“Morning, Han!”
Abbey’s voice cut through the quiet dawn air as Hannah entered through the back door of the cafe that led through the kitchen. The door creaked violently when Hannah pushed herself inside, and she frowned at the hinges as she shook the rain off of her umbrella on the stoop, kicking off her rainboots into a corner of the tiled kitchen and pulled her trainers out of her backpack.
“Remind me to bring some grease for that door,” Hannah said into the dim light of the sleepy cafe, and she watched as Abbey moved about the front of the shop by the espresso machine, turning the dials to make hot water begin to churn from the depths of the steel beast and drip from the portafilters. Hannah reached beside the door and hit the light switch, flickering the small dining area beyond the counter to life and illuminating the cafe.
The smell of cinnamon and butter wafted from the back, and Hannah could just barely see Emil, the cafe’s head baker, bustling to and fro from the large ovens and the stove in the back behind the steel swinging door with the little window at its center. His apron was covered in flour, and he was listening to his usual cacophony of orchestral music off of his little portable radio, moving through the thin hallway of the back kitchen with the grace of a ballerina holding a sheet pan.
Hannah grinned at the sight, and having changed into her dry trainers, she reached for her own apron which was hanging on a hook by the back door just to her right, pulling it over her head and tying it at her waist.
She emerged into the front counter side of the shop to see Abbey frothing milk at the espresso machine’s end, and she smiled wide at the two sets of golden brown espresso shots that were pulling from the machine into tiny glasses sitting upon its grate. Abbey winked at her.
“Early birds get first sip,” she said, flicking off the switch of the steam wand and wiping it clean with a rag. “Grab mugs, will you?”
Hannah turned to grab two green mugs from their place on the shelf just below the counter, and she dumped the espresso shots into them two at a time. Abbey poured the piping-hot milk over the coffee, bringing two exquisite cappuccinos bursting to life in the wee rainy hours of the early morning. “Cheers to spring!” Abbey crowed, clinking her mug against Hannah’s before taking a sip, milk foam dotting her upper lip.
Spring had indeed sprung in London, but it had entered with copious amounts of dreary, gray days. April was almost making its arrival, and yet the world seemed to still want to sleep under the clouds and shining pavement of the city lights. It had been so torrential Hannah hadn’t been able to bike to work for the last few weeks and instead had to take the tube from West Hampstead on the Jubilee line to Westminster, the station where the cafe was only a short walk away from.
Through the front windows of the cafe, Hannah could see puddles accruing all along the blacktopped roads and cobble walkways, each of them alive with movement as far drops disturbed their surfaces. The Abbey (the royal church, not Hannah’s coworker) stood regally up from the flat-top copper roofs a few blocks away, and Hannah could see a cluster of birds taking wing from somewhere high up on its structure as a gust of wind shook the weedy trees in their planters.
The world had just barely begun to rouse—cars lumbered by on the roads as a few other shopkeepers began to unlock their front doors and raise the shades from their windows. Hannah saw Mel, the well-meaning and soft-spoken tailor that often came in for a croissant and macchiato, turn his closed sign to open on his little yellow seam shop from across the way. She made a mental note to bring him his treats if she didn’t see him by ten o’clock; she knew that Mondays were his busiest mornings by far and that he often did not come in time to get his pastry before the cafe sold out. She wandered into the cafe dining area and began to carefully flip the chairs off of their places on the flats of the small square tables, setting them neatly in their spots one by one as she moved through the space. The cafe had added a few more areas to sit over the time Hannah had been there--the large velvet sofa in the corner by the bookshelf was fraying a bit at the edges, but Hannah knew that the owners, Neil and Claire, had gone to great lengths to procure it from a charity shop just down the way when they had seen it through the window.
It was a well-loved little seat, and Hannah had often watched customers settle into it with piles of homework, or a worn paperback from the nearby shelf, or to begin a game of chess with the old carved pieces that sat on the board on the coffee table. Even more so, Hannah had seen a few lovely first dates on that couch--nervous hands holding steaming mugs of coffee and flushed cheeks as the two awkwardly stumbled through conversation--and she had also had the pleasure of watching long-time lovers rest into its cushions, tea in hand, voices low, eyes comfortably contented with their chosen company.
