My Clocking In System

The food came and was too hot to talk over for a bit.

Something grilled on the bone, salted hard, the fat crisped along one edge, lemon on it. The potatoes she’d been threatening. Greens with about half a bulb of garlic in them.

And a little jug of something orange that the woman put down between them and pointed at.

"Not much," she said. "Not much."

Jodie put a lot on.

"She said not much."

"I’ve had it before, I’m fine."

Two seconds later her eyes went.

"Ah. Oh, that’s got... oh God."

"She did say."

"Don’t."

They ate most of it off the bone with their hands.

She got sauce on her wrist and licked it off and caught him watching and did it slower the second time, and he was still working out what to do about that when she said, with no run-up at all:

"Can I say a thing about the other Saturday?"

He put the bone down.

"It’s fine," she said. "It was fine Monday and it’s fine now. I want to say one thing and then talk about something else, so don’t make it a whole conversation."

"All right."

"You came with me."

"Course I came with you."

"No." She put both hands flat on the paper. "You got up at 9 on your day off and walked round Battersea in the freezing cold and went in 3 chemists. And. You know."

He didn’t say anything.

"The last one I did on my own. I was 23." She was looking at the flowers. "Just got the bus. Sat on a wall outside the Greggs for about an hour after and I couldn’t tell you why."

The kid came out from under the table two along and ran the whole length of the restaurant.

He got caught by a woman who never once stopped talking to the person opposite her while she caught him, and half the room watched it happen.

"Where was he?" Danny said.

"Who?"

"Whoever it was."

"Oh." She waved her fork. "At work. He said he’d have come but he was at work, and he probably was, that’s the annoying bit. He wasn’t a monster."

"Jodie."

"Mm."

"I’d have come."

She looked at him a long moment.

Then she nodded twice, picked her wine up, and said, "Right. That’s that. Talk about something else, I feel a bit sick."

"Like what?"

"Anything. Literally anything."

"There’s an old boy comes to the shop," Danny said. "Eighty-odd, walks with a stick. His wife used to come in every Thursday with her sister for a toasted teacake. And the wife’s died, and he still turns up on a Thursday because it’s Thursday."

"Oh, that’s..."

"And I put a ramp over the step so it stops catching him. And he come in Thursday, looked at it, and told me I’d screwed a scaffold board into his threshold."

Jodie laughed with her head back.

"His threshold," Danny said.

"Well, he’s right. It is his." She was still going. "How long’s he been coming?"

"Longer than I’ve been alive, he says. He says that a lot."

"What’s he called?"

"Norman."

"Norman." She said it with enormous satisfaction. "I love him. I’ve never met him and I love him. Is the sister still about?"

"Pat. She’s got the hip."

"Course she has." She got some more potato. "See, that’s what you want to call it."

"What is?"

"Something like that. Something that sounds like them." She was chewing. "Ignore me, I’m three glasses in."

"No, go on."

"It’s gone." She waved it off. "Right. My turn. I’ve done something and I’ve told nobody, and if you say the wrong thing I’m going to cry in a Portuguese restaurant."

"No pressure."

"None at all."

She had a go at her hair and gave up on it.

"I’ve booked 4 days off. Actual leave, not sick. Put it in Wednesday and Steve nearly had a fit because it’s the run-up and I never take leave." She was building now. "I’ve got 19 days sat there doing nothing. 19. And he’s stood there going the run-up, Jodie, like I’ve not worked every Christmas since I was 19."

"Four days to do what?"

"Make 6 of these." She pulled at her own sleeve. "Three sizes."

"Six."

"There’s a woman with a shop off Northcote Road who saw the first one on me back in October, and said if I ever made more she’d take them sale or return. And I said yeah, sure, thanks, in that voice you do." She rolled her eyes at herself. "And then never rang her. For a month and a half. Because I’m an idiot."

"And you’ve rung her."

"Thursday lunchtime. Stood in the stockroom with my heart going like a bird."

Her hands were going now.

"And she remembered. She remembered the collar, Danny. She goes, oh, the one with the funny collar. Bring me 6 and we’ll see."

"How much does the fabric come to?"

It was out of him before he’d had a look at it.

Jodie’s face changed.

"Why?"

"No reason."

"Danny."

"All right." He put his hands up. "Yeah. I was going to offer."

