Debbie Johnson - Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe

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.