The Comfort Food Café

Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

I know they mean well, and they might even be right, but I don’t call Gabriel. It’s a complicated thing, and after I spoke to them I gave it a lot of thought.

Firstly, he clearly doesn’t want me to call him. There was no ‘keep in touch’ element to that letter, and phones work both ways. If he’s not in contact, then that’s because he doesn’t want to be.

Secondly, they don’t really understand. I hate thinking this, but it’s true. This is something I could never say out loud, because it makes me sound like an awful human being, but their husbands died. That is terrible and tragic and I’ve seen the toll it’s taken on them both.

But their husbands had no choice about that; they were torn from them by illness or accident. They didn’t walk away willingly, after telling them they’d ‘let themselves go’. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish that Richie was dead, and I am not in any way claiming that what I went through was worse than what they went through. Of course it wasn’t. But it was different.

They’ve had to deal with grief and loss and suffering, building a new life without their loved ones. That is horrible, and my heart goes out to them. But they haven’t faced the same circumstances as me, the rejection, the self-loathing, the long war of attrition. It’s all left its mark, and it’s not something I want to go through again. Whether I love Gabriel or not, I also need to love myself. And that means having some self-respect. I will not give another man the chance to tell me I’m not good enough.

This is all fine in theory, but back in the real world I still feel like crap, despite the copious amounts of Bakewell tart that Laura keeps baking for me. My comfort food isn’t really doing the trick, but I appreciate the thought behind it.

What does do the trick is keeping as busy as I possibly can. It was a perfect storm when Richie left, and if I’d had my mum to take care of, or my job hadn’t gone kaput, maybe I’d have coped better. Here, I have plenty to do. I am useful, and helpful, and can contribute to the community.

Work gets even busier once the schools break up for the holidays, with more people arriving for a Christmas break in our gorgeous little corner of the world. I extend my hours, and at my suggestion we start doing evening meals. It’s a weird time to start, the week before Christmas, but Cherie leaps on the idea as soon as the words come out of my mouth. Maybe I’m not the only one who wants to keep busy. We agree to do it as a trial for two nights, and it’s a sell-out both times.

It’s also the Max and Cherie show, as Laura has commitments at home. Cherie came up with the menus, and we all helped prepare. Sophie and her friend Jess waited on the tables, and it was chaotic but a lot of fun. Cherie says she’s definitely going to carry on with it, and is already planning for the week between Christmas and New Year, ‘when nobody can remember what day it is and they’re all sick of turkey’.

I’ve renewed the tenants’ lease on the house in Solihull, and realise that I’m okay with leaving it behind. Part of me wanted to run home once things got hard, but I talked myself out of it. There is nothing there for me now. My life is here, even if Gabriel isn’t.

I’m also giving more thought to my side hustle of doing up the Rockery cottages. Cherie seems serious about it, and on changeover day she walked me round them while they were being cleaned for the next guests. They’re all charming in their own way, but the decor is on the tired side. Each one has a lot of potential, and I am brimming with ideas about what I might do if we decide to go ahead.

Sophie suggested, jokingly, that I should start my own YouTube channel called Max’s Home Makeovers, and I shocked her by saying I might. I won’t, of course—put a camera on me and I’m guaranteed to walk into a lamp post—but it was worth it just to see the look on her face.

I visit Katie and happy-cry when I hold her baby, and I do some Christmas shopping, and Auburn and Finn take me on a tour of Briarwood, the big old manor house where all the geniuses live. Most of them have gone home for Christmas, but some remain, locked into their work. I don’t understand most of it, but when one of their inventions changes the world I’ll be able to say I was there at the beginning.

I visit Belle every other day and take her treats, and in her own disgruntled way she seems pleased to see me. I check out her stables and water troughs, and she’s being taken care of. I never go inside the house, though; I just couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear to see it empty and quiet, haunted by the things I’ve done there, by the person I became there. By Gabriel.

