My Clocking In System

The sander stopped for the last time at 20 past 12.

Lloyd came out with his ears still going and stood on the pavement and let the dust settle for 10 minutes, and then Danny went in.

Honey. Wall to wall, corner to corner, the whole length of the room in one colour, and you could not see where the man had stopped in October and you could not see where he had started again this morning.

Danny walked from the door to the back wall and turned round and walked back.

"Well?"

"Lloyd."

"Mm."

"That’s the first thing anybody’s done in here that looks finished."

"It’s not finished, it wants 2 coats and a day between them and you’re not walking on it in boots on Wednesday." Lloyd was writing something on a docket. "But yeah. It’s all right, that."

He tore the docket off and handed it over.

"Now. Bad news."

"Go on."

"Under your counter."

"I know."

"You’ve got about 40 foot of honey and 3 foot of grey where your kickboard is, and I can’t get in there, because a man’s screwed a carcass to the boards." He put the pen away. "Who did that?"

"Terry."

"And did Terry tell you?"

"Terry told me."

"Right." Lloyd nodded slowly. "Well. You’ll be looking at it every day for 20 years."

"He said that as well."

Keisha came at 12 on the dot with a canvas holdall over one shoulder and put it down on the new floor without asking whether she could.

She had her own tamper in there. Her own cloths, a set of scales, a thermometer, and 4 cups wrapped in a tea towel.

"You’ve had your floor done."

"This morning."

"Right." She had not looked at the floor. She was looking at the counter. "Machine’s still in Peckham?"

"Femi’s bringing it Thursday."

"Good."

Then she went behind the counter and stopped talking for about 20 minutes.

Danny stood by the door and watched her do it and did not say one word.

She stood where the machine was going and put her hands where the group heads would be. Turned. Took the two steps to where the grinder was going. Turned back. Did it again. Did it about 15 times, and about halfway through she stopped counting them out loud under her breath and started doing it faster, and then she did it once with her eyes shut.

Then she got down on the floor and looked underneath.

"Where’s your waste?"

"What?"

"Your waste. Where’s it going." She was flat on her back with her head under the carcass. "Because there’s a drain in the back kitchen and there’s nothing here, and if I’m knocking out 400 drinks a morning I’m not walking a knock box through a door every 40 minutes."

"There’s a spur Errol’s putting in Wednesday."

"Where?"

"Back left."

"That’s the wrong side." She came out from under it and sat up on the new floor. "It wants to be under where I’m stood, which is here, and that’s a run across the room, and your floor went down 3 hours ago."

"So what’s the fix?"

"Somebody lifts that floor." She said it without any weight on it. "You pay Lloyd twice and you pay Errol twice and you lose a week. Or it goes in back left and I walk 4 steps every time instead of nought."

"What’s 4 steps?"

"Four steps, 400 times, is 1,600 a morning." She brushed the back of her legs off. "Five days a week. That’s your knees, not mine, because in 20 years it’ll be somebody else stood there. But it’s 1,600."

"What’s it cost? To lift it."

"Lloyd’s day, Errol’s day, and a week you’ve not got." She thought about it properly, which he liked her for. "Fifteen hundred? Two, if the boards don’t come up clean."

Two grand.

You’ve got £316,412.87 in an account. You could pay for that with the money you got for standing in a room in St James’s for 2 hours on Saturday, and you’d not notice it had gone.

Say yes. Say do it. She’s going to be behind that counter for 20 years.

And then she asks you where it’s coming from.

And you’ve got £48k of fit-out left on a shop that cost £52,340, and she’s watched you count it, and Sandra’s watched you count it, and every single person in this trade knows exactly what a man with 65 grand can and cannot do.

So you can have the drain, or you can have the story.

Danny stood on his own new floor.

"Leave it back left," he said.

"Yeah." Keisha was already getting up. "That’s what I’d have said."

"Is it?"

"You’ve got 9 grand of problems in this room and that’s not one of them." She dusted her hands off on her thighs. "You’ll not always be able to do that, mind."

"Do what?"

"Take the cheap one." She said it flat, the way she says everything. "You’ve done it twice now that I’ve seen. You’ll get away with it for another 3 months and then you’ll be opening, and once you’re open the cheap one costs more than the other one. That’s the whole trade, that is."

She thinks you’re skint.

She’s stood there thinking you’re a careful man doing sums, and she likes you for it, and she is completely wrong about the reason.

She saw the grey patch on her way back round.

She did not say anything about it. She looked at it for 4 seconds, then at the kickboard, then at Danny.

"Friday," Danny said. "Terry told me to wait. I wanted you stood behind it today."

Keisha’s eyebrows went up about a millimetre.

"I got it wrong."

"Yeah, you did." She got her holdall open. "Well. Nobody’s going to see it but us."

