The Comfort Food Café

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

‘Y ou do know this is a stupid idea, don’t you?’ I ask, as Sophie turns the key in the ignition. This simple act fills me with fear and dread. She only passed her test a few months ago and drives like she’s auditioning for a role in one of the Fast and Furious films.

‘Me behind the wheel, or going to Dorset?’

‘Erm, do I have to choose? They both feel bloody terrifying!’

‘That,’ she says, screeching out from our parking spot without checking her mirrors, ‘is because you’re a big cowardy-custard, Mum. You’re a jelly in human form. A spineless blob of a person, wearing an outfit that should be burnt at the stake for crimes against fashion.’

‘Thanks for the pep talk,’ I reply, glancing down at myself. ‘And what’s wrong with my outfit? It’s comfortable, and it hides my jiggly bits!’

Truth be told, I don’t have as many jiggly bits as I used to. Turns out that your husband leaving you is a really effective way to slim down. I should probably write some kind of self-help manual: Lose Your Man and Three Stone in One Easy Life Crisis . I still feel jiggly, though, and that’s what counts.

‘Mum, you have massive boobs and a big arse, and a bit extra in between. You’re just like Jessica Rabbit after she popped out a couple of kids and ate too many carrot cakes. The jiggly bits are hot. You know those music videos for R I was never quite at the stage where I could do that to the kids, and was always brutally aware of how much of a shadow that would cast over other people’s lives. Not just Sophie and Ben, but everyone who was touched by it, everyone who vaguely knew me, even the person who’d find me.

I remember reading an interview with the actress Kathy Burke where she talked about being so low because of menopause and illness that she’d considered taking her own life, but didn’t want to traumatise anyone. In the end she came up with an ingenious plan involving a hotel suite and warning notes on the door, and even more importantly, obviously didn’t put the ingenious plan into action. Maybe, like me, it was just something that she kept hidden in the back of her mind like a last resort, a fail-safe, the ultimate escape hatch if things really did get too dark.

I feel a flush of shame as I even admit these thoughts to myself, and then get annoyed about the fact that I’m ashamed. Wouldn’t I be the first person to say there’s no stigma to suffering with your mental health? Yes, I would … to other people. Funny how we judge ourselves more harshly than everyone else, isn’t it?

Anyway, I decide, swiping my hand across the now steamed-up window, I don’t feel like that anymore. Life hasn’t suddenly changed—my mum hasn’t come back to life, and Richie is still with the Other Woman—but I’m not unemployed, at least, thanks to my very rude daughter. She’s currently singing along to a track by a singer called Peaches, which repeats the title line, ‘F**k the Pain Away’ over and over again. It’s a super-catchy tune, but it’s not an image any mother wants to associate with her teenaged offspring.

It’s been just over a month since I had that first conversation with Laura, and it was followed by several more. I wasn’t instantly sold, but she’s persistent, I’ll give her that. I think maybe she was projecting some of her past self onto me, and that made her even more determined to drag me out of my old life and into the new. The new, she assured me, was one filled with fun and friendship and cake. Laura seems incapable of having an entire conversation without reference to cake.

She’d filled me in on all her ‘regulars’, the familiar faces that make up the café’s loyal clientele, and introduced me via the screen to Cherie Moon, the actual owner of the café. Cherie is an older lady, apparently in her early eighties, though she could get away with claiming younger. She has one of those timeless faces, lined and creased but so full of life that the vibrancy of her years overshadows the ageing process.

As far as Cherie was concerned, it was already a done deal that I’d be joining them.

‘Laura says you’re the one, my love,’ she’d said, shaking her head resignedly. ‘It’s like the moonlight—you can’t fight it. What’s your comfort food anyway, so we can stock up?’

This, I’ve learnt, is one of the café’s quirks: knowing everybody’s personal comfort food, and always having it on hand. I’ve been told that’s anything from chicken and mushroom Pot Noodles through to home-made jam roly-poly, and whatever I desire, it will be waiting for me.

‘Erm … lobster thermidor?’ I’d suggested, though truthfully I have no idea what that even is—it just sounds posh.

‘I’ll swim out to sea and catch one for you myself, darling,’ she’d responded, her laughter lines crinkling in a way that reminded me of my mum. She laughed a lot, my mother, even when her life was hard and painful. The only thing she loved more than having a good laugh was watching repeats of Inspector Morse, and making inappropriate comments about how ‘rugged’ John Thaw was in The Sweeney .

