The Comfort Food Café

Chapter 1

Chapter One

D ear Laura,

First of all, I have to be honest: I’m writing this on behalf of my mum, Maxine (though everyone calls her Max). She has no clue I’m sending this email, and she’d probably kill me if she did, but I’m willing to risk death to do this, because something about your job advert made me think it was perfect for her. You know when something just makes you tingle because it’s so right, like all your spider senses have been set off, but in a good way?

I was considering coming up with a dramatic back story to catch your eye—like our father is a gambling addict and lost our family home in a high-stakes poker game at a casino in Montenegro, or Mum has just come out of a decade-long coma after a freak unicycle accident. Something with oomph that would make her stand out from the crowd.

In the end I decided that would be a fib too far. I’m already being shady, sneaking around behind her back, without lying about her as though she’s not interesting enough in real life. I think that’s already one of her problems: she doesn’t think she’s interesting anymore, and it won’t help if her own daughter fictionalises her as well. She’s had a few years of Totally Crap Things happen, and now she seems to have deflated. She’s a bit like one of those squashed helium balloons that got stuck on a bush, and it makes me really sad for her.

The other day, we were watching Dracula —you know that old version with Keanu Reeves and Gary Oldman in it? Though she told me off for calling it the ‘old version’, because apparently 1992 was only five years ago in her head… Anyway, I’m sure you know the one. She said, after it finished, that if she was in a story like that, she wouldn’t be Dracula, or Van Helsing, or Mina, or one of the glamorous vampire chicks. She wouldn’t even be Renfield, she said—she’d maybe be in with a chance at being the servant who empties Renfield’s slop bucket at the asylum. That’s how much she sees herself as a background character, and I absolutely hate it. Everyone should be the star of their own story, shouldn’t they—or at least the co-star?

That all sounds a bit depressing, I know, but I wanted to explain why I’m doing this. My mum needs a change, badly. She needs to get away from her life and make a fresh start, somewhere new, where she can stop seeing herself as dull and unimportant. She needs to feel useful, not like Renfield’s slop bucket slave. At the moment she’s forgotten all the good things about herself, like how kind she is, how funny she is, how she’s the type of person who keeps a pocketful of pound coins every time she goes into town to give to homeless people. How she always stops and chats to them when everyone else tries to walk as far away as they can.

How she’s always the one who gives up her seat on the bus, or helps a mum carry a buggy up the stairs, or offers to pay for someone’s shopping if they’ve forgotten their purse. This stuff used to make me roll my eyes and feel embarrassed when I was younger, but now I see these little things for what they are: the signs that my mum, my lovely mum, is a really decent person who deserves better than what life has given her recently.

I’m nearly nineteen now, and all my friends still think she’s the best and wish she’d adopt them. Everyone always hung out at our house—she was the mum who’d always give us lifts, or provide pizza, and bring the mattresses downstairs so we could have a movie night sleepover in the living room. The ‘treat box’ was never empty, and she always had a smile on her face. She rarely lost her rag, even when someone had puked Malibu and Coke on the dog (true story). She’d just pull a face and say ‘well, we’ve all been there…’

Stuff like this should be more important, shouldn’t it? It should get more respect in the world. I mean, she’s never been famous or had a high-flying career, but she’s so kind and brilliant and nice, and I think that makes her extraordinary.

If you’re wondering why she’s going through such a low spell in her life, it’s not one big dramatic thing. It’s like a cavalcade of crap, a snowball of shit that’s built up and up until it’s basically squashed her (excuse my language but they’re the mildest words I can use). I’ll tell you about it, but this isn’t in order—it all kind of smushed together anyway.

Her mum, my nana, died about a year and a half ago. It wasn’t a tragedy—she was in her late seventies—but Mum had looked after her for years after her dad passed away. So she didn’t just lose her mum, which would have been bad enough—I think she lost a bit of her purpose as well. She’d been caring for her for so long and suddenly she was gone, and that left a big nana-shaped hole in her heart and her life.

