Summer at the Comfort Food Café
DEBBIE JOHNSON

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HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2016

Copyright © Debbie Johnson 2016

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Cover layout design by HarperCollinsPublishers

Cover design by Alex Allden

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A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008150242

Version 2018-09-21

PRAISE FOR DEBBIE JOHNSON’S BOOKS

‘A sheer delight’

Sunday Express

‘A lovely, emotion-filled, giggle-inducing story’

Milly Johnson

‘The perfect summer story’

Jane Costello

‘My new favourite author’

Holly Martin

‘Has all the best ingredients for a holiday read: the beautiful West Country, a family-run farm, and a mystery man with Poldark-style charms’

Yours Magazine

‘Funny, raunchy, and heartwarming…Buy it. Read it. Tell your friends about it’

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‘I’ve got nothing but love for this amazing novel and its author’

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‘I laughed, screamed in frustration and felt the truly happy feeling that you get when you turn the final page of a great story…Bridget Jones eat your heart out’

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‘A beautifully addictive read’

Reviewed the Book

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Debbie Johnson’s Books

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Week 1

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Week 2

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Week 3

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Week 4

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Week 5

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Week 6

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Down Dorset Way …

And Now for the Yummy Bit …

Also by Debbie Johnson

Debbie Johnson

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

COOK WANTED – MUST BE COMFORTING

We are looking for a summer-season cook for our busy seaside café. The job will also involve taking orders and waiting on tables. The successful applicant will be naturally friendly, be able to boil an egg, enjoy a chat and have a well-developed sense of empathy with other human beings. Good sense of humour absolutely vital. The only experience required is experience of life, along with decent cooking skills. Pay is pitiful, but the position comes with six weeks’ free use of a luxury holiday cottage in a family-friendly setting near the Jurassic Coast, with use of a swimming pool, games room and playground. Children, dogs, cats, guinea pigs and stray maiden aunts all welcome. No application form needed – if you’re interested, send us your heart and soul in letter form, telling us why you think you’re right for the job. Post your essays to Cherie Moon, The Comfort Food Café, Willington Hill, near Budbury, Dorset.

Chapter 2

Dear Cherie,

I’m writing to you about the job you advertised for a cook at the Comfort Food Café in Dorset.

This is about my sixth attempt at composing this letter, and all the rest have ended up as soggy, crumpled balls lying on the floor around the bin – my aim seems to be as off as my writing skills. I’ve promised myself that this time, no matter how long it gets, or how many mistakes I might make, this will be the final version. From the heart, like you asked for, even if it takes me the rest of the day. If nothing else it’s pretty good therapy.

This is probably not the most professional or brilliant way to make a first impression, and you’re most likely thinking about filing this under ‘N for nutter’ – or possibly ‘B for bin’. I can only apologise – my hand’s a bit cramped now and I have a blister coming up on my ring finger. I haven’t written this much since my A levels, so please forgive me if it gets a bit messy.

To be honest, everything in my life is a bit messy. It got that way just over two years ago, when my husband, David, died. He was the same age as me – I’m thirty-five now – and he was the love of my life. I can’t give you a romantic story about how we met at a wedding or got set up on a blind date by friends, or how our eyes met across a crowded nightclub – mainly because our eyes actually met across a crowded playground when we were seven years old.

He’d joined our school a few years in and appeared like a space alien at the start of term one in September. He was really good at football, was impossible to catch in a game of tag and liked drawing cartoons about his dogs, Jimbo and Jambo. We sat next to each other on the Turquoise Table in Miss Hennessey’s class, and that was that – my fate was sealed.

That story sounds completely crazy now, I know. I look at my own kids and think there’s no way anyone they mix with at their age could turn out to be the love of their life. That’s what my parents thought – and his. I lost track of the number of times we were told we were too young. I think they thought it was sweet when we were seven, saying we were boyfriend and girlfriend – innocent and cute. By the time we were sixteen and we’d stayed together all through high school, they didn’t think it was quite so cute any more.

I get it, I really do. They wanted us to see a bit of the world. See other people. Although they were all too polite to say it, they wanted us to split up. My parents would always phrase it nicely, saying things like ‘I’ve nothing against David – he’s a lovely lad – but don’t you want to travel? Go to university? Have a few adventures before you settle down? Follow your own dreams? And anyway, if it’s meant to be, you’ll come back to each other in a few years’ time.’

He got the same speeches from his family, too. We used to laugh about it and compare notes on the different ways they all tried to express the same thing: You’re Too Young and You’re Making a Mistake. We weren’t angry – we knew it was because they loved us, wanted the best for us. But what they didn’t get – what they never really understood – was that we were already following our dreams. We were already having the biggest adventure of our lives. We loved each other beyond belief from the age of seven, and we never, ever stopped. What we had was rare and precious and so much more valuable than anything we could have done apart.

We got married when we were twenty, and no matter how happy I was, people still commented on it. I even found my mum crying in the loo at the reception – she thought I was wasting my life. I’d got decent enough grades in my exams – including a grade A in home economics, I should probably point out, as it’s the first relevant thing I’ve said. So did David. He got a job as a trainee at the local bank, and I initially worked in what I’d like to claim was some fancy five-star restaurant, but was actually a McDonald’s on a retail park on the outskirts of Manchester.

I know it sounds boring, but it wasn’t. It was brilliant. We bought a little two-up two-down in a decent part of the city, and even at that stage we were thinking about schools – because we knew we wanted kids, and soon. Lizzie came along not too long after, and she’s fourteen now. She has his blonde hair and my green eyes, and at the moment is equal parts smiley and surly. I can’t blame her. It’s been tough losing her dad. I’ve done my best to stay strong for her, but I suspect my best hasn’t been up to much. She’s fourteen. Do you remember being a fourteen-year-old girl? It wasn’t ever easy, was it? Even without dead dads and zombified mums.

Nate is twelve and he’s a heartbreaker. Quite literally, when I look at him, it feels like my heart is breaking. He got David’s blonde hair too, and also his sparkly blue eyes. You know, those Paul Newman eyes? And David’s smile. And that one dimple on the left-hand side of his mouth.

He looks so much like his dad that people used to call him David’s ‘mini me’! Sometimes I hug him so tight he complains that I’m breaking his ribs. I laugh and let him go, even though I want to carry on squeezing and keep this tiny, perfect little human being safe for the rest of his life. We all know that’s not possible now and sometimes I think that’s the biggest casualty of David dying – none of us feel safe any more, which really isn’t fair when you’re twelve, is it?

But I have to remind myself that we had so much. We loved so much, and laughed so much, and shared so much. All of it was perfect, even the arguments. Especially the arguments – or the aftermath at least. Sometimes I wonder if that was the problem – we had too much that was too good, too young. Even after thirteen years of marriage he could still give me that cheeky little grin of his that made my heart beat a bit faster, and I could never, ever stay angry with him. It was the uni-dimple. It just made it impossible.

One of David’s favourite things was holidays. He worked hard at the bank, got promoted and enjoyed his job – but it was his family life that really mattered to him. We saved up and every year we’d have a brilliant holiday together. He loved researching them and planning them almost as much as going on them.

To start with, they were ‘baby’ holidays – the most important thing was finding somewhere we’d be safe with the little ones. So we stayed in the UK or did short flights to places like Majorca or Spain.

As the kids got older, we got more adventurous – or he did at least! We started by expanding our horizons and going on camping holidays on the continent. Tents in Tuscany, driving to the South of France with the car loaded up, a mobile home in Holland. The last two before he died were the most exciting ever – a yachting trip around Turkey, where the kids learned to sail and I learned to sunbathe, and three weeks in Florida doing the theme parks but then driving all the way down to the Keys and going native for a week.

Every holiday, for every year, was also given its own photo album when we got home.

It wasn’t enough for him to keep the pictures online, he got them all printed out and each album had the year it related to and the place we’d visited written on the spine on a sticker.

They’re all there now, on the bookshelf in the living room. Lined up in order – a photographic journey through time and space. Lizzie as a baby; Lizzie as a toddler and me pregnant; Nate joining the party. They grow up in those photo albums, right before our eyes – missing teeth and changing tastes and different haircuts, getting taller each year.

I suppose we age as well – I definitely put a bit of weight on as the years go by; David loses a bit of hair, gets more laughter lines. We never lose our smiles, though – that’s one thing that never changes.

The only year we didn’t have a holiday was when the kids were too old to share a room any more, and we had to buy a bigger house. We were skint, so we stayed at home – and even then, David set up a massive tent in our new garden and bought a load of sand from a builder’s yard to make our very own beach! Even that one has its own album, although on quite a few of the photos we’re wearing our swimming costumes in the rain!

If I’m entirely honest, the main reason I’m applying for this job – and doing a very bad job of it, I know – is because of all those holidays, and the memories that David managed to build for our children. For me. The memories that are all we have left of him now.

The last holiday David planned was over two years ago. We were going to Australia, flying in to Sydney and touring up to Queensland. The kids were buzzing about seeing koalas and kangaroos, and I was slightly concerned about them getting eaten by sharks or bitten by a killer spider. David was in his element.

He never got to go on that holiday. It was the first properly sunny day after winter – February 12th, to be exact – and he decided to do some house maintenance, the way you do once the sun comes out again.

While he was clearing some leaves out of the guttering, he slipped off the ladder and banged his head on the concrete patio. He seemed all right at first – we laughed about it, joked about his hard head. We thought we’d been lucky.

We were wrong. We didn’t know it at the time, but he had bleeding around his brain – his brain was swelling and bit by bit a disaster was going on inside his skull.

By the time he started to complain of a headache, he’d probably been feeling bad for hours. Taking Paracetamol for his ‘bump’ and trying to get on with his weekend. Eventually he collapsed in front of all three of us – fell right off his chair at the dinner table. At first the kids just laughed – he was a bit of a buffoon, David. He was always doing daft things to amuse them – it was like living with Norman Wisdom sometimes, the amount of slapstick that went on in our house!

But he wasn’t joking. And even though the ambulance got there so fast and the hospital was so good, it was too late. He was gone. He was put on a life-support machine and his parents and my parents came and his brother came, all to say goodbye. The kids? That was a hard decision. Nate was just ten and Lizzie was only twelve – but I thought they deserved it, the chance to say their farewells. I still don’t know if it was the right decision or not – it was impossible to weigh up whether the trauma of seeing him like that, hooked up to machines, would be worse than knowing they never got to see him off to heaven. Was it the right thing to do? I suppose I’ll have to wait and see how messed up they are over the next few years before I get my answer.

I can’t go into any detail about how I felt, Cherie, having to make those kinds of decisions. I just can’t. I’ll never, ever get this letter written if I do that – it’s too big and too raw, and even now, after all this time, I still have moments where the pain paralyses me – where I struggle to even get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other. They are only moments, though, and they are becoming further and further apart – I suppose that means my own brain injury is healing, which makes me feel strangely guilty.

I hate the fact that he died doing such a mundane thing. Cleaning the gutters. He was funny and kind and quietly brave – he was the type of man who would have thrown himself under a bus to save a child, or would have jumped into a raging sea to rescue a Labrador. Losing him because of leaves in the gutters seems so … pointless. He was an organ donor, though, which is some small comfort – the thought of all the lives he saved or changed for the better through that does help. I take consolation from someone walking around with that big, beautiful heart of his beating inside them.

So … by now, you’re either hooked and wondering how this story ends, or you’re considering calling the police to get a restraining order in case this crazy woman turns up at your café and tries to comfort random people.

The answer is, of course, that the story hasn’t ended – the story is still playing out, albeit at a very slow pace. We had a holiday the year after he died, and it was a disaster – a trip to Crete to stay in a hotel that turned out to be full of eighteen to thirty-year-olds, all on a mission to give themselves liver failure and complete their set of STD top trumps. It was loud, it was foul, and we all hated it – mainly, of course, because he wasn’t there. It was awful.

