me with emotion. I want to take her in my arms, and stroke her wet hair, and tell her that everything will be all right. But I know she won’t let me do that. It would push her over the edge, and she wouldn’t forgive me.

“Okay, I know that. I know you would …” she mutters, her fingers screwing up into tight fists in front of her, as though she’s trying to keep herself calm, desperately trying to avoid using the L-word. “I know that, but I still don’t want to move away. I’ll be better. I won’t go out as much. I’ll … I don’t know, I’ll stop puking on the living room floor. I’ll work harder. I’ll start smoking menthol … whatever you like. But not that – I won’t go and live in the 1950s, all right?”

I bite back a bout of inappropriate laughter at that little speech. She’ll start smoking menthol? To hijack a phrase I’m told is popular with the kids these days, WTF? Or even WTF-ing-F? How bad have things become, that Martha sees swapping one cancer stick for another as a sign of commitment to a new lifestyle?

I suppose it is, at least, a step in the right direction. The only problem is, I’m determined that we’ll be taking a lot more steps in another direction – all the way to Dorset. I’ve been pondering it all morning, and it’s doable. Kate, straight after her diagnosis – well, straight after the bit that involved us and a bottle of Grey Goose – had gone in to see her bank manager and her solicitor.

She wasn’t by any means wealthy, but she had a proper job – head of English at a high school – which came with a pension, and when she’d bought the house she’d done uncharacte‌ristically grown-up stuff like take out shedloads of life assurance. Money, for the time being, wasn’t an issue. The mortgage was sorted, there was a lump sum for Martha when she was older, and there was a chunk set aside for the next two years while Martha was still living at home with me.

After taking advice from the legal people, she’d structured things so that I managed the cash until Martha was either 18 or 21, at my discretion.

That in itself had made us both laugh, unlikely as it seems. We’d sat on the sofa, telling each other it wouldn’t come to that, that the treatment would work, that she’d carry on as a boob-less wonder and we’d all be together until we were ancient, smelly old crones.

But if it didn’t … then Martha’s financial future was going to depend on ‘my discretion.’

“I know it’s just a legal phrase,” Kate had said, grinning at me despite the grimness of the situation, “but really? You’re an absolute nutter, Zoe. Remember that time you spent a whole week’s worth of wages on tickets to see Fun Lovin’ Criminals? Or the time you got a taxi all the way back from London because the woman sitting next to you on the train was eating a pickled egg?”

“Well, you must admit that Scooby Snacks was a classic of our time … and I swear to God, if you’d smelled those pickled eggs, you’d have done the same …”

“Okay. But what about when you were 19, and you decided you were going to hitch-hike round the UK trying out all the Little Chefs because you liked those cherry pancakes so much?”

“That one was a bit weird. I think I only made it as far as Bath. But … yeah. I am a nutter, you’re right. Are you sure about this? About me, and Martha, and … my discretion?”

She’d reached out and held my hand, squeezing my fingers as though I was the one who needed reassuring, and said: “100%. I’d trust you with my life – and I trust you with Martha’s.”

Remembering that now, as I look at Martha – the child who has selflessly just offered to start smoking menthol to placate me – I wonder if Kate hadn’t been a bit of a nutter herself. Or whether she saw something in me that I couldn’t quite see in myself.

“I think,” I say to Martha, who’d helpfully taken the first mug of coffee out of my hands and started drinking it herself, “that you need to stop smoking completely. You’re 16. You probably don’t have a raging case of the black lung just yet, so quit while you’re ahead. And as to Dorset … well, don’t throw one of your diva fits, sweetie, but you’re not doing so well, are you?”

Martha opens her mouth to argue with me – in fact it’s usually the only thing she open her mouth for these days, other than to insert a menthol, presumably – but I hold up one hand to stop her.

“Nope! Not listening! I’m not having an argument with someone whose face I pulled out of their own vomit last night, all right? You’re not doing so well, and that’s that. Neither am I. I think we need to make some changes. We need a new world order, because this one sucks.”

I’m saved from the oncoming tirade by a knock on the door. We both stare at each other, momentarily taken aback, before we hear a familiar voice: “Coo-ee! It’s only me!”

For once in complete agreement, Martha and I do a neatly choreographed eye-roll, and sigh in mutual exasperation.

“It’s Sunday, isn’t it?” I say, glancing at my watch and seeing that it is dead on noon. Our common nemesis is nothing if not punctual.

“Yeah. Shit. We forgot. How does Sunday keep happening so often?” she replies, looking genuinely confused.

“I don’t know … it’s like we’re trapped in some kind of hell dimension, doomed to eternal knocks on the door and ‘coo-ees’, and …”

“And the next line – any minute now …”

We both pause, our heads on one side like curious budgerigars, and grin as we wait for the inevitable.

