My Clocking In System

The tap upstairs came back on at 10 to 5.

Neither of them had been asleep. Her breathing had not changed once since about half 1, and twice in the night she had taken her foot off his shin and then put it back.

"Jodie."

"Don’t."

"You’ve been awake since 2."

"I’ve been awake since I asked you." Flat on her back with one arm over her eyes. "And I’ve spent 4 hours answering it for you. I’ve done 9 versions. Two of them were all right."

"Which 2?"

"You’re not having them, because if I say them out loud you’ll pick one and I’ll never know if it was true."

The radiator under the window went tick, once, coming on for the morning, and somewhere down on Lavender Hill a bin lorry started doing the thing they do.

Her arm came off her face.

"Right. Before you say it."

"Jodie..."

"No. I’ve thought about this an’ all, and I want it on the record that I know exactly what I’m doing." She had the duvet in one fist. Hair flat on one side and a disaster on the other. "Because if you answer me first I’m not going to want you anywhere near me, and I’ve decided I’d rather have this than the moral high ground."

"Noted."

"Don’t say noted." The t-shirt came off over her head. "And don’t be careful with me. That’d be the worst of the lot."

She took hold of my wrist and put my hand where she wanted it.

Six weeks she has made me find it myself.

Freckles over her shoulders and over the tops of her tits, thinning out where the sun has never had a go at her.

She says boobs. I don’t.

And they were up in both my hands, because she was on her knees over me with the duvet gone and her back straight.

"Look at me properly."

"I am looking at you properly."

"You’re doing the face. The one where you’re thinking." Her hand was already moving on my cock. "Not this morning."

So I put my mouth on a nipple and sucked it up hard and she made a noise about it straight away, out loud, no jaw, no hand over it, nothing, at 5 in the morning through a wall with Sarah the other side of it.

Six weeks of getting her there in stages and she went straight to the top of it cold.

"Sarah’s..."

"Sarah can put her telly on." She had my hair in her fist. "Don’t stop."

I put 2 fingers in her cunt and she was soaking already, wet all down the inside of her thigh, and she shoved herself down onto my hand and got louder, and an alarm went off in the flat above us and somebody slapped it.

Not the slow thing. She would not have it. Twice I tried to take it down and twice she took it back up, and the second time she moved my wrist herself.

There is the smell of the pillow and of sleep on her and under that the other one, and where I put my mouth on her shoulder to stop myself saying anything she goes salt.

Then she reached down and took hold of me and did not stop to look.

She always stops to look. Fist round the base, head on one side, the whole inspection, every time since the first Sunday, and I have never once made it through without saying something stupid.

This morning she put me straight in and came down hard and waited for nobody.

"Jodie."

"I know what I didn’t do." Both hands flat on my chest. "I’ve not got it in me."

She rode me sat up with her chin up and her eyes open and it was the loudest she has ever been and not one bit of it was for me.

Her hair went in her mouth. She took it out with 2 fingers and did not lose the rhythm doing it.

Her thighs are hard off 9 hours a day and 40 flights of stockroom ladder and I could feel the pair of them working either side of my hips. Sweat at her hairline. Her chest and her throat coming up blotchy all the way down to where the freckles quit.

She worked a hand down between us onto her own clit and finished herself off on top of me with her head right back and a noise in her throat that went on and on and on.

I went about 4 seconds behind her with both hands full of her arse and my balls tight up against her.

Then she put her forehead down on my collarbone and stayed there with her hair all over me, breathing, and neither of us said one word for about a minute and a half, and the tap in the flat above ran and stopped.

She did not get off him.

She sat back up with her hands on his chest and her hair pushed off her face, and made him do it from underneath.

"I’ve got a million pound," Danny said.

Jodie did not move.

"Say that again."

"One million, two hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and twelve pounds. And 87 pence. In a bank, in my name, since the middle of October."

Nothing happened for about 6 seconds.

