Chapter 182: About a Flat II

They left the Vespa at Pembury on Sunday and came to Battersea on the bus with a bag from the bakery. His mother had done a stew.

Beef and dumplings, in the big orange pan she’d had since before he was born, with the lid rattling on the hob and the whole flat smelling of bay leaf and gravy. The Formica was laid for 3 again with the good plates, and the beer mat was still folded under the short leg of the chair with the wobble.

Jodie hung her coat by the door next to the grey fleece, and touched the little flap she’d sewn on the pocket the week before, and his mother saw her do it and said nothing and turned the gas down.

She talked all the way through the first plate. She’d been going since they came through the door.

"Denise’s grandson’s got in at the college, the big one, the one with the fish on the sign, I can’t think of it, he’s doing engines. Planes. He’s 17 and he can’t boil an egg, and they’re going to let him near a plane. I said to Denise, I said I hope it’s a small one.

"And the Co-op’s moved the bread again. Third time since August. I went in for a loaf on Friday and it’s where the batteries were, and the batteries are where the cards were, and I stood there like a lemon with my basket. A girl came up and said can I help you, and I said you can tell me who keeps doing this, and she said it’s head office. Head office. Somebody in an office in Manchester moving my bread about.

"Jodie, have another dumpling, I can see your collarbones from here. That dress. Did you make that? You never. It’s lovely. You could’ve made it a bit higher at the front for my dinner table, mind, but it’s lovely.

"And your man in hospital, Danny. Did he get his pyjamas? Good. Is he still in? They’ll want that bed back, mark my words, they do it on a Sunday, they ring round the families at dinner time and they’re all stood in the corridor in their coats with a carrier bag. I’ve seen it a thousand times. When he does come out, you’ll have to watch he eats."

Danny put his fork down.

Ask her now. If you wait for a gap she’ll go through the whole of the Co-op aisle by aisle.

"Mum. I said there was a thing I needed to ask you. It’s not the other thing. It’s not the money, and it’s not the thing I owe you. It’s a question about before I went. About the week I left."

His mother stopped with the ladle over the pan.

"Go on."

"That week, or the one before it. Did anybody come to the door asking about me? I don’t mean a mate from school. Somebody you didn’t know, who knew my name."

She put the ladle back in the pan, and the lid back on, and the lid stopped rattling. She sat down on her own chair with her hands flat on the Formica. Jodie had gone completely quiet beside him.

"I’d forgot that," his mother said. "I’d forgot it completely. Hand on heart, Danny, till you said it just now, I’d not thought of her in 11 years."

"Her? Mum, who? Somebody from round here?"

"Nobody from round here." She was looking at the window, at the walkway and the railings and the grey afternoon. "It was a Sunday. I’d been on an early, 7 till 3, and I’d just got my shoes off. About 4 o’clock. I know that much, the football was on through Denise’s wall and they’d just gone in at half time. Her Terry used to shout at the half time, I remember that.

"There was a knock. Not the bell, a knock. 3 little ones, neat, like a doctor’s receptionist.

"I opened it in my stocking feet and there’s this woman on the walkway. Nicely turned out. A grey coat, a good one, wool. Dark hair cut straight here." She put the side of her hand against her own jaw. "Red on her mouth. Flat black shoes, like she’d walked a long way and meant to walk further. A folder under her arm, one of them cardboard ones. And she said, Does Daniel Flynn live here?

"Well, I thought it was the school. You’d been off that much that term I thought they’d sent somebody round. Or the council about the bins. So I said, Who’s asking? And she didn’t say who. She said she’d come about a flat. I have come about a flat for Daniel. Like that. Posh, and quiet with it.

"I said, What flat? He’s 17. He lives here with me. And she looked at me, Danny, she looked at me like she was sorry for me, and she said, Then he will not need it yet.

"And then she said good evening. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon, with the sun still up. Good evening. And she went off along the walkway past Denise’s and down the stairs and never once looked round. I shut the door and I thought, you’ve been on your feet since 7, go and sit down, it’s somebody at the wrong door."

Nobody said anything. The pipe in the wall went knock.

"Denise’s bath," Jodie said quietly, before his mother could.

His mother almost smiled.

"Which Sunday?" Danny said. "Mum. It matters which one. I went on the Saturday. Was it the Sunday before that? The same week?"

"It was the Sunday before." She said it straight off. "I know it was. On the Sunday there was nothing to go about. You’d not said a word about going. You didn’t say you were going till the Tuesday night, stood in that doorway. And the Monday..."

She stopped. She looked down at her hands on the Formica. Then she picked up the salt and put it down again in the same place.

"And the Monday was the Monday," his mother said. "I’m not doing your dad over a stew. Not with your girl sat there with her dinner going cold. That’s the other thing, and that’s yours to bring me, and it’s not today."