Now, I’m looking ahead and I see that there needs to be a change. David left us with enough life insurance to pay off the mortgage and the car loans, and to live on for a little while. We have no debt at all, which I know puts us at a big advantage over lots of families who are struggling to make ends meet.

But there’s nothing coming in – no income. Which means no holiday – not because of my lack of planning skills, but because we can’t afford it. Not if we want to eat as well. Don’t get me wrong, our heads are above water, but there isn’t much spare after paying the bills and doing the shopping and coping with what feels like the mountain of expense a teenage girl piles up!

If we ration we’ll be fine for another year. Rationing means no holiday – and I just can’t face it. I think we need a holiday – one that we actually enjoy, this time. We’ve all started to feel just a little bit better now. Almost against our will, there is more laughter, more easy chat, more smiling.

The kids’ lives have moved on, certainly a lot more than mine! They’re both in high school now, both starting to grow into young adults, both changing. I’d like to add another photo album to that shelf before they’re too cool to be bothered with their poor old mum.

I also know that I need to get my act together. I need to get a job – and not just for the money. I need to get out there, back into the world. Because the kids are that little bit older and more independent now. They don’t need me as much. They’re out a lot – or Lizzie is at least, and Nate is showing signs of following suit. That’s only right – it’s good. It’s what I want for them, to have normal lives. But me sitting at home in a rocking chair, counting cobwebs and watching The Good Wife on repeat isn’t going to do any of us any good.

Getting a job will help me to meet new people. Get away from my own problems. Make my world bigger. I have my sister, my parents and his family too – but sometimes, if I’m honest, that feels like more of a responsibility than a help. They’re all so worried about me all the time, I feel like I’m under a microscope. I think they’re waiting for me to crack.

I think they’re scared that long term, I can’t live without him. Maybe they’re right, I don’t know – but I have to try. I don’t want to forget David – that would be impossible even if I did – but I do need to start living my life After David. AD, if you like.

I started looking at jobs a few months ago and came to the depressing conclusion that I’m officially useless. I have the aforementioned Home Economics A level, which is the pinnacle of my academic achievement (I also have a C in Health and Social Care and a B in General Studies, which are really of no use to anybody). I worked at McDonald’s for a year before I had the kids and I got a food hygiene certificate when I did volunteer work at the school kitchen. Not hugely impressive, I know – it’s not like Marco Pierre White is hammering on the door with a job offer.

But I do cook – I cook a lot. Family dinners, occasional forays into something more exotic like Thai or Japanese. I do a mean roast and can make my own meatballs. I can bake and I can whip up marinades, and I can do a full English fry-up with my eyes closed.

I wouldn’t get very far on Masterchef, but I can cook – proper home-made stuff – the kind of food that isn’t just good for your body but good for your soul as well. At least I like to think so. I’m amazed, in fact, that the kids aren’t the size of that giant marshmallow man in Ghostbusters by now – one of the ways I’ve tried to console them (and if I’m honest, myself as well) over the last few years is through feeding them. It keeps me busy, it makes me feel like I’m doing something positive, and it’s a way to show I love them now they’re too old for public displays of affection.

They just scarf it down, of course, they’re kids – but perhaps, at somewhere like the Comfort Food Café, I could actually be of some use. It would be really, really nice to feel useful again – and to spend the summer in Dorset, and fill up another one of those albums.

So. There we go. I think that’s everything. Probably more than everything. I’m not sure this is what you meant when you said send your heart and soul in letter form, but that serves you right for being so vague! I bet you got some really strange replies – this one being possibly the strangest of all.

I won’t hold it against you, Cherie, if I never hear from you. But if you want to talk to me, or find out anything more, then let me know. Whatever happens, good luck to you.

All the best,

Laura Walker

WEEK 1

In which I travel to Dorset, sing a lot of Meatloaf songs, accidentally inhale what might possibly be marijuana, wrap my bra around a strange man’s head and become completely betwattled …

Chapter 3

‘They filmed The French Lieutenant’s Woman there,’ I say, trying to meet my daughter’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. She’s not interested, of course. She’s too busy staring at her phone, thumbs moving quick as lightning as she types. So quick they’re just vague pink blurs, in fact. If Lizzie was going to be a superhero, she’d be called Thumb Girl: the Fastest Text in the West.

Sadly, Thumb Girl doesn’t seem impressed with my cinematic reference, and really, what did I expect? Was that the best I could come up with? A sappy Meryl Streep movie from before she was even born? A historical romance featuring some award-winning moustaches and meaningful glances? It’s enough to give mothers the world over a bad name, for God’s sake.

‘Never heard of it, Mum,’ she replies, grudgingly. I’m actually surprised she even vocalises her response and suspect she’s saying something much ruder on her screen. I make a mental note to check her Twitter account later. Or Tumblr. Or Facebook. I’ve kind of lost track of which one is her favourite form of communication at the moment. It certainly isn’t good old-fashioned talking. Not with me at least.

I scrabble for something more contemporary – something cooler. Something that might make her hate me ever-so-slightly less than she does right now. Something along the lines of ‘the lead singer from Green Day will be living next door to us’, but more … true.

‘Yeah. I suppose it is a bit old for you. Well, they filmed Broadchurch there,’ I finally say.

‘The one about the murdered kid?’ asks Lizzie, finally looking up, one eyebrow raised in query just about visible beneath her straight blonde fringe. The fringe has been getting lower and lower for months now – eventually I fear it will cover her whole face and she’ll look like Cousin It dressed by Primark.

‘That’s it, yes, the one with David Tennant in it,’ I reply, encouraged to have finally found some common ground. Even if it is common ground built on infanticide and Doctor Who.

‘Wow. What a great advert for the place,’ comes the sarcastic reply. ‘Remind me to get a rape alarm.’

Okay. Deep breaths. There are at least four hours left of this fun family road trip, I remind myself. In an ideal world, we’ll at least save the shouting until we’re past Birmingham. I consider starting a ‘count the red cars’ game and realise that they haven’t played that since they were a lot younger. And I also realise – for about the millionth time – that I suck at this.

David had a way of making car journeys fun. I’d be the one making sure we all had bottles of water and muffins to eat and spare carrier bags in case Nate threw up, and he’d be the one making them laugh. I’d be studying the map – Sat nav’s for Slackers, he’d always say – and he’d be driving and somehow managing to keep everybody’s spirits up.

Well, they’re older now – and way less easy to amuse. Plus, I’m still not sure how it is going to be possible to read the map, drive the car and keep everybody’s spirits up at the same time. I’m struggling with my own spirits, never mind theirs as well. And, even though I’d never drink and drive (honest), every time I think of the word ‘spirits’, I start to yearn for a large, super frosty G&T. Or maybe a mojito. Later, I promise. Later.

I take the deep breath I’d recommended to myself and ask – silently – the question that plays across my mind at least a few times every day. Even more right now as we set off on this exciting adventure that nobody, including me, seems to find very exciting at all. What Would David Do, I think? WWDD, for short.

David, I know, would be untroubled. He’d smile and ignore the cheekiness, and find a way to deflate the whole situation with a lame joke. Or he’d start to talk in a series of fart noises. Or put on a French accent and sing ‘Barbie Girl’. Something like that, anyway.

But David did have the very big advantage of Lizzie adoring everything about him. He could never do any wrong in her eyes – whereas her feelings towards me, right now, aren’t quite so generous. At best, I suspect they go along the lines of ‘will someone please tell me I’m adopted?’, and at worst, she may be using her birthday money to hire a hitman. To say she’s displeased at being separated from her friends for the summer is something of an understatement – a bit like saying Daniel Craig is passably attractive.

‘It’s on the Jurassic Coast,’ I add, trying again. I can practically feel the black aura creeping over my shoulders from the back seat, but I have to try. Because that is definitely what DWD and I need to keep going. Sat nav’s for Slackers, and Quiet’s for Quitters. It’s 6.30am and I’ve only had one mug of coffee.

If somebody doesn’t talk to me soon, I might actually fall asleep at the wheel, which would be bad for all concerned as I’m in control of a very full Citroen Picasso, complete with equally full roof rack and a fat black Labrador snoring in the boot.

Nate perks up at my latest comment, looking up from his DS for a moment. Presumably Super Mario/Sonic the Hedgehog/Pokémon/delete as applicable is on pause. His hair’s a bit too long as well, but not for style purposes – we just haven’t found the time or the inclination to go to the barbers very much. That was one of his dad’s jobs, too. I’ve been trimming it myself with the nail scissors, which I really must stop doing – he’s twelve. He needs to stop looking like he lets his mum cut his hair, even if he does.

‘So did they film Jurassic World there?’ he asks, hopefully. I hate to disappoint, but feel that leading him to expect a first-hand encounter with a friendly bronchosaurus might ultimately result in him hating me when he realises I lied. He is, as I’ve said, twelve – so technically he knows that velociraptors don’t roam the hills and vales of Dorset. But he’s also a boy, so he lives in hope that he’s about to be whisked off to a super-secret island filled with Scenes of Mild Peril.

‘Erm … no,’ I admit. ‘But we can go fossil-hunting, if you like? Apparently there are loads washed up on the beach.’

He gives me the smile. That small, sweet smile that says ‘I remain unimpressed, but love you anyway’. The uni-dimple makes a brief, heart-wrenching appearance, before he turns his face back to what really matters. The small device on his lap.

I have a fleeting moment of nostalgia for the days when kids weren’t permanently attached to electronic gadgets, and then realise I am being both hypocritical and very, very old. When I was their age, I thought my Walkman was the absolute bees knees and used to pull very rude faces when my mum suggested I might get ear cancer if I didn’t take the headphones off every now and then.

‘That sounds cool, Mum,’ Nate says, already lost in his alternative reality.

‘Are you okay playing on that?’ I ask. ‘You don’t feel sick?’

‘No. It’s okay Mum. I haven’t been car sick since I was eight.’

‘All right. But I’ve put some bags in the glove box you know, just in case …’

He nods and gives me another grin before playing again. Beautiful boy.

I bask in my thirty seconds of maternal glory and glance out at the approaching motorway sign.

Hmmm. Sandbach Service Station – I wonder if they do mojitos to go?

Chapter 4

We drive down the M6 without a single mojito incident and very little conversation. It’s quiet on the roads – due to most normal people being asleep – and even quieter in the car.

I combat this by playing Meatloaf’s Greatest Hits very loud and singing along to ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, including all the motorbike-revving noises near the end. I’d do air guitar to the solos, but that’s probably against the Highway Code. I can just imagine the signs: cartoons of Meatloaf with a big red cross through his face.

Nate frowns a little at my performance and I hear an exasperated sigh emitted from the back seat. Even the dog lets out a half-hearted woof. Everyone’s a critic.

I choose to ignore them, as that’s what they’ve been doing to me for the last few hours. Obviously, once I decide on this particular path of action, Lizzie has something to say. Initially, I don’t hear her because of my singing. I’ve had three more black coffees since we first set off, so I feel totally wired and perfectly capable of appearing before a sell-out crowd at Wembley.

‘What?’ I shout, pausing the track when I realise she’s speaking.

‘Do you know,’ says Lizzie, who I see in the rear-view mirror is still staring at her screen, probably googling ‘ways to divorce your parent, ‘that this song is about dying in a terrible crash? Don’t you think that’s tempting fate a bit as we’re driving to the end of the world at 600 miles per hour?’

