My Clocking In System

Naomi writes to the insurer Monday.

And that’s nothing to do with a wages trust, and she’ll say so, and then I’m sat here explaining why I brought it up.

"January’s better."

"January." She wrote it down. "Now the will."

She pulled a fresh sheet and put his full name across the top in capitals, off the birth certificate, letter by letter, and checked it twice.

"Who gets it."

"My mum. All of it."

"She is 52, she pushes a trolley round a hospital, and she has never had more than £400 in an account at one time."

"I know."

"You are handing her a lease, a machine, a bank account, 2 employees and a tax return, in the week she will not be able to read a letter." The biro did not stop. "So we do it properly. A specific gift of the business. An executor who is not her. A substitute if she goes before you. And a letter of wishes with no legal force at all, which will be the only useful document in the file."

"Who’s executor?"

"Me for a fee or a bank for a bigger one. I am 57 and you are 28, so we name the Camberwell partner as substitute." Writing fast. "Substitute beneficiary. Have you children?"

"No."

"A partner. I am asking as a solicitor and it goes in a box."

"There’s somebody." He heard himself say it. "And she’s not speaking to me as of 6 o’clock this morning, and she’d refuse it, and I’d put money on her ringing you up to say so."

"Then she does not go in, because a gift to somebody who will not take it is a gift to a court. Who?"

Danny sat in a room the size of a bathroom on the Clapham Road.

"Pat."

"Who is Pat?"

"She’s 60-odd with a bad hip and she came in that shop every Thursday for 16 years before it shut. She sat in the window this afternoon and told me about 9 flats over Ray’s and a woman with 2 dogs and where to put a hook."

"That is not a reason to leave somebody a business."

"No. The reason’s this." He had one hand flat on the edge of her desk. "If my mum’s gone as well then that room’s going to somebody, and everybody else it could go to would sell it in a fortnight, and Pat wouldn’t, because she’s got nowhere else to sit on a Thursday."

Priya looked at him for a while.

"Full name and address. And you will tell her, because people find out at the worst hour and it does things to families."

"She’s got a brother-in-law called Norman."

"Full name and address, Mr Flynn."

"I’ll get it Monday."

"Good." She turned the sheet. "Last box. Your father."

Downstairs the machine started again.

"He is alive, he takes half on an intestacy, and you are making a will that gives him nothing. He may challenge it and he will lose, provided the file shows we knew he existed and dealt with him on purpose rather than forgot him." The biro went down flat. "Full name, date of birth if you have it, last known address."

Danny did not say anything.

"You have an address. You went white when I said the word."

"I’ve got one."

"Where does it go?"

"Into my file, and into a schedule attached to the letter of wishes. Nowhere else. It is not published and nobody reads a will until you are dead." She was watching him now. "Why?"

And his mother was stood on a walkway in her coat with both hands flat on a biscuit tin.

Not a promise you’ll not. Just that I’d rather not be stood at that sink finding out off a postcard.

Can you do that?

"Can I bring it Monday?"

"You can. Is there a reason?"

"There’s somebody I said I’d tell before it went anywhere."

Priya Anand wrote 3 words on her pad and put the lid on the biro.

"Monday, 10 o’clock, the bank. Bring the address and Pat’s full name. It is £900 for the will and about 2,000 for the trust and you will get one bill in January."

He was on his feet with his coat over his arm when he looked out of the window that did not open.

Four doors up on the other side, outside the newsagent’s, Mara Doyle was stood with her back against the glass and the folder under her arm and her phone up in both hands.

She had not gone to her mother’s.

Her thumbs went for a bit. Then she put the phone in her coat pocket, took the folder out, looked at it, put it back, and walked off towards the tube.

Keisha was outside the shop at 20 past 5 with the holdall on her shoulder and her own tamper in it.

"You’ve got no machine."

"Femi’s got the 2 group in the arch and it’s plumbed. Ten minutes up the road. I rang him at 4 and he’s there till 8 and he’ll not charge us."

