The 24-Hour Café

by Libby Page

  ‘Yes, I suppose she does,’ she replied, forcing herself to smile. But she had peered at the squashed face in her arms and seen a stranger.

  When they left the hospital her husband squeezed her tightly with one arm, the carrier held carefully in the other. He looked ahead but she stopped to look over her shoulder, expecting to see the nurses running after her. They were stealing a baby; how could no one be chasing them? But no one came; they let them carry the bundle of blankets and soft, crinkled flesh out the hospital doors and to the taxi rank outside.

  Ella. Her name is Ella. Monique’s mother cried when she told her they had chosen her name for their daughter.

  ‘My darling daughter,’ she said, kissing her cheek, ‘And now my darling granddaughter. Thank you.’

  Monique closes Facebook and opens her messages. She pauses, her hand hovering over the keypad. Since Ella was born Monique has half-written texts to her mum so many times but never sent them. ‘Mum, I’m not coping.’ She types it into her phone again now just to stare at the words she hasn’t let herself say out loud and can’t imagine ever saying to her mother’s face. She reads the words over and over again.

  Monique always wanted a baby. When she was a little girl she pushed toy dolls in prams like her friends, but her desire didn’t go away when most of her friends moved on to other interests: travelling and men who made excellent lovers but would be terrible husbands. Monique carried the yearning for a baby inside her, keeping it quiet when it didn’t feel appropriate. It felt like a dirty secret when she talked with her friends about careers and ambitions – she didn’t dare tell them that one of hers was not new or pushing boundaries, but thousands of years old and tightly woven into the fabric of her body.

  She expected her first moment with her daughter not to be a meeting, but to feel like a reunion. She imagined she would know the small face, the tiny fingers and toes, instantly and almost as well as her own body. This was the shadow that had followed her whole life, the being she had carried for nine months – the wish she had held for much longer.

  When she came face to face with a stranger it rocked her. This was not how it was supposed to be. In her lifelong imaginings it had never occurred to her that maternal love might not come to her as easily as breathing. She took it completely for granted that she would love her child. North is north and south is south, the sun rises and always sets, and mothers love their children.

  Monique drinks her coffee and looks around the café. She stares up at the stuffed bear in the top hat and wonders if he has a name. She imagines it would be something old fashioned and noble. Beside her, customers sit in booths and at bar stools sipping coffee, but she barely registers their faces.

  She pictures her mother at home with Ella, holding her in her strong arms and rocking her to sleep. After a while she picks up her phone again and types one more time the words: ‘Mum, I’m not coping.’

  Her finger hovers over the ‘send’ button as buses pull up and move away outside the window and workers disappear into the belly of Liverpool Street station.

  Mona

  ‘Is that your daughter?’ Mona asks. As she cleans tables around the customer with the curly hair she can’t help but notice the photograph.

  The woman looks up, startled. Mona gestures at the key ring attached to a bunch of keys placed on the table. Inside the small plastic frame is a photo of a new-born baby wearing a pink knitted hat.

  ‘She’s very cute,’ says Mona, placing a jug of water and a cup on the woman’s table and wiping the one beside it.

  The woman looks at the photograph and studies it closely, as though trying to work something out.

  ‘Yes, I suppose she is,’ she says.

  ‘Lots of sleepless nights then?’ says Mona, working her way to the next table but turning back to listen for the woman’s response.

  ‘You could say that,’ replies the woman. She is silent after that and Mona, not wanting to push it, smiles and nods.

  ‘Just shout if you want anything else, OK?’ she says. As she turns to leave she notices the woman type something on her phone and hears the small noise indicating she has just sent a message. As she puts her phone down her shoulders sink and Mona notices a very slight smile on her face, but it looks grim, not happy.

  ‘Can we pay our bill?’ says a voice and Mona looks up – it is one of the two men sat at the booth. They have been here a while, eating cake and talking.

