by Libby Page
Several customers in the café are clapping and a cheer erupts from a table near the bar. The couple blush and smile, both looking a little stunned, their eyes swollen from crying but their faces happy.
Hannah wishes that she had thought to whip out her phone to take a photograph of the proposal – she thinks it’s a moment the couple would be pleased to have captured on camera. But it was so unexpected that she didn’t think of it at the time. She noticed one of the men bending to the floor but assumed he was reaching for something or leaning to stuff a paper napkin under their table to correct a wobble. When he dropped to one knee she could hardly believe it.
Hannah brings the couple two milkshakes on the house, grinning at them as she sets them down on the table. She wishes she could speak to them and ask them dozens of questions about themselves and their lives and their engagement. But she gets the sense that they want to be left alone, so with great restraint she nods at them and returns to the bar.
She is still beaming when she feels her phone buzz in her pocket. She glances across to the coffee counter; Eleanor is serving a woman who wears a shiny red raincoat, despite the fact it long ago stopped raining. She seems to have things under control, and there is no one else waiting, so Hannah discreetly pulls her phone from her pocket. She has received a new email, and she clicks on the icon to open it.
As she does, she feels her head start to spin.
‘We are really sorry but …’
At ‘sorry’ she feels the tears pricking her eyes and a lump forming in her throat. But she fights hard not to let the tears fall. Not here, not on the café floor. With what tiny scrap of energy she has left, she focuses on holding herself together.
The email is from the manager at the hotel who booked her for the upcoming gigs next month. He is writing to tell her that they are going in a new, more modern direction in the bar and as such have decided to go for a different option for their music. They want to attract a younger business crowd and think her jazz style might be too old fashioned. They are sorry, but they will let her know if anything comes up in the future. But Hannah feels suddenly sure that it won’t. They have made up her mind. They don’t want her – she is old fashioned and irrelevant. Although it is just the one hotel and just one gig, it feels suddenly more significant than that. With a clarity and certainty that she has never quite felt before, she feels suddenly certain that if she keeps going, this is the way the rest of her life is going to go. Endless ‘no’s, endless disappointments. And finally, after years and years of trying, she realises she can’t do it any more.
She is still holding her phone, and as she looks down she notices she has received another message, this time a text. Not quite ready to face getting back to work, Hannah opens the message.
‘I GOT THE JOB.’
She stares at her phone and at Mona’s message. Around her, life in the café continues. She can half hear Eleanor speaking to a customer and the quiet chatter of the happily engaged couple with the suitcases. Pablo’s radio in the kitchen competes with the music playing from the café speakers. But Hannah is frozen to the spot, gripping her phone tightly and staring at the screen.
It takes all her strength to type a reply.
‘That’s amazing,’ she writes. ‘We’ll celebrate later. I’m so proud of you. H xx’
And she is proud of her friend. She knows how hard Mona works – ever since Hannah has known her Mona has been driven to the point of obsessiveness, practising far longer than Hannah thinks she really needs to and spending spare hours and money on dance classes. But she also aches.
‘Excuse me,’ comes a sharp voice, ‘Can you put your phone away and take my order?’
A woman in a pale grey trouser suit is staring at Hannah, a hand on one hip and the other tightly clutching the bag slung over her arm.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Hannah, quickly putting the phone in her pocket and returning to the counter.
‘What can I get you?’
‘A black Americano,’ says the woman in a clipped voice.
As Hannah makes the coffee, her mind circles around and around the same collection of thoughts. Jaheim, and how he lied and Hannah was fooled by him. The message from the hotel, her mind sticking on the phrases, ‘we’re sorry’, and ‘old fashioned’. Baby Mabel, and Hannah’s mother who might never become a grandmother. Mona, and how her career has suddenly leapt forwards at the same time that Hannah’s has come to an end.
As she hands the coffee over, the woman in the trouser suit looks down at it and frowns.
‘This has milk in it,’ she says, thrusting the cup back at Hannah, ‘I asked for a black Americano.’
Eleanor flashes Hannah a glance, but when Hannah says nothing she returns to the customer she had just been serving, an elderly man with a dachshund poking its head out of a bag on his shoulder. Hannah makes the woman’s coffee again, thinking about the thousands of coffees she must have made here over the years, and wondering what it has all been for.
12.00 p.m.
Hannah
Hannah can hear Pablo clattering in the kitchen, chopping and slicing, bacon hissing on the pan. It is the start of the lunch rush, two hours of madness in which the café heaves with local office workers. Many queue for takeaway sandwiches; others sit in groups or alone, heads leant over books or phones on the table.
In one corner a pair of older men conduct what looks like an interview with a younger man. A sandwich lies abandoned in front of him as he talks quickly, moving his hands in front of him as he does. Every now and then he moves as if to reach for the sandwich, but one of the other men will always ask him another question making him straighten back up again. Sweat is starting to darken his shirt beneath his arms.
At steady intervals Pablo brings a plate of food through from the kitchen and rests it on the counter, saying the name of the dish loudly as he does so.
‘Fish and chips!’
‘Fried eggs on toast with a side of bacon!’
