It’s 2 AM on a Wednesday night and Finley can’t sleep. Her dad was in one of his moods – the throwing-plates-and-hitting kind rather than the crying-on-the-kitchen-floor or giggling-over-a-bottle-of-wine sort he got into whenever he drank (which was often). She didn’t want to be home when he was like that, no one did really. Her mum locked herself up in her own room and her sister’d gone over to her boyfriend’s house. She asked him if her little sister could tag along, but all Finley could catch of that conversation was that it would ruin the mood or something along those lines. Finley hates all her sister’s boyfriends.
So here she is, 2 AM at the nearest 24-7 cafe. The night crew recognize her by now. It’s been a couple months since she started coming here a few times a week, always after midnight, but before dawn.
She takes a seat at her favorite spot, a little table by the window, orders some coffee, and takes out a book to help pass the time until morning.