Breaking Bread

Date: 1/2/2026

The diner is a living, breathing embodiment of vintage charm — a shrine to the 1950s. Vinyl booths in sugary pastels. Chrome trim polished to a mirror sheen. A jukebox glowing like a saint behind glass. Even the air feels curated — thick with coffee, fryer grease, and the ghost of optimism. The kind of place that insists nothing bad ever happened, but the upholstery remembers it all — every spill, every whisper, every quiet betrayal. I slide in and immediately clock Connie. She’s wedged into a booth, shoulders slumped, staring at her hands. Connie — normally a one-woman parade of enthusiasm. Connie, whose joy arrives before she does. Today she looks like someone’s pulled the plug on her, yanked it straight from the wall and left it sparking. When our eyes meet, her expression doesn’t lift. It tightens. “Hey, Connie,” I say, bright as a waitress who still believes in tips. “Fancy seeing you here.” She doesn’t answer. Instead, she leans across the table like she’s about to sell me something illegal and whispers, “How much money do you have in your account?” Ah. The universal hello. I give her a vague number — the sort you use when you’re not trying to lie but also not trying to tell the truth. Her face drains. “You don’t belong here,” she says flatly. “You belong over there.” She gestures with her chin. That’s when I see it properly: the divide. The diner is split clean down the middle, as if someone’s taken a ruler and drawn a line through society. Colour-coded T-shirts. Pastel on one side. Muted, apologetic tones on the other. “You’re one of them,” Connie says, already sliding a folded pink T-shirt towards me. “Put this on. We can’t be seen together.” I want to ask who they are. I want to ask when lunch became tribal. But she’s already looking past me, pretending we were never speaking. The shirt is warm — like it’s recently worn another body. I pull it on. It fits perfectly, which somehow feels worse. I belong now. Apparently. On my new side of the diner, an authoritative-looking man sits alone in a booth. He doesn’t eat. He audits. He weighs. He decides. “ID,” he says. I hand over my passport, opening it first to make sure it’s mine and not one of the kids’. It is. Unfortunately. The photo is criminal. A bowl haircut so severe it could slice a watermelon clean in half. Helmet-like. Merciless symmetry. A fringe hiding a multitude of sins. “I apologise in advance,” I chuckle. “It was a difficult era.” He doesn’t smile. He tears the passport clean in half, slowly — like breaking bread that's gone stale. “You won’t be needing that,” he says. “You have a new identity now.” He slides a replacement towards me. “Your name is Pepper.” Pepper. Not a person. A sodding seasoning. An afterthought. Not even a proper food group. As I leave, the smell hits me. Bread. Real bread. Not supermarket bread. Proper bread. Hot, yeasty, alive. The kind of smell that reaches into your chest and squeezes. Kitchens. Hands dusted white. Hunger that made sense. “Smells wonderful,” I sigh, to the universe. Connie materialises behind me, holding a baguette upright like a theatrical disguise. “My sister works in the bakery,” she whispers. “Oh wow,” I beam. “I’d love to meet her.” Her eyes go wide. “No.” But I’m already opening the door. Behind the scenes, the bakery is wrong. Too still. Too many people not moving. A hundred faces turn towards me — hollow-eyed, grey, exhausted — all except one. Those eyes. Mr Fring. Of course. Breaking Bad’s Drug King risen from the flaming ashes of despair. Calm. Immaculate. Watching me the way a man watches dough rise — patiently, possessively. “My apologies,” I mutter, reversing out. “You shouldn’t have done that,” Connie says once I’m clear. “They’ll be punished now. He withholds sleep to improve productivity. My sister hasn’t slept in years.” I wait for the punchline. There isn’t one. Breaking bread, I realise, was never about sharing. It means deciding who gets to eat. The scene collapses like a burnt crust. I’m walking into town, narrating my life aloud like a podcast no one subscribed to. Full gestures. Full conviction. I know I look unhinged. I continue anyway, committed to the performance. Someone slams into my shoulder. My sister-in-law. Naturally. I brace for judgement, but she barely registers me — muttering about being late before speed-walking away. Even my madness isn’t interesting anymore. In a shop window, I catch my reflection and stop dead. The face mask. Bubblegum-pink. Still on. Glowing. Like shame with moisturising properties. Panic flares. Immediate. Nuclear. Teenagers stroll past, unbothered — lost in their own small, urgent worlds. I try to fold myself into invisibility, waiting for divine intervention in the form of makeup wipes pouring down from the sky. None arrive. “Mum.” Alex’s voice. He’s six again, sitting in a rolltop bathtub placed squarely in the middle of the road. Bigger than ours. Ridiculous. Perfectly normal. “Get in!” he says. I do. Clothes on. Dignity off. I wash the pink away while pedestrians politely navigate around us. No one questions this. No one ever does. The water drains. So does the scene. My mother-in-law stands at the stove, stirring a pot of brown sludge with religious devotion. “I’m making soup for everyone,” She announces. My stomach growls in protest. I nod. I always nod. My sister-in-law enters, eyes bulging and raw with tears. “Dad’s not going to make it,” she says. “But I don’t want to be the one to turn off the machine.” She cries into her bowl. The broth — now with added salt — thickens. I offer the wrong comfort. “Maybe it’s time to let go.” They glare like I’ve confessed to first degree murder. “Before you go,” She snaps, “have a bowl.” “And bread,” she adds. Bread. The bakery flashes through my mind — shackled ankles, sleepless eyes. Endless loaves cooling for people who will never know the cost. “I’ll pass,” I say quietly. “I’m not hungry.” My mother-in-law upends the soup into the bin, wounded by my refusal. I smile. At the door, I glance down. I’m still wearing the T-shirt. I can’t remember when I agreed to wear it. But my hands are dusted faintly with flour — white as obedience, the kind that lingers after the work is done, after something has been broken, torn, kneaded into submission, proved, shaped, and released before the warmth forgets.