Thinking about my mum somehow triggered me into telling Cherie, ‘Bakewell tart. My mum used to make it when I was little.’

‘That we can do, my sweet,’ she’d answered, tapping the side of her head. ‘It’s now noted in my mobile encyclopaedia. See you soon!’

Somehow, during the course of these bizarre long-distance interactions, my initial resistance was worn down. The more I spoke to them, the more I looked forward to our next call, the more it seemed to make sense. As our connection built, it started to feel like a perfectly rational decision to put my fate in the hands of these eccentric strangers. After every entertaining chat, it felt more logical: Sophie wanted to do it, and really, what did I have to lose?

Eventually, I realised that the answer to that question was ‘not much’. It was a chance encounter with Richie and the Other Woman (real name Valerie) that pushed me past my tipping point. We accidentally bumped into each other in the Boots in town. She was buying expensive skin care products, and my basket contained some Gaviscon and a bumper pack of Imodium Instants—my humiliation was complete. Valerie is the kind of woman who gets her roots done every month, and factors the cost of shellac nails into her essentials budget. She’s so glamorous she probably wears high-heeled socks.

It was one of those awkward encounters where everybody concerned probably wished they’d seen each other quicker, and managed to hide. After an excruciating few minutes of tense small talk, I’d exited stage left as fast as my decidedly unglamorous Skechers could carry me, my heart pounding and my stomach churning.

When he first left, the pain was raw and brutal and felt like it would never end. Now, it’s like having grit in your eye: always there, but you know it’s probably not going to kill you. Seeing him—seeing them— in the flesh, though? That’s still agony, and makes me feel small and pointless and heartsore. Like I’ve got the tip of a screwdriver in my eye.

Richie and I were together for twenty-three years, and while it wasn’t perfect, I was always content. I assumed he was too, which was a mistake. He’d been seeing her behind my back for a long time before I found out.

I think that’s what hurt the most: not just that he left, but the mockery he made of our whole marriage. That he’d been seeing her, then coming home to me. It’s not a fair comparison, is it? She was the foxy mistress who always had her fancy knickers on and was constantly ready to rumble in the bedroom. I was the chubby wife who asked him to put the bins out, last bought fancy knickers in 2009, and was usually way too tired to rumble in the bedroom. I didn’t stand a chance.

After Boots-gate, I realised that there was always going to be a risk of these random encounters happening. We live in a suburb of Birmingham called Solihull, and it’s a nice place, but it is always going to be the place where my past lives. The past that now has a new haircut and a hipster beard and wears skinny jeans.

I realised that I didn’t want to walk around worried I’d end up with a screwdriver in my eye, and that I’d quite like to get rid of the grit as well. That I needed the change as much as Sophie kept telling me I did.

I drove up to Manchester to talk it over with Ben and take him out for a cheeky Nandos. He’d got a job there working as a night porter in a fancy hotel, and had only been home for weekends during the summer. I missed him, but was glad he was enjoying life up north.

When I told him about our escape plan, he told me it was mental, but ‘maybe you need a bit of mental’. I had to discuss it with him—despite Sophie’s claims that he was irrelevant—because it affected him too. Or at least it affected where he’d be bringing his dirty washing back to for the Christmas break. He basically told me to go for it, and by doing so, my last thread of an excuse officially disappeared.

Once I’d decided, it was all surprisingly straightforward. I spoke to a lettings agency about renting out the house for a few months, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a ‘high demand property, exceptionally well presented throughout’—go me. That’s a big change up from ‘requires cosmetic improvement’. A short-term tenant will be moving in next week, on a three-month contract, which means that Sophie and I are free to roam to our heart’s content.

It’s still insane. It’s still probably the single most reckless thing I’ve ever done in my life, but somehow, it might just work. And if it doesn’t, at the end of the three months, I won’t have lost anything at all.

Now our bags are packed, Sophie’s said her goodbyes, and Gary is curled in a small ball on the backseat, next to my daughter’s vital collection of games and devices. We’re off to the Comfort Food Café, and a whole new life. Or at least a whole new three months.

Sophie bullies her way onto the motorway, and immediately zig-zags into the fast lane, where she hammers our poor Toyota for all she’s worth.

‘We’ve got hours to go yet,’ she says, turning the music down. ‘Let’s play some games. I’ll start. Who’s your favourite Hun? Mine’s Attila, and you can’t have the same one!’