Debbie Johnson - Sunshine at the Comfort Food Cafe - The most heartwarming and feel good novel of 2018!

I’m here at Briarwood because I’m being paid to clean the place, by an estate agent in Bristol. My mum is safe and snug with Cherie at the café, and they’ll all be waiting for me to get back – desperate for me to spill the beans and fill them in on what I’ve seen.

The problem is, as things stand, I’m going to have to tell them all that the House on the Hill has, in fact, been bought by an eternally teenaged vegetarian vampire. That should raise a few eyebrows.

Inside, the house isn’t quite as daunting as I remembered. It’s been empty since Mr and Mrs Featherbottom – yes, that’s their real name – retired, over a decade ago.

They’d moved to a flat in Lyme Regis, after spending years running Briarwood as some kind of private children’s home. That sounds terrifying in itself, but all my memories of the couple are really nice. Mrs F was round and often covered in flour; Mr F always seemed to have a fishing rod in his hand. In fact, I think perhaps I’m getting confused, and imagining them both as garden gnomes come to life.

From what I can recall, and from what the older residents of Budbury like Frank and Edie have said, it was quite a happy place – considering the circumstances of most of the kids. Some of them were orphans, which sounds pretty Dickensian; others were placed there because their parents just couldn’t be their mum and dad for some reason, like illness or work. It was part home, part boarding school.

Some of the children arrived in various states of distress – and pulling up in front of a building that looks like it might be patrolled by Dementors at night probably didn’t help.

That’s one of the reasons my mum used to come here. To help the kids. She was always a little on the feral side, my mum – never had what you’d call a proper job in her life. My three older siblings – Van, Angel and Auburn – spent the first years of their lives on a hippy artists’ commune in Cornwall, until I came along. Different dad, a few years later – which at least partly explains why I’ve always been the odd one out.

They all moved to Budbury while Mum was pregnant with me, and she picked up bits of work here and there – enough to keep us in gender-neutral clothes that could always be passed down, as well as funding our hummus and pitta bread habit. I suppose she was ahead of her time in a lot of ways – trying to get us to eat organic, never taking us to the doctor unless a leg was about to drop off, giving us weird names before Gwyneth Paltrow ever thought of it.

Here at Briarwood, she did a variety of things – yoga classes, meditation, arts and crafts sessions, creative writing workshops. She was just Mum to us, but I think to a lot of the kids she must have seemed like an insanely exotic creature, all wild curly hair and tie-dye clothes, smelling of incense and Patchouli oil.

As I wander the corridors of the building, I can still see the signs of all that life – all those young people, living here together, with Mr and Mrs F trying to make it as nice for them as they could. There are still old noticeboards on the walls downstairs, the tattered remains of tacked-up paper dangling from rusted drawing pins. I know I need to clear them off, but it feels a bit like I’m somehow defiling a sacred place. Vandalising a museum, maybe.

I pull one down, and part of the paper disintegrates in my hand. I can still see what it was about, though: Mr F taking part in a sponsored Fish-a-Thon to raise money for Save the Children. I smile, and place the sheet inside two pages of my notepad. I don’t quite have the heart to throw it into a bin bag, which might explain why my bedroom is cluttered enough to qualify me for one of those reality TV shows about hoarders.

I continue my investigations, leaving the front door propped open with a brick – there is electricity in here, I’ve found, but a lot of the lightbulbs are blown, and others are flickering as I go. I’m already slightly jumpy, and the sizzling sounds of the overhead lamps and the on-again-off-again light quality isn’t helping. Luckily, I have my fearless guard dog with me – Bella has her nose to the ground, and is dashing around in strange looping circles that only make sense to her. She’s making a snuffling sound like a seal as she goes, which is reassuring in an otherwise silent building.

I work my way towards what I remember was the office, and Mr and Mrs F’s living quarters, and again find something of a time capsule. Most of the furniture is gone, but there are a few odds and ends: a pile of mouldy paperbacks; empty filing cabinets, open and gaping; the desiccated remains of a potted plant that may or may not have been an African violet in a previous life. The bay window is grimy, but sunshine is pouring in and dappling the whole room with dancing dust motes.

I try and shake off the impending sense of melancholy, and start thinking professionally instead. I know from the estate agent that the upper floors have been completely cleared. So, I tell the logical part of my brain – this is a very small part, with super-selective hearing – that’s where I should start.

I’m booked for a few days, and there’ll be plenty of time to get around to the lower floors later. It’ll be easier once they’re empty – apart from anything else, it’ll stop me gazing at everything as though I have some weird telepathic power that allows me to talk to dead houseplants.

Bella is sniffing furiously at the paperbacks, and I know what that might mean.

‘Nope,’ I say firmly, reaching down to distract her with a tickle behind the ears. ‘It might smell like it, but this is not the outside. So no puddles, okay?’

She gives me a look from beneath her grey, whiskery eyebrows, and trots off back into the corridor. I swear, she understands every word.

I retrieve my cleaning supplies – the usual exciting smorgasbord of cloths, chemicals and bin bags– and climb the wooden staircase up to the top floor. This will mainly be a reconnaissance mission – I’m guessing I’ll have to come back with the heavy-duty floor cleaning gear later, and possibly rope in some of the strapping menfolk of the village to help me lug it up the stairs. Luckily we are insanely blessed with strapping menfolk in Budbury. It seems to be located on some kind of mystical ley line that pulls them in.

As I climb, I notice the thick layer of dust that’s built up on the curving banister. This always used to be polished so well you could see your distorted face reflected in it – it was kept that way by a combination of Mrs F, Mr Sheen, and the bottoms of boisterous young kids sliding down it.

Briarwood was always bustling – there was always noise, and music, and activity, and the rich smells of cooking and communal living. Now, it’s so sad and quiet and musty – and I realise I’m thrilled that someone has bought it. I hope Tom Cruise takes care of the place and doesn’t turn it into a Scientologist bunker.

When I reach the top floor, it is much smaller in reality than in my recollections. In the same way that Mars Bars seemed much bigger back then, Briarwood also loomed large. I think I’d imagined it was an enormous mansion, filled with secret compartments and haunted stairwells. It certainly felt like it back then, especially compared to the crowded three-bedroomed cottage that we all lived in.

Now that it’s shrunk – or I’ve grown – I see that there are probably no more than twenty rooms, laid out over three floors. It looks a bit like a smaller version of Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, sadly minus Wolverine in his slinky vest top. I’m sure there’s a cellar as well, but there’s about as much chance of me going down there alone as there is of me completing a PhD in astrophysics.