My Clocking In System

Chapter 34: Mum

VOLUME TWO

The letter had been on the kitchen table since one.

It was face up, next to the salt and the pepper, and it had a nought on it. She had read it, by twenty past four, forty-one times.

She was still in her work fleece. The maroon one. The company logo. Her hair was still in the clip from her shift.

The kettle had boiled and gone cold twice. The blind on the small window was down the way it was always down, because the balcony opposite looked straight in and she had lived twenty years opposite people who looked straight in.

She had read it once at the door. Once at the table, with her coat still on. Then again with the coat off. Then holding it up to the ceiling light like an old fiver, because that was the last thing she’d been given that turned out to be worth nothing. Then with her reading glasses. Then without.

Balance outstanding: £0.00.

No further payment is required.

She had rung the number on the letter. A woman had said it was right. She had hung up on the woman, because that was how they got you.

Then she had gone through the drawer under the phone until she found last year’s demand, with the old number on it, the one she knew was the real one. A man had said the same thing.

Then she had sat down.

For about an hour she had done nothing at all.

She had watched the clock over the cooker, and the second hand had gone round the face fifty-nine times, and she had felt her heart the whole way through it. Not scared. Not glad. Just here, in this kitchen, waiting for the other shoe.

Because nobody pays forty thousand pounds for you.

She knew that the way she knew her own name.

At twenty past four she picked up the phone and rang her son.

Across the river, forty floors up, Danny was at the glass.

He’d been there most of the afternoon.

Cheap mug in his hand. Cheap tea in the mug.

The city was going orange over the river. He wasn’t thinking about anything much. He was doing what he’d been doing for four days, which was working out the arithmetic of the post. Second class. Battersea. The way it used to go missing for a week and turn up bent.

He’d been standing in this spot when he’d made the call. Sat on the floor. Phone hot against his ear. A stranger in Leeds telling him a woman with a robin mug was free.

He’d chosen the letter. Not the phone call. Cold, not warm. He’d told himself that was the kinder one.

Four days later he wasn’t sure any more.

The phone went.

MUM.

He knew before he touched it.

Buzz. Buzz.

He let it go twice. In the space of those two rings he had time to be more frightened than he had been at Halloran’s door.

"Mum."

"Danny." Her voice came out wrong. Small. Quick. Too high. The voice she’d used the night the electric went off for good when he was fourteen. "Danny, love, are you at work? Is this a bad time? It’s a bad time."

"It’s not a bad time."

"Only I’ve had a letter." A breath. Paper going through the phone. Crackle. Close to the mouthpiece. Like she was holding it up as if he could see it. "I’ve had a letter, and I don’t. Danny, I don’t understand it."

"All right."

"It says settled." Her voice went up on the word. "It says settled in full. It’s got the account number on it and everything, the old one, the one from your dad’s, and it says the balance is nothing. Zero. It’s got a nought on it, Danny."

"Mum."

"I rang them." She wasn’t listening. Going too fast, the way she did.

"I rang them and they said it’s right. Then I thought no, that’s how they do it, isn’t it, they get you on the phone and they take your details and next thing. So I hung up on the woman. And then I rang back on the number off the old letter, not the new one, the old one, because that one I know is right, and a man said the same thing."

Ding. Faintly, in the background. Her kettle. She’d be standing in the kitchen with the letter flat on the counter and the light on because she never opened the blind on that window.

"Danny." And there it was, under all of it, the actual thing. "Danny, who’s paid it?"

He closed his eyes.

"Because nobody pays forty thousand pounds for you." Her voice cracked on it. She pushed straight through, hard, the way she’d taught herself.

"Nobody does that. That’s not, love, that doesn’t happen, so either it’s a mistake and they’ll want it back, and they’ll want it back off me, or somebody’s paid it and they’ll be wanting something, and I need to know which it is before it comes to the door."

Before it comes to the door.

"I’m coming over," Danny said.

"You’re at work."

"I’m coming over. Put the kettle on."

