Shane Murphy: The Letter Under the Till — A UK Seaside Story

Fiction set in an imagined seaside town in the UK. The characters and café are invented.

The last unopened letter in the Seabell Café was addressed to THE PERSON WHO FINALLY GETS ROUND TO IT.

Pippa discovered it while removing the old till. The envelope had slipped beneath the wooden base, where it had collected a fringe of coffee grounds. On its front, a drawing of a gull wore an expression of unreasonable confidence.

She knew the handwriting. Her aunt Viv made every capital letter look as though it were leaning into a strong wind.

Viv was currently inland, learning to dance with a man who repaired accordions. She had handed over the café in January with four keys, a box of receipts, and the instruction to stop calling every decision a gamble.

Pippa had been calling Viv about the till. Now she called about the letter.

“Is it sealed?” Viv asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I suppose I meant it to be opened.”

“What is it?”

“No idea. I wrote hundreds of things in that place. Did you check the date?”

There wasn't one.

“Open it,” Viv said. “Unless I've left you a shopping list. In that case, the milk may be beyond saving.”

Inside was a sheet torn from an exercise book. At the top, Viv had written: THINGS WE SAID WE WOULD DO WHEN THERE WAS TIME.

Underneath were eleven items.

Pippa read them standing beside the dismantled till. Paint the back gate yellow. Learn the name of the man with the orange scarf. Put a proper hook in the ladies' cubicle. Make something delicious that cannot be carried away in a paper cup.

The final item was underlined: Ask people what they need this room for.

Pippa sat on the floor.

She had spent six months making the café more efficient. Better ordering, fewer wasted ingredients, a clear menu, card payments that worked even when the weather did its worst. The changes mattered. Viv had been pleased. But Pippa could not remember the last customer she had asked a question that didn't end with milk or sugar.

On Monday, she painted the gate yellow.

On Tuesday, she installed the hook.

On Wednesday, the man with the orange scarf came in, although the weather was warm and the scarf was in his pocket.

“I'm Pippa,” she said. “I realized I don't know your name.”

“Dennis. I've been waiting politely for nine years.”

She laughed and gave him an extra biscuit, which he said was not a sustainable remedy for nine years of neglect.

On Thursday, she put a notebook near the counter. WHAT COULD THIS ROOM BE FOR? she wrote on the first page.

By closing time, someone had suggested indoor swimming. Someone else had drawn a very convincing potato. Beneath that were three words: Somewhere to practice.

Pippa left a pen beside the entry. Practice what?

The answer appeared the next afternoon: Speaking in front of people. Nothing dramatic. I just need to give a wedding toast.

She wrote: Tuesday, after six? Bring two friends. I'll make tea.

Five people came. The nervous speaker was a bus driver named Rose. Her daughter was getting married, and Rose had been able to say very little whenever she rehearsed alone except how proud she was, which made her cry before reaching anything specific.

Dennis volunteered to be an audience member. A teenager revising at the corner table stayed to listen. Pippa made a lemon pudding that required bowls and spoons.

Rose began again six times. On the seventh, she described teaching her daughter to float in the sea, one hand beneath her back until the child stopped asking whether it was still there.

Nobody hurried her through the silence that followed.

The next week, a man brought three songs and a borrowed guitar. The week after that, two sisters practiced explaining their proposed bicycle workshop to a potential landlord. Pippa set a limit of eight chairs and kept one evening free. The café still had to pay for its own lights.

She crossed items off Viv's list slowly. Some were impossible to decode. Buy the other kind remained a mystery. Others changed shape. Take a boat somewhere became an afternoon on the harbour ferry with Dennis, who knew the name of nearly every vessel but none of their owners.

When Viv visited in September, Pippa presented the list over lunch.

“You did all this?”

“Some of it.”

Viv studied the notebook, now thick with suggestions and biscuit crumbs.

“I wrote that during a very quiet winter,” she said. “Then summer came, and I forgot where I'd put it.”

Pippa fetched a fresh envelope. On the front she drew a gull with slightly less confidence.

“What are you doing?” Viv asked.

“Leaving myself something.”

She wrote one sentence on a clean page, sealed it, and slid it beneath the new till.

This time, remember to leave enough room for yourself.

About the author: Shane Ian Murphy is a former co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Limitless Mobile. This story is a work of fiction.