‘We’re not driving to the end of the world, we’re driving to Dorset,’ I reply. ‘And I think you’ll find that not only was Meatloaf on a motorbike, he was hitting the highway like a battering ram. We are in a ten-year-old Citroen Picasso and I barely ever leave the slow lane in case Jimbo suddenly needs a wee.’

Jimbo is the dog. He’s the third black lab that David owned – his parents had Jimbo and Jambo when we were little; then a new puppy called Jambo the Second, who died just after we got married. After that, they didn’t want any more – they were very busy with their cruise club – so we took over, with Jimbo the Second. Poor Jimbo is almost thirteen now, completely grey around the muzzle and round as a barrel. He mainly sleeps, snores and snuffles, occasionally punctuated by moments of vast and unexpected energy, where he chases imaginary rabbits and scares much younger dogs.

He’s a lovely beast, with very eloquent eyebrows and a powerful tail that can sweep a table clean when he’s feeling happy. He’s already on tablets for his arthritis and his heart isn’t brilliant, and he has all sorts of lumps and bumps that so far haven’t been anything serious.

I know he’s not going to be around forever and secretly fear that when he finally goes I’ll have some kind of nervous breakdown. That all my carefully managed grief and sadness will come spilling forth and drown me in emotion. That I’ll start crying in the vet’s surgery and everyone will be washed out, down the street, like they’re on some kind of weird water-park ride made of widow’s tears. Which sounds like the kind of water park Tim Burton would design.

I have had way too much coffee, it seems.

Lizzie doesn’t reply to my defence of Meatloaf as a valid driving-song choice. I see that she has put her ear buds back in and is now pretending to be asleep. So much for that brief detente. I glance to my side. Nate is gazing out of the window, head lolling, eyelids heavy. He looks about three years old and my heart constricts a little, remembering a time when he was. The very best of days.

I press play again, but turn the sound down, just in case Nate does want to drift off. It’s not his fault his crazy mother got him up at stupid o’clock to drag him to the far reaches of the country for the whole summer. It’s not Lizzie’s fault, either, and I get why she’s angry.

She didn’t want to come. She’s fourteen. Her friends are her world and I have the suspicion there’s a boy on the scene as well. There usually is at that age. David died during her first year at high school, so she got off to a rocky start. She was the Girl With The Dead Dad for ages, subject to the same mix of pity and fear that being bereaved always seems to provoke in people.

It’s taken us all a long time to get anything like equilibrium back, and hers seems to be wrapped up with her pals, with angsty rock music and with black eye liner. So, no, Lizzie really didn’t want to come to a small village in the countryside, even if I did try and sell it as a very long holiday.

She even asked if she could stay at my sister’s instead, which upset me so much I had to fake an urgent need for the toilet and lock myself in the loo while I wept. This is something I do quite a lot these days, as her tongue gets sharper and her hormones get louder and I fail to get any tougher.

She’s seen enough of me crying to last a lifetime, I’m sure – and it’s better she thinks I’m suffering from IBS than continues to see me soggy. Anyway, getting your feelings hurt by your teenage daughter seems to be par for the course from what I remember. I can still recall the door slamming and the eye rolling and the telling my mum she just didn’t understand.

Now I’m getting payback from my own daughter. I suppose it’s all part of the great circle of life, but not the kind they sing about in the Lion King.

The problem with crying about one thing is that it inevitably leads onto crying about another. This is one of the many pleasant side effects of grief – you have a bit of a blub about one thing (like an especially sappy John Lewis commercial or a stroppy daughter) and you end up weeping about Everything That Hurt You Ever. But once I’d got that out of my system and left the sanctuary of the downstairs lav, I did consider it.

I know Rebecca, my younger sis by two years, would have welcomed Lizzie into her life, and her flat in the city centre, and would probably have been a heck of a lot more fun than I am.

Becca, you see, doesn’t have kids. Or a dead husband. Or even an elderly Labrador. She has no responsibilities at all, which is just the way she likes it. She got her teenybopper heart broken when she was seventeen, and since then has remained steadfastly single and carefree.

Lizzie would undoubtedly have had a ball staying there for the summer, but I had to say no. Apart from anything else, Becca knows as much about boundaries and discipline as I do about particle physics. I may well have come home to find Lizzie pregnant, in rehab or starting a new life as a tattoo artist. All three risk factors could equally have applied to Becca herself.

Funnily enough, after that idea was knocked back, Lizzie didn’t ask to stay with my parents … mainly because she’s not stupid and knows their idea of a wild night out is getting all four corners in bingo at the church hall.

My parents are very sensible – so obviously they hadn’t wanted me to do this either. They thought I was nuts, though they phrased it more sensitively than that. They tread carefully around me these days, which is kind of heartbreaking in its own way. I yearn for the days when my dad can look me in the eye and be rude to me again.

Maybe, I think, surveying the now-thickening traffic as we join the M5 and follow the signs that faithfully promise we are heading towards The South West, they’re all spot on. Maybe Lizzie and Nate and my mum and dad are one hundred per cent accurate with their assessment: maybe I am nuts. Plus, now I come to think about it, Becca didn’t try and talk me out of it at all, which is probably a sure sign that I’m making a poor life choice.

But somehow … I know it’s the right thing to do. I just know it is, with a certainty I’ve not felt for a very long time. I feel scared and anxious and I miss David like hell – but I also feel something odd. Something fluttery and strange. Something that vaguely resembles hope and optimism, and a sense of potential. Perhaps it’s just the sheer shock of it all, I don’t know – but even if Lizzie hates me for a while (possibly forever) and Nate is bored, and my parents consider getting me committed, I know I’m heading in the right direction. Even without the sat nav.

It’s all as unexpected to me as it is to my family. I’d say I’m not an impulsive person, but I don’t really know if that’s true or not. I don’t really know what kind of a person I am, not in this version of reality. I was with David for so long – most of my life – that my entire identity was wrapped up with him. I’ve never been on my own – I’ve always been with him. I’ve never been just Laura, I’ve always been one half of David and Laura. Daura or Lavid … nah, neither of those work. We’d never make it in Hollywood.

Something about this – upping sticks and dragging us all off to Dorset – feels like the first step to finding out who I’m going to be next. That sounds weird, a bit like I’m an international spy with a bundle of fake IDs and foreign passports and stacks of Euros hidden in a heating vent.

But I know it’s important, this feeling. It’s taken me a long time to accept that there will even be a ‘next’ – to accept that I have to try and make a life for myself without David. Basically because I didn’t even want a life without David – in fact I still don’t. But it’s not just about me, it’s about the kids. I can’t just shrivel up and fade into the West without him, much as Lizzie might like that right now.

I have to keep moving. I have to push on, to find the courage to even believe that there will be a ‘next’. It’s been over two years since he left us and that tiny, fluttering feeling – that hope – is what’s keeping me going on this insane drive. Or, possibly, that tiny fluttering feeling is just all the coffee on an empty stomach. Either way, we’re going. It feels like the right thing to do – plus, well, I got the job. That in itself is a minor miracle, all things considered, and it would be downright rude to reject a miracle, wouldn’t it? Even a minor one.

I sent off that ridiculous letter two days before the closing date and genuinely never expected to hear from them. I mean, who in their right minds would give a job to a woman like me? A woman who not only wrote, but actually posted, a tear-stained letter that was the very definition of over-sharing?

Apparently, Cherie Moon would. Perhaps I should take that as fair warning – Cherie, my new boss, the woman who holds our destiny in her hands for the next month and a half, is entirely probably not in her right mind. Also, as Becca had helpfully pointed out, she did have what sounded like a ‘very cool but probably made-up name’.

The response to my letter had been short but very, very sweet. It landed four weeks ago, in one of those small brown padded jiffy bags that people use when you’ve bought something off eBay. As I hadn’t actually bought anything off eBay, and as my post usually consists of bills and people trying to persuade me to reclaim my PPI, I was a bit confused. I stared at it for a few minutes, jiggled it about, and eventually – in a fit of amazing clarity – actually opened it.

Inside was a small pink card, folded in two, from none other than the legendary and possibly fictitious Cherie Moon.

‘Congratulations!’ it announced, in tiny, curling handwriting. ‘I could tell from your letter that you are exactly the right person for the job, and I’m so excited about welcoming you all to the Comfort Food Café for your working holiday. Enclosed are directions to both us and to your cottage, along with your keys, a bit of information on boring things to do with the house, and phone numbers in case you need them. I’ll expect you on July 23 – and I’ll have something sweet and special waiting for you at the café!’

And that was, quite literally, it. Even I, with very limited experience in the world of work, knew that this was unorthodox. There was no request for references (thank God) and only a couple of forms to fill in. There was just that pretty little card, with its tiny handwriting, a few photocopied sheets with a map and pictures, and the keys.

The keys that were currently tucked away in my bag, which was somewhere under Nate’s feet, crammed in with a multipack of juice cartons and mini boxes of raisins and dried apricots that nobody would eat. I just like to be prepared, in case a freak snowstorm or a zombie invasion means we get trapped at the side of the road, you know?

David used to take the mickey out of me something rotten for what he called my ‘survivalist streak’. I even miss that. I even miss being mocked, which is kind of tragic. But he mocked me in a nice way, and now nobody even knows me well enough or cares enough to bother poking fun at me.

I give myself a mental whack around the head and start to sing along to ‘I Would Do Anything For Love’ instead of allowing myself to follow this familiar path to Wallow Town. I Will Not Wallow – my new mantra – I think, as I join Meatloaf on a sonic journey through affairs of the heart.

‘I like this one,’ mumbles Nate, almost-but-not-quite asleep now. His comatose tone makes me smile – it’s the way he speaks just before he conks out.

‘Me too,’ I reply, smiling.

‘I don’t,’ mutters Lizzie from the back seat.

Oh well, I think, glad to hear her voice, even if it does sound pissed off. Two out of three ain’t bad.

Chapter 5

Our arrival in Budbury doesn’t go quite as planned. In fact, it’s about seven hours later than I’d hoped for, we’re all very hot and bothered, and the dog has been whining for the last thirty minutes. I know exactly how he feels.

It’s also practically nightfall, that strange twilight between-time when the sun could be setting or rising. In this case, it’s definitely setting, sinking as low in the sky as my morale by this stage.

We had a few problems once we left the motorway. First there was the sat-nav fiasco. Or the lack-of-sat-nav fiasco, to be more precise. I decided, in my infinite insanity, that it would be a really good idea to stop off at Avebury. We could see the famous stone circles and walk the dog, and get some air and sunshine that wasn’t filtered through petrol fumes in service-station car parks.

As you can perhaps imagine, if you’ve ever met twenty-first-century teenagers, that idea went down very well.

This idyllic little detour lost us a few of the hours we’d gained by setting off early, mainly because I was convinced that we could find it without using the sat nav. It was on the map. It was a tourist attraction. Surely there would be brown signs or queues of druids in flowing white robes trekking down the lay-by?

Poor Nate was trying to read the road map, with Lizzie hovering behind him, glaring over his shoulder, poking the pages with her finger and yelling comments like ‘It’s to the right, you retard!’

Nate eventually elbowed her in the face, which I didn’t entirely blame him for. He managed to connect with her cheekbone and made her howl so loudly the dog joined in. All the way through these familial delights, I had a tractor in front of me and a Land Rover driving so far up my arse he should really have brought a wedding ring.

By the time we’d circled the same stretch of admittedly very pretty road for about the gazillionth time, we’d all had enough. Lizzie was yelling. Nate was yelling back. The dog was barking. I was trying to retain my zen, but fast losing the will to live.

Things started to really deteriorate when Lizzie shouted ‘for God’s sake, use the bloody sat nav!’ Nate had come out with the traditional response – Sat Nav’s for Slackers – which provoked her to new lows.

‘That’s what Dad used to say,’ she hissed. ‘But Dad’s not here is he? And Mum just isn’t up to the job!’

