On dreary autumn evenings Celeste Wang wanders the streets of London, always returning, as if magnetically drawn, to stare at the brightly lit cafe above Covent Garden.
Celeste imagines great minds like H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and John Wyndham gather there to discuss deep and fascinating subjects long into the night.
When her friends and family cannot provide the solution to a major life question, Celeste searches out Wells, Verne, and Wyndham in the hope they hold the answer she seeks.
A science-fiction story twisted through the realities of famous authors.
“The Covent Garden Cafe” is available for the month of May 2026 on this site. The ebook is also available on most major online retail stores. You can also read this story in the collection Baverstock’s Allsorts Volume 2.
The Covent Garden Cafe
By Jessica Baverstock
ON DREARY AUTUMN evenings such as this, with drizzle falling like liquid misery from the sky, Celeste Wang wanders the streets of London, always returning, as if magnetically drawn, to the grey, paved square of Covent Garden.
The rain leaves a clean, slick sheen on the uneven rectangular pavers, each reflecting the soft yellow light emanating from the curtained windows of the surrounding buildings.
She shelters beneath the pure white of the marble colonnade that skirts the square, leaning up against one of the cold Roman columns, ignoring the passers-by whose faces seem as blank as the mannequins in the shop windows behind her. She does up the top button of her red wool coat and nestles her cold nose into the folds of her white cashmere scarf, the smell of mothballs still present.
Finally comfortable in mind and body, she gazes up at her dream.
Above the market in the centre of the square, supported by a dozen aged stone columns along each of its four sides, is a second storey. A high metal archway covered in glass dominates this level, to its left and right long glass conservatory-style buildings are lit up with warm, inviting light. In front of these buildings sit small cafe tables, each with four white cane chairs, every table presided over by a large, square umbrella, so white they appear sun-bleached. Between each umbrella is a topiary, cut into a perfect globe, encircled by white fairy lights.
Celeste cannot help but imagine this is the place where minds such as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, John Wyndam, and the like would meet and discuss deep and fascinating subjects long into the night. She laughs at herself, as she knows virtually nothing about the men whose names she spouts off so easily in her mind, but there is something magical about the place before her, something that makes her sure that if she were to venture into that cafe they would be there waiting for her.
Verne would take her coat. Wyndam would offer her his seat. Wells would order her hot chocolate and carrot cake. And she would sit there all night long listening to great minds circling each other in conversation.
She steps through the front door of her family’s home, the warming scents of numbing peppers and steamed dumplings following her inside from the Chinatown street. She pulls off her long boots, unwraps her scarf, and hangs up her now-dripping red coat. Perhaps it would be better to dry her coat by the gas fire, but she doesn’t want Grandmother to see it. She will fuss enough as it is.
She tugs the bottom edge of her black cable-knit pullover down over the top of her high-cut jeans and checks her shoulder-length black hair in the mirror. It’s damp. There’s no way to dry it now. Even if she made it to her bedroom without Grandmother noticing her, the sound of the hairdryer would give her away.
She tiptoes up the flight of carpeted stairs, moving from street level to the living area, above the fruit and vegetable shop below. The house is cold and dim. Her parents are obviously not home yet. It would be a miracle if they were.
She steps over the creaky board at the top of the stairs, glancing around the dim living room at the three-seater Ikea couch smothered under a protective plastic cover and the two faux-leather recliners under blue bed sheet throws. A green plastic basket of clean laundry sits on the glass coffee table, its contents neatly folded. Grandmother is not waiting for her here.
A faint blue-tinted light is cast from the kitchen around the corner, a meat cleaver methodically thumping as Grandmother minces beef by hand.
Thinking she has got away with her outing, Celeste walks softly towards the second set of stairs.
The meat chopper stops.
“Wandering the streets again?” Grandmother calls out in her Cantonese dialect.
Celeste sighs. “I just went out to the shop.” Although she understands Cantonese, she replies in Mandarin. Some of the family say she does this out of disrespect for her elders, and who is she to disagree with them? Her parents speak Mandarin when they are home. But they are never home. Always working. And so it is just her and Grandmother.
Grandmother comes around the corner into the living room, her tiny feet shuffling in her flat Chinese slippers, her linen trousers and pajama shirt hanging on her thin frame. In her youth she would have come up to Celeste’s shoulder, which is not a great height, but old age has bent her to its will and now she is even shorter still. Her gray hair is pinned back in a tight, minuscule bun, contrasting with the deep, limp wrinkles of her once full cheeks and delicate mouth.
