Page 14 of A Touch of Magic at the Comfort Food Café
I follow her through the kitchens, to a small staircase at the back. The steps creak as we make our way up, and with all the lights off in the main part of the building, it’s very slightly spooky. Or maybe all this talk of Halloween and haunted hills has got the better of me. Despite my vivid imagination andinterest in the supernatural, I’ve led a decidedly dull life on that front: I’ve never seen a ghostly face in the mirror other than my own, never encountered a poltergeist, never fallen through a timeslip in Trafalgar Square. I suppose there’s still time.
We emerge into Cherie’s little flat and I stare around in appreciation. It is small but perfectly formed, with skylights that frame square portraits of the dark, starry sky above. The sofa is covered with a red velvet throw with gold tassels, there are photos everywhere, and one corner is filled with a huge vinyl collection and an old-fashioned record player that looks as though it’s lived a life and a half. As she gets us drinks, I stroll around and take it all in, the colourful knick-knacks, the incense burners and their little piles of ash, the shimmering bead curtain through into the kitchen. It’s bright and bold and eccentric, the ultimate reflection of its owner.
I pause in front of a framed poster for the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. ‘That was a good one,’ she says, passing me a glass. I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t drink Calvados in full tumblers, but there you go. I raise my eyebrows at it and she says: ‘Well, you said one glass. You didn’t specify the size. You’re lucky it’s not a pint.’
I snort out a laugh, because I already wouldn’t rule that out. ‘Were you there?’ I ask. ‘At the festival?’
‘I was. I was at all of them. That was the year with The Who, The Doors, Hendrix… It’s where I met my first husband, Wally.’
I glance at her tanned face, the crinkled laughter lines and the eyes that have almost disappeared into her smile, and can totally picture her there. ‘Have you got photos?’ I ask.
‘Not many,’ she replies, frowning. ‘It wasn’t like it is now, back then. These days, everybody takes pictures of everything, including their dinner. But this was pre-digital, and not many people had cameras. I have a few though, if you really want to see?’
‘I really do. I warn you now, I’m sneakily nosy.’
‘I’ve noticed. Okay, sit yourself down and I’ll find a few snaps from the past. Any music preference?’
I tell her I’ll let her choose, and within a few minutes she has joined me on the sofa with a small album on her lap, the mellow sound of Nina Simone playing in the background, the distinct hiss and crackle of well-played vinyl. Luna is snuggled up in a basket, but the occasional glance tells me I’m probably in her usual spot.
Cherie shows me a picture of her as a young woman, sprawled on a patch of grass, a cigarette in her fingers. Herhair is rich and dark and shining in the sun, parted in the middle and draped with a coronet made of daisies. Her bell-bottom jeaned legs seem to go on forever, and are paired with a leather waistcoat that barely covers her assets. She is absolutely gorgeous, the very epitome of a carefree flower child.
‘Wow,’ I say, smiling as I turn the pages. ‘You look stunning. And so happy.’
‘I was… although the weather was pretty rotten, I seem to recall. When it was all over, I got separated from my friends on the way home. It was carnage really, pure hippy chaos, and I ended up hitchhiking. Wally picked me up, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Totally changed my life.’
She shows me a few more shots and tells me a few more stories, and she seems to be enjoying it. It’s fascinating, really, this glimpse into her world– you can totally see those origins in the woman she still is today. The herbal cigarettes, the kaftans, the hair, this little flat that feels like somewhere the Beatles would have hung out during their guru meditation phase. Cherie is unlike anyone I have ever met before.
‘So,’ she says, propping her feet up on the multi-coloured pouffe in front of us, ‘do you want to talk about it? The reason you were so worried about your privacy. I get that you’re a bitof a public figure, but it was more than that, wasn’t it? What happened?’
I stare at her, quite surprised at the sudden turnaround. One minute I’m listening to her tales of hanging out in rock bands’ dressing rooms, and the next the spotlight is on me. I have never enjoyed the spotlight.