“It’s only me!” shouts Barbara again, and I can just picture her on the doorstep, faffing with her scarf and checking her cameo brooch and sniffing the air like she’s a bloodhound on the track of moral iniquity. “Don’t like to intrude,” she trills, “but I’ll just use my key …”

Martha stares at me. I stare back.

“She’s lying,” says Martha, swigging down the last of the coffee. “She loves intruding. You should get the locks changed.”

She strides off to go and get properly dressed, and I attempt to smooth my crazy curls down into something less likely to make Barbara make the sign of the cross when she sees me.

It’s Sunday. Again. Which means that Martha gets the unrivalled joy of lunch with her grandparents – and I get a few more hours to plan our escape to the West Country.

Chapter 4

By the time Martha comes home, I have e-mailed the landlady of The Rockery, checked out the courses at the college, and looked for dogs at the nearest rescue centre. I’ve made notes, and looked at our finances, and pondered the idea of renting out my flat to make it all stretch a little further.

I mean, it’s not like I need my flat any more. It’s across the road, the bottom half of a sandstone terrace, and is now more of a museum to my previous existence than a functioning residence. It’s full of books and clothes I’ll never wear again and cheap hippy jewellery I used to think made me look super-cool at festivals. I don’t need it any more – technically at least.

And yet for some reason, I’ve kept it – probably because in the same way that Martha needs that ‘I’m 16, you can’t make me’ reassurance, I also need my ‘I can run away if it all gets too much’ reassurance.

It has happened a few times – I’ve made the desperate dash over there, winding my way through the recycling bins and neighbourhood cats to let myself in. To lie on my own bed, in my own territory. In the end, I decide against it – I’ll keep the flat, and instead I’ll use my life savings. I’ve got an ISA – which Kate made me take out – that contains the less than impressive lump sum of just under £5,000. But I don’t need much, and that’ll keep me going for a few months at least, allow me to pay my way instead of just using Kate’s money.

There’s a lot to sort out, and I’ll have to think about it later – because right now, I can hear the strained chatter of Barbara and her husband Ron in the hallway.

I close the lid of my laptop, and hide the papers beneath it. Barbara has a keen eye for detail – especially any detail that backs up her belief that I am a terrible human being incapable of caring for her precious grandchild.

Martha slopes into the room looking sheepish and borderline embarrassed. I suspect this is because her grandparents have spent the last few hours telling her how wonderful she is, and she played along. I don’t blame her – it’s definitely the path of least resistance.

She left her nose and ear piercings out, and tied her hair up into a ponytail. To the casual observer, she could pass for a normal teenaged girl. ‘Normal’ in the sense that Barbara and Ron would use the word, anyway. I know that every time she does that, Martha hates herself a little. Tempestuous as our relationship can be, she can at least behave like herself when she’s at home – not the Stepford Teen version of herself that she presents to her grandparents.

Barbara is wearing a smart tweed suit that makes her look like one of the presenters on the Antiques Roadshow. Her hair is perfectly bouffed and frosted with spray, and her make-up is suitably age-appropriate for a respectable woman in her early 60s. Her smile, as she stares at me with laser eyes, is almost as frosted as her hair.

I suppose, if I were to look at myself from her perspective, I might feel a little frosty too. She’s never liked me. I was the bad influence, the wayward gypsy, the blemish in Kate’s otherwise perfectly managed childhood.

Barbara was always convinced that every wild thing Kate ever did – the travelling after she got her degree, the crappy jobs she started off with, the boyfriends with names like Chili Pepper, the fact that she became a single mum – was because of me.

It wasn’t true of course. There was a reason Kate and I clicked the minute we met.

A reason that Kate – clever, pretty, popular, from a stable home – immediately took me under her wing, despite the fact that I was none of those things. The reality was different. Kate had a wild streak all of her own – sometimes it even put mine to shame. She was daring and bold and yearned to break free of the constrictions of her cloying home life. The travelling – where she met Martha’s father (a polite word for ‘had a one-night-stand-with-while-under-the-influence-of-weed-and-booze’) – was nothing to do with me. I wasn’t even there.

The crappy jobs were just her way of finding out what she really wanted to do, before she settled on teaching. The boyfriends with names like Chili Pepper … well, to be fair, at least a few of those were down to me, and my borderline crusty pals with dogs on strings and only a passing acquaintance with personal hygiene.

Barbara either doesn’t know any of that, or wilfully ignores it. It’s easier to have a scapegoat. A scapegoat who is now sitting at the kitchen table still in her dressing gown, rocking electric-shock-chic hair and wired on coffee.

“Zoe!” she says, taking it all in. “How nice of you to make the effort! Late night, was it?”

