My Clocking In System

Brrp. Brrp.

She picked up on the first ring.

She never picked up on the first ring.

"Mum. What’s wrong?"

"Nothing’s wrong." Bright and thin and stretched over something. "I didn’t want to bother you, you’re busy with your..."

"You rang 5 times."

"Did I? I didn’t think the first ones went through." A breath. "It’s daft. I don’t know why I even..."

She stopped.

"Something’s come in the post."

Clack. The sealant gun went down on the pine, and he’d not decided to put it down.

"What’s come in the post."

"It’s from your father."

Out the front window a bus pulled up and knelt with a hiss and let three people off, and not one of them looked at the shop.

"I’m coming over."

"You don’t have to come over, it’s a postcard, it’s not..."

"Put the kettle on. 20 minutes."

"It’s already on," she said.

Brmm.

He nearly had it on the bridge, 40 in a 30 with his jaw locked, and made himself back off halfway across, because he’d learned that the night of the debt letter.

The estate was doing what it did at half 6. Two lads on the wall by the bins with a speaker going, doof doof doof, one of them going "nah, nah, nah, listen, listen" over the top of it. A telly loud through a ground-floor window with the curtains open and nobody in the room. Somebody’s dinner coming down the stairwell, onions and something catching.

Clang went the stairwell door behind him.

Denise from upstairs was coming down with a bin bag.

"All right, Danny love." She stopped on the half-landing. "Here. Your mum all right? Only she come past me at dinnertime and never said nothing, and she always says something."

"She’s all right, Denise."

"Mm." She didn’t move. "She never says nothing when she’s not all right, though, does she."

"I’m going up now."

"Good lad." She shifted the bag from one hand to the other. "Oi. Tell her I’ll do her a shepherd’s pie Thursday. She likes them. Tell her I said."

His mum had the door open before he knocked. Chain off, rattle, and there she was in the work fleece with her hair still up from the morning, and she’d cried and done her face over it and it hadn’t taken.

"You didn’t have to come."

"Where is it."

"On the table."

Already going back into the kitchen. Already talking, filling the air so there’d be no room in it.

"I nearly binned it. I don’t know why I didn’t."

The kitchen was the kitchen. Robin mug. Three photos on the shelf. The brown chair by the window nobody had sat in for 11 years.

The postcard was face up next to the salt and pepper. Exactly where the debt letter had been.

Danny picked it up.

A beach. The glossy kind off a spinning rack, sand too white, sea too blue, a headland with houses on it. Yellow letters across the top: GREETINGS FROM NOOSA.

Snap went the card, turning over, stiff between his fingers.

Australian stamp with a bright little bird on it. Postmark smudged but he got QLD off it. Four lines in the slanted capitals that were on the back of his school photos. DANNY AGE 8.

Thought of you both. Doing well out here, weather’s a dream, you’d not believe it. Sharon says hello. No hard feelings eh. Look after your mother, son. Dad

Taped in the corner, a real photo, printed and gone curled at one edge. Tanned man in his 60s, linen shirt open at the neck, sunglasses pushed up on grey hair. Arm round a blonde in a sundress. Jetty behind them. Glass of something in his free hand.

Both grinning.

His thumb went through the tape without him deciding anything. He put it back down flat.

"He wants me to look after my mother."

"Don’t read it out." Her back to him, doing something to the kettle that didn’t want doing. "I’ve read it enough."

"He left you £40,000 in the hole and he’s on a beach telling me to look after you."

"Danny."

"Sharon says hello."

"I know."

"11 years." He turned it over again like the sea might explain it. "Why now?"

She turned round.

Her face had gone past crying into something older. She’d been sat at that table since first post working it out.

"Because somebody’s told him."

"Told him what."

"That you’ve come into money."

Flat. Like reading a meter.

"11 years, not a peep. Then the same few weeks you clear his debt and you’re on a new scooter and buying cafés, and that turns up. Chummy as anything." Her mouth did something. "Somebody on this estate’s got a cousin out there. Or it’s gone on the Facebook. I don’t know how it’s reached him. But it’s reached him."

"So what’s the postcard for."

"It’s him putting his hand out."

She sat down. Not the brown chair. Never the brown chair.

"He’d never ask straight, he’s too clever, he always was. So he sends a beach. Thought of you both. Nice and warm. Reminds you he’s out there. Reminds you he’s your dad." Her hands went flat on the table either side of the mug. "And then in 6 months there’s another one, and that one’s got a bit of trouble in it. A bit of bad luck. Something Sharon needs."

"And by then."

"By then you’ve got used to him being back in the world. And he’s an old man on a beach. And he’s been thinking of you both."

Upstairs somebody ran a tap and the pipe in the wall went knock, knock, which it had done his entire childhood.

She’d read the whole thing off 4 lines and a photograph, sat in a fleece at a Formica table, and every word was right.

"He reckons we need him."

"He reckons you need him. Boy with money and no dad." She held his eye. "He’s wrong about that."

"Yeah."

He was still holding it, though.

Noosa. A first name. A jetty with a rail on it and a boat tied up behind.

11 years of a hole in the room shaped like a chair, and the man had gone and written his own address on the back of a beach.

He put it face down.

She was crying again and furious about it, wiping at it with the flat of her hand like she was cleaning a surface.

"I’m sorry. It’s a bit of card. I don’t feel anything for him, Danny, I haven’t in years, I swear to you, so I don’t know why I’m..."

"It’s not about feeling something for him."

She looked up.

"It’s that he gets to be happy."

He came round the table.

"That’s what’s done it. You’ve done 11 years on your knees paying for what he took. In the dark. On the buses. And he’s on a beach, brown as a nut, with a Sharon and a glass of wine." He crouched down by her chair. "And it’s not fair. And there’s nobody to say it to."

Both hands over her face.

"And it’s not even that you want him back," Danny said. "It’s that you want the 11 years back. And you can’t have them. And he’s on a beach."

She went properly then, and he got his arms round her, and she took hold of his forearm with both hands and gripped hard enough to leave something.

Knock, knock, went the pipe.

The brown chair sat 2 feet away with the streetlight on it.

He was not leaving her in this room tonight with that thing on the table.

"Get your coat."

She lifted her head. "What?"

"You’re not stopping here. Come to mine."

"Oh, don’t be daft, I’m fine, I’ve got my programmes."

"One night. I’ll run you back in the morning, you’ve not got Tower Court till Thursday." His voice went and he let it. "Please, Mum."

She looked at him a long time.

Then something that had been managing on its own since 2014 put itself down for the evening.

"I’ll want my tablets."