Chapter 1: The Glue for Broken Lives

“One medium cappuccino and carrot cake, anything else for you madame?”, the waitress asked me, laying down my order onto the table.

“No thank you. Oh hold on, do you have any serviettes?”

“You can get them over by the till next to the cutlery, now, will that be all?”

I nod my head as the waitress gathers up the previous customer’s dirty debris onto a tray and then sails back towards the kitchen. I recline with relief back into my chair and let out a sigh, allowing my eyes to pan across the cafe. In front of me, a herd (is that the correct collective noun for children?) of hyperactive kids buzz sporadically around an exhausted and regretful young mother: who sits, clad in a worn Adidas tracksuit, with a fixed rictus grin which screams ‘verge of a breakdown’ as she desperately attempts to calm her unwanted entourage. To my left, a middle-aged couple gazes with false love into each other’s eyes in an attempt to re-ignite that infamous love flame without any fuel. The woman’s attempting, and failing, to breach the subject of marriage counselling, but the man just keeps blabbing incoherently on about staplers or fishing or something: because he knows that if he listens to her then it will turn into an argument and he doesn’t want to cause a scene, not here, not now. Behind the couple is the counter that stands in the corner of the room as the cafe’s teenage staff hurry from one to the other and occasionally through a fly screened doorway into the kitchen, trying the serve as many customers as possible. Annie, the waitress that had served me, is slumped in deep concentration over the numerous orders in her notepad, occasionally sweeping back her long, blonde fringe from off her face. Unlike most cafes and restaurants in the area, Cafe Norman still uses notepad and pencil to take orders and write bills instead of ipads; this, although a nuisance to its staff, gives the cafe the warm embrace of unchangeability in which many others with my mindset find a comfort. And finally, to my right, the sodden town of Higly: cold, miserable, anti-social, and yet still managed to win the “the nicest town in Sussex” award in 2011. Fat raindrops trickle greasily down the Edwardian window pane, another unchanged asset to cafe Norman. The right side, by far, is my least favourite of my usual seat as, unlike other angles, only reflects my face off of the glass, so I look away.

 

The cafe’s cake has always been great, I assume because it’s all homemade, so’s their coffee. With all of this climate change business you hear on the news, it makes you feel good to go to a cafe where all of their items are locally, sustainably sourced and, most importantly, very cheap! I’ve been trying to do things that make me happy lately because that’s what my current book, “The glue for broken lives”, says to try and do. My mum had given it to me for Christmas last year, I know that she’s trying to help me but I couldn’t help feeling hurt. The book also says to focus on yourself more in different ways like having a hobby, I guess mine’s eavesdropping. I’ve brought the book with me but I can’t concentrate on it, who wants to focus on helping themselves when the people around them’s lives are way more dramatic? I find that the best way to eavesdrop on others conversations is to pretend that you’re doing something else, something casual. If you were stealing a laptop, for example, you wouldn’t knock on the owner’s door and ask to steal it and then, in the unlikely circumstance that they said yes, parade around the streets with the laptop, telling passers-by how you did it, would you? You would want to keep a low profile. So, I find that coffee, cake and a book work perfectly. The only problem is that you have to keep up the act for as long as you’re interested in the person’s conversation, so I’m usually out of cake and coffee before I can move on to someone else.

 

Ooo! Drama over on table number 4, some sleazy old man is trying to chat up Annie, she’s trying to ignore him and is briskly clearing away his plates and is now writing down something into her notepad, probably his bill, she’s now slammed it down onto his table and is now storm back to the kitchen, she doesn’t look happy. Damn. I’ve now got a milk moustache from slurping too vigorously at my coffee; I need a serviette but I’m too anxious to go over to the busy counter. Come on Evie, it’ll be fine. Discreetly, covering up my tache with my hand, I smoothly walk towards the counter. Ah-ha! Tissues! I was just about to head back to my seat when I spot Annie and her boss, a middle-aged woman with a dyed-red pixie cut, having an animated conversation. Shoot, the her boss’s coming out from the kitchen with Annie in tow, I bow my head and pretend to look at the coffee bean packets that are displayed on the counter. Luckily, the older woman has strode off towards the grey-haired man on table 4, pasting a shark-like grin on her face. I let out a sigh of relief.

 

“Hello? Can I help you?”, Annie’s voice spoke from behind the counter

 

“Oh. I was just getting some serviettes” I said holding up the tissues and trying to keep it together, this is too much excitement for one day. The waitress looks confused at this claim: the serviettes and cutlery are all the way over at the other side of the counter.

 

“Aaand, I was just looking at your coffee!”, I exclaim with a smile, hopeful that that is convincing enough.

 

“Oh”, she looks relieved, “ did you know that it is sustainably sourced from Colombia? And is the only one of our products that is not from the UK”

 

“Mm”, I hum with fake interest, I need to get away.

 

“Anyway, are you ready for your bill?”