Then a while ago, she got made redundant from her job in a supermarket. I know it doesn’t sound exciting, and honestly, when I was younger, I was a bit embarrassed when she used to turn up at school in her uniform (yes, I seemed to spend a lot of time being embarrassed; I think this is a normal girl thing). I suppose I wanted my mum to be more exotic, like a movie star or a footballer’s wife or even just someone who worked in an office and wore high heels.

Thing is, she loved her job—loved all her regulars, and chatting to everyone who popped in, and telling me tales about the 90-year-old man who bought flowers for his wife every Friday, and the woman who was addicted to wine gums but hated the green ones. She used to say all of human life was there, and most of it fancied a four-pack of Carlsberg and a giant bag of Wotsits. She really enjoyed it, especially the old people who used to come in for ‘their bits’; she said she could tell sometimes she was the only person they spoke to all day.

Then that thing happened where the supermarket brought in self-service tills instead, and swapped the humans for machines. I mean, I suppose we’re all used to that now, but I never use them on principle, because I’ve seen the other side. Not just my mum losing her job, but my mum getting upset at the thought of all those old people struggling to scan their ready meals for one and trying to chat to a screen. I’d never even thought about the human side of it all before, just thought they were convenient, and if I’m honest, I was glad I didn’t have to stand in a queue behind those old dears and their endless chat to the people on the tills. I’m a bit ashamed of that now.

So, she lost her mum and lost her job, and also my older brother Ben went off to uni in Manchester. This was a bonus for me, because he’s an absolute arse and we get on about as well as Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Oscars. For some weird reason, though, she actually likes having him around, and when he left she was really sad. I caught her once sitting on his bed and crying, clutching a pile of dirty socks and soggy towels he’d left on the floor. I don’t understand why she misses him—I mean, it’s not like it was me who left, the far superior child!—but she does. Must be a mum thing.

This was all bad enough, but even worse was my dad—or as he’s also known, The Biggest Twat in the Universe—walking out on her. People, even Mum, keep telling me this is a ‘complicated’ subject. That marriages are complicated, life is complicated, relationships are complicated. They say this like it excuses literally any kind of behaviour. I know I’m only eighteen and three-quarters, and therefore have less life experience than a garlic naan, but I still think that’s bullshit. Like, can you imagine this excuse being used anywhere else? ‘Yes, m’lord, my client was indeed found covered in blood, carrying the murder weapon, and wearing a T-shirt that said “Guilty as Charged!” on the front, but in his defence, it was complicated .’

In this case, it wasn’t that complicated. My dad left my mum—left us all, let’s be blunt—and moved in with a woman he’d been seeing behind her back for almost two years. So basically, while she was still looking after, and then grieving for, Nana, and saying goodbye to Ben, and getting shafted by self-service machines, he was sneaking around like love’s middle-aged dream with a woman who runs a cocktail bar in town. That was about ten months ago now, and she’s still reeling.

He’s tried to dodge all of the responsibility for this, to the point where he seems to be blaming everything, from my mum to Guinness to global warming, for the choices he’s made. Anything other than admit he’s in the wrong. He’s taken the things that make my mum special, and used them against her: she was too wrapped up in worrying about the kids, too concerned with other people, too busy caring for Nana. Too preoccupied to pay him enough attention.

Basically he’s a giant baby, and doesn’t even see how self-obsessed he is. At one point he even muttered the immortal words ‘Well, you can’t deny you’ve let yourself go a bit, can you?’ Unfortunately for him, I was outside the room and overheard this gem, then walked in and slapped him across the face. He was horrified; Mum was horrified; I suppose even I was. But using the Rule of Grown-Up Life, I can just say ‘Well, it’s complicated’, and get away with it, can’t I?