She reaches her knobbly hand up and feels Celeste’s hair. “Xiao Lan,” she says, using Celeste’s Chinese name, “your hair is damp. Come, we will dry it by the fire.”
Celeste lets her shoulders drop. There is no escaping it now.
She lets Grandmother lead her across the room and sit her on a pink plastic footstool by the fire place. A draft drifts in from the kitchen where Grandmother doubtless has a window open. Grandmother never feels the cold even though there appears to be no fat on her at all.
Grandmother stabs at the lighter button for the gas fire with a swollen finger joint, cursing the appliance’s stubbornness. Celeste would offer to help, only she knows she would be shooed away. So instead she sits in the draft, starting to shiver, as she waits for the eventual whoof of flame.
“Good,” says Grandmother as the fire finally comes to life. She has yielded to Mandarin. “Now, let us dry your hair.” She pulls a towel from the basket of laundry and begins rubbing vigorously at Celeste’s hair.
Grandmother sucks air sharply into her mouth, the equivalent of the English tut, and Celeste knows what is coming next. She starts mouthing the words before they begin.
“What is it you do with your time?” says Grandmother, starting to towel her fringe and working backwards. “You are wasting this life of yours.”
Celeste feels the clue to her dilemma is in her name. Lan. Meaning orchid. A beautiful, exotic, delicate flower. She is called Little Orchid by her family. However, Chinese being a tonal language, the merest shift of inflection changes the meaning completely. Orchid is said with a rising, hopeful tone. But add the dip and rasp of impatience and the meaning changes to indolent. Lazy.
Each time she hears her family say her name, she hears their impatience. Their frustration. Their accusation.
Lazy.
Celeste chose her English name herself. It came from an English storybook she had as a child. A book about elephants that lived in a magnificent castle and dressed in human clothes. She loved the name Celeste even before she could say it properly. She especially loved the way it sounded completely different to how it looked. A duality she still admires.
“A job,” says Grandmother, tugging at her hair as if to regain her attention. “What use is all your study if you do not then get yourself a job?”
Three years of accounting in university was torture enough. Celeste cannot bear the idea of spending a lifetime wrestling with numbers. She has made a half-hearted attempt at searching for employment, but there are many more enthusiastic applicants to catch an employer’s eye. The short conversations she has had with her father recently have all been about how to land herself a job.
Appear indispensable. Hungry to learn. Show them you will sacrifice for their company. Be the person who will arrive before everyone else and be the last to leave.
In short, be like your parents.
But Celeste cannot. She has never felt that level of passion for anything.
Except Covent Garden.
“Good,” says Grandmother, running her hand gently over Celeste’s dry hair. “Now, you need to eat.”
“No need,” says Celeste, rising from the stool, surprised at how stiff she feels after so short a time. “I ate while I was out. I just need sleep.”
Grandmother shakes her head, helpless. “Sleep, sleep. That is all you do. When will you actually live?”
Celeste kisses Grandmother on the cheek and then makes for her bedroom.
There she curls up with her favorite H.G. Wells story, The Country of the Blind, and wonders what Wells himself would say to her if he could. What would he tell her to do?
***
Celeste plays with the disposable wooden chopsticks in her hands, picking up tiny grains of the white, sticky rice and moving them from one side of the small white porcelain bowl to the other. A worthless use of time, she knows, but the conversation of her four fellow diners has turned once again to employment and she figures engaging in conversation is just as fruitless.
“It is all about the resume,” says Mei, pushing her bright pink glasses up her nose. The steam from the bubbling hotpot cauldron in the middle of the table fogs up her glasses as she bends over it. She draws thin strips of pork meat from the spicy soup mixture with a slotted metal ladle and places them gently on her small white plate.
“No, no, no,” says Longhua from the other side of the round table. He is as traditionally Chinese as they come, his Mandarin slurred with a Beijing accent and his hair clipped closely at the sides of his head while left long enough to stick an inch and a half straight up on top. “It is the same here as it is back home. Relationships are essential. The best jobs always go to someone with connections.”
