My Clocking In System

"Ten minutes," he said, like it was costing him money to say it. "If the Rotherhithe one goes the way it should, they’re through by 11 and they’re stood in a van on Verney Road anyway waiting for the traffic to die down before they come back here."

"So they’re there."

"They’re near."

"90 minutes, Geoff."

"It’s not 90 minutes, it’s 90 minutes plus the paperwork, plus the isolation, plus your lad’s got to be on site with his ticket or I’m not touching it."

"He’ll be on site at 7 and he won’t leave."

"He’d better be, because if he’s not there they get back in the van and you go back in the queue at the bottom, and I mean the bottom, I don’t mean where you are now."

"He’ll be there."

Geoff took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers, and then he got up, and he went to the wall, and he stood in front of Friday with his hands on his hips.

"Reference."

Danny read it off his phone.

Geoff wrote it on a blank white strip in marker, in capitals, and stuck it in the hole on Friday, and pressed it flat with his thumb.

"Half 11. And if they’re late off Rotherhithe it’s not happening and I’m not ringing you about it."

"Understood."

"And don’t come back here."

"I won’t."

"They all say that."

Danny got down the 3 steps with the gaffered carpet and out across the yard past the drums, and the man in the hi-vis was still sat in the van with the engine going and the crisps finished, and he lifted his chin about a centimetre as Danny went past.

At the pedestrian gate Danny stopped and turned round and looked at the portakabin.

I’ve had that conversation 400 times.

Bloke behind a door who’s already said no before you’ve opened your mouth. And you never get in by pushing on the door, do you.

You get in by working out what’s behind him that he’s worried about.

11 years of doing that for somebody else’s commission.

He got on the scooter and rang Errol from the fence with his gloves off and his fingers going white.

"Friday. Half 11. You’ve got to be on site at 7 and you can’t leave it."

Nothing came back for long enough that Danny checked the screen.

"Say that again."

"Friday, half 11."

"Who did you talk to?"

"Geoff."

"There’s no Geoff. I’ve been ringing that lot for 30 years."

"There’s a Geoff," Danny said, "and he’s got a wall."

It took him 50 minutes to get back across to Bermondsey and Ray was outside Southwark Tyres with a cigarette when he pulled up, stood in his own doorway out of the wind with his fleece zipped to the chin.

"You’ve been somewhere."

"Charlton."

"What’s in Charlton?"

"Geoff."

Ray nodded slowly at that and asked nothing else about it.

Danny went and stood on his own step. 2 inches of stone with a dip worn into the middle where 100 years of people had come in for a cup of tea.

"Ray."

"Mm."

"How do I get rid of this?"

Ray came over with the cigarette. He looked at the step. Then he looked at the pavement, and then at the door frame, and then he crouched down, which took him a second and a noise, and put his thumb along the joint at the bottom of the reveal.

"That’s not a step, that’s your threshold. That’s holding your frame."

"So it can’t go?"

"I never said that." Fzz, went the cigarette in the gutter. "It can go. You want a ramp, or you want the pavement bringing up to meet it, and the pavement’s not yours, it’s the council’s, so it’s the first one." He straightened up. "Who’s it for?"

"Old boy with a stick."

"Right." Ray wiped his hands down his fleece. "My sister’s lad does groundwork. He’s not cheap and he’s not quick, but he’s not going to leave you with a lip, and a lip’s worse than a step. You get a lip and someone goes over on it and that’s your insurance."

"Can he look at it?"

"He can look at it Friday."

"Friday’s spoken for."

"Then he’ll look at it Thursday and do it Friday, and you’ll pay him for the privilege of it being Thursday." Ray was already going back in. "I’ll ring him. Get a tape on it and give me the width of that door, will you, off the inside of the reveal, not the frame."

The tape was in the bag with the sealant gun. Danny got down on his knees on the pavement with it, and the cold came straight through his jeans, and he had the end of the tape jammed in the corner with one thumb and was trying to read it in the shade of the doorway when a woman had to step round him with a pushchair.

"Sorry, love."

"You’re all right, darling."

The front wheel went over the step with a bump and the whole pushchair rocked, and the kid in it said something with two vowels in it, and she was 20 feet up the road before Danny had finished writing the number down.

He looked at the step again.

Then he wrote a second number under it. Width of a pushchair. He was guessing.

