Reflections in the Coffee Shop Window

I haven’t been back to your old haunt in quite some time. The smell of warm coffee hits me like a wall as I open the door and slip in off the cobbles. It’s warm inside; condensation drips down the windows, and my nose and my ears nip as they begin to thaw.

It’s like stepping back into a scruffy old jumper; simultaneously comforting and familiar but bagging around the elbows and stretched around the cuffs.

I don’t recognise the barista, but they smile at me amiably, and ask what it’ll be.

‘A matcha latte, please. Unsweetened.’ Some things never change.

They take my name, and I wait patiently to the side and try not to stare at the milk-frother. It’s busy for eleven on a Tuesday morning. You liked the quiet.

Soon I’m easing my way upstairs, my hands wrapped around an oversized mug. My foot somehow instinctively glances over the creakiest step. As I round the doorway, I look for your favourite table next to that one window. It’s the only window that gives a good view of the clock on the side of the church next door.

I can practically see you sat there now; a cleft chewing into the space between your eyebrows as you pore over articles written about long dead people, despairing as the hands on the huge clock tick-tock your deadlines ever closer.

You agonised over how to put your own words on paper. You were so sure that there was no way you could ever produce anything of value. Your eyes would slide away from your laptop, fall on the street below, wondering if you were staring at the same cobbles as Hume, or Smith, or even Stevenson and Scott.

Sometimes, it almost ached; a lump in your throat that wouldn’t go away.

That seat is taken today. An old woman is reading a colourful paperback and blowing gently on a small mug. I slide into one of the tables near the front of the room. You never sat here, but you always imagined it was be your dream table – one with both a laptop socket and a good view of the street outside. It’s incredibly surprising to find it free. As I settle, I unwind my scarf from my neck, and wipe the fog from one of the panes of glass.

I can see the bagpiper who settles outside the cashmere shop and plays the same song on loop for hours. I remember how you were the day ended up listening to several full hours of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. By the time you left, you were fizzing, ‘It’s no even a pipe song!’ and swearing that you’d stuff the next chanter you saw so deep down the piper’s throat that it came out their...well.

I find myself glowering out of the window. Some things definitely never change.

The piper today is playing some familiar songs, competing with the mellow sound of the coffee shop sound system. I let out a deep breath, wondering if the seats were always this uncomfortable. You used to spend hours here, so maybe it’s just me.

Two dissertations spilled over the same laptop in this coffee shop. Two dissertations, several CVs, a hundred emails, essays, short stories, texts to friends, messages to people you would never talk to again, and more than one angry sub-tweet very quickly deleted. And all the while you glanced at the clock, watching those hands power away, wondering what it was all worth. Where it was going to lead you. If, indeed, you were going anywhere at all.

As that fateful last day of university came closer and closer, the raw burn in your throat couldn’t be soothed by overpriced tea lattes.

Everything felt impossible at times, I know. There were some dire, dismal moments. Some nights that you laid awake until sunrise, some days you barely felt like crawling from your bed. Some moments that you wondered if you were in the right place, or if you should jack it all in and leave.

I swirl the cloudy dregs in the bottom of my mug.

Life was much simpler when there was still some kind of mystery to it. No-one asks a kid for a ten year plan. You’d grow up, start working as a doctor or a princess, and buy all the things your mum never let you have.

In reality, life promised to be a flurry of uncertainty; a dead-end job, and rejection after rejection. You’d have to leave everyone and everything you’d come to love.

How I wish I could go back there, slide you across a drink, a friendly smile and a couple words of encouragement. I wish I could turn your attention away from the minutes, and show you that they all turned into hours, into days, weeks, months. Would you have listened though? If only I could reach back in time and tell you that you already know how to find the answers – just like one of those essays you agonised over.

You didn’t know how things would work out, but you kept at it. They didn’t all hit the mark; just like the applications didn’t all lead to interviews, and some of those messages stung. You slogged on, cursing Hume and Smith and Scott every step of the way, perhaps, but you never gave up, even when you thought it was pointless.

My mug is empty. I sigh and set it down. The window pane has started to fog up again, but the dirl of the piper outside lets me know that the street is still there, as it always will be. The piper too, probably. I might toss him a couple of quid when I head back to the train.

You had no way to know that it was all going to be okay – but I promise you, it is. I’m still staring out of windows, but at least now the scenery keeps changing.