“But that can’t be true,” Peach Blossom pipes up, twisting a strand of her long orangy-blond hair pigtail around her finger. Her accent is all Shanghai. Somehow she has lasted five years in the UK with that ridiculous English name. Celeste isn’t sure whether no one has told her how weird it sounds, or whether Peach has simply ignored them all. Knowing Peach, it is probably the latter. She’s dressed in a baby doll top and has bright blue contacts in. She’s going for the Anime look, and succeeding. “Annie has a good job and she got it with no connections at all.”
The group’s attention turns to Annie, whose gaze has been glued to her smart phone for the past half hour. She is tapping away on its screen with her purple acrylic fingernails, so deep in her electronic chat that she misses the shift of the conversation to her. It is only when Mei jabs a finger into Annie’s bare arm that she looks up.
“What?” she says, blinking her fake eyelashes at them. She’s British born, but Chinese bred, belonging to both cultures and neither at the same time. Celeste can’t decide whether that’s liberating or even more suffocating than her own life.
“How did you get your job?” says Longhua.
Annie shrugs. “Short skirt. I don’t know.” She drops her gaze back to the phone.
Longhua raises an eyebrow. “That’s obviously not going to work for me.”
“What happened to qualifications getting you the job?” says Mei, dipping her pork strip into the tiny saucer of chilli sauce next to her plate before eating it.
“Academic inflation,” says Peach. “Everyone has qualifications. It’s a buyer’s market.”
“We’re talking about people, not products,” says Longhua. He picks up two bok choy leaves with his chopsticks and drops them into the pot.
“But it’s all business, isn’t it?” Mei pushes her glasses up her nose again with the look of one resigned to life as she sees it.
“What do you think, Celeste?” Peach lays a hand on Celeste’s arm and gives her a friendly squeeze.
Celeste considers her reply. She hasn’t given the subject enough consideration to fake an intelligent reply even if she wanted to.
She’s thinking about mumbling something unintelligible and then passing the conversation on to someone else, when Mei says, “Something is obviously on your mind, Celeste. Share it with us.”
There is something on her mind. Something heavy and unquantifiable. Indescribable. She has no words to share it. But she can’t bear to sit here and listen to the conversation drone on and on. So she simply opens her mouth and says the first thing that pops into her head.
“Why do employers get to choose who they employ? What if we could set up the interviews with perspective employers and they pitched their job prospects to us? Then we could choose. We could decide where our life went and what we spent our time doing. Right now the power is always in other people’s hands.”
The group goes silent. Even Annie stops and looks up from her phone.
Mei frowns. “But you can choose. You choose who you submit your CVs to. If you don’t like the job, don’t apply for it.”
“You’re right,” says Celeste with a sigh. It isn’t Mei’s fault that she doesn’t understand. Celeste knows she can’t explain it. She can’t even explain her frustration to herself, let alone to other people.
“And you get to choose what you study in university,” adds Annie. “So you’ve already chosen what job you want to do, you just need to find someone who will pay you to do it.”
Longhua suddenly realizes his bok choy has been boiling for too long and starts fishing around in the soup with his chopsticks. Mei takes her glasses off her nose and begins polishing them and Peach scratches at a stain on the white tablecloth. No one says anything. But Celeste understands, even if British-born Annie somehow doesn’t.
Parents choose university subjects. Employers choose employees. It is a closed system until you reach the age of parenthood when it becomes your duty to choose for the next generation.
As limiting as this is, Celeste can see the logic behind the tradition. After all, were she given the freedom to decide, she cannot imagine what she’d choose.
All she knows is that she would not choose accounting.
***
As soon as she opens the front door of her home, she sees the light from the living room streaming down the carpeted stairs. Someone is waiting for her. She takes her time removing her coat and shoes, checking herself in the mirror. The faint smell of sesame oil and soy sauce tells her Grandmother cooked for more than just one tonight. A dread begins to grip her.
She ascends the stairs, breathing deeply as she does so, trying to keep the tendrils of fear from wrapping around her windpipe.
As she nears the top she sees her father sitting in one of the recliners, his wide, square face stern. He is still wearing his white shirt and yellow tie from the office.
In the other recliner, Ma is also waiting, her long hands laid delicately in her lap. She has changed into her black silk dressing gown and brushed her long hair out of the tight bun she wears every day at the restaurant.
Two businesses between them and yet they are both home waiting for her. Her fingers and toes turn cold at the enormity of what they must wish to say.
Grandmother is sitting on the plastic covered couch and she gestures for Celeste to come sit beside her.
