My Clocking In System

He stood up as well, because she had, and she did not move back, and the two of them were closer than the room needed.

She smelled of coconut. It is always coconut, off the pool, off her hair, and it was the first thing he ever knew about her.

"You're going to go up," Mara said.

"I've not asked you for anything."

"You've not had to. You've come down a floor at 9 at night on the day you told me the biggest thing you've got, and I've let you in, and I'm stood 6 inches off you in my own front room with no shoes on." Her mouth had gone unsteady at one corner where the freckle sits. "I'm 24, Danny, I'm not simple."

"Then say it and I'll go."

"I'm saying the same thing I said in November and I'm saying it again because you've made it worse." Her eyes did not move off his. "I told you to sort it out. Not for me. For her. Because whatever she is, she'd not been told any of it."

"Mara..."

"Has she been told?"

Danny stood in flat 39.

"Yeah."

Something went across her face and got put away.

"When?"

"This morning. Ten past 5."

"And where is she now?"

"At work. She's not speaking to me and she wouldn't tell me when she would."

"Right." Mara took one step back and folded her arms and then unfolded them again. "So she's been told, and she's gone off you, and you've come down here the same night. And you want me to think that's about the note."

"Some of it's about the note."

Mara's chin came up.

"Well, that's the most honest sentence anybody's said in this flat since March."

She went to her own front door and put her hand on the latch and did not open it.

"I'm not going to be a problem. I said that and I meant it and it's still true." Her voice had come right down. "But I'll tell you what I am not doing. I am not going to be the thing that happens to you on a bad Thursday. Not because I'm above it. Because I'd like it too much and then I'd have to be somebody who did that, and I've got enough on."

"That's fair."

"Don't tell me it's fair, I know it's fair, I've been sat in here working it out since 5 o'clock." She opened the door 8 inches. "Go up. And ring me tomorrow after 6 and tell me what Naomi says, because it's my handwriting and I'd like to know what I've done."

He got as far as the corridor.

"Mara."

"Mm."

"Thanks for the 13 days."

She stood in her own doorway in a cardigan and no shoes with the light behind her.

"They were for me," she said. "Not you. I just wanted to be somebody who could."

The door went.

Mara Doyle stood in her own hall with her back against it and counted the lift down past 38, 37, 36, and then lost it.

She put the chain on. She put the lamp off. She went and stood in her own shower because there was nowhere else in the flat to be.

Forehead on the tile, water on the back of her neck, and she was furious, and under the furious was the thing that had been sat there since he stood 6 inches off her in her own front room and did not move.

She had a hand full of her own tit before she had decided anything.

They are heavy and they hang with their own weight and in the heat they go warm right through, and both nipples had come up hard and dark pink, and she did a thumb over one and then the other and her knees went stupid about it. The water ran down between them and off.

Her waist going in and her hips going out after it. Her arse, and the tops of her thighs, and the whole width of her she has been aware of since she was 15 and spent 9 years apologising for and spent one night in November being told was the entire argument of her.

Her other hand went down and she was slick with more than the shower.

Copper, darker than the hair on her head. Her whole pussy already open with it, and slippery, and when she worked 2 fingers up into her cunt her back came off the tile.

She did not do the slow thing. She is not a patient woman and she had no interest in learning tonight. Two fingers in and the heel of her hand hard on her clit and her hips going against it.

And because there is only one thing in her head and there has been since that Tuesday, she went and got it.

His hands where she put them on a gym mat and left there. The weight of his cock in her fist the first time she ever had one in her hand and did not know what to do with the information. His balls up tight against her when he went, and her ankles locked at the bottom of his back, and a forearm across her stomach pinning her flat to her own bed while she asked him out loud why is that, why is being held down.

Him telling her nothing happens that she does not do.

An inch. Then stop.

She had her teeth in her own bottom lip for about 20 seconds out of habit.

Then she let go of her lip, because this is a corner flat with nobody either side and 40 floors of his empty living room over her head, and she has never in her life had to be quiet.

So she was not quiet.

She said his name twice, which she will be embarrassed about on Sunday. She said don't stop out loud to a tiled wall in an empty flat, which is worse. And she came standing up with one hand flat on the tile and the other still going and the water gone cold at the edges, and her legs went and she let them.

Then she sat down in the tray with her knees up and the water running on her back and her hair stuck flat to her head like the pool.

Right.

Sack the solicitor. Ring the desk in the morning and ask that lad what he did with an envelope, so at least I know what I've done.

And stay out of it.

And stop saying his name in the shower like a woman in a film.