The Waitress Read Online Free

she was on the first rung of a ladder she wanted to stay on forever, and they’d even celebrated that night with a bottle of wine. One day she’d get a manager’s job in a respectable London restaurant and from there start her journey towards owning her own restaurant franchise. With the waitressing job to pay her rent, she’d have time to go for interviews, money to buy an interview suit and relevant experience to discuss.
    At first it had felt heaven-sent. There she’d met Sukie, an out-of-work actress, and they had clicked immediately. Katie’s flair for cooking blossomed and she often came up with inspired and delicious menu ideas that her boss was happy to let her make as well as serve. She liked her employer, a circular Greek woman who called her Sweetie and gave her delicious home-made leftovers that she and Jon would devour. But then her boss’s husband became ill and she sold the café quickly to become his full-time carer. The farewell party was sad yet not without hope. That was because they hadn’t met their new boss yet.
    The first thing Alec did as owner was open up The Café two hours earlier each morning to catch the city commuters who set out every morning from the station directly below. Then he cut his staff by half, doubled the price of coffee, shrank the menu and only cooked fresh food twice a week. After that, the next step was easy – make customers spend their money and then leave.
    Katie couldn’t remember when she stopped looking in the papers for a new job. Was it after she got scared of going for interviews because she knew she’d be too tired to do herself justice? Or after she realised her interview suit was out of fashion, and she couldn’t afford another one and refused to ask her parents for a handout? Or after she realised she’d have to give a convincing answer to why she’d worked at a crappy local café for so long?
    Whichever it was, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she had to get out of here.
    Back in the café, she joined Sukie who was already attacking the coffee machine with gusto. The first commuter queue had started. The 7.14 into Euston was notoriously unreliable. It either came in late or smack bang on time but at the wrong platform, so that fifty knackered commuters had to race over the bridge to catch it. There was usually no tannoy announcement, so they had to be alert to spot whether it was their train or the 7.24 straight through to Brighton. Their morning coffees were not a luxury, they were a necessary tool in making it into the office instead of to the south coast.
    If The Café staff resented making coffee for tired, ungrateful and often surly commuters, the commuters resented buying it, with knobs on. For a start, they would rather be in bed. Then there was the flickering fluorescent light that always pissed them off. And what did they have to look forward to? A crowded, over-or under-heated train where they probably wouldn’t get a seat, followed by a job that didn’t even pay them enough to be able to live near the borders of a place splattered with blue plaques – and that was if they were lucky and didn’t catch the Brighton train.
    ‘Double espresso, two sugars.’
    Sukie took the change from one customer, nodded to let the next one know she’d heard him and whizzed back to the coffee machine. Katie joined her and spoke to commuter number three in the queue.
    ‘Good morning! How can I help you this fine day.’
    ‘Black coffee.’
    ‘Black coffee coming up. It’ll be my absolute pleas—’
    ‘Excuse me,’ cut in commuter number five, a man whose face seemed to have been pummelled in the night. Number four in the queue had overtaken him on the stairs up to the café and he wanted to knife him. ‘Some of us have got trains to catch.’
    ‘Right,’ said Katie and she turned to the coffee machine.
    ‘Will you spit in his coffee or shall I?’ muttered Sukie without breaking from her task.
    ‘Someone’s already trodden on his