The 24-Hour Café

by Libby Page

  He pulls apart from her and rests his large, callused hands on her shoulders, his familiar, warm face looking intently at her.

  ‘Chiquita, I’m so proud of you,’ he says, his bright eyes shining, faint wrinkles creasing.

  Mona swallows hard as she thinks about saying goodbye to Pablo and also realises that these are the words she so desperately wanted Hannah to say.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says in a serious tone, her energy focused on keeping calm. She hopes he knows her well enough to know that she means to say so much more than this but just can’t find the words.

  ‘If we don’t work another shift together you’ll come in and say goodbye before you leave, won’t you?’ he says, and as he does so it hits Mona for the first time that she will actually be leaving. In the excitement of the job offer and then the turbulent argument with Hannah she hasn’t had time to really think about the reality of leaving the café, the flat and the city that is so familiar to her.

  ‘Of course,’ she replies, blinking back tears.

  ‘Can I sit here?’ a woman asks, pointing at a table close to the bar. Mona settles her face in a calm expression and waves goodbye to Pablo, who is heading to the door, while answering the customer.

  ‘Please, do,’ she says, as the door shuts behind Pablo. The sound makes her flinch slightly.

  She turns her attention to the customer, who is dressed in office wear and carries a large scrapbook under her arm with bits of paper and fabric peeking out at the edges. She is wearing a blue coat, and the hand that isn’t wrapped around the scrapbook grips a black and white polka-dot umbrella. Mona spots the glint of an engagement ring on the hand that holds the umbrella. She watches for a moment as the woman sits down and places the book on the table, staring intently out the window.

  ‘I’ll give you a minute and then come and take your order,’ Mona says, but the woman doesn’t reply, she simply nods and continues looking ahead, out at the view that Mona knows so well that if she were to close her eyes it would still be there, every detail clear in her mind.

  Sonja

  The forecast is for rain. Not just gentle showers, but torrential, pouring, flooding rain. She has checked both BBC weather and the Met office once every hour for the past three days. The local weather station has issued high alert flood warnings.

  Sonja looks out the window of Stella’s and the view backs up the prediction. Perfectly on cue, the grey clouds break and a sudden downpour soaks the street. On the pavement outside the café the man selling the Big Issue looks to the sky and opens a pink umbrella above his head. The street becomes suddenly more colourful as around him pedestrians reach into bags and pull out their umbrellas too. Others simply dash.

  Sonja’s blue coat hangs on the back of her chair, her black and white polka-dot umbrella tucked in the pocket in anticipation of this sudden downpour.

  ‘Who organises a wedding on a flood plain?’ she says to herself, dropping her phone heavily on the table and taking a long sip of the strawberry milkshake she ordered from the dark-haired waitress. It is candyfloss pink and is nearly solid with ice cream, condensation forming on the glass in tiny droplets. She had been trying to be good ahead of the wedding, being prone to breakouts, but there doesn’t seem to be much point any more.

  When Timur proposed, she knew immediately where she wanted to get married. They both did. There was never any question that it would be anywhere other than at her parents’ house, the marquee set up on the lawn at the bottom of the garden, by the river.

  His parents still live in Turkey and they were never very close anyway, but Sonja’s mum and dad treat him like he is their own. It’s one of the things she has always felt proudest of about them – how openly they had welcomed him into their family. It must have been hard, her being their only daughter. Sonja imagines having a daughter and her bringing home their partner – she thinks she would probably take a while to warm to them.

  It had taken a while for her to warm to Timur herself. They met at the media agency where they both worked. She took her job very seriously. He didn’t. It used to annoy her that he would leave at five on the dot while she was still in the office, often till gone ten o’clock. Just seeing him the next morning infuriated her because of that. But when her mum called her at work to tell her that they’d had to put down Bertie, the family dog whom Sonja had loved since she was a teenager, Timur was the only one who stopped and comforted her when he spotted her crying on a step on the fire escape. He sat with her and listened patiently, not once making her feel embarrassed about her tears, or suggesting that Bertie was only a dog. Instead, he told her about Sage, the pet cat of his childhood who had died not long after he left Turkey for London. Once she had stopped crying, they talked a little more about themselves – asking for the first time questions that weren’t just related to work. She learnt that he was passionate about cooking and had always wanted to be a chef but did this agency job to earn enough money to help look after his younger sister, who moved to the UK a year ago but was struggling to find permanent work. He left at five o’clock each evening and went home to practise new recipes or invent and perfect his own. She immediately felt bad for having thought he didn’t take his job seriously. Because his real job, his real calling, she found out was elsewhere and not in the office. She regretted having judged him before, and for never having asked the right questions.

  They had become close after that, sharing lunches together and often going for a drink after work. But she said she wouldn’t date someone she worked with – that she had a rule against it because it could get too complicated. So he quit. He moved to another agency and they started dating, and when his sister finally found secure work he left the agency and found a job as a junior chef in a kitchen. Over several years he worked his way up in the kitchen, she moved up in the media agency, and the two of them became inseparable.

