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The smell of coffee has always made Mary feel a bit sick. There’s something about it, she thinks, that comes with a tension; it reminds her of early morning trains, sandwiched between businessmen and their newspapers, or the lingering daytime blend that stuck to the walls when she stumbled into one of those bookshop-by-day bars in her undergrad years. She seemed to be unnaturally attuned to a bad cup. The smell was either black-bitter or ashy or raw, and wherever she went no one seemed to be able to get it right.
Most of all, it reminds her of waking up at home. On weekends, the house came alive even earlier than on a school day for some reason. Mary used to lie for hours with her eyes forced closed, trying to keep herself asleep, while the sound of clinking spoons and bubbling kettles and that odious coffee cloud rapped and tapped on her bedroom door.
It’s strange, then, that she should find herself sitting in a café two hundred miles from home with a cup of the stuff steaming away in front of her.
It’s not perfect, because it never is, but the intensity of a PhD calls for it these days. The first sip scalds her tongue, and she grimaces as she puts it down. She fiddles with her glasses, the new prescription prickling her eyes, and readjusts her grip on her book.
“Come on,” Mary mutters to herself. “Concentrate.”
She has been living in York for five months. After four years in London completing her first two degrees, despite the generosity of her aunt and uncle letting her lodge with them to avoid accommodation fees, she came to the melancholic conclusion that it still wasn’t far enough from home. For now Mary needed to snip herself off from everything, even the lovely Gardiners. So when a place came up to study a doctorate in Medieval Geography in one of the most beautiful cities in the country, she couldn’t resist.
In less than three year’s time, she will no longer be Miss Bennet but Doctor Bennet. The thought thrills her more than anything she’s accomplished so far. It’s something her sisters will never do, something she can do just for herself. She’s proud to have arrived independently at her passions. Academia is something truly her own. Even her father, who’d shared more of her personality than anyone else in the family, had favoured STEM subjects. Having spent his years almost completely absorbed by an intense psychiatric career, he didn’t always have time to indulge Mary’s questions about the lives of medieval women.
Halfway through a particularly gripping paragraph, Mary’s phone buzzes. She picks it up. It’s the family group chat that she hasn’t sent a single message into since Dad died.
Lydia
OMG GUYS
I HAVE A BRAND DEAL
THEY’RE GIVING ME £75,000
I AM BOUND BY STRICT CONFIDENTIALITY ABOUT THIS APPARENTLY
Kitty
WTF THAT’S INSANE
Liz
Well done Lyds. x
Mum
WOW!!!!! Lydia you are a S.T.A.R star xxx my beautiful girl xxx
Mary sighs. If she had a pound for every conversation that went exactly like this, she would have been able to move home at 15.
While Mary was plugging away at university, doing her best to put her family out of her mind, she had come back one Easter holiday a few years ago to find her youngest sister Lydia suddenly famous. Having started to post videos on TikTok during lockdown, her perpetual pit of energy and infuriatingly symmetrical good looks had garnered her quite the following. During the family outings Mary is dragged along for, someone always stopped them in the street for a picture. Even she had received DMs on her barely-used Instagram, asking what Lydia was up to that weekend. She always blocked them all.
The whole thing is vexing by itself, but even more so is the reaction it gets from her mother. Jane’s the director of a multi-million-pound PR firm in London, Lizzie is a literary agent, and Kitty’s husband’s farm supplies most of the supermarkets in the country, but nothing seems to please Mrs Bennet more than Lydia prancing about online in skimpy outfits. Lydia could shit in the garden in front of the King and her mother would praise her for fertilising the plants.
The book about Hildegard von Bingen lies tempting Mary on the table. The opportunity to self-flagellate on her phone is even stronger, though. She knows she shouldn’t, but getting such an easy glimpse into the person Mary should be according to her mother is not an easy siren to ignore.
Two million followers. Two million. It’s beyond comprehension. Lydia’s content is completely as expected: outfits of the day, get ready with her for a complimentary red carpet trip to some trashy romcom film, staged pranks with her meathead boyfriend.
“Hey guys, come along with me to this amazing new hot yoga retreat! So today for breakfast I had avocado toast with kombucha, and-”
“Here’s everything George got me for my birthday! Firstly this gorgeous little set of earrings from Garrard, then this Charlotte Tilbury skincare set, then-”
“Ten things you might not know about me! One, I am a natural brunette. Two, I’ve never been on a diet, I just look like this. Three…”
A stranger is shuffling in Mary’s periphery. He keeps clearing his throat and casting glances her way. The café is fairly cramped, so he’s less than three feet away on the adjacent table. The sound is annoying her, so she glances back. After about thirty seconds of this game, Mary stands up. So does he. They move forward at the same time.
“I’m sorry, would you mind — ahh!”
“Please can you wear headphones, I’m trying to — oof!”
Mary and the stranger seem to have had the same idea. They not only stand up in unison, but also bring the entire contents of their tables — along with the tables themselves — with them. Mary picks up her coffee frantically, protecting it from the clash, only to find that the stranger brought his own coffee over when he stood up. The cups clash together over the table. Two lots of coffee crest upwards and splash them both in the face. The subsequent wetting of the table, Mary’s jumper, and book seems to happen in slow motion.
