My Clocking In System

He rang a cab from the front room while she got her bag, and then stood out on the walkway in the cold and watched his mother lock her own front door and check it twice, rattle, rattle.

25 minutes and she walks out of a lift and sees it.

And there’s no version of crypto that covers what she’s about to see.

The cab was a Prius and the driver was about 50 with prayer beads on the mirror and Talksport down low, some bloke going on about a penalty.

"Where we going, love?"

"Riverwalk. The Sterling." Danny had a twenty through the window before his mum could get her purse out. "She’s my mum. I’m following on the scooter, so don’t lose me."

"The Sterling." The driver’s eyes came up in the mirror. Went to the fleece. Came back. "Right you are."

"Oh, he doesn’t need to follow." His mum was getting in and already apologising to a stranger. "I’m sorry, love, he fusses."

"Ah, he’s all right." Clunk went her door. "My mum’s the same. Won’t be told nothing."

Danny got the scooter round and sat on the cab’s tail the whole way, over the bridge with the water black on both sides and her taillights ahead of him through Bermondsey and the wet.

She got out on the pavement outside the Sterling and leaned back to look up.

40 floors of black glass, the lights on, the name over the door in brushed steel.

"Danny." She hadn’t moved. "Where are we."

"This is where I live."

"You live here?"

"Come in, it’s freezing."

Thomas had the door before they reached it, took one look at a shaken woman in a supermarket fleece and Mr Flynn from 40 with his jaw set, and earned every penny anybody had ever paid him.

"Evening, Mr Flynn. And this’ll be your mum." Like it was the most ordinary sentence of his week. "Ah, I can see it an’ all. Mind that step, it’s slippy, they’ve not been out with the salt."

"Oh," said his mum, thrown completely. "Thank you, love."

50 years of manners doesn’t leave you just because the floor’s gone.

The warm air off the curtain hit them both going in, and then the marble, and the low lights, and the flowers on the desk that got changed twice a week.

"Evening, Mr Flynn." Priyanka, and then straight past him: "Evening. Have you come far? It’s horrible out there."

"Battersea," his mum said. "It’s not far."

"Cold, though." Priyanka came round the desk with a little dish. "Here, have a chocolate. They send them and nobody ever eats them."

"Ooh." His mum took one. "Thank you. Thank you, love."

In a fortnight nobody in this building’s offered me one of those.

Through the archway two residents sat in the lounge with something amber in heavy glasses. One of them glanced over at the fleece, once, and went back to whatever he was saying.

His mum saw it land.

"Danny," very quietly. "I’m in my work fleece."

"You’re fine."

"These aren’t our sort of people, love."

"They’re not my sort of people either."

He got her in the lift before she could turn for the door.

She watched him not press a button. Watched him hold a fob to a panel instead. Chime, and the doors shut, and it started climbing, and she watched the number go up, 20, 25, 30, and her hand found his sleeve and stayed there.

"How high does this go?"

"Top."

The doors opened straight into the flat.

That was the bit that got people. No corridor, no front door. The box opens and there it all is: the double height, the wall of glass 40 floors up, the whole of London black and glittering underneath, the river running through it with the bridges strung orange, the Shard lit up close enough to touch.

His mum took one step out and stopped.

She stood there a long time with her handbag held in both hands in front of her.

"Danny." Very small. "Whose is this."

"Mine."

"This is yours."

"Yeah."

She turned round slowly. The sofas. The marble. The stairs going up to another whole floor.

He watched her do the sum. Watched it not come out.

"Crypto," she said.

Not a question. She was handing it to him.

His mother, stood in the middle of £8,400,000 she could not begin to hold in her head, reaching for the story he’d given her because it was a door she could get through and the truth was a wall.

"Crypto," Danny said. "It went bigger than I told you. I didn’t know how to say it. How do you say it? It doesn’t sound real."

He came and stood next to her at the glass.

"So I didn’t say it. I’ve been living here and coming to yours and I couldn’t work out how to tell you."

He watched her find the seams in it. Watched her get right to the edge of the next question.

And put it down.

"Well," she said, and her voice cracked, and she took his hand. "It’s very high up."

"It is."

"I don’t know how you sleep. I’d be worried about the wind."

"You get used to it."

"Do you, though." Still looking out. Crying, but different ones. "My boy. From that flat with the meter in the cupboard to this."

"Mum."

"He never made anything." Fierce, sudden, and she meant the beach. "In 50-odd years your father never made one single thing. He only ever took it. And you’re 28 and you paid my debt and you bought me a café and you came and got me tonight over a bit of card."

She turned and looked at him.

"So he can keep his beach. He can keep his Sharon and his jetty. I’ve got a son who came and got me. He’s got a postcard."

Danny couldn’t say anything at all.

Then she sniffed, straightened up, and went somewhere else entirely.

"Right. Have you got anything in? I’ve not eaten. And I’m not being funny, love, but that kitchen’s never seen a fish finger in its life."

"It hasn’t."

"No. It’s too clean. You can tell."

Coat off, at home in it inside 4 minutes flat, handbag down on the marble next to the white plastic kettle.

Then she stopped.

"Oh, that’s your kettle. From the Argos."

"Yeah."

"You bought that. In among all this." She looked at it, small and cheap and white on £10,000 of stone. "Course you did."

And she smiled properly, the first one since the postcard, and filled it.

Click. The rumble starting up.

"Right, tell me you’ve got proper tea in here and not..." Cupboards going, tap, tap, tap, doors shutting one after another. "What is all this? Is this even food? Oh, for goodness’ sake, Danny. I’m doing you a shop tomorrow. I don’t care how high up you are."

She found the tea in the third cupboard, made two, told him off about the milk, and took hers over to the glass and stood there a long while without saying anything.

He put her in the first spare room. Two lamps, two bedside tables, made up four days ago by somebody for guests who didn’t exist.

She stood in the doorway of it.

"Danny, this is bigger than my whole flat."

"I know."

"And there’s another two of these?"

"Yeah."

"Well. That’s just silly," his mum said, and went in and shut the door.

The bed went, one long creak. Then nothing.

Danny stood in a hallway in a flat with three empty rooms in it that now had two.

Her handbag was on the island where she’d left it.

He stood over it a while with his hands in his pockets.

Then he took the postcard out.

He didn’t put the light on. He stood at the glass with the city going underneath him and turned it over and looked at the man on the jetty. The sunglasses pushed up. The glass in his hand. The grin.

Look after your mother, son.

She’s asleep in one of my spare rooms. There’s two more.

You have got no idea what I’ve got now.

He turned it back to the beach.

GREETINGS FROM NOOSA.

He got his phone out and held it a while without unlocking it.

Then he unlocked it, and opened the maps, and typed 5 letters in with his thumb before he stopped.

He stood there with the search box open and the cursor going, and the whole of London lit up in front of him, and behind him down the hall his mother turned over, creak, in a bed that had never been slept in.