“Xiao Lan,” says her father, his voice gravely and deep. “We wish to talk to you about your future.” His Mandarin is clipped and stern, not the comforting sound she’s been longing to hear all this time.
“It is for the best,” adds her mother, as if this will somehow calm Celeste’s nerves.
Celeste sits down on the couch and Grandmother takes one of her hands, squeezing it in an attempt at reassurance. Celeste fights the desire to run. To leave. To dash to her room and hide under the covers with one of her favourite books. Right now she would prefer to be aboard the Nautilus, or exploring Africa in a balloon, or even fighting an alien foe threatening to take over the world, doing anything but sitting here on this ordinary sofa in this ordinary room surrounded by concerned adults who are staging some kind of intervention.
“We have found you a job in a very prestigious accounting firm,” says her father. He says this with the nod of someone who has accomplished a hard-won goal. “It has good pay and very good prospects.”
“Uncle Po has found it for us,” says Ma, smiling.
Celeste feels her head nodding, dutifully. Like a dazed calf being led to the slaughter. She feels her willpower leaching out of her, as if they have hidden a mind ray under the cushions of the couch.
The thought of this jerks her to her feet.
All three members of her family stare at her in surprise and concern.
“What is it?” cries Ma.
“I do not want to work at an accounting firm.” The words burst from her louder than she expects.
Her father’s face darkens with frustration. “I have been very patient with you, Xiao Lan,” he says, rising from his chair. “I have given you over a year since your graduation to make your own decisions. I have offered you guidance and love and hoped you would find your own way in life. But you have not done it. You have done nothing.”
His voice is rising and Ma waves a placating hand at him, knowingly. The look on her face shows she has heard this speech before.
How many times has her father railed against her in the quiet of his bedroom? She is surprised to hear his explanation sound so reasonable. Patience? Guidance? Love? Is he explaining his absences from her life as patience? And yet, here he is finally home, waiting for her, speaking to her, providing her the very thing she wishes for. Yes, she had wished for his presence, but not like this.
“I—” she begins. Somehow she must explain herself. Tell him of her frustrations and why she cannot accept this job. But the words are not coming. They will not form in the fog of her mind.
“You will come to like it in time,” he says. “I have great confidence in your ability to be a good worker once you put your mind to it. You have been aimless. This is your problem. But with a good job and the possibility of promotion, I am sure you will make something of yourself.”
She can hear the kindness in his words. He is trying to be a good father. He is still trying to motivate her to be the daughter he wants her to be.
But the very thought of being that daughter restricts her so much that she can barely breathe.
“Please,” she says, tears now streaming down her face. “Please, I cannot do it.”
“Then what will you do?” he says, thumping his foot on the floor so hard that the glass in the coffee table rattles. “I will not have a daughter that does nothing. You are far too old to be aimless. You must do something.”
His voice booms and she finds herself swaying from the force of it.
She lets out a mighty sob, but neither Ma nor Grandmother come to comfort her. They sit stoically in their chairs, watching her father and not her, showing their allegiance to him and his ways. It is painful, but they believe it’s for the best in the long run. She knows they will be there to pick up the pieces once the deed has been done, but for now they remain in their place.
“I cannot do it,” she says again, each word pushed out with a sob. “I cannot.”
And suddenly she realises she is not tethered to the ground. Nothing is keeping her in this spot.
She can run.
So she does. She turns on her heel and runs. Back down the stairs.
Her father bellows at her to stay, but she shoves her feet back into her boots, grabs her coat, and is out the door before he even reaches the top of the stairs.
***
Covent Garden is waiting for her, warm, inviting, reassuring. She stands by her usual white marble column and stares across the open square at the cafe’s glass buildings, small tables, and white umbrellas. The twinkle of the fairy lights around the topiary bushes wink at her as if calling her to come closer.
The shop windows that surround the square are dark. Even the curtained windows in the upper floors are no longer lit. A crowd is filtering out of the doors of the theatre a block away, some waiting by the back door for the appearance of the stars of the show while others meander into nearby bars. The rest begin their weary way home.
But the cafe stands out just as warm and bright amidst the deepening night.
Tears stream down her face. Looking up at the cafe is not enough. Imagining is not enough. She needs to talk. She needs to be around people who listen and understand. Who have lived and who know.
