Chapter 191: Robin I

The bus dropped them at the bottom of Pembury Road at 20 past 12. Jodie walked the last bit half asleep with her arm through his, and on the stairs she took them 1 at a time with her hand on the rail, and at the top landing she leaned on the wall while he found the key.

She was asleep again inside 5 minutes, on her front on the new mattress, in his jumper and nothing else.

Danny lay on his back with his left arm over the duvet and his sleeve pulled down to the knuckle.

If she wakes up first she’ll not ask, she’ll just look.

He kept his cuff down all night.

At 10 to 7 the light was grey in the window and the kettle was going, and Jodie was standing at the open sash in his shirt, with the cold coming in round her bare legs and a mug in each hand. She put one on the floor by his head without taking her eyes off him.

"Left arm," she said.

"Morning. I’ve not even got my eyes open yet."

"I’ve been awake since 6, Danny. I lay there and looked at that cuff for an hour. You slept with your arm across your chest like a dead pharaoh." She sat on the end of the mattress. "I’m not going to grab it. I’m asking."

He sat up and drank some of the tea.

She’s asked nicely. Now I’ve no way out of it.

"After," he said. "I’ll show you after. You’ll see it before I say it to anybody, and that’s a promise."

"After what?"

He put the mug down and got up off the mattress.

I walked her backwards to the window with my hands on her hips, till her back was against the open sash.

"After this. Hold still and let me show you."

I undid the shirt from the bottom button up, slowly, and she let me, with the street going about its morning 3 floors below. Under it she was warm from the bed and naked, and her nipples tightened in the cold air off the window before I’d touched them.

"There’s a bus stop right there," she said.

"Then hold on to the window and don’t let go of it."

I got down on my knees on the bare boards in front of her. She put her hands back on the sash behind her, one either side, gripping the wood, and the shirt hung open off her shoulders. I kissed the inside of her knee, and then her thigh, higher, and she opened her feet on the boards to let me in.

She smelled of sleep and of me from the night before. I put my mouth on her pussy and licked her slowly from the bottom to the top, and she said oh to the ceiling and her knuckles went white on the sash.

I held her by the backs of her thighs, my fingers sunk into the soft of her arse, and ate her there against the open window, slow at first with my tongue flat, then sucking her clit gently into my mouth. Her hips started to move. Down on the street the man from the Turkish shop rattled his shutter up, and she pushed her cunt against my face and didn’t care.

"Danny, if anybody looks up..."

"They’ll see your back and your hair. Hold on."

I slid my fingers up inside her and went back to her clit with my mouth, harder, and she made a sound I’d not heard her make before, high and broken. One hand came off the sash and went into my hair and held my head where she wanted it.

She came standing up, shaking, with the cold air on her back and her fingers knotted in my hair, her thighs trembling either side of my face and her cunt clenching round my fingers, and she had to grab the window frame to stay on her feet.

I stood up. She was flushed down to her chest and breathing hard, and she pulled me in by the waistband.

"Bed," she said. "Before my legs go."

I knelt up in the middle of the mattress and she came down onto my lap facing me, with her knees either side of my hips and the shirt still hanging off one shoulder. She got my boxers down and took my cock in her hand and held it, and looked at me, and sank down onto it slowly till I was all the way inside her and her arse was resting on my thighs.

Neither of us moved for a second. We were wrapped right round each other, chest to chest, with her nose against mine.

"Kiss me while you do it," she said.

I did. I held her round the waist and lifted her and brought her down, slow and deep, rocking her on me, and she rolled her hips to meet every stroke. Her tits were pressed against my chest and I could feel her heart going through them. She was soaking wet and so tight after coming, and she kissed me through every stroke, slow and open-mouthed, till she had to break off to breathe.

"I love you," she said, right into my face. "I love you, and if you’ve written the wrong name on that arm I’ll kill you."

"Fuck, Jodie. You’ll see it in a minute. Let me finish loving you first."

That nearly finished me. I gripped her hips and dragged her down onto me harder, faster, with her knees clamped to my sides and her nails in my back, and she gasped into my mouth on every one. I came inside her with my forehead against hers and my balls tight, groaning her name, with the cold from the window going across both of us.

We stayed like that, joined, kneeling in the middle of the mattress with her breath on my neck.

"Now," she said into my shoulder. "Show me."

She leaned back in his lap to give herself room. He held his left arm up between them with the palm up, and pushed back the cuff.

The ink had smudged a little at the edges from the night, but the word was there in the old man’s black capitals on the inside of his wrist.

ROBIN

Jodie looked at it. She didn’t say anything for a while. Then she put her thumb on it, very lightly, as if the ink might still be wet.

"Robin," she said.

"It’s not Robin’s record. Robin was never on it. I know that." Danny kept his arm out. "I wrote Robin so I’d remember what it was for. If I’d written Pemberton, I’d have sat on that bus thinking about what he loses. I wrote his brother so I’d think about Thursday."

Her eyes had filled up. She blinked and it ran.

"So it’s his," she said. "You’re giving it him. I’m staying on."

"You are. You told me on the 55. You told me on the river wall on Saturday as well, before any of this, that I don’t get to pick for you. So I’m not picking for you. You picked."

She took his face in both hands and kissed him, hard, with the tears going down into it.

"And you’ll show me," she said against his mouth. "Every gold message. Every door. I’m on it, so you’ve no excuse now."

"Every one, from now on. I promise you that."

At 1 o’clock he was on Verney Road to pick the post up off the shop mat, and Pat was in the shop.

She’d come down to sit in her chair on a Tuesday, she said, to see what it was like on a day that wasn’t hers. It was set in the middle of the bare floor where the counter would go, the rush-seated one with the arms, with Jodie’s green cushion under her and her bag on her knee. The ceiling above her was dry and white. The place smelled of plaster and of the bacon roll Ray had brought her from next door.

"There he is," Pat said. "I’ve been sat here since 12, testing my chair. It’s a lovely chair. I’ve told Ray it’s the best 12 pound anybody’s spent on me since John bought me a hat in 1987, and Ray laughed at me, and I said you’ve not seen the hat.

"Now. Norman’s been round. Norman says the solicitor’s letter’s the real thing, he’s had a look at it, he did 30 years at the council so he knows a letter. Norman says if I’m the one that gets the shop if you go under a bus, I’m to make you promise not to go under a bus. So promise."

"I promise, Pat. I’ll look both ways till I’m 90."

"Good. And Ray says you’ve got a funeral Thursday. Jodie told him on Friday, carrying that mattress." She looked at his jacket. "In that?"

"I’ve got a navy suit. It’s the only one I own."

"That’s for weddings." She opened her bag on her knee and took out a flat paper bag, folded in half, and held it out. "That’s John’s black tie. Silk. He wore it to his mother’s and then he never wore it again. The next one was his, and they put him in his blue. It’s been in my drawer since. You’ll wear it Thursday and you’ll bring it back Friday. Don’t you dry-clean it."

He took it. It was light as a letter. He could smell lavender drawer liner through the paper.

"Thank you, Pat. I’ll look after it like it’s yours."

"Whose is it? The funeral."

"An old man’s brother. The old man in flat 17, at the building I’m moving out of. The brother signed my first flat for me when I was 17."

Pat nodded slowly, with her hands on her bag.

"Then you stand next to him," she said. "The one that’s left. That’s what I wanted, when John went, somebody stood next to me that wasn’t crying, so I could. You can do that. You’ve got the shoulders for it."