The 24-Hour Café

by Libby Page

  Perhaps she should have run after the boy when he left earlier, she thinks to herself, but it was a few moments after he had gone that she found the book and he would have disappeared by then. There was nothing she could have done. At least that’s what she tells herself.

  When both Hannah and Mona are low on tips or have taken time off from waitressing to focus on creative projects that sometimes pay a little, but often pay nothing, their evening meals become an amalgamation of things in their cupboards or freezer. Tinned mackerel on toast, tuna and kidney beans stirred into pasta, frozen vegetables and fishcakes. When she was younger these mismatched meals were somehow exciting, but they long ago lost any sort of charm. She hates that she still lives like a student, that she has no savings to speak of and is constantly worried about money.

  So when she found the money left on the table she acted on impulse, the side of her that is exhausted and stressed taking over. No one had been looking, it was so easy just to slip it into her apron pocket. That money would mean several weeks’ food shopping, or a trip home to Wales to visit her parents. That’s how she tried to justify it to herself, even though she knew it was wrong. And part of her did it just because she could, because there was a thrill to it, however tinged with guilt, because it was there.

  As she slips the money back inside the notebook she wonders if this is how it happened with Jaheim. Is that what led him, the man she loved, to deceive her? Sometimes it starts with just one bad decision.

  *

  They have been together for nearly a year. During that year she has spent less and less time with other people and more and more time with him. When she broke up with Sam she told herself she would never distance herself like that again, but now that she is in love again she has completely forgotten her earlier promises to herself. Very occasionally it crosses her mind that perhaps she has cut down on her social life like she did before. But she always talks herself out of it. This time it’s different. Jaheim is different. It’s still a relatively new relationship and for it to work out she has to dedicate time to it, to them. Love is a drug and she is a junkie.

  It’s not just her social life that has become secondary to the all-consuming force that is her relationship. She hasn’t performed in public in months; instead she prefers singing to Jaheim. He says he likes nothing more than to listen to her and sometimes after sex she reaches for her guitar and plays naked while he lies in her bed and watches. She has never felt more relaxed than in these moments. With him she is safe and adored. She can never even hope for that from a gig, let alone depend upon it.

  As a result of this lack of motivation for performing, she is short on money. She still works regular shifts at the café but working enough to be more comfortable in her finances would mean no time to see Jaheim. It seems that every time she goes to her wallet or to check her bank balance there is less there than she had been expecting.

  One Friday evening they order pizza to eat in Hannah’s room: as much as they enjoy going out, love often makes them too lazy for it. The door buzzer rings and Hannah leaps out of bed where they had been lounging together, a film playing on her laptop. She reaches for her wallet on the top of her chest of drawers and leafs through it.

  ‘That’s weird,’ she says, a frown creasing her forehead, ‘I could have sworn I had a twenty in here – I got it out specially.’

  Jaheim props himself up in the bed. He yawns.

  ‘Have you checked all the pockets?’

  She unzips the coin purse but there is nothing except a lone twenty pence.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe you dropped it at the ATM,’ he says, ‘There’s some money in my jeans pocket. Take that.’

  He points to the floor where his jeans lie in a heap.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says bending down and rummaging until she finds a crisp twenty, ‘I wanted this to be my treat.’

  He waves his hand as she heads to the door with the money. ‘Don’t worry about it, babe.’

  They eat the pizza in bed and she forgets about the money.

  But a few days later the same thing happens. She goes to her purse, expecting to find ten pounds, and instead it’s empty. This time she mentions it in passing to Mona, asking if she’s borrowed any without telling her. But Mona says she hasn’t, and Hannah immediately believes her, regretting bringing it up. Of course Mona wouldn’t take any money from her without asking.

  ‘I think I’m going mad,’ she says to Jaheim one evening, ‘I keep losing stuff. That or I’m way more broke than I thought I was.’

  He kisses her on the tip of her nose.

  ‘We’ll just have to have more cosy dinners in,’ he says, ‘I can think of worse things, can’t you?’ She settles under the nook of his arm and breathes in his smell that she knows so well. It calms her, and she asks Jaheim about his day at work, happy to move the conversation away from money.

  But it is a pattern and a conversation that will repeat itself regularly over the coming weeks. One day when she logs into her online banking she decides to take the time to read through her statement. She spots a few transactions she doesn’t recognise but decides not to worry about them – they are only small amounts and she knows she is disorganised and prone to forgetfulness. She is never going to remember every single cup of coffee or supermarket shop or takeaway ordered.

  She starts trying to be extra friendly and smiley at the café. She checks up on all her customers and brings them a jug of tap water before they have to ask. Gradually her tips do improve; she keeps them stored in a glass jar on top of her chest of drawers. Usually it’s just coins, but one day a customer leaves her the biggest tip she has ever received from a single person: a crumpled ten-pound note that has a rip through the middle and an ink stain on the corner but is still definitely usable. She arrives home that evening in a good mood, placing the ten-pound note in the tip jar and changing out of her work clothes into a figure-hugging dress. When Jaheim arrives at the flat after work she suggests that they go to the pub for a drink.