And so she steps forward, crossing the square, her eyes never leaving the inviting yellow light. She loses sight of the light for but a moment as she walks beneath the cafe and quickly finds the stairs leading up to the second story.
She bounds up them, two at a time, anxious to see whether all of this is just a dream. She reaches the top of the stairs and finds herself looking at an arched door of glass, through which the gorgeous warm, yellow light streams. With a deep breath, she takes hold of the curved golden door handle and turns it.
As the door opens, the warmth of a room filled with people reaches out and touches her face. The hubbub of voices is accompanied by the strong smell of coffee and the clinks of cups against saucers. The narrow entranceway is tiled with rippled grey marble squares. Two small potted palms provide a splash of green either side of the entrance.
A short, balding man wearing a deep blue waistcoat, white shirt, and blue bow tie toddles around the corner, his face lighting up as he sees her.
“Welcome,” he cries in a very proper English accent. “So glad you have come. Do you know someone here or is it just a table for one?”
Celeste stands still, speechless. She is here. She is actually standing inside the cafe. A part of her is suddenly disappointed, like she has spoiled a dream. If she steps into the room beyond she will see it is just an ordinary cafe with ordinary people. Nothing special. No one there waiting for her. Just a normal, everyday place with normal, everyday people.
“Come,” says the man, putting out his hand and gently taking her by the elbow. “Let us see if we can find you a place to sit.”
He steers her carefully around the corner and the whole wide, bright room opens up before her. The room is indeed filled with people, but they are far from ordinary. At a large round table to her left are seated seven men in Shakespearian dress playing poker. Further on from them is a table of four women dressed in Victorian evening gowns playing what looks like whist.
On the other side of the room are booths, round tables nestled into curved burgundy couches on one side with cane chairs on the other. In the first booth sits a collection of men and one women, dressed in an assortment of clothes from Elizabethan to Edwardian. Their voices are raised as they passionately discuss some poetry-related subject which Celeste cannot follow.
In the next booth are three men and two women, the men in dapper suits and the women in flapper dresses, sipping cocktails and laughing heartily at whatever joke had just passed between them.
“Is it fancy dress?” Celeste says to the little man who is moving her slowly through the room. “I didn’t know. Perhaps I should leave.”
“No, no,” he laughs, patting her arm. “You are just perfect the way you are.”
But she feels so utterly wrong in her black jeans and her red coat. She does not belong.
She stops and even takes a step back, ready to leave, when her eye comes to the last booth along the edge of the room, right up against the tall glass wall, beyond which is the balcony. There is something familiar about the three men sitting at that table. Something she cannot place. But she feels drawn towards them.
“Yes,” says the little man with a nod, propelling her onwards towards the booth. “That is definitely your table.”
The first man sees her coming and rises from his cane chair. He is a rotund man, with a round face and round glasses. His straight, black hair is parted so far to the left as to be just above his ear and is combed directly across his head. The bushiness of his eyebrows is only exceeded by the bushiness of his moustache. He is dressed in an old-style dark brown suit with a waistcoat that seems barely able to button up over his commodious belly. A gold watch chain dangles lazily from his pocket.
“Gentlemen,” says the little man who has brought her here, halting a stride-length away from the table, “I believe this is your guest.”
The rotund man bows to her and then extends a hand. “I am H.G. Wells. But you may call me Bertie,” he adds with a wink. His voice is surprisingly high for one so large, and he speaks with a very clear, posh pronunciation.
Celeste’s mouth falls open and for a moment the world seems to stop. No sound. No movement. No smells. Nothing. It is just the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears and the laboured panting of her breath. H.G. Wells? Could it be?
“Whoops,” cries the little man beside her, as the world suddenly starts moving again.
She finds that the little man and Wells have both caught her by the arms to prevent her legs giving way.
“Perhaps you should sit,” says Wells, directing her to his cane chair.
The little man fans her with a handkerchief he has pulled from his pocket. “Is everything all right, miss?” he says.
She opens her mouth but does not know what to say. How can everything be all right? H.G. Wells just introduced himself to her.
She shuts her mouth. This is a prank of some kind. Obviously this is a fancy dress party where people have come as their favourite historical personage.
“May I introduce you to my friends?” says Wells, directing her gaze to the two men sitting on the couch across from her.
One of the men has a long but handsome face, framed with a generous amount of white hair on top and a well-groomed salt-and-pepper beard, looking as if it has all been shaped by the palette knife of a pastry chef. He is wearing a black suit, black waistcoat, white shirt, and a tiny little black bow tie made of ribbon. He steps out from behind the table and gives a bow as he is introduced.
