Chapter 56: Online life
The quiet after closing was a palpable thing, a soft, dust-muffled blanket that settled over the café. Yvonne slid the last bolt home on the front door, the metallic thunk echoing in the empty space. Her body was a ledger of the day’s transactions: a sharp ache in her hip from the morning’s run, a dull burn across her shoulders from hauling sacks of beans, a pleasant tiredness in her fingers from the repetitive press of the portafilter. The fine white plaster dust seemed to have permeated everything, coating her dreadlocks, lining the creases of her knuckles, softening the edges of the world.
She moved through the post-closing ritual slowly, deliberately. Wiping down counters already clean, giving the espresso machine its nightly purging sigh, counting the till with a focus that made the numbers swim less than usual. The sight of the new wooden archway, naked and promising in the gloom, pulled at her. She walked over and ran a hand along the smooth, sanded frame. It smelled of raw pine and potential. A shiver of excitement, thin and bright, cut through the fatigue. She wanted to tell someone who would understand the weight of it.
Upstairs, the apartment welcomed her with its familiar clutter. Hans collapsed onto his bed with a world-weary groan. Yvonne kicked off her shoes, peeled off her dust-powdered socks. The silence up here was different—deeper, more private. It pressed in, and with it came the hollow echo of the day’s last laugh, the last clink of a cup. The space felt too large.
She didn’t bother with the overhead light. She opened her laptop on the small, crowded kitchen table, its glow a cold blue rectangle in the warm dusk of the room. The video call connection chimed, a sound that always now carried a spike of adrenaline and a knot of longing.
Victoria’s face appeared, pixelated for a second before resolving. She was in her London flat, the background a minimalist blur of grey sofa and a shelving unit with precisely arranged books. Her hair was damp, recently showered, her glasses off. She looked tired in a different way—a tightness around her eyes, a pallor that the screen’s light didn’t flatter.
“Hey, you,” Victoria said, her voice a little raspy. The simple words, in her accent, unraveled something in Yvonne’s chest.
“Hey.” Yvonne pushed her glasses up her nose, suddenly aware of the dust smudge on her cheek. “You look… clean.”
Victoria barked a short laugh. “Long day. The air here tastes like recycled complaints and toner fluid. You look like you’ve been in a flour fight.”
“Plaster,” Yvonne corrected, smiling faintly. She rubbed at her cheek. “Janusz and his crew were here. The frame is in. It’s… a real thing now. You can walk through it. Well, you can’t yet, there’s no floor, but the hole is officially shaped.”
She watched Victoria’s face. The tiredness receded for a moment, replaced by keen interest. “Show me.”
Yvonne fumbled with the laptop, lifting it and turning it around. She walked slowly towards the stairs, narrating as she went. “Mind the step. The dust is worse down here. It’s everywhere. I think Vita inhaled a kilo.” She reached the café floor and aimed the camera at the archway. In the dim emergency lighting, it was a dramatic black void framed by pale, new wood.
“Christ, it’s big,” Victoria whispered, leaning closer to her own screen. “The scale looks perfect. The curve is right.” Yvonne could hear the professional appreciation in her tone, the eye for detail that saw plans manifest in three dimensions. “How does the light look from the laundry side?”
“Don’t know yet. The window’s still boarded. Tomorrow, maybe.” Yvonne brought the laptop back to her face, settling again at her table. “But that’s not the big news.”
“Did the sourdough finally achieve consciousness?”
“Bigger.” Yvonne leaned in, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Herr Kaya came in tonight. With his brother. From Istanbul.”
Victoria’s eyebrows lifted. “No.”
“Yes. And his brother’s grandkids. Two little noise-makers, as he called them.” Yvonne recounted the scene—the children barreling towards Hans, Herr Kaya’s gruff ordering of warm milk with honey, the monumental declaration that the coffee was ‘the least terrible’ in Berlin. She imitated his stern nod. “He was… soft. I’ve never seen him like that. It was like watching a statue blush.”
Victoria was smiling properly now, the tightness around her eyes smoothing. “The café does that. It sandpapers the edges off people.” She paused, her gaze softening. “You sound happy. Tired, but happy.”
“I am,” Yvonne said, and the truth of it was a quiet warmth in her stomach. “It was a good day. A hard day, but… good.” She shifted, her sore muscle twinging. “I did The Run this morning.”
This time Victoria’s surprise was complete. Her mouth dropped open slightly. “You what?”
“Hans demanded. You weren’t here. So it was me.” Yvonne heard the defensiveness in her own voice. “It was horrible. I cursed your name for the first fifteen minutes. I think I discovered several new muscles, all of which are currently filing a complaint.”
Victoria was laughing, a real, rich sound that filled Yvonne’s quiet apartment. “You ran? You actually ran? What was your time? Your route?”
