The 24-Hour Café

by Libby Page

  ‘Yeah, I guess they did,’ says Dan, offering a small, polite smile. The man continues watching him and Dan thinks he sees his eyes glancing to his rucksack under the table and back again.

  ‘Are you a student?’ asks the man, gesturing towards the books on the table. Dan nods and the man asks him what he is studying.

  ‘I want to be an engineer,’ Dan replies, holding up the book in his hand.

  ‘Materials Science and Engineering: an Introduction,’ reads the man out loud, ‘Wow, impressive stuff.’

  Dan shrugs.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand all of it just yet.’

  ‘But still, you must have done well at school to get on to a course like that. They don’t let just anyone design our bridges and whatnot.’

  Dan smiles. He did do well at school. His mum always encouraged him to study, to work hard. She wanted him to have a better life than they had – even if he’d never once complained about their lot, not the charity-shop clothes nor the beans on toast for dinner three nights a week. Their mantelpiece was like a shrine to his education: school photos and every prize he had ever won, however small (one was a certificate for just entering the school’s Maths Challenge, but his mum still framed it and put it up there).

  ‘I flunked my exams myself,’ continues the man, ‘I was a bit rebellious at school – far more interested in girls.’

  He smiles at Dan, and Dan can tell that the man is willing him to smile back, so he does, this time digging out one that he hopes looks a little more genuine.

  ‘I’m getting another coffee,’ the man says, ‘Do you want anything? Something to eat maybe?’

  Dan’s stomach grumbles again, but he shakes his head. He promised himself he wouldn’t rely on charity.

  ‘Are you sure?’ the man says, rising and heading to the bar. The waitress looks up from the book resting on the counter.

  ‘I’m sure,’ says Dan.

  While the man is at the bar Dan returns to his textbooks, but his mind is elsewhere. He’s thinking about his mum. The lingering smell of pancakes in the café takes him back to being seven or eight years old and sitting on the worktop in their small kitchen as his mum pours the pancake mix into the pan. He watches it sizzle, bubbles appearing as though a sea creature is trapped beneath the doughy mix, trying to get out. The thought unnerves him, but then he breathes in the sweet smell and his mind turns to golden syrup and Nutella. They are having pancakes for dinner. It’s not even Pancake Day. Dan is delighted. But later, as they sit together in front of the TV, Dan with his favourite Power Rangers plate that he knows he should have grown out of by now, his mum starts to cry. Dan can’t understand it, and he shuffles closer and tries to wrap an arm around her shoulder but can’t reach all the way.

  ‘I’m sorry, buddy,’ she says, sniffing.

  He doesn’t know what she is sorry for, or what to say, so he rests his head on her arm.

  ‘These are the best pancakes I’ve ever eaten,’ he says, and he feels her body softening as she smiles.

  The man returns to the table just as Dan swallows hard.

  ‘God, I need another coffee,’ says the man, sitting down, ‘That’s one of the problems with being an insomniac – I’m constantly knackered but can never sleep. Funny, isn’t it?’

  Dan doesn’t think it sounds very funny but doesn’t say so. The man rubs his forehead and tilts his neck from side to side, stretching. Outside the café a bus pulls up and two men throw cigarette butts in the gutter and step on.

  ‘What, so you just can’t sleep at all?’ Dan asks, turning back to the man. Dan doesn’t have any problem sleeping. At the moment his issue is staying awake.

  ‘I get some sleep,’ the man replies, ‘I’d be a medical marvel if I got none at all and was still standing. But it doesn’t come easily.’

  ‘Is there anything you can do about it? Aren’t there pills you can take?’

  ‘I’ve tried them all – pills, meditation, counting, listening to music,’ says the man. ‘Sometimes I drift off for a bit, but then I’m wide awake again, just staring. I get so sick of looking at the same cracks in the ceiling that I come here instead. Nearest place that’s open all night. Handy, isn’t it?’

  The man is looking at him, but Dan wants to avoid the subject of the café and why he is here at two in the morning with his university books around him and a sleeping bag beneath the table.