 

“Um-eh y-yeah, yes-yes please”, I stutter, my mind had wandered elsewhere. I was making such a fool of myself.

 

“I’ll bring it to your table”

 

I nod then spin on my heel and hurry back to my seat. I sat down and looked at the table in front, the young mother and her kids had left, poor woman. I’ve never wanted to have children. My sister, May, is the opposite, as soon as she was married, she would say to me when we were younger, she would have children and so she did; one son, Harry, and two daughters, Bea and Alex. May’s husband, Harrison, is a completely boring man, he’s a parking warden for christ’s sake! All he does is blab on about Communists-this and cars-that, I find their dog, scruffs, going to the toilet more interesting than him. My sister must have the patience of a saint to put up with a man, let alone a husband, like that.

 

The sleazy man at table 4 is now packing up his things, he looks happy. The older woman is still hovering at his table, grimacing down at him. It’s always in these situations that you feel compelled to be happy that they’ve made up but, deep-down, you wish that the drama was carrying on.

 

Oh god, the rain’s getting heavier, I really should be going. Where is Annie? She’s probably forgotten. I’ll just head over to the counter and remind her.

 

“Hello? Excuse me”, I said awkwardly to Annie as she busily rushed around behind the counter, her blonde hair swaying annoyingly over her face, “Umm. Hello? Annie?”

 

“Yes?” she hissed without looking round, “Oh I am so sorry madame, I thought you were someone else. How do you know my name?”

 

“Oh, your badge,” I tapped where her badge was on my chest, then realised it was prodding my b**b and abruptly stopped.

 

“Aah right,” she mumbled with fake interest, “Now, what can I help you with?”

 

“Urh ye-yes, I was wondering if I could get my bill now?”

 

“Oh. Yes.” Annie reached into her pocket and got out her notepad; she opens it up then, without looking, rips out the last page and hands it to me. I don’t want to stand around and make more of a fool of myself, so I stuff it into my pocket.

 

“Ok, and that will be…” She continued

 

“£4.50.” I cut in then handed her the cash, I’ve been to cafe Norman so many times, the price has been etched into my brain.

 

 “ Thanks.“ the rather shocked Annie remarked as she stuffed the £5 note into the already bulging till.

 

“Thank you!” I chuckled, overly enthusiastically, then rushed to and out of the door.

 

The street was cold and absolutely tipping it down: where was my umbrella? I took my bag off of my shoulder and rummaged around as the heavy raindrops splattered onto its contents, AAH! Looking around for shelter, I spotted the narrow alleyway alongside cafe Norman. Cursing under my breath, I awkwardly shuffled into the alley and removed my bag.  I began to search, once again, for my umbrella in amongst all of the usual crap one keeps in their bag: Sweet-wrappers, flyers from my friend’s fundraising event which I pretended to be interested in, a beaten-up tampon, coffee-stained receipts, old provisional license. I found it easier to tip out all of the bag’s contents into one of the used cardboard boxes I found by my side, previously used to carry food products for cafe Norman and now, like so many other items, tossed into the back alley for the bin men to collect. Where is it? Oh, hold on: front pocket. Unzipping the front pocket, I discovered my umbrella. I bit my lip and tried not to throw my bag at the wall in anger. As I began to shift all of my crap back into my bag, I noticed something written on the cardboard box:

‘Bean there, Done that, coffee bisness

Made in Colombia’

That seemed right, but the address on the inside didn’t match:

 

‘Warehouse 2

Siberia

Russia’

 

Isn’t that too simplified to be an address? And why store coffee somewhere over the other side of the world from where it’s made? Something wasn’t right. Oh well. Not my business. “You really must stop putting your nose into everyone else’s business, it’s time that you get on with your life”, my mum says to me, I think that it’s about time I listened to her. Stuffing the rest of my stuff back into my bag, I stood up and began to trudge back to my flat.

 

 

Somewhat to my Mum’s disapproval, the first thing that I got when I rented my flat was my cat, Gimli. I believe that my Mum’s moto for conveying any message or emotion should be: ‘say it with a book’. I’ve noticed this come into play on numerous occasions; When May got married, Mum gave her ‘Dysfunctional: The beginner’s guide to divorce’, when Dad broke his leg and ended up in hospital Mum gave him: ‘Hard times: People who are a lot worse off than you” and when I got Gimli she gave me: ‘101 reasons why you’re cat will ruin your life’. This last one, like many others, went straight into the charity bag: I don’t even see the point in keeping them on my bookshelf because, hopefully, that’s my way of conveying the message to Mum that I just don’t want them anymore. She has her ways, I have mine. But, ‘The glue for broken lives’ is one that I am willing to force myself to read as its plot has valid justifications, in my opinion anyway.