That hurt, almost physically. It felt a bit like she’d actually stabbed me in the back of the head with a fork and blood was dripping down my scalp.

The worst thing about it was that it was one hundred per cent true. I might be getting my equilibrium back; I might be trying to move on. I might be less of a nervous wreck than I was this time a year ago. But I still wasn’t up to the job – assuming the job was being her dad. Because much as I tried, I would never be her dad – and an epic fail on the road-map front was only a tiny part of that.

In the end I took the very sensible option of pulling over into one of those beauty spots where you’re supposed to take photos of the stunning scenery. As the only scenery in my car consisted of violent kids and a senile Labrador, I refrained from creating a magical Kodak moment and instead simply got out.

I put Jimbo on his lead and practically heard his old bones creak as he threw himself out of the boot. He immediately cocked his leg to pee on a fence post and then tries to eat a small pile of sheep droppings.

I gazed out at the hills and valleys and luscious greenery and completely understood why Ye Ancient People had decided to locate their mysterious and allegedly powerful stone circle here. I just wished they’d thought to leave some better directions.

After Jimbo had sniffed and snuffled a few more times and I’d allowed the gentle sensation of sunlight on my skin soothe me down from the cliff edge the kids had driven me up, I helped the dog climb back into the boot, and slid back in the car.

Both of the kids were very quiet, which is always a worrying sign. I quickly glanced at both, making sure they were still alive, before fastening my seatbelt and preparing to move off.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ came a small voice from the back seat. I felt her hand pat me on the shoulder, which made me grin immediately. It was such a hesitant pat, like she knew she had to do it, but didn’t enjoy it either. Almost as though she might catch leprosy from me if she kept it going for more than a few seconds.

‘For what?’ I asked, not wanting to give in too easily.

‘For what I said about Dad. For being the Mean Girl. You’re doing great, and I’ll read the map if you want.’

I briefly touched my fingers to hers – keeping it quick so I don’t ruin the moment with too much affection – and nodded.

‘Thank you, Lizzie. And it’s fine – we all miss him, and we all get mean sometimes. But you know what? I think you’re right about this one. I think I’m going to have to break Dad’s rule and hope he doesn’t mind. Nate, get that sat nav out of the glove compartment …’

Nate hurried to comply, and within about six minutes, we arrived at Avebury – it appeared that we’d somehow managed to drive past it over and over again without ever noticing.

The visit was fine, the kids had ice cream and we all took photos. Jimbo discovered lots of new things to smell, and all things considered, I’d have to put it in the ‘win’ column.

The rest of the day, though, wasn’t such a winner. It consisted of – in no particular order – our car battery dying and having to flag down passing German tourists to help us; getting lost again (despite the sat nav); Nate getting very, very sick and having to vomit his way through various picturesque lay-bys; getting lost some more; an emergency pit-stop at McDonald’s in Yeovil; getting lost some more and Lizzie having to wee in a field.

‘I’m never, ever leaving the city again …’ she’d muttered, throwing the toilet roll at the car windscreen so hard it bounced off and flew away into the road.

With the various delays, it took us way too long to make the journey. We arrived in Budbury frazzled and irritable and, in my case, squinty-eyed from all the driving.

We spot the turning for the cottage complex – The Rockery – at the very last minute, and I veer suddenly to the left to pass through the open gates, thankful that the one-lane road behind me was empty of traffic.

We drive slowly past the shadowed playground with its colourful swings and slide, and past the games room, lit up inside and filled with what look like old board games, books, DVDs, table football and one of those air-hockey things, and follow the signs through to the cottages.

By the time we park up on a crunchy gravel-topped driveway that circles a large green lawn, the light is greying and I can see both the moon and the sun hovering in the sky. It’s very strange and a little bit like the beginning of some kind of fantasy film.

I climb out of the car, so relieved to finally be here, squinting in the fading daylight as I try and figure out which cottage is ours. Hyacinth House, our home for the summer. The name sounds vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough for me to be able to identify why. This is becoming a more and more common sensation as I get older, which my mother tells me cheerily is the beginning of the end for my brain cells.

From what I can see in front of me, there are about seven or eight cottages scattered around the green. There’s a terraced row of three, a couple of semi-detached pairs and one slightly bigger house near the entrance. Solar lights planted around the edge of the lawn are glimmering, looking like glow-worms in the gloaming.

The windows of most of the cottages are lit up, some with curtains drawn, others still open. I watch families inside, brief glimpses of kids running around, flickering television sets, one window steamed up as someone works in the kitchen.

I’m not sure if our cottage is one of the ones I can see or if it is further afield. I can just about make out a path running down the side of the terrace and the shapes of a few more buildings beyond.

I decide we can explore later – but first I need to figure out how to unpack the roofbox. It occurred to me about an hour ago that I have possibly made something of a tactical error with the roofbox. When I was putting the stuff in it, I had to stand on a foot stool so I could manage.

Obviously, I didn’t bring the foot stool with me, and as I haven’t grown on the journey, I’m still about inches too small to reach. It’s a tricky one – and I suppose I’ll just have to hope they have foot stools in Dorset, or perhaps tall people. At least we are here.

I pull open the front and rear car doors, and the detritus of the journey tumbles out of every footwell – carrier bags full of tissues, muffin wrappers and apple cores, old drinks cups from McDonald’s, soft bananas with blackened skin, a torn leaflet about English Heritage, and finally, groggily, two grouchy children. I gather the litter up to put in the bin and pull open the boot so that poor Jimbo can clamber out and stretch his old legs.

Except Jimbo, of course, decides that after being cooped up in the car for far too long, he isn’t old at all. In fact he’s decided that he’s basically a puppy and sprints off over the grass like a gazelle on cocaine, springing and leaping and arcing through the dim evening sky.

He gallops in circles around and around on the grass, the solar lights highlighting the black gleam of his coat and reflecting off his eyes so he looks slightly demonic. He woofs and growls with sheer delight as he pursues his own tail and claws at the ground with his paws.

The kids start to laugh and I have to join in. I may be exhausted and frazzled and burned out, but the sound of my children giggling is enough to revitalise me even more effectively than a spa break and a bucket of chilled prosecco.

They’re both at such awkward ages – half-baked humans, not quite grown up, not quite babies – that giggling isn’t something that often occurs in our house. Lizzie’s out with her friends more and more and Nate spends a lot of time in his room playing X Box Live. They bounce between needing me and not needing me, and in Lizzie’s case between liking me and despising me. Even without the whole dead dad thing, I suspect it would have been a difficult time for us all.

Our laughter and the dog’s playful gnashing, are pretty much the only sounds I can hear. It’s almost alarmingly quiet at the Rockery. The families are all inside, living their barely glimpsed lives. There’s no traffic at all. No loud music coming from loud cars, distant sirens screeching, or trains or trams rattling past. None of the usual urban noises we’re all used to. Just the delicate twittering of birds at dusk, singing their last hurrah before bed time.

Jimbo jumps to his feet and his ears go on alert. We might think it’s quiet, and he might be about a thousand in dog years, but he can clearly hear something we can’t. His head swivels around, grey muzzle pointing towards the cottages, and he is suddenly galvanised into the fastest run I’ve seen from him in months.

He gallops away towards the path by the terrace, his inky fur starting to fade into the darkening light, his red collar just about still visible. I run after him and feel my now-frizzy curly brown hair billowing out behind me.

I catch up just at the point where the path stretches off between the buildings. There are a few more solar lights peeking out of the bedding plants here, so I can see exactly what has attracted his attention, and exactly why he’s stopped long enough for me to reach him.

Jimbo currently has his nose buried in the crotch of a man who appears to be only wearing a white towel, tied around his waist. There’s a lot more of him on display than I’ve seen of a man in real life for quite a while, and I’m glad it’s not light enough for him to properly see my bright-red face – a combination of being too hot, running when I’m about as naturally athletic as an asthmatic tortoise and being a bit embarrassed.

He’s tall, with wide shoulders that look on the brawny side. Like I imagine a blacksmith would look if I’d ever met one. Not many of those knocking round Manchester, funnily enough. His hair looks like it’s probably dark brown, a bit too long, and it’s dripping water all over his shoulders. I conclude from this, and from the fact that I can now see the swimming pool complex behind him, that he’s been for a dip.

It’s pleasantly warm now, even as evening falls, and I can see how that would be an attractive proposition. I quite fancy jumping into a pool and washing off the cares of the day myself. But first I have to try and drag my perverted old Labrador’s face out of a strange man’s nether regions.

I’m not quite sure how to go about it and am fearful that if I make a grab for Jimbo, I might accidentally dislodge the towel as well – which would be very rude indeed.

‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry,’ I mumble, trying to get hold of Jimbo’s collar so I can tug him back from his erotic encounter. ‘Jimbo!’

Jimbo has not only found the speed of a much younger dog today, he’s also found the disobedience levels of a puppy and he fights me every inch. He’s way too interested in having a good sniff.

So I tug and mutter apologies, and try to ignore the dog’s disturbing snuffling noises as he buries his nose even further into the white towel. I also become aware that the kids have followed and are now sniggering away behind me. I realise that this really must all look very, very funny to someone who isn’t, you know, me.

The man is taking this canine sexual assault extremely well and eventually he simply leans down, takes Jimbo’s muzzle in one large hand and pulls it firmly away. He keeps hold of it and then kneels down in front of him, so he’s on eye level. He lets go of Jimbo’s mouth and starts scratching behind his floppy black ears, making his furry head twist around in ecstasy.

All the time, the man murmurs ‘good lad’-type noises, while also gazing into the pooch’s eyes and exercising some kind of Jedi mind-control trick that keeps him relatively still. For a few moments at least.

Jimbo suddenly darts forward to give the man’s face a very thorough tongue bath, then plops himself down at his feet. Within seconds, he’s snoring, curled up in an exhausted ball.

The dog whisperer stands up, holding on to the towel at his waist, although I have thankfully noticed the band of a pair of swimming trunks peeking out.

‘How old is he?’ the man asks, looking down at Jimbo, who is, I see, not lying at his feet – he’s actually lying on his feet.

‘Almost thirteen,’ I say, ‘and I’m so sorry.’

I am feeling suddenly very tired and very sad. The absurdity of my situation flashes across my mind: I have uprooted my children, myself and my very elderly dog on some kind of wild-goose chase, pursuing God knows what. Happiness? Progress? A break from the underlying misery that seems to have been wrapped around my heart every day since David died?

Well, whatever it is, I’m not pursuing it fast enough – all I’m finding is exhaustion, grumpy kids, senile dogs and a caffeine overload. That and chronic embarrassment as I apologise to a mostly naked man, in the dark, in a place I’ve never even visited before – a place I’ve unilaterally decided to make our home for the summer.

I clench my eyes together very, very tightly, squeezing back any watery signs of self pity that might be tempted to overflow, and force myself to look at the man instead of the dog.

I can only see bits of his face reflected in the silvery lighting, but he looks about my age. Maybe a little older, I’m not sure. His hair is definitely a bit too long, and will probably dry a lighter shade of brown once it’s not soggy. His eyes seem to be hazel or brown or green, I can’t really tell, and he’s not smiling.

He was smiling when he was playing with Jimbo. But now he’s not. Now he’s looking at me. I guess I just have that effect on tall, handsome strangers.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks, gruffly, frowning at me with such style and finesse that I instinctively know he frowns at least as much as he smiles. I suspect he’s one of those people who vastly prefers animals to people, and communicates much better with dogs than humans.

