Anna and Johan

The door opened suddenly and there he was.

''Hi, I'm Johan. It's great to meet you!'' he said with a big bright smile.

She looked at him in disbelief. Enthusiasm was not something she was used to seeing at work. Everyone was always in a bad mood or looking bored, always complaining about something. There were no gleams of excitement in anyone's eyes apart from the

times when they'd get a tip. The bigger the tip, the brighter the gleam.

Yet there it was, the bright gleam with no apparent reason for it.

''I'm Anna, welcome to the team!'' she said, concluding that it must be first day excitement in his eyes and nothing more.

Anna had worked in that particular hotel since 1 year and had another job on the side, night shifts mainly in a casino. She was also a full-time student. She'd just shared all this with Johan over lunch in the canteen and he was now the one in disbelief.

''But how does that work?

When do you do everything? ''

''I honestly have no idea. I'm on auto-mode most of the time. I simply have no choice. And so I do it. ''

For Johan this was madness.

He'd just landed in London from a country where having 2 jobs whilst studying was not really heard of. It was to be the first reality hit on his travelling adventure. As time passed, Johan and

Anna became close, but not in the way everyone suspected they were. They would go out after work as many times as Anna's schedule allowed it and sometimes they would have their own secret parties during work. It was Anna that started this form of ‘’rebellion’’ as she called it.

''Good morni.......aaahahahahahah ...what is going on here? Looks like a night club''

Johan said amused. Anna had turned all the lights off in the tiny

underground bunker of an office that was the hotel's switchboard. She was blasting The Smiths’ There is a Light that Never Goes Out from her office computer. Only fitting, seen as her PC was most likely from the 80s judging by its looks.

‘’It’s a rebellion!!’’ she said, leaning in to hug him through the small counter window and letting out a huge loud laughter.

‘’Come in and join the party, you got 20 minutes of shennanigans till your shift starts!’’

Johan went in holding two cups of strong coffee. He always brought one for Anna especially when he knew she was finishing a night shift like that day. He made it a thing to go in early just so they could catch up. It made his day.

‘’Whooops, gotta turn the lights back on now, big boss’s gonna walk by very soon. Back to reality’’, she said with a cheeky and tired look in her eyes.

It was things like this that drew them closer. Time spent together went by faster than a rocket, filled with laughter, banter and sparks of connection. In the little spare time they had together, the activity of choice was merely always live gigs. Anna particularly loved being in the presence of live music.

‘’It makes me feel so alive’’ she said emphatically.

One Thursday evening they met up to attend a live music night at a pub near Portobello Road that Anna had discovered. But Johan had a dinner date so he first met his date Jen in the restaurant area of the pub. He promised Anna they would join her upstairs soon as they had a bite to eat. He wasn’t in luck that night though, his date turned out to be a disaster as he put it. As this woman kept talking and talking about herself, he realised she had no questions for him whatsoever and slowly started thinking about teleporting himself upstairs where Anna was. ''What am I doing here?'', he thought.

To his relief, his date suddenly got up and said she has to leave and he quickly paid the bill and started walking up the stairs towards the pub’s attic where the concert was, when he suddenly heard Anna's cry ‘’Hurry up mate, you’re missing it!!!!’’

As he rushed up the stairs he realised she was not waiting for him by the stage but at the end of this dark corridor.

‘’Come on, follow me!!’’ she said walking through a door onto this roofless balcony.

As he stepped on the crackling wood he felt cold tingles on his face. He couldn’t believe it. It was snowing! He had never seen snow before. Anna stood about a metre away, studying his face with the brightest gleam in her eyes.