She found herself smiling at the thought, finishing the last of the chairs. A sofa with meaning.
“Good morning, girls!” A cheerful voice broke through the sounds of steaming milk. Hannah turned to see that Emil had emerged from the back with a pan full of steaming cinnamon brioche, the steel door swinging haphazardly behind him. He moved to the counter and set the tray down, and Abbey handed him a mug of strong black tea that she had graciously poured hot milk foam over top of. “Abbey,” he said reverently, placing a hand over his heart dramatically. “I love you for this.”
“Every morning is a new proclamation,” Abbey laughed, swatting at him. Emil was a tall, thin man who had grown up in Brussels. He had spent his last fifteen years living in London, but his thick accent and his strikingly sharp features always made him catch a few admiring glances from the patrons of the cafe, even when approaching his fifties. He was tall and thin, with a nose like a graceful hook and cheekbones that rose high under his deep brown eyes. He had light brown hair peppered with gray, and thin lips that hid a crooked set of dazzling white teeth.
He had grown up in his grandmother’s kitchen, and he credited her to his mastery in culinary arts. Surrounded by the smells of baking bread, herbs from the garden, and freshly picked fruit in the orchards, Emil often spoke of how his grandmother had Hannah had learned through long evenings closing the cafe that Emil had also been a bit of a troublemaker growing up, and he had joined the army in Belgium to straighten out. Becoming a chaplain in his third year of service, he had gone to Congo in the sixties, and after his tour there, he returned to Belgium a rather broken fellow from the harrows of occupation in a heavily politically repressed country by none other than his own.
He had told Hannah over the smell of oven de-greaser and burnt bits of croissant as they cleaned up shops that he returned to Belgium a ghost of a man, turning to liquor to forget his time in the military. His grandmother, upon greeting him at the train station in Belgium when he first arrived back from the front, took one look at him and told him sternly, “don’t unpack yet, kleine vis; you are going to France.”
He left a month later to work at a patisserie in Amiens, owned and lovingly fostered by a dear friend of his grandmother. There, under the careful eye of the seasoned pastry chefs, he learned to take his anger and to place it heartily into the folds of buttered pastry dough. He spent the first ten months making stodgy cakes, burning his croissants, and over-proofing every loaf he attempted to craft.
But slowly, painstakingly so, his grief became a teacher as well. His shame and guilt from war taught him to be grateful to the dough he worked on--to realize that he was capable of creating beautiful things even in the depths of his depression. His work in the bakery began to improve as he approached the work table with gentler hands. The long nights without sleep that used to drive him to drink instead went towards trying to perfect his ratios. The mornings spent stuck in his bed without the energy to force himself to rise suddenly had become the most sacred parts of his day; the times he could go to the patisserie and work on his skills before others arrived. Soon after, he found himself leaning upon the support of his fellow bakers, even traveling with some of them to visit neighboring cities and towns to sample the baked goods and to create friendships with other pastry chefs. The owner of the shop saw him progress, and he entrusted Emil with training other hires. Emil got sober, and shortly after he met his wife, Cassandra, when she came into the patisserie early one morning and tripped in the doorway, falling right into Emil’s arms as he walked by with a bundle of golden mille feuille.
“Hannah, my treasure,” he would say from across the suds of the mopped kitchen floor as she counted the register. “I will never be able to repay what the pastry has given me.”
Emil loved his work, but more important than that, he loved his life. Hannah never saw him frown. Even if it stormed for days, or the oven stopped working halfway through his scones (as it often did), or if he barely made enough money to support Cassandra and their six children in their tiny flat that had a perpetual leak in the roof--Emil was always looking for a reason to smile. He would sing great, boisterous sonnets in the kitchen alongside his tiny portable radio (always turned to either the orchestral station, or the opera grand), and with his hands covered in flour and his mustache trimmed to perfection, he grinned as he crafted his glorious edible creations into being, constantly praising his good fortune to be where he was right at that very moment. He was eccentric, romantic, dedicated, and just about the most genuine man Hannah had ever had the pleasure of meeting in her few short years.