  He is the only person who can make her laugh at herself or break her frown into a smile when she is frustrated or anxious. At work she takes pride in being confident, in control and slightly unreachable; behind the door of their flat she clings to him at night and asks him to brush her hair when she is unwell. He always does it very gently, kissing her forehead when he is finished.

  They had been saving for two and a half years for the wedding. When people spot her engagement ring and ask her when she is getting married, at first she felt embarrassed to say how long they had to wait. She wanted it to be sooner, she wanted it to be right now.

  The problem was that she could picture it so clearly. It annoyed her that it made her fall into a female cliché, but she knew exactly what she wanted her wedding to be like, and had imagined every single detail years before she even met Timur. The marquee in her parents’ garden, the flowers by the local florist, Jen (who was her mum’s friend), the food supplied by the local deli and the brunch they would hold in their conservatory the next day with a few of their closest friends. In her head every tiny detail was perfect – meticulously organised and chosen with love and care. She knew that she was lucky that Timur agreed on everything too, but then everything was based around her home and he loved it there nearly as much as she did.

  But now the image of her perfect wedding has disappeared. All she can picture is a marquee floating on a flood plain, tables and chairs submerged in muddy water. They will just have to postpone it.

  Mona

  Mona serves the customer with the scrapbook and deals with another flurry of takeaway lunch orders. Every now and then she catches Eleanor’s eye and knows she should talk to her and apologise for the earlier outburst with Hannah, but they are both busy, Eleanor dealing with customers at their tables and Mona struggling to keep up with the coffee and sandwich orders at the bar. She is still shaken from the earlier argument and from saying goodbye to Pablo, but works hard to remain professional and to keep the emotion from her face. She doesn’t want Eleanor or the customers to see how much she is spinning
inside. She almost laughs at herself as she thinks how typical of her it is – it makes her think of her bedroom back in Haggerston that is immaculate, the tidiness giving her a feeling of order and control that she so desperately craves. It is vital that she stays in control, no matter what is going on behind her calm expression.

  ‘I’ll have two black coffees, two orange juices, two poached eggs on toast and two pancakes with berries,’ says a woman wearing a yellow poncho in a confident American accent, before returning to a table in the corner where a middle-aged man in a similar poncho sits with two small children who point at Ernest the bear and growl at each other before dissolving into giggles. Mona writes very neatly on her pad and passes the order through to Aleksander, who looks up briefly at her before returning to work. Mona wants to apologise for not acknowledging him when he first arrived but has no time – there are customers waiting for her back at the counter.

  A latte and a piece of brownie for a woman with red hair who makes Mona think of Hannah without meaning to, three sandwiches for a man in a pale blue shirt with a neat moustache. She passes two smoothies to a teenage girl wearing a spotty headscarf who holds the hand of another girl with the whitest blonde hair Mona has ever seen and eyelashes that seem almost not there, they are so faint. They nod and move to a table at the back of the café, leaning so close together as they drink that their foreheads almost touch.

  Among the sounds of laugher, the hissing of the coffee machine, Aleksander’s mutterings in the kitchen and the music that fills the room, Mona picks out a flurry of French conversation. It is coming from two men near the back of the queue and she cannot understand what they are saying, but the sound lifts her up and out of the café, taking her back in an instant to three weeks ago when she headed to France for the first audition for the job that would change her life. Suddenly in Mona’s head she is not here in this café on Liverpool Street, she is in Paris on the Rue des Martyrs.

  *

  The charms of Paris reveal themselves slowly at first. As she steps off the train at the Gare du Nord, Mona can’t help but feel disappointed. Ever since she left Singapore for London as a teenager, she has told herself she should make the most of the easy travel to mainland Europe. When she first moved, she pictured herself jetting to European cities for weekends away. But she quickly found that her finances and her schedule – partly dictated by her dance degree and partly due to the self-enforced extra hours of practice – didn’t allow her much in the way of holidays. Then after graduating came the endless juggling of shifts with auditions, classes and shows. It’s a juggling act that she is still performing nine years later, trying hard not to drop any balls. It has meant that over the years she hasn’t had much time for the trips away she dreamed of when she was younger. She has travelled, of course – at twenty-two she spent a year working on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, and there have been a few brief, cheap holidays over the years. But otherwise any spare money goes on occasional flights to Argentina to stay with her father, stepmother and half-brother Matías and to Germany to visit her mother. She feels embarrassed to admit that at the age of thirty, and with a good friend living there, she has still never been to Paris.

  So when she arrives she is full of excitement and yet her feelings are quickly dampened by the busy, somewhat drab reality. The concourse heaves with people rushing in all directions or standing and watching the arrivals and departure boards. Women grip their handbags tightly beneath their shoulders and Mona suddenly realises why – within a few moments she is approached by a man who eyes her bag with overt keenness. She notices groups lurking around the ticket machines too, perhaps waiting for dropped coins or bags left unattended in a moment of opportunity. Mona drags her suitcase quickly behind her and makes her way through the crowds, emerging onto Place Napoléon-III. It isn’t much better here – the streets are thronged with people and she notices similar huddled groups waiting around in a way that she can’t help but find suspicious. It is getting dark and Mona suddenly wishes she had accepted Poppy’s offer to come and meet her, rather than insisting that she could make her way to the apartment by herself.

