My Clocking In System

At 25 past 10 Ray put his head round the door without knocking.

"Your sign man’s been."

"I’ve not got a sign man."

"You have now, he’s been stood outside your glass for 10 minutes with a tape." Ray had his hands in his fleece. "I said you were in. He says he’ll come back."

"Did he leave a name?"

"He left a card on your step, in the wet, because you’ve got no letterbox." Ray went. "And there’s a pigeon been in your back kitchen, that door’s open again."

There was a pigeon in the back kitchen.

It took 11 minutes to get it out and it went round the room 4 times and left a mark on the new floor that came up with a cloth, and by the end of it Danny was sat on the bottom of the cellar steps sweating in a coat.

The card on the step said A. PERRY & SON, SIGNWRITERS, EST 1961 and had a mobile number on it in a font from about 1994, and the rain had got the top corner.

He stood in his own doorway and looked at it.

Signwriters. Est 1961.

And he’s stood out here with a tape measuring a fascia I’ve not asked him to measure, which means somebody’s told him about this shop.

Keisha. Or Errol. Or Ray, who’s just stood there and told me he didn’t.

He put the card in his coat pocket and did not ring it.

Then he got the phone out and sat on the bucket, and it was not the card he had got it out for.

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. ]

At half 1 he went up the road to the lights because he had not eaten since a piece of toast at 7.

Wasim had 3 in the queue and the griddle going and did not look up.

"Bacon, no sauce."

"You want an egg on it."

"Go on then."

"Yeah." Crack. "You’ve not eaten all day, you’ve got the look."

He did the thing with the egg, whatever the thing with the egg is, and Danny watched him do it from 3 feet away and still could not tell you what it was.

"Your machine’s in."

"Who told you that?"

"Ray." Wasim got the lid on the tea. "Ray tells me everything. Ray told me your floor, your electric, your ceiling and your barrels, and he told me you’re not doing beer, which he’s not got over."

"He’ll not get over it."

"No." He slid it across. "Four pound ten."

Danny gave him a fiver and got 90p back and did not try anything else about it, because the last time he had tried that he had been stood there for a full minute like a man in a shop.

He ate it stood against the railings at the lights with the traffic going both ways, and it was the best thing he had eaten all week, and he thought about the fact that a man with £1.2m in an account was stood in the cold eating a bacon roll off a van because a bloke had put an egg on it without being asked.

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."