My Clocking In System

Twenty minutes before she came up, and he spent eleven of them cleaning a flat that was already clean.

Marble island nobody had ever eaten off. Two cushions on a sofa he’d sat on maybe four times.

He took his coat off the hook by the door and hung it in a cupboard, and then stood there with his hand on the cupboard door thinking, what am I doing that for? What’s she going to do, price it?

Would she, though? Sixteen years reading what men turn up in. Course she would.

He left it in the cupboard.

Then he was stood in the middle of his own front room holding a cloth like a divvy.

There’s a housekeeper comes with this place. Never rung her once. Why haven’t I rung her once?

He put the cloth away.

What does she actually want? Fortnight I’ve been here and she’s never needed to come up. So why now? Is it the money? Can they see the money?

Can they see the money?

At two minutes past ten the lift chimed and his stomach did something stupid.

Charcoal. Wool cut close and cut properly, the way a thing hangs when it’s been made for one woman and nobody else. Nothing shiny on her anywhere. Shoes worth about a fortnight of what he used to clear, not making a thing of it. Hair up, and not casually. A thin gold chain in the notch of her throat.

Danny clocked all of it the way he’d clock a well-kept van.

He’d been in bed with Jodie Carter at half six and could still smell her on his own collar, and some daft corner of him was pleased about that even now, even here.

The folder under Naomi’s arm was already tabbed. Little coloured markers along the edge of it.

She’s done that this morning. Before eight, probably. Who tabs a folder for a five-minute conversation?

Somebody who’s not planning on a five-minute conversation, that’s who.

Eighteen years old on that desk telling people the lift was on the left, and now the whole building. Forty-one flats. The rota. The night porter. Priyanka trained to smile and say nothing in exactly the right proportion.

Two years he’d stood on doorsteps being sized up by people with clipboards, and not one of them had been any good at it.

She’s good at it. So what do I do? Talk more or talk less?

Less. Definitely less. When have you ever improved anything by talking?

"Mr Flynn." Dry handshake. "Thank you. I know it’s irregular."

"Come in."

Three steps and she stopped. Didn’t look round the flat.

Anyone else would look round the flat.

"Two things, and I’ll be quick. The first is boring and I apologise for it. The insurers have changed underwriters and they’re re-papering every leaseholder. Photo ID, proof of address, signature that matches the lease."

"Right."

"Forty-one flats. I’ve had thirty-eight back." A gap of exactly the right size. "You’re one of three."

"Who’s the other two?"

"One’s in Singapore until March. One is ninety-one." Nothing at all on her face. "Which makes you the interesting one."

Face still. Face still.

"I’ll sort it."

"Wonderful. End of next week." A small mark on something. "It’s the insurers, it isn’t me. I’d rather send them a complete file than a covering letter."

"Understood."

"Good."

She closed the folder and didn’t move.

Here it comes. That was the entry fee.

"Second thing."

"Go on."

"Somebody in this building is asking about you."

Forty floors down, London carried on with its morning.

"Asking what."

"Priyanka’s been asked more than once whether you’ve been down to the pool, which is the sort of thing people ask. And then whether we hold a forwarding address for flat forty, which isn’t." She let that sit. "On Friday somebody rang the managing agents direct. Not the desk. The agents. Asked who’d handled the sale of the top floor."

"Who?"

"I know who."

"Are you telling me?"

"No." Pleasant. Immovable. "I don’t discuss one resident with another. If I did it for you this morning you’d be right to assume I’d do it about you this afternoon."

He looked at her.

"Fair enough."

"Thank you." Something in her shoulders came down an eighth of an inch. "But you should know it’s happening. What you do about it is your business."

"Then why tell me at all?"

She took her time.

"Sixteen years I’ve watched people move into buildings like this. The ones who are what they say they are get bored of us and buy somewhere bigger." A beat.

"The other sort find out they’re being looked into about six weeks too late to do anything sensible. Then they leave in a way that’s bad for everybody. Including me."

"That’s not an answer."

"No. It isn’t."

A card went on the marble island, squared to the edge.

"My mobile. Not the desk. If your situation gets complicated I’d sooner hear it from you than from somebody’s solicitor."

The smallest smile. "Which is self-interest, before you thank me. A managing agent who gets surprised is a managing agent looking for work."

She went to the lift.

