My Clocking In System

At the roundabout there were 4 of them.

Riders stacked up on the pavement side with their square bags. 2 Deliveroo, 1 Uber, 1 with no branding at all. Bikes leant on the railing. One had his phone clamped to the bars and was staring at it with his thumb up, waiting.

Danny knew that thumb.

Out since 3. Four drops, maybe 5. He’s watching it because if it doesn’t go in 10 minutes he’s got to move up to Tower Bridge and burn 20 getting there.

The lad on the end had a bin bag cut open and taped over the top of his bag.

It had rained at 2. It’d rain again by 6. He knew it would.

Sainsbury’s carrier. 8 months I did that.

Lights went. Danny went with them, and in the mirror the 4 of them stayed on the pavement, and the one with the phone pushed off into the traffic still looking at it.

Two weeks.

He didn’t finish it. There wasn’t a version of that thought that came out sounding like anything except a man congratulating himself at a set of lights.

The bridge was worse, the way it always was, wind off the water going up his sleeves and his eyes running, and the Sterling standing up out of the dark on the far side with the top 4 floors lit and everything under them black.

The revolving door sighed him in and the warm-air curtain hit him full in the face.

Terrazzo floor with wet mats down for November, and the room doing that thing big stone rooms do where every noise arrives slightly late and slightly posh. Heels crossing it. The water wall going, which he’d never once heard until he stopped and listened for it. And a bought smell over all of it, some diffuser and lilies in a vase the size of a wheelie bin, and Danny walking into it carrying petrol and wet jacket and cold.

Thomas had the door before he’d got the stand down.

"Evening, Mr Flynn."

"Evening. All right?"

"Very good, sir." He took the helmet out of Danny’s hand.

The 2 gym-kit women were by the water wall with their green drinks. He got about 6 words of it going past, the consonants gone in all that stone. ...no, but she would, that’s the... absolutely would.

Priyanka lifted a hand off the desk. "Mr Flynn. There’s a parcel, I’ve put it in your lift."

"Cheers."

Mr Pemberton was coming out of the lifts in his coat and cap with a folded paper under his arm, and stopped.

He had never once stopped.

"Mr Flynn."

"Mr Pemberton."

"You’ve not been swimming."

"Been busy."

"Mm." The old man looked at him from under the cap. "Miss Doyle asked after you. Twice." He let that sit. "I said I hadn’t seen you."

Then he carried on to the door.

Danny stood on the wet mat with his ears going red in the warm.

He’s covering for me.

Ninety-odd years old and he’s covering for me, and he wants me to know he’s doing it.

Why does he reckon I need it?

Ding.

40 floors, and the doors opened on the quiet.

He’d stopped hearing it as nothing, because it wasn’t nothing.

Triple glazing at that height takes the street out entirely and leaves you the building instead: ventilation whispering above the ceiling, the fridge compressor kicking in and running, a downlight ticking as it cooled, and the whole structure moving very slightly in the wind off the river with a sound like being on a boat.

He put the parcel on the island unopened, kept his coat on, and went and stood at the glass.

Orange all the way out. Blackfriars strung across the black gap of the water. 2 planes stacked over the east waiting their turn with their lights going. The Shard with its top in cloud.

His hands hurt coming back to life.

He got the phone out with them still half-useless and found a Vietnamese place 11 minutes away, and ordered bun cha and summer rolls and an extra rice because he hadn’t eaten since half 7.

£31.40.

The app asked about a tip. He put it to £15 and looked at it.

Then he thought about a bin bag taped over a bag at a roundabout and typed £100 into the box instead, and pressed it before he could have the argument with himself.

Order confirmed.

You’ll never see him. Can’t hand it over, can’t say anything, he can’t say anything back. It’ll just come up in his app at midnight while he’s counting what he’s done and he’ll think it’s a glitch.

Good. Nobody has to do a face.

20 minutes later the phone went.

Reception: Your delivery has arrived, Mr Flynn. I’m afraid riders can’t come up past the barrier, it’s the insurance. Anwar’s bringing it to you now.

Course he can’t come up.

Two years of that. 22 floors of somebody else’s building and a desk and a bloke saying leave it there, mate.

And now I’m the flat at the top, and there’s a barrier, and I’m the reason for it.

3 soft knocks and it was Anwar off the desk in the waistcoat, holding a knotted blue carrier bag out with both hands like it might break.

"Mr Flynn."

"Cheers, Anwar. Sorry about the stairs."

"Is a lift, sir." Absolutely deadpan. "Enjoy."

Ding.

Danny stood in his own hallway with a warm bag in his fist and the flat ticking round him.

He ate it standing at the island out of the containers. The broth had gone cloudy on the ride and was still hot enough to steam when the lid came off, and the herbs had come in their own bag so they hadn’t sweated flat, and he tipped them in.

First mouthful and the whole back of his mouth lit up. Fish sauce and sugar and lime, vinegar off the pickled carrot cutting through it, and the char on the pork underneath all of it where it had been over a proper flame.

It was so much louder than anything he’d eaten in a fortnight that he stopped chewing.

That’s what food’s meant to do.

Nobody’s getting this in my place. Bacon roll and a mug of tea at 6 in the morning, and that’s what they want, and that’s fine.

But something on that board’s got to do this. One thing. Or what’s the point.

He got the notebook out one-handed and wrote SAUCE. everything needs a sauce that does something, looked at it, decided it was probably the stupidest thing he’d written all week, and left it in.

He was three quarters through when the phone went.

Buzz.