Читать книгу Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe - Debbie Johnson, Debbie Johnson - Страница 12

Hyacinth House is rustic and pretty, and filled with the aroma of home-baked bread and fresh, sugary confections. It smells so good, in fact, as I push open the heavy wooden door, that for a moment I think it’s been spritzed with one of those artificial scents that people use when they’re trying to sell their home. Not that I’m sure those artificial scents even exist, but if not, they should. Maybe I’ll invent them and make my fortune.

I flick on the lights in the hallway and then the living room. Actually, I realise, as I take it all in, it’s one big open-plan room, really, in an L-shape. The little leg of the L is the kitchen and the big leg of the L is long but cosy and has a dining table at one end, and squishy-looking sofas and a TV at the other end.

There’s a lot of exposed brick and wooden beams peeking out of the low ceiling and a big stone fireplace that we’re unlikely to use in this weather unless we decide to do some hot yoga.

The interior design runs very much to the chintzy end of the style spectrum, with swirling floral patterns on the sofas and the throws that are on the sofas, the curtains and the lamp shades, and pretty much every available soft-furnishing surface.

The dining table is vast and battered and made from what looks like oak; it’s solid and scarred and seems like it’s led an interesting life. It’s also bearing a big tray of delicious-looking cupcakes, all iced in different rainbow colours, and a huge seed-topped loaf that has the slightly wonky look of something home-made.

There’s also a big bunch of wildflowers in a glass vase, and yes – praise the Lord! – a bottle of wine. Looks like it has a home-made label, so it is probably intensely organic and will get me very drunk, very quickly. Excellent.

Propped against it is a little note, which I pick up and read as I hear the kids stomping their way through. Nate heads immediately for the cupcakes, drawn like a moth to a fattening flame.

‘Who’s that from?’ asks Lizzie, also reaching out for a cake. She’s become disgustingly figure-conscious over the last few months and I count a day of her eating McDonald’s and cupcakes as a positive, weirdly enough.

‘It’s from Cherie,’ I say, ‘you know, the – ‘

‘The woman who was bonkers enough to give you a job?’ she finishes. That obviously wasn’t what I was going to say, but she kind of has a point. I don’t answer, choosing to remain dignified and aloof.

‘Don’t do your ‘who’s farted?’ face, Mum, you know what I mean!’

Apparently my dignified and aloof needs a little work, so I shove a whole cupcake in my mouth instead.

‘I mean,’ Lizzie continues, ‘that it’s all a bit weird, isn’t it? She’s never even met you. I didn’t mean it as an insult – you’re, you know, pretty good. At cooking. I’m sure you’ll be all right at working in a café. I just wish you’d found one a bit …’

‘Closer to home,’ supplies Nate, helpfully. ‘I think it took Matt Damon less time to get off Mars than it took us to get here.’

He flops down onto the sofa and straight away starts trying to figure out how to use the TV remote. Jimbo leaps up onto the couch next to him, circles precisely three times, then falls asleep with his muzzle buried beneath his own tail.

‘So what does she say, then, the mysterious Cherie?’ asks Lizzie, snapping a few pictures on her phone as she prowls around the room. A close-up of the bread, the flowers. A snarl before she takes one of the floral curtains, which are presumably not to her sophisticated tastes. One of Jimbo. One of Nate, who is now repeatedly pressing the same button on the remote, as though it might work the ninety-ninth time he does it. Then one of me, as I quickly realise that I shouldn’t have put that whole cupcake in my mouth all at once.

I wait a few moments, chewing frantically, before I am able to answer.

‘She says she’s sorry she didn’t get to see us earlier, but she has to go to her salsa class tonight. She says she hopes we enjoy the cakes and the wine – that bit’s aimed at me, obviously – and that she’ll see us all tomorrow. That we should spend the morning getting settled in and come round to the café for lunch. Isn’t that nice?’