Hannah strode over to the counter where he was bringing out another tray piled with crumbly pecan muffins and piping hot blueberry scones, and she placed a warm hand on his shoulder.
“Another beautiful day,” she grinned.
“Another beautiful day!” He echoed, spreading a hand towards the downpour outside the gray windows. “What a gift this morning is, my girls!”
Abbey and Hannah smiled at one another knowingly--they started every opening shift more or less like this. Hannah helped Emil stack his pastries carefully inside the glass of the display on their respective ceramic platters, and Emil sang in french under his breath as they worked in unison. Hannah marveled at one particularly beautiful row of kouign-amanns, holding one up to her eyes to admire the golden-brown, flaked layers each in their pristine rose pattern.
“Gorgeous, Emil!” She said brightly, and he lit up when he looked at her.
“Thank you, my dear,” he took up the empty trays and turned towards the kitchen door to switch them out for the full trays of eclairs and loaves of lemon frosted coffee cake. “They are the joy of my soul.”
“How was your day off?” Abbey asked her, sliding over to the far end of the espresso machine to nudge Hannah’s arm with her elbow. “What’cha do?”
Hannah began to fill a carafe with hot water to brew chai tea. “I spent most of it studying. In the evening, I went down to Bartrum’s to practice piano and to plan for the garden we are starting next week. Did I tell you that we built a greenhouse a few weeks ago?”
“No! Where?”
“Over by the old shed, sort of off to the side,” Hannah closed the lid on the carafe after carefully scooping heaps of black tea into the mesh and leaving it to steep within. “Bartrum apparently is quite the green thumb. He and I spent hours last night mapping out the rows of vegetables we are going to seed in the planters, and then figuring out how we’re going to set the layout of the greenhouse.”
“Marvelous,” Abbey mused, setting out a few of the bottles of latte syrup. “I’ll have to come over and see it all soon.”
Hannah nodded, “definitely. How’s Midge?”
Abbey beamed, setting a gallon of whole milk on the counter. “She’s wonderful. Her teacher told me last Friday that she’s the best reader in her year. Can you believe that?” Abbey laughed aloud, “at least one of the Hemingway girls is going to be book smart!”
Molly--or ‘Midge’ as she was affectionately called by those who knew her--was Abbey’s beloved five year old daughter. A mess of bright orange curls and a smattering of freckles under green eyes, Midge was the picture of a Scottish belle, just as Abbey was, and how all the women in Abbey’s lineage had been known to be as far back as their heritage documented such things.
Abbey’s mother and father came from out beyond the wild farmlands of Inverness a decade ago with Abbey in tow, and although London was a place with opportunity to be had by all, Abbey had recounted that both her parents worked two jobs each to tirelessly afford their cottage at the edge of New Ash Green.
“I was a difficult one,” Abbey confided in Hannah one evening as she walked with both her and Midge in Kensington Park, the birdsong overhead flitting through the autumn leaves. “I gave ‘em hell for uprooting me from home. Wish I’d known back then.”
Abbey was bullied relentlessly in secondary schooling for her crop of unruly red curls and her rural accent. She took to rejecting all civility in the name of trying to feel something worth holding onto. Amid sprees of shoplifting and clubbing late into the night, It wasn’t long before she had gotten caught up in the wrong crowd, and when she got pregnant with Midge, she was barely seventeen. The boy she’d hooked up with was a year older than her, and when she told him she was late, he told her that if she spoke to him again, he’d have her drowned by his mates on the rugby team.
Her parents hadn’t balked when Abbey--forced to go to them for help when she found the drugstore test showing her two damning little lines over and over again--came clean about her actions. They instead had told her to straighten out, because she was now going to be an adult. If she wanted their help, she needed to prove to them that she was going to do everything in her power to help not only herself, but the child she was now tethered to.
It had been horribly hard, and Abbey had almost given up on carrying Midge to term while she worked as a server at a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria while also keeping her grades up enough to graduate. But two months before her eighteenth birthday, on a balmy August afternoon, Midge arrived on the scene, and Abbey felt her heart swell to bursting in her chest at the first sight of her.