  ‘So what do you do when you’re not trying to sleep?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m a script writer.’

  The man points at the crossword, ‘When I can’t sleep I do these. I really should make the most of the sleepless nights and write instead – I’d be far more productive.’

  ‘What do you write?’ asks Dan, looking closely at the man. He hasn’t met a writer before. He tries to imagine what it would be like – designing with words rather than physical materials every day. The thought makes his head swim. He likes solid, tangible things you can hold on to, like equations, steel and brick.

  ‘Nothing you’d watch,’ he replies with a laugh, ‘The stuff your mum or auntie would watch. Murder mysteries, daytime dramas …’

  He mentions a few names, and one causes a spark of recognition.

  ‘Oh yeah, my mum used to watch that one,’ says Dan, ‘Dan! Switch over, no more car programmes, it’s time for Midsomer Murders!’ He imitates her voice, enjoying the smile that spreads over the man’s face as he does. Dan’s mum liked the old-fashioned murder mysteries that were set on riverboats or steam trains; it was her lifelong dream to go on the Orient Express. She had a glass jar on the mantelpiece where they both put spare coins. It had ‘Orient Express’ written in her handwriting on a sticky label. Dan once looked it up and found out how much it would actually cost – he wanted to know how far away they were. When he found out he didn’t tell her. He realised that the coins would never get his mother on the Orient Express but he still dropped his spare ones in there anyway. In the programmes his mum liked the characters wore chic suits and drank cocktails from trolleys. She had bought a glass and metal trolley from a charity shop once and it stood in their living room next to the TV, holding the TV guide and her library books, tins of beer and her ashtray. She had wheeled it all the way home from Bethnal Green to Stepney.

  ‘Used to?’ says the man with a laugh, ‘Did she switch shows when my writing got worse? I think it has recently, lack of sleep really messes with the imagination.’

  ‘Mum died a few months ago,’ says Dan.

  The man’s face turns pale. He rubs at his beard and shakes his head. Dan almost feels sorry – he doesn’t like seeing other people uncomfortable. It makes him squirm too. But he doesn’t know any way to soften the truth. He can’t bring himself to say the well-worn euphemisms like ‘passed away’ or the worst: ‘we lost her’, as though he was in some way to blame for his carelessness, or there was hope that she might one day be found.

  ‘Shit,’ the man says, making the word sound much longer than its four letters. It helps, a bit. Sometimes Dan would like to say that word himself, over and over. Yell it in fact. Scream it until he has no breath left for shouting. He’s never been much of a swearer – it used to upset him when his mum did it when he was younger, when she dropped something or stubbed her toe or sometimes when she spoke loudly on the phone to someone (she never told him who – ‘Just a bastard you don’t need to know’, she’d say).

  ‘God, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,’ says the man.

  After she died, Dan had been determined to start university despite it all. He knew his mum would want him to go – they’d both worked so hard for him to get there. But they didn’t own their home, and she had debts. He couldn’t stay in the flat and he knew it wasn’t sensible to enrol in halls of residence. He didn’t know how he’d meet every payment – his student loan wouldn’t cover both the accommodation and his living expenses, and he had no one to ask fo
r help. He didn’t want to tell his course mates or his lecturers what had happened – he didn’t want to be treated differently. So instead he asked friends if it was OK to crash with them for a while until he sorted things out, telling them there’d been a problem with his halls and his room wasn’t ready yet. He stayed with different friends for a few days at a time. Rob, a guy who’d been a few years above him in school and now lived with two friends in a basement apartment in Stratford, let him stay for four weeks. He gave Dan his own towel and pumped up an airbed in the living room, where marijuana grew in heated glass houses and a soppy Ragdoll cat called Pumpkin shared his bed, falling asleep on his feet. Dan grew fond of the cat, and would sneak her Wotsits (his favourite snack, since he was a child) when the others weren’t looking. Dan helped with the cooking and made sure his bed was packed away neatly each morning. He got on well with Rob and his flatmates Matt and Jared – some evenings they’d play World of Warcraft together and share beers. It was a good month, considering.