‘Oh, yes, thank you … just tired. We’ve been driving all day and now we’ve got to find our cottage and unload the roofbox, and I don’t know how I’m going to do that because I didn’t bring the foot stool and I’m too short, and the kids need some dinner and I need some coffee … well, probably wine, to be honest, and …’

I catch a glimpse of his expression as I ramble incoherently, and note that he looks slightly frightened. I realise I sound like a crazy person and as I have the kind of hair that expands in heat and I’ve been stuck in a hot car all day, I undoubtedly look like one too.

‘And yes, I’m fine, thank you,’ I say, firmly. ‘Do you happen to know where the Hyacinth House is? I have the keys.’

‘I can help you,’ he says, looking away from my eyes and gazing off into the distance. He sounds a little bit grumpy, a touch reluctant – as though he knows he should help, but doesn’t really want to engage.

‘No, I’m all right …’ I insist, wondering how I’m going to get Jimbo off his feet without appearing rude.

‘Let me help. I don’t have any wine, but I can help with the other thing.’

‘What?’ I ask, staring up at him in confusion. ‘You can help me stop being too short?’

Quick as a flash, a grin breaks out on his face and he lets out a laugh. It doesn’t last long and he seems to clamp down on it as soon as he can, like he’s not used to hearing the sound in public.

‘Sorry, no. I’m a vet, not a miracle worker. But I can unpack the roofbox for you. I’ll get dressed and come round. Hyacinth is just back there – next to the swimming pool. This is the nearest you can get the car, but I’ll help you unload. I assume you’re Laura?’

I feel a jolt of surprise that he knows who I am and also a jolt of a stubborn desire to continue insisting that I don’t need any help at all. I settle for just nodding and giving him a half-hearted smile as he extricates his bare feet from underneath the snoring dog’s tummy.

‘Thought so. In that case, if I know Cherie, she’ll have left wine in the cottage – so all your problems will be solved.’

Ha, I think, watching him disappear off up the path and noticing Lizzie still tapping away on her phone, face scrunched up in that very deliberate expression of vexed boredom that teenagers specialise in.

If only.

Chapter 6

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?

Chapter 7

I wake up the next morning with a mild hangover and a slightly less mild desire to throttle my own daughter.

I take a deep breath, grab the bottle of water I have thoughtfully placed on the bedside cabinet and glug down a few mouthfuls.

I lie still for a handful of moments, gazing at the hyacinth-covered lampshade and the rose-patterned wallpaper and the flowers-I-don’t-recognise curtains, while snuggling under my sunflower-riddled duvet. I let out a huge sneeze. I seem to have developed psychosomatic hayfever, which is odd as I don’t even get the real kind.

I have managed to snag the biggest bedroom by conceding the one with the en-suite to Lizzie. I am more than happy with that arrangement and I like my new home a lot. Even the bedrooms have beams in the ceiling and enough light is creeping past the edges of the curtains for me to know that the rooms will be bright and sunny and glorious. I can hear the TV on downstairs, which means that Nate is up and has conquered the remote, and I can actually hear Jimbo snoring all the way up here.

Other than that, again, it’s just the sound of birdsong coming from outside, beautiful trilling harmonies that instantly make me feel more joyful. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere so still and natural and peaceful.

There is, though, one small thing spoiling my burgeoning sense of tranquillity. Stopping me from reaching a state of Buddah-like zen. In fact, making me bite my lip so hard I taste blood.

It all started with the phone calls the night before. I chose not to use my mobile and instead called my mother using the brilliantly so-old-it’s-now-retro-cool Bakelite phone – the type with the massive handset and a big circular dial that takes forever to click all the way around.

The children have stared at it as though it’s a museum exhibit, Lizzie poking it cautiously with her fingertips as though it might be some deviously disguised creature from Doctor Who. She once watched an episode where plastic came to life as pure evil and she’s never quite forgotten it. She was scared of her SpongeBob lunchbox for weeks afterwards.

Anyway, museum exhibit or not, the phone worked perfectly. Now, for the sake of sanity and brevity – and in fact all of humanity – I will paraphrase my conversation with my mother. It went something like this:

Me: Hi, Mum! We’ve all arrived safely and it’s gorgeous! Best place ever!

Mum: Are you sure? It’s a long way off. How are you going to cope?

Me: It’s an adventure, we’re all going to have a marvellous, brilliant, wonderful, life-changingly positive experience!

Mum: Your dad will come and fetch you all if you need to come home, you know …

It’s a wee bit depressing how little faith she has in me – but I know, because I’m a mum myself, that it’s only because she loves me so much. She knows what I’ve gone through and it breaks her heart.

It’s not just me and the kids that David’s passing affected – it’s taken a toll on all of us. His mum and dad have never been quite right since; my parents constantly worry about me and I know that even Becca – beneath the drunken binges and party-girl persona – both misses him and feels for me and her niece and nephew, both of whom she loves beyond belief.

My next phone call was, in fact, to Becca herself. I was surprised to find her in on a Saturday night, and was touched when I realised that she was waiting for my call.

‘Wassup, girlfriend?’ she said, in a fake American accent. She likes to experiment with accents, my sister. Well, with everything really – but the accents are one of the many reasons the kids like her so much. They’re especially fond of her ‘Nordic noir’ voice, where she orders food in the McDonald’s drive-through as though she’s a Scandinavian detective making a blood-curdling discovery in a Stockholm suburb.

I filled her in on the day’s events – the driving, the singing, the vomiting. The ups, the downs, the sideways crab-walks. The uber-floral cottage. The peace and quiet and disturbingly dark darkness. The dog, and the man, and the cupcakes, and the roofbox and the delicious home-made wine I was sipping as I chatted to her.

‘Hang on,’ she said when I’d finished, and I heard a bit of shuffling going on in the background.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked, wondering if that was a wise idea. With Becca, it’s sometimes better not to know.

‘Adjusting the zip on my gimp mask,’ she replied, jauntily. ‘Or, just refreshing my laptop screen, I need to check on something. So – tell me more about this man.’

‘Oh, he’s just … a man. Well, a man called Matt.’

‘Matt? That’s a foxy name. I think I read a survey once that said men called Matt have very large penises.’

‘No you didn’t,’ I said, laughing despite myself. It’s impossible to keep a straight face when you’re talking to Becca.

‘What does he look like?’

I thought about that question and realised I didn’t want to be totally honest in regard to how much I remembered about Matt’s appearance. Mainly because I remember way too much: him, bare-chested, water dripping down onto broad swimmers’ shoulders, towel hanging low on angular hipbones, the shape of muscular thighs pressed against the fabric … if I tell her that I’ll never hear the end of it. She’ll call the local vicar and start getting the banns read.

‘He looks a bit like Harrison Ford,’ I said, eventually.

‘Saggy Harrison or fit Harrison?’

‘Fit Harrison.’

‘Han Solo Harrison or Indiana Jones Harrison? Because I think the latter might be useful – your vagina is so well hidden it might as well be in that warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant …’

‘Becca!’ I snapped, torn between horror and amusement. So, it’d been a while. I think your husband dying is pretty good excuse for a lack of sex life, don’t you?

‘Okay, okay … just saying. You could always borrow my Princess Leia outfit.’

‘What kind, or do I need to ask?’

‘Slutty slave girl in Jabba’s palace, obv. You need to get a bit more slutty slave girl, you know.’

‘I do not!’ I spluttered, half-heartedly. She sounded distracted and was paying no attention to my half-hearted outraged spluttering anyway. To be honest, I’d had a couple of glasses of wine by that stage, which was definitely helping me feel more mellow. It’s hard to do full-hearted spluttering when you’re a bit tipsy.

‘Aaah …’ she said.

‘Aaah what?’ I asked.

‘Aaah, I see – yes, he’d definitely get it. Han Solo, though, with that hair, don’t you think? If Han Solo wore Levis that showed off his arse like that, anyway … gosh, he’s really tall, isn’t he? Total man totty.’

I was silent for a few seconds, wondering if Becca had developed powers of clairvoyance since I’d left home. Or if she was possibly having some kind of filthy, illicit sexual relationship with the head of NASA and he’d redirected all European satellites to focus on a small village in Dorset.

‘What … what do you mean? How do you know what he looks like?’ I said, frowning. I looked suspiciously around the room just in case somebody had installed a spycam and I was broadcasting live to the nation like some especially boring episode of Big Brother. There was no spycam. And no kids – Nate had dragged himself to bed, exhausted, and Lizzie had gone upstairs to ‘communicate’.

Becca didn’t answer straight away. She was too busy laughing. Not a polite chuckle either – but a fully throated guffaw. The type that makes you cry and potentially suffocate.

‘Oh God!’ she finally said, clearing her throat, ‘that one of you with the whole cupcake in your mouth is priceless! All that green icing over your face! You look like a Teletubby!’

By that stage I was starting to get a vague inkling of what was going on. I poured another glass of wine and decided that I probably needed a firmer inkling. Also, I wondered what an inkling was – it sounded like it could be a baby fountain pen.

‘Becca,’ I said, as firmly as I could: ‘Tell. Me. What’s. Going. On.’

She giggled, obviously intimidated by my powerful big-sister voice.

‘It’s all on Lizzie’s Instagram account,’ she said, ‘the whole day. You with your mouth wide open in the car – looks like you’re singing … oh yeah, it’s a little video! Ha ha, Meatloaf – seriously, sis? This is too funny …’

She paused and I could hear her clicking through the images.

I stared at my own mobile and considered going online myself. In the end I decided it was bad enough hearing about it, never mind seeing it.

‘There’s one of poor Nate chucking up, the little love,’ Becca added. ‘You’re holding his shoulders and leaning down over him. You have about seventeen chins, you’ll be glad to hear. One of the back of your head. One of Nate asleep, dribbling a bit … there’s loads. Oh … here’s a nice one, though. It’s one of you standing in a very pretty lay-by, gazing out over the hills … your hair’s all flowy and hippy-ish, you’re all thoughtful and pensive, and you look gorgeous, honest! She’s even captioned it “Mum looking less than hideous” – isn’t that nice?’

Nice, I thought … nice? That wasn’t the word I’d have used. ‘Nice’ applied to Cornish cream teas, or a Cath Kidston tote bag, or a cosy night in with a box set of Midsomer Murders. ‘Nice’ was a way of describing your mother’s new perm, or a bath towel set you’ve seen in John Lewis, or a recipe book you buy in a National Trust gift shop.

‘Nice’ was most definitely not the right word for this scenario – the scenario where my teenage daughter and budding photo-journalist has been reporting live to the world at large for the last twenty-four hours without ever mentioning it to the stars of the show.

As Becca went on to describe yet more of the photos, my heart began to sink even further. It really didn’t feel nice at all. I felt humiliated and hurt and ready to cry, none of which was helped by Becca’s laughter, or the fact that I knew Lizzie was entirely possibly upstairs as we were speaking, adding even more pictures.

I closed my eyes and listened as Becca continued her commentary. She was especially amused by my Incredible Escaping Underwear, and by a shot of Matt wearing my bra on his head. Oh God … Matt. I’d have to either get Lizzie to take them offline, or tell him. Or, possibly, simply pack us all back in the car and just flee the scene of the crime …

‘You’re not upset, are you?’ asked Becca, presumably when she’d noticed I’d been stonily silent for a few minutes.

‘Yes,’ I said simply, draining the glass of wine and giving in as the tears started to flow over my cheeks and pool at the base of my neck.

‘But you shouldn’t be! I know it’s cheeky – I know some of the captions are a bit rude – but it’s harmless, really. It’s just her way of dealing with the change … you know she didn’t want to come. You didn’t give her any choice, though, you made her, so she has to let that frustration out some way.

‘It’s hard at that age – you have no power, do you? You’re grown-up enough to think you know your own mind, but not grown up enough that anybody ever listens to you … you’re completely controlled by your parents, by school, by teachers. It’s horrible – especially for someone as bright and independent as Lizzie.’

