My Clocking In System

His mother had the bag in her hand before he was through the door, because she was doing her coat up and she was on Rye Lane at 8.

"Don’t leave it on a scooter."

He went through it in the stairwell with the timer light going off twice.

Water bill, 2018, both their names on it and a meter reading in somebody’s handwriting on the back. The council letter about the bins, with the date printed down the side in grey the way they do it. March 2019. And the provisional licence application, folded in 3, with his own handwriting in the boxes and a signature at the bottom that he did not recognise.

2016.

Right. Do it properly rather than standing here hoping.

She wants the 3 years before October. Adaeze covers the back 2 because she bought the building. So the hole is the year before that, and it ends about 3 years ago.

And I’ve got 2016, 2018 and 2019.

Every one of these is older than the hole.

He stood in a stairwell in Battersea at 20 past 7 with 3 bits of paper and made himself go the rest of the way, which he had been walking round since Wednesday night.

What have I got from that year at all?

I was 25. Six days a week on the bags. A phone contract off a shop on Mare Street that I paid in a shop. No bank card that worked for about 4 months of it. Never registered with a doctor because I never got round to it.

I haven’t got one thing with my name and that address on it from that year, and I never did, because there was nothing to have.

That’s not the phone’s doing. That one’s mine.

He put them back in the bag flat and went and sat on the scooter outside with the engine off and the helmet on his knee, and got his phone out.

It was still there. It had been there since half 5 on Wednesday evening, and he had opened it 11 times in 2 days and never once put his thumb down.

[ Nothing is put back, host. ] [ An address can be filed. ] [ Confirm and it will be filed by 09:00. ]

Right.

You’ve got 40 minutes before she’s at that desk and you’ve got a bag of paper that’s 3 years too old, and you’ve done the errand and the errand’s no good.

So there’s 2 ways this goes.

One. You take the documents in and she says what you already know, and she ticks that box at 4 o’clock, and on Monday a bloke in Croydon runs 4 searches on a man who isn’t in any of them. And Naomi’s told you what happens after that, which is nothing, for about 5 years, until you notice.

Two. You put your thumb on that.

He sat on a scooter on a road in Battersea with his mother’s stairwell door going behind him and somebody’s radio on in a flat.

And what does it cost.

It won’t say. You’ve asked twice and it won’t say.

But you know what it cost last time, because you found out on Wednesday, 3 weeks late. It cost 11 years of a flat with a boiler that gave you 6 minutes. It took that off the world so a bloke at a desk couldn’t find it.

So this one takes something an’ all. Something of mine, and I’ll not be told, and I’ll find out about it in February when somebody can’t find something.

And the somebody might be my mum.

He sat with that for a good long while.

Or you say no, and you keep whatever it is, and you become a man that Naomi Adeyemi cannot vouch for.

And the café’s in my name. The lease is in my name. Priya’s got a file with my name on it and a source of funds she signed off.

And if a bloke in Croydon pulls a thread on Daniel Flynn, that’s the thread he pulls.

Him. Not me. The shop.

That was the one that did it, and he knew it while it was happening, and he did it anyway.

He typed with one thumb.

confirm

[ Confirmed. ]

And then nothing for about 4 seconds, and then:

[ 14 Ashwell Court, Hackney. ] [ September 2021 to October 2022. ] [ Filed. ]

Danny sat on a scooter outside his mother’s block and read an address he had never been to in his life.

where is that

[ It is 400 metres from Pembury House. ]

is it a real flat

[ Yes. ]

does somebody live in it

Nine seconds.

[ That is not a question the Concierge is able to answer. ]

He put the phone in his coat and did not start the engine for about a minute and a half.

Naomi Adeyemi came out of her office at 9 minutes past 9 with her reading glasses on, and he put the 3 documents on the end of her desk because he had carried them across a river and it seemed daft not to.

She looked at each one for about 8 seconds.

"Two thousand and eighteen. Two thousand and nineteen." She turned the licence application over. "And 2016."

"They’re the wrong years. I know they are. I worked it out in a stairwell at half 7."

"Then why have you brought them?"

"Because they’re what I’ve got," Danny said, "and I’d rather you saw me go and look."

Something moved in her face and went away again.

"Hold on."

She went back round the desk and sat down and pulled the keyboard over and did something with it, and Danny stood in the doorway of a small warm office and watched a woman find out.

She stopped.

She read it twice. He watched her do that, because he watches everybody.

"When did you send this?"

Careful.

"I’ve not sent anything."

