My Clocking In System

The lobby at quarter to 9 on a Friday had the going-out crowd in it. A bloke by the water wall in a good coat with his phone out and a taxi coming. Two of the gym kit women transformed into two completely different women, hair down, heels, one of them arguing about whether they were early. Priyanka on the desk with a stack of parcels she was building into a wall.

And Mara came out of the bank of 6 lifts in the dark green coat.

Big collar, belt done up, hair down over it. She had a small bag on a chain and she was already looking at her phone and walking, and she got 4 steps into the lobby before she saw him stood there in a wet coat with a crash helmet under his arm.

"Oh," she said.

"You got the coat."

"I got the coat."

"It’s very green."

"It’s extremely green." She stopped in the middle of the floor. "Your mother will be pleased. Is it warm? That’s the question. That’s what she’d ask."

"Is it?"

"I’ve had it on 4 minutes. It’s warmer than the other one, and the other one was a cardigan with ambitions." She put the phone in the bag. "I’m going out. Soph’s cousin’s back from Dubai and I said I’d have a drink with her about 4 weeks ago and I’ve cancelled twice."

"Right."

"So I’ve got about 90 seconds and I’m going to use them, because I’ve been working out how to say this since Wednesday and if I don’t do it now I’ll think about it all weekend."

Danny stood still.

"You’ve got someone."

He didn’t say anything.

"You’ve got someone, and you nearly told me on Tuesday, and I stopped you." Her chin was up, the way it went. "And I’ve spent 3 days working out why I stopped you. It’s because if you say it out loud then I have to do something about it. And I don’t want to do anything about it yet. So don’t say it."

"Mara, "

"I’m not finished." She glanced at the desk. Priyanka was 20 feet away building her wall of parcels and was extremely busy with it. "Two other things. I’m not sitting in that window again. That was mad, I knew it was mad while I was doing it, and I did it anyway."

"And?"

"And I’m not giving up my 9 o’clock either. It’s my pool, I’ve been going since June, and I’m in it Monday." She got the bag onto her shoulder. "So you can work out what you’re doing about that over the weekend."

"That’s the 90 seconds?"

"That’s the 90 seconds."

"Can I say one thing?"

"Only if it isn’t kind."

"It’s not kind." He shifted the helmet. "Tuesday you said you weren’t going to be a problem. You haven’t been. This week’s been the strangest week of my entire life and you’re the only bit of it that’s been straight with me."

Mara looked at the floor.

"That’s still quite kind."

"Yeah, well."

"Right." She did the top button of the coat and got about 3 steps past him, and then turned round. "Oh. Do you know a solicitor?"

Danny’s hand stopped on the helmet.

"What for?"

"Tom." She said the name the way you’d say a bill. "The flat’s in the company and it should be in my name and it’s been 8 months. He keeps saying he’ll get his person onto it, and his person is a man in Marylebone who charges £600 an hour to not answer an email." She pulled a face. "I want somebody small. Somebody who picks the phone up."

"I know some, "

He stopped.

Priya Anand. One room over a dry cleaner’s on the Clapham Road, with a dead plant on the filing cabinet and the smell of other people’s laundry coming up through the floor.

And 3 shell companies with her address on them, and a penthouse on the top of this building.

And a woman stood in front of me who has been asking questions about flat 40 since October.

"You know somebody," Mara said.

"I’ll ask about," Danny said. "There’s a woman my mum used through the council years ago, I’d have to dig it out."

Mara looked at him for slightly too long.

"You said I know some."

"I know some people who’d know somebody."

"Right." She said it slowly. "Right, well. Whenever."

Then she went, past Priyanka and her parcels and out through the revolving door with the green coat going round in it, and Thomas said something to her on the way past and she laughed at it.

Danny stood on the wet mat in the middle of the lobby.

She clocked that.

She clocked it and she let it go and she’s going to sit in a bar in an hour with a drink in her hand turning it over.

He rang Adaeze from the lift.

"Danny Flynn." Music behind her, and a glass going down on something. "Twice in a month. Should I sit down?"