"When did you get organised?"

"This afternoon. It was that or tell a lad with 2 buses to come back Saturday."

"He’s not here."

"I texted him half 5 for 6. He’s got a nursery to get to first."

Tobi came round the corner at 4 minutes past 6 with a rucksack on one shoulder and a child of about 3 on the other hip, red coat, hood up, a bag of raisins in her fist.

He stopped 8 feet short.

"Right. So I’ve got to say something before you say anything."

"Go on."

"I had to get her first. Nursery shuts at half 5 and it’s the 63 and then a walk." He had her balanced like a man who has carried things for a living. "And I’ve not got anybody to leave her with. So it was her or I don’t come, and I’ve had 2 places make a face at me about exactly this, and I’d rather have it out here on the pavement than in there."

Danny looked at a 24-year-old stood on a pavement with his chin up.

"What’s she called?"

He took a second over it.

"Amara."

"Right. Amara, there’s no ceiling in ours yet and it’s all dust, so we’re going up the road to a bloke called Femi who’s got a radio." The shutter came back down. "Keisha, has he got anywhere she can sit?"

"He’s got a bench and about 40 things she can’t touch." The holdall was already back on her shoulder. "I’ll have her. You two go in the arch and I’ll stand in the mouth of it and shout at you both from there."

"You don’t have to..."

"Tobi." Her hand was out for the rucksack. "I’ve a boy of 14 and I did 6 years of this on my own with a manager who docked me 20 minutes every time. Give me the bag and go and pull me 4 shots."

He pulled 11.

The first 3 were nothing and he binned them himself. The fourth he let run to the end, and looked at Keisha, and Keisha said nothing at all. The seventh he stopped at 24 seconds, tasted it, made a face, and went and moved the grinder 2 clicks finer without asking anybody.

Keisha was in the mouth of the arch with Amara on her hip, pointing at a radiator.

"He moved that grinder without looking at me," she said.

"Is that good?"

"Marcus has had lads 4 years who’d put a bad one in a cup because I was stood there."

The 11th she drank a third of, put down, and said nothing about.

Femi came over wiping his hands.

"She’s done that to me 40 times. Drinks a third of it and puts it down and looks at the wall."

"What’s it mean?"

"It means I’ve got a machine to put back together before 8 and you two are stood in my arch." He was already going. "Ask her yourself, she’s 6 foot away."

"Femi."

"I’m going."

Danny signed 2 contracts on the wing of Femi’s van at 20 past 7, with a biro Keisha had to go and dig out of the bottom of the holdall.

Tobi read all of his. Both pages, with his daughter asleep against his shoulder. He stopped at the third clause down on page 2 and read that one twice.

"That’s in there."

"It’s a term. Somebody else running that floor in 3 years can’t move it."

"Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. Off the floor at quarter to 5." One finger on the line. "My mum’s going to want to see this."

He signed it.

The private lift at the Sterling has no numbers in it. One unmarked circle, and it does 2 stops, the lobby and him.

Danny stepped in at 10 to 9 with his coat over his arm, and the building fell away underneath him for 40 floors, and the doors opened straight into the flat.

Lights off. Everything where he had left it on Wednesday morning. The 2 mugs. The kettle. The whole river in the window and the Thursday traffic going over the bridge both ways.

On the kitchen island, squared to the edge, one sheet torn out of a notebook along the perforation and folded once.

He turned it over with a finger.

Four lines in biro, the last one gone over twice.

correspondence address: 2a Clapham Rd SW9, above the dry cleaner’s

P. ANAND

Building manager. Down from 40 in the private lift, 10:25.

Then, newer ink, pressed harder into the paper:

Flynn.

Danny put the sheet in his coat pocket and stood at that window long enough for a boat to go under the bridge and come out the other side of it.

Then he went back into the lift and rode it all the way down, 40 floors, past her, into a lobby where the night man said good evening Mr Flynn without looking up from his screen.

He crossed to the 6 lifts everybody else uses.

Pressed 39.