  Pulling her phone from her bag, she checks quickly to see if there are any messages from Hannah. When she left she felt guilty at first – Hannah and Jaheim only broke up last week and Hannah has been in a daze ever since, calling in sick for work and staying in her room. But alongside the guilt was a flash of something stronger too, a hurt and anger that has built up slowly over the past months. It was that anger that eventually allowed her to shout a final goodbye into Hannah’s room and leave the flat with her suitcase, telling Hannah she was going to visit an aunt who was staying in Dorset for a few days.

  There are no messages from Hannah so Mona looks up Poppy’s address and then zips her phone into an inside pocket of her jacket. As she sets off down the street towards Montmartre she looks up and notices the buildings properly for the first time. The top halves are exactly how she imagined them – pale stone and faded silvery blue roofs, black railings marking balconies here and there. But the bottom halves make her think not of Paris, but of any city in the world. The bright façade of a burger bar, a kebab shop, a chain hotel. Taxis line up outside the station, sounding their horns at pedestrians or other drivers, Mona can’t tell.

  She walks quickly, happy to get away from the station and the rush of noise, people and garish lights flashing outside restaurants and bars. Some streets she walks down are quiet, but then she approaches Anvers metro station and is plunged into the crowds again. Her heart sinks in disappointment when she spots a Pret a Manger on a street lined with tourist shops, tea towels decorated in Eiffel Towers flapping outside their doors. Is this really the place she dreamt of? Is she really willing to leave her home and the life she has built in London for this, however much she likes the sound of the job she will be auditioning for tomorrow? Was this all just a huge, rash mistake?

  But then she catches a glimpse of the Sacre Coeur, the white domes perching on the top of the hill and illuminated by lights, making it look like paper cut out against the night’s sky. The sight of it makes her stop, staring up through the dark garden and the many steps that lead to its doors. Mona can make out the groups of tourists at the top, but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful. And it is undeniably Paris. For the first time since stepping off the train, she feels like she has arrived.

  By the time she finds herself at Poppy and Antoine’s apartment, reached via quieter streets where Mona notes cafés and shops she would like to return to, she is part-way to being charmed by the city but is still not entirely convinced. The flat goes some way towards hooking her. It is on the fourth floor of a building at the top of Rue des Martyrs, reached by an ancient spiral wooden staircase. As Mona climbs the steps she counts the flats, amazed that so many can fit within the one building. Most have mats outside their doors, one has an umbrella stand, another a pram, another a pair of running shoes.

  As she climbs higher, an unexpected sense of nervousness passes over her. It has been a year since she last saw Poppy, on one of Poppy’s visits to London, although they have kept in touch via WhatsApp and Instagram. Poppy was one of the first friends she made at dance college, the warm, funny young woman immediately managing to break down the somewhat cold and stand-offish persona Mona had adopted in order to disguise her fear at leaving her family behind and arriving alone in a new country, in a new city she had never visited. They remained friends throughout their degree, but Poppy had a wide circle and Mona knew she was only ever one of many, many people Poppy cared about. After graduating they saw each other infrequently, often among other people, and then one Halloween Poppy invited Mona to her house for a party and that’s when she met Hannah. Mona’s connection with Hannah was so instant and so firm, that once she’d moved in, jumping at the chance to leave her nightmare flatmates behind, they quickly became closer than Mona had ever been with Poppy. Perhaps it was partly because they both so needed each other’s frien
dship – Hannah had recently split up with her boyfriend and Mona had spent the years since graduating working so hard that she had unintentionally drifted apart from many of her friends. Hannah and Mona threw everything into their new friendship, whereas Poppy was only ever really able to scatter brief, if warm and vibrant, bursts of attention to hers.

  As Mona approaches the door to Poppy’s flat, she feels suddenly very aware of the distance that has grown between them over the years. Perhaps she should have stayed in a hotel this weekend, but when she told Poppy she was coming to Paris, she had insisted Mona stay with her and Antoine. Mona accepted, conscious of how much the trip was already costing her. But now she pauses on the threshold to the flat.

  When she eventually rings the buzzer, Poppy greets her with two kisses, a cheerful ‘Bonjour’ and a huge hug. The warmth of the hug relaxes Mona, making her feel immediately more at ease. Mona has seen photos of Antoine before but has never met him, so she looks at him with some curiosity as she and Poppy untangle themselves from their embrace. He stands a little behind Poppy in the hallway and is a tall, extremely attractive but, Mona can tell immediately, surprisingly shy man. He has a perfectly trimmed beard and dark, long-lashed eyes which flick up to meet Mona’s before looking down again. His hands are plunged in his pockets and Mona nods and smiles at him instead of offering a hug. He nods back and smiles, a look of relief on his face.