He walked to the tube station on autopilot. He was, despite the fact that it was October, wearing sunglasses to protect his eyes from the weak glare of the new day. He paused as he reached the spot of his collision last night. He was pretty sure he could see a few splatters of bloodred wine still on the pavement, like the remnants of a mugging. An unwelcome vision floored him: a feisty, pretty brunette, glaring at him as if she really, really hated him. Women never looked at him like that. Hazard didn’t like being hated.
Then a thought struck him with the vicious sideswipe of an inconvenient truth: He hated himself too. Right down to the smallest molecule, the tiniest atom, the most microscopic subatomic particle.
Something had to change. Actually, everything had to change.
FIVE
Monica
Monica had always loved numbers. She loved their logic, their predictability. She found making one side of an equation balance with the other immensely satisfying, solving x and proving y. But the numbers on the paper in front of her now would not behave. No matter how many times she added up the figures in the left-hand column (income), they wouldn’t stretch to cover the total in the right (outgoings).
Monica thought back to her days as a corporate lawyer, when adding up the numbers was a chore, but never something to keep her awake at night. Every hour she spent poring over the small print on some contract, or leafing through endless statutes, she’d bill the client two hundred and fifty pounds. She’d have to sell one hundred medium-sized cappuccinos to make the same.
Why had she allowed herself to make such a monumental life change with such alacrity, and for such emotional reasons? She who found it difficult to choose a sandwich filling without running through a mental list of pros and cons, comparing price, nutritional values, and calorie counts.
Monica had tried every café on the commute between her apartment and her office. There were the soulless ones, the tired and grubby ones, and the Identikit, mass-produced chain ones. Every time she handed over money for an overpriced, mediocre takeaway coffee she’d picture her ideal café. There would be no brushed concrete, molded plastic, exposed pipework, or industrial-style lamps and tables; rather, it would feel like being invited into someone’s home. There would be comfy, mismatched armchairs, eclectic art on the walls, newspapers and books. Books everywhere, not just for show, but ones you could pick up, read, and take home with you, so long as you left another one in its place. The barista wouldn’t ask your name in order to misspell it on your cup, he (or she, Monica added quickly), would know it already. They’d ask after your kids and remember the name of your cat.
Then, she’d been walking down the Fulham Road and noticed that the dusty old sweet shop, which had been there forever, had finally closed. A large board on its front announced TO LET. Some local wag had painted a large I in between the letters O and L.
Every time Monica walked past the vacant shop she could hear her mother’s voice. In those last few weeks, the ones that smelled of disease and decay and that were punctuated by the constant electronic beeps of medical machinery, she’d urgently tried to impart decades’ worth of wisdom to her daughter, before it was too late. Listen to me, Monica. Write it down, Monica. Don’t forget, Monica. Emmeline Pankhurst didn’t chain herself to those railings so we could spend our lives as a tiny cog in someone else’s wheel. Be your own boss. Create something. Employ people. Be fearless. Do something you really love. Make it all worthwhile. So, she had done it.
Monica wished she’d been able to name the café after her mother, but she was called Charity, and it seemed like a really bad business decision to give a café a name that implied no need to pay. Things, as it turned out, were hard enough.
Just because this café was her dream didn’t mean anyone else would necessarily share it. Or, at least, not enough of them to cover her costs, and she couldn’t keep making up the shortfall forever; the bank wouldn’t let her. Her head was throbbing. She walked over to the bar and poured the remainder of a bottle of red wine into a large glass.
Being the boss was all very well, she told her mother, inside her head, and she loved her café, the essence of which had seeped into her bones, but it was lonely. She missed the office gossip around the water cooler, she missed the camaraderie forged over pizza during late-night working sessions, she even found herself remembering fondly those ridiculous team bonding days, the office jargon, and impenetrable three-letter acronyms. She loved her team at the café, but there was always a slight distance between them, because she was responsible for their livelihoods, and right now she couldn’t even manage her own.
She was reminded of the questions that man—Julian—had asked in the notebook he’d left on this very table. She’d approved of his choice. Monica couldn’t help herself judging people by where in her café they decided to sit. How well do you know the people who live near you? How well do they know you?
She thought of all the people who’d come in and out today, the bell ringing jauntily with each arrival and departure. They were all connected, more than ever before, to thousands of people, friends on social media, friends of friends. Yet did they, like her, feel like they had no one they could actually talk to? Not about the latest celebrity eviction from some house, or island, or jungle, but about the important things—the things that keep you awake at night. Like numbers that wouldn’t obey your command.
Monica shuffled her papers back into their file and pulled out her phone, loading up Facebook and scrolling through. There was still no sign of Duncan, the man she’d been dating until a few weeks ago, on her social media. She’d been ghosted. Duncan, the vegan who’d refused to eat avocados because the farmers exploited bees in their pollination, but who thought it perfectly acceptable to have sex with her and then just disappear. He cared more about the sensitivities of a bee than he did her.
She kept scrolling, despite knowing this would not be a comfort, more a form of mild self-harm. Hayley had changed her relationship status to “engaged.” Whoop whoop. Pam had posted a status about her life with three kids, a boast thinly and inexpertly disguised as self-deprecation, and Sally had shared her baby scan picture—twelve weeks.
Baby scans. What was the point in sharing those? They all looked the same, and none of them resembled an actual child, more like a weather map predicting an area of high pressure over northern Spain. And yet, every time Monica saw a new one it stopped her breath and floored her with a wave of yearning and a humiliating stab of envy. She felt, sometimes, like an old Ford Fiesta, broken down on the hard shoulder, while everyone sailed past her in the fast lane.
Someone had left a copy of HELLO! on a table today; it screamed a headline about a Hollywood actress’s “baby joy” at forty-three. Monica had scanned the pages during her coffee break, looking for clues as to how she’d done it. IVF? Egg donation? Had she frozen her eggs years ago? Or had it happened easily? How much time did her own ovaries have left? Were they already packing their suitcases for a relaxing retirement on the Costa Brava?