Christmas at the Comfort Food Cafe

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As it turned out, though, the parentals have probably had just as many sleepless nights about Laura as they have about me now. Because her entire life fell to pieces a few years ago, when her husband, David – the beloved David of Myth and Legend, the boy who won her heart in primary school – died.

He died in a bloody stupid way that still makes me angry. He died falling off a ladder, while he was clearing leaves out of their guttering. It’s not glamorous, is it? Nothing involving guttering ever could be. Or death, now I come to think of it. But at least members of the 27 Club exited this world in a cloud of mystique and self-indulgence. They weren’t clearing leaves out of their damn gutters.

David was only thirty-three, the same age as Laura was at the time. He was too young to die, and she was way too young to be a widow. He left her on her own with their kids, Nate and Lizzie, and their dog Jimbo. He left her on her own, when she’d never been on her own before. While I’d lived my life on the margins of my own family, she’d gone off and created her own – one that revolved around the love story that she shared with David.

I can’t begin to describe the hell on earth that followed his death. Mainly for Laura and the kids, obviously, but also for the rest of us. You can’t see someone you love suffer like that and not go through it with them.

I watched her fade and struggle and fight and fade again, over and over, like some twisted Groundhog Day. I saw her try to be brave and I saw her collapse, and I saw her paralysed with pain so strong I honestly thought she’d never move again.

I saw her weep and I saw her tremble and, worst of all, I saw her silent – silent and withdrawn and empty, her face a blank mask, going through the motions of life and motherhood, living on automatic pilot, functioning without feeling.

I saw all of this, and I saw Lizzie and Nate go through their own agonies, and I saw my mum and dad snarled up with their inability to do anything, and I saw myself, quietly screaming inside.

It was the very worst of times – and it seemed to go on forever.

Until, that is, she got her second chance. Until she applied for a job at a café in Dorset and took the kids down to the coast for a long, hot, working summer.

Until she made a world of new and wonderful friends and got a new dog, and found her new home, and found a man who is helping her heal. Until she found the will to live again.

Until she found the Comfort Food Café.

Which is exactly where I am heading this month – December. Against my will, I am being dragged away from the comfortable urban buzz of my flat in Manchester, and my shallow-but-safe existence and, more importantly, my entirely Christmas-free lifestyle.

I don’t want to go, but Laura asked me to. And when it comes to her, I have no backbone. No spine. I simply can’t say no.

I really, really hate Christmas.

But I love my sister more.