The Regulars

What it looks like, and what it does

A brightly lit roadside diner at 3 a.m. A counter with seven stools, six occupied by figures in hi-vis and overalls with steaming mugs. A laminated menu in a typeface from 1979. Rain streaking the window. A waitress refilling cups.

Arrive at 03:00. Order the dish of the day. Speak only to order and to thank. Leave when the first tanker leaves the forecourt.

What is known

The Marston Services eatery has three tills. The oldest has a coin drawer that opens at 03:04 with a bell.

Staff serve them, and the food is eaten. In the morning the till is correct to the penny, with a tip in a coin dated 1979 but still bright.

What it can do

• Eat a meal that is actually consumed
• Pay in coins that are genuine

Where it stops

• Do not speak to staff other than to order
• Leave when the first tanker pulls out

An encounter

Price brought six coffees and wiped the seventh stool, as she has for nineteen years. The man on the fourth stool, in a canvas jacket, looked up and said, “You've done your hair different.” She hadn't, in years. She says it was the kindest thing anyone has said to her at work.

Gwenda Price, night waitress, Marston Services, Counter 2, 03:04, a weekday

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Till rolls show nine hundred orders for items not on the current menu.
• rumor: That the seventh stool is for the next driver who doesn't make it.
• interpretation: They are not the dead. They are the people who will always stop for a coffee, and who never reach where they were going.

Still unresolved

There is always a stool left empty. The staff wipe it down.

Where it has been recorded

• Marston Services (confirmed) — Recorded by Gwenda Price, night waitress.

Connected entities

• The Roll Call — Both are workers who keep a shift after the work is gone. Both are looked after by someone who brings them something hot.
• Last Orders — Both are rooms that keep an hour for the people who do not want to leave it. Neither pushes anyone out.