My Clocking In System

If he can look away from this, it’s somebody else. And then I’ll know, and I can stop.

Phone. Key. Nerve.

She went out into the corridor and stood in front of the bronze doors, set apart from the six, with no call button anywhere on them.

That one’s not for us, Mar. That one’s the crown.

Tom, the day he’d handed over the keys, pleased with himself.

She couldn’t call it. There was no way to call it. It came for one person.

So she got the number out. The one she’d had off Priyanka 3 weeks back with a smile and a lie about a parcel, and had never let herself use, because using it meant admitting the whole thing.

She typed it standing there in her heels with her pulse in her throat.

It’s Mara. From 39.

I met your mum this morning. She’s lovely. She told me to get a proper coat.

I’m stood outside your lift in a dress you are not going to believe. I’ve been reasonable for 12 days and I’ve run out.

Send it down, or come and tell me to my face there’s someone else. Either’s fine. But I’m not swimming any more lengths, Danny.

Whoosh.

Somewhere below her a door went. Somebody’s telly came through a wall, a laugh track, then off.

Her phone buzzed 90 seconds later.

lift’s coming down

She let out a breath she’d been holding since the lobby.

Hum.

The doors parted and she stepped in.

No panel. One unmarked circle. She put her thumb on it and the doors shut and it climbed, smooth and silent and fast enough to feel in the soles of her feet.

No floor numbers. Just the building dropping away underneath her, 39 storeys of it, then past that, up to the one flat with nothing above it but weather.

She looked at herself in the mirrored wall and made herself stop, because thinking would undo the nerve and the nerve was all she’d brought.

The doors opened straight into the flat.

No corridor. No front door.

Mara Doyle, who had grown up in large rooms, who had stood in her father’s houses and his friends’ houses and three villas over water, lost her next breath in the mouth of a lift.

The whole of London lay under the glass. Forty floors down, a million lights in the dark, the river running black through the middle strung with bridges. The room enormous and quiet around all of it, a staircase going up to another floor.

And Danny in the middle of it in a jumper and socks, holding his phone.

She watched him see her.

He didn’t look away.

His eyes went down the whole length of her and back up and he didn’t manage one single thing with his face, and Mara stood in the mouth of that lift and watched 12 days of extremely polite behaviour come apart in about a second and a half.

There.

There you are.

She’d had a line ready in the lift. She’d had about four.

"There’s no pool up here," is what came out, "so you’ll have to..."

And then she couldn’t remember the end of it.

Oh, brilliant. Twelve days and a dress from Milan and you’ve forgotten the sentence.

Danny didn’t say anything.

He’d got his phone in his hand still, and he looked at it like he wasn’t sure how it had got there, and put it down on the arm of the sofa without looking where it landed.

"You’ve..." He stopped. Started again. "That’s a dress."

"It’s a dress."

"Yeah. No, I mean." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry. Come in. That’s the wrong word. Come, it’s, there isn’t a hallway, you’re already in."

He’s flustered.

He’s actually flustered.

Twelve days of not one text and he’s stood in his socks going red.

Something in her chest let go about an inch.

"You’re the first person I’ve asked up here," he said.

"Am I."

"Yeah."

"Ever?"

"Ever."

Which wasn’t what she’d come up expecting, and she had absolutely nowhere to put it.

"Right." She stepped out and the doors whispered shut behind her. "Well. Don’t say things like that when I’ve got a whole speech."

That got something out of him. Not a laugh. The start of one, caught.

She went to the glass, because she needed somewhere to look that wasn’t him, and because she knew exactly what the dress did from behind and she took her time getting there.

He didn’t move. She could hear him not moving.

"Your mum’s lovely," she said to the window.

"She is."

"She told me my coat was useless."

"It is useless." A beat. "Sorry. That’s..."

"No, it is. It’s completely useless. I’ve been cold since October."

The river went on being black underneath her. A plane crossed the far side of it with its lights going.

"She’s been through it, my mum," he said, behind her. "That’s all. She’s not..."

He stopped.