"Naomi."

She turned.

"You looked me up."

A second and a half of nothing whatsoever.

"Have a good morning, Mr Flynn."

The doors took her down.

Went looking. Came up anyway.

So she found nothing.

And the nothing’s what’s keeping her up.

He put her card in his wallet behind the one from the shopfitters.

Thirty-nine floors below him Mara Doyle sat on a bench in the lobby with wet hair and a bag on her shoulder, waiting on a courier with a dress she needed for Thursday.

The bronze doors on the far wall opened.

Those doors.

One lift, set apart from the bank of six. No call button on the outside. Her brother had explained it the day he handed over the keys to thirty-nine, pleased with himself about it. That one’s not for us, Mar. That one’s the crown.

Naomi Adeyemi came out of it.

Oh.

Mara’s chlorine headache picked exactly then to arrive, right behind the left eye, the way it always did if she’d done more than twenty and skipped breakfast.

She’s come down from his.

Naomi’s eyes came up and found her across forty feet of marble.

Two seconds. Neither of them looked away, and Mara felt her own chin go up half an inch, which she’d got off her mother and hated.

The quarter-inch nod. Absolutely polite.

"Miss Doyle."

"Naomi."

Then she was behind the desk saying something to Priyanka about a delivery bay, and Mara was sat on a bench with wet hair going cold down her back and a swimming costume balled up in a Waitrose bag.

She’s got keys to everything, Mara. That’s literally her job. It’s a leak. It’s a smoke alarm.

Nobody’s smoke alarm goes off at half ten on a Monday.

Loads of people’s smoke alarms go off at half ten on a Monday.

She realised she was staring and made herself look at her own knees.

Eleven weeks I’ve been in this building.

That lift had never once opened for anyone else except Danny.

Not for a delivery, not for a cleaner, not for anybody, and she’d been sat in this lobby often enough lately to have noticed, which was its own separate and quite upsetting thing to know about herself.

Friday.

Friday morning he had his hands on me on a gym mat and I came apart under them like something out of a film, and he didn’t say one word about it, and he hasn’t said one word about it since.

Three days. Saturday, Sunday, this morning. Down there every single one of them in a costume I bought for him, and he hasn’t been near the place.

Does he think I’m mortified? Am I meant to be mortified?

I’m not mortified.

I might be a bit mortified.

Her thumb had got hold of the strap of her bag and was worrying a loose bit of stitching.

And now she goes up. Half ten on a Monday.

And comes down forty minutes later.

Forty. I’d have heard the lift go the first time if I’d been sat here, I wasn’t sat here, I was in the pool, so I don’t actually know she was up there forty minutes, I know she was up there at least as long as it took me to get out and dry my hair badly and come down and order a coffee I haven’t drunk...

Stop.

She looked at the back of Naomi’s head. The knot of hair. The coat.

That coat’s Joseph. That’s four figures, that. On a managing agent’s money.

And then, immediately, in her mother’s voice, so clearly that she flinched:

Well, darling, what else would a woman like that be up there for?

"God," Mara said out loud, to nobody. A man reading the FT two benches down glanced over.

You are twenty-four years old and you have met the man three times and you sound like an aunt.

She got her phone out mostly to have somewhere to put her eyes.

THE FORTY PROBLEM. Friday’s last line, solicitor, Clapham Rd, above dry cleaner’s.

She typed: Building manager. Down from 40 in the private lift, Mon 10.25. Knows my name.

Then she sat looking at it.

She said my name.

She’d said it like a woman handing something back across a counter. And she’d known which one of the forty flats Mara was, and hadn’t had to think about it, and there was no version of that where somebody hadn’t sat her down and told her.

So he knows I’ve been asking.

He’s known for..

How long’s he known?

Her face went hot, actually hot, in a marble lobby with a man reading the FT eight feet away, and she typed knows I’ve been ask and then deleted the whole line back to the full stop, because seeing it in writing was worse than thinking it.

She put the phone in her bag.

Right. Fine. Good. Whatever.

She went and got the lift to thirty-nine and pressed the button four times, which never made it come faster, and stood watching the numbers with her arms folded and her wet hair dripping down the back of her linen shirt.

He could have just said hello.

Three days, and a hello would have done it.

A courier came eleven minutes later and had to leave the dress at the desk.