The 24-Hour Café

by Libby Page

  ‘Same to you,’ Paul replies quietly.

  ‘I can’t deny it’s a surprise,’ says the other man. He has a deep voice that rises above the noises in the café. It is a voice that seems used to filling a room.

  Paul says nothing in reply. The other man continues.

  ‘But still. Anyway, I’m sorry about what happened. Just one of those things, you know? But I take it you’ve found something new?’

  Paul nods, ‘Yes, just around the corner.’

  ‘Excellent! Excellent. Late start then?’

  ‘Flexitime.’

  ‘The dream!’ says the other man, ‘Well, good for you, good for you. Right, I’d better get my caffeine fix and get back to the old ball-breaker. If you’re working around here now, then maybe see you in the usual one evening?’

  ‘Yes, that would be great,’ says Paul.

  ‘Bye for now!’

  Paul stays standing until the other man has ordered his coffee and left, his cup held aloft in a salute. He raises his hand in a wave too and then sits down heavily in his chair.

  Hannah slips out from behind the counter again, taking the orange juice to Paul’s table.

  ‘Your breakfast will be with you soon,’ she says, ‘Can I get you anything else?’

  ‘Gin?’ he says, looking at her almost seriously and then breaking into a weak laugh.

  ‘Too early for gin, I suppose?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘This will do then, thanks.’

  And he turns back to the window, his hands resting on his laptop keys but his eyes focused outside. Hannah returns to the queue, concentrating on the orders and trying to ignore the feeling of the crossword book in her apron pocket, her thoughts of Jaheim, and her anxieties about her career and whether she has the energy to keep fighting for it.

  9.00 a.m.

  Hannah

  The takeaway orders continue into the morning. The mother and baby who sat by the window leave and Hannah misses the sound of the child’s laughter. They had played together while they sat there, the mother pointing out dogs on the street and the baby giggling. The mother laughed too as though she genuinely enjoyed nothing more than playing with the little ball of flesh who couldn’t even speak yet.

  As she makes the orders, sharing customers efficiently and quietly with Eleanor, she is aware of the middle-aged male customer in the suit and the purple tie who arrived earlier and ordered a full English breakfast and an orange juice. Since they last spoke he has been sat in the corner tapping away at his laptop. Every now and then he stares out the window, before returning to typing so fiercely that the keys sound like a crowd of marching footsteps on a stone floor.

  She lets herself pause and glance outside for a moment. Discarded copies of that morning’s newspaper lie like autumn leaves around the station. In the city, today’s news is already old news. As she looks out, the street abruptly darkens and the rain that has been threatening all morning beats suddenly on the pavements, on the cars and buses on the road and on the windows of the café. At first Hannah is relieved; the café windows rarely get washed and are constantly covered in a thin layer of dust and grime from the street and its endless pulse of traffic. But then she spots John the Big Issue seller hurriedly reaching for a plastic cover in his pocket and slipping his magazines inside. Around him people huddle under the awnings of shops and open umbrellas or lift their jackets over their heads as they dash across the road. A bottleneck has already formed at the station as people rush to get inside while struggling to close umbrellas.

  ‘Are you OK for one sec?’ Hannah asks Eleanor, who nods. Hannah quickly rummages in a box under the counter and steps outside, her coat held aloft over her head.

  ‘Morning, John,’ she says over the sound of the rain and the traffic.

  ‘Morning!’ he says cheerfully, a large raindrop dripping off the tip of his nose.

  ‘I thought you might like this,’ she says, ‘It was in our lost property. I’m sorry about the colour.’

  She hands him a bright pink umbrella. The handle is in the shape of a flamingo’s head. They both look at it for a moment. He pushes it open and is sheltered in a glow of pink.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s all we had,’ Hannah says.

  ‘I think it suits me, don’t you?’ John says after a moment. He laughs, a bright peal of sound that seems at odds with the gloomy surroundings. Hannah smiles, relief spreading across her face.

  ‘Can I get you a coffee?’ she asks, then spots a paper cup in his hand. If she or Mona are too busy to step outside and chat to him and offer him a coffee, a customer usually gets there first.

  ‘I’m all set, thank you,’ he replies, ‘Now you get back in the dry. I’ll be right as rain here.’

  He chuckles at his own joke. She smiles too and glances at him briefly, sheltered by the pink flamingo umbrella, before waving and dashing back into the café. As she steps through the door she catches sight of the clock. Not long until Mona’s audition, she thinks to herself. She imagines Mona waiting nervously for her second audition before being called in and walking with an artificial confidence into the room. She wonders what the casting team will think when they see her – perhaps some for the second time and others for the first (the panel is usually larger for call-backs). They will notice her slender build and the graceful way she carries herself – instilled by years and years of dancing – and her height and the way she tilts her head just a little too high when she is nervous. She wonders if they will see what Hannah sees. The determination, the focus and the shine that comes off her friend. Because Mona is one of the special ones. She sparkles.

  Hannah glances around the café, checking if there are any customers who need her attention. And that’s when she notices that the middle-aged man with the purple tie, Paul, she remembers his name was, is shaking. Hannah stares at him in alarm. It’s only after a few moments that she realises he is crying. Tears drip from his face onto his laptop keyboard and he makes no move to wipe them away.