"Well, don’t." She sat back. "I’ve had that off my dad since I was 16 and I’ve had it off Marcus. It always comes with a face on. And then it’s a bit theirs, and this one’s mine."

"Fair enough."

"Is it?"

"It’s completely fair," he said. "I got it wrong. I’m not going to do it again."

"Right." She looked at him for a second. "Well. Good."

"Can I do something else instead?"

"That depends entirely on what it is."

"Can I come and watch?"

Jodie stopped with her glass halfway up.

"Watch what?"

"You doing it. The 4 days." He shrugged. "I’ll sit on the settee and be quiet. I’ll make the tea. I’ve got a shop with no power in it half the week, I’ve got nowhere better to be."

She put the glass down without drinking any of it.

"You want to sit in my front room and watch me sew. For 4 days."

"Yeah."

"That’s the most boring thing anyone’s ever suggested to me."

"Probably."

"You’d be bored out of your mind, Danny."

"Then I’ll be bored."

Jodie looked at him across a paper tablecloth for a good long while with the football going over the till behind her.

"You can come Tuesday," she said. "And you’re doing the tea, and you’re not touching the machine."

"Deal."

"And if you say one word about fabric."

"I won’t say one word about fabric."

"Right." She picked her glass back up, went pink, and hid in it. "Good. That’s Tuesday sorted."

The plates went.

The woman came back with 2 small glasses of something without being asked, put them down, said "on the house," and was gone before either of them could get a word out.

Jodie drank half of hers, pulled a face, and finished it.

"Right. I’m going to tell you something and you’re going to laugh at me."

"Go on."

"I tried to find a photo of you."

"Of me?"

"From school. Nadia kept asking what you looked like and I said imagine a bloke who’s been up since 5." She did something at her own hair. "And then I thought I’d find that one from the sixth form thing, where you had the... you had a whole thing going on."

"Right."

"And it’s not there."

She was smiling at it.

"There’s one of them year group pages. Somebody set it up years back, everyone’s on it, there’s about 200 photos. You’re not in one of them."

"I wasn’t in a lot of photos."

"You were in that one. I remember you being in it, you were stood by the window." She waved it off. "Anyway. You’re not anywhere. No Facebook, nothing. Nadia reckons you sound made up."

She laughed.

"I’ve pulled a hermit," she said.

The till roll ran out again and the man shouted about it again.

There is nothing of you left outside this account.

It had said that in October. It said it about Naomi. He’d read it as a good thing at the time and he’d been pleased with it.

Left.

"Danny."

"Yeah."

"You’ve gone grey."

"It’s the sauce."

"It is not the sauce, you had one drop." She reached over and put her fingers round his wrist. "What?"

He looked at her hand on his arm.

"I’m knackered," he said. "Up since 6 and it’s been a strange day."

Jodie looked at him about 2 seconds longer than she needed to.

Then she let it go, the way she always let it go.

"Then get the bill and stop being knackered." She squeezed his wrist. "You’ve still got Bernadette’s to answer for."

The woman was putting chairs up while they got their coats on.

Outside it had gone properly cold. The road was doing the thing it does at 11 on a Saturday, half of them going home and half just starting.

Jodie did her coat up to the chin and stood in front of him with her hands in the pockets.

"So."

"So."

"Three glasses of red and whatever that was in the little glass," she said. "And mine’s 40 minutes on the back of that scooter. In November. In a dress I made."

"I’ll go slow."

"I know you’ll go slow." She rocked on her heels. "Can I say the obvious thing?"

"Go on."

"I’ve never been to yours."

Danny got his helmet off the seat and took his time about it.

"It’s a long way."

"It’s always a long way." She nodded slowly. "It’s been a long way since October."

"Jodie."

"I’m not asking." She put a hand up. "I want that clear, because your face has gone all formal. I’m not asking tonight. I’ve had a lovely night and I’d like to keep it lovely."

She turned round and looked up the road, and he followed where she was looking.

Two hundred yards up, past the shut chicken shop and the bus stop, a sign lit over a low white building set back off the road with a car park in front.

She looked at it for a while.

Then she looked back at him, and the half-smile went at the one corner, and she got hold of the front of his coat with both hands.

"That’s not 40 minutes on a scooter, is it," Jodie said.

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