‘Yeah, I s’pose,’ says Nate, giving up on the TV and instead shuffling down on the sofa so he can rest his head on the dog. Jimbo absently licks his face, then goes back to sleep.

‘Adorable,’ says Lizzie. ‘I can’t wait. Do you think that tall bloke is going to come round or not? I think my phone charger’s in one of the bags in the roofbox.’

‘And what would happen if your phone ran out of charge?’ I ask, sarcastically.

‘I’d die of boredom,’ she replies, deadpan. ‘And I have a signal at the moment. Didn’t you say it was a bit dodgy here? I have some serious communicating to do, so I’m going to make the most of it before we plummet back into the Dark Ages.’

Right on cue, there’s a knock at the door and the Tall Bloke walks through into the living room. I hastily swallow the last mouthful of cupcake and wipe the icing off my chin with a half-hearted swipe of my sleeve. I have the awful feeling that when I next look in a mirror, there’ll still be some there – along with the long, frizzy hair, the rosy cheeks and the harassed expression. The only sensible response to the entire situation is to never look in a mirror again. I may get Lizzie to go round the whole building covering them up with towels.

As the man enters, Jimbo looks up and lets out a high-pitched yip, thumping his tail a few times in appreciation. It makes the man smile, which I’m starting to realise is probably so rare in the wild that David Attenborough should make a documentary about it.

‘Cake?’ I ask, gesturing at the tray on the table. ‘Wine? Bread?’

Dear Lord. I’m starting to sound like Mrs Doyle off Father Ted, and probably look even worse.

‘No. Thanks,’ he says, not quite making eye contact. He’s dressed in a pair of faded Levis and an equally faded black T-shirt that fits very snugly around all the muscular parts of him I probably shouldn’t even be noticing. His hair’s been roughly towel-dried and is an attractively shaggy mass of brown and chestnut. The eyes, I note, are definitely hazel.

‘Shall we get you unloaded then?’ he prompts, which makes me wonder if I’ve been staring at him for two seconds or two hours. Awky-mo, as Lizzie would say. Or would have said last year, it’s probably not cool any more. Like LOLcats or wicked.

‘Right!’ I reply, wiping my hands down on my jeans and nodding. I look at the kids and give them my very best ‘get off your lazy arses and come help’ face. Nate immediately feigns sleep, letting out huge fake snores, and Lizzie runs away up the stairs, presumably to call dibs on a bedroom.

I suck in a breath and smile.

‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘I can beat them later. They’re overdue a whipping.’

He raises his eyebrows and I have the feeling he’s not a hundred per cent sure if I’m joking or not. Neither am I.

‘Okay,’ I exclaim, walking towards the door. ‘Let’s get started.’

I turn back and hold one hand up in a gesture of ‘wait a moment’ to him as he follows.

‘Just cover your ears for a bit,’ I say. As soon as he does, I bellow at the top of my voice: ‘Lizzie! Nate! Come and help or there will be a ban on ALL electronic devices for the next week!’

I exit the cottage, smiling in evil maternal satisfaction as I hear Lizzie thundering downstairs and Nate groaning as he drags himself off the squishy sofa.

We walk back to the car, along the path, and around the terrace, and across the crunchy gravel. Just like we’re all going on a bear hunt. It’s properly dark now, bright spots flickering among the plants from the solar lights. The bird song has quietened down and the only sound is that of our footsteps and the occasional trickle of laughter from one of the other cottages.

‘Weird, isn’t it?’ asks Nate, looking around suspiciously, as though a mad axe murderer might leap out of the bushes at any moment.

‘What?’ I say.

‘Not hearing the police helicopter?’

‘That doesn’t happen often!’ I snap back, somehow offended on behalf of our actually very nice part of Manchester. In reality, I suppose we hear it hovering somewhere nearby maybe once or twice a week – but it’s not as though we live in some crack-den infested ghetto. There’s a Waitrose, for God’s sake!