  Watching him, Hannah thinks first of her tears in the storeroom earlier, feeling her cheeks flush at the memory. Next, she thinks of her father.

  As a child, she never saw her father cry. Her mother was always the emotional one, breaking into tears watching anything from RSPCA adverts to emotional stories in the London marathon or the Olympics. At every school performance, Hannah’s mother would stuff tissues into the sleeves of her cardigan and sometimes audibly sob when Hannah took to the stage. It embarrassed Hannah, particularly when she was a teenager, but she didn’t want her to stop, either. It was part of who her mother was, and showed a softness that meant Hannah felt she could come to her with any worry, however small. With her father, she always felt warier. She knew he loved her; but they rarely spent time together without her mother being there too and when, later, she had left home and called her parents, if her father answered he would always say, ‘I’ll get your mother’ as soon as he heard Hannah’s voice on the other end.

  Now, Hannah remembers the first time she saw him cry, at her grandmother’s funeral earlier that year, and wishes that she had taken her break later so she could have spoken to her father too when she phoned her mother this morning. The customer’s tears make her ache suddenly for her father, remembering in painful detail his breakdown at the funeral. Despite her discomfort at holding back the news of her break-up from her parents, Hannah suddenly longs to be with her father with a simplicity and an intensity that overpowers everything.

  *

  Her grandmother dies on New Year’s Day.

  Hannah and Mona held a party at theirs the night before and when Hannah wakes her room is bright with winter sun. Her head is foggy and she is aware of the empty bottles discarded around her room – the room they used as the main space for the party. There are a few half-empty bin bags scattered around too from when Hannah and Mona had, still drunk, attempted to start
tidying in the early hours, before giving up and crashing asleep, both in Hannah’s bed. Jaheim was there for the start of the party but left early as New Year’s Eve is also the birthday of one of his best friends. Hannah had tried to leave with him, but by that point she was already drunk and he persuaded her, reluctantly, to stay behind.

  As she shifts she feels the warmth of Mona’s body next to her and hears the quiet snuffle of her snores. When they first lived together they sometimes fell asleep like this after staying up late watching a film, but it’s been a long time since it last happened.

  When she opens her eyes, Hannah reaches immediately for her phone. She notes the time – it is midday – and sees that there are no messages from Jaheim. Instead, there are four from her mother. There is a voicemail too and she slips out of bed, wrapping a blanket around her, to listen to it without disturbing Mona.

  Her mother’s voice has a shake to it, but Hannah can tell she is trying to stay calm.

  ‘Will you give me a call back when you get this, sweetheart?’ she says, ‘It’s your gran.’

  Hannah phones home immediately, glad that it is her mother who picks up, not her father, when she hears the news. She doesn’t know what she will say to her dad when she sees him. They talk briefly and stick mainly to logistics. Her mother has already looked up the train times for the next day. Hannah says goodbye and tells her mum to give her dad a hug from her.

  When she hangs up the phone she notices Mona in the doorway. She is wearing her dressing gown and has last night’s make-up smudged around her eyes.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asks.

  Hannah shakes her head and feels herself starting to cry.

  ‘No,’ she says, as Mona crosses the room and takes her into a hug, ‘Gran died.’

  Mona cooks them both breakfast, which they take back to Hannah’s bed, eating wrapped up beneath the duvet. Hannah tries calling Jaheim but he must still be asleep, or too hung-over to answer. Mona listens as Hannah tells her about her grandmother – the sweets she always kept buried somewhere in her pockets and that were sneaked into Hannah’s outstretched hands as a child, her famous apple pie that to Hannah was the sweetest thing in the world, and the way she always smelt of mothballs, cigarettes and Astral face cream.

  They watch Disney films in bed (Mona’s idea) and Hannah finds it hard to work out where her hangover ends and her grief begins.

  At five o’clock in the afternoon her phone rings. It’s Jaheim and she jumps out of bed to talk to him, walking out onto the balcony despite the cold.

  ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t answer your call earlier,’ he says when she tells him the news, ‘You poor thing, I hate the thought of you being on your own at a time like this.’

  Hannah leans against the balcony railing and turns to look inside. Mona had left the room for a moment but is back now, sitting on the bed and looking worriedly out the window at Hannah. She nods at her.

  ‘I wasn’t on my own,’ she says, her voice slightly cold.

  ‘I still wish I’d been there, my love,’ he says, and she softens. Because this is Jaheim, and because she loves him.

  ‘I do too,’ she admits, ‘But I’ll come over later?’

  ‘As long as you’re sure,’ he says, ‘I can easily come there?’

  ‘No it’s fine, it’d be nice to have a change of scenery.’

  They chat for a little longer. The sound of his voice makes her smile, despite it all. They talk a bit about her grandmother and he tells her about last night’s party for his friend – it distracts her and she enjoys listening to him (she could listen to him talk about anything). By the time they hang up and she steps inside, she is feeling calmer.

  As soon as she closes the door behind her, glad to be back inside the warmth of the flat, Mona, who has placed two mugs of tea on the table, starts talking.

