Coming Home to the Comfort Food Café. Debbie Johnson

‘fuck’ – I can still say it properly, and that’s what counts.”

       Chapter 5

      The next few days come and go with relatively little drama. Martha is on her best behaviour, which is verging on the terrifying.

      She’s not mentioned the move again, and neither have I – I suspect she is trying to placate me, trying to prove that she can be a good girl after all, hoping I’ve miraculously forgotten all about it.

      I haven’t, of course. I’ve done nothing but think about it. Thinking that seems to involve chewing the ends of a lot of pencils, drinking a lot more coffee, and doodling pictures of rose-trellised cottages on the back of receipts from Bargain Booze.

      I carry on my email conversation with the amusing Cherie Moon, landlady at The Rockery holiday cottages; I contact the college in Budbury, and I send a very immature message to Martha’s former head teacher saying we’re both happy to never be returning.

      Soon, I’ve made progress. Cherie Moon – my new best friend – has confirmed that we can take one of her two-bedroomed cottages on a six-month let for what seems to be a very excellent price. She’s asked all kinds of questions I didn’t expect, and seems a lot more interested in why we’re moving to Dorset than my credit rating, which is unusual in a landlady.

      I’m not sure why, but I told Cherie about Kate, and Martha, and the fact that we are looking for a fresh start. She’d made lots of sympathetic comments, and expressed views that Budbury, and the cafe she ran on the coast, ‘specialised in fresh starts.’

      I do have brief and fleeting concerns that maybe she’s some kind of cult leader – she has the right name for it – trying to lure us into a quasi-religious community where we’d be expected to tithe our earnings and sleep with the high priest and make jam out of tea leaves and rat entrails. But then again, I always did have an over-active imagination.

      I reward myself for all this progress with a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones – it could be worse, I think, Martha could be in Sansa Stark’s shoes – and a glass of wine. I may or may not have drifted off to sleep. Something definitely happened, because the next time I was aware of my surroundings, I had a red stain on my jeans, slobber on my chin, and it had gone dark outside. Classy.

      Edging back into hazy consciousness, I wipe my face clean, retrieve the empty wine glass from the side of the sofa, and hide my eyes while I switch the TV off. I’d left Game of Thrones running and the episodes had been on auto-play – the very worst kind of spoiler.

      I glance at my watch, and see that it is after eleven pm. I’ve actually been out for a few hours, in one of those deep and dreamless sleeps you have when you’re completely exhausted.

      I can still hear the sound of a bass-line thudding through the floor of Martha’s room, like a sonic boom. It must be bone-rattlingly loud in there. She may have to face life without ear-drums if she carries on like this.

      I do a bit of housework – and by that I mean cramming even more plates into the dishwasher and hoping for the best – and decide to try and turn in for the night. Or at least lie in bed with a good book. I sleep in what used to be the spare room of the house, which is quite small and looks out over the garden. I’ve never been able to bring myself to sleep in Kate’s room, even though it is by far the biggest. It’s still too much … hers. The whole house, to some extent, is a bit like a constant reminder of the life we used to have; the woman we loved, who filled it with energy and warmth and security. The woman we lost.

      But we live in the rest of the house. We use it; we make meals, and mess things up, and wash clothes, and leave books lying around, and dump our bags in the hallway. The rest of the house has moved on a little – it’s evolving with us, around us.

      Kate’s room, though? That’s still haunted. Still a no-go zone. Like there’s some kind of emotional cordon around it; crime scene tape for the mind. The door stays shut, although I do occasionally find myself standing outside, touching the handle, imagining she’s still in there. Getting ready for work, or a night out, faffing around with hair straighteners or using one of the seventeen different types of perfume on her cluttered dressing table, sniffing them all and usually deciding on the Burberry.

      Sometimes I even go so far as to open the door, and the disappointment of seeing that neatly made bed; seeing the wires of the hair straighteners tangled in an unused heap like coiled snakes; smelling the seventeen different types of perfume … well, it’s a killer, I can tell you. Some doors are simply better off left closed – at least for the time being.

      I amble up the stairs, feeling croaky and stiff, like an 80-year-old version of myself. I pause outside Martha’s room, lingering there as I debate whether to knock or not.

      I don’t want to push her, or intrude … or, if I’m entirely honest, interact with her at all. I’m tired too, and we both need a bit of space. But I also really don’t want to be listening to death metal all night, while I try to concentrate on reading the latest Kate Atkinson book. Jackson Brodie deserves my full attention.

      So I knock, practicing my super-friendly, no-conflict-here smile, and wait for her to answer. She doesn’t – possibly because of the ear-splitting level of the music. I knock again, my super-friendly, no-conflict-here smile possibly fading a little. I wait some more. Still nothing.

      After that, I bang on the door double-fisted, yelling ‘Martha! Turn that racket down!’ at the top of my voice. God, the neighbours must absolutely love us.

      The super-friendly, no-conflict-here smile has by this time well and truly done a runner. It has been replaced by its angry relative: the super-unfriendly I’m-going-to-kill-you face.

      Annoyed, tired, and already feeling tomorrow’s headache coming on, I decide that her privacy is an over-rated commodity, and push the door open. I usually avoid doing such things – you never know what you’re going to find in an angry teenaged girl’s bedroom – but I’ve had enough.

      The door slams backwards, and I storm into the room. I intend to rip the plug to the stereo out of the wall, and entirely possibly throw her awesomely cool record player (the kind we all got rid of in the 90s) out of the window. I might, depending on how that goes, snap her entire vinyl collection into tiny black smithereens.

      Of course, I don’t do any of this. Not because I am cool and calm and restrained. But because I realise that there is a bigger issue to deal with than the music.

      The room – smelling suspiciously ripe and herbal – is empty. Martha, adorable child that she is, has snuck out.

       Chapter 6

      It’s my own fault, I think, as I make my way towards town. If I hadn’t passed out in front of the goggle box, she wouldn’t have been able to sneak past me and into the night. I’d known she was more upset than she’d been letting on – about the letter from college, about life in general, the potential move to Dorset– but I’d let her escape to her room and fester in it.

      I didn’t even bother doing the usual ring-round of her friends. She’d moved on from them. I did, however, ring Steph – the police lady who had become half a friend. After bringing Martha home that night, we’d bumped into each other a few times in town, and she’d always been kind, not only asking how Martha was, but asking how I was as well. So few people ever asked that, and I was pathetically grateful. Funny how you can present a tough front to the world, but a random act of kindness from a virtual stranger can bring on the waterworks.

      So tonight, I took a chance, and called her, trying to sound light-hearted but feeling the weight of the world bearing down on my shoulders. The rational part of me knew Martha would be all right – but the part of me that read a lot of books was extremely concerned with serial killers, rohypnol in drinks,