Us.

Danny got that word and put it somewhere and did not say anything about it, and she carried on with her bag and never knew she’d handed him anything.

She ran water through the sink for 6 minutes and put a thermometer in it and looked at the reading and made a face and wrote something down.

"Your water’s hard as anything, I told you that in Peckham." She dried her hands. "You’ll want a softener on the line before the machine goes anywhere near it, and Femi will tell you the same thing, and it’s about £600 and it’s the difference between that boiler lasting 8 years and 3."

"Then it goes on."

"Yeah, it does." She was already writing. "Right. Menu."

"I’ve got 6 lines."

"Show me."

He got the notebook out and turned to the page and handed it over, and she read it stood up in the middle of the room.

bacon roll

sausage roll?

egg, fried, in a roll. do people want scrambled at 6am? ask

tea. proper tea, in a mug

coffee. the good stuff

toasted teacake, THURSDAYS at least. every day if it works

a table in the window. not the best one. THE window one. you get everybody twice

She read it twice. Then she looked up.

"Who’s the teacake for?"

"Woman called Pat. She came in Thursday with her brother-in-law. They used to come every Thursday for 16 years before it shut."

"And the table in the window?"

"That’s the same woman. Her sister used to like it."

Keisha handed the notebook back.

"That’s not a menu," she said. "But it’s the first one anybody’s shown me that’s got a person on it."

She got a cup out of the tea towel and put it on the counter and turned it round so the handle sat right.

"Right. Who’s opening?"

"Me."

"Every day?"

"For now."

"You can’t open a 6 o’clock shop on your own every day, you’ll be finished by March." She said it flat, the way you’d say a bus was late. "Six means somebody’s in here at 5. That’s the grinder on, that’s water up to temp, that’s your first bake in, that’s your float counted. Five, not half 5."

"Right."

"So who’s here at 5?"

And Danny stood in the middle of a room that had a floor now and did not answer, because there was only one answer and he was not going to be the one who said it out loud first.

Keisha turned the cup round again by a quarter and left it exactly where it had been.

"Right, well," she said. "You’d better start thinking about that."

She left at 20 to 2 and stopped in the doorway on the way out.

"When’s your sign going up?"

"Haven’t got a sign."

"You’ve not got a name."

"No."

"You’re opening in 4 months."

"I know."

"You’ve got a floor, a counter and a machine coming Thursday, and there’s nothing over that door." She got her holdall onto her shoulder. "It’s a good corner, that. Sunny side, bus stop up the road, 200 yards off a junction with a van on it. People will walk past this 4 times a day for 30 years and never once know what it’s called."

"Say that again."

Keisha stopped in the doorway.

"Which bit?"

"The corner."

"It’s a good corner." She was looking at him like he’d gone soft. "What?"

"Woman was sat in that chair on Thursday," Danny said. "Pat. She’s 60-odd, she’s got the hip, she comes with a trolley. And she told me the bloke who had this place for 40 years never put a sign up. Not once, the whole time. And I asked her what people called it."

"Go on."

"She said you’d just say the corner. Are you coming up the corner. I’ll see you up the corner." He was stood on his own new floor with the light going outside. "And I’ve had you saying it to me down a phone since the first week and I never joined the two up until you said it stood in that doorway."

Keisha did not say anything for a second.

Then she put the holdall down on the floor.

"Say it, then."

"The Corner."

"No." She shook her head. "Not like that. You said it like a bloke reading a menu. Say it like you’d say it to somebody at a bus stop."

Danny looked at her.

"I’ll see you up the corner."

"There." She picked the bag back up. "That’s your sign."

"It’s not much of a name."

"It’s not a name at all. It’s what people already call it, and you’ve not had to buy it off anybody." She was going now, backwards, up the road. "Get a sign man in. Black board, gold letters, nothing clever. And don’t let anybody put an apostrophe in it."

He locked up at 4 and rode north with the light going, and the whole way over the bridge he kept catching himself saying it in his head in Pat’s voice rather than his own.

Thomas had the door before he’d got the stand down.

"Evening, Mr Flynn. You’ve got a bit of dust on you."

"I’ve had a floor done."

"Very nice." He took the helmet. "Oh. Miss Adeyemi asked if you’d got a minute when you’re in. Nothing urgent, she said."

Danny stopped on the mat with his ears in the warm.

"She say what about?"

"She did not, sir." Thomas already had the cupboard open. "But she asked twice."

Danny got his phone out in the lift, because he had been checking it every 20 minutes since 9 in the morning and there was no point pretending he had not.

One message. Half 3. Four miles north of a floor sander, from a woman who had done her 20 lengths on her own.

that was the worst voicemail i have ever received

and i’ve had one off my father

He was still looking at it when the doors opened on 40.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!