My Clocking In System

At 25 past 3 he was on the scooter with the envelope inside his coat. The Clapham Road was already doing what it does at 4, and he chained up outside the dry cleaner’s at 4 minutes to.

The woman inside was steaming a jacket on a pole and did not look up.

He put his thumb on the buzzer beside the flat brown door with the 4 screw holes in the brick, and the door came open on its own, because somebody was coming down.

The stairs are narrow, there is a bend in them, the smell of other people’s laundry comes up through the treads, and 2 people cannot pass on them.

He was 3 steps up when he stopped.

Boots with a heel came round the bend. Camel coat open over a cream jumper, copper down past her shoulders, gold hoops, a folder under one arm.

Mara Doyle stopped 4 treads above him with a hand flat on the wall.

For about a second and a half she was a woman on a staircase with somebody in her way.

He watched her eyes come off his face, go down past him to the street door he had come through, and go back up to the landing she had just left. He watched the freckle at the corner of her mouth stop.

"Danny."

Downstairs the machine went into its cycle, thump-thump-thump, and up on the landing a chair went back on a wooden floor.

She’s got it.

She’s got it in her hand right now and she’s standing there deciding whether to pick it up, and she’s going to give herself 4 days and a Sunday not to, because that’s what she’s been doing since the 6th of November.

And you can let her.

You can stand here and say nothing and she’ll walk past you and she’ll be honest with herself all the way to the tube and she’ll get nowhere near it, and you’ll have another 6 weeks.

You had 4 hours of that this morning.

"Mara. It’s me."

Her hand came off the wall.

"What?"

"The one Naomi’s ringing about. The flat on 40 that’s in a company. It’s me, and that’s who you heard her talking about on that phone, and I’ve known since the Monday you told me in the pool and I sat in the water and said nothing."

Nobody moved on the stairs.

When she spoke it came out very evenly and very fast, the way it does with her when she has decided to be pleasant.

"Why have you done that?"

"Because you’d have worked it out."

"I would not have worked it out. I have been not working it out, and I’ve been extremely good at it, and I’ve had 13 days of practice."

She had gone white round the mouth.

"Two things in a notebook and I made myself leave them as 2 things. And I told you in November. I sat on your floor and I told you that if you said a thing out loud I’d have to do something about it, and I asked you not to, and you said all right."

"I know I did."

She came down 2 steps so there was one tread between them, close enough that he could smell the coconut off her hair the way you can in that pool.

"So that was for you, then. You’ve not told me because it’s fair. You’ve had a morning of somebody doing this to you."

Danny stood on a narrow staircase above a dry cleaner’s.

"Yeah."

"Yes." She said it like a woman confirming a delivery. "So you’ve come out of one of these and walked straight into another one and handed it to me, and I’m the one carrying it up the Clapham Road."

"Mara..."

"Move, please. I’m not getting past you."

He went down 3 and stood in the doorway and let her come past him, all of her at once, the coat and the folder and the boots on the tile.

She stopped on the pavement with her back to him.

"Is Priya in this?"

"No. She’s never said one word to me about you and she’s never said one word about you to me, and she’d not."

"No, she’d not." Mara put the folder under her other arm. "Right. Well, that’s the only decent thing on this street."

She walked off towards the tube.

Upstairs the kettle was going and a file was already open on the desk.

"You’re 4 minutes late, which for you is early. Sit down." Priya Anand did not look up. "Kettle’s there. Tea’s still rubbish and I’m still not making it."

The photograph was turned at its angle so only she could see it. The dead plant on the filing cabinet moved very slightly in time with the machine below. Through the window that did not open, Danny could see the top of a bus and the corner of pavement Mara had just been stood on.

"Have you got it?"

He took the envelope out and put the slip of paper on the desk. Four inches wide, folded in 3, soft at the creases, the colour of weak tea.

Priya put her glasses down off her head, unfolded it, and read both sides. She took longer over it than she had taken over anything since October.

"This is an original."

"It’s the one they gave her."

"Registrar’s hand and the district stamp." One finger under it. "This has been in a drawer 28 years."

"A tin."

"Better. I will take a copy and you will take this home and you will not carry it about in a coat. If you lose it you cannot replace it. You can only buy a new one, and a new one is not this." She wrote something short. "Two things. The second will take 40 minutes and you will not enjoy the middle of it."

"Go on."

"The bank. Monday at 10, a woman I have used for 14 years, and she has seen the shape of it on paper. Twelve months of 2 people’s wages, standing instruction, paid on the last working day, second signature." She turned the pad round. "Whose?"

"I thought you’d tell me."

"I have been waiting 3 days for you to ask. It cannot be mine, because I am your solicitor and I would be on both sides of your money. It cannot be your mother, because she is the beneficiary of the will we are about to write. It cannot be either of the 2 people it pays."

"So who’s left?"

"Nobody. Which is what I want you to sit with." She let it sit. "You have a solicitor, a designer, a plasterer, an electrician and 2 employees, Mr Flynn. There is not one person in your life who can hold a signature and is not already on that list."

Danny sat in a chair 4 feet from a filing cabinet with his name in it.

Mum can’t. Keisha can’t and wouldn’t have it off me anyway. Jodie’s not speaking to me and hasn’t got a bank account with a spare inch in it.

Then who? Wasim, who I stood on a pavement with this morning and told I was coming for his scaffolders. Ray, who’s not got over the beer. Pat, who’s 60-odd and has a chiropodist.

Twenty-eight years old and there’s 3 names and all 3 of them are a joke.

"Can it be nobody?"

"Say more."

"You said the thing’s got to not die when I do. So it’s not a person I want, it’s somebody who has to say no." Both hands on his knees. "Can the bank be the one that says no? Can I put it somewhere that nobody can get at, me included, so there’s no second key to give anybody?"

Priya’s biro stopped.

"That is a trust."

"Can I have one?"

"It costs about £2,000 rather than £900 and it takes 6 weeks rather than Monday, and it is the correct answer."

"Then why’s it not what you said in the first place?"

"Because I did not think you would sit still for 6 weeks." She had already turned to the cabinet. "It is a bare trust. It wants a trustee and a trustee can be a firm. Not mine. There is a woman in Camberwell I have sent 30 years of this to, and she is duller than I am, which is what you are buying."

"How long’s 6 weeks?"

"The middle of January."

"And between now and then?"

"Between now and then your 2 people are covered by nothing except you staying alive." Over the top of the glasses. "You do not open for 3 months, so I am content with that. Unless there is a reason it has to be inside a week."