I mean, it is complicated. I miss my dad but I also despise him. I love him but I also have no respect for him. Because of him leaving, we had to sell the house I grew up in, and now live in a much smaller place. Our whole lives have been tipped upside down, especially Mum’s. She’s made the best of it, but the best isn’t exactly awesome.

So now he’s run off, and Ben’s away, and I’m at home seeing her very quietly and very slowly fall apart. She’s even doing that in a kind way, as though she doesn’t want to inconvenience anyone, and she probably thinks she’s fooled me. Anyone who didn’t know her as well as I do would think she was fine.

She’s one of those people who always says good morning to random strangers, and knows everyone’s life story on the dog-walking route, and always has a smile ready. On the surface, she’s Little Miss Sunshine—but I know better. I hear her crying in her bedroom late at night, and see her looking at her own body as though she can’t believe it’s hers. She stays cheerful until she thinks I’ve left the house, and then sinks into blank-faced misery. I know this because I forgot my headphones once, and came back in without her knowing. It was horrible and I snuck straight back out because I knew she’d be upset if she knew I’d seen her.

She’s doing her best to put on a good front, but her confidence has gone. It’s one of the reasons she hasn’t applied for a new job yet, and is living off her redundancy. It’s like she can’t see her own value anymore. She’s still a great mum. She forgets her own issues as soon as I have one, and sometimes I even make them up to give her something to fix. But I can tell she’s completely grey inside, when she used to be rainbow, if that makes sense. It’s like she’s become the Invisible Woman, and I want her to be seen again. I want her to see herself again.

I know I’ve gone on a bit—you did say ‘heart and soul’ to be fair—and some of this has been a bit heavy, and probably all of it is inappropriate. So I also wanted to tell you some of the positives, which might even be relevant. Well, the empathy bit and the good listener bit are definitely covered—those are her defining characteristics. Dad used to wind her up and call her the ‘empathy sponge’, because she got so involved in the way other people might feel—except he saw it as a bad thing, obviously, because he was like an empathy void instead.

She’s a good cook; she’s raised a family, and we always ate well. She can bake, and do a mean Sunday roast, and seems to enjoy feeding people. I love cooking too, and sometimes there’s a scuffle in the kitchen about who gets to make dinner—so you might even get a BOGOF deal.

My mum is really hard-working, and one of those irritating people who lives that whole ‘if a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing right’ ethos. And she’s really good at making a home. I don’t know how to describe this—she just has a knack for it. She’s always up a ladder doing the decorating, and she loved giving our rooms a new look, and her idea of heaven would be taking a blank canvas house and making it into a home.

When we moved into the new house, it was pretty grim. It belonged to an older man and it hadn’t been painted since about 1902. Everything was really ugly and grimy and it felt like the place where hope comes to die. She got to work straight away and transformed it—and within a month it didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like somewhere crap we’d been forced into because of Dad’s roving penis. It felt like our home, where we’d always lived, clean and fresh and comfy. Not sure that’s any use in a café, but it’s a really nice thing about her, and something she genuinely loses herself in.

Anyway. That’s that, I suppose. Except, full disclosure, it’s probably not just her who needs a fresh start. It’s me as well. Everything that’s gone on has affected me too, plus I split up with my boyfriend and messed up my A-levels. Maybe they were all connected, I don’t know, but everything seems to have gone massively wrong. I didn’t feel ready to leave Mum and go to uni anyway, and I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to do, but it’s never nice to fail at things, is it? I might do resits at some point, and my school said they can set me up with some online courses as well, so all is not lost—I could rediscover my inner genius in Dorset! I just know that maybe a change of scenery will be good for both of us, away from the past, and everything that reminds us of all that stuff that’s gone massively wrong.

So, that’s it, Laura. If you have any questions—like ‘who is this crazy person?’—then feel free to ask! Even if I never hear from you, it felt weirdly good to get all of this written down. Cathartic, to use a fancy English A-level word.

Sophie Connolly xxx