I said I would write it down before they turned it into committee business. So here we are.
How he even got in the door
We were in Soho. Not the glossy bit they put on reels. The sticky bit, the one where the pavement is always slightly wet and someone is always arguing with a bouncer who has already won. Mia had dragged us out on a Thursday, which is already a moral failing, and I had done that thing I do where I say I am only staying for one and then I am still there when the lights change.
He was at the bar. Tall enough. Dark hair that looked like it had been told off recently. A voice that did not shout over the music so much as wait for a gap and then use it. I liked that. I like a man who understands timing. He bought a round without making a speech about it. That helped too.
His name is Callum. I am putting that here because Sophie will ask again anyway and I am tired of spelling it in the kitchen.
We talked about nothing useful. Work, sort of. He does something with numbers that pays for a watch like that and a taxi without checking the estimate first. I told him I write. He said he had gathered. I still do not know what that was supposed to mean and I did not ask. Asking ruins it.
At some point Mia vanished toward a cigarette she did not need and Sophie got claimed by a girl from uni she swore she never liked. That left me and him and a decision that was not really a decision. You know the one. The night has already chosen. You are just catching up.
I brought him home. Parsons Green at 1.40am is not glamorous. It is foxes and somebody’s Deliveroo bag in the hedge. He laughed at the fox. I liked that more than I should have.
The bit I will get asked about
Yes. It was good.
Not fireworks and a film score. Just good in the way that makes you stay in the bed instead of doing the polite shuffle toward the door. He paid attention. He did not narrate. He did not ask if I came like he was ticking a box on a form. I did, for the record. Twice, if we are doing the honest version, and we are, because that is the whole point of this job.
He fell asleep on his front. I stared at the ceiling like I always do and thought about whether I wanted tea and knew I would not get up for it. The watch came off before anything else. That should have told me something. Men who take the watch off carefully are either precious about it or used to taking it off in other people’s rooms. Both can be true.
I did not clock where he put it. I was busy.
Noon, which is when the trouble starts
He left while I was still half under. A hand on my hip. A quiet I will text you that I have heard enough times to file under weather. I made a noise that could have been agreement. Then the front door, then nothing.
I slept. Properly, which is rare. When I woke up the flat had that Sunday feeling even though it was Friday. Light on the wall. Someone running a tap. My phone full of nothing useful.
Sophie came in with concealer she was not returning and froze like she had found a body.
There it was. Silver. Thin. The kind of watch that looks bored in a shop window and expensive once you pick it up. Not a loud watch. Not a boy’s watch. A grown one. Face down, as if it had been placed rather than dropped.
I sat up too fast and immediately regretted my life.
Sophie did not speak at first. She just looked at me, then at the watch, then at me again, which is her whole personality in three moves.
Nice, she said.
I know, I said.
Does he want it back?
That is the question, is it not.
The kitchen tribunal
Mia appeared two minutes later in a hoodie that is technically mine. She saw the watch on the table where Sophie had moved it, because Sophie cannot leave an object in the wrong room, and she made the face. The one that means we are about to have a meeting nobody asked for.
Name.
Callum.
Job.
Numbers. Finance. Something that requires being awake before I am.
Rating.
I took too long answering, which they both noticed.
Seven, I said. Then I changed it. Seven and a half. The extra half is for the watch and the fact he did not talk about his startup, if he even has one. I cannot be sure. I was not interviewing him. I was taking his clothes off.
Mia wanted more detail than that. She always does. She wants the map, the weather, the exact sentence he used when he asked to come back. I gave her some of it. Not all. A girl has to keep a little back or the story has no later chapters.
Sophie wanted to know if he was coming to collect it. She said it like we were discussing a parcel. Neutral. Practical. Judging me with her whole spine.
I said I did not know. That is true. He has not texted. I have not texted. The watch is still here, sitting next to the fruit bowl like it pays rent.
What you do with a thing like that
There is an unwritten rule and everybody pretends they invented it. Cheap stuff gets a week. A beanie. A charger. The mystery coin from his pocket. After that it belongs to the flat. Expensive stuff gets longer, but not forever. A watch is expensive enough to be a problem and personal enough to feel like a message even when it is not one.
I turned it over. No inscription. No scratch that looked like a story. Just a clean back and a strap that had taken the shape of a wrist that is not in this postcode anymore.
I could text. Easy. Found your watch, with a full stop, no kiss, no joke. That is the clean version. The other version is I wait and see if the watch matters more than the night. If he notices before I do him the favour. If he uses it as a door back in or as a chore he has to get over with on his lunch break.
I know what I look like, sitting here making a philosophy out of a timepiece. I do not care. This is how my brain works the morning after. It looks for the object. The leftover. The thing that proves it happened once the body has gone quiet.
Mia said I should post it. Not his face. Just the watch on the chest of drawers, morning light, a caption that does the work. I told her that was grotesque and then I took the photo anyway. I have not posted it. I might. I contain contradictions. Most people do. They just edit them out.
Whether he is coming back
I do not know yet. That is the least satisfying sentence in the English language and it is still the true one.
Part of me hopes he does, because I want to see him in daylight with a shirt on and decide if the half point still stands. Part of me hopes he sends a mate, or a courier, or a very polite paragraph that ends the thing cleanly. There is a version of me that likes a closed loop. There is another version that likes a man crossing the city for a strap of metal he could replace in an afternoon.
Sophie thinks I should leave it in a bag by the door with his name on it, like we are civilised. Mia thinks I should wear it to dinner and see if anyone asks. I think I will keep it on the drawer for one more night and see what the phone does.
If he texts first, I will be charming. If he does not, I will still be charming, just to a smaller audience.
The watch looks expensive in this light. It also looks a bit lost. I know the feeling.
The rating, for the minutes
Since they will ask, here is the card.
Face: eight. Conversation before: six and a half, which is fine, I did not come out for a seminar. Manners: eight. In bed: eight. Exit: seven, because the watch complicates an otherwise clean getaway. Overall: seven and a half, pending collection.
I told Sophie that last bit and she said pending collection is not how scores work. I said it is now. She went to put the kettle on. Mia stole my toast. The watch stayed where it was.
Look. He might come back for it. He might not. Either way I have a Friday, a story, and something silver catching the light every time I walk past the drawers. That will do for now. I am going to do my mouth and pretend I have plans that are not this.
If he wants it, he knows where it is. Sort of. He knows the road, anyway. The rest he can work out. I did.