Then she got off him, one knee at a time, and sat on the edge of her own bed with her back to him, and found the t-shirt on the floor, and put it on.

"Say the pence again."

"87 pence. And I’ve not had to look it up since the 19th of October."

"You know it to the pence."

"I know the account number an’ all. And the sort code, and I’ve never wrote either of them down anywhere, because there’s nowhere in my life I’d be happy leaving them."

Down in the street a van door went and an engine turned over 3 times before it caught.

"And where’s it from?"

"I can’t tell you that."

Jodie turned round.

"You’ve just said the pence to me with your cock still in me."

"I have, yeah."

"So say the other bit."

"I’ve been trying to find a way to for 5 weeks." He had the pillow up behind him. "There’s about 9 versions and every one of them’s a lie with a bit of true in it, and you’d have took any of them off me at any point up to about Tuesday, and I’ve sat there and not said them."

"Why not?"

"Because I’d have had to keep it going."

"Is it crypto?"

"No."

"Is it your dad? Is it something off a bloke in a pub? Have you hurt somebody? I’m going to keep going till you stop me."

"None of those, and I’ve not, and I’m not going to."

"Are you going to go to prison?"

And Danny sat up in her bed in Battersea at 10 past 5 with the same answer he had given his mother on a settee on Tuesday and nothing better found in the 2 days between.

"I don’t know."

Jodie stood up, went out, and came back with her phone and put the big light on.

He had been in that bedroom 20-odd times since the first Sunday. That light had never been on.

"Sit up. I’m not saying this to a man lying down."

He sat up.

"Monday I put 6 dresses in a bag. Tuesday I got told 12 more. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I sat on that carpet with a bit of chalk and worked out 156 hours and what £600 a month does to my rent." Her hands were going and her voice was not. "Wednesday night you sat on that carpet and watched me do it."

"Jodie."

"With your coat in my hall." The phone was flat against her leg. "You let me sit there working out whether I could afford to lose £600, and there was a million and a quarter pound on a hook 12 foot away, and you gave me advice."

"If I’d given you the money..."

"I’d not have had it. I’d not have had a penny and you know that, so don’t hide behind it."

"Then what?"

"You sat there and let me be small in front of you. Four days of sums. And a man with a million pound saying have you asked her what happens if she pays late."

He had nothing to put in the room that made any of that not so.

"I’m sorry."

"I know. It doesn’t do anything." She turned the screen round to him.

Northcote Road, 11:52pm. Half up front is fine, £990 Friday. Can you do 14 by the 3rd of Jan?

"She said yes at 10 to 12 last night. It’s been on that windowsill since and I looked at it 5 minutes ago stood in the dark in my own front room, and I’ll tell you what I felt, because I’ve had all night to get it wrong and I’ve not managed it."

"Go on."

"Nothing." The phone went face down on the chest of drawers. "Best thing that’s happened to me in 11 years, and it come in after I’d already worked out you were holding something back, and it went in flat. I’ll not get that one again. There’s no second time somebody says yes to your first 6 dresses."

The boiler came on in the hall cupboard.

"I’m still going in to Marie."

"Right."

"Not for you. For 2 and a half grand and a name on a rail." She got her dressing gown off the door. "And I’m doing it on my own and I’d like you to hear the word."

"I’ve heard it."

"Good. Now get dressed and go, because I’m in at 8, and I’ve got to put my face on, and I can’t do it with you sat there looking sorry at me."

"When can I ring you?"

"I don’t know."

"Jodie."

"I’ve not got an answer for you, Danny. I’ve got a shop to open." Cord done up, hand on the door. "You’ll have to sit in it. I’ve been sat in it since Wednesday teatime."

He got his boots on in her hall at 10 to 6 with his mother’s bag in one hand and his coat off the hook and the envelope in the inside pocket of it. The oranges were still in the carrier on the side where she had put them down on Wednesday.