A Gift from the Comfort Food Café: Celebrate Christmas in the cosy village of Budbury with the most heartwarming read of 2018!

Chapter 5

Six weeks earlier

It’s the weekend. Saturday, in fact. But as anyone with young children knows, kids have absolutely zero respect for the sacred concept of ‘the lie-in’.

Saul has always been high-energy. I mean, I don’t have a lot to compare it to, but even the other little boys at the playgroups we’ve attended, and at his pre-school in the next village over, seem like they’re on sedatives next to him.

He’s a force of nature. A bundle of energy. A whirling dervish in Paw Patrol pyjamas – and he never stops talking. I know this is good – he has a crazy vocabulary for his age – but sometimes I remember the days when he couldn’t speak or move oh so fondly. I am such a bad mother.

Right now, I’m lying in bed, in what my friend Lynnie calls the ‘corpse pose’. Lynnie is in her sixties and has Alzheimer’s – but no matter how much she declines, she always seems to remember her past life as a yoga instructor. Saul adores her, and she’s even managed to get him into downward dog on a few occasions – sometimes for literally whole seconds.

It hasn’t turned him into a zen master though – and he seems to think that 5.45 a.m. is the perfect time to come and climb into bed with me.

We live together in a teeny-tiny terraced house in the centre of Budbury village. There’s only one road, which runs through the village like a ribbon, lined with a few shops and a pub, a community centre and a pet cemetery and a couple of dozen little houses. They’re quite old, and face straight into the pavement, and were probably built for fishermen in ye olde days of yore.

Several of my friends – regulars at the Comfort Food Café, a few minutes’ walk away on the clifftops – live on the same road. I used to feel a bit claustrophobic, living so close to people who were keen to be friends. I used to feel like the only way I could be independent and safe was to be alone. Sometimes, I still feel like that – but I try to beat it down with a big stick, because it’s really not healthy, is it?

So, I know from my horribly early visit to the bathroom, in the grey pre-dawn November light, roughly what else they’re all up to. Edie May, who is 92 and has almost as much energy as Saul, is still tucked up in bed, bless her.

Zoe and Cal, along with Cal’s daughter Martha, also still seem to be a-slumber. Martha’s 17, and from what I recall from that state of being, mornings are not to be touched at weekends. Lucky swines.

In fact, I can see lights on in only one other house – the one where Becca and Sam live. They have a baby girl – Little Edie – who has just turned one. She’s utterly adorable and they both dote on her – but she’s not one of life’s sleepers.

Seeing them awake, and imagining Sam bleary-eyed and zombified as he tries to entertain Little Edie, makes me feel slightly better. There’s no snooze button on a baby – he’ll be up, and surrounded by plastic objects in primary colours, and elbow-deep in nappies. Ha ha.

Saul doesn’t have a snooze button either – but he is easier to distract. This morning, by 6 a.m., I am not only in corpse pose – I am playing Beauty Parlour.

This is one of Saul’s favourite games, and I have no idea where he picked it up. None of the women in Budbury are exactly dedicated followers of fashion.

Willow, one of Lynnie’s daughters, has a pretty unique style that involves a lot of home-made clothes and a nose ring and bright pink hair. The teenagers – Martha and her pal Lizzie – definitely wear a lot of eyeliner. But there isn’t a beauty parlour in the village – or possibly even in the twenty-first century. Even the words sound like something from the 1950s, and bring to mind those big space-alien dryers women sit beneath in old movies, before they go on a hot date with Cary Grant.

Anyway – I don’t know where he got it from, but I’m glad he did. It’s a game that can be played with me entirely immobile. The very best kind of game.

He’s gathered my make-up bag and a collection of hairbrushes and slides and bobbles; even some hairspray and perfume. In all honesty, I rarely even use any of it, but like most women I’ve somehow managed to amass a gigantic pile of half-used cosmetics and hair products to clutter up the house for no good reason.

He’s sitting cross-legged next to me, blond hair scrunched up on one side and perfectly flat on the other, working away with the foundation. I didn’t know I even owned foundation, and I suspect it’s some deep tan-coloured gunk I used after a sunny holiday in Majorca when I was twenty-one. He’s blending it in with all the gentleness of Mike Tyson, but I don’t care.

It’s allowing me to stay in bed, so I just make the odd encouraging noise, and keep my eyes closed really tight when he starts on the eyeshadow. I ban him from mascara though, as I’d actually like to keep my vision.