  ‘Of course!’ says Mona, hurrying over with the card machine. As the two men pay (they split the bill fifty-fifty) she notices that they both have the same tattoo on their forearms: a small anchor.

  ‘Thanks,’ says one of the two men, pulling on a grey hooded jumper, the tattoo disappearing under its sleeve. At the door, Mona watches as the two men hug each other, holding one another firmly. They stay like that for a moment then pat each other hard on the shoulders before parting.

  ‘Let’s not leave it this long next time,’ says one of the men.

  ‘We say that every time,’ says the other.

  ‘Isn’t that what being an adult is?’ says the other, ‘Saying “it’s been ages” on repeat until you die?’

  They both laugh, and shake hands, before opening the door and stepping outside. They turn in opposite directions down the street and then are gone. At the table on the other side of the room the woman with the photograph of her baby in a key ring stands, drops a handful of coins onto the table and looks around once more before leaving.

  ‘Good evening, good evening,’ comes a distinctive female voice a few moments later. Mona looks up at the elegant woman in her seventies who is stepping inside, grey hair set in curls as usual, dressed in the retro style she always favours. Tonight, it is a pair of high-waisted black jeans, a red and white top and a silk scarf around her neck. Mona smiles at Stella, the café’s owner, trying to calm her breathing and her heartbeat which has suddenly started to race as she tries to work out how to break her news to her. Stella is one of those people who has what Mona’s dance teachers would have called ‘presence’. Despite her age and her petite stature she fills the room with simply the sense of her.

  ‘Quiet tonight?’ Stella says, looking around at the tables which are empty apart from an elderly man drinking a cup of tea in one corner, and a quiet couple who sit near the back of the café, not talking to one another. Mona follows Stella’s gaze around the room.

  ‘It was busier earlier,’ she says. And there were also two full-blown arguments here today, Mona thinks but does not say. She feels ashamed suddenly about the outbursts, imagining what Stella would think if she’d overheard them and seen the customers turning to look at the spectacle.

  Stella wipes a hand over one of the tables. Her fingernails are painted red, silver bangles jangling on her slim wrist.

  ‘I’m thinking of redecorating in here,’ she says, casting her eyes around the signs, the lamps, and up at Ernest the bear.

  ‘Really?’ says Mona, surprised. The café feels like an extension of Stella herself; Mona knows that she personally picked out everything in here, some pictures coming from her own home when she first opened the café many years ago and had little money to decorate. The pictures stayed, and over the years more and more things have joined them too, adding to the busy, eclectic nature of the place. It is not to everyone’s taste, Mona knows that, but it is Stella’s. It’s her name above the door and her place inside too.

  ‘Oh. I don’t know though,’ Stella says, walking between the tables until she reaches the bar, where she slips gracefully onto one of the stools. ‘I probably never will.’ By now the café must seem too familiar to change; Mona assumes it will stay exactly the way it is as long as Stella is here to run it. There is no question of her ever retiring.

  Mona pauses, knowing she has to tell Stella that she is leaving but wanting to stay talking about decorating instead.

  ‘Anything to report from t
oday then?’ says Stella, ‘Tricky customers? Running low on anything? Everything OK with the food?’

  Stella does most of her ordering and admin from her home but pops in regularly to check up on things. She has no children to take over from her, but even if she did, Mona doubts she would give up control that easily. Stella looks at Mona, her hands neatly folded on the table, waiting for Mona’s reply.

  ‘It’s all been fine,’ Mona says, her mouth dry, ‘Just a typical day really.’

  She feels the words catching in her throat. It hasn’t been a typical day, not for her. It’s a day when everything has changed, when her life and its direction has altered completely.

  Stella nods, happy with Mona’s answer.

  ‘So how are you then?’ she asks.