  ‘Good idea,’ he says with a smile.

  ‘I’m just going to redo my make-up,’ she says, disappearing into the bathroom, leaving him sat on her bed. When she is ready they head out, shouting a goodbye to Mona, who has just got back from a dance class.

  It’s one of Hannah’s favourite local pubs and they order two pints.

  ‘I’ll get this round, you get the next?’ says Jaheim, leaning on the bar. Hannah smiles and rests her head on his shoulder. As she does, she sees as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a crumpled ten-pound note. There is a rip through the middle and an ink stain in the corner, but it is still usable.

  The bartender hands Jaheim his change and he stuffs it into his back pocket. Jaheim hands Hannah the drink and she focuses hard on keeping her hand from shaking. The bar is noisy, filled with the sound of conversation and music. But Hannah’s ears suddenly fill with the silence and emptiness of realisation.

  ‘Hannah?’ he says, ‘Did you hear me?’

  She turns back to him. That smile that she loves so much looks different now.

  ‘I said, shall we sit over there?’ he asks, his smile faltering as he looks at her questioningly.

  For a second she wavers, suspended part-way between two potential decisions, two potential endings to this evening. As though returning to her body, she becomes aware of the noises around her again – the bartender talking to a customer, a group of friends at the back of the room clinking glasses and shouting ‘cheers’. Her stomach tightens and her legs feel weak. But she smiles.

  ‘Sure,’ she says, letting herself be led to the table by the man she loves, and the man who has been stealing from her.

  *

  It took her a while to confront him. At first, she was too shocked to accept the truth. Although she had seen the proof very clearly, she still couldn’t quite believe it. Her feelings turned
quickly to embarrassment. How could she have let herself be so misled, especially after what happened with Sam? She’d had no idea about his affair, and now she’d had no idea Jaheim could be so deceptive. She thought of Mona too, flinching at the memory of asking her if she’d stolen from her, and of all those nights when she’d shut herself away in her room with Jaheim rather than spending time with her friend.

  Among it all was the fear of the end. She loved him and she knew when she admitted to herself, and to him, what she knew, it would all be over. He would go, and she would be alone. The time spent with him would have been for nothing, and she would be single again, having just turned thirty. So she put it off, delaying the inevitable, holding on to the idea of their relationship for just a little bit longer.

  When she finally did tell him what she knew, she expected him to be defensive, but in the end he was surprisingly honest.

  He told her it started as twenty pounds borrowed for the food shop one night. Her purse had been right there on the side, he said. She was in the shower and he’d promised to nip out to buy something for them both to eat. It was so easy, he told her when it all emerged and when their relationship came tumbling down like an earthquake had rocked the house she had spent so long building – that they had built together. At first it didn’t even feel like he was doing anything wrong, he told her. He had meant to tell her and replace the money that first time, but he forgot, and she didn’t seem to notice, or at least she never mentioned anything about it. And so it continued. It was around this time that he started online gambling, a revelation that filled her with just as much shock as the stealing. She had no idea. At first it had started as a distraction and a release while he commuted to and from work, he said, but he started winning and got a buzz from it. So he kept playing. But then his winning streak changed, which meant his commitment to playing only increased. He had to win back what he had lost. He would stop as soon as that happened.

  The money he stole from Hannah was always to pay for food shopping or dinners out, or even gifts for her, he told her. To be able to afford them while his bank balance slowly dripped away down the gambling sink. He always used his bank card for the gambling – he found it important to make this distinction, as though it made it somehow better. For Hannah, it made it much, much worse.

  When Hannah saw her ten-pound note in his hand in that bar, she thought it was something that had only happened a few times. But it turned out it had been going on for most of their relationship: she just didn’t notice it until she was suddenly really struggling for money and very aware of every ten pounds, every twenty pounds. He had used her bank card for so many online transactions (he kept them small so she wouldn’t notice) that he admitted he knew the numbers by heart.

  By the time their relationship ended Jaheim shamefacedly guessed he had stolen several hundred pounds from her.

  In the café, Hannah winces as she thinks about the stolen money and Jaheim’s deception. He has promised to pay her back in instalments. He seems genuine about it, so she hopes that in a few months she will have regained the money. But that fact gives her next to no comfort.

  Over the past few weeks since they broke up, she has spent a lot of time wondering how she let it get to that point, how she was so blind to what was happening. But she knows the answer. She loved him. And for her, it became more than just a relationship. She had been feeling so lost when she met him, so unsure of herself and her future, that he became her whole life.

  Hannah feels suddenly filled with an overwhelming desire to apologise to Mona for the way she behaved while she and Jaheim were dating. She hadn’t thought about it at the time, but looking back she can see that her obsession made her at times forget her friend and the impact that her new relationship might be having on her. The pain of the break-up might still be fresh, but enough time has passed for Hannah to now be able to see that she should have behaved better and to want to make it right with Mona. She thinks about the dinner she plans to invite Mona to, the one that was originally supposed to be her anniversary celebration with Jaheim. Perhaps they can have a proper heart-to-heart then. She will apologise and tell Mona how foolish she feels. And that’s when she will suggest the trip to Paris, Hannah suddenly decides. She’ll tell Mona that she wants to spend some proper time with her, that she loves her and values her as a friend and wants to make things right.