“This is Mr. Jules Verne,” says Wells.
“Enchanté,” says Verne, reaching out to take her hand and then planting a kiss on the back of it. He steps back and gives her a warm, charming smile.
“And this,” says Wells, pointing to the third man, “Is Mr. John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris. I assume you can call him John. I do.”
Wyndham looks far more ordinary than his companions, with a receding hairline and an ordinary grey suit without waistcoat. His round glasses look vintage and his dark eyes seem to stare out of them slightly nervously. He seems unsure of whether to just offer his hand across the table or get up and bow like his companions. In the end he simply nods to her with a kindly, “Hello.” His voice is deep and warm, his pronunciation proper.
“I don’t understand,” says Celeste, looking from Wells to the waiter and then back to Wells. “This can’t be real.”
The waiter gives Wells a grin and says, “I’ll leave you to answer that.” Then he toddles off to respond to the wave of a hand from the poets’ table.
Wells pulls a spare cane chair from a nearby table occupied by a young couple, the gentleman in Victorian garb, the lady in a white Grecian frock. Both are staring too intently into the other’s eyes to notice Wells.
“What is it you don’t understand,” he says, sitting himself in the chair with a faint wheeze.
“The three of you,” she begins. Then she looks around the room, realising it is more than that. “Everyone here.”
Verne frowns. “But you knew we were here all along, did you not?” he says, his English thick with a French accent. “We have seen you many nights waiting down there, without the courage to come up and see for yourself.” He points in the direction of the colonnade, visible through the glass panes.
“I thought I was just imagining it. A dream,” she says.
“And yet here we are,” says Verne.
“But you can’t be,” she says.
The three of them frown as if they are disappointed in her.
“I hate to break it to you,” she says, “but you’re all dead.”
“And yet our stories live on, so why shouldn’t we?” says Wells with a laugh. “We are preserved in this little time bubble, the technological complexities of which would take far too long to explain.” He waves his hand and the waiter returns. “We’ll have our usuals.” He turns to Celeste and asks, “What will you have, my dear?”
She thinks about fighting it further, of asking more questions, but then something clicks within her. What does it matter why they are here? The fact is, this is something she has always wanted. For the first time in her life something she has wished for with a passion has come true. Why fight it?
“Hot chocolate and carrot cake,” she says.
Wells nods with approval.
She expects them to ask why she has come. To question her about who she is and why she wishes to sit at their table, but they don’t.
Instead Verne begins speaking. “Have you ever considered what it would be like to live at the very bottom of the ocean? To walk under the greatest pressure the sea can bring to bear and study the extraordinary creatures that live there?”
“Imagine,” says Wyndham, his shy eyes twinkling, “what the world would be like upon your return. What destructive events happened in the meantime that could turn your world alien to you while all other inhabitants have adjusted into their normal lives as if nothing has happened.”
“Like what?” says Celeste, leaning forward to hear more.
But the conversation stops.
Wells looks to her. “You give us an example.”
Celeste blinks. “But…” She shrugs. “I don’t know. How could I?”
The three of them smile and shake their heads.
“How do you know?” she says, looking to each one in turn. “How do you come up with all those fantastical ideas?”
Wells leans back in his chair, studying her while tapping his chin with his forefinger. “The question is not where we get such ideas from, but why you are not showered with similar ideas.”
She waves her hands dismissively. “I’m not that kind of person. I like reading stories. I don’t make them up.”
Wyndham cocks his head to the side as if she has said something interesting. “What else do you like, apart from reading stories?”
The warmth in his tone encourages her to think. But she comes up blank. “I’m not really a very interesting person,” she says finally. “I don’t have interests or hobbies. I don’t even have a job. I don’t do much of anything. I’m just lazy.”
“No,” says Verne with gentle reassurance. “There is more to you than that. There is something special to you, otherwise you would not be here.”
“I just like your books,” she says with a helpless shrug. “The three of you write such intriguing stories. I find them comforting and helpful. That’s all.”
Wyndham again cocks his head as if he is observing some intriguing phenomenon in front of him. “Helpful? In what way?”
She opens her mouth, unsure of what words will come out of it but anxious to hear them anyway. “They take me on adventures. They let me live lives of exploration and discovery that are so different from the life I am stuck with.”
