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."