I develop a knack of shutting down my brain every time I even think his name, and that works while I’m busy. It works while I have something to distract me. The problems come at night, when I’m lying in bed trying to sleep. Then, I am helpless, and it all comes rushing in, crushing me in a landslide of regret. I miss him so much it hurts. Everything I do in my oh-so-busy life, I want to tell him about. I want to show him the pictures of little ugly-gorgeous Oliver, and talk to him about Briarwood, and test out the evening menu on him.

Every night, I find myself writing him a message on my phone, telling him about my day, asking about his. Telling him that I love him. And every night, I delete it without pressing send.

I feel like part of me is missing, and I have phantom pain where Gabriel used to be. I hide it from the kids well enough that neither of them even asks how I am; they carry on being selfish and inconsiderate, which is exactly the way I want it. I’ve told them he’s gone away for Christmas and they’ve accepted that, plus it’s not technically a lie. He has gone away; I’ve just no idea when he’ll be back, or even if he will.

I am in pain, but I am in secret pain, and that is a strange kind of consolation. I just need to stay busy, keep myself occupied, never leave an empty moment where the sadness might swoop in and grab me.

The day before Christmas Eve is a Monday, and the café is closed. The weather is miserable—relentless rain and sleet battered the windows through the night—and I wake up to face a rare day that is so far unfilled. It makes me panic a little, and I lie in bed wracking my brains to come up with a mind-numbing task. All my gifts are bought and wrapped, the cottage is pristine, and I can’t do any more work on it until the kitchen is done in the New Year.

I’m considering buying a wetsuit and asking Sam for an impromptu surf lesson when my phone pings on my bedside cabinet. As ever, I experience that little whoosh of hope. Much as I try, I can’t quite kill it completely.

It’s actually a message from Edie, and even seeing her name come up on my contacts makes me smile. She told me once she has to use a magnifying glass to see the keypad on her phone, but I suspect she was having me on. It’s hard to tell with Edie; there’s a lot of devilment in her.

I found some pictures for Gabriel, but I haven’t heard from him. Pop round if you have time, but don’t worry if not.

She signs off with a string of emojis that show old people with walking sticks, and then a giant winky-smiley face.

I am up and out within half an hour, taking Gary with me. He’s not best pleased and tries to sneak back inside once he realises it’s raining, but if I’m not long at Edie’s, I can use him as an excuse to go for a long walk. He looks up at me, as though he can read my mind, and I swear to God he narrows his eyes.

The single street of the village is busy, the butcher doing a roaring trade and the front of the florist’s shop filled with poinsettia in pots and bouquets decorated with holly. I nip in and grab a bunch for Edie. Nobody ever goes anywhere empty-handed in Budbury, I’ve come to realise.

I see Auburn through the window of the pharmacy and give her a wave before I knock on Edie’s door. I’ve never actually been inside her home, and it’s charming. She lives in one of the tiny whitewashed terraces that line the road, and the front door opens right into the living room. She has old-fashioned lace antimacassars on the chair arms, and everything is made of chintz. There’s a life-size cardboard figure of Anton du Beke from Strictly in one corner, his smiling face covered in bright red lipstick kisses. I don’t ask.

I hand her the flowers, and she takes them in delight. I notice belatedly that there are already four other vases full of very similar bouquets, and realise I’m not the only one to have had that thought.

‘Yours are my favourite,’ she assures me, as she adds yet another vase to the collection. ‘Tea, coffee? Tequila?’

I opt for coffee, but am curious as to whether she actually has the tequila or not. I wouldn’t put it past her. Maybe it’s the secret to her long life.

Once we’re settled and Gary is curled up at my feet, she passes me a plain cardboard folder, and says: ‘Took me a while, but once Gabriel asked me to look I was determined! I do like a challenge! I found them in the county archive in the end. When the little local newspaper we had went digital, they donated all their old photos. These are copies, so he’s welcome to keep them.’

I open the folder, and find three pictures. Black and white, obviously, as they date back to the forties and fifties. One shows the street outside, and I am amazed at how little it’s changed. The shops are different, and there are hardly any cars, but essentially it is the same. There’s some kind of party going on, tables set up and people waving flags, bunting draped from house to house.

‘That was Coronation Day,’ Edie announces, smiling at the memory. ‘We had a street party. And look, there they are—the Pumpwells.’