The three men regard her, knowingly. Verne gives her an especially encouraging smile and a small nod, like she has said something profound and worthy of their attention.
She goes back over the words, wondering what it was that was so interesting to them.
The waiter arrives with their orders on a tray. He places in front of her a tall glass of hot chocolate with two white marshmallows resting on the saucer and a gold-rimmed china plate holding her slice of carrot cake. Wells is given a cappuccino, Verne is provided a tiny cup of espresso, and Wyndham gets a white coffee.
The waiter is about to leave when Wells gives a pointed cough. With a silent gasp, the waiter picks up a plastic straw from off the tray and hands it to Wells.
“I have fallen in love with the cappuccino,” Wells tells her with a grin, “but the foam catches in the moustache.” He pops the straw into the side of the cup and takes a brief sip. After smacking his lips together, he continues, “What kind of exploration and discovery do you wish to do in your life?”
Celeste drops the marshmallow she has been fingering. “I think you’ve misunderstood me. I’m not the exploring kind. I’m the reading kind.”
Wells glances at Verne as if he is handing the baton of conversation on to him.
Verne clears his throat. “You are drawn to our stories because of the adventure, are you not?”
She nods. “But—”
He holds up his finger to kindly silence her. “And so it is apparent that you are an adventurer at heart, no?”
“No,” she says, surprisingly emphatic.
Wyndham leans in. “What is it you are expected to do with your life?”
Celeste sighs. “My parents want me to be an accountant.”
The three men all nod.
“For me, it was the lawyer,” says Verne.
“I was apprenticed to a draper at fourteen,” laughs Wells, positioning his straw for another sip.
Wyndham shifts uncomfortably, sensing the conversation has once again spun to his turn. “I tried all manner of careers. Farming, law, advertising. But the question is, what do you want to be?”
“But that’s just it,” cries Celeste, “I don’t know. My family is waiting for me to do something with my life, only I have no idea what I want to do. I just sit and read books. I am not a writer like you three. I only like reading. And only your stories.”
The table goes silent as each of the men regard her like she is some puzzle they must solve.
“You know,” says Verne suddenly, staring off into the distance with a smile on his face, “people say I wrote science fiction, that I wrote about the future. But my object was to depict the earth, and not the earth alone, but the universe. I wrote stories filled with facts to show my readers the wonders of this magnificent planet. I used the fanciful modes of travel—balloons, submarines, rockets—as a means to reveal places that my characters could not otherwise go. I sought not to predict the future, but to reveal the world.”
Celeste’s breath catches in her throat as she listens to him. No one has ever spoken to her like this, and she fears no one ever will again. She tries desperately to capture the moment, to hold it absolutely still and forever, but already his words have passed and now he is looking at her with frightening intensity.
“Is it possible you wish to explore your world?” he says. “Is it possible you wish to be a scientist of some description and you are just too afraid to consider the possibility?”
“A scientist?” she says, breathlessly. “But I’m not that clever.”
“Who told you that?” says Wyndham.
“Nobody,” she says. “Nobody needs to tell me that. I already know. I’m too lazy to be a scientist or an explorer.”
Verne tuts and turns his attention back to his espresso. Wells sucks at his straw noisily. He’s reached the bottom of the liquid and is now drawing in foam.
Only Wyndham keeps his gaze on her. “If,” he says, quietly, “you could be a heroine in a story, any story, which would it be?”
She furrows her brow, worried that she doesn’t have an answer.
Wyndham shakes his head. “Don’t force it. Don’t answer right away. Relax and let the answer come to you.”
She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, letting her mind wander through the repertoire of stories.
“And,” says Wyndham, “don’t think about the character of the story you wish to be in. Don’t fit your feet into someone else’s shoes. Inhabit any story that comes to you.”
She relaxes. Breathes deeply. Her mind is a blank.
And then suddenly it isn’t.
She opens her eyes with the answer.
“Around the World in Eighty Days. I would be Phileas Fogg.”
Verne lets out a whoop of laughter and claps his hands. Wells thumps the table in triumph and Wyndham looks at her with all the pride of a father.
“You are an adventurer,” cries Verne. “A traveller and explorer.”
