Chapter 144: A Longer Memory I

The door opened the width of her.

Jodie stood in the hall with the red book and the phone held flat against her chest, and she did not step out of the way.

"You’re not riding back to that flat tonight," she said, low, for the landing. "Sitting up there till morning with nothing on you before October. I’d lie in there thinking about you doing it, and I’ve got 11 and a half dresses."

"Jodie..."

"I played that voice note 3 times after I shut the door. I want you in the room with it." She stepped back. "Shoes off. Sarah’s on earlies."

He came in.

The front room smelled of the iron. 2 dresses hung on the rail in tissue, and a half one stood on the dummy with pins down the side seam.

She put Adaeze’s rent book in the drawer under the machine, on top of her grandmother’s buttons, and shut it.

"There. It’s in with the buttons. Nobody official’s getting it out of there."

Then she turned round. She had cried at some point that afternoon and washed her face after, and the skin round her eyes was pink and scrubbed.

"I’m still angry with you," she said.

"Good. You should be."

"I want it on the record before anything else happens." She came across the rug. "Because something’s going to."

She took my face in both hands the way she holds a seam up to the lamp. Her thumbs were cold. Her mouth was menthol from a cough sweet, and she kissed me slowly with her eyes open.

"Bedroom," she said against my mouth. "And you’re having me quiet."

"Because of Sarah?"

"Because of everybody." Her forehead on mine. "Nobody through a wall and nobody under a floor. If you want me tonight, it’s just us."

"And if I make a noise?"

"Then I’ll put my hand over your mouth and you’ll like it."

In the bedroom she didn’t put the light on. The streetlight came through the curtains in one orange stripe across the duvet, and she stood in it and pulled the jumper off over her head. The clip came out with it and her hair came down.

Black cotton knickers and nothing else. Freckles across her collarbones like somebody had flicked a wet brush at her. Her nipples were tight and dark with the cold, and her tits rose when she lifted her arms.

"You’re staring."

"Yeah."

"Good. Get your clothes off, I’m freezing."

She sat on the edge of the bed and watched me do it. When I was down to nothing she looked at my cock and bit her lip, and reached out and took hold of it, warm palm and cold fingers, and I nearly went at the knees.

"Lie back," I said.

"I’m in charge."

"You’re in charge of the noise. Lie back."

She lay back on her elbows. I knelt on the floor and worked the knickers down and off over her feet.

Her cunt was wet already when I put my mouth on it. She tasted of salt and faintly of the lavender soap by her sink, and she put one hand in my hair and held on.

I went slow on her clit with the flat of my tongue, then quick. She breathed out through her nose and gave me nothing else. Her thighs shook against my ears.

She took my hand off her hip and pressed it flat on her own stomach, low down, and held it there hard so I could feel what she was keeping in.

"Don’t you make me loud," she whispered. "Don’t you dare."

I didn’t stop. She came with her mouth shut and her eyes open on the ceiling, one long shudder that went up through her into my palm, and the bed creaked once.

"On your side," she said when she could. "Face the wall."

"What?"

"You had me like this in the Travelodge. Your arm round me and not moving." She was already pulling the duvet back. "My turn."

I lay on my side. She got in behind me and pressed herself down the length of my back, her tits against my shoulder blades, her knees in the backs of mine.

Her pussy was hot against the top of my arse. Her arm came round the front of me and she took hold of my cock again, and she moved.

She went slowly, with her whole hand, her mouth on the back of my neck. Every time I pushed into her hand she let go and waited for me to give up, and then started again.

Once she reached lower and cupped my balls and held them, and I put my forehead on the wallpaper and made a noise. Her other hand came over my mouth.

"Told you," she breathed in my ear.

I took hold of her wrist and moved her hand off my cock.

"Keep that up and I’ll be done and you won’t have had me."

"So?"

"So I want your face." I turned over onto my back and pulled her across on top of me. "I’ve had 3 days of not looking at you properly."

She didn’t sit up. She lay down the length of me, chest to chest, and reached between us and put me in herself, with her hair hanging round both our faces.

"There," she whispered. "Now look at me."

Then she moved her hips, only her hips, short and slow, with her face 2 inches over mine.

It was the quietest I’ve ever been fucked. The headboard never touched the wall. There was her breath and mine, and the slick of us, and the stripe of streetlight going up and down her shoulder.

When she started to come again she put her mouth on mine and came into it. I felt the noise she wouldn’t make go down into my chest.

That finished me. I took her arse in both hands and held her down on me and came deep inside her, her mouth still on mine, and neither of us made a sound.

Afterwards Jodie lay on her front with one arm across him and her hair all over the pillow.

"What’ve you got tomorrow?" she said.

"Deniz at 8 for the ceiling. Then a bank at 10, with my solicitor. Priya. She’s doing my will, and a trust so Keisha and Tobi get a year’s wages whatever happens to me."

"Like what?"

"Like a bus." He looked at the stripe of light on the ceiling. "And the bank’s going to check me first. Properly."

Jodie lifted her head.

"Check you how? You said yourself there’s nothing on you before October."

"There’s nothing anywhere else. The bank’s got me since I was 23. Their own records. Every month of it."

"How can a bank have you since 23 if nobody else does?"

"I can’t tell you that one."

She looked at him for a long time in the dark.

"Is that the real one?" she said. "The answer I asked you for on Wednesday?"

"It’s the edge of it."

"So tomorrow somebody at that bank looks at what they’ve got on you, and then at what everybody else has got."

"Probably."

"Then don’t go."

"Then there’s no trust. Keisha’s got 12 months in her contract. Tobi’s got a 3-year-old and a nursery that shuts at half 5."

He kept his eyes on the ceiling.

"Between now and January the only thing paying them is me staying alive. I’m going to go in and not lie. Whatever they find, they find."

Jodie put her head back down on her arm.

"I’m going to lie here and not ask you anything else," she said. "And you’re going to remember I didn’t."

"That’s more than I’d have managed."

"Am I in the will?"

"Priya asked if there was somebody. I said there was, and she wasn’t speaking to me as of 6 that morning, and she’d refuse it and ring Priya up to tell her so."

"I’d have rung her an’ all," Jodie said into the pillow. "Very polite. Take me out of that, I’m not having his money when he’s dead either."

She was asleep in about 4 minutes.

At 10 to 7 she was up before him, sat at the machine in his old t-shirt with the lamp on and pins in her mouth. She took them out to kiss him at the door and put them straight back in.

"Go and do your ceiling," she said round them.

"Will you be all right today?"

She took the pins out again.

"I’ve got Marie at 9 and 11 and a half dresses, and I’ll be thinking about your bank all day whether I’m all right or not. Ring me when you come out. Not a text. Ring."

"Before 11."

"If it’s 5 past, I’m ringing that bank myself and asking for you by name." She shut the door on him.

Verney Road was dark blue at 25 to 8. Wasim’s van was steaming at the kerb with 6 scaffolders queued along the side of it in hi-vis, and Wasim pulled a face at him over the counter.

"You’re early for a man with no sign."

"Plasterer’s at 8. 4 days of skim."

"Then he’ll want tea, and he’ll want it off me, not off a man with a machine in a blanket." Wasim already had the cups out. "How many?"

"4. One’s for his lad."

"His lad has 3 sugars. I know his lad." Psshh went the urn. "£3.60."

Inside, the shop was cold, and 6 DROPS + EXTRACT was still pencilled on the wall under the bare boards. He folded back the blanket on the machine, put a bin bag over the group head the way Ray had said, tied it with a bread tie, and covered it again.