Coming Home to the Comfort Food Café. Debbie Johnson
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I know this is random, but a few things to mention. Her favourite food is fish finger sandwiches, squashed onto soft white bread and butter. You have to really squish the bread together, so hard you leave thumb prints.
Her favourite TV show is still Spongebob, but she secretly also loves In The Night Garden, even though she thinks it’s a bit babyish. She likes dressing up as Stephanie out of Lazy Town, and will try and wear the pink wig to bed if you let her. Don’t – it leaves her real hair in terrible tangles, and then you have to use the No More Tears, which in my experience isn’t that accurate a name.
If she can’t sleep, she likes to listen to a CD of those stories about talking hamsters while she drifts off. Her favourite outfit is currently her Shaun the Sheep pyjamas, which she even likes wearing in the day. I don’t have a problem with that and I know you won’t.
If she’s upset about anything at all, try singing the theme tune to Postman Pat out loud. You have to do it with gusto, or she’s not convinced. If you do that, even when she’s angry she can’t help joining in at some point, and before you know it she’ll be more interested in words that rhyme with ‘black and white cat’ than whatever’s bothering her. Even though she doesn’t watch the programme any more, it’s like there’s a folk memory in her brain that makes it soothing, no matter what else is going on.
And on that helpful note, I shall bid you farewell. Yeah, I know, I’m being nuts – but then again I always was, wasn’t I? Poor Princess Di.
Don’t forget – Postman Pat theme tune. Out loud, and with gusto. It cures all ills.
Love you loads,
Kate xxx
I read the letter through for what feels like the millionth time, and fold it back up into familiar squares. It’s starting to tatter and fray, and I really need to do something about that. Like get it laminated maybe; anything to preserve the precious words, the precious hand-writing, the precious connection between me and my now-dead friend.
The main connection between us is just as precious. Well, more so, obviously, as she’s a human being and not a piece of paper – but she’s nowhere near as easy to protect. I glance at Martha, who is lying in a heap on the living room floor, covered in vomit, and wonder if I can possibly get her laminated as well. It would definitely cut down on the amount of washing I have to do.
That letter was written years ago. What feels like millennia ago, now. Back in the days when Martha was a happy-go-lucky, ultra-lovable little girl. She used to dress up in her Stephanie wig and I used to pretend to be Sportacus, and we’d eat satsumas together and lick the juice from our fingers like we were sampling the nectar of the gods.
Now, Martha is 16, and I could marinate her in a whole bathtub of No More Tears and it wouldn’t help. In fact, she’d probably just drink it, in an attempt to find a new high. Martha lives in a whole different type of Crazy Town now.
So do I. I live in a Crazy Town without Kate. Without my best friend. Without the person who kept me sane for so many years. My shoulder to cry on, my confidante, my other half. Neither of us ever got married, or even had a serious relationship – and I think that’s partly because nobody could ever live up to what we had. Friends since we were six, through the good times and the bad. Joined at the hip, no matter what her parents did to try and discourage their golden child’s unhealthy attachment to the scruffy-haired foster kid from the council estate they viewed as one step down from hell.
Martha groans, and I kneel by her side. I have become adept at making sure her airways are clear, and putting her in the recovery position, just in case she does a Janis Joplin on me and chokes on her own sick.
Her dyed black hair is crusted to her pale cheeks, her skin splashed with purple that probably came from some kind of blackcurrant mixer. Her nose is pierced through with a ring, several more in her ears. Winged eyeliner that looked cool in a Tim Burton Batgirl kind of way hours earlier is now smeared beneath her eyes, and she looks like a corpse. She’s wearing deliberately laddered black fishnet tights, a black denim mini-skirt now hoisted up to her bum, and a Nirvana T-shirt. There’s a smiley face on the front, and on the back it says ‘flower sniffin kitty pettin baby kissin corporate rock whores.’
I can see words inked on one of her arms, and squint my eyes to read them: Fuk You. I hope it’s just magic marker and not a tattoo, especially as it isn’t even spelled right.
Her skinny legs are still on the sofa, one of her Doc Marten boots still on, one of them half off. I’m guessing she came in, tried to sit on the couch and get ready for bed, and became overwhelmed by the industrial amounts of alcohol she probably consumed tonight. Possibly by some drugs as well – in my day it would have been ecstasy or speed. In her day, they have all kinds of fancy names that makes them sound like cute schoolgirls from Japanese anime books.
I reach out and stroke a long strand of sticky hair away from her face. Her eyes pop open, staring up at me like something from a Hammer Horror film – bright, rich brown. Not so long ago, they’d have been sparkling with humour and the sheer irrepressible joy of life. Now, they simply register that it’s me hovering over her – not the person she wants it to be – and cloud with disappointment.
She closes her eyes again, and I see fat tears start to seep out of the sides, mixing in with the eyeliner, painting a dark, dirty streak as they roll sideways.
I murmur what I hope are comforting sounds, not sure if I even believe them myself.
I think about that letter again. About those words of advice from Kate, the woman we both loved so much. Written oh-so-long ago, and now seeming oh-so-wrong. I can’t do this. Martha is sinking, disappearing beneath an avalanche of grief and poor life choices, and I don’t know how to save her. I don’t know how to save myself.
I sit back on my heels, and start to hum the theme tune from Postman Pat. I don’t sing it with gusto, I don’t have any of that left. And besides, if there was a black and white cat in the room these days, I suspect Martha would sacrifice it to Satan.
Something needs to change. Something needs to give, before all is lost. Before I let my best friend down in a way that I will never be able to forgive myself for.
I wake up the next morning with two things: a headache, and a plan. A plan to change our lives.
The headache is predictable and understandable. I’d been in bed when Martha fell through the door in the early hours of the morning. In bed, but not really asleep.
I used to be a championship level sleeper. I had an undemanding job managing a book shop, lived in a tiny studio flat across the road from Kate and Martha, earned enough money to pay my mortgage, keep me in Ben and Jerry’s and set a bit aside. I avoided all stress, emotional, physical, or otherwise.
I’d cut off ties with my toxic past, and led a quiet life. Other people might have found it unambitious and boring – but not me. I’d had a lot of excitement in my early years, and was happier without it.
I thought I’d been so clever – constructing this little life for myself. Vicarious motherhood through Kate. No commitments I couldn’t handle. It was very pure and simple, as All Saints might have said, and I liked it that way. I liked the fact that the most stressful thing that had happened to me for years had been my Pot Noodle container splitting and making a chicken and mushroomy mess over the kitchen counters. At 38, I’d achieved my own personal nirvana: steadiness.
As a result, me and sleep were best friends. I used to wake up every morning feeling refreshed and with a smile on my face, looking forward to cycling to work and doing nothing more challenging than ordering in some extra paperback copies of the latest Dan Brown novel, and persuading my three customers a day to buy something by a local author.
These days, it’s all changed. I’ve become an accidental mother, and I suck at it. I miss Kate, and I’m crap at looking after Martha. I spend most of