Abbey had told Hannah over a mug of hot tea, “It had all been worth it. And It still is.”
Abbey now worked two jobs during the hours that Midge was at reception schooling--a barista at the cafe and a stenographer at a small law firm--and she and Midge lived at home with her parents at the same little cottage in New Ash Green. She was a miraculously hard worker; she was always the first to arrive to shift and usually the last to leave after ensuring all her tasks at the bar were done.
Although it was rare for her to have a whole day off, in the hours where she wasn’t working, Abbey was one of the most attentive and caring mothers that Hannah had ever come across. She encouraged Midge to do everything--to swim at the rec center, to dance at the after school program, to sing in choir, to cook the traditional Scottish wares alongside her grandmother. She truly believed Midge to be the most incredible creature to ever walk the earth, and in doing so, Midge was growing up in a sturdy kind of love that bred only the strongest sort of women.
Hannah had often gone with Abbey and Midge to such places as the park or the zoo, and she always found herself to be quite amazed at how razor sharp Midge was. She spoke to strangers about their interests, and she often could name the different types of birds in the trees or flowers growing along the paths. She listened to music intensely as it lazed from passing street performers, and she would watch with apt attention at cars driving by in the roads, asking her mother what made them move forward or how the roads had ever come to be paved. She ran with other children at the parks they frequented, and she was faster than most of the boys as she sprinted through the grass in her skirts and cardigans. She climbed the biggest trees she could reach the branches of. She drank out of every hose. She romped after rabbits in the bushes. She would spend long hours seated on a picnic blanket with a stack of children’s books, her mind centered wholly on the stories she had long-learned the letters for.
As a ferociously lovely little girl, she lived her life as voraciously as if she had the whole world set before her for the taking, regardless of her and Abbey’s everyday life. They were certainly not rich, but they were gloriously grateful for their own special kind of wealth that they had cultivated in their home--mother and daughter seemingly against the world--and Midge never spent a moment of her young life without knowing that she was loved.
“She’s going to be six next month,” Abbey continued to Hannah as the girls worked together to set the rest of the cafe up for the imminent morning rush that would occur in only a few short minutes once the clock struck seven. “I want to have a nice party for her with her schoolmates, I think. She’s never had a birthday party where it wasn’t just me and my parents.”
“That sounds absolutely stupendous. Does she know?”
“Nah, I’ll surprise her. She adores a surprise.”
“I can make some decor,” Hannah offered. “Does she still like that big book of fairy tales? Maybe I can make some fairies and some dragons out of construction paper to hang.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“She would love that!” Abbey exclaimed warmly. “You would do that?”
“Of course. Midge is my friend!”
“You’ll come to her party too, though, won’t you?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Hannah laughed, patting Abbey’s arm as she walked behind her towards the register at the other end of the counter. “Let’s plan a day in the next few weeks to craft. I’ll head to the drugstore to get supplies this weekend.”
Emil came through the kitchen door then with the last of the pastries, just as Hannah crossed to the glass front door of the cafe to flip their own closed sign to open. He waved a finger at her in a goodnatured warning.
“Not until they are all settled,” he said with grave humor, motioning to the baked goods as he made to set them into the display. “Let the masses wait for perfection!”
Hannah threw her head back in a laugh, one that could have stopped the rain from falling from the sky should she have wished for it.
---
The morning went by quickly in a blur of espresso and the constant stream of foot traffic that the cafe experienced per its usual Monday. Hannah wandered the cafe counter over and over, taking orders, passing drink tickets to Abbey, grabbing pastries and placing them delicately into paper sacks for the patrons, and calling to Emil to replenish the dwindling display case as his wares were purchased left and right. Hannah loved Mondays--they were the days she was most likely to see all her favorite customers as they traveled into the city center to their day jobs.
