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It’s cold and wet. The cobblestones are slick and slippy. Rain falls slowly as if sieved from above in tiny droplets. Above, the sky is a crowded mix of dull grey and brown - it’s midday, but the risen sun is obscured behind the clouds. Umbrellas decorate the pavement. Footsteps are hurried in between store fronts. Gutters splutter. Drain pipes overflow. The overhanging parts of buildings drip in a hurry in a cadence fast. He doesn’t have a brolly - just a coat wrapped tight. His uncovered head is wet. It takes him just five minutes to get from A to B, but in that short period he’s damp, his clothes feel heavy, his trousers round the front of his thighs seem stuck to his legs. The place’s window that fills the frontage is steamed up and a Victorian midnight shade of orange. A few streaks where hands have brushed the surface reveal a busy interior, full of life and warmth. The door swings open, and two ladies emerge, the umbrella goes up in automatic and both huddle together underneath, a body merged into one. The door begins its slow retreat, but he catches it and takes a skip inside. Inside: where the quiet noise of the street is replaced by the low hum of conversation and of music playing soft. The rain had chased off the usual hubbub of the high street: conversations and encounters were curtailed and necessarily brief; footsteps were quick rather than slow. Inside: a different pace. He walked to the counter and asked for an espresso and a bottle of sparkling water. She took his order.

Staying in, yeah? I’ll bring it over to you.

Her voice was full of presumption and kindness. He felt soggy. He found an empty table-for-two by the window, draped his coat on the chair and sat opposite on the galleyside, where a low bench stretched itself alongways. The table still held the previous occupants stuff: cups and saucers. He moved them to the side. And as he moved the second saucer he revealed something underneath. It was a small piece of card with the handwritten words “call me” in elegant joined writing, followed by a phone number. He picked it up and turned it over and looked around the place. Everyone inside was wrapped up in their own business. The three in front on the round table were discussing something, laptops open, notebooks scribbling, keys tapping; the couple to his left were holding hands across their table-for-two forming a capital A with their arms; further down, a man was reading Albert Camus’s The Stranger and next to him on the table after were two older women who looked at purest comfort with one another, laughing and smiling and talking in a manner that seemed so utterly lacking even the slightest artifice. No one was watching him. With some degree of anxiety, as if he was conscious of committing some crime, he put the card into his breast pocket. And, as he did this, one of the waiters came to clear his table in a motion that was as fluid and quick as mercury, giving him no time at all to react in embarrassment; she was already walking away with the cups and saucers by the time he realised what was happening.

The espresso came a few moments later on a disc shaped black tray. The glass bottle of sparkling water with a glass.

Who was the note for? Why was the message so inexplicably bereft of exposition?

He sipped the coffee. It was so bitter and strong that it made his shoulders roll back and his back lift his body up straight. He returned the cup the to the saucer and breathed out.

Serious writers sit in cafes and write, he said to himself.

He leaned round the table and took out his notebook and pen from his coat’s inner pocket and began to write.

This is the story of a young woman named Daisy.

The decision has been made, it was time to leave.

Storm clouds gathered like lions waiting for the kill.

Thoughts tumbled round his head and off his pen in curious scribbles that came together to create symbols which corresponded to letter names, breathing words and then, with more symbols that followed the codex of grammar, sentences, full blown sentences were born out in front of him. His handwriting was fast and often incomprehensible - more scratchy, full of points.

Vertiginous clouds. Iridescent rain drops. Footsteps falling like snow flakes. Jagged sun beams. Hard-edged shadows. Rumbling whispers. Raging paradoxes. Chimney pots beckoning whorls of desperation.

He finished the coffee and felt useless. He was not a writer. He was a failure. He looked at his watch and time was almost up - time to go back to the office where he worked; this moment of retreat, of release from the mundane reality of his existence was almost up. This allotted hour afforded him by his generous employees - explicitly for his lunch, but which he used as an hour of creative adventure. He poured the sparkling water into the glass and watched the bubbles bounce around. He looked at the product of his time: the scribbles on the page. He took a sip. Then, with a heavy sigh, admitted the necessity of administrative process which he forced himself into: write the date. Write the number which records the number of sessions. He thought to himself as he made these notes: by force of nature, will I eventually stumble upon a series and sequence of words that create something that frees me? Or will I toil like Sisyphus till the day I die, wholly lacking some magical ability to write something worth writing? He considered the room again. He looked at his watch: five minutes to walk back, giving him approximately eight minutes before he had to leave this seat. He put his pen in his breast pocket and remembered the card. He pulled it out again and allowed himself to contemplate.

call me: 07966988992

Two words, a colon and a series of digits. Those things seemed to him in a moment more powerful than anything he had ever written himself. How could such brevity be so potent? He held the card and realisation dripped around him.

The beauty and power of this card was its brevity; he was taken aback by it because of the multitude of thoughts and curiosities it had triggered within his mind: who had written it? Who was it for? Whose voice would be heard if someone were to phone that telephone number? Was it an old person or young person? Was it meant for me? But how could it have been? The piece of card was a ticket into a black hole of eternity where possibilities seemed infinite. He looked at his watch. The numbers had stopped. He looked around the room and everyone was frozen in time. He lifted his hand to his face and moved his finger tips.

And then he breathed out.