My Clocking In System

Chapter 21: Coffee With Jodie II

"What do you do now, then?"

There it was.

He’d known it was coming since she’d walked through the door of the shop with a basket on her hip and saved his life with a pencil in her hair.

He’d had a day to build the answer for civilians who weren’t her and zero days to build the answer for her, and the difference between the two answers was the whole of his new life.

He looked at her. He set down his cup.

"I came into money," he said.

"Sudden. Strange. Bit of luck, the kind you don’t ask too many questions about. It’s mine, it’s clean, no one’s coming for me, no one’s coming for anyone near me. That’s the whole of what I can tell you. I know that’s..." he tipped his hand.

"I know."

I want to put the phone on the table and show her the number. I want to tell her about the doors. The lobby. I can’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

She watched him say it. She did not interrupt.

When he stopped her eyes had gone sharper. The dry watchful Jodie look he remembered from school, the one that meant she had heard everything he’d said and also everything he hadn’t.

She did not push.

"Right," she said. She held the word in her mouth a second, like she was testing the weight of it. "Clean."

"Clean."

"And nobody’s coming."

"Nobody."

She did not say you’d tell me if they were the way the conversation seemed to want her to. She put the question down and picked up a different one.

"This is the worst lie you’ve ever told me, you know that."

"I know."

"You always were a shit liar."

"Yeah."

"Eyes give it away."

He looked away. Out the window. Then back. She had not moved, watching him do it.

"I know," he said again, quieter.

She held his eye a second longer than she had to. The sharp catching the too-smooth edge of his answer, then the choice not to push, all in the same look. She dropped her eyes to her cup and tapped the saucer. Once. Then again, slow.

"I’m going to file all that for later, Danny Flynn, because today’s been good and I don’t want to ruin it being clever. But I’m filing it. You should know that."

"I know that too."

"Good."

That was the end of it.

Mostly they didn’t talk about the money.

They talked about everything else. The estate. Who’d stayed. Who’d got out. Who’d died. Who’d had kids. Mr Okonkwo the maths teacher, retired now, apparently growing prize marrows in Catford. The chicken shop that was still going.

Half the people she’s listing I’ve avoided going past for ten years.

It was strange to hear the names out loud. Easier in her mouth than in his head.

She told him about her job. The assistant-manager thing. Then, eyes down, then up, daring him to laugh, the thing under the thing.

"I make stuff. At night. After work."

"Stuff."

"Clothes. I’ve, I’ve got a name for it. A label, if you’re being grand. I’m not being grand. I’m doing it on my mum’s old machine in my front room. I’ve sold three pieces. Three. To my cousin and her two mates, and I think one of them only took it to be nice."

"What’s it called?"

She bit the inside of her cheek.

"Don’t laugh."

"I’m not going to laugh."

"It’s called Carter. Because I’m called Carter, and I couldn’t think of anything cleverer, and I thought if I waited for clever I’d never put a single thing on a hanger."

"Carter’s a good name."

"It’s my name."

"Still."

She held his eye for a second, looking for the laugh that wasn’t going to come, then dropped her eyes back to the cup.

"Anyway. That’s the thing. I make things at night and someone might wear them one day or they might not, and that’s the thing I haven’t told anyone except my mum and now you, so."

"So."

"So don’t make me regret it."

"I won’t."

He asked questions. Real ones. Watched her light up. Watched the colour come up in her cheeks that had nothing to do with the coffee.

The afternoon went gold and then grey in the window. The coffees went cold and got replaced.

At some point, she was telling a story about her nan at a funeral.

"At Auntie Lou’s, right, she leans across the casket while the vicar’s halfway through the eulogy and goes, loud, ’she’d have hated him’."

And then she was off. Crying-laughing. Gripping his wrist across the table to stay upright, the laugh going through her in waves, the kind you didn’t fake. Her hand stayed there after the laughing stopped. Warm over his pulse. Her thumb moving against the inside of his wrist like she didn’t know she was doing it.

They both looked at it.

Then at each other.

The bubble pulled tight.

She let go and reached for her cup, flustered, covering it with a joke.

"It’s gone six," she said eventually, looking at her phone. "How is it gone six?"

"Time flies when you’re being interrogated."

"Oh, that wasn’t the interrogation. That was the warm-up."

She stood. Stretched. Arms up.

Her shirt rode up with the stretch and Danny caught the bare strip of skin above her jeans. The flat of her stomach. The dip of her navel. The curve of her hips inside the denim.

I haven’t let myself look at her properly in eleven years.

He looked.

She turned to grab her coat off the back of the chair and he saw the shape of her from behind for the first time. Round. Tight in the jeans. The seam of the denim at the back going down into the line of her thigh.

His cock stirred under the table and he was glad he was still sitting down.

The bill came. He had it before she’d registered the waitress was at the table.

"Danny..."

"I’ve got it."

"Danny. It’s two coffees and a refill, give over, I’ve got cash, "

"I’ve got it."

She watched him pay it.

The same way she’d watched him pay for the coat. He saw her clock the contactless going through with no question, the tip he left, the way the waitress’s eyebrow flicked, and she said nothing, because she was Jodie and she noticed everything and pried at nothing.

She didn’t say thanks either. He liked that. She was not a woman who thanked a man for two coffees because he had more money than she did.

She nodded once.

"Walk me back?" she said. "It’s not far. Ten minutes up toward the park."

"I came on the Vespa."

"I know you came on the Vespa." She rolled her eyes. "I saw it from the till the morning you bought the coat. I have thoughts about the Vespa, Danny Flynn."

"Don’t."

"I’m going to."

"I know you are."

"A scooter. That scooter. In that coat."

"Save it for the ride."

"I will absolutely not save it for the ride. I’m going to be saying it the whole way."

He held her gaze across the table, the half-smile of his own starting at the corner of his mouth that he had not used in years.

"Get your coat."

She got her coat.

She did not put it on. She held it over one arm.

"Ride me back, then, mystery man." Her voice had dropped half a note. "Show me what you ride."

Outside she put the helmet on. Fumbled the strap.

He reached over and did it up for her without thinking. His knuckles against the soft underside of her jaw.

They both went still.

Close. His fingers at her throat.

Her eyes on his. He could smell the steam-iron and cotton again, stronger out here in the cold. Her breath had gone shallow. The strap clicked. His hand stayed there. His thumb brushed her jawline. He could lean down right now.

He almost did.

Then she cleared it with a joke, the way she cleared everything.

"If you crash this and ruin my one good coat, I’m haunting you."

"I won’t crash."

She swung on behind him and slid her arms around his middle and pressed against his back.

Danny felt all of it.

Her tits against him.

Her nipples hard through the cotton of her shirt, pressing into the wool of his coat through to his back.

Her thighs either side of his. Her fingers lacing together low on his stomach, just above his belt. She wasn’t holding on like a passenger.

She was holding on like she’d wanted an excuse to put her hands on him all afternoon and the scooter had finally given her one.