She waved constantly at the familiar faces that came and went--Ben the lawyer who loved a black coffee and a piece of shortbread, Alison the stylist who always wore unpractical heels and red lipstick and who loved a large mocha, Daniella the chef at the Italian eatery across the street who would reach over the counter to pat Hannah’s arm as affectionately as if she were her own mother--Hannah loved knowing little bits and pieces of the city through the faces of the people who worked within it. It was like some grand secret that only she could hold onto; the gift of learning even a fraction of a persons’ reality was good fun and gave her an overwhelming pride in what she did day in and day out at the cafe.
She and Abbey worked in harmony to run the bar, and Emil and his pastry assistant, a girl named Ruby, played the orchestral station as loud as it would go on Emil’s portable as they bustled about in the kitchen. People sat at the chairs with their drinks, reading the daily paper or having conversations with their friends or colleagues over thick slices of buttered brioche. Hannah loved watching the cycle of people wander to the bookshelves as they waited for their drinks--some would only look with appraising gazes, while others would pull a few of the old paperbacks and weathered hardcovers down to examine them, maybe even reading a few pages as they stood. Hannah adored the bookshelves. She herself personally took to ensuring that they were always crammed as tightly as they could bear with books that she would buy in bulk bags from the charity shops.
Hannah lifted her hand in a wave as Nell, a lovely woman who worked in the art studio a few blocks over, approached the counter.
“How’s the day been?” Nell asked, pulling a pound note out of her jean pocket and holding it out to Hannah. “The usual, please.”
“Busy!” Hannah replied with a grin. “Dry capp, coming right up.”
The hours passed by akin to this. Hannah wiped the counters, replenished the coffee pot, swept up crumbs under the tables, and helped Abbey get through large rushes of drink orders.
“Hey, Hannah! Thanks for the drink!” Adam, a contractor from Greenwich, called.
“Happy Monday, dear,” Gwen admonished through the arms of her three young children, all grabbing for the sack of scones she had purchased. “Hope the rain stops soon!”
“You’re always here, girl!” Calvin said surprisedly when he and his wife, Amy, ordered their drinks as they headed to their work at their architect practice. “Don’t you ever get a day off?”
Round and round the conversations flew, and Hannah only knew it was nearing the afternoon when the rush at last ended. The rain hadn’t ceased in the slightest, and the gray clouds overhead betrayed not even a glimpse of sunlight as Hannah took up a rag and went about the cafe to wipe tables. The early-afternoon patrons were lazing about at the bar stools and at the tables with their homework, or their taxes, or their project paperwork, or even their artwork. It was a lull that Hannah was grateful for--it was in these precious hours that she was able to right the cafe back to normal.
Ruby and Emil were eating croissants through the glass of the kitchen window, both of them leaning against the work counters and swaying with the crooning of the violins that were playing ruefully from the portable. Abbey wiped down some clean mugs, placing them under the counter on the shelves hidden below, and she grinned at a young man who approached the counter, sauntering over and leaning his elbow on the butcher block to ask Abbey a question. Hannah smiled to herself at the sight--she loved to tease Abbey when boys would come calling at the counter for her. Abbey was a radiant woman, so full of life and natural beauty that it was almost overwhelming to Hannah. She deserved a little bit of attention from the boys, however much Abbey burned scarlet at the mention of any of it.
“Can I get a black coffee?” A stranger waved Hannah down as she wiped the bar, and she crossed to his table with a nod.
“Absolutely. Anything else?”
“Are you the owner of this cafe?” The man asked her casually. He was a large man, his white beard grazing the collar of his tweed suit.
“No sir,” Hannah replied. “Just a counter girl.”
“You do seem like you wear many of the hats,” he complimented. “Thought you’d at least be a manager.”
Hannah bowed her head slightly in thanks, and turned to the counter to slip behind it, heading straight for the carafe of hot coffee. She snagged a mug from underneath Abbey’s station, eyeing her friend as she stood in front of the same young man who had come over to her with her hands on her hips.
“What do you mean when you say you don’t know the way to the abbey?” Abbey asked him dryly, and Hannah stifled a choking laugh as the boy cleared his throat.
“I merely said that I don’t know the way.”
“It’s right there,” Abbey pointed clear out the window where the top of Westminster Abbey was in plain view over the tops of the nearer buildings. “You quite literally couldn’t miss it if you were blind.”