  Mona looks at Stella, her boss of five years who has always been so fair and considered, who has let her have the flexibility she so needs in order to support her other life. And with a great surge of feeling she realises she has let her down.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ she says suddenly, blurting out the words she knows she should have said the moment Stella arrived. ‘I had an audition for a role with a contemporary dance company and I should have told you but I never expected I’d get it. The job is in Paris, it starts in two weeks, but I’d really like to leave sooner so I can pack and get everything ready. I know that gives you hardly any notice though, I’m so sorry.’

  She stops, breathless. Stella is frowning, her red-painted lips pursed. She pauses for a long time before saying anything and Mona watches her, desperate to hear what she will say, feeling terrible.

  ‘Hmm,’ Stella says eventually, ‘It’s going to be tough to find a new member of staff at such short notice. Especially someone like you, of course. I’ll have to speak to Hannah, Eleanor and Sofia about picking up extra shifts.’

  Mona shifts uncomfortably on the spot.

  ‘I’m honestly so sorry to let you down,’ she says, ‘I wish I could say that I could stay longer, or that I didn’t have to go, but …’

  ‘Oh, you must go!’ says Stella suddenly, her tone changing, her eyes meeting Mona’s, ‘Yes, it’s a loss for us and it means things to sort out, but it’s wonderful for you. Of course you must go. Congratulations, Mona.’

  Stella smiles now and Mona smiles too, only realising she’d been holding her breath as it escapes from her in a sigh. She still feels guilty but Stella’s enthusiasm, and her understanding, come as a relief.

  Stella pauses for a moment, gazing around the café. Mona scans the room too, checking to see if either of the tables need anything, but they are both quiet and seem content, and don’t catch Mona’s eye when she looks in their direction. Stella’s eyes have a somewhat faraway look to them, and as she turns back to Mona they seem suddenly to sparkle.

  ‘You know,’ Stella says in a soft voice, ‘I used to be a dancer too.’

  Mona raises her eyebrows; she had no idea. Looking at Stella now she can suddenly see it though: her petite, slender frame, the elegance to her movements.

  ‘You never said anything!’ Mona says. She has worked for Stella for five years and has often told her about auditions and shows that she needs to change shifts to accommodate. And yet Stella has never once mentioned that she shares her passion.

  ‘Oh, it was a very long time ago now,’ says Stella, looking up at Ernest the bear before turning her eyes back to Mona, ‘I stopped decades ago, when I was just a little older than you.’

  ‘What made you stop?’ asks Mona. She tries to picture Stella at her age, dancing on a stage, and finds it surprisingly easy to do. Mona can tell she must have been a wonderful dancer – it’s that presence that she had always noticed. But she can’t believe she had never before guessed that Stella was once a performer. It makes complete sense now.

  Stella’s face suddenly grows serious as she considers the question. Eventually she answers.

  ‘I grew tired of waiting to see my name in lights,’ she says.

  Mona thinks of the sign that hangs outside above the café door: ‘Stella’s’ written in large, glowing letters. As though knowing exactly where Mona’s thoughts have gone, Stella laughs quietly.

  ‘I do love it here,’ she says, looking around again at the café that she has created and that Mona thinks has so much of her on the walls, in the atmosphere. ‘It started as a new chapter to my life that I never expected. But over time it has become the main story in my life. I have now run this café for far longer than I ever danced. I’m happy, and I like that I’ve made somewhere that people can come whatever the time of day or night. Where they can get pancakes at midnight. I like the possibility of it all – that the city might be dark and cold but we are always here, ready to serve coffee and cake and to be a meeting point for lovers, for friends, for colleagues. To me, it’s a bit like the city itself – lives brushing up against one another, always something happening somewhere.’

  Stella pauses again.

  ‘But to say I have no regrets would not be true. I always wondered what would have happened if I’d kept going just a little bit longer. Perhaps my big break was just around the corner but I never reached it, I stopped trying before I got there.’

  She looks at Mona and as Mona looks back she sees her own desires and dreams reflected in the older woman’s eyes.

  ‘So you must go,’ says Stella, fiercely this time, passionately, ‘You must do what you are meant to do.’