The stranger’s glasses are steamed and spotted with the sudden hot downpour. He scoffs, taking them off to dry them on the hem of his own jumper, and raises his eyebrows at Mary.
“Thanks,” he says, with only a gentle reproach to his tone.
Mary lifts her chin. “Thank you too. That was…yes. That really was a once in a lifetime experience.”
The stranger concurs. “I can’t say I’ve ever been in a coffee tsunami before. I’ve been white water rafting, but this was much more invigorating.”
“Probably the caffeine,” Mary says.
She cleans her glasses on her sleeve and looks at him. He’s slightly blurry, but close enough for Mary to see. Taller than her, with broad shoulders and something of a shy, awkward stance, the man looks warm — beyond the coffee, that is. He has kind eyes.
Lydia’s grating voice is still blaring through the speakers. Someone at another table shushes them both. They both mouth a ‘sorry’ and the man heads to the counter for some napkins while Mary mutes her phone.
He comes back, handing her a wad of them. Mary tuts as she dabs down her book.
“Well, that’s ruined,” she murmurs. “It’s going to smell of coffee forever.”
“There are worse things to smell of,” the man counters. “Suppose we’ll have to get used to it for the rest of the day, um…?”
“Mary,” she answers.
The man smiles. “Tom.”
Mary was on the brink of declaring coffee her lifelong arch nemesis, but then Tom pulls his chair up to her table and finishes cleaning it up for her. Perhaps there are benefits to it after all.
“What are you reading?” Tom asks.
“Just something for my coursework,” Mary says. “I’m trying to renew a focus on place and space in the lives of medieval women who survived by their own means, with three particular case studies. Hildegard von Bingen, Christine de Pizen and finally Agnes Vescy.”
“Right.” Tom gestures at Mary’s phone. “But I’m guessing Lydia Bennet is more fascinating, right?”
Mary blinks. Hearing her sister’s name come out of a stranger’s mouth is a bizarre experience, and it irritates her slightly, like her own place and space is being invaded. And to be mistaken for a fan of Lydia’s…well.
“I came over to ask if you wouldn’t mind putting headphones in,” Tom says, his face a little sheepish. “Sorry. I’m working, that’s all. And I know you were asking me something similar when we - clashed antlers, so I also apologise for whatever it was.”
“No, no, it’s alright,” Mary reassures him. “I was just wondering if you could, um, work a little quieter.”
Tom chuckles. “I’ll give it a shot –”
“She’s my sister,” Mary blurts out.
“Who?” Tom looks at the phone. Lydia is still flying around on screen, blissfully muted. He raises an eyebrow. “Oh. I see.”
“Just in case you thought I was watching it. I wasn’t. Well. I was. But not – not in the way other people do.”
Tom shrugs. “Your sister’s Lydia Bennet. It’s a good fact to have for two truths and a lie,” he quips. “I can’t say I’m very well-versed in all that influencing stuff. Do you plan on following in her footsteps?”
“Oh no, not me. I’m much more of a – a National Trust and camping holiday sort of person.”
Mary screws her eyes shut, cursing herself internally.
What kind of idiot..?
The first thing she’s said about herself to anyone in ages, let alone a handsome man in a coffee shop, and it had to be the most stilted and cringey statement imaginable.
She had the perfect opportunity to make herself likeable, to offer something impressive. Maybe she should’ve lied and said that stupid brand deal was actually hers, and he simply caught her on a day when she wasn’t wearing her Lycra gym shorts.
When she opens her eyes, Tom’s pulling a curious expression. It’s not one Mary’s ever seen before – certainly not directed at her, anyhow. He has a look of mild surprise and his smile comes slowly and warmly, as though he’s just been told something much more pleasant.
“That sounds right up my street,” he says. “I’d ban all that online nonsense if it was up to me.”
Mary feels very hot all of a sudden. It must be a delayed effect from the coffee splash. She smiles back at him, allowing herself to look him in the eye rather than duck her head in the way she’s used to. The moment sits for a second or two, then Tom blinks rapidly and shakes his head like he’s shaking water from his hair as he motions back to his own table.
“Um – is it a doctorate you’re doing, then?” he says, clearing his throat.
“Yes, I’m a sixth of the way through as of next week.”
“A sixth of the way through,” Tom repeats with amusement. “Very thorough.”
“And yourself?”
“I graduated last year,” he says. “Law. I have a placement at the Magistrate’s now.”
A patch of sun finds its way through to Mary’s table. It casts light on her book, her hands, and Tom’s eyes. Perhaps it will dry up the rest of the coffee, she wonders.
He looks at her again with that curious expression. In the golden midday light, Mary works out what it is. Fondness.
Tom stands up. Mary feels a pang of disappointment and looks down at her book for a moment until she hears the sound of scraping metal on the wooden floor. She looks up again. Tom is dragging his table across the floor to hers. He clears up the damp napkins and rearranges his laptop and papers so they both have some space to work.
Tom hovers between the two tables. “I feel like I owe you a drink after that debacle,” he says. “Tea?”
“Please.”
He smiles once more as he heads towards the counter. Mary watches him order, then switches off her phone and puts it in her bag.