‘You’re looking so beautiful, Mummy,’ he says, when he pauses to inspect his work so far. ‘But I think you need to highlight your cheekbones a bit more. I’ll use some blusher.’

‘Okay,’ I mutter, half asleep. Where is he getting this stuff?

I hear the lids getting screwed off various pots, and know from his sharp inhalation of breath that he’s probably just spilled something. In fact, the whole duvet cover will likely be covered in powders and lotions – but hey, that’s what washing machines were made for, right?

He pokes at me with his fingers, rubbing in what I know will be two great big clown-like spots on the side of my face, before sighing in satisfaction. Lipstick is next, after he’s instructed me to make a ‘kissy mouth’ first. I bet I’m looking really sexy.

I glance through slitted eyes at the clock, and see that it is now 6.20 a.m. Wow. A massive lie-in.

‘How’s it going?’ I ask, stifling a yawn.

‘Really good. Really pretty. I think I might be finished. Shall we get up so we can watch cartoons before we go to the café for breakfast?’

Ugggh. Cartoons. I shrivel and die a little inside, and make a new suggestion: ‘Hey – why don’t you go and get my nail varnishes and you can do my fingers and toes?’

That fills in the next half an hour, and completely finishes off the duvet cover. I must admit he does a quite good job though, and am still admiring my brand-new multi-coloured fingers a little while later, when he is safely installed on the sofa watching shows on CBBC, shoving chunks of sliced-up banana into his mouth and laughing at the antics of a cartoon mouse who goes to school.

I put the duvet cover in the washer, and change it out for a new one – it’s getting colder now anyway, and I’m already looking forward to snuggling up beneath the clean brushed cotton later. I live a wild and crazy life, what can I say?

I catch up on a bit of coursework for college – I’m trying to keep my nursing skills up to date, and since I met Lynnie, I’ve become a lot more interested in community mental health – and organise some files. I do some ironing, in a vain attempt to get prepared for the week ahead, and I check my emails. Apart from being contacted by a Nigerian prince offering me an unbeatable investment opportunity, there’s nothing.

My phone shows three missed calls from my mum, but I can’t quite face that conversation just yet. It’s never fun, getting Mum’s weekly updates on what terrible crime Dad has committed recently. I love them both, but it’s like being trapped between two angry pit bulls. Except with more spite and slobber.

I intermittently check in with Saul, making sure he’s not eating the coffee table or swinging from the light fittings, and eventually take him upstairs to get ready for the day ahead. He’s excited to go to the café, and I can’t say that I blame him – it’s become like a second home to us. A home that always has cake.

It’s his favourite place in the whole world. I think it might just be mine too.

Chapter 6

The Comfort Food Café is like no place else on earth. It’s set on the top of a cliff on the gorgeous coastline, surrounded by the sea on one side and rolling green hills on the other.

You reach it by climbing up a long and winding path, and enter through a wrought-iron archway that spells out its name in an embroidery made of metal roses. Even the archway is pretty and welcoming.

The building itself is low and sprawling, and set in its own higgledy-piggledy garden. There are tables and benches that get packed in summer, as well as a barbecue area, a terrace, and as of this year, the adjoining Comfort Reads bookshop.

The bookshop is open by the time we get there, and Zoe – short, ginger, slim – waves at us through the window. She’s sitting on her stool behind the till, a paperback propped up on her knees. Saul squeaks when he sees her, as the last time we were here she produced a Gruffalo mug for him.

Zoe moved here last year with her god-daughter Martha, who is seventeen now, after her mother died. It’s not been an easy ride for them, but they’re settled now – along with Cal, Martha’s biological dad, who she’d never even met before last Christmas as he lived in Australia. Yeah, I know – if Budbury had a Facebook page, it would need to set its relationship status to ‘It’s Complicated’.

I don’t think anyone here is simple, or straightforward, or has had an especially traditional life. It’s one of the reasons it’s sucked me in, to be honest – these are people who lived through a lot, survived to tell the tale, and now seem to see it as their life’s mission to make other people happy while feeding them carrot cake.

There’s even some kind of weird vibe where they match people up with their favourite comfort foods – like me and jam roly-poly, which always reminds me of my nan. I must have mentioned it at some point, but I don’t remember when – all I know is when I’m especially down or tired, that’s what will be waiting for me there, even if it’s not on the menu.