  Mona feels her blood pounding inside her, her skin tingling with the feeling she has tried so hard to hold on to over the years – that anything is possible.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, hoping her voice conveys how much she means it, ‘I really am sorry to let you down. But thank you for being so understanding.’

  Stella shrugs and shakes her head slightly.

  ‘We’ll manage,’ she says. She glances around again and then stands up.

  ‘Well, given that it’s so quiet here I think I’ll go,’ she says, ‘I just wanted to check in really, and now I need to start looking for a new waitress.’

  Stella brushes the counter lightly with one hand and then nods at Mona.

  ‘If you do your shifts on Sunday and Monday, and then don’t worry about coming in after that,’ she says. Mona thanks her again and Stella nods.

  ‘I might not see you before you leave, then,’ she says. ‘But good luck in Paris.’

  Mona is out from behind the counter now, Stella standing a little stiffly in front of her. Mona overcomes her own awkwardness and does what she knows she should do – she reaches out and hugs her. She feels the warmth of Stella’s body and smells her perfume – she can’t tell the exact scent but it is classic and has a strength to it, just like Stella. Then the two women step apart, Mona returning to the counter and Stella walking through the café before stepping out onto the street where her name shines above her in bright red letters.

  9.00 p.m.

  Mona

  The door opens on a couple who look a few years younger than Mona. They are both dressed in jeans that are ripped at the knees, old-looking T-shirts and leather jackets. The woman is slightly taller than the man and has a large yellow scarf wrapped around her neck; her partner has a closely shaved head and the bluest eyes Mona has ever seen. Mona would describe them as edgy but in a sort of wholesome way – they look like the sort of couple who attend rock gigs in underground clubs and have friends who own tattoo parlours and bars, but who also shop at Whole Foods and possibly own a dog. They are both smiling but look tired as they sit down heavily at a table close to the door. Aside from them there are only a few other occupied tables: a man in a crumpled suit has ordered fish and chips and types on a laptop; a woman with purple hair who wears a Carphone Warehouse uniform scrolls on her phone and a tall man in a floral dress and red lipstick sits at one of the high tables and orders pancakes.

  The young couple glance briefly at the man in the dres
s and then return to looking at their menus. Mona loves this about the city – it is so full of people that nothing is really that unusual.

  ‘Do you know what you’d like to order?’ says Mona once the couple have had time to read the menu and she has checked on the other customers. The pair lean back in their chairs, leather jackets hung over the backs and their legs stretched out, feet intertwined under the table.

  ‘We’re starving,’ says the man, his blue eyes sparkling as he looks up at Mona, ‘Aren’t we, cabbage?’

  He turns to his girlfriend, who smiles at him.

  ‘So hungry,’ says the woman, a southern lilt to her voice, ‘We’ve been packing all day. Packing and packing and then we realised we’d only gone and packed away all the plates and kitchen stuff. So we thought we’d come out.’

  The couple talk as though Mona has asked them many questions, or as though they are old friends. Mona says nothing, simply holds her pad and listens, nodding every now and then. She feels distracted, thinking about Stella and her former life as a dancer, and about Sofia’s words which she has replayed in her mind over and over but hasn’t fully confronted yet.

  ‘It’s our last night in London,’ says the man, ‘We’re moving to Bristol tomorrow – found a nice little place down there. It’s even got a tumble dryer.’

  Mona can’t help but smile this time. She can’t imagine this man in the scruffy ripped jeans using a tumble dryer.

  ‘Oh, really?’ she says. He grins widely, clearly taking this as an invitation to continue talking.

  ‘Yeah! And a dishwasher! Just a small one, mind, no good for your big pans and that, but great for the everyday stuff, you know?’

  ‘So what’s made you move?’ says Mona, getting into the swing of things. She finds it actually feels good, this mindless chat, it calms all the other things that are spinning around her head. ‘New jobs?’