‘Pastrami sandwich no pickles.’
Eleanor and Hannah work quickly, trying to keep up with the queue and the orders. Hannah can feel her hands shaking and her feet burning with the pain of twelve hours of standing, but she knows she can’t stop. Her shift may be over, but she can’t leave until Mona arrives, and even then, in a rush like this she is unlikely to go until the queue has died down. She works as if in a trance. One or two people complain – she burns the milk on one order and adds normal milk instead of soya milk to another. She never usually makes mistakes like this and is aware of Eleanor looking concernedly in her direction. But she doesn’t care.
When Mona arrives, Hannah is so busy that all she can do is look up and flash her a quick smile before returning to the coffees she had been making. She is working the counter now, with Eleanor doing table service, and it’s hard to keep up with the orders on her own. After a moment Mona is at her side, apron tied around her waist. She places a hand briefly on Hannah’s back and then turns to the queue.
‘Who’s next, please?’ Mona says brightly. The queue shuffles forward slightly, and for a while the two of them work silently alongside each other, taking lunch orders and making coffees. It feels strange to have Mona suddenly here. It may only have been twelve hours since Hannah last saw her, but it seems as though so much has changed. She is not the same person who danced with Mona at midnight. Her eyes glance at the clock: it is now midday so her shift has technically ended, but she knows she can’t leave Eleanor and Mona during this rush and besides, she needs to speak to Mona and ask her about the job, and perhaps tell her about her own cancelled gigs (she hasn’t decided yet how much she wants to say).
Finally, the queue subsides slightly and Hannah makes the most of the pause to do what she knows she should do – hug Mona tightly. Mona feels a little stiff beneath her arms, but after a second she relaxes and squeezes Hannah back.
‘I’m so happy for yo
u,’ Hannah says once she has released Mona, ‘It’s so exciting.’
She forces herself to say the words she knows she should, rather than exactly what she feels. She wants to be there for her friend, but it is hard.
‘Thank you, I’m excited too,’ replies Mona, but her voice is somewhat flat. Hannah wonders why she isn’t being more expressive, but presses on, trying her best to be supportive.
‘I want to hear all about it,’ she says.
Mona pauses. She looks down at her apron, thrusts her hands in her pockets and then removes them again, fiddling with her watch strap. Hannah notices that her cheeks are flushed.
‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ Mona says slowly.
A very short man with very blue eyes and a piercing in his eyebrow approaches the counter.
‘Can I get an all-day breakfast wrap to go,’ he says. Despite his stature, his voice is incredibly loud and makes Hannah jump slightly. She gives a quick look at Mona, trying to work out her expression, but Mona is looking down at her apron.
‘Of course,’ Hannah says to the man with the eyebrow piercing, passing the order through to Pablo.
Peering over the head of the short man is a tall teenage girl who wears her height apologetically. A long fringe hangs in front of one eye. Hannah notices a blue badge on her coat that says ‘Please offer me a seat’ and recognises it as one of the badges available from Transport for London. Without meaning to, Hannah finds herself wondering at the young woman’s story and what unseen battle she must be fighting with her body. She hopes that, despite the badge, she is winning.
‘What can I get you?’ Hannah says. The young woman orders a latte and a ham and cheese toastie and takes a seat at one of the bar stools. As Hannah deals with the order she is very aware of Mona standing next to her, fiddling with her watch and tucking strands of her hair behind an ear, untucking it and then tucking it behind again. Hannah knows her well enough to know that she looks nervous and it confuses her. She should be happy, shouldn’t she? Hannah feels a stab of annoyance that she can’t control – why isn’t Mona happy? Hannah would give anything for a break like that, but Mona seems somehow distracted, as though she doesn’t care.
When the sudden rush has died down Hannah turns to Mona again.
‘So, what is it?’ she asks, less softly than before.
Mona looks up and meets Hannah’s eyes with hers.
‘The job,’ she says, ‘It’s in Paris.’
Hannah’s stomach drops and she stops still. Mona is staring at her, waiting for her to say something. But she doesn’t know what to say, because there is nothing to say. She is so shocked and overwhelmed that all she can do is repeat ‘Paris’ over and over in her head.
‘What?’ Hannah says eventually. It’s all she can muster. She feels as though she is spinning and reaches for the counter without thinking. She can hear her heart beating loudly in her ears.
‘The job is in Paris,’ says Mona.
In an instant the reality of what is happening hits Hannah. Mona is leaving. And Hannah will be truly on her own again. She suddenly feels overwhelmed by the smell of scrambled eggs coming from the kitchen. It is all she can smell and she feels sick. Her feet give a sudden sharp burst of pain.
‘Paris?’ Hannah says, unable to think of anything else to say.
‘Paris,’ Mona repeats.
Hannah wants to say more but a woman with a pinched-looking face is standing at the counter and audibly tapping her foot on the linoleum.
‘I’ll get this,’ Mona says quietly to Hannah before turning to the woman and smiling her best waitress smile.
‘What can I get you?’