Celeste’s eyes grow wide. “But—” she says. The enormity of travel, of leaving home, of going to places she has never been before overwhelms her. “I’m not—”
“But you are,” says Verne reaching across the table and grabbing her hand. “You are. You read of all these wondrous places. It is your mind’s only way to fill the void it faces. But books are not enough. You must go out and live it.”
“I can’t,” she says. “My father… There is no money in it. How would I support myself?”
“Have you considered,” says Wyndham, “that your father only wishes to know what you want to do with your life? That perhaps he would be supportive of your dreams if you speak up and share them?”
“No,” she says, less emphatically this time. “We are Chinese. Financial security is very important. I must find a career that I can progress in. It is not possible to just travel around the world for no reason.”
“Then find a reason,” says Wells.
Celeste shrugs her shoulders helplessly. “A reason? What reason?”
Verne snaps his fingers with an idea. “Find yourself a job in another country. It is a start.”
Celeste shakes her head. “My father will never believe I can hold down a job in another country if I cannot even find a job in this country.”
Wyndham rubs his forefinger across his bottom lip, thinking. “You need not decide that right now. Opening yourself up to the possibility is enough. When one is aware of one’s dreams, often the answers are provided in due course.”
“But I have to know now,” she says. “My father has found me a job and he wants me to start right away.”
“There is always the circus,” suggests Verne helpfully. “They travel.”
Celeste laughs. A good, deep, cleansing laugh. She realises this is the first time she has ever laughed like this. In fact, this is the first conversation she has ever had like this. And she wants more.
“Can I come here any time I want to?” she says.
Wells shrugs. “I don’t see why not. We do.”
She laughs again, savouring the feeling of liberation it gives her.
“But enough about you,” says Verne, waving for the waiter to provide him another espresso. “We have grilled you enough, I think. What I wish to know is what ideas are swimming around in our dear friend John’s head. He tells the most incredible stories once you get him going.”
Celeste watches as Verne and Wells cheer Wyndham on until, with a look of resignation, he begins spinning a wondrous tale of dangerous, futuristic adventure.
“Miss,” says a hazy voice in the distance.
Celeste jerks awake, feeling the immediate ache in her neck and shoulders telling her she fell asleep with her head resting in her arms. The side of her mouth is wet and her eyes are heavy and gritty. She blinks them, looking around at the ordinary little cafe she has woken up in.
The morning light brings a cold brightness to the room, the tables and chairs looking worn and the burgundy couches seeming drab and even slightly torn in places now that no one is sitting on them.
In fact, the entire room is empty of people except for her and the young man who has just woken her. He stares down at her from a pale, dull face, his brown hair ruffled fashionably to look as if he himself has just woken up.
“How did you get in here?” he says, a look of guarded concern on his face.
“I was here last night.” She wipes at the side of her mouth and gingerly straightens her stiff muscles. “I must have fallen asleep while they were talking.”
The young man raises an incredulous eyebrow. “We close at six o’clock every evening, miss. There was no one here last night. How did you get in?”
She gets to her feet, surveying the room that appears far too ordinary to have been the same room she was in last night. The floor is not marble tiles, but merely a glossy white and grey ripple. The chairs aren’t white cane, but metal covered with chipped beige paint. And yet the layout of the room is the same. And she has been sitting at the last table along the wall, right next to the glass.
The young man is still staring at her as if he wishes to interrogate her further.
“I must be going,” she says, moving to leave. Just as she does so, something on the table catches her eye.
A plastic drinking straw.
She smiles to herself as she walks out.
The morning air is nippy and there is still a hint of mist in the air as she heads to the underground. But inside she’s glowing with a new but familiar warmth, as if the inviting yellow light of Covent Garden is now within her for her to take wherever she goes.
And where is it she is going? She doesn’t know. But as she sits down on an empty seat on the train, she picks up an abandoned newspaper and, without even thinking, flicks to the employment section. And then, just as quickly, to the travel section. Something, she is sure, will jump out at her before she reaches home.
By the time she walks up those carpeted steps, she will have something to tell her father.
“The Covent Garden Cafe” is available for the month of May 2026 on this site. The ebook is also available on most major online retail stores. You can also read this story in the collection Baverstock’s Allsorts Volume 2.
“The Covent Garden Cafe”
Copyright © Jessica Baverstock
Cover and Layout copyright © Jessica Baverstock
Cover design by Jessica Baverstock
Cover art © TanaDobush/Shutterstock, tommyvideo/Pixabay, and BarbaraALane/Pixabay
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