"Somebody has." She had both hands off the keyboard now. "There’s an address on your file that was not on it at half 5 yesterday. Ashwell Court in Hackney, September 2021 to October 2022. With a landlord reference attached to it."

"Right."

"Mr Flynn." She turned the screen round on its arm so he could see it, which she has never once done. "Is that yours?"

And there it was.

Say yes and she puts a yes in the box and it’s done and she goes home at 5 and stops thinking about you.

Say no and you have got about 4 seconds to explain how an address you’ve never been to got onto a file that only she and an insurer can touch.

"That’s mine," Danny said.

Naomi Adeyemi looked at him for a long moment.

"Then why did you bring me a water bill from 2018?"

Because I confirmed it 40 minutes ago on a scooter outside my mum’s.

"Because I didn’t know it had gone through," he said. "I’d asked my solicitor to chase it Wednesday and I’d heard nothing, and I wasn’t going to come in here empty-handed on your deadline."

She sat with that.

He watched her decide whether to push it, and he watched her not, and the not was not because she believed him.

"Right." She turned the screen back. "Well. That’s a yes in the box."

"Is that it?"

"That is it." She was typing. "The reference will get a letter and they’ll answer it or they won’t, and if they don’t it comes back to me in 6 weeks and we do this again. But the box has a yes in it and the file goes back today with a yes on it, and that is what I have been trying to get to since Monday."

She clicked something and sat back.

"I’ll be honest with you, Mr Flynn. I did not think that was going to happen."

"No."

"I had a paragraph written for the insurer explaining why I couldn’t verify you. I wrote it on Wednesday night." A small shrug. "I’ve just deleted it, and I’m glad, and I’d have been sorry to send it."

And she smiled at him, which she had not done in 5 conversations, and it was a real one.

Danny stood in the doorway with his helmet under his arm and his mother’s documents in a bag, and watched a woman who had been decent to him for a fortnight be pleased about a thing that was not true.

She’s relieved.

Sixteen years, 41 flats, and she’s sat there relieved because she doesn’t have to do something to a man she’s decided she likes.

And I did that to her 40 minutes ago with one thumb.

"Miss Adeyemi."

"Mr Flynn."

"Thanks for holding it to today."

"It was 4 days." She was already pulling something else across the desk. "Go and see to your café."

He got the shop open at 10 and did not do one useful thing in it until 12.

He swept a floor that had been swept. He got Keisha’s list out and read it and put it down. He stood behind the counter and put his hands where she had put his hands on Thursday, and did not switch anything on.

Then he got his phone out and sat on the bucket.

what did it cost

[ There is no charge to the host. ]

that’s not what i asked

[ Rephrase. ]

He sat on an upturned bucket in an empty café and looked at that word for a bit.

what got taken off to put that on

Fourteen seconds, which is the longest it has ever taken.

[ Nothing was taken. ] [ Ashwell Court was added. ]

so nothing’s gone

[ Correct. ]

then why did pembury go in october

[ Pembury House was removed in October. ] [ Ashwell Court was added today. ] [ Those are different operations, host. ]

Danny read that about 5 times.

And that’s true.

That’s the thing about it. Every word of that is true, and it hasn’t answered one single thing I’ve asked, and it’s never going to, and I’ve been sat here 20 minutes trying to get a machine to feel guilty.

He put the phone face down on the counter.

Right. So there’s a flat in Hackney with a number on a door, 400 metres from where I actually lived, and it’s real, and I have just told a woman I lived in it.

And somewhere there’s a landlord reference with somebody’s name on it.

Whose?

He picked the phone straight back up.

who’s the landlord reference

[ That is not a question the Concierge is able to answer. ]

He got to Battersea at 10 past 4 without ringing first, because he had spent 40 minutes in the shop building a sentence for the phone and had not got one that survived being said out loud.

Her light was on. He stood on the pavement long enough for a woman with a pram to go past him twice, once each way.

Then he went up and knocked.

She opened it with a tape measure round her neck and a biro behind her ear and went straight back down the hall.

"Shut that, you’re letting the cold in. And take your boots off, I’ve had them all over that carpet since Tuesday."

He took his boots off.

The front room had changed again. Cutting mat gone. Machine back in its corner with the flex untaped. And along the back wall on a rail she had got from somewhere, 6 dark green dresses on hangers with tissue over the shoulders.

Jodie was on her knees at the end of the rail with a roll of garment bags and a pair of scissors.

"You can hold these open while I get them in. Don’t touch the shoulders."

So he held garment bags open for 20 minutes.