  ‘I just spoke to Stella,’ she says, ‘And she’s given you all of next week off work – she says there’s no rush to come back in, Eleanor and Sofia can cover your shifts. So that’s one less thing to worry about. And as soon as you know the date of the funeral she says I can have that day off too.’

  Hannah walks across the room and gives her friend a hug.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she says, squeezing her before stepping away, ‘But don’t worry, you’ve already done plenty. Jaheim’s going to come with me to the funeral.’

  Mona looks down at her tea.

  ‘Oh, right,’ she says.

  ‘It’s just I knew you said you wanted some extra shifts this month to catch up after the show at Christmas,’ says Hannah quickly, ‘And it’s a long way to travel. I don’t want you to have to do that.’

  Mona nods.

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ she says, ‘I could certainly do with the money if you don’t need me there.’

  Hannah smiles, pleased to have made the right decision. She knows how stressed Mona gets about money and the train tickets to Wales can be expensive.

  Hannah catches the train home the next morning, her mother greeting her at the station. Normally she pulls up in the drop-off area and beeps as she sees Hannah walking outside. Today she parks in the car park and is waiting for Hannah on the platform. They hug, then walk slowly back to the car, their steps syncing up without meaning to.

  ‘How’s Dad?’ Hannah asks, immediately regretting the obviousness of the question. It feels pointless, and she wishes she could find words with more meaning.

  ‘He’s just about coping,’ her mother replies, turning to her and squeezing her arm, ‘He’ll be very happy to see you.’

  Hannah isn’t sure she’d describe her father’s reaction to her arriving home as happiness, but happiness probably isn’t something he is capable of right now. He is sat in one of the three armchairs in the sitting area just off from the kitchen. He is staring intently out the window to where a sparrow hops along the top of the garden wall. Hannah watches the sparrow fly away but her father’s gaze does not move. Hannah’s mother kisses his forehead and busies herself filling the kettle while Hannah sits in the chair next to him and reaches to place a hand on top of his.

  ‘Hi Dad,’ she says.

  He flinches slightly then turns to her.

  ‘Hannah,’ he says softly, ‘You’re home.’

  ‘I am,’ she replies, ‘Mum just got me from the station.’

  She pauses for a moment.

  ‘Dad, I’m so sorry,’ she says.

  He turns his hand over so that his palm is facing up and she links her fingers through his.

  ‘Me too,’ he says.

  ‘I’m so glad I got to know her,’ Hannah continues, ‘She was a great woman. I’m going to really miss her.’

  ‘Me too,’ her father says again.

  Her mother joins them, bringing them coffee with a spoonful of cream, something usually only reserved for Christmas and birthdays.

  ‘We’ll let ourselves have a little treat to cheer ourselves up, won’t we?’ she says as she pours, Hannah watching the cream swirl into the black coffee.

  Then the three of them sit in a silence that only families can manage, Hannah not letting go of her father’s hand. She feels, not for the first time, the physical absence of a sibling. She wishes for a brother or sister to share this moment with – a solid comfort between the raw grief of her father and the worry and sympathetic heartache of her mother.

  It’s partly why she feels so relieved when Jaheim arrives on the day of the funeral. It’s the first time he’s met Hannah’s family and the formality of it holds them all together somehow. Her father even talks to him about tennis (a shared passion, they discover).

  In the church, she introduces Jaheim to distant relatives, her grandmother’s friends and friends and colleagues of her father (there are many of these, and it makes her feel a brief, golden burst of pride amid the darkness). She feels stronger on Jaheim’s arm, somehow.


  It is Jaheim who suggests he sit at the back of the church, instead of next to her at the front. She says he’s welcome with her and her family but he shakes his head and insists.

  ‘I’ll see you afterwards, OK?’ he says, ‘You look after your dad.’

  So she takes her place in the pew between her parents, the first time that they have sat at the front of a church together. She remembers all the Christmas carol concerts they took her to when she was young – not because they were religious, but because she loved the singing. They used to hide at the back, eating chocolate buttons and then joining in with the carols. This time, she tries her best to sing along with the hymns – she doesn’t know their tunes but tries to pick them up from the older members of the congregation. She wonders if Jaheim can hear her at the back, and whether he is singing too. Her mother and father are mute during the singing, so she sings a little louder as she finds the melody, realising that this – her voice joining the others that rise above the heads of the congregation – is all that she has left to offer her grandmother.

  Eventually it is time for her father’s eulogy. He stands up from the pew and stumbles forward, drawing from his pocket a crumpled sheet of paper that he clutches tightly between two hands. Hannah’s mother rises slightly in her chair as though about to reach out for him, but then she sits back down again, folds her hands in her lap and locks her eyes on him instead. Hannah watches too, her heart beating fast as he stands alone at the front of the church. There is silence, then the shuffling of people in their seats as they wriggle with the awkwardness of it all. Someone coughs.

  And then Hannah’s father begins to speak. His eyes are fixed and unmoving from the sheet of paper. He talks in a flat and steady voice free from emotion. He sounds as though he is reading from a teleprompter and reminds her of the stilted speeches of un-charming politicians.