The boy looked incredibly nervous at Abbey’s brutal assault on his very poorly-crafted pick-up line. “That’s not the Abbey I’m talking about…”
Hannah turned away with the fresh mug of coffee, hearing the tail end of Abbey’s snide retort from over her shoulder. When she reached the man who had ordered the mug, she saw from the corner of her eye that Abbey made a grand shooing motion from behind the counter at the boy, and he slunk away, defeated in his endeavor to win her favor.
“You really should be a bit more gracious,” Hannah said cautiously when she made her way back behind the counter again and came alongside Abbey. “He was really trying to be charming.”
“Charming my arse,” Abbey spat furiously, her burning face betraying her anger. “He was insufferable.”
“He was brave to talk to you!”
“He was daft.”
“You know; you may actually be the reason he was tripping over his words.” Hannah jabbed a finger into Abbey’s arm. “You have that effect on men. You play so hard to get that they forget themselves when they ever dare to come near.”
Abbey rolled her eyes, “I’m not playing anything.”
It was Hannah's turn to roll her eyes, “sure. Right.”
“I mean it!” Abbey cried, swatting at Hannah with her dishrag. Hannah bounced back with a laugh, moving out of Abbey’s reach and sticking her head back into the kitchen to see if Emil needed anything. The sounds of the orchestra swelled as she pushed open the door, and she spotted Emil up on a stepladder near the back of the kitchen, a pile of rags balanced precariously on one of his shoulders as he reached for a ten pound sack of almonds.
“All squared away, Emil?” She shouted back to him over the mastery of Vivaldi.
“As a tennis court!” Emil yelled back jubilantly. Hannah burst out in laughter at this, and she saw Ruby give an amused, exasperated look from where she stood stirring a hot pot of strawberry preserves on the stove.
“He’s a genius, I swear,” Ruby said with a nod of her head back to Emil as he stumbled from the stepladder, dropping half the rags and barely holding onto the almonds. “Strictly in the bakery, though.”
Hannah returned to her place up front at the counter and continued taking orders as people came and went, needing their afternoon fix of caffeine and sweet treats. One of the owners, Neil, waved at her as he sat with a man in a crisp white button down and sensible slacks, and Hannah knew he was working on getting his second business off the ground--a bar by Canary Wharf that he and Claire had had dreamed of naming Birdcage--and that he was meeting with investors and contracts to see how he might be able to get some more income to purchase a space.
Hannah brought him and the investor some coffee and some scones, and he smiled up at her through his thick, tortoiseshell glasses.
“Many thanks, Hannah!” He said, handing her a five pound note. Hannah blushed at his generosity, and she tried to place it back on the table.
“Oh no, Mr. Fullerton, really I can’t accept this.”
“Oh, take it,” he insisted, pressing it back to her hand. “I appreciate you bringing us these without me even asking. You’re too good sometimes, Hannah.”
“It’s nice work, if you can get it,” Hannah replied graciously, and she tucked the note into her apron pocket, making a mental note to place it in the gratuity coffee can on the counter by the register so that Emil, Ruby, and Abbey would reap a reward from it as well.
When Hannah returned to the counter, the door opened, letting in a gust of strong, cold wind with a drizzle of rain mist. A man strode in, his long brown peacoat dripping with water right down to his soaked white trainers. Standing just inside the doorway, he shook sharply to rid himself of as many water drops as possible, and he ran a hand through his dark hair, shaking the rain that came off on his fingers to the ground. Hannah eyed him as he patted down his black pants and then took his coat off, striding over the table in the far corner that was up against the large front window. As he slung his coat over the back of one of the two chairs at the space, Hannah turned away and moved to the cleaning closet for the mop, knowing that she would have to do something about the large puddle the man had left in his wake at the door.
Just as she got the mop out and was reaching down for some rags, she heard a throat clearing itself loudly behind her, and she spun around. The man was standing at the register, his face pinched into a scowl, his dark eyebrows drawn close together as he rummaged in the pockets of his pants. Hannah blinked, bewildered by his sudden appearance, and she placed the mop against the closet door. From behind the espresso machine, Abbey was busy with a line of drink tickets, and she gave no notice as Hannah approached the register and straightened her shoulders.