I nodded, miserably, then realised she couldn’t see me. I knew she was trying to make me feel better, and I could even hear the sense in some of what she was saying. Lizzie was much more like Becca than me at that age, more naturally prickly, more fierce. Stronger in some ways, more vulnerable in others. Becca ‘got’ her, which occasionally makes me jealous, petty as it sounds.

So while the rational part of me could accept the truth in Becca’s arguments, the rest of me still felt like crap. Crap and out of touch, and useless – a million light years away from the precious baby girl who was lying only a few steps away from me. I felt old and tired and mainly – mainly – I just felt terribly, horribly alone.

The kids were upstairs. Becky was on the phone. Matt was nearby in his cottage. The dog was on the sofa. The other holiday homes were full. I was not technically alone. But none of that mattered – I could have been at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or at Trafalgar Square at New Year, or surrounded by family and friends at a party. I would still have felt alone – no matter how big the crowd. I’d felt alone ever since he left me.

‘I know,’ I mumbled, trying to pull myself together. My family were finally starting to believe that I was moving on, finally starting to believe that I was feeling better. That I might be behaving a bit irrationally, but I was past the worst of my grieving.

Clearly, they actually knew sod all.

‘I know,’ I repeated, more firmly the second time. ‘I’m just a bit knackered. And I feel bad for Matt – I mean, he probably doesn’t want the world to see him with a bra on his head, does he?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Becca, ‘he might love it. For all you know he’s the chairman of the Dorset Bra-On-Head-Wearers Committee, Han Solo branch. And anyway, it’s not really the world – it’s only people who are her friends on Instagram. That’s me and a handful of teenagers in Manchester. I’m sure she’ll add you as well, if you ask.’

‘I’m pretty sure she won’t … and that’s probably for the best. You’re right. She needs some privacy. She needs a way to blow off steam. I just need to tell her to lay off the innocent bystanders.’

‘Yeah, do that. And look, don’t feel bad – I’m sorry I described it all like it was hilarious, and I know you’re sitting there half cut and pretending not to cry even though you are. There are some lovely pictures on here as well, honest. I’ve been looking through while we’ve been talking and lots of it’s really nice – views of the scenery, the stone circles, a fab one of you and Nate eating ice cream under a huge weeping willow tree … one of Jimbo peeing on someone else’s car wheel at a service-station car park and you looking a bit shifty as you try and drag him away … one of you outside McDonald’s, with the caption “Best. Mum. Ever”.’

‘And there’s an absolutely beautiful one of the front of your cottage. It’s quite darkly lit and very arty … Hyacinth House? Is that what it’s called, where you’re staying? That’s very hip for Dorset!’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. I’d been wondering why it sounded familiar all evening.

‘The Hyacinth House. It’s a Doors song. Remember, from my hippy rock phase?’

Now that she’s said it, I did remember, a little bit. Dimly and distantly, a vision of Becca with her tie-dyed T-shirts and greasy hair and the stench of patchouli oil came back to me. It had been a deeply unfashionable phase, that, not to mention smelly. Sadly we’d shared a room, so her taste in music became mine by default.

‘Just about,’ I said, a ghost of a tune playing in my head. ‘Weird. Look, I’m going to go, Becca. I need to get some rest. I just hope she doesn’t creep into my room at night and take a picture of me drooling onto my pillow.’

‘I’m sure she won’t. And just remember – there are far, far worse ways for a teenage girl to rebel than this. And I know, I tried them all.’

By the time I finally hung up, I was too exhausted to even think about it any more. I decided that the best course of action would be to let Lizzie know I knew, lay down a few ground rules, but not try anything too heavy-handed like banning her, or forcing her to close her account, or confiscating her phone, or killing her.

Besides, a sneaky part of me thought, as I let Jimbo out for his last wee of the night and prepared to climb the stairs, it might be the best possible chance I had of understanding what was going on in her brain. Surely Becca would warn me if she started posting pics of naked teenage boys or open condom packets or crates full of alcopops?

Jimbo had wandered back in and did his usual circling around routine before he curled up in a ball on his bed. I scratched his ears goodnight and went upstairs to do the same. Not circle around three times before curling up in a ball, but my own bedtime routine.

I took the framed photo of me, David and the kids that I’d brought with me and placed it on the bedside cabinet, facing inwards so it was the last thing I’d see before I went to sleep, and the first thing I’d see in the morning. It was taken when we were all scuba diving on holiday, and we have big plastic masks propped up on our heads. Nate’s missing his front teeth; Lizzie’s still a little girl, and me and David … well, we look happy. One of those perfect moments, frozen in time.

I positioned it perfectly and because it had been a very tough day and I was feeling emotionally drained, I resorted to the Sniff and Cuddle technique to settle myself off.

After David had died, I couldn’t bring myself to wash his clothes for ages. They just sat there, in the laundry basket, with everyone else’s getting thrown on top of them. Nothing was ever added to David’s pile and nothing was ever taken away from it.

I never had to wash another clean work shirt for him or sort a fresh pair of socks, or dry his favourite Superman T-shirt that had holes in the armpits. I never needed to use the special Fairy non-bio because of his sensitive skin, and I never had to iron another pair of trousers. Because he never needed anything else from me ever again.

Eventually, my mother took charge and simply bundled the whole lot home with her to do herself. She washed them and dried them and folded them, and together we decided what needed to go to the charity shop, and what should be binned. To be fair, it’s not as callous as it sounds – those clothes of his had been in the basket for three months by that stage, and it wasn’t fair on the kids, apart from anything else, constantly seeing them there. It makes me cringe when I look back, in all honesty. I was definitely a teeny bit insane, which must have been frightening for them.

So I let my mum bag them up and bin them, partly because it was the right thing to do, and also because I was going through a kind of zombie stage back then. I was very malleable and easy to move around, like a lump of play dough in human form. I wasn’t good at making decisions and I wasn’t good at resisting them either.

Luckily, my mum didn’t expand her Empire of Common Sense to the bedroom, and I took comfort in the knowledge that I had a secret stash of David lurking on a hook on the back of the door.

I had his dressing gown, a big bulky burgundy fleece. He’d had it for years and he’d lost the belt in the garden when we used it for an impromptu tug of war with the kids. Jimbo had chewed one sleeve and the left-side pocket was falling off. He’d really needed a new one and I’d mentally added it to his Christmas list.

But its ragged state didn’t matter at all to me. What mattered was the fact that it still smelled of him; of him, and his deodorant, and the Old Spice aftershave the kids had bought him as a joke birthday present and he claimed to love.

If you’ve ever lost anyone, you’ll know how important your sense of smell is. Walking into a room that smelled like David could literally take my breath away. An impromptu waft of his aftershave could reduce me to rubble. I couldn’t even sit in the car for weeks afterwards, the aroma was so very ‘him’. I also kept automatically getting into the passenger side, because he did the bulk of the driving, and waiting for him to get in next to me.

After a while, those little things – the outward signs of a life being half-lived, of a life in flux – started to fade. I got used to the driving. I accepted that his clothes were gone. I stopped bursting into tears every time I smelled Old Spice. But I never, ever, let go of that dressing gown.

I suspect it’s a sign of some kind of mental breakdown, so I keep it secret, tucked away in a Tesco carrier bag in my underwear drawer, only getting it out at night. It’s rarely seen, but always nearby – usually under the pillow he slept on (and yes, it did take me a very long time to allow my mother to strip the bed linens as well), or on particularly difficult evenings, cuddled up in my arms like a big, fleecy cat. The smell is faint now, barely there – but it’s comforting anyway.

That night had definitely been a full-on fleecy-cat-cuddling kind of night, and I finally fell asleep after half an hour of Very Deep Thinking. About Lizzie. About Nate. About me. About our future, and what it might hold. About starting a new job tomorrow. About meeting Cherie Moon. About Matt. About the fact that Jimbo was so very old. About that scene in Casino Royale where James Bond is in the shower comforting a trembling Vesper Lynd and manages to be really sexy even though he’s fully clothed … at that point, I suspect I drifted off into a happier place.

I was still cuddling my fake David, but he wouldn’t mind. He’d always respected my relationship with Daniel Craig.

I’d slept surprisingly well, which was perhaps a result of the wine intake, and now I’m awake. Groggy, but awake. I glance at my watch on the cabinet – 9.38am – and give David a quick ‘good morning’ smile.

I stretch out, swipe the sleep out of my eyes and get out of bed. I carefully wrap my precious dressing gown up in the carrier bag and tuck it under the pillow for later.

I go for a morning tinkle and then tiptoe to Lizzie’s room. I push the door open, just a teeny, tiny bit, and see her there. She’s splayed across the predictably flowered duvet, one pyjama-clad leg under and one leg hooked over, and her hair is a mass of tangles against the pillowcase. She’s still fast asleep, her eyelids moving slightly as she dreams, her lips open. She looks about ten years old, and my heart melts. Still my precious baby girl. Especially when she’s asleep.

Today, I promise myself as I head for the shower, is going to be a good day. It will be positive and exciting, and fulfilling. And I will do my very best not to end up in any ridiculous situations that give Lizzie the opportunity to document my downfall live and online.

Chapter 8

‘Mum!’ shouts Nate, as I am busily burning toast in the kitchen. ‘There’s a picture of a strange man in the downstairs loo!’

I frown, throw the irredeemably black slices into the bin, and go to see what all the fuss is about. I make a mental note to dash back in time to turn the new, improved toast over on the grill. Some cook I’m turning out to be – completely flummoxed by the lack of a toaster.

I knock politely on the toilet door, because despite the fact that I carried this small person in my own body for nine months, Nate has become quite private since his twelfth birthday. When I have time, I feel a little worried about it – he’s at that age where there is probably a lot of stuff going on with him; a lot of boy stuff, which he obviously doesn’t want to talk to me about. So I tread carefully, let him know I’m available and don’t barge into the bathroom.

He pulls open the door and points in something akin to wonder at a framed black-and-white photo that’s hanging on the wall over the cistern.

At that point, Lizzie also comes in, her hair doing the Macarena over her face, phone in hand as usual. Just to complete the set, Jimbo pokes his way through our legs, sniffing at the toilet rim and wagging his tail so hard he’s whacking the sides of my thighs like a carpet beater. It’s suddenly very crowded in the downstairs loo.

‘Who is it, and why’s he there? It feels weird having him watch me while I pee …’ says Nate.

I stare at the picture: at the long hair, the leather trousers and the arrogantly handsome face.

‘It’s Jim Morrison,’ I reply. ‘He’s from a band called the Doors, and they recorded a song called the “Hyacinth House”. I’d thought perhaps Becca was over-stretching to assume the cottage was named after it, but it looks like I was wrong …’

Lizzie pushes to the front of the crowd and gazes up at Jim. Poor dead Jim, one of the brightest stars of his time, now performing in front of an audience of three (four if you count the dog) in a very small lavatory.

She closes the wooden lid and climbs up on it, so her face is right next to the photo.

‘Nate!’ she says, passing him her phone. ‘Take a picture! This is so cool – Becca did me a playlist that had the Doors on it. That song about people being strange. Come on, Nate, I can’t stand on the bog all day. Take the bloody picture!’

She does that strange fish-like pout that seems to be a legal requirement of teenagers’ photos the world over these days, and Nate takes the picture.

‘Is that for your Instagram account?’ I say, as she clambers down from the toilet lid. There’s a brief pause, where she looks twitchy and nervous and then tries to hide it. Caught between being a little girl who doesn’t want to get into trouble with her mum and a rebellious teen who wants to stick two fingers up at me.