‘This is the part where I should say “you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to”, I know,’ she adds, looking at my closed-off expression. ‘But I think you probably should. If this is a fresh start for you, maybe you should clear the air with yourself.’
I’d never thought of it like that. Clearing the air is something we always do with others, isn’t it? But she’s right, in a way– maybe it’s more important we do it with ourselves. Face up to our fears, forgive ourselves for the things we are ashamed of. Allow ourselves the same space and kindness as we allow others. Sitting here, in this cosy room, with this ageless woman, it makes sense. Going against a lifetime of self-conditioning, I decide to talk to someone about it all. I nod abruptly and gulp down way too much Calvados at once. I almost choke, and that wouldn’t be a bad way to go– killed by strong French liquor.
‘Um, well, there’s not that much to tell,’ I say slowly, trying to form my thoughts into an orderly queue. ‘His name was Martin. We met in the park, and he was walking his dog. I always trust people with dogs, but I later found out it wasn’t even his… He was walking it for his boss. He didn’t tell me that. I suppose maybe that was the first clue– fake dog ownership.’
‘Definitely a red flag. Go on.’
‘Well, it was a cute dog, and we got chatting and he seemed very nice. Good-looking, but in an approachable way, you know. He told me he was a freelance web designer, divorced, in his early fifties. The only true part of any of that was his age. The rest was all made up. I still haven’t figured out why he’d go for thosethings, if he was going to lie. I mean, why not say he was a retired astronaut or a Nobel prize winning poet or something?’
‘I suppose,’ Cherie responds, frowning as she thinks about it, ‘that maybe you wouldn’t have believed him? Sounds like he was trying to be an everyman kind of guy?’
I nod. She’s probably right. I don’t like talking about this at all, but I notice that it is easier than I expected it to be.
‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, we started seeing each other. I’d been single for a very long time, and I suppose maybe I was a little lonely… or maybe it’s just that I thought I should, you know, be with somebody. It was nice, having a person to do things with, go out for dinners, go to galleries, meet up for coffees. It was maybe a month or so into it that I started to notice a few strange things about him, stuff that didn’t add up. Like he could never do Saturdays, which is odd when you’re a freelance web designer, isn’t it? And that I could never go to his place, because it was being redecorated… for a whole month. It’s not like I was ready for marriage or whatever, but I suppose I was ready to be more intimate. To see what would happen next.’
His face is still so vivid in my mind– brown eyes that at first I thought were kind. An easy smile. The way all of that kindness and ease could disappear in the blink of a brown eye, and turn to contempt. It was like he had two faces, and they were the complete opposites of each other.
‘What did happen?’ Cherie asks, grabbing the bottle and topping up my drink.
‘Nothing dramatic, nothing sudden. But I suppose I kept asking questions, and was getting increasingly confused by the answers. I had the opportunity to go on a work trip to Lisbon for a week, to meet my publishers there, and I asked him if he wanted to come. He said his passport was out of date, which again seemed odd. I asked him if he wanted to meet my twin sister, and he always cancelled– or sometimes found a way tomake me cancel. Like not only didn’thewant to meet her, he also didn’t want me to see her either.
‘Then a few things happened that made me even more concerned… like messages disappearing from my phone, and people later asking me why I hadn’t replied; my old address book going missing. Entries on my calendar being deleted. The doorman in my building greeting him like an old friend, even though as far as I knew, they’d only met a few times. He was… creeping into my life, and very subtly trying to take it over. It was happening so slowly I could almost convince myself I was imagining it.’
Cherie makes a snorting noise, and shakes her head. ‘That’s what they do, isn’t it? Men like that? Make you think you’re going mad? I bet every time you talked to him about it, he looked all sad, like you’d hurt his precious feelings by daring to doubt him?’
‘Exactly that! Later, I asked the doorman, and he said he’d been around quite a bit. He’d obviously somehow made a copy of my key and was letting himself in on days I wasn’t at home. Which he knew because he’d also been rummaging around in my phone, and by extension, my life. Amazing how much we put on those things. I don’t anymore.’