I still vividly remember the first time I came here. It was a couple of weeks after we’d made the move to Dorset – after leaving Jason, I lived with my parents for a while, but I soon realised that was a mistake. I knew I needed to get away properly, and started looking for a place with enough distance for a fresh start, but close enough to Bristol for me to get back and see my parents, and potentially for Saul to see his dad, if that’s how things played out. It’s not, but such is life.

Mum, amazingly, helped me find the money to move here – something to do with a ‘nest egg’ that my nan had left – but it took some sorting. Jason resisted initially, made some half-hearted attempts to persuade me to come back, but it felt hollow and fake – we were better off without each other, and we both knew it. Eventually he moved himself as well, all the way to Glasgow – fresh starts all round.

It was harder than I thought, though, leaving. Setting up on my own in a new place where I knew nobody, with a baby. I’d thought it was what I needed – but I didn’t factor in how lonely I’d feel in those first few weeks. I had to stop myself from giving in, from calling my parents or Jason, from back-sliding.

Saul was almost eighteen months by that stage, and bloody hard work. I can say it now, because I’m his mum and it’s in the past – but he was actually a bit of a demon child. Endless energy, constant battles, the terrible twos way before his birthday. I was exhausted, running on empty, and secretly convinced that my own child hated me. I had no idea how I was going to cope.

Then, one morning, I came here. To the café. Out of sheer desperation, really – the need to get out of the house and at least be in some proximity to the rest of the world. I was sitting there, Saul busily throwing bread soldiers at my head and mashing his egg up like it was his mortal enemy, feeling washed out and fatigued to the edge of insanity.

A woman I now know as Becca came up to me, and brought me toast. Not Saul – me. Then another lady, who I’d thought was a customer but turned out to be the owner of the café, Cherie Moon, came and took Saul away. She’s a big woman, Cherie, tall and robust, in her seventies with a weather-beaten face and wrinkles she wears with pride. She has a lot of long hair that she often has bundled up into a grey-streaked plait, and she has so much confidence that it practically oozes out of her.

Anyone else, I’d have worried about handing the baby over – more for their sake than his – but I just instinctively knew that Cherie could handle it. She’d walked him around the room, while I ate my toast and actually drank a hot beverage before it was lukewarm, and the sense of relief I felt was astonishing. In fact I had to disappear off to the toilets for a minute to compose myself – by which I mean sob relentlessly into wadded-up tissue paper.

These random acts of kindness – aimed at me, a complete stranger – were my introduction to the café. To the village. To the community that now, almost two years on, I am starting to dare to call my own.

It’s taken a long time, because I am wary and stubborn and always cautious about random acts of kindness, but I understand it all better now. This place is like the island of misfit toys, and someone is always on hand with a sticking plaster and a spoonful of medicine for the soul.

These days, our lives are tied up with theirs in ways I could never have anticipated. The café gang help me out with childcare. I help them out with other things. We all look out for each other. It’s like a big, tangled, misshapen ball of string, all directions leading to each other.

I’m still not the life and soul of any of the parties the café hosts or organises – I still dodge the big social events – but I’m getting there. Edging towards a security and comfort that I’ve never known since my nan died.

Saul thinks this place is home. He’s little – he doesn’t remember a life before it. He thinks Lynnie is his wacky granny, and Willow is a cartoon character because of her pink hair, and Cherie is the queen of the world.

He thinks Laura, who manages the café, is the cuddliest woman ever, and that Edie May is a magical tiny-faced elf who lives in a teapot.

He thinks all the men of Budbury – and there are several – are there purely to play football with him, or take him for walks on the beach, or help him hunt for fossils. He thinks the dogs of Budbury – Midgebo, Laura’s black Lab, and Bella Swan, Willow’s border terrier, and her boyfriend Tom’s Rottie cross, Rick Grimes – are his own personal pooches.

I may have left behind my parents, and Jason, but what I gained was so much bigger – a whole village of the biggest-hearted people I’ve ever met.

He’s tugging at my hand as we approach the doors, his little legs pumping as fast as they can, like a puppy straining on the lead, desperate to get inside.

Inside, where a world of fun awaits. Where the café starts to get weird. Weird in a good way. There are lots of things you’d expect to find in a café – tables covered with red gingham cloths; a big fridge full of soft drinks; a chiller cabinet crammed with sandwich platters and salads and whopping great slices of cake; a serving counter and a till. So far, so normal.

Then there are the extras. The things that immediately let you know that you’re not in Kansas any more, Toto. The multiple mobiles hanging from the ceiling, dangling home-made oddities like old vinyl singles and papier-mâché fish. Half a red kayak. The oars from a rowing boat. Fishing net tangled up with fairy lights. The shelves lined with random objects – an antique sewing machine; a giant fossil in a cabinet; rows of books and board games and puzzles.

