Sunshine at the Comfort Food Cafe: The most heartwarming and feel good novel of 2018!. Debbie Johnson
32
Summer Of The Year 2000
‘It’s haunted,’ says Auburn, poking Willow so hard in her skinny ribcage that she almost falls over. She rights herself by clinging on to her brother, Angel, who is almost as skinny as her, and trying to look completely unaffected by the whole adventure.
As part of his attempt at bravado, he pushes Willow away with both hands. She’s the youngest of the siblings by several years – always smaller, always quieter, always the butt of the jokes, always on the receiving end of the pranks. Always determined to prove that she’s not the weakest link, and usually getting herself into trouble along the way.
‘No it’s not,’ says Willow, staggering a few steps along the corridor and bumping into the wood-panelled wall. It’s an old building, this, all dark wallpaper and high ceilings and ornate plasterwork. It’s big, and filled with labyrinth-like corridors full of mystery. It’s also been, for this one summer, their unofficial – and slightly terrifying – playground.
‘It’s not!’ she repeats, glaring at Auburn in defiance. ‘You can’t have only one room haunted in a whole massive house. That doesn’t make sense!’
‘Course it does,’ says Auburn, looking to her big brother for back-up, red hair flashing in the dim lighting. Van is fifteen, and the oldest of the gang. He’s already six foot tall and has the musculature of a runner bean to go with his unfashionable Nirvana T-shirt and shoulder-length grease-bomb hair. He thinks he’s really cool, which doesn’t quite make up for the fact that everyone else thinks he’s a complete dork.
Willow gazes up at him from her significantly shorter eight-year-old’s height, frowning. She’s worshipped her big brother for a long time, but is starting to suspect that he might actually be evil. He definitely smells evil. She eyes the stains on his T-shirt, knowing that in a few years’ time, as soon as she’s big enough, she’ll be expected to wear it. Hand-me-downs are a way of life for the Longville family.
All three of the younger siblings stare at Van, waiting for his pronouncement. Auburn looks fierce; Angel is biting his chubby lip and trembling, and Willow has her arms crossed defiantly over her passed-down-several-times Barney the Purple Dinosaur T-shirt.
‘It could be …’ he says, creeping towards the door at the end of the corridor, ‘… that the evil spirit only resides in this particular room. Maybe something terrible happened there.’
‘Like what?’ asks Willow, trying to sound tough but wishing she could just run away and find her mum. She knows she can’t, though – Auburn would never let her live it down. Besides, her mum is leading some kind of meditation workshop out in the garden, and she’ll kill her if she interrupts it. Well, not kill her exactly – something a bit more zen than that, but it wouldn’t be good.
‘Like,’ says Auburn, whispering into her ear, ‘someone died in there. Maybe they hung themselves from the rafters. Or maybe they were bricked up in the wall and left to starve to death. Or maybe it was a little crippled boy whose parents were ashamed of him and kept him in there his whole life, until he wasted away.’
Angel looks on the verge of tears now, his blonde curls bobbling around his full cheeks. Van is nodding wisely, as though every word Auburn has just said makes perfect sense to his almost-adult mind.
‘That’s … crap!’ replies Willow, flushing slightly as she uses what she knows is a naughty word. Not sent-to-bed naughty, like the ones Van uses that start with F, but still naughty. Somehow, though, using it gives her the strength to do what she does next.
‘Prove it, then,’ taunts Auburn, pointing at the door. ‘Go and open it and see what’s inside. If you dare.’
The door in question, just minutes ago, looked completely ordinary, but now – after her 14-year-old sister has finished creating a whole myth around it – looks utterly horrifying. Dark wood, brass handle, empty keyhole. Practically the gates to hell.
It’s just a door, Willow tells herself, glaring at Auburn with the sort of hatred that only a younger sister can feel for someone she loves.
It’s just a door, to a room, that isn’t haunted. Because ghosts don’t exist, and even if they did, they might be friendly, like Casper.
She draws in a ragged breath, and tucks her straggly brown hair behind her ears. More than anything right now, she wishes they hadn’t started this game. They know most of the kids who live here, in this place – a place where kids with no mum or dad come to live. They know their names, and their stories, and they play with them while their own mum is working, doing art classes or yoga lessons or helping them with their reading.
They know most of them – but they don’t know who lives in that room. The door has never been open, the child who lives in there has never been seen, and the only evidence they have of his existence is the occasional shadowy glimpse through the window outside.
That’s what started it all – this debate about whether he was real, or a ghost. It was fun to start off with – but now? Now it’s very scary indeed. Willow doesn’t really want to open the door. She doesn’t want to see the spirit of someone hanging from the rafters with their purple tongue bulging out, or encounter a half-starved child who’s sure to be a bit angry with the world.
But she wants Auburn to see her weakness even less. Auburn is always mean to her, and always manages to hide it from their mum, which makes Willow look like she’s always moaning about nothing. If she backs out now, she’ll never let her forget it. Right on cue, she hears her big sister start making chicken noises behind her, and within seconds, the boys have joined in, flapping their arms like wings and clucking away in a poultry-inspired chorus.
Willow