Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe. Debbie Johnson

       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

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