"It’s on," she said, and then, in a very different voice, thin and old, "Danny, is it your father?"

The city sat there under the glass. Gold and enormous and paid for.

"No," he said. "It’s not him. Put the kettle on. Twenty-five minutes."

The Vespa went south.

He rode fast. Two years of couriering knew how to cut between queues in going-home traffic, and Danny let the muscle memory take over and rode the way he used to ride when a package was worth the day’s wage.

Brmm.

Halfway over the bridge he made himself slow down. Riding angry was how couriers went under buses.

He wasn’t angry at her.

He was angry at the world that had taught her to read good news as a threat.

He stopped at the Sainsbury’s Local on the corner of her road because he couldn’t walk in empty-handed.

Milk. She’d have run out and not said.

The proper biscuits. The tin ones with the picture on it. Not the value ones.

Flowers from the bucket by the door. Three days old. She’d make a fuss. She’d put them in the good vase. She’d mention them to Denise upstairs for a fortnight.

Beep. The scanner went through the shopping. The total came up. Danny paid it without looking.

That was when it landed.

That he hadn’t looked. That he was a man who didn’t look at a till any more. That this was the single strangest thing that had happened to him yet.

Eleven pounds forty.

It used to be a decision.

The estate looked the way it always looked.

Two boys were doing something to a bike outside the bin store. One holding it up. The other spinning the pedal. Tick-tick-tick. Chain going round. Someone’s telly was on too loud through an open window. Football crowd noise going up and down.

Mrs Antwi’s washing was out on the third-floor walkway. She’d given up on the forecast.

Danny went up the stairs. The lift in this block had been a rumour since 2019.

Third floor. Fourth door. The mat that said WELCOME. Corner curled where the damp got in.

He had a key. He’d always had a key. He knocked.

The last time he’d let himself in unannounced she’d nearly gone through the ceiling.

He heard her coming. The particular sound of his mother crossing that hallway. Something in his chest went very tight.

A bolt went back. Clunk. The door opened on the chain first. It always did. Then the chain came off. Rattle. And she was there.

Fleece. Clip. Letter in her hand.

She’d been holding it so long the top edge had gone soft.

"You didn’t have to come," she said.

"I know."

"You’ve come all this way."

"I’ve come four miles, Mum."

"On that scooter." She stood aside to let him in. Already talking. Already moving toward the kitchen. "In this traffic. In the dark. I don’t like that scooter. Denise’s nephew came off one of them on the Old Kent Road and he’s got a pin in his arm now. A pin, Danny. In the arm."

"He was probably going faster than nineteen miles an hour."

"Don’t." She took the bag off him. Looked in it. Stopped. "You’ve got the tin ones."

"I have."

"What have you got the tin ones for?"

"Because I fancied them," Danny said.

She made a small noise that meant she’d seen straight through him and was going to allow it. Put the flowers in the sink to deal with later. Switched the kettle back on.

The flat was the flat.

Same carpet. Worn shiny in the doorway where three thousand hallways’ worth of feet had gone through.

Same three photos on the shelf. Him at six in the front garden of the old place. Him at eleven in a football kit two sizes too big with his socks round his ankles. Her and her sister at somebody’s wedding in 1998, both laughing at something outside the frame.

Same electric meter in the cupboard by the door. Little window. Numbers.

Same chair by the window. The brown one. Nobody had sat in it for eleven years.

His dad’s chair.

She’d never got rid of it and she’d never said why and Danny had never asked. The two of them had been walking round it for over a decade like a hole in the floor.

She put the tea down in front of him. The mug with the robin on it. His mug, since he was nine.

Sat down across the little table. Chair legs scraped.

The letter between them.

She pushed it toward him.

"Read it," she said. "Because I’ve read it about forty times and I think I’ve gone stupid."

Danny picked it up.

He knew exactly what it said. He’d sat on a bed with a view of the entire city and listened to a woman in a call centre in Leeds say the words cleared in full while his hands shook.