Hannah fell into her usual warm smile, “hello sir, what can-”
“Tea,” the man said, interrupting her so sharply that Hannah was surprised that she didn’t flinch. She paused for a moment, gathering herself.
“Alright, what sort-”
“Earl gray,” he muttered, pulling a wad of pound notes out and spilling them onto the counter before the register.
Hannah practically bit her tongue. “Do you need-”
“No cream.”
“I-”
“Just tea. Hot. How much?”
Hannah felt a pinprick of annoyance at this fellow’s abruptness. She nodded, ringing him up without any more attempts of conversation.
“Eighty pence,” she told him, still kindly.
He roughly yanked a five pound note from the stack and pushed it at her without a word. Hannah took it, straightened it out, and opened the register to get his change. Instead of waiting, he turned on his heel and moved quickly back to his table, settling himself in the chair opposite where he had laid his coat. Hannah held the four and twenty pence in her palm and watched him depart, her eyebrows raised in astonishment. She stood there a moment longer before placing his change on the counter and scribbling the drink note, handing it to Abbey to put in her line of orders. She then turned once more to the mop and brought it to the doorway, beginning to clean up the wash of water the man had carried in with him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him glare out the window, his hands gripped tightly together on the table, knuckles turning white in their strangulation.
He was a young man--Hannah would’ve guessed him to still be in his twenties--with long legs and rather slender shoulders. His hair felt in damp straight clumps around his sharp face, and his eyes were narrowed annoyedly into high cheekbones. He had deep tan skin, and his chin as well as his cheeks were shadowed with the desperate need for a shave. Were it not for his terrible glowering, Hannah would’ve deemed him a sharp fellow, if a little gangly. But unfortunately, his brows were knitted together so tightly in a grimace that she found herself unsettled by him and his rudeness.
Hannah’s mind wandered as she wrung the mop with a rag. She was happy to serve him if he was paying; and perhaps he was having a bad start to the week. She chose to believe the best of him, even if she told herself that she didn’t need to remain in his company for longer than need be.
As she returned the mop to the closet, Abbey finished placing a bag of earl gray tea into the piping hot mug of water she prepared. “Here, can you run this one?” Abbey asked her, pushing the mug in her direction. “He’s sat so far out, and I’ve got three more tickets on the bar.”
“Happy to,” Hannah said brightly, even though she most definitely was not happy to. She plucked up the mug and then reached for the spot where she had left the four and twenty change, taking it as well. She emerged from the counter, heading directly towards where the man sat, her jaw set determinedly in a gentle, easy smile.
When she at last reached his table, she stood squarely in front of him, and he stared out the window with such frustrated conviction that he did not even glance in her direction. She placed the mug on the counter, the ceramic scraping on the resin surface, and he still did not turn his head, the corners of his mouth plastered downwards. At last, Hannah held out the change of notes and pence to him, and placed her other hand on the back of the empty chair she stood behind.
“Sir,” she said shortly. He snapped his head in her direction, a flash of something like surprise crossing his face as he took in her presence before him. As soon as it had come, however, it melted back into what could only be described as an obnoxiously dramatic scowl.
“What do you want?” He practically spat.
“Your change, sir,” Hannah lifted the four and twenty pence to his eye-level, and he focused on the money. “You left this at the register.”
“I don’t want it,” his voice was rimmed with anger, almost as if he was in disbelief that she had brought him something so displeasing. Hannah waited for him to continue, but he didn’t speak on. Instead, his narrowed blue eyes cut into hers with all the annoyance of a parent appraising a naughty child. She met his gaze unwaveringly, even if she felt her chest squeeze with annoyance of her own. How can someone be so intolerable?
“It’s much more than the tea’s worth, sir,” she continued curtly, placing the cash on the table. Her pulse quickened. “Thanks for your service, and do enjoy the earl gray.”
With that, Hannah turned from him, and she maneuvered back to behind the counter, shaking off the feeling of his flaming blue eyes boring holes into her back.
