Chapter 143: Proper Dinner II

He did not open it straight away.

What if it’s blank? What if it’s been in that drawer 2 years and it’s blank, the same as the doctor, the same as the roll?

He opened it.

Week after week of her neat blue hand, the date and the amount and her initials beside each one, and then 2 weeks with owed written in where the money should be. After that came a line in different ink, pressed harder into the page: PAID IN FULL BY TRANSFER, with the date, and underlined twice.

"It’s all there," he said.

"I wrote it every Friday for 2 years. Where else would it be?" She was frowning down at the book. "Take it. If anybody ever says you weren’t there, it says you were. It’s only 2 years. It’s what I’ve got."

He got his phone out.

"Can I photograph it first? Every page. I see my solicitor at 10 tomorrow and she’ll want it in a form she can send."

"Photograph what you like."

He did it on the cloth with the gravy boat moved out of the way, page by page, 31 photos, holding each one flat with 2 fingers. Adaeze watched him do it without saying anything.

"Would you write it down as well?" he said, when he’d done. "A letter. That I was your tenant from when to when, at Pembury, flat number, and you saw me on the stairs every week. Signed. For Priya."

"I’ll do it on my letterhead. I’ve got letterhead." She almost looked pleased. "You’ll have it by Tuesday."

"I’ll bring the book back."

"Bring it back when you don’t need it." She sat down slowly. "Danny. That completion statement I sent her. I kept a copy."

"What’s it say?"

"A company name I’d never heard of in my life. I looked it up on my phone stood in the loft. It was shut down 2 years after I bought."

She was looking at the window.

"And now your 11 years are gone off everything except my drawer. So tomorrow I’m ringing the agent who sold me Pembury. He’s retired to Margate. He’ll remember who he was dealing with, because he took me for lunch on it and he never took anybody for lunch."

"Adaeze, you don’t have to..."

"I don’t like not knowing who owned the stairs you lived on." She picked her spoon back up. "Eat your crumble."

He stood on her stairwell at 5 to 5 with the rent book inside his coat next to his father’s letters, and texted Ray.

Ray. Sorry it’s Sunday. Do you know Pat’s surname? Pat with the trolley. And where she lives. Need it for a form tomorrow.

It took 6 minutes.

Pat Mulvey. Patricia. Flat 4 over the bookies, same flat John’s mum had. What form.

A good one. I’ll tell you Thursday.

You’d better. She’ll want to know before I do.

He saved it under PAT MULVEY, Flat 4 over the bookies, Verney Rd.

Priya at 10. Pat’s name. Dad’s address. 2 sealed letters for her drawer. Deniz on the ceiling at 8. Naomi writing at 9.

And you’ve not told the one person who most needs to know.

He got on the scooter and went south and west towards Lavender Hill.

Her light was on at 20 to 7, and the sewing machine was going. It stopped when he knocked.

Nothing for a while. Then her feet in the hall, slow, and the door opening on the chain.

Jodie looked at him through the gap. Hair scraped up in a clip, the grey jumper, no tape measure, and eyes like she had not slept.

"I said don’t text me good."

"I didn’t text. I came."

"That’s worse."

"I’ve got one thing to tell you, then I’ll go, and you never have to take that chain off."

"Danny, I’m not..."

"Mara said tell you before Monday, not after. She was right. I’ve done after to you all week."

Jodie stood behind the chain.

"Go on, then."

"There’s a woman who runs my building. Naomi," he said.

"A few weeks back she needed a form filled in about where I’d lived before. I gave her an address I can’t explain, and I told her my solicitor had filed it, and my solicitor’s written to her to say she never filed anything. So tomorrow at 9 Naomi’s writing to the insurer to say her form on me was wrong."

"And?"

"And they’ll run me again. Properly. And there’s nothing on me before October. Not Pembury. Not the doctor, not the bank. Naomi had it run once already and it came back 9 lines, and 8 of them said nothing."

Jodie had gone very still.

"That’s not possible."

"That’s what Adaeze said."

"Who’s Adaeze?"

"My landlady at Pembury."

"What were you doing at your landlady’s on a Sunday?"

Tell her. The dress and all.

"She cooked me dinner. She texted yesterday dinnertime and told me I was coming, and I said yes."

He kept looking at her through the gap.

"She’d put a dress on for me. I told her what I’d done yesterday, and she fed me and sent me home, and said she wasn’t going to be the third woman in my weekend."

"You knew yesterday you were going."

"Yes."

"On that pavement. When you said that’s everybody. You knew you’d got a dinner today with a woman in a dress."

"I knew I’d got a dinner. I didn’t know about the dress. And nothing’s ever happened with her. October or today." He made himself keep looking at her. "I should have said it on the pavement. I’m saying it now."

Jodie’s mouth went tight.

"What’s the book?" she said.

He took it out and held it to the gap. The red cover.

"Her rent book. 2 years in her handwriting. She keeps them. She said if anybody ever says I wasn’t there, it says I was."

Jodie looked at the red book. Then she took her phone out of her back pocket.

"What are you doing?"

"Checking." Her thumb was going. "You said nothing before October. I’ve got you in here since 2014."

He stood on the landing and did not breathe.

She scrolled a long way. Her face did nothing. Then she stopped, and pressed something, and turned the phone round to the gap and turned the speaker up.

His own voice came out of it, drunk and singing, with a bus engine under it and somebody laughing near the phone, and him going wrong on the high note and starting again louder.

February 2019. 38 bus. 2:14am.

Jodie took the phone back and listened to the end of it with her eyes shut.

"It’s there," she said.

"I didn’t know you’d kept that."

"You sang the whole of the chorus and got every word wrong." She opened her eyes. "So it’s not everything. It’s not me. Whatever’s taking you off things, it’s not taken you off me."

The doctor’s gone. The bank’s gone. The roll’s gone.

A voice note on her phone from a night bus, and that’s still there.

Why? Because it’s hers? Because nobody ever had to fill in a form about it?

"It’s never been anywhere official," he said. "It’s on your phone. That’s why."

"Then they’d have to come through me for it." She held the phone against her collarbone. "Give me that book."

"What?"

"Give me the rent book. If somebody official comes to my door asking about you, I want something in my hand that isn’t my phone and my word." She held her hand out through the gap. The sleeve of the jumper had come down over her knuckles, and under its hem her legs were bare to the thigh, freckled, goosebumped from the stairwell.

"It’s Adaeze’s. I told her I’d bring it back."

"Have you photographed it?"

"Every page. 31."

"Then your solicitor’s got her copy and I’ll have the real one." Her hand stayed where it was. "And I’ll take it back to your landlady myself, when you don’t need it. I’d like to meet the woman who sent you home with pudding."

She’ll go. She’ll get on a bus to Hackney with it in her bag and knock on that door.

And Adaeze’ll open it in an apron, and look at her, and know exactly who she is.

You’re handing a 39-year-old woman’s keepsake to the 28-year-old one she just stood aside for, and you know it.

He put Adaeze’s rent book into her hand through the gap in the chain.

She took it, and held it against her chest with the phone.

"Now go home," she said. "I’ve done 2 and a half dresses and I’ve got 11 and a half to do, and I’ve not slept since you said 39."

She shut the door.

On the landing below, somebody’s telly went quiet. The sewing machine did not start up again. For a long while there was nothing behind the door at all.

Clink.

The chain.