I remind myself of what Becca said and remind myself that she was right – Lizzie didn’t want to come here and I did, in fact, force her to. If the only thing she has power over is taking crazed selfies and embarrassing pictures of me, I can live with it – it’s a shedload better than an eating disorder, that’s for sure.

I’m interested to see which way she’ll go, and can almost hear the cogs turning in her brain. In the end, she just shrugs, face neutral – not apologising, but not being aggressive either. Clever girl.

‘Yeah. Is that all right?’ she asks. She obviously knows now that I’ve spoken to Becca, and may be feeling a little anxious about my next move. Carefully, I also maintain a neutral face. We’re both trying very hard to be Switzerland, here, which is perhaps the best we can hope for.

‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Apart from taking photos of people who aren’t in the family. Like Matt. If you do that, you ask their permission to share, okay? You can’t invade people’s privacy like that. It’s not respectful.’

She nods, agreeing to my terms, and I feel jubilant inside. Like I have negotiated a peace treaty that has ended all conflict in the Middle East, and should now be made the chairman of The Entire World.

‘Mum!’ shouts Nate, sniffing the air, ‘I think that toast is burning again …’

Aaagh, I think, dashing out of the toilet, tripping slightly over the dog’s arse and running towards the kitchen. Perhaps being chairman of The Entire World can wait until I’ve mastered turning bread brown without starting a fire.

I give up on the toast and we all eat cereal. Cherie has kindly left us a little welcome pack of butter, milk, coffee, a few other bits and bobs. Plus a giant box of Sugar Puffs, which is strangely enough the kids’ favourite – an excellent guess from the mysterious Mrs Moon. I scoff down a huge mug of black coffee, and Nate and Lizzie guzzle some orange juice before disappearing off upstairs to get dressed. We have a couple of hours before we need to be at the café and plan to go and explore.

Having failed to cover all the mirrors up the night before, I was forced to confront myself in the bathroom after my shower. That resulted in a hefty spray of Frizz-Ease before I dried my hair, and a very light application of some tinted moisturiser. As a result, I look almost presentable and am dressed in some khaki shorts and a green T-shirt, along with a pair of Birkenstock sandals that were probably in fashion several years ago.

I take the precaution of hooking Jimbo up on his lead as we head out, just in case he decides he’s a puppy again and does a runner, and he ambles alongside us, at a plodding pace I use as an excuse to go slowly myself.

We start with a stroll through the woods at the back of the house, which is a pretty magical place. The canopy of the trees is so dense that only a few rays of sunlight manage to creep through and dapple the mossy ground beneath our feet, and the only sound is birdcall and the bubbling of a nearby stream. It feels very isolated and mystical, almost as though we’re in our very own private rainforest, even though I know the cottages are only five minutes away.

We do a loop, following a circular footpath that’s dotted at all the junctions and forks with garden gnomes. Each gnome seems to be doing something different – fishing, clapping, playing what looks like a ukulele – and each one has a wooden sign next to it on a stick, bearing a few words of gnomish wisdom in colourful speech bubbles. One says ‘the path to the cottages’; another says ‘the way to the falls’. One is holding little binoculars, and his sign says ‘the trail to the distant coast’. An especially jaunty fellow wearing a red beret tells us to follow the ‘road to San Jose’, but I think that one might be a joke.

Nate and Lizzie are fascinated by it all. Honestly, it’s as though they’ve never seen trees before. Everything seems to take on huge significance – a giant fern still dripping with morning dew; the hollowed-out trunk of an oak big enough to squeeze inside; faded pink bunting hanging from overhead branches, as though someone has been having a party; a patch of wild mushrooms that Lizzie swears is the spitting image of David Cameron’s face.

Nate isn’t quite old enough to have totally developed his sense of cool yet, so seeing him running around isn’t as much of a surprise. He still plays football on the street and likes to go to the swings.

But seeing Lizzie let go of her teenage diva image for even a few moments is a complete and unexpected delight. She’s running and jumping and exploring, and taking photos of everything, and I don’t even care when she takes one of me as I lean down to scoop up one of Jimbo’s giant poos in a plastic bag. At least it shows I’m a responsible dog owner.

Eventually, we follow the advice of the fishing gnome and follow the path back to the cottages. The sunlight as we emerge from the deep-green shelter of the woods is quite dazzling and I turn my face up to the sky. I like the sun. It makes me feel better. I remind myself to make sure the kids get coated in suncream before we come out again, it’s that warm.

Our cottage is right next to the swimming pool. We peek through the windows of the pool and see that it is small but perfectly formed. There is already a family inside, the water is bobbing with inflatables, and the dad is pretending to be a shark, chasing screaming primary-age children around while the mum looks on and laughs.

They look really happy and I quickly walk away. I don’t want to feel jealous. I don’t want to feel like I’m missing out. Not today. Today, I want to feel thankful and hopeful and strong. I want to feel like Katy Perry in the Roar video, although I don’t share that image with the kids – they might actually die laughing.

‘Mum, look!’ says Lizzie, bounding back towards me, returning from her advance scouting party beyond the path. The pool and our cottage are the only buildings at the back of the complex, which is actually really nice. We’re not just here for a week on holiday, we’re here for ages, and the location means we’ll have more privacy. You know, for when we have all our wild parties.

I follow her down the path, and back through to the central lawn we saw when we arrived last night. It’s much prettier in daylight, with a big circular bedding area in the middle that’s full of luscious flowers; deep red dahlias, multi-coloured begonias, delicate sweet peas, the purple trumpets of petunias.

There’s a water feature in the middle, some kind of mock-Victorian affair that looks like a shower for fairies and elves, and pretty lilac clematis is trailing all around it. It’s the kind of effortless-looking gardening that actually takes a huge amount of effort.

I’m all right at gardening. Ours back home isn’t huge, and I gave up on a decent lawn years ago due to Nate’s incessant footballing and Jimbo’s pee patrols, but we have lovely borders and beautiful hanging baskets and a few trees that produce more apples and pears than we need every year.

David was always my slave labour, doing the weeding and digging and turning over and hefting bags of fertiliser around, while I was the evil mastermind. One of my more realistic ‘moving on with life’ plans was to get an allotment. It’s still a good idea – I’m just doing the ‘insane relocating to Dorset’ plan first.

‘What?’ I ask, failing to see what’s got Lizzie so excited. It certainly isn’t a nice clematis, I know that much. I glance around at the cottages circling the lawn. Some are much bigger than others, and the tiny ones look quite higgledy-piggledy, but they all have features in common. Each has a little path leading up to the door, each has a name plaque, and each has a beautiful hanging basket in a riot of colour.

‘This!’ she says, as she points frantically at one of the cottages. ‘Look at what it’s called!’

I squint slightly in the glare of the sun, and try and make out the writing on the slate plaque adorning the pale stone wall of the cottage.

‘Lilac Wine?’ I say, looking a question at her. It’s a weird name, but I’m not sure why it’s got her quite so bothered.

‘It’s a song, by Jeff Buckley!’ she says, snapping a photo of it. ‘We were listening to it in our music class. By lots of other people as well, but his is the best.’

She skips over to the adjoining cottage, bats away a few bees hovering around the hanging basket, and takes a photo of that one as well.

‘And this one,’ she says, ‘is called the Cactus Tree … don’t you think that’s odd, too?’

I nod. Because it is. Hyacinths and lilacs I get as names for Dorset cottages – but cactus? Not so much.

We stroll along, Lizzie and Nate exclaiming at the weird names of the cottages, her taking photos of each and obviously planning a long session on google at some point or another to solve the mystery. We pass Poison Ivy and the Laughing Apple and Cherry Blossom Road and then Mad About Saffron, which immediately strikes a chord with me.

‘I think I know that one!’ I squeal, obviously more infected with the excitement than I realise. And yes, obviously, I need to get out more.

‘What is it?’ squeaks Lizzie, bounding back towards me. Her hair is loose and wild and untainted by product, and it makes her look about five years younger. It’s only the eye liner that reminds me she’s a teenager at all.

‘Is it a band?’ she says, practically pogo-ing on one leg.

‘It’s a song, by … by …’

She looks at me expectantly, and I feel the pressure mounting. This is my chance to prove I’m cool, and I’m about to blow it. I start to hum the song, fragments of the chorus coming back to me. It was on an advert, I’m sure.

‘I’m just mad about Saffron …’ I sing, badly. I can’t remember the next line, so I go back to humming, and Lizzie is looking increasingly agitated as I fail to fulfil her quest for knowledge.

‘It’s … it’s.… oh, lord, I can’t quite get it! It’s there in my brain, just give me a minute! It’s by …’

‘Donovan,’ says a voice from behind us. ‘Mellow Yellow.’

I whirl around to see Matt, the man from last night. He’s wearing a pair of faded denim shorts with big pockets on the side, and no top. Again. He clearly doesn’t own many shirts.

He’s a bit sweaty, as though he’s been working, and I notice things about him I didn’t notice the night before. Like the fact that his brawny shoulders and back are really bronzed, as though he spends a lot of time outside. Like the tiny crinkles at the corners of his hazel eyes, and his very long lashes. Like the way the sun glints on the chestnut shades in his hair. Like the fact that he has really, really big hands.

My pulse rate speeds up slightly as I notice all of these things, and it takes me a while to identify the feeling. It’s called fancying someone, and it’s not happened to me for a very long time. This, I decide, is even weirder than the cottage names, and far more disconcerting.

I don’t know how to cope with fancying someone. I mean, I met David when I was in juniors. And of course I noticed attractive men after that – I was married, not comatose – but certainly not since David died.

It’s as though that part of me shut down at the same time he did. I’d not mourned it, or sought it out, or listened at all when various members of my family started to make subtle references to the fact that I was ‘still young’. I knew what that was code for, and it seemed like a completely absurd idea to me. As far as I was concerned, that aspect of my life was over.

I now feel more than a little freaked out, as I look at Matt, to realise that my libido at least isn’t entirely convinced that’s true. I also feel a twinge of guilt, for all sorts of complex and uncomfortable reasons, and dart my eyes away from him as quickly as possible.

‘That’s it!’ I say, turning back to Lizzie. ‘Donovan. Your granddad likes him. 60s stuff. So, we’ve got Donovan here, and we’ve got Jim Morrison and the Doors in our cottage. And Lilac Wine. So there’s a theme?’

Lizzie makes a slightly ‘duh’ face, and nods.

‘What’s the name of your holiday cottage?’ she asks Matt straight away.

‘Well, the cottage is called the Black Rose,’ he replies, wiping one hand across his forehead. He looks hot. And thirsty. I notice gardening gloves hanging out of one pocket, and use my laser-like detective skills to figure out that he’s the effortless gardener who actually puts in all the effort.

‘But it’s not a holiday cottage,’ he adds. ‘I live there permanently. Well I have for almost a year now. I was only supposed to be here for two weeks while I found somewhere else, but Cherie and I came to an agreement.’

‘Black Rose …’ she says, frowning, and starting to tap into her phone.

‘It’s a Thin Lizzy song,’ Matt replies, saving her the effort. She looks a little bewildered.

‘Rock band, mainly big in the 70s. All the cottages are named after songs or bands, you’re right. There’s Sugar Magnolia over there, which is a Grateful Dead song. Poison Ivy is the Rolling Stones. Laughing Apple, Cat Stevens. Cherry Blossom Road is Heart. Cactus Tree is Joni Mitchell. You might not have heard of them, but they were all well known. Cherie’s idea of a joke. Nobody quite knows if it’s true or not, but there are rumours that she was either in a band herself, or toured with one, or was Jimi Hendrix’s girlfriend … I’ve never asked.’

‘Why not?’ says Lizzie, clearly fascinated.

‘Because that’s her business,’ he replies.