“My time was ‘survival’. My route was ‘wherever the dog decided to drag me’.” Yvonne sighed, a mock-exasperated puff of air. “But… I get it now. The buzz afterwards. The quiet head.”
A look passed over Victoria’s face then, complex and fleeting. Pride, affection, but underneath it, a deep, wistful sadness. It was the look of someone hearing about their own life being competently lived without them. “I’m impressed,” she said, and her voice had gone a bit thick. “Seriously. Hans is a tyrant about his pace.”
They lapsed into a comfortable silence for a moment, the digital connection humming between them. The easy part was over. Yvonne traced a water ring on the wooden table. “How are your negotiations? You said you had that meeting with the regional head.”
The light in Victoria’s eyes dimmed. She looked away from the camera, towards her own sterile window. “Stalled. He’s been pulled into some fire drill in Singapore. Indefinitely. My direct boss is supportive, but he can’t greenlight the permanent transfer without him. It’s just… sitting in an inbox over the Pacific.” She dragged a hand through her short hair. “It’s bureaucracy. It’s not a ‘no’. It’s just not a ‘yes’, and ‘yes’ is what I need to start tearing down this bloody flat.”
The word ‘indefinitely’ hung in the air, toxic and heavy. Yvonne felt it like a physical pressure change. She nodded, swallowing. “Okay. So we wait.”
“We wait,” Victoria echoed, the frustration clear in her clipped tone. She turned back, her expression forcing itself into something brighter, pragmatic. “To keep from climbing the walls here, I’m going to head up to Sheffield this weekend. See the parents. And my sister. Immerse myself in the chaos of the triplets. It’ll be a good distraction.”
“That sounds nice,” Yvonne said, meaning it. She loved hearing about Victoria’s loud, loving, tactless family. It was so different from her own quiet, distant one. “Give them my love. And take photos of the babies covered in food. I need the joy.”
“I will.” Victoria’s smile returned, smaller but genuine. “You’ll have the weekend to yourself. No disruptions. You can talk to your plants without judgment.”
“They’re very good listeners.” Yvonne adjusted her glasses, a nervous habit. “I miss you.”
The words were simple, but they seemed to crack something open on the screen. Victoria’s composure slipped, her lower lip trembling almost imperceptibly before she bit it. “I miss you so much it feels stupid,” she whispered. “I miss the dust. I miss Hans’s judgemental sighs. I miss the way you squint at the till as if it’s personally insulting you.” She let out a shaky breath. “This flat is just a place I store my suits. It’s not… it’s not a place anything happens.”
Yvonne’s throat tightened. She wished violently for the technology to reach through the screen, to feel the solid reality of Victoria’s shoulder under her hand. All she had was pixels and voice. “Things are happening here,” she said softly, gesturing vaguely around. “The archway is happening. Herr Kaya’s heart is happening. My new muscles are definitely happening. It’s all just… stockpiling. For when you get here.”
Victoria nodded, blinking rapidly. “Right. Stockpiling.” She cleared her throat. “Show me your plant. The one on the windowsill.”
It was their ritual. A small, domestic anchor. Yvonne lifted the laptop again, turning it to face the crowded sill where a trailing pothos spilled from a chipped ceramic pot. She moved the camera slowly over the philodendron, the stubborn succulent, the spider plant putting out new runners. “The pothos is getting brave,” she narrated, her voice steadying. “See this new leaf? It’s going for the light switch.”
She heard Victoria’s quiet, steadying breath. “Good for it.” A pause. “I should let you go. You’re dead on your feet.”
“I am.” Yvonne didn’t deny it. She brought the screen back to her face. They looked at each other, the distance a vast, silent third presence in the call.
“I’ll call you from Sheffield,” Victoria said. “It’ll be loud. You’ll hear the glorious panic.”
“I can’t wait.” Yvonne offered a small smile. “Goodnight, Victoria.”
“Goodnight, Yvonne.”
The screen went black, reflecting her own tired, dusty face in the darkened apartment. The quiet rushed back in, deeper now, layered with the ghost of the conversation. The ‘indefinitely’ echoed. The warmth of Herr Kaya’s family, the solidity of the new archway—they were still there, but they had subtly shifted, becoming both comforts and evidence of an absence.
Yvonne sat for a long time in the dark. She didn’t cry. She just felt the vast, intricate architecture of her longing, as real and raw as the new wooden frame downstairs. It was built of time zones, of stalled approvals, of warm milk with honey, of a dog’s determined pace. It was a structure she lived inside. She finally stood, her body protesting, and went to water the plants. The pothos leaf, she noted, was indeed stretching toward the switch, a vibrant green arrow in the gloom, persistently seeking the closest thing it had to light.