Mara waited. He didn’t finish it.

And there’s the door shutting again. Every single time.

"Twelve days, Danny."

Nothing.

"I sat in that lobby this morning and watched your mother come out of a lift I’ve never been in." She kept her eyes on the glass. "And I made myself properly stupid about it for about an hour. I had a whole thing going. Who’s that, who’s the next one, is there a rota."

"Mara."

"I know. I know. I could see what she was to you from 40 feet away, I’m not an idiot, I watched you put your arm round her on the pavement and it was, " she heard her own voice do something and steadied it, "it was very obvious what that was."

She turned round.

"But it was the last one. That’s all. Because everybody gets the real one except me."

He’d gone very still again.

"Naomi goes up to your flat. Priyanka gets a smile every morning. Your mum gets your arm round her in the street and gets to sit in your lobby telling strangers about your coat opinions." The city stood up behind her in the glass. "And I get a bloke who is extremely polite to me at a swimming pool."

"That’s not, " he started.

"And who hasn’t said one word to me in twelve days about what happened on that gym floor."

The room went completely quiet.

Danny’s jaw did something.

"I didn’t know what to say."

"You could have said anything."

"I know."

"You could have said morning." Her voice had gone up and she pulled it back down. "Twelve days, and you have gone up and down in that lift and past that pool and you have said nothing, and do you know what that does? Do you know what a fortnight of that does to somebody?"

"Yes," Danny said.

That stopped her.

"What?"

"I said yes. I do know." He looked at the floor, then made himself look back up. "I’ve been going the long way round the third floor. I’ve been going in the gym at half five so you wouldn’t be in it. I’ve been, "

He stopped again.

"Go on," Mara said.

"I’ve been avoiding you," he said. "On purpose. Every day. And I know exactly what that looks like from where you’re stood and it’s not, " a breath, "it’s not what it looks like."

"Then what is it?"

He didn’t answer.

He’s working out what to give me. Look at him. He’s actually stood there doing the arithmetic on it.

"I’m not embarrassed," Mara said, and it came out harder than she meant. "About the gym. That’s what I came up to say and I’m going to say it. I kept waiting to be embarrassed and it never turned up, and I’ve decided it isn’t going to, so you can stop protecting me from it. It’s very, " her chin went up, the way her mother’s did, "it’s very gallant and it’s driving me mad."

Danny put a hand over his mouth and took it away again.

"Right," he said.

"Right what?"

"Nothing. Just..." He almost laughed. "You’re not what I..."

"Finish a sentence, Danny."

"You’re not what I thought you were," he said. "That’s all. When I met you at that pool. I had you down as, "

"Say it."

"Spoiled," Danny said.

Mara’s eyebrows went up.

"Well," she said. "That’s honest."

"You asked."

"I did ask." She folded her arms and unfolded them again, because folding them across that neckline did something she hadn’t intended. "And now?"

He took his time over it, and she let him, and she watched him take it, and it was the first thing all evening that felt like the truth arriving in the room.

"Now I think you’re the only person in this entire building who says what they actually mean," Danny said. "And I’ve been avoiding you for twelve days because of it."

The lift hummed somewhere behind the wall, going down for somebody else, forty floors below them.

"So here I am," Mara said. "In the crown."

She had to stop and get her breath before the next bit, and she hated that, and she did it anyway.

"Tell me there’s somebody else, and I’ll get in that lift, and I’ll never mention one word of it again. I’ll be perfectly pleasant to you in the lobby for the next 40 years, I’m extremely good at that, I’ve had training."

Her hands had gone cold.

"Or stop looking at me from all the way over there and come here."

Danny took one step.

Then stopped.

And Mara had been reading men since she was fifteen, and she had never in her life watched anybody fight themselves that hard.

"Mara," he said.

It was in his voice before he’d got to the second word.

Ah.

Of course.

Of course there is.

Her chin came up on its own, which was her mother’s, which she’d hated her whole life and had never once been able to stop.

"Right," she said. "Then say it properly. I’ve come a very long way up for it."