That is clearly an alien concept to Lizzie. It also reminds me of another issue, and I’m about to raise the subject of the Instagram affair when she pre-empts me.

Lizzie often does this neat mind-reading trick that occasionally makes me think she’s psychic. Or more likely that I’m very predictable.

‘Matt,’ she says, smiling sweetly. ‘I was wondering if you’re okay with me using a picture of you in a kind of school project? I’m keeping a record of what I do over the summer in an online photo journal. It’s on Instagram, but hardly anybody will see it, honest. I have all the privacy settings on, so it’s only for friends and family.’

Well, I think, some family at least. I’m momentarily taken aback by her description of it as a school project, and wonder if that’s true, or if it’s something she’s fabricated to make it sound more respectable.

Matt is gazing at a spot about three feet to the left of my head. I resist the temptation to turn around and see what he’s looking it, as I am starting to realise that it’s simply something he does.

He has a very slight disconnect going on that I recognise as the sign of someone not wanting to get too involved in a conversation or a social situation. I deal with mine differently – I smile a lot and pretend I have to dash off to the school/shops/doctor/library – but I instinctively know we’re coming from the same place. A place of entrenched solitude.

‘I’m not sure what Instagram is,’ he says eventually. ‘But as long as it’s not something likely to go viral, or embarrass me, or upset anyone, then that’s fine. Are you going to the café today?’

He’s changed the subject quite quickly, but Lizzie takes it as a win, and says her thank yous before disappearing off to take more pictures.

Nate spots another lad of about the same age emerging from Cactus Tree, kicking a bright orange football around, and starts to edge in his direction. The siren call of sport. I know that within minutes, they’ll be setting up penalty shoot-outs and having keepy-up contests and firing each other headers to practice, without even knowing each other’s names. Sure enough, even as Iook on, the boy raises his eyebrows at Nate, who nods, and they’re off.

‘Yes,’ I reply, turning my attention back to Matt, but using his tactic of not quite making eye contact. I feel very slightly awkward now we’re alone, mainly because I have caught myself out having naughty thoughts about him.

I am both shocked at my own behaviour, and also a bit humiliated, as though he can tell and already feels repulsed at the very concept.

‘Yes, we’re going to the café. For lunch.’

‘Good,’ he says, nodding firmly. ‘Have a nice time, then.’

He turns, not exactly abruptly, but certainly without any preamble, and starts to walk away. I am caught unawares and find myself watching his backside as he strides off towards what I assume to be the Black Rose.

He stops, suddenly, and comes back towards me, as though he’s remembered something. Turns out he had, and I could have lived without it.

‘I found these,’ he said, digging his hand into one of his pockets. ‘While I was working on the lobelia in the borders. I think they’re yours.’

He hands a small, scrunched bundle to me, before nodding again and walking more briskly away, like he really means it this time. I open my clenched fist, already slightly sick about it.

If I was feeling humiliated before, nothing he could have found lurking in the lobelia could possibly be about to make it any better.

And most definitely not a pair of size-fourteen skin-tone tummy-control pants with an elasticated panel for holding in the wobbly bits.

Chapter 9

We hadn’t seen much of the landscape when we arrived, due to the failing light and the fact that I was mainly concentrating on finding the cottages and not killing us in the process. So we set off early, even though the café is only a few miles away from our new home, to explore.

We soon see that the area immediately around the Rockery – which now makes a lot more sense, given the cottages’ music-inspired names – is stunning. Breathtaking. Even Lizzie is forced to admit it’s pretty.

We drive carefully along criss-crossing one-car tracks and through stretched-out road-side hamlets, and through woods so dense the trees meet overhead, arching across the paths and holding hands above us.

We drive through rolling hills and wooded glades and open fields that stretch and tumble as far as the eye can see, in more shades of green than I ever knew existed. The roads twist and turn through the countryside, edged by gnarled tree trunks and vibrant hedgerows and quaint cottages with thatched roofs, looking like a living postcard.

We see birds of all kinds, from frantically darting tits and sparrows to soaring kestrels floating on the air currents overhead; we see scurrying squirrels and oceans of listless, sunbathing cows, and on one confusing occasion a small herd of llama. We see horses and sheep and signs that warn us of crossing deer and migrating toads.

We see so many different wild flowers, twined in the hedges, twisting around the tree trunks, swaying in meadows – some I recognise, some I don’t. We see farmhouses and small shops and just one garage that seems to sell nothing but petrol and spare tractor parts.

And eventually, as we flow downhill with the road, trickling towards the coast like a man-made stream, we see the sea.

Nate is captivated and screams with excitement. ‘First person to see the sea’ was always a travel game we played – when they were too little to know any better, we even used to play it when we were staying inland, which was cruel but had them glued to the windows in silence for hours at a time.

At first, this time, it doesn’t even look like the sea. It looks like a shimmering, shining turquoise blanket that’s fallen down from the hills, rippling in the gentle breeze. We see increasingly longer glimmers of it as we wind our way downhill, glimpsed between bends and buildings, a distant, sparkling mirage.

After an hour’s random driving and a steep last-minute descent, we’re here. We drive through the village – a long, thin strip of road edged with a combination of fancy and functional shops, a pharmacy, a post office and a Community Hall – and take the coastal road out of it again.

I see the car park Cherie has advised us to use and pull in, reminding myself that despite our long sightseeing cruise to get here, we’re only about three miles from the Rockery.

I’m nervous as we park up at the bottom of the hill, edging into a spot between a Land Rover and a Fiat Panda and hoping I can get out again. The car park is packed, which doesn’t surprise me at all. The weather is divine and the location is even better.

Spread in front of us is a beach, small but perfectly formed, that curves inwards in a kind of horse-shoe shape. There are lots of families and dogs and walkers down there, enjoying the sunshine, paddling and swimming and spreading out over picnic blankets.

A single ice-cream van has set up at the far end of the car park, and is doing a brisk trade. Overhead, seagulls are wheeling and screaming and occasionally swooping down to snatch up a discarded cone or a wandering sandwich crust. The only other sounds are children laughing and adults chatting and the constant whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the waves creeping ever closer, splashing frothily onto the sand.

Nate gazes out longingly and I just know he’s already considering chucking off his trainers and rolling his jeans up to knees and making a run for it. Lizzie is trying not to look like she feels the same – because she hates Dorset after all – but I can tell she does. That alone makes me smile, and for a moment I consider suggesting we all head down for a quick paddle. But, you know, new job and all – best not to arrive barefoot and covered in sand.

The cove is surrounded by towering cliff tops and boulders that run from the bottom of the cliffs about twenty feet out into the sand. People are using them to sit on or drape clothes on to dry in the sun, and a few people are investigating the rock pools hopefully, looking out for crabs and creatures. At high tide the waterline undoubtedly comes all the way over, and I can see the dark, mossy marks left on the cliffs.

A path leads up from the side of the car park to the top of the hill. It’s steep and I fan myself with my fingers, which is totally useless against the midday heat. I’m not thrilled at the thought of climbing that path, but I have to. Because up the hill lies the Comfort Food Café, and Cherie Moon, and my new job, and, well, a free lunch. So I usher the kids in that direction, promising them a dip in the sea later, and we start the upwards trek.

The path actually has low steps cut into it and a wooden handrail, so it’s not quite as arduous as it looks. I see that over on the far side of the hill, there’s a more meandering path that’s been paved over, presumably so people can also make the Comfort Food pilgrimage if they have a pram or a wheelchair.

Near the top, by what is obviously meant to be a little viewing station, we pause. Not just to catch our breath – which is definitely a factor for me – but to admire the vista. It is pretty amazing, and Lizzie is silently taking photos already.

It feels a bit like we may have reached the edge of the world – all we can see is that glorious stretch of glittering blue-green water colliding with red and brown cliffs; dots of colour as back-packed walkers amble along high-up footpaths, patches of yellow sand getting smaller and smaller as they become more distant, curving off around the coastline.

The sun is shining down on my skin, I can hear the birds and the laughter and the waves, and I feel a moment of complete and utter peace. A rare sense that everything will be all right in our family’s fractured little world. I close my eyes and turn my face to the sky and smile.

‘You all right, mum?’ Nate asks, poking me curiously in the side. ‘You’re not having a stroke or anything, are you?’

I laugh and shake my head, and gesture that we should carry on to the top, where we can now very clearly see our destination.

Lizzie bounds ahead like a mountain goat in a Nirvana T-shirt, clicking away. She turns back to face us and takes a picture of me as I smile up at her. She even smiles back – a proper smile, big and warm and genuine – and I take a solid hold of the railing to stop myself falling down in shock.

And at the very top, I see it. An archway built over the path, of wrought iron decorated with beautifully forged metallic roses, a kind of man-made trellis, painted in shades of red and green. Amid the roses and the leaves and the stems are carefully crafted words, made up of curling letters, all painted white.

‘Welcome to the Comfort Food Café.’

Chapter 10

The café itself is one storey apart from a few attic windows and really rather ramshackle. It has the look of a building that has been expanded to suit varying purposes over a number of years, growing organically further and further along its cliff-top location. The entrance is surrounded by open green space looking out over the sea. The land here isn’t entirely flat and is dotted with slightly wonky wooden tables and benches.

Plenty of customers are using them, families, walkers and people who have the weather-beaten look of those who spend their whole lives outdoors. None of them seem to be put off by the slope, but I notice that quite a few are keeping a tight hold of their drinks.

There’s an enclosed patch of land off to the right, fenced in, with a wooden structure that looks a bit like an old-fashioned bus stop and offers a long, shady patch of protection against the sun. I realise that it’s some kind of doggie crèche, and although a few of the tables still have dogs sitting under them panting away, there are also about six or seven inside the little paddock. Some are running around, sniffing each other’s bits and play-fighting, but most are snoozing away in the shade or drinking from the water bowls.

We’ve left Jimbo at home this afternoon, as he seemed perfectly comfortable curled up in his bed, merely raising one eyebrow when I offered him his lead before we left – but it’s good to know that on the longer days he can come here with me.

There’s a decked patio section running the whole length of the building, with a few more tables and chairs, and off to the other side is a massive, industrial-level gas-powered barbecue. It’s the barbecue that’s producing the mouth-watering aroma and I see Nate licking his lips in anticipation.

An older man wearing a stripey blue-and-white chef’s apron seems to be at the helm, flipping burgers, turning steaks and prodding chicken breasts. He must be roasting-hot himself, with the heat and the smoke and the sun, but he seems perfectly happy.

Next to it is a large trestle table set out with salads, corn on the cob, jacket potatoes, sauces and condiments of every possible shade. A young woman with a dazzlingly bright shade of pink hair is laughing with customers as she helps them, serving up coleslaw and offering grated cheese and drizzling a huge bowl of rocket with olive oil.

The woman with the pink hair looks wild enough to have once been Jimi Hendrix’s girlfriend, but definitely not old enough, so I rule her out as a potential Cherie Moon. And as the barbecue master is most definitely male, that’s not her either, unless she’s in disguise.

Lizzie has disappeared over to the doggie crèche and is taking photos of the sleepy hounds, and Nate is drifting towards the barbecue, nostrils flaring, one hand rubbing his stomach.

‘I’m just popping inside,’ I say to nobody at all, as both kids have forgotten I exist, and I walk through the open patio doors and into the main café building.

Inside, it’s surprisingly cool, which means there must be some kind of air-conditioning. Predictably enough, though, on a day like this, it’s completely empty, which gives me time to take it all in.

It’s not actually huge – more long and thin than spacious – and probably only seats about forty people at most. There are tiny circular tables meant for two, square ones for four and longer ones with benches that could sit families or groups. All of them are made of the same battered-but-beautiful shade of light-hued pine, and all of them are decorated with fresh flowers in tiny pottery vases.

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