Alannah and Irham
The café on Gloucester Road was the kind of place that had survived everything — two recessions, a pandemic, and the great chain-store collapse of 2027 — by being stubbornly, almost defiantly, itself. Mismatched chairs, steamed-up windows, and a hand-written chalkboard menu that still listed a builder's tea for ninety pence, a price that hadn't changed in fifteen years out of what the owner called "principle." Alannah liked it here. So did Irham. "Do you remember," Irham said, "when we genuinely didn't know if it was going to be alright?" Alannah wrapped her hands around her mug. Outside, a woman pushed a pram through the January drizzle, her face tilted up rather than down — not at a phone, just at the grey Bristol sky, as though she was glad to be in it. That small thing still struck Alannah as remarkable. "I remember," she said. "Around 2025, 2026. That stretch where every morning felt like opening a door and not knowing w...