Abbey caught her elbow as she passed by, “everything alright? You look a little flushed.”
“Just fine,” Hannah assured her, resisting the urge to point out the man to Abbey and to say something nasty. “Let me help you with these drinks.”
They girls worked together in harmonious silence, and Hannah felt her heartbeat returning to its normal cadence inside her chest. From over the top of the espresso machine, she could see the strange, angry man yank a small field notebook out from his back pocket and begin to scribble furiously inside of it, the table shaking slightly with the effort he was putting into the task. He would pause to glare out the window at the rain every now and then, and Hannah observed how he would scan the streets with an intensity that seemed almost feral from where he sat, glowering out at the world. She wondered at what he could possibly be writing with such fervor.
The hours passed to closing, and Hannah began to close down the register. A few straggling patrons filtered in and out, and Hannah and Abbey made a point to give them their coffees and pastries quickly as they worked towards shutting down for the day. When the clock hit four, Abbey turned off the espresso machine, and Hannah heard Emil click his orchestra to silence.
As Hannah began to wipe down the counter, patrons that had been sitting enjoying the last wares stood from their seats and pulled on their coats, ready to head out into the rain and to face the wind that had taken to gusting strongly every few minutes or so, chilling the streets. She waved to a few familiar ones, promising to see them later, and she moved to the coffee table before the sofa to replace the chess pieces that had been scattered about in the last game she had witnessed that day between a couple of schoolboys.
With a scrape of the chair, the man that had been sequestered in the corner rose rapidly and snagged his coat up from the chair opposite him, leaving the table unkempt as he strode for the door, jamming his notebook into his back pocket once more. Hannah froze by the sofa as he swept his peacoat on and pulled the collar up around his face before stepping quickly out into the street, turning left and then stalking off out of sight of the large front windows.
Hannah nodded once, placing the last of the pieces down on the board and straightening up to brush her palms on her apron. He had been the last of the patrons to leave the cafe.
Abbey pulled the steam wand on the espresso machine, unleashing a puffy cloud of white steam that rose and curled up to the green-trimmed ceiling, “that’s Monday!” She shouted back to Emil and Ruby, and they both acknowledged her with whoops of triumph of their own. Hannah grabbed the broom and dustpan and began to work her way around the shop, cleaning up piles of crumbs and flakes of pastry as well as napkins and various other trash that people had unknowingly left behind throughout the day. She circled the cafe, listening to the sounds of Abbey clinking clan mugs together and of Emil and Ruby stacking sheet trays loudly in the back, and she hummed a bit as she worked, letting the feeling of a successful beginning to her week rise up inside of her rather than dwell any more on the rude stranger she had annoyingly allow to infiltrate her thoughts.
She would go home and make an early dinner, and then she and Bartrum would undoubtedly come together for a piano lesson, or at least for a spot of tea before bed. She knew that he had been insisting on finding more of his old piano lesson books in his basement because he had told her that she had been progressing quicker than he imagined, and that it was time to challenge her with some more complete works. She rounded the tables with the broom, pausing to clean dirty dishes into the bus bin and to turn the chairs upside down to rest on the tables’ surfaces.
Yes, she would visit with Bartrum and would make the most of the day that she had left. Tomorrow was another work day, for her weekend was six days out, and she knew that she would feel much better about it if she got in a bit of fun that evening.
As she approached the last table in the cafe, the one in the farthest corner by the front window, she stopped short of it, gazing at it in bewilderment. A chill went down her spine.
The now-frigid mug of tea sat untouched from where she had left it, the tea bag now dissolving into a mass of soggy herbs that floated flaccidly around the top rim of the cup. Beside it, four pounds and twenty pence sat neatly in a pile--the very same that she had placed down nearly three hours earlier.
After a moment, Hannah shook her head, breaking free from the uneasy spell she had been under whilst staring at the forgotten items. She dumped the tea, and she placed the mug in the dirty dish bin before sweeping the change into the gratuity can on the counter by the register, closing the lid on the can shut tightly over it so that it was out of sight.