  But one evening Rob mentioned that his flatmates had been asking him when Dan would be moving on. Dan couldn’t help but feel disappointed – he thought Matt and Jared had liked him. But then he’d stopped himself. It wasn’t personal, this was their home. Of course he couldn’t stay forever. It was ridiculous to think that, to have let himself forget for four weeks and feel almost settled.

  ‘No problem mate,’ Dan said that evening, ‘I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow morning – is that OK?’

  ‘That’s great – did you get your halls sorted out then?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s all sorted.’

  ‘That’s wicked, you’re going to have the best time at uni, trust me bro.’

  Except it wasn’t sorted.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ says the man and Dan looks up, remembering that at this particular moment, he is not alone. ‘My dad went just over a year ago. It’s when the insomnia started. I just suddenly found I couldn’t sleep any more.’

  ‘Yeah, the first few nights I didn’t get much sleep either,’ admits Dan.

  ‘Fuck, those first nights are the worst,’ replies the man, shaking his head again. ‘But then it hits you again a bit later doesn’t it? About a month afterwards when things have sort of settled down and people have stopped checking up on you – just that realisation that they’re really gone.’

  Dan has never heard anyone else talk like this. Not many of his friends know about his mum. The ones who do try to understand but just can’t. Some offer stories of grandparents’ funerals and he wants to tell them it isn’t the same, it’s not nearly the same and how could they possibly think it would be, but he doesn’t want to be unkind.

  It hit him hardest the week after her funeral. He was walking back to the flat from Tesco; he was still living in the flat back then. The shopping bags were heavy and cut into the skin on his hands and he was worried that he hadn’t bought the right food – that he’d spent too much money by giving in to his craving for Wotsits and pancake mix. It started to rain and the pavement was slippery and he looked up at the grey sky and it suddenly hit him that the world no longer held his mum in it.

  The waitress brings a cappuccino and a steaming pile of pancakes to the table and sets them down in front of the man.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says. The waitress smiles and looks at them both.

  ‘Let me know if you need anything else.’

  Dan tries not to stare at the pancakes (they are drizzled in maple syrup, crispy slices of bacon resting on the side), and covers his stomach with a hand under the table, attempting somehow to stifle the gurgles that to him sound loud enough to fill the café, but that he knows are probably quieter.

  The man takes a few bites of the pancakes and pushes them away.

  ‘I’m not hungry after all,’ he says, ‘I think I’ll just stick to the coffee. I wouldn’t want them to go to waste, though …’

  Dan thinks about it. The pancakes will just be thrown away otherwise and unlike the leftovers he’d observed throughout the night at other tables, these are right in front of him and being offered to him.

  ‘If you don’t want them …’ he says eventually. The man passes the plate over and after a moment’s hesitation, Dan begins to eat.

  The pancakes are delicious. They are freshly made, he can tell, and dripping with butter and maple syrup. The saltiness of the bacon goes perfectly with them – unlikely, but ultimately well-suited partners. His stomach gives a satisfying rumble as he eats. They’re still not as good as his mum’s packet-made ones, though.

  ‘I know what you mean about trying to write,’ says Dan between mouthfuls, the sugar reviving him and creating a sudden urge to steer the conversation away from his mum, ‘I’ve been trying to study but it’s not going well.’

  ‘You should try a crossword,’ says the man, sipping his cappuccino. ‘They’re a good distraction, I find.’

  He tears several pages out of his book and passes them to Dan, along with a pen from his shirt pocket. The man picks up his own pen and returns his focus to the crossword, so Dan does the same. For a while they sit in silence, doing the crosswords.

  Every now and then Dan looks up and is reassured to see the man still sat nearby, absorbed in his puzzle, his pen resting between his teeth. It is nice not to be alone, especially at this hour.

  Doing something different instead of trying desperately to absorb the information in his textbooks makes Dan feel more awake. The pancakes might have helped, too. He feels more positive about making it through the night to the opening of the university library, where he will wait until his first lecture.