As Mona serves the woman, who answers her phone part-way through ordering and speaks to both Mona and the person on the phone seemingly at the same time, Hannah stares around the café. As she does so, she suddenly sees it with fresh eyes. Instead of looking cosy and amusingly ironic, the fake leather booths and retro decorations appear tacky and old fashioned, not in a cool authentic way, but in a tedious, predictable one. The smell of the scrambled eggs seems even stronger although she can’t even remember anyone actually ordering them. She notices the grease stains on her apron and a line of dirt under her fingernails that she hadn’t seen before; she isn’t sure where it came from. Outside a dog shits on the pavement and its owner walks quickly away, ignoring the shouts of John the Big Issue seller that Hannah can hear even through the café window and above the drone of the traffic.
She stares back inside the café full of strangers. For years she has told herself this is just a passing phase, a part-time job to support her other work, her real work. Hannah suddenly sees herself and the life she leads as ridiculous.
‘So, what, you’re moving out then?’ she says when Mona has finished with the customer. She tries to keep the tremble out of her voice but it is hard, she feels as though the ground is shaking beneath her feet.
Hannah already knows the answer but it still rocks her to see Mona nodding slowly. Her face looks pained but Hannah pretends not to see this. It allows her anger more room to grow if she doesn’t. She realises that for years she has fought against anger, choosing sadness instead. When she found out that Sam and Jaheim had been lying to her, she felt awful, but not angry at first. And after every failed audition or cancelled gig she has taken it as a reflection on her and her abilities, each disappointment knocking away at her self-confidence. But suddenly she feels a fiery explosion of anger, finally erupting after all these years.
‘I start the job in two weeks,’ Mona says, ‘I’ll pay my rent until the end of the month though.’
A jolt of panic flashes through Hannah’s body. She pictures the flat they have shared together for four years, the place that might not be perfect but that feels like home. Now she imagines herself peeling their pictures down from the walls and packing her things into boxes, to go where? Where will she go? She can’t stay in the flat alone – she couldn’t afford it and can’t imagine someone else moving in. It would be too strange, too sad. Mona’s room is Mona’s room. No one else could possibly live there. And she suddenly can’t bear it all any more – the café, the rejections, the city itself. She realises she has absolutely no idea what she is going to do next.
‘Well, thanks for all the fucking notice,’ she says, surprising herself with the sharpness of her voice. This is not her, she hates arguments and she loves her friend. And yet it is her, all her pain and disappointment materialising itself in a sudden rage.
She spots a shift in Mona’s face, a hardening as sadness turns to irritation. She knows Mona’s expressions better than her own, having witnessed the whole spectrum of them throughout their friendship. She is angry too.
‘I thought you’d be happy for me,’ Mona says tersely.
Part of Hannah wants to tell Mona about the cancelled hotel gigs and her own realisation that her career is over. Maybe it would help Mona to understand why her news has hit her so hard, that it isn’t that she isn’t happy for her, but that she is falling apart.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she says instead, feeling her voice growing louder.
Mona shudders a little as though shaking off something uncomfortable that previously sat on her shoulders. One of the customers looks up at the two waitresses but then looks back at his phone.
‘We don’t talk about our auditions, you know that. We never do.’
‘Yes, but when you audition for a job in fucking Paris, that’s something you tell me. When you’re thinking about leaving the country and moving out of our flat, that’s something you tell me.’
Hannah feels herself getting more and more agitated. She hears her voice and how irrational it sounds but finds she can’t control it. How can she tell Mona that their friendship, and their home together, felt like the only good thing in her life? The words are there, beneath the surface, but she can’t reach them. They seem absur
d, embarrassing, pointless. Mona has made her decision – she is leaving.
Hannah senses more of the customers looking at the two of them. She tries to smile reassuringly at the room as though it is an audience, but her face won’t quite twist the way she wants it to. Mona has her head down and is wiping the counter. When she speaks again it is in a quieter voice and without looking up from the coffee bar.
‘It’s a permanent role with a contemporary dance company I’ve admired for years,’ says Mona, ‘These jobs just don’t come around, and certainly not at this stage in my career. I’m not twenty-one any more. So to find something like this, something with security, where I’ll be able to do what I love every day instead of serving coffee to strangers …’
Hannah flinches at her words, realising that for the past four years she has been deluding herself. She is not a singer/waitress. She is a waitress. She makes coffee for people whose stories she will never know.
‘You don’t understand what it’s like as a dancer,’ Mona continues, ‘Every year that passes it becomes less and less likely that I’m going to make it. I stand next to these women in auditions – these girls really – and I realise I’m old. I’m only thirty but to them I am ancient. Every time I go to another audition I tell myself that perhaps it should be the last one, that perhaps it’s time to give up on the dream. It’s just too painful to keep trying and failing. Most people do jobs they are indifferent to at best, often that they hate. Why should I be different? But despite it all it doesn’t go away, that aching to live another kind of life, to spend my day doing the only thing I’ve ever felt actually good at, the only thing that makes sense, the thing that feels as normal to me as breathing. I want it so much it feels like a physical pain sometimes. I know that some people don’t understand that, but it’s how it feels. And this could be my last shot. After this it might be too late for me. So I don’t care that the job’s in Paris. If it was in Australia I’d still go.’