She did not talk while she did it, except to tell him he was holding it too narrow, and then that he was pinching it, and then to say "that one, the one on the end, mind the hem," and he watched her get 6 dresses into 6 bags with her hands doing something careful every single time and her face doing nothing at all.

When they were done she sat back on her heels.

"They go at half 10 tomorrow."

"Are they finished?"

"They were finished Wednesday night." She got up off the floor with a noise. "I’ve spent 2 days since then finding things wrong and putting them right, and this morning I made myself stop, because I’d have gone on till Christmas."

"Can I see the shoulder?"

Jodie stopped with the scissors in her hand.

"Which shoulder?"

"The one you told me about on the phone. The second one. You said you’d done a thing you were pleased with and nobody would ever notice it."

She stood there for a second.

Then she went down the rail, and unzipped the third bag along about 8 inches, and held it open.

He looked. He could not see anything at all.

"No," Danny said.

"No." She zipped it back up. "That’s the whole point of it."

She went and put the kettle on and he stood in the front room on his own with 6 bags on a rail.

When she came back she had 2 mugs and she gave him the one with the chip in it and sat down on the settee with her feet up under her.

And she did not say anything about Wednesday.

She talked about the woman on Northcote Road, and about whether £120 was too low and whether she should have said £140, and about Nadia covering her Saturday, and about a man in the shop on Thursday who had tried to return a coat he had plainly worn to a wedding.

Twenty minutes of it. All of it easy, and none of it anywhere near him.

She’s not going to bring it up.

She’s decided not to and she’ll do the whole evening like this if I let her, and I’ll go home at 8 and it’ll have been nice, and something will have gone.

"Jodie."

"Mm."

"I said Wednesday."

She had her mug halfway up and she put it back down on her knee.

"You did."

"And I didn’t come, and I didn’t ring, and it was Thursday as well, and I’ve not got a reason I can give you."

"No."

"So I’m not going to sit here and let you do 20 minutes on a bloke with a coat."

Jodie looked at the fire that was not lit.

"I had my phone face up on that table for 3 days," she said. "Wednesday I thought something had happened to you. Properly thought it, about half 9 at night, and I nearly rang your mum and then I realised I’ve not got her number."

"Jodie."

"And then Thursday I stopped thinking that and started thinking the other thing." She turned the mug round. "And the other thing’s worse, because you can be cross about the other thing, and you can’t be cross about a man in a hospital."

Danny sat on the arm of the settee.

"I’m not going to ask you what it is," she said. "I said that Tuesday and I meant it Tuesday and I mean it now. But I’m going to tell you what I’ve worked out, because I’ve had 3 days and there’s nothing else to do while you’re sewing."

"Go on."

"It’s not another woman." She said it flatly. "I thought it was for about an hour on Wednesday and then I thought, no, because a man doing that doesn’t go grey in a restaurant when somebody asks about a photograph."

He did not say anything.

"And it’s not the café, because you tell me everything about the café, you tell me about a man’s ramp." She had both hands round the mug. "So it’s money, or it’s trouble, or it’s both."

The room went quiet for a bit. Upstairs somebody ran a tap.

"And that’s as far as I’ve got," Jodie said, "and I’m not going any further, because the next bit is asking, and I’m not doing it."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Nothing. That’s what I’ve been telling you." She drank some of her tea. "I want you to not do Wednesday to me again. That’s the whole of it."

"I said that this morning, and..."

"You said it 4 hours ago, Danny. It’s still Friday."

He laughed before he could stop it, and she looked up, and there was about a second where it could have gone either way.

Then she put her feet down off the settee and got up, and came over, and stood in front of him with her mug in one hand.

"Right," she said. "Here’s what’s happening tomorrow. Half 10 they go in. Half 11 I’m out of there whether she’s said anything or not, because I’m not standing in a shop watching a woman look at my hems."

"Do you want me to come?"

"No."

"Right."

"I want you to be at the end of a phone at half 11." She put her free hand flat on his chest. "Because one of 2 things is going to have happened, and either way I’m going to want to tell somebody, and there isn’t anybody else."

Danny sat on the arm of a settee in Battersea with a woman’s hand flat on his chest and £1,216,412.87 in an account and a flat in Hackney with his name against it that he had never been to.

"I’ll be at the end of a phone," he said.

"At half 11."

"At half 11."

"Right." She took her hand off him and picked her tea back up. "Now go and put them boots back on, because I’ve got a 7 o’clock start and you’ve been here an hour and a half and I’ve got to be asleep by 10."