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

I can see the marks where the carpet used to be, the floorboards around it more faded and dusty. The walls are bare, and each room I poke my head into is empty. The rooms vary in size, but are all decorated the same way – in blue wallpaper dotted with now-yellowing footballs, with threadbare blue carpet. I remember there were girls here as well. They probably all stayed on the floor below, in rooms with fairy princess wallpaper and pink carpet.

I’m guessing the new owner will sort all of this out. It’s not my job to check the damp-proofing, or redecorate – it’s my job to give it a once-over with the Will-o’-the-Wash magic touch. I’m assuming there will be some hefty renovations eventually, but making it less disgusting will be a start. My contribution to bringing this place back to life.

I decide to start with the windows – getting them clean will make the whole experience a lot more pleasant for everyone. By which I mean for me. The dirt and grime all over them is making the building feel even more neglected. It’s a beautiful day outside, and I need to let some of that sunshine in.

I work my way through almost all of the rooms, opening the windows as I clean each one. Some need a bit of welly – they’re crusted closed by old paint or grot, and I become intimate friends with several weirdly shaped lumps of moss as I go.

I gaze outside as I work, hoping for a glimpse of the man I saw in the pond earlier. He didn’t see me – I edged away as quietly as I could when I realised there was someone there. Nobody wants to be caught out having a personal moment in a pond, do they? And, as I can’t see any car parked nearby, it’s still entirely possible that I imagined it.

I mean, I don’t think I did. I’m not usually quite that out there. But I am very tired, I have had a hard couple of days, and I can’t rule it out. Or, of course, he might just be someone who likes the pond and walks up here in the grounds of Briarwood – I’d noticed bits of litter, as well as old cider bottles and cigarette stubs, which is usually a sign of colonisation by the common or garden teenager.

He didn’t look like a teenager – he was definitely grown-man shaped in all the right ways – but he could have been a walker. We get loads of walkers. Budbury is on the Jurassic Coast, and part of a network of clifftop paths that criss-cross the whole area. The Comfort Food Café is often visited by the kinds of people who wear high-vis singlets over their anoraks and use spiky poles to walk with. Maybe he was just one of those.

I try and put it to the back of my mind, and concentrate on the job. Bella has found a corner she likes the smell of, and is snoring away as I work. As I keep cleaning, the scent of lemons starts to gradually overpower the scent of neglect. Each room has its own sink – they’re filthy, and will probably be next on the list – but the plumbing is still functional, even if it is creaky, which means I can fill and refill my bowls to my heart’s content.

It’s mind-numbing work, and in all honesty that’s one of the reasons I like it. It stops my brain from wandering, and there’s also a very tangible outcome. You clean something, it ends up clean. It’s not like so many other things in life where you put in megatons of effort and nothing seems to change as a result.

I’m hitting my stride, and building myself up to tackling the last room on the corridor, wishing I’d brought my radio or some speakers with me. I could put in my earphones, but hey – I’ve seen horror films. I know what happens to young women, alone in an old deserted house, when they don’t pay attention. The only thing you can do that’s worse than put earphones in is snog someone – the bogeyman will definitely get you if you do that. Stabbed to death in your bra and knickers, end of story.

I’m not about to snog anybody, but I do wish I had the music. Maybe a bit of Meatloaf, or the collected works of Neil Diamond – something with a big chorus to sing along to.

I’d like the distraction, as I’m now standing outside that last room. The one I’ve not even been into yet. Staring it down, as though I need to show it who’s boss.

Not that it’s any different than the others, I’m sure – it’s just that we have a bit of history, me and that room. The last summer I spent any significant amount of time here, my darling siblings persuaded me it was haunted, and dared me to go in and find out.

I still remember vividly how scared I was. Even though it seems silly now, like most dramas from your childhood do in hindsight, I’m a wee bit hesitant as I walk towards it, bin bag in one hand, spray gun in the other. You know, just in case I need to spray cleaning fluid in a demon’s eyes or anything.

I haven’t seen my siblings for varying amounts of years. They’ve scattered like sheep, landing in different places doing different things. It’s only me who’s still here, in Budbury – with our mum. I don’t blame them; they’re older than me, and moved away and built their lives long before she started to show signs of her illness. I don’t blame them – but I do miss them.

Even though, I think, as I pause outside the Room of Horrors, they were complete bastards that day – building up the terror, forcing me to go through with it, then laughing their arses off when I was so scared. It was the end for me and Briarwood – Mum kept on working here on and off, but I always made sure I had something else to do, even if it was tagging along with my evil big sister Auburn.Vicious as she could be, she wasn’t as scary as that room.

Over the years, though, I’ve thought of it occasionally – the way that kids can be so casually cruel to each other and not give it a second thought.

And, of course, the way I ran away, frightened out of my wits – I didn’t even talk to the poor boy in the room, who was just as scared. Who wouldn’t be? Some strange, feral child crashes into your space uninvited, screams at the top of her voice, and legs it without a word of explanation?

I think I scarred him for life – and as he was living in a children’s home at the time, he probably wasn’t in an especially good place to begin with. We were just two people who collided with each other’s lives for a split second. I still feel a bit bad about it, and wish I could go back in a time machine and at least push a note under his door saying sorry.

I force myself to stop procrastinating and open the door. Amazingly, nothing happens. No ghostly boys, no hanging corpses, no demons. Not even a whiff of the scary choir music from The Omen . It’s just a room – dark, musty, and sad.

The desk I remember, covered in what I now think was probably dismantled computer parts or reverse-engineered toasters, has gone. The swivel-chair the boy spun around in has gone. There’s nothing left here to tell me anything about the living, breathing children who once called this small place home.

I can feel the melancholy creeping back over me again, and shake it off. Nostalgia’s not what it used to be, and I’m probably not well-equipped to deal with thinking too closely about the past. I struggle enough to cope with the present.

I wander over to the window, preparing to open it like I did all the others, and stop dead. Hazily outlined through the grime, I see a person standing outside. He’s very still, looking up, probably thinking exactly the same thing as me: am I imagining this, or is there another human being out here in the land that time forgot?

I freeze for a moment, suddenly scared, and then use one of my cloths to wipe a circle of dirt from the window pane.

No, I’m not imagining it – it’s a man. A tall man with dark hair, and a bloody big dog. I wave at him, and he hesitantly waves back. He can probably only see one bit of my face, which must look weird.