 

I could already hear Gimli scratching on the front door as I entered my flat, the second front door that is. Gimli tends to pounce at, and mercilessly claw, at any interloper’s (by interloper I mean apart from me) exposed skin. So, only a few months after I got him May got Harrison to fix another door to my flat’s entrance, it turns out that the man has at least one use. I shall not go into detail about the event that led to May’s decision on containing Gimli, let’s just say that it involved her youngest, Harry, Gimli and a friendly trip to A&E. Now all I have to do is unlock and enter through the first front door then, after checking the coast is clear, unlock the second: and so I did. Hooking up my keys, I kicked off my shoes and began walking through to the kitchen, removing and flinging my sodden clothing onto various areas of the floor as I went. On entering my kitchen, I headed straight for the crisps. Oh my god, what the hell is that? I peered down at my odd socked foot to find it now covered in cat sick. I was just about to have a full-on meltdown when the phone rang: It was Mum.

 

“Hi love”

 

“Hi, Mum. I’m quite busy at the moment. Maybe I could call you back in 10?”

 

“No, no. I was just calling about…”, there was a long silence at the end of the line.

 

“Umm Mum? Are you still there?”

 

“Of course I am.”

 

“Ok?”, I’ve found that at moments like this, I choose to repress my anger and start a new conversation, “How are you, Mum?”

 

“Oh, I’m alright. You know, I’ve got this brilliant new book! It’s called ‘The man in the mirror: Signs of a narcissist’, and, you know, I’ve recognised some situations similar to how you behave-”, I blanked her out, letting my mind turn her blabbing into peaceful ambience. The cat sick was still on my sock so, leaving the phone on the side, I removed it and held it away as far as it was possible from me as I tip-toed to my bathroom. Flinging the sock into my washing basket, I unravelled the toilet roll into my hand then tip-toed back to the kitchen.  I scooped only half of the vomit away before I had run out of toilet roll: so I head back to the bathroom. On my way, I almost slipped on a piece of paper that had fallen out of my coat pocket and onto the floor. Cursing under my breath, I bent down to pick it up. The paper read:

 

‘Bottom Grain joint in Oblivion’

 

What did it mean? I turned it over:

 

‘1x Regular Cappuccino: £3

1x Carrot cake: £1.50

 

Total: 4:50

 

Table 2’

 

That was my order and table number, this is my bill. The billing part was in Annie’s usual joined-up and small handwriting, but the other side was in large, spidery capitals: that’s odd. It’s only Annie who takes the orders so why are there two different types of handwriting?

 

“Evie? Evie?! Are you there?”, Came my Mum’s voice from my phone in the kitchen. I rushed back through the hallway and picked up the phone from the table.

 

“Hello? Mum? Sorry about that. The connection is bad at the moment. Carry on”

“Come on Gimli. Just roll over that way”, I cooed to my cat in an attempt to persuade him to shift his bulk off of my paperback. Eventually, I managed to roll him over onto his side of the bed. The only reason why I had bought a double bed was so that Gimli could safely lie beside me, out of harm's way: he’s the only thing I’ve got. I picked up my book and began to read:

 

‘Lady Vernot flicked back her hair and shifted in her seat.

 

“Now, Lady Vernot, I want to start at the beginning. Where were you when you heard the gunshot?”, inspector Kitson said calmly as Downs, his junior, flipped open his notepad and held his pen-yielding its paper.

 

“Well, I had just been to talk to my maid, Francis Dawn, and was heading towards the garden-”

 

“And what were you doing in the garden?”, Kitson cut in.

 

“Well, i-i…erh”, Lady Vernot’s face suddenly blushed.

 

“Is there something that you’re not telling us Lady Vernot? May it have something to do with Wilson, the gardener? If so, i suggest that you speak now or else i-’

 

“Gimli!”, I exclaimed, snapping out of my murder mystery world. Gimli had, as most cats do, crawled right across my open book’s pages and decided to lie down right on top of where I was reading. Instead of resisting, i removed my book,’ The Vernot case: a Kitnor mystery’, from beneath him, bookmarked it and then placed it down on my bedside table. I switched off my lamp then shuffled under my duvet, Gimli still firmly slouched over my chest. I gazed up at my ceiling, letting my eyes create colourful, dancing patterns as they adjusted to the dark. Thoughts of the day’s events began to swim around in my mind: Annie, the bill, the coffee boxes all the way from Russia! It’s bizarre, like something from a novel. They’ll end up being some sort of gangsters leading a drug ring or something! Imagine! I chuckled. Of course not, that stuff only happens in books or movies, not real life. It’s just a typo, or joke at the most: nothing to concern me.

 

Reviews

[New Yorkshire]

You have an interesting idea for a story, and I like that your character eaves drops like its her job. The details of the passive-aggressive mother were fun as well, which created some engaging tension through the conflict between the characters. I want to know more about the mysterious note on the back of her bill. You introduced it, the most interesting part of the story, but didn't give it the attention it deserves. Unfortunately, a lot of the great things you have in this story got lost in the changing of tense. I might suggest sticking to past tense; present tense is very difficult to write, and even harder to write well because it is so limiting.