I follow her finger, and see a family sitting together at one of the tables. Mum and Dad look quite stern, but the teenagers are clearly having a ball, grinning and holding glasses in the air.

‘That’s Norman and Marjorie,’ Edie tells me. ‘I seem to recall Norman got quite drunk on scrumpy that day. He’d only have been young, and I think he ended up taken home in a wheelbarrow…’

The next one features the whole family standing together by the side of a field, a display of vegetables in front and a big piece of machinery behind them. Again, the parents look dour, but I suppose these are people who had gone through through two world wars and lived a tough life on the land.

‘That one was taken as part of an article about the “modern face of farming in Dorset”,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a copy of that as well. They don’t look very modern now, I know, but they were one of the first farms to have their own combine harvester. That was big news back in the day!’

The last photo is the one that really gets to me. Edie tells me it was taken as part of the same article, and it shows Norman and Marjorie standing outside the farmhouse. The extension on the side of the building was clearly new back then, but other than that, it looks the same.

Norman is tall, dark-haired and handsome in that 1950s way, maybe about sixteen at the time. He has his arm around Marjorie’s shoulders, and they’re both smiling for the camera. Marjorie herself is a stunner, with glamorous swept-up hair and a playful look that still shines through after all this time.

I stroke the picture, wondering what was going on in their heads when this was taken. They look happy, but were they? By that stage, was Marjorie’s unwanted marriage already planned? Was Norman already dreaming of leaving to go to university? One moment, frozen in time, when they were so young the whole world must have felt like an adventure.

‘It was a bit of a scandal when she eloped,’ says Edie, her face wrinkled in time. ‘I didn’t know them well, but I remember it happening. Back in those days there was a lot more pressure on young people to stay with their families, to carry on with the farming. It’s not like that now, and I never know if that’s a good thing or not. I suppose it depends on the young people. But Marjorie clearly never wanted what was mapped out for her.’

‘Neither did Norman,’ I reply. ‘He wanted to be a doctor.’

‘Did he really?’ she says, sounding surprised. ‘Well, I never knew that! Marjorie running away would have put the kibosh on that, I suppose. What a shame, for both of them. We never found out what had happened to her, but when Gabriel turned up out of the blue, it seemed like she’d at least gone off and had a nice life. I’d have told him all of this, Gabriel, but he never asked. All those times we sat here having a cuppa, he never once asked. I got the feeling he didn’t want to know, and it wasn’t my place to push.’

‘That sounds like him,’ I say, smiling gently. ‘He probably would never have asked; it’s just that we found some letters back at the farmhouse, from Majorie. He loved his grandmother and I think it made him curious.’

‘I’m curious too. What did happen to her?’

‘Well, she married the archaeologist, and lived happily ever after. She had a daughter, Gabriel’s mum, who sadly died when he was only sixteen, but it sounds like she basically went on to have a long, full life. She died in 2021, when she was eighty-four.’

‘Oh, so young!’ says Edie sadly, and I bite back a laugh. I suppose from her perspective, it is young.

I gather up the pictures, and sit and chat with her for a little while longer. She tells me all about her nieces and their children, and shares her own memories of the Coronation Day street party, and it’s all very pleasant. She doesn’t require much in the way of encouragement, and I can see why Gabriel found her easy to be around: he could sit in his traditional stony silence and just listen to the anecdotes.

Eventually I thank her, and make my way outside. It’s still raining, but it’s less heavy. There’s more snow forecast over the next few days, and the weather people on the telly are going into ecstasies about it being a white Christmas.

I call into the pharmacy, where Auburn is perched on a stool blowing into a lollipop in the shape of a whistle. She toots at me as I walk in, and tells me she’s been rushed off her feet doing last-minute prescriptions all morning.

‘Have you got any photos’, I ask, ‘of Mr Pumpwell? I know you were friends, and that he started coming to village events in his later years.’

‘Reluctantly, and with a great deal of kicking and screaming, but yes. And I’m sure I’ll have some on my phone.’

‘Is there any way you could print them off for me? Pretty please?’

