Chapter 140: Nothing In The Way I

She got as far as the lobby and stopped.

There was nowhere to go. Her mother would want to know why she had come without ringing. Soph was in Dubai. The pool shut at 5 on a Saturday.

She had her coat on over the cardigan and boots on instead of the bed socks, and her keys in her fist.

So go out. Walk to the river and back. Buy a coffee you don’t want.

She sat down on the bench at the far end by the window.

From there she could see the bronze doors, and she knew that when she chose it. She sat with her coat buttoned and her hands in her pockets and was ashamed of herself, and did not move.

The lad from the desk came over with the dish of chocolates. Thin, in a cardigan, with glasses. On Thursday she had pushed an envelope across the desk to him and watched him put it to one side.

"Miss Doyle. You all right? You look like you’re waiting for a cab."

"I’m waiting to make my mind up, Kieran. A cab would be quicker."

"Have one of these while you do it."

She took a dark one in gold foil.

"Kieran. Thursday. The envelope I gave you for 40."

"I gave it Ms Adeyemi, like you’re meant to. Was that wrong?"

"No. That’s exactly what you’re meant to do." She put the chocolate in her pocket. "I just wanted to hear it. Is it always this quiet on a Saturday?"

"Till about 7. Then they all come down dressed up and leave their perfume in the lift."

At 20 past 5 Mr Pemberton came out of the bank of 6 in his cap and good coat with a folded paper under his arm, and changed course across the marble when he saw her.

"Miss Doyle. You are dressed for out and you are sitting down."

"I can’t decide where out is."

"I go to Gennaro’s on a Saturday. I have done since my wife died. The risotto is overpriced and the waiter is rude to me, and I enjoy both." He looked at her face and then at the bronze doors, in that order. "You may come, if you like. I eat at 6. I’ll sit a minute first, my knees want it."

He sat at the far end of her bench and said nothing else, and she let him.

Somebody up there has been loud for an hour.

A woman. In a bath, by the sound of the water. A bath that size in a flat that size.

Stop it. You are 24 and you are sat in a lobby like a dog by a door.

At 25 to 6 the bronze doors opened.

Danny came out first, and then a woman.

She had dark blonde hair, wet at the ends and drying wrong, pushed back off a freckled face with the colour still high on it. Her coat hung open over a soft grey jumper, with a tape measure round her neck like a scarf.

She was shorter than Mara and built strong through the hips and thighs, a woman who stood on her feet all day. She was laughing at something with one corner of her mouth first, and she had hold of his sleeve.

Oh.

She’s lovely. What did you think he’d have, a horrible one?

And she has no idea who you are.

Mara stood up. Sitting was worse.

Danny saw the copper hair at the window before he saw anything else in that lobby. His legs kept walking and the rest of him stopped.

She’s in her coat, sat by the door. She’s been sat there waiting for those doors to open.

She heard.

And you stood in that bathroom and said not for 40 floors.

Mara came across the terrazzo with the old man beside her, as if the doors were where she had been going all along. The camel coat was buttoned to her throat and did nothing at all to hide the shape of her under it, full on top and in at the waist and out again. Her hair was down her back, copper under the lights.

"Evening, Danny."

It came out very even and quite fast.

"Mara. You’re going out."

"Mr Pemberton’s taking me to Gennaro’s." She turned to Jodie and smiled. Danny had seen her pleasant smile across this same lobby, and this was not that one. "Hi. I love your tape measure. Are you a tailor?"

Jodie put a hand up to her neck.

"Oh God, I’ve still got it on. No. Sort of. I make dresses."

"From scratch? Patterns and everything?"

"She sold her first 6 in 4 days on Northcote Road," Danny said. "At £150. They want 14 more by January."

Jodie looked round at him with her mouth half open.

"Danny."

"Well, they do."

"14 by January," Mara said, and looked at Jodie properly. "I can’t sew a button on. I’d love to see one some time."

"There’ll be a website. When I’ve had a minute."

"Then I’ll look out for it."

Jodie was looking at her now. Not at her face. At the coat and the shoulders and the way it pulled across her and went in, the way a woman with a tape measure round her neck looks at another woman.

Mr Pemberton nodded at Danny once from under the peak of his cap, and did not say anything to him at all.

"Come along, Miss Doyle. I’m 90 and the waiter gets ruder after 6."

Mara put her hand through his arm.

"Lovely to meet you," she said to Jodie. She did not ask her name. She did not look at Danny again. She went out through the door Thomas was holding.

The 2 of them stopped at the river railings 30 yards along, under a lamp, the old man talking and Mara with her back to the building.

Jodie watched them through the glass.

"She’s a 14 on top and a 10 at the waist," she said. "There’s not a dress in that shop would sit right on her without me taking it in by hand."

"She’d hate that you can tell."

"Who is she?"

"Mara. She lives on 39."

Jodie did not move.

"And you’re 40."

"Yes."

Thomas had the door open again and was looking hard at nothing. Jodie walked out through it onto the pavement and stood with the cold coming off the river.

Danny followed her out.

"She came down here in her coat to sit by the door," Jodie said, with her back to him. "On a Saturday. With nowhere to go. And she looked at me like she already knew what my voice sounded like."

Tell her. She’ll work it out in about 4 seconds anyway.

No. Tell her because it’s yours to tell, not hers.

"She did know," Danny said. "She lives right under me. You asked me in the bathroom who was underneath and I said concrete. And then in the bath you said there’s nobody, and I said not for 40 floors."

Jodie turned round.

"I did think about her. In the bathroom. For about a second," he said. "I told myself she’d be out, she’s always out, and it was concrete, and she’d have said if she’d ever heard anything. And I wanted you loud more than I wanted to be sure."

"So she heard."

"Every bit of it, by the look of her."

"I’ve never in my life," Jodie said, quite quietly, "been loud anywhere. Paper walls and my mum through one of them, then Tooting, then Sarah. And I did it today because you told me there was nobody."

"I took that off you. I know I did."

"With a woman underneath with copper hair, sat by the door in her coat."

He did not try to say anything to that. There was nothing that would have been worth her time.

Jodie looked at him for a long while.

"Have you slept with her?"

One word. One word and she’ll believe you, because she’s just been in your bath and she wants to.

And then you’re the man who said the pence on Thursday and left a flat out, and did it again a second time to her face.

"Yes," he said.

"When?"

"November. Once. A Tuesday."

"While you were seeing me."

"Yes. Before the Travelodge. Before I’d ever once said you were anything to me." He made himself keep looking at her. "That’s on me, all of it. I should have told you before I took you up there. And I’m sorry, Jodie. I’m sorry I made today a lie for you."

A bus went past along the embankment with its top deck lit and empty.

"Is there anybody else?" Jodie said. "I’m asking now, while I’m stood here, because I’m not doing this twice. The woman at your café. Your designer. Anybody."

"No."

"Keisha?"

"Keisha’s been on a coffee machine 9 years and she’d put my hand in the steam wand if I tried."

"Danny."

"No. There’s nobody else. There’s you, and there was Mara once, and that’s everybody."