Opening Time

Frank unlocked the door at ten to eight as he had for over eleven years.

He flicked the lights on in their usual order and stood in the empty cafe while the filter machine coughed and started to warm. He wiped down the counter in slow circles, rinsed the cloth under the tap, wrung it out, and wiped again. The bell above the door hung still.

Margaret came at eight, every morning, without fail, and often appeared before Frank had even turned the key. Flat white with one sugar, stirred exactly three times before she’d look up and tell him who’d been voted off Strictly the night before, or whether the new cycle lane on the high street was a blessing or a catastrophe, or what they’d said about the council tax on BBC Surrey.

This, every day for eleven years. He could set the morning by her.

At a quarter past eight, he rinsed Margaret’s cup and set it on the counter beside the sugar. He polished a glass as he watched the door.

The bell rang a few minutes later, and Frank looked up, but it was Tom Brightley pushing through with Ned, his Border Terrier, who shook himself vigorously on the mat and left a trail of muddy marks. Tom hung his coat on the hook by the radiator and lowered himself into his usual chair with a wince that he pretended hadn’t happened.

‘Black coffee when you’re ready, Frank.’

‘On the way.’

‘Is the heating broken? It’s freezing in here.’ He rubbed his hands, grimacing theatrically.

‘The heating’s fine, Tom.’

‘It’s not fine. I can feel a draught from somewhere.’

‘That’s the door. You just walked through it.’

‘Well, it feels broken to me.’

They’d been doing this since Tom’s wife died. The complaining was how Tom said good morning.

Frank set the coffee down, and Tom wrapped both hands around it. Frank’s eyes drifted to the glass of the cafe, speckled with raindrops, the horse chestnuts in the park outside bending and swaying in the February gusts.

By nine o’clock, two builders were arguing about whether Palace had been robbed against Brighton at the weekend at the window table, and a young woman he didn’t recognise had set up a laptop near the back wall with her coat draped over the next chair. She’d ordered a coconut flat white, and he’d paused when he made it, the spoon hovering over the wrong cup for the wrong person.

He texted Margaret at nine-thirty.

‘Margaret, Frank here at the caf. Checking in to see if you’re ok.’

The text showed one tick. He wiped an already clean counter.

The girl at the back still hadn’t ordered anything else, and her single cup had been empty for the better part of an hour. There were five tables in the little room, and she was using one of them, plus the chair beside her, for a coat and a bag. He straightened the sugar caddies near her table as he passed, but she didn’t look up from her screen.

Marion from the post office came in just before ten, shaking her umbrella over the doormat, and launched straight into the news about the Hendersons selling their house and how awful it was that it had been on the market for seven months without a sniff of interest.

She told him in the animated, spiralling way she told everything, and he nodded along, refilled her tea, and positioned himself where he could see both the door and the till.

‘You’re quiet today,’ Marion said.

‘Am I?’

‘Quieter than usual, which for you is saying something.’

He smiled at that, but it didn’t hold. The lunchtime prep would start soon, and the weight that had been sitting behind his ribs since he opened was harder to ignore now the place was filling with noise. Margaret’s cup sat untouched on the counter where he’d left it.

At half eleven, Tom came back in for his second cup, which meant his walk had been a short one and his hip was playing up again. Ned collapsed under the table like a soggy beanbag.

‘You look like someone stole your car,’ Tom said.

‘Margaret hasn’t been in.’

Tom raised his eyebrows. ‘Since when?’

‘Since eight o’clock this morning.’

‘That’s not exactly a missing persons case, Frank.’

Frank played with his fingers.

‘Margaret’s been in here every morning for eleven years straight, Tom. Every morning.’

Tom gave him a look through narrow eyes. Then he picked up his cup and moved to his usual spot by the radiator. Ned stayed under the first table until Tom pulled the leash, and the dog followed with sluggish drags on the tiles.

At quarter to twelve, Frank was carrying boxes from the back to below the counter. The girl at the back table was finally packing up, and his shoulders dropped an inch at the thought of having the table back for the lunch crowd. She zipped her bag and caught his eye as she stood.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Are you Frank?’

He stopped with a box in both hands. ‘I am.’

She pulled an envelope from her coat pocket and held it out to him. ‘My mum asked me to give you this. She said you’d worry.’

Frank put the box down on the shelf.

‘Sorry, I should have given it to you earlier.’

The envelope was cream-coloured with his name written across the front. She smiled at him in a way that reminded him of someone, and then she was through the door with the bell ringing behind her.

He opened it, standing at the counter with the soup going cold on the hob. Inside was a card showing the town’s green with a painted sunrise, and beneath it, in the same careful handwriting he’d watched sign credit card receipts for over a decade:

‘Frank. I’ve gone somewhere warm for a bit. Back in two weeks. Don’t let Tom sit in my seat. — M’

He read it twice, then a third time, and folded it back into the envelope and tucked it into his apron pocket. He picked up Margaret’s cup from the counter and put it back on the shelf with the others.

The soup needed heating. The bread needed slicing. The cafe would need him now.

It always did.

. . .

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