Room Enough for Grace: Stories Round The Table 3

Lily Cathcart December 16, 2025 0 0

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Read and listen to our next Advent Story Round the Table written by Lily Cathcart and read aloud by Lily Cathcart.

There is nothing so nice as reading with a hot drink and the buzz of people around me. It’s one of my biggest pleasures in life and now that I have a lot less going on I allow myself more and more time for it.

I started coming here on Tuesdays, back when it was my only day off work. Just me and a book, glad to be out of my uniform and to be somewhere that let me be invisible. I always smiled at the staff, some of them still work here today but others have moved on with younger and younger folks trained up in their place. Nothing stays the same, not even for me.

I admit I was at a loss when I left work. It was time, but what was I to do with myself now? I missed the chatter, the purpose and the routine. I tried so many different projects…

I learned that I am not a natural at gardening, my thumbs are in fact the opposite of green! 

I remembered that I don’t really enjoy sewing, can’t bake, and only have the energy to climb a hill every few months which doesn’t really amount to a hobby.

Through it all the coffee shop was here, Tuesdays with my book and my hot drink steaming happily on the table became my anchor in a new and strange world.

So just as boats adrift in an ocean will do, I clung to my anchor. Tuesdays soon became Tuesdays and Thursdays, then Fridays and Mondays joined the crew. Eventually the only day I didn’t bring a book to the coffee shop was Sunday and by then it just seemed silly to leave it out.

So I find myself here, battling past the chill in the air on my coffee shop commute newly littered with fairy lights and competing Christmas jingles from nearby shops. At last I open the door to my anchor place and the world settles a little.

‘Morning Maggie!’ the manager Orla greets me with her now usual enthusiasm. I’m glad, not only to feel so welcomed but also to see her smile. She had a tough time a few months ago where smiles and greetings were harder to come by and her life seemed to be getting her down, even more than she would like to admit.

‘How is Skye getting on?’ I ask, ‘Did he figure out the door yet?’

She laughs, such a welcome sight, and proudly shows me a picture of her new puppy halfway in and out of a dog door looking thoroughly confused.

I wonder to myself, as I order a seasonal hot chocolate (with marshmallows that are supposed to look like snowmen), whether it was the puppy that helped to bring her out of her sadness.

I consider, as coco powder rains down on my drink, whether I should also get a puppy, but then I remember Orla’s brief anecdote about cleaning dog mess off the carpet and decide against it. 

She brings the coffee to my table with me, though I know I could carry it just as easily, I take it as a friendly kindness. She looks strangely excited to see that I’ve brought my blanket again today and glances back to the counter where her newest recruit, a sweet young teen with smiling eyes, looks at her full of glee. I wave her off with thanks and reach for my book, their antics are not for me. They probably have an in-joke about the silly old lady with the blanket but I don’t mind, I am at an age where I would rather be silly than have cold knees.

Right now I have cosy mystery to read and a world of alone time to fill.

The cafe seems busier than usual, I notice as I take a moment to stop reading and hold my still warm drink with two hands, glancing about me. Mostly the tables near to me.

In fact they are filled with people reading. That brings me a smile, I love it when more people read in coffee shops, not only does it prove that the world really is full of people with good sense but it makes me look much less listless than I fear I sometimes seem. It must be the season for reading.

I dive into another chapter, letting the world around me fade into noise and colours, I travel to a distant wood where a small cottage is lit by a cosy fire and am glad again for my fluffy blanket.

By the time I surface the circle of readers around me — because I now realise it is around me — has grown and includes a few of the staff on their day-off or on their break.

I look around me and giggle at the scene. ‘Ok what are you up to?’ I grin at the young teen who had been filling the coffee machine with fresh beans when I had last looked up. Now she sits with a book, a blanket, and even has a well loved brown bear in little red dungarees tucked under the crook of her arm.

‘You just always look so cosy that we wanted to join you.’ She grins, with the same glee in her eyes as I saw before. Suddenly I know who has put them up to it.

As if on cue Orla arrives with tray full of hot chocolates and begins to pass them round.

‘I take it this was your idea.’ I smile at her, enjoying her childlike cheekiness at being found out.

‘I wanted to get into the mind of my very best customer and, well it kind of grew wings along the way.’ she gestures round at the smiling faces. ‘You don’t mind do you?’ she asks quickly.

‘Not at all.’ I reassure her, and realise that I really don’t, in fact I am suddenly more touched than I can express. ‘I always wondered what it would be like to be part of a reading club and now I know!’

‘And now I know why you bring your blanket!’ The teen pipes up, ‘it’s so cosy!’

‘Maybe next time I’ll bring a teddy too.’ I smile

For a while we sit like that, chatting. It’s the most I have talked to people all week, my heart sings a little at the thrill of it, and I thank God for each one of them. We end up laughing as we try to fit all our hot chocolates on one table and then laugh even more when Orla appears with a tray of sandwiches. We pull over more tables and as she passes them out I notice the fillings are all of my most-often-ordered sandwich choices. I try not to let the tears in my eyes show as I thank her but she sees anyway.

Somehow hours pass and I have read a lot less than I predicted today but I do have a full heart and an invitation to try a painting class in a fortnight. The group around me has dwindled and I look up from my book to see no-one left except Orla, who has finally agreed to take a break and sit down with a lunch of her own.

‘That was so nice’ I say, ‘Thank you.’

‘Any time Maggie.’ She smiles a tired smile, producing a blanket and a book. ‘I want to be just like you when I grow up.’

I laugh and we both pick up our books in amicable near silence as a Christmas tune jingles softly from the speakers at the other end of what is definitely my favourite coffee shop in the world.

Lily Cathcart

Music in the audio version 'Silent Night' by Jonas Kolberg and 'Chasing the Light' by Northern Heart, both licensed by Sanctus Media from www.Artist.io.