Chapter 148: Date and Time I

Keisha finished the shot.

She let it run to the end, took the glass off, put it on the pass for the woman waiting, and wiped the group with the cloth off her shoulder. Then she turned round.

"Pen," she said to the lad on the till.

He gave her one. She tore a sheet off the order pad and wrote on it against the side of the grinder. The 3 people waiting watched her like it was the telly.

She held it out to Marcus.

"Read it."

Marcus put the tray down.

"I stop to the 28th of February. Tobi keeps his 5 to the 28th of February. On the 1st of March we both tell you, to your face, whether we’re going." He looked up. "That’s one extra month of you, Keish. I asked for for ever."

"That was in front of a queue. This is on paper."

"And my Deptford lad?"

"Gets Saturdays. You’ve wanted Saturdays covered since August. Tobi’ll train him."

"And when you both walk on the 1st of March, I’ve got a Saturday lad and nobody."

"Then you’ve had 3 months’ notice." Keisha did not lower the sheet. "You’ve never had me over, Marcus. Don’t start with Tobi. He found out off a drawing pin."

Marcus looked at the paper and did not pick up the pen.

What does he get out of this that he can show the lad on the till? Nothing. He gets told.

So give him something. What have you got that isn’t money?

"Put one more on it," Danny said.

They both looked at him.

"I don’t set foot in this shop till the 1st of March. Not to see her, not to see Tobi, not for a coffee. If I want either of them, I ring them, and I meet them somewhere that isn’t here."

"Till March," Marcus said. "And after?"

"What do you want after?"

"Nobody else of mine. Not my Saturday lad, not my till lad, not anybody who comes through that door in an apron. Ever. If those 2 go, they’re the last 2 you have off me."

Ever’s a long time on a road with 9 stools on it.

And it’s the only thing on that sheet he can point at.

"Then I’ll not take anybody of yours, as long as I’ve got a shop," Danny said. "Write it so I can’t wriggle."

Marcus studied him for about 3 seconds.

"Write both on," he said to Keisha.

She wrote it on. Marcus took the pen off her and signed the bottom against the window, and gave it back.

"Pin it up yourself." He picked up the tray. "And if you’re going in March, I want to know before the 1st."

"You’ll know when I know."

Outside at the bins, Tobi was still stood with his hands shoved in his apron. Keisha held the sheet up in front of him.

"Your 5 stay on the rota. The Deptford lad gets Saturdays and you show him the milk."

Tobi read it twice, the way he’d read his contract on the wing of Femi’s van.

"What did that cost?"

"A month of mine." Keisha turned to Danny. "You told Tobi at the bus stop, 4 months from November. He told me. You were never opening before March. So I’ve given Marcus February and kept us both out of an empty shop with a ceiling drying in it."

"And if it’s not sorted by then?"

"By then your bank’s let go and your trust’s signed and I’ve read it, or it hasn’t." She folded the sheet and put it in her apron pocket. "If it hasn’t, I’m stood at that machine for Marcus, and so’s Tobi, and you’ve a corner with a ceiling and a 3 group and nobody to work it."

"That’s 14 weeks," Danny said.

"It’s 13 weeks and 6 days. Count properly." She was already going in. "And you’re barred, so don’t come back for a flat white."

Tobi stayed a second after the door shut.

"I’m ringing my mum on my break," he said. "Tell her to leave it on the fridge."

It was 20 past 1. Danny had ￡2.80 and half a tank. He rode to Battersea.

His mother’s walkway was empty except for a bike with no front wheel chained to the railings. Upstairs in Denise’s the pipe went knock, knock as he came along. The chain came off before the door opened.

She was in her fleece with her hair still up from the morning and her reading glasses on top of her head. She looked at his face, then at the helmet in his hand.

"What’s happened?"

"Can I come in first?"

"Come in, then. And then tell me."

The kitchen smelled of toast. She sat him at the Formica on the chair with the wobble and stood with her back to the sink and her arms folded, the way she used to stand when something came through the door in a brown envelope.

"Go on."

"You said when you couldn’t do it you’d ring me. I can’t do it. So I’ve come."

"Do what?"

"Pay anybody. My bank’s stopped my account this morning. I can see it and I can’t touch it. They’re checking me and they won’t say why or how long, and I’ve a plasterer on Thursday and 2 people starting in March and ￡2.80."

She pulled out the chair opposite and sat down, and took her glasses off her head and put them on the table.

"Is it them? Are you going to get took away?"

"I don’t know. Today it’s the bank."

"Right." She squared the glasses with the edge of the table. "And there’s something else, because you’ve got the other face on. The one from when you were 9 and you’d broke the telly."

Tell her now. She kept 3 letters in a bag for years and you were cross for about a minute. Don’t make her find this one in a bag.

"It’s not 1,216,412.87 anymore," Danny said.

"What is it?"

"2,116,412.87."

His mother sat very straight.

"Since when?"

"Saturday morning, 10 o’clock."

"I saw you Friday night. In this kitchen, with your dad’s card."

"It wasn’t there Friday night."

"From what?"

"Saturday I was 4 hours in a big house in Dulwich, in a suit, stood in a hall."

The pipe in the wall went knock once and stopped.

"900,000 pound," she said. "In a morning."

"Yes."

"Is it drugs?"

"No."

"Has anybody been hurt by it?"

"A ring went back in a drawer where it belonged."

"That’s not what I asked you." She did not move her hands off the Formica. "I asked has anybody been hurt. You’ve told me something near it."

She caught it. She always catches it.

"A woman in a car thought she’d got her mother-in-law’s ring," Danny said. "I took it off her and put it back. She lost it, and she saw my face doing it."

"So somebody’s lost something because of you."

"Yes."

"Then say that first, next time. Don’t make me dig for it." She looked at him a while longer. "And who knew before me?"

Say it.

"Jodie. Saturday afternoon."

His mother breathed in through her nose and let it out.

"Then the bank’s right to look, love," she said. "And I’m cross. Both. If that come into my bank on a Saturday, off a man who had 41 quid in September, I’d stop it and all. I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong. I’m saying I’d stop it."

"I know."

"And the other thing’s that I’m last. Again. I was the last one to find out what your dad owed, off a letter, after he’d gone. And now I’m last after a girl you’ve not even brought round."

"I’m sorry."

"I know you are." She put her glasses back on her head. "Ask me what you came to ask. You’ve not come all this way for sorry."

"How did you do 2014? The letters. The man at the door. What did you do first?"

His mother got up and took a lined pad and a biro off the side, out from under the tin, and put them in front of him.

"I wrote it down. Every phone call, the date and the time and the name of the person and what they said they’d do. And what I said back. At the table in the front room, with you asleep down the hall."

She sat again.

"Nobody ever asked to see it. Not the bailiff, not the finance lot. But when a man on the phone told me I’d been told something I’d never been told, I could look at my own handwriting and know he was lying. And I could say his name to him."

"Did that make him stop?"

"It stopped my hands shaking while I was on the phone to him." She tapped the pad. "Go on, then. From this morning."