By 4 his hands were finished and the light had gone, and he went up the road to the bookies doorway, because it was still the only 2 feet on that road out of the wind.

He rang Sandra from it.

"I want to ask you about something and you’re going to think it’s daft."

"Go on."

"I want to get somebody in who does rooms."

The noise behind her was the 4 o’clock noise, thinner than lunchtime, one machine and a chair going back and somebody saying goodnight to somebody.

"Does rooms."

"Not a shopfitter. Shopfitters sell you their standard, I’ve had two on the phone and they both wanted to know what my brand colours were." He shifted the phone. "Somebody who looks at a room and knows what a room’s supposed to do."

"An interior designer."

"I suppose."

"For a caff."

"For a caff."

Sandra made a sound he’d not heard her make before.

"That’s £3,000 you’re not spending on your extraction."

"I know."

"You’ve got a floor half done and no power."

"I know that as well."

"Then what do you want me to say?"

"Say it’s daft, and I’ll not do it."

There was a long bit where she didn’t say anything, and a chair went over somewhere in her café and she said leave it, leave it to somebody, and came back.

"I’ve had the same tables 30 years," she said.

"Right."

"There’s 2 of them nobody sits at. There’s a two-top by the fridge and there’s the one round by the toilets. 30 years I’ve watched people come in that door and look at those 2 tables and go past them and stand up at the counter instead. Every day. Thousands of them."

"So why are they still there?"

"Because they came with the shop," Sandra said, "and I’ve never once had a reason to move them."

Somebody at her end said goodnight and she said it back.

"You’ve got an empty room, no floor, and nothing’s come with it. You’ll not be in that position again."

Danny stood in the doorway with the fruit machine going through its noises behind the glass by his ear.

"So I should do it."

"It’d be daft in March." A till drawer went. "I’ll ask about. There was a woman did the Portuguese place on the Walworth Road. It’s a shoebox, that place, it’s narrower than mine, and you go in and it doesn’t feel like one, and I’ve stood in there with a coffee I didn’t want trying to work out what she’s done to it and I cannot tell you."

"Sandra."

"What."

"Thanks."

Click.

He got in at 6 with his hands hurting and his knees still soaked through from the pavement, and his mother had gone.

Note on the island, biro, back of the same receipt, underneath the other one.

Gone home on the 63, don’t fuss. Denise is doing me a pie tomorrow. Fish fingers are in the freezer, the grill’s the one on the left, I’ve checked. Ring me Thursday night. Mum x

PS your kettle wants descaling.

He read it twice and put it down and stood there in his coat.

Under his feet, one floor down, was a woman who had sat in a lobby for an hour that morning so he would have to walk past her, and had told him so to his face, and had then gone up in a lift and not sent him one single message all day.

39.

She’s about 12 feet under this bit of floor, give or take.

And you’re stood in your coat working out whether you’re allowed to knock.

Then he got the phone out to ring his mum and it lit up in his hand before he’d touched it.

Not a text.

The Sterling Riverwalk — Residents’ Portal1 new document requires your attention

He opened it standing up.

From: Naomi Adeyemi, Building Manager Re: Buildings & Contents Declaration, Apartment 40 Mr Flynn, The insurers have come back to me for the third time. I have held them off twice. I have attached Section 4 again. It requires a previous residential address covering the 3 years prior to purchase, and a name and number for one of the following: a former landlord, a managing agent, or a mortgage provider. I appreciate you are busy. I would rather send this back completed than send it back explaining why it is not. Could we say Friday. N. Adeyemi

Danny stood in the middle of £8,400,000 of empty living room with his coat on and his knees wet and read it again.

Then he turned the phone face down on the marble next to his mother’s note.

Pembury House. 11 years. Adaeze Nwosu.

Right. That’s a landlord. That’s a real landlord with a real name and a real number.

And she’d say yes. She’d say yes in about 4 seconds and she’d not ask me one single question about it.

He picked the phone back up and got her number on the screen and stood there with his thumb over it.

And then Naomi Adeyemi has got Adaeze’s number.

And a name. And an address in Hackney with 11 years of me on it.

And she’s already searched me once and found nothing, and she told me the nothing was the bit that bothered her.

The fridge compressor came on and ran.

He put the phone down without pressing it, and went and stood at the glass, and out past his own reflection the crane light over Vauxhall went on and off, on and off, the way it did all night.

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