My Clocking In System

Mara sat on Camilla’s sofa with the phone in her hand and started laughing on her own in an empty flat.

Eleven minutes.

Eight months of Rupert and eleven minutes of a woman with a website from 2014.

She had the notes open and was halfway through typing Thurs 2pm, £450 under P. ANAND when the intercom went.

Bzzzt.

She looked at the clock. Twenty to 11 on a Monday. Nobody comes to a door on 39 at 20 to 11 on a Monday.

She went and pressed it.

"Hello?"

"Miss Doyle, it’s Naomi Adeyemi. I’m terribly sorry to turn up at your door. I’ve got the insurance declarations to get round the building and I’m doing 39 this morning. It’s about 4 minutes."

Mara stood in her own hallway in a dressing gown with her hair in a towel.

Twelve days ago you sat in that lobby and watched this woman come out of a lift that only goes to one flat.

And you have asked Priyanka about 40 three times.

And she is stood outside your door.

"Give me 2 minutes," Mara said. "I’ve just got out of a pool."

She was in jeans and a jumper with her hair down and wet in 90 seconds, and she opened the door on a woman in charcoal wool with a slim folder under one arm and a smile pitched exactly right.

"Thank you. I know it’s a Monday."

"Come in."

"I’ll not sit down, I’ve got 8 of these to do." Naomi came 3 steps into Camilla’s front room and did not look round it, which Mara noticed, because everybody looks round it. "It’s the buildings and contents re-papering. The insurers have gone to town this year."

She got a form out.

It took about 3 minutes and it was entirely boring. Occupancy. Whether the flat was let. Whether anybody else held a key. Whether there had been any alterations to the layout since purchase.

"And the flat’s owned by...?"

"A company. My brother’s."

"That’s most of the building, so don’t feel got at." Naomi wrote it down. "Are you a named occupier on his policy, do you know?"

"I’ve no idea."

"I’d find out. If you’re not, your things aren’t covered." She said it like she was mentioning rain. "That’s not on my form. That’s just free."

"Right. Thank you."

Naomi closed the folder.

And then she did not leave.

"Can I ask you something that isn’t on the form?"

There it is.

She’s asked me the boring 4 and now she’s putting the folder away first, so it’s off the record, so I relax.

I do that. I do exactly that.

"Go on," Mara said.

"Have you noticed anything unusual in the building over the last month or so?"

Mara held her face absolutely still.

"Unusual how?"

"Anything. Deliveries at odd hours, people in the lobby who don’t live here, anybody asking questions they’ve no business asking." A small shrug. "I ask everybody. It’s a security review."

No you don’t.

You are on the 39th floor at 20 to 11 with 8 doors to do and you have taken the trouble to put a folder away.

"I’m out most of the day," Mara said. "Sorry. I’d not be much use to you."

"No, that’s fine."

"Has something happened?"

"Nothing at all." Naomi’s face did not move either. "It’s the insurers. They want to know we’re on top of things."

And the two of them stood in Camilla’s front room for about a second and a half and were entirely aware of each other.

She knows.

She doesn’t know it’s me. If she knew it was me she’d not have come with a form.

She thinks it might be me, and she has come up here to have a look at my face while she says the word questions.

So give her something. Give her something true and boring and watch what she does with it.

"There is one thing," Mara said. "It’s nothing."

"Go on."

"The private lift. The one that’s set apart from the six." She said it exactly as lightly as she had planned to. "It’s been going up and down a lot more than it used to. I’m right underneath it and you hear it in the corridor. That’s all."

Naomi Adeyemi did not blink.

But she stopped, for about a third of a second, in the way a person stops when a thing has landed somewhere they were not expecting it to.

"That’ll be the housekeeping," she said. "There’s a service Thursdays."

"That’ll be it."

"I’ll have the engineers look at the noise, though. That shouldn’t carry."

"It doesn’t really carry. I’ve got good ears."

"Well." Naomi put the folder under her arm. "Thank you, Miss Doyle. Sorry again about the hour."

She was at the door when Mara said it.

"Miss Adeyemi."

She turned round.

"Who does live in 40?"

The pause was not long. It was about half a second, and it was in exactly the wrong place, because it came before the answer instead of after the question.

"I’m afraid I can’t discuss residents."

"No. Of course not." Mara had the door open. "It’s only that his mother was in the lobby a fortnight ago and I sat and had a lovely chat with her, and I’ve felt rude ever since not knowing his name."

Something went across Naomi Adeyemi’s face and got put away at speed.

"His mother."

"Little woman. Sixties. Coat that had been good about 15 years ago." Mara said it with her whole face open. "She came out of that lift on her own and sat down next to me and told me my coat was useless."

Naomi looked at her.

"How very nice," she said.

Then she went off down the corridor towards the 6 lifts with the folder under her arm, and she did not press the button until she got there, and she pressed it once.

Mara shut her own front door and leaned on the back of it.

She didn’t know about the mother.

Sixteen years, 41 flats, she reads everybody in this building and she did not know there was a woman in her sixties in that lobby.

She got the phone out of her jeans and stood in her own hallway with her hair still wet.

She came up here to find out whether it was me.

And she found out it’s me, and I found out she doesn’t know either.

The building manager. Sixteen years. She has not got a clue who lives in that flat, and she is frightened of it, and she has just spent 4 minutes on my doorstep pretending to be interested in a boiler.

She opened the notes.

She went past the shopping list and the flight details and DAD BIRTHDAY IDEAS, and opened it, and looked at the heading for a moment.

THE FORTY PROBLEM

Then she typed 2 new lines under the others.

P. ANAND. Thurs 2pm, £450 fixed. Straight with you.

N. ADEYEMI came to my door 10:40 Mon with a form she didn’t need. Put the folder away before she asked the real one. She doesn’t know who he is either.

She read the last one back.

Then she added 3 words on the end of it, and they were the truest thing in the whole note.

and she’s scared.

At 25 past 3 she was stood in a queue in a chemist’s on the high street with a basket on her arm, and she got the phone out to look at the time and there it was again. Played twice. Sat there since 9:06.

She typed 3 things and deleted all 3.

Then she wrote what she actually thought, which took 9 seconds.

that was the worst voicemail i have ever received

She looked at it.

Too cold. He’ll take that as the end of it.

She put a second line under it and sent both before she could talk herself out of either.

and i’ve had one off my father

The woman in front moved up and Mara moved up with her, and the phone went into her coat pocket face down and stayed there.

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