Yes, I think. A late night spent looking after your butter-wouldn’t-melt grandchild. I don’t say this of course – especially as Martha is shooting me imploring looks over her shoulder. I take a deep breath, and remind myself that Barbara is Kate’s mother. That she is a woman who has lost her only child, and will probably never recover. She covers it as well as her make-up covers her wrinkles, but it is still there – the pain, and the anguish. The loss.

“Did you have a nice lunch?” I ask innocently, refusing to rise to the bait. I have mastered the art of war when it comes to Barbara – and I win my battles by being relentlessly civil in the face of her poking and prodding. Frankly, it drives her nuts. When I was younger, I used to lock horns with her all the time – with the whole world in fact – but these days? Zen master in a dressing gown.

“Lovely, thanks, Zoe,” says Ron, who is hovering in the background in his chinos and perfectly pressed polo shirt, his threadbare hair carefully arranged over his scalp. He’s not so bad, Ron. I once spent an impromptu night down the pub with him and he was a laugh. Sadly he’s one of those men doomed to be forever overshadowed by a far stronger wife.

“Yeah,” chips in Martha, keen to avert the conversation from my late night and her shenanigans. “We went to that place outside town that has the really good onion rings.”

“I know the one,” I reply, smiling. Smiling, and now conscious of the fact that I’ve not eaten all day. My stomach lets out a huge grumble in response, and Barbara wrinkles her nose at me like I’ve just soiled myself in public.

“Right, Ron,” she announces. “We better go. And Zoe? You might want to consider buying some bleach for this kitchen, you know. Cleanliness is next to Godliness and all that.”

I nod enthusiastically, as though this is the best suggestion I have ever heard, and wait while Martha sees them to the door.

When she comes back, she is quiet. Pensive. Thoughtful. None of which are words I usually associate with Hurricane Martha.

“Are you okay?” I ask, reaching out to briefly touch her fingers. Predictably enough she snatches her hand away, but she does sit down opposite me at the kitchen table. She points at the laptop and the papers peeking out beneath it.

“Are you still planning the great escape?” she asks, sounding hollow. Her face is paler than usual, and her dark brown eyes are pools of liquid sorrow. It’s not the way I want her to look, or feel, and I am overwhelmed with sadness at the shitty situation we’ve all found ourselves in.

“Yes,” I say, firmly. “I know you’re not keen, Martha, and I understand why. But perhaps you have to trust me on this one. Or at least try to.”

She is silent for a few moments, chewing the inside of her cheek so hard I know she must be drawing blood. Eventually she nods, abruptly.

“I’ll try. Gran was … well, she was full on today, you know?”

“In what way?” I ask, frowning. Barbara was, as you can imagine, deeply unhappy when Kate told her that Martha would be staying with me if the unthinkable happened. And I know that when it did, she considered some kind of legal action to get her away from me. It was only a letter left by Kate, as well as Martha saying she wanted to stay in her own home, that stopped her.

She’s never stopped trying to persuade Martha, though. She lavishes her with gifts and cash and adoration, all in an attempt to convince her to go and live with her and Ron instead of the red-haired she-devil.

“In a ‘we-only-want-what’s-best-for-you’ way,” replies Martha. “You know. The way where I live with them, and wear a lot of pink leisure wear, and learn to bake, and watch My Little Pony videos as a special treat at the weekend …”

I burst out laughing. One of those unattractive snorty laughs, where you almost choke. Somehow the image of Martha dressed in a candyfloss velour tracksuit watching cartoons strikes me as so funny, I have to let it out. Almost against her will, I see a slight upward curl on her lips. For Martha these days, that passes as an uncontrollable belly laugh.

“It’s not funny,” she says, not sounding convinced.

“It is though,” I reply, still giggling. “Just a little bit. But … look, I know it’s hard. Your gran is … a strong character. But she loves you, you know that. And she loved your mum.”

“I know she loves us! But she really doesn’t understand us, does she?”

“Not even close. She never has. It doesn’t make her evil. But … it doesn’t make her someone you’d want to live with either. This is where we are, now, Martha. We all want it to be different. We all want your mum to still be here. I lost my best friend. Your gran lost her daughter. You lost your mother. None of us will ever be the same again – but we have to go on living. I’m worried about you. About school. About your social life. About the fact that you can’t spell ‘fuck.’ I’m worried about everything – and that’s why I think we need a change.”

She nods again, and stands up. She’s not that tall, but she’s really slim and willowy and always reminds me a bit of Bambi, not quite knowing what to do with her legs.

“Okay,” she says, turning to leave. “I’ll think about it. And don’t worry about me being able to spell ‘fuck’ – I can still say it properly, and that’s what counts.”