  After a while he goes to the bathroom and washes his hands and splashes water on his face. He looks at himself in the mirror. His blond hair is in need of a cut and he forgot his shaving things at Rob’s and needs to stop by to pick them up. But he likes his eyes – they’re green, just like his mum’s. They match the green hoody that he wears with the fleecy lining, zipped up to his chin even though it’s warm in the café.

  On the wall next to the mirror someone has written ‘Nick is gay’ in permanent marker. Underneath is a pencil arrow pointing back up to the writing and a note that says, ‘No, you’re gay’. Next to it is a crudely drawn penis, scratched into the paintwork. Without realising exactly what he’s doing, Dan takes the borrowed pen from his hoody pocket and starts work on the drawing, adding ears, a face, two legs, a tail. The drawing has become a cat. He adds a collar and writes ‘Pumpkin’ on it.

  Then he heads back into the café, sits down opposite the man and returns to his crossword.

  Hannah

  Hannah cleans the Cadbury’s cabinet and rearranges the cakes and smoothies inside, wiping the glass. She has a feeling she already cleaned the case but can’t seem to remember doing it.

  The boy in the green hoody and the older man with the tortoiseshell glasses and the scruffy hair are now sat at the same table. For a while they talk and Hannah catches snippets of the conversation over the music, too small to piece together. But now they are silent, both focusing on a crossword.

  Once she is finished with the cabinet she checks the customers are still intently looking at their crosswords and then reaches for her phone. She scrolls through the calendar, looking at the week ahead, checking her shifts. Another double shift on Saturday, then a single on Sunday and Monday, a break on Tuesday … At Wednesday she stops. The phone feels hot in her hand as she stares at Wednesday’s date and realises its significance. It would have been her and Jaheim’s first anniversary. They had planned to go to Honey & Co., their favourite middle-eastern restaurant, near Warren Street. She had even eagerly booked a table a couple of months ago and suddenly remembers that she has forgotten to cancel it. She will have to call them later and wonders what she will say – whether she will find the energy to make up an excuse.

  As she writes a note on her phone to remind herself to call the restaurant, she ha
s an idea. Why should she not get to enjoy her favourite restaurant just because she no longer has a boyfriend? She pictures her favourite dish, pomegranate chicken with a fragrant salad, and finds her mouth watering despite the strange hour. She will keep the reservation and ask Mona to come with her instead. Perhaps it can be a celebration if Mona’s audition goes well. She finds herself smiling at the idea and changing the note to remind her to invite Mona to dinner instead – she is pretty sure she isn’t working that evening either.

  Because that’s a big difference between this break up and the one before. When she and Sam split up she was suddenly entirely on her own. She had friends back then, but when she moved in with Sam she found that she saw them less and less. At the time she hadn’t minded – she was happy spending her evenings in their flat together, cooking and watching television and building a life fit for two. But when they split up she came out of the relationship as though coming up from being underground, only to realise that everyone she knew had moved on.

  *

  She sits on the living room floor surrounded by boxes, an empty wine glass held in her hand. From where she sits she can see the bottle resting on the table just a few steps away, but the effort of standing and walking to retrieve it seems suddenly too much to manage. Scraps of newspaper and bubble wrap litter the carpet but the boxes are all empty, waiting to be filled. Hannah looks again at the bottle. If Sam were home he would top up her glass without her even having to ask, planting a kiss on the top of her head at the same time.

  And then she starts to cry. Because Sam is not here. And if he were and he tried to kiss her she would flinch and pull away, her stomach twisting and her mind filled with one huge thought: does he kiss her like that too?

  She found out about his affair by discovering an Ann Summers receipt in the hoover a week ago. She hadn’t been looking for clues – she had no idea she needed to. They’d been happy. They were talking about getting a cat. The hoover wasn’t working and she pulled out a clump of hair and paper and the name caught her eye. He’d never bought her anything from there. Dislodging the blockage didn’t work – she was left with a broken hoover and a broken heart.