Lizzie is holding her phone in front of her with the torch app switched on, her eyes staring at the ground as she walks, carefully measuring each step, like she’s never walked anywhere in the dark before.

There’s a sudden and very strange noise from one of the distant fields. It sounds vaguely like someone moaning in pain, deep and low and a tiny bit sinister.

‘What’s that?’ I say, gazing around us and wondering if I’ve walked into some bizarre Wicker Man-type scenario. I notice the kids both freeze solid as well, looking very young and very scared. I tense, coiled with protective instinct, ready to kill anything that threatens my young.

‘It’s a cow,’ says the man, who turns back to give me a sympathetic look. A look that says ‘you poor, sad city person’.

I nod, and stay quiet. I’m not a hundred per cent sure I believe him – that didn’t sound like a moo to me. I proceed with slightly more caution, following him to the car, feeling a little bit more aware of the fact that countryside dark really is a lot more serious than city dark.

We get to the car, I pass him the key and he effortlessly unlocks and lifts the roofbox lid. The one that took a whole lot of huffing, puffing, effing and jeffing for me to sort out the night before. I look on, standing on tiptoes and still barely able to reach. I am starting to hate him, a little tiny bit.

In the end I give up on my ineffectual stretching. It’ll be easier if I just let him get everything out and then the rest of us start to carry it back to Hyacinth. Of course, what I’ve temporarily expunged from my mind about the roofbox is the way I’ve packed it.

Actually, ‘packed’ might be too generous a word. What I’d actually done was put masses of the kids’ clothes and shoes into bin bags, put breakables and electrics into a cardboard box, added a few essentials like coffee and bog roll in one of those big reusable shoppers and then shoved most of my stuff down the sides, squeezing it all in to whatever spaces were left.

It had seemed to make perfect sense at the time, but as the man tugs hard at one of the tightly packed black bin bags, I start to regret it. It’s a mess, frankly. The kind of mess you only ever want to see yourself.

I start to regret it even more when he finally manages to pull the bin bag away, with a grunt of effort. As it pops free, it brings with it a big, squashed clump of my underwear, which promptly scatters around us like an explosion of over-washed cotton being shot from a knicker cannon.

One pair of briefs gets stuck on the car aerial and another is caught mid-air by Nate, who immediately makes an ‘uggh’ noise and throws them on the floor. Jimbo, who has ambled out to see what all the fuss is about, straight away makes a beeline for the pants that Nate has just discarded and gobbles them up into his mouth. He runs away as fast as he can, a disappearing black blur with a limp pair of white undies hanging out of his muzzle.

I screw my eyes up in embarrassment and clench my fists so hard my fingernails dig into my palms.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the summary of my life since David died – incompetent, incomplete and incapable of being even a fraction as much fun as he was. If my knickers had come flying out of the roofbox with him around, he’d have made a game of it. He’d have organised the Underwear Olympics. He’d have had everyone laughing, even me.

Sometimes, at the most unlikely and inconvenient of moments, I miss him so much I could quite happily lie down on the floor and go to sleep for a thousand years. I could use all my old drawers as a blanket and just sleep.

I open my eyes again, as going to sleep for a thousand years simply doesn’t seem to be a realistic option. I see Lizzie, bless her, running around the driveway snaffling spare scraps of underwear from their new homes hanging off bushes and splayed over solar lights, and I see Nate chasing after Jimbo the Knicker Snaffler.

‘So,’ says tall, dark and helpful. ‘I’m Matt, by the way. As I appear to have one of your bras wrapped around my head, it seems as good a time as any to introduce myself.’

I look up at him and see that he is grinning. It’s a nice grin, genuine and playful and from what I’ve seen of Matt so far, quite a find. The lesser spotted Dorset Matt Grin.

I have to grin back, I really do, no matter how dreadful I’m feeling. Because what woman could resist a smiling man with a pair of 36C M&S Per Una bra cups hanging around his ears?