"I need a favour and it’s a boring one."

"Those are the best kind. Go on."

"You’re going to get a call Monday morning from a woman called Naomi Adeyemi. She’s a building manager. She’s going to ask you if I lived at Pembury House and for how long and whether I paid my rent."

"And did you?"

"You know I did."

"You were late in March."

"I was 5 days late in March."

"You were 11 days late in March and you brought it round in cash and you wouldn’t come in," Adaeze said. "So. I say yes, 11 years, always paid. What else?"

"Nothing else."

"Danny."

"That’s it. That’s the whole favour."

"Then why did you ring me at 9 o’clock on a Friday night to tell me to say a true thing?"

He stood in the lift with his hand flat on the wall.

"Because she’ll ask you what I do," he said.

"Ah." A pause with the music going in it. "And what do you want me to tell her?"

"That I was a courier."

"That’s true as well."

"Yeah."

"So you want me to tell her the true thing and stop," Adaeze said. "And not the other thing."

"Yeah."

"Which is what, Danny? Because I don’t know the other thing either. I know you paid off 11 years of my patience and moved out in a fortnight and bought a scooter, and I know you were sat in my kitchen in September saying you didn’t know how you’d get through the winter." She’d slowed right down and taken all the edge out of it. "I’m not asking you now. I’m telling you I’ve noticed, and that I’m going to say what you’ve asked me to say on Monday, and that at some point you’re going to have to tell somebody."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Adaeze."

"Mm."

"Thank you."

"Yes, well," she said. "Go and have your dinner."

Ding.

He came out into the quiet and stood in the kitchen with his coat still on and did not put a light on, and ate a fish finger sandwich stood at the island, and read Keisha’s missed call notification about 4 times without ringing her back because it was gone 9 on a Friday.

Then he texted her instead.

power’s on since 5 past 2. counter’s fixed down, facing the door, corner return’s gone. floor man’s coming monday 8

She rang him 40 seconds later.

"Say the first bit again."

"Power’s on."

"You’ve actually got power."

"Since 5 past 2."

"And Femi’s not been near it?"

"Femi hasn’t been near it, the machine’s still in Peckham, nobody’s touched anything."

"Right." A long breath at her end, and a telly going somewhere behind her. "Right. Monday. I’ll come Monday and I’ll bring my own kit and we’ll run water through and see what we’ve actually got. What time’s your floor man?"

"Eight."

"Then I’ll come at 12 and let him get on."

"And don’t paint anything before I’ve seen where you’re standing."

"Keisha."

"What?"

"Are you coming Monday as somebody looking, or, "

"Night, Danny."

Click.

At 10 he got back on the scooter and rode 4 miles south in the cold for no reason he could have said out loud.

The road was Friday-night quiet down that end, a bus with 4 people on it, the chicken shop lit up and empty, Ray’s shutter down and the tyre place dark.

Wasim’s van was gone. He’d have been off at 9.

Danny stopped outside his own shop and put the stand down and stood on the pavement.

The lights were off. He’d turned them off at half 7.

He got the key out and let himself in, clunk, and put his thumb on the brass switch by the door, and this time it worked first go.

Ka-tunk.

The room came on.

Half honey, half grey, the line still running straight down the middle of it where the floor man had stopped on a Friday 8 days ago and gone to Catford. A counter fixed down along the window with a straight end on it and a gap where a red machine was going to sit facing the door, and grey boards underneath it that were going to stay grey for the next 20 years because Danny had been in a hurry on a Friday afternoon.

Nine things on a list instead of 22. A crack in the ceiling he now knew about. A light he’d been told to get rid of. A chair and a milk crate and an upturned bucket sat in the middle of the floor where 3 people had drunk somebody else’s tea on Thursday.

And in the corner by the door, on the honey side, a chipped green cast iron umbrella stand that had cost £12.

Danny stood in the doorway of it for a while with the cold coming in behind him.

Then he turned the light off, which worked, and locked up, and rode home.

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