  And as Hannah thinks it, she feels a rush of guilt for the crossword book and money in her apron pocket. What was she thinking? She is not Jaheim. She took the money in a moment of weakness, taking advantage of a brief opportunity and thinking about how much that money would mean to her. But it’s not hers, and she doesn’t want to steal or lie. Because it’s the deception that hurt her most about the endings with Sam and Jaheim. They kept things from her and lied to her and she never wants to be like them.

  Hastily she withdraws the stolen crossword book from her apron pocket. Searching beneath the counter, she finds a large envelope and slips the book inside. Before sealing it, she suddenly reaches for her own bag, stashed beneath the counter beside sacks of coffee beans. She glances briefly towards Eleanor, who is back from her break, but she is busy serving a customer at a table in the corner. Crouching, Hannah rifles through her purse, finds a couple of notes from last week’s wages and slips these carefully alongside the others that were there inside the crossword book. Then she seals the envelope and places it in the lost property box, alongside a single glove, a pair of keys with a pom-pom key ring that have been there for months, a baby’s dummy and a silver card holder stuffed with business cards that was dropped by one of the morning’s customers.

  Standing again, she writes a note addressed to Mona and secures it to the front of the till so she won’t miss it when she starts her shift. She will tell her about it too and describe the young man to her so she knows who to look out for, but just in case they are caught in a rush and don’t have time to talk, this note will be here for her.

  Now, every time the café door opens Hannah looks up quickly, hoping it will be the young man in the green hoody so she can hand over his lost book and the money. She scans the faces beyond the window too, hoping to see a flash of green outside so she can rush up to him and right the wrong she committed easily, but which now gnaws at her like the residue of a bad dream that won’t disappear with the brightening day. But he never comes. Instead, the café starts to fill with workers taking their morning coffee break, heading here for their dose of caffeine administered in a paper cup, before disappearing into the many buildings that spread out around Stella’s and on into the sprawling streets of the city.

  And in the middle of the café the two young men with the red suitcase hold hands across the table. They have been like that for a long time now, gripping tightly but saying nothing, as though they are each other’s lifebelts and if they simply hold on, eventually the choppy seas will calm or someone will come and rescue them.

  11.00 a.m.

  Joe and Haziq

  ‘Fuck it,’ says Haziq.

  Joe looks up in shock. It is the first thing either of them has said in over an hour, since they watched Haziq’s coach pull up opposite the café and then roll away again, and since they looked up at the clock and realised that check-in for his flight would now be closed.

  ‘What?’ says Joe.

  Haziq is standing up and in a moment of panic Joe wonders if he is leaving now after all, if he has decided to catch the next coach to the airport and to try to buy a new ticket. He thought he would be able to say goodbye, but after hours of sitting together in silence, watching time passing, he realises he is incapable. He cannot let him go, he cannot say goodbye.

  But Haziq isn’t leaving, instead he bends down. Joe wonders if he dropped something and looks down on the floor, but when he looks up again Haziq is kneeling, his eyes meeting Joe’s.

  ‘Joe,’ Haziq says, reaching out and taking Joe’s hands, wrapping them in both of his, ‘
I want you to marry me.’

  Joe’s mouth grows dry, his head is spinning. He notices that the two waitresses and a line of customers by the till have turned to watch them. He doesn’t care.

  ‘I want you to marry me,’ Haziq repeats, without looking at the others in the café, oblivious to the fact they are all staring at him. He looks only at Joe. Haziq’s eyes are damp and he quickly wipes at them before returning his hands to Joe’s lap. ‘I want you to marry me, and not because of immigration laws or the fact I am being forced to leave. I want you to marry me because I have never met a kinder man than you, because there is no greater happiness in my life than waking up next to you, and because I don’t believe I could ever meet a better friend, a better partner, than you.’

  Joe feels his eyes filling too and he lets the tears fall. Haziq holds his hands tightly and continues, his voice shaking.

  ‘I want you to marry me because the thought of a life without you in it doesn’t seem like a life at all. And I know what you’ll be thinking, because I know what I said earlier, but I was stupid. I was just scared, but after sitting here with you I’ve realised that nothing is scarier than the thought of leaving you.’

  Joe finds himself sobbing with the strength of someone who has just been broken and put back together again.

  ‘What do you say?’ says Haziq, wiping his eyes again.

  Joe takes a deep breath.

  ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘Of course I will.’

  As he leans forwards to kiss Haziq his ears buzz with the sound of cheering.

  Hannah

  She watches the proposal from the coffee bar, speechless and smiling. Throughout her five years working in the all-night café she has seen many things, some that have made her laugh and smile, others that she wishes she could forget. But she has never seen a proposal. She notices that Eleanor is staring at the couple too and when their eyes meet they find themselves suddenly sharing a hug. Hannah has never hugged her young colleague before, but it feels necessary somehow – she wants to share this happy moment with someone. They step away from each other, both looking slightly surprised at the sudden physical contact, but happy too.