It’s like the anti-Ikea – as though the Old Curiosity Shop got together with a tea room and had a baby. Despite the clutter, though, it all still feels fresh and clean, and is washed over with the light flooding in through the windows on all sides.

On one side, you can see into the garden. On the other, it’s the sea and the beach and the endless red-and-gold clifftops stretching off along the horizon. It’s the kind of place you can lose hours, just watching the maritime world go by.

Saul bursts through the doors and strikes a dramatic pose, his little arms raised in the air, fists clenched, as though he’s Superman about to take off.

‘Everybody, I’m here!’ he shouts, just in case they hadn’t noticed. Laura is behind the counter, round and pretty and fighting a constant losing battle with her curly hair. She pauses in her work – slicing up lemon meringue cake – and her face breaks out into a huge smile.

‘Thank goodness! I was wondering when you were going to turn up!’ she says, wiping her hands down on her apron and walking out to see us. She crouches down in front of Saul and gives him a cuddle which he returns so enthusiastically she ends up sitting on her backside, his face buried in her hair.

I start to apologise, but she looks up at me and raises an eyebrow. That’s a stern telling off from Laura, so I clamp my mouth shut.

Laura has two kids of her own – Nate and Lizzie, teenagers now – and understands children. She’s told me approximately seven thousand times that I need to stop saying I’m sorry about Saul, when he’s only doing what kids of that age do. She continues to stare at me, over the tufts of Saul’s hair, but I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong this time, so I pretend not to notice.

I look around, and see Cherie sitting at a corner table, her feet in red and green striped socks, propped up on the chair next to her. Her husband Frank, who is an 82-year-old silver fox, is sitting opposite, drinking his thick tea and reading the paper. They both look up at me, and grin widely. They must be in an extra good mood this morning.

There is an actual paying customer here, still wrapped up in walking gear, perusing a guide book as he eats his toast. The café is on the Jurassic Coast and is often populated by people in padded anoraks and woolly hats, taking a break from their treks. He glances at the commotion, briefly widens his eyes when he nods good morning to me, and goes hastily back to his maps.

I glance around. There’s nobody else here. Or at least I don’t think there is, until he walks out of the gents.

He’s tall by my standards – about six foot – but short by the standards of his own family, who are all giants. He’s bulky, with brawn he earned travelling the world digging wells and building schools in the kind of places you see on the news during droughts. His chestnut hair is cropped brutally short, and he’s wearing his usual uniform of care-worn denims and a long-sleeved jersey top.

He looks up, and our eyes meet across an un-crowded room. He has great eyes. Bright blue, on the Paul Newman spectrum. He smiles when he sees me, and I smile back, even though I feel the usual tug of anxiety I get whenever I’m around him. He’s looking half-amused, as though he’s remembering a joke someone told him on a bus some time, his gaze moving from me to Saul.

This is Van, and he’s Lynnie’s son, and Willow’s brother. He came back from his life in Africa when Lynnie took a turn for the worse in the spring, and has been working for Frank as a labourer ever since. I wait, knowing that Saul will spot him as soon as he’s emerged from Laura’s hair.

Right on cue, I see my son look up and around, his eyes widening in excitement when he sees him walking towards us.

‘Van! Van! Mummy, Van is here, look!’ he squeals, leaving Laura lying on the floor, abandoned and forgotten, and me in a cloud of dust as he runs towards him. Van braces – this has happened many times before – catches him in his arms, scoops him up, and swings him around and around in a dizzying circle.

All I can hear is the ecstatic chuckling of my little boy as he whirls and flies through the air, shrieking for it to stop in a way that suggests he really doesn’t want it to. Laura looks on and grins. Cherie and Frank look on and laugh. Even the random walker stifles a smile.

It’s the kind of thing that makes everyone who sees it happy – an innocent expression of pure, unadulterated joy.

Everyone apart from me, I suspect. It doesn’t make me happy. It makes me nervous. It makes me want to grab Saul back from him, and run away all over again. I vowed I wouldn’t, no matter how complicated it all gets – but this is a whole new level of complicated.

Because in the same way that Saul seems to think that Cherie is the queen, and Edie is a magical elf, and Willow is a cartoon character, and all the dogs belong to him, he has views about Van as well. In his world, Van seems to have become the nearest thing he has to a real-life dad.

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