A Wedding at the Comfort Food Cafe. Debbie Johnson
to the other side of the table, and see modern-day Laura. Modern-day Laura is almost forty, and the only thing pink about her is her cheeks. She’s almost seven months pregnant with twins, and the size of a sumo wrestler. Her swollen ankles are propped up on a chair, and her arms are rested over the vast expanse of her baby-carrying belly. She still looks gorgeous – but not in a fantasy wedding kind of way. More of an earth-goddess-needing-a-nap kind of way.
‘Okay, okay – so I liked pink!’ she exclaims, grinning. ‘Someone had to – Becca was already fantasising about her Satanic wedding!’
Becca nods at this, and the Groucho glasses bobble up and down.
‘True that,’ she confirms, in a mock ghetto accent. ‘I was indeed a daughter of darkness. My fantasy wedding involved a vampire groom and cake with worms and goblets of blood. Now, I will pass along the sacred glasses of My Dream Wedding, and we will each share our own story, our hopes, our fantasies, our personal choices of veil and party food …’
I feel a slight twinge of panic at that particular announcement. Obviously, Becca intends this to be a round-robin of fun – but in my case, it accidentally touches a raw nerve, and makes my nostrils flare.
I love all the ladies here present, but discussing My Dream Wedding feels perilously close to facing up to something long hidden. It’s a bit like I’m an archaeological site, and Becca is about to attack me with a trowel to unearth my secrets.
Looking around, and seeing how happy everyone else seems to be doing this, I wonder if perhaps my secrets are even worth keeping any more.
With great ceremony, Becca removes the plastic Grouchos, and walks to place them on Cherie’s face. They’re not big enough, and the arms stretch around Cherie’s wide cheekbones. Cherie stands up, and bows, majestic in a sequinned kaftan straight from the seventies, and begins.
‘My dream wedding, when I was young, probably involved hallucinogenic mushrooms and Marc Bolan. My first wedding did involve hallucinogenic mushrooms, but not Marc Bolan. But my dream wedding … well, that was the one I had right here, a couple of Christmases ago, to my hero Frank.’
We all let out a communal ‘aaaah’ at that. I wasn’t here for that wedding – I was busy perfecting my role as the black sheep of our family, travelling around and screwing up – but I’ve seen the photos.
Cherie and Frank – known universally as Farmer Frank due to his magnificent acreage – married late in life after being widowed. The ceremony was held here at the Comfort Food Café, same as Laura’s will be – but unlike Laura and Matt’s, which will hopefully be sun-drenched and balmy, theirs was a winter wonderland.
Cherie passes the now slightly bent-out-of-shape Groucho specs to Katie, who looks borderline horrified at being thrust into the spotlight. Katie is in her late twenties, petite and blonde and pretty, and manages to combine both being one of the most blunt and honest people I know with being extremely shy. She also has rotten taste in men, clearly, or she wouldn’t be hanging around with my brother. Uggh. Sick in mouth again.
‘Ummm … okay …’ she says quietly, standing up and still barely matching Cherie while she’s sitting down. ‘I’ve never had a wedding. But I suppose when I was little, it maybe involved white dresses and Justin Timberlake. These days, I’d be happy with anything that involved a lie-in.’
She sits down very quickly, and Cherie pats her knee. I get where she’s coming from. Saul is a whirlwind of a child with endless energy and endless questions. I’m pretty high energy myself, but on the few nights he’s had a sleepover at our cottage, I’ve spent the rest of the day staggering around like a zombie. Last time, he jumped into bed with me at half five in the morning quizzing me about my favourite crustacean.
Katie passes the glasses along to Zoe, who inserts them into her masses of ginger curls, and stands up to her five foot nothing height. Us Longvilles are all tall and lean; we are giants amongst midgets.
‘I have never had a dream wedding,’ Zoe announces firmly. ‘As a child I dreamt only of running off with gypsies to travel the world in a brightly painted caravan, cursing unkind villagers and making friends with freaks. I found you lot eventually, so I suppose some of that came true. I still have no dream wedding, and don’t intend on conjuring one up. Thank you very much.’
I realise, as the glasses are passed on to my sister Willow, that it will be my turn next. I feel a churn in my stomach at the prospect – not because I’m shy, or because of the many espresso martinis I’ve consumed, but because this is not a subject I want to discuss. I plan to make a sharp and timely exit to the ladies as soon as Willow nears the end of her talk, or possibly to pretend that I’ve fallen asleep, and sit snoring and drooling in my seat while the glasses of doom pass me by.
Or maybe I won’t. Maybe this is the time. Maybe I should come clean. When I first moved back here, to help Willow with Lynnie, I had no idea how long I’d stay. It could have been days, or weeks, and now it looks like possibly forever. Things are different now – I have a small business, I have friends, I have a super-sexy man in my life. I’m probably not leaving Budbury any time soon.
I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, so I put off making any kind of decision until Willow has finished. I’m sure the right thing will come to me – a bit like when you’re in a restaurant and can’t choose from the menu, and can’t come up with a decision until your waiter is standing right there with his notepad, and suddenly your instincts tell you: ‘Yes! Spaghetti carbonara for me please!’, and all feels well with the world.
Willow has neon pink hair, which would have looked great at Laura’s wedding, and it dangles over the plastic glasses as she stands. It’s been in a kind of bob for a while, but she let it grow over the winter so she could keep her ears warm. Makes perfect sense to me.
‘Growing up as we did with Lynnie,’ she says, nodding towards me, ‘you can imagine that such traditional patriarchal nonsense as dream weddings was not encouraged. It was far more important to find love than to find a husband, and in all honesty I think that’s probably fair. But I also think that if Tom and me were to plan a wedding, it would most likely be at Briarwood, and have a zombie theme.’
There are nods and giggles at this. Tom owns a big old Victorian mansion on a hill at the edge of the village, where he runs a kind of school for eccentric inventor genius types. He also has a dog called Rick Grimes, named after the hero of The Walking Dead, so it’s a fair call. In fact it would be a great wedding. I’m pondering my costume when Willow continues.
‘And now I’d like to pass the sacred Groucho glasses to my darling sister Auburn, who as far as I know is currently enjoying her longest relationship ever with the lovely Finn. Can’t wait to hear about this dream wedding …’
Damn. I’ve been caught out – so busy planning my milky-lens zombie outfit that I didn’t duck out in time. Or maybe I subconsciously sabotaged my own escape plan. Gosh, I’m annoying.
There is a general buzz and shuffle and sounds of interest as she passes the specs along to me. She’s right on one count – I am loved up at the moment. She’s also right that Finn is lovely. I might even, in the dim dark recesses of my primeval girl brain, imagine being married to him one day – but that process would not be a simple one. Frankly, nothing ever is with me.
I scrape my chair back, gulp down the remainder of my espresso martini, and perch the glasses on my nose. I pause while they all refocus their attention. Might as well create a moment – show a bit of style. I’ve trapped myself in this moment, and this is the equivalent of the waiter hovering at my shoulder with his notepad – decision time.
I glance around at the smiling faces, the expressions of warm curiosity, and realise that I actually want to be honest with these people. Friends, family, community – none of it should be built on a lie. And none of this lot are going to judge me – it’s not that kind of place. Deep breath, and in I plunge.
‘Well, ladies and gentlewomen, Willow raises a good point,’ I say. ‘My dream wedding would be an elaborate cathedral of sound and light; a lightning storm