‘Sure,’ she says, giving a final whistle as she jumps off her stool. ‘Are they a Christmas gift for Gabriel? And if I print them for you, will you tell me if he’s a good kisser?’

I laugh, and also feel grateful that Cherie and Laura haven’t told anybody else what has happened. It’s hard enough to deal with, without everybody knowing and feeling sorry for me.

I give her a definite maybe, and agree to call back later in the day to collect them.

After that I head to Applechurch, the next village down the coast from Budbury. In comparison, it’s a bustling metropolis with several antique shops, two pubs, and a small supermarket. It doesn’t have quite the same charm, but it does have what I need.

Once the rain clears properly, I take Gary for a walk along the clifftop paths for an hour. I’ve been doing a lot of walking recently, and it’s pretty much the best thing in the world for a good, solid head-clearing. Even on a dull day like this the views are breathtaking, the rolling swell of the sea stretching out into infinity.

I’ve managed to fill in most of the day, and once I collect the prints from Auburn, I have a project in mind for the rest of it. Gabriel might not still be here, but his house is, and I’ve always wanted to be able to put some family photos up on those old stone walls. I might not have found the perfect rug, but I’d like to add the pictures. It will feel like the final touch, having Norman and Marjorie back home.

I go back to Hyacinth, where I find a group of Young People gathered around the dining room table playing Monopoly. There is much screeching and laughing, and I can see that Lizzie, Laura’s daughter, is absolutely slaughtering them all. She has a huge pile of fake cash in front of her, and hotels on Mayfair. Go Lizzie.

‘Where’s your brother?’ I ask.

‘Dunno. I was nice, I promise, and I asked him to play. He said he was going to do something more interesting, like watch the kettle boil.’

I check the kitchen, just in case he meant that literally, but then head upstairs. I knock on his door, and find him lying on his bed wearing his headphones, staring at his phone.

‘Can I use your desk?’ I ask. Both the kids have small desks in their rooms allegedly for their studies, but Sophie’s is set up with her PlayStation and if I move anything even a fraction of an inch, she will rain down hellfire.

When he shrugs, I take it as a yes and get set up. I found a really nice old frame in one of the shops in Applechurch, and I carefully dismantle it and insert the backing card. I smile as I look through Auburn’s photos, seeing a variety of shots of the late Norman Pumpwell. He’s very old on these, sitting in the café with a party hat on, looking like he’d prefer to be anywhere else in the world. It’s hard to imagine him as that teenaged boy who got so drunk on scrumpy he had to be pushed home in a wheelbarrow.

There’s one of him sitting in his kitchen, a ‘Birthday Boy’ banner decorated with little footballs up on the wall. He’s almost smiling as he looks at the cake in front of him, and the background shows me exactly how much renovation work has been done on the room.

I compile a nice collage of all the different shots, with the old black and white one of him with Marjorie taking pride of place in the centre. When I’m done, I lean back in the chair and survey it. It’s perfect, I think. Even if Gabriel never comes back to receive it, this will be my little gift to the farmhouse. To the memory of Norman and Marjorie.

‘That’s cool,’ Ben says, lurking behind me. ‘The group shot looks a bit like the Addams Family, though. Who are the younger ones?’

‘That’s Norman Pumpwell, Gabriel’s great-uncle, and Marjorie, his grandmother. It’s a long story, and a bit sad.’

‘Right. I prefer them fast and happy. When’s he coming back?’

‘Who?’

‘Santa Claus. Who do you think I mean? Gabriel.’

‘Oh. I don’t know.’

He stares at me, his eyes narrowed, and then gives me an unexpected and totally delightful hug.

‘I hope it works out, Mum. He’s nice, and he makes you happy. But if it doesn’t work out … well, screw him, eh? It’s his loss.’

I can’t tell if he suspects there’s something wrong or not, and I don’t want to push the subject. I don’t want to have to talk about it, because if I do, there’s a strong chance my veneer will crack, and the real me—the nighttime me—will come spilling out. The photos have me teetering on the edge already.

‘Damn right,’ I say enthusiastically, wiping my hand across the glass of the frame. ‘His loss.’