Coming Home to the Comfort Food Café. Debbie Johnson

face falls into a place somewhere between anger and embarrassment, and the tribe tries to close in around her. I’m guessing they know who I am. I’m sure she’s told them stories about her control-freak fake-mother, and I’m sure they’re sympathetic. Somewhere, somehow, I’ve become The Man – how ironic.

      One of them, a tall, skinny guy with a spider web tattooed around his neck, stands between us. He probably thinks he’s cool. He probably thinks he’s tough. He probably thinks I’m scared of him.

      He’s probably wrong.

      I gesture for him to come closer, so I can make myself heard over the sound of Dave Grohl, and whisper into his ear: “I need to talk to Martha. So back off, don’t try and stop me, and I won’t pull that nose ring right out of your nostrils, okay?”

      He rears up, trying to look unimpressed but not entirely pulling it off. I meet his eyes, and he seems to realise that I’m being serious. He doesn’t back off – that would be too big a bravado fail – but he doesn’t resist when I slide past him, either.

      For a moment, I feel bad – he can’t be more than 19 himself. Still a kid, despite the tats and the attitude. What right do I have to judge him, or threaten him? None at all – apart from the right that being Martha’s fake-mother gives me. Still, I glance over my shoulder at him, and mouth the words: ‘Thank you.’ He frowns – for some reason that seems to scare him even more.

      Martha stands frozen, completely still, her arms folded across her chest. Her eyes don’t look quite right – they’re trying to focus on me, but keep sliding around. She’s clearly drunk, at the very least. I meet her gaze, and the world fades around us. I try to ignore the music and her friends and the strobe light and the jostling of young bodies dancing away their anger.

      I close the gap between us, and lean close so she can hear me.

      “Martha, it’s time to come home,” I say, simply.

      “Why?” she replies, her expression torn between a sneer and sadness. “It doesn’t even feel like home any more. She’s not there. You hate me. Even that crappy bloody college doesn’t want me. There’s just … no point.”

      Part of me – a part I bury very quickly – actually agrees with her. It does all feel pointless. Like an endless battle, a constant round of pain and recovery and more pain. And the house – that lovely little house in a nice part of Bristol – doesn’t feel like home any more. It feels like a prison, for both of us, with Kate’s ghost wandering the halls and whispering into our ears at lights out. I want to curl up in a ball and go to sleep, for the next two decades at least. But I can’t. Because of her. Because of Kate. Because they both need me to be the best person I can be.

      “I don’t hate you,” I say, keeping my voice steady. “I love you. And I know these are your friends, and that you think they’re looking after you, but it’s time to come home.”

      “They are looking after me! More than anyone else does!” she shrieks, stamping her foot onto the dancefloor. I cast a quick glance at the friends in question, and understand the power that they hold over her. Despite their challenging appearance, I’m sure they’re not bad people. I’m sure they are, in their own way, looking after her. And I completely understand the lure of that – of rebellion, of escape, of finding a crowd of like-minded rejects to make you feel less rejected yourself.

      But I also understand how dangerous it could be for her. She’s new to this battlefield, and she doesn’t have the armour she needs yet. She doesn’t have the shell I had by her age, layered on over years of instability and neglect.

      “I know you think that. And we can talk about it all later. But now, I need you to come home. Please.”

      I’m amazed at how calm I’m sounding, when inside I just want to yell and scream and possibly pull her out of that place by her hair if I need to. Maybe this is one of the secrets of parenthood: resisting those urges, and walking the better path.

      “Look,” I continue, watching as she chews on her lip, tearing the flesh away with her teeth, “I get it, all right? It feels like the whole world’s got it in for you. You’ve lost the best mum in the world, and now everything’s gone to shit. It doesn’t feel fair, or right, or like the pain will ever end. And losing yourself in moments like these is the only way you manage to stay sane. I get it. I understand. I don’t have any answers, Martha – but I do know I want you to come home with me. I love you, and I want to help you.”

      I can see tears shining in her eyes, and a debate raging across her face. There’s a battle going on inside her: the tough Martha who wants to tell me to eff off and run away to live in a squat, and the good Martha – the one who knows, deep down, that what I’m saying is right. I stay silent, and let her think it through, spending several surreal moments surrounded by dancing kids and feeling the strobe light flash over my disastrous hair.

      Eventually, after more chewing, and the angry swiping away of those annoying tears, she says: “Can I finish my drink first?”

      I am instantly submerged with relief. The good Martha has won out – and letting her finish her drink seems like a small price to pay for what feels like a huge victory. In fact, I feel like a drink myself.

      She wanders off to the side of the dancefloor, where empty glasses and beer bottles are lying on a shelf. She picks up a green bottle, and swigs from it. Her protector from earlier – Spider Man – hovers behind us, and I wonder momentarily if he’s going to cause trouble. If he’s going to try and persuade her to stay.

      Instead, he gives me half a smile, and offers me a bottle too. Peroni, which is classier than I expected. I nod gratefully, and take the drink from him. I kind of want to hug him for that small gesture, but think it might terrify him. I take a gulp, and realise that I’ve been running on adrenaline for a while now. Knowing that Martha is safe, here with me, and not locked up in a cellar with a creepy old dude, releases some of it. Enough for me to actually enjoy a quick drink of lager, and enough for me to respond when the first notes of the next song kick in.

      It’s instantly recognisable, and impossible to mistake for anything else. The strutting guitar riffs of David Bowie’s Rebel Rebel blast out into the room, and a collective whoop of joy goes up from the crowd. I look at them flocking to dance, David still issuing the rallying cry of freaks the world over. I feel the beat, deep in my soul, and my toes start to tap. This was one of our songs – mine and Kate’s. We danced to it at home, in her garage, and here. On this very dancefloor, so many times – pouting and prancing and spinning and doing silly actions, feeling the music and the lyrics lift us higher than any drug ever could.

      I take a long, deep chug on the beer, and place it down on the shelf. I look at Martha, and raise one eyebrow. She used to dance to it with us as well – bopping around the living room in her pink ballet tutu when she was four; jumping off the sofa to it and into our arms. When she was older, we’d go giddy with it, all pretending to sing into hairbrushes or wine bottles, sticking our chests out and mincing all over the room.

      She gives me half a smile, showing me that she remembers – and then we’re off. Both of us, winding our way into the crush of bodies, the black-clad teens and the tattooed wonders and the pierced babies of the world. We are in the very middle of the dance floor, where the action is – and we go for it.

      We strut and we jump and we wave our arms and we spin each other round and we laugh and we pull faces. We pose and we pause and we leap – we shine in the strobe lights, hair cascading around our sweating faces. We jig and we stretch and we point at each other as we sing that magical, wonderful line – hot tramp, I love you so. We are brilliant. We are awesome. We are the bloody Diamond Dogs, and we are howling at the moon.

      When the song fades to its close, we wrap our arms around each other, and we weep. We weep for Kate. For poor David Bowie. For ourselves. We weep for all we have lost, for all that we had, for all that we will never have again.

PART TWO