The Warmth of White China by Karen Arnold

You switch on lights and shrug off your coat in one heavy, rolling wave of muscle memory. Today will be busy. You’ll make time, as always, for your regulars.

The lorry driver on his way home to Birmingham. Pale and wiry, he is silvered with age, counting down the years in full English breakfasts. There are too many empty back loads now he tells you, time to pack it in. He breeds racing pigeons, shows you pictures of soft grey birds with feathers that shimmer with the colours of petrol in a rain puddle, the shades of city skies and back yards. He cradles them in his slender hands, makes a tender cage of his fingers.

The old lady who arrives each day on the dot of one. Swollen feet overflowing from soft slippers, a man’s overcoat buttoned up to her chin, a battered pushchair wedged next to the plastic seat. Each time you look over, she is slipping morsels of fish to it’s occupant, a tiny white dog. He is a fragile tangle of soft lamb’s wool curls. Brown streaks run down from his eyes like tears and he shivers each time the door opens. They look at each other with such tenderness that it leaves another bruise around your heart.

When they leave, the space is taken by a tall, long-limbed girl. She is skinny, kohl-eyed and leather-jacketed. She pushes a rucksack under the table and stares out of the window. Her hands are blue with cold, nails bitten to the quick. There is an ink black heart tattooed on her little finger that looks as though it was made with the point of a compass. She takes packets of sugar out of the bowl without looking at them. Flicks them with a nail, over and over until one of them splits, spilling sugar over the table. She dips a finger into the powder, licks at it, the tip of her tongue small and pink as a kitten’s.  The man in the corner watches her, hungry despite his emptied plate.

You take her a mug of tea and she looks at you with startled eyes that say she didn’t ask for this, but she wraps her fingers around the warmth of the white china.

She is still there as the winter afternoon darkens. By the time the last person leaves, she has acquired a halo of yellow lamp light from the streetlamp. You ask her where she is going. She tells you home. She thinks she will go home.

You put up the closed sign, put on your coat. In the pocket, buried deep, there is a creased picture, a dark-haired girl, with eyes like fireworks. You stroke the picture with one finger, over and over, hoping that someone is bringing her a cup of tea she did not ask for.

Karen Arnold is a writer and child psychotherapist. She came to writing later in life, but is busy making up for lost time. She is fascinated by the way we use narratives and storytelling to make sense of our human experience. She has won the Mslexia prize for flash fiction and has work in The Waxed Lemon, The Martello, and Banshee amongst others. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions. Her first chapbook collection of flash fiction was published by the independent publisher Bridge House Publishing in September 2025