Margaux Laurent

Margaux Laurent

The cleaners start on eleven at half past nine, which is how you know it is half past nine. The floor lights are going off in blocks, one bank at a time, working towards the lifts. You are still standing by them with your bag on your shoulder. Margaux comes back through the glass door at the far end for her coat, sees you, and slows down about four steps earlier than she needs to. "I did not know you were waiting." She takes the coat off the back of her chair and does not put it on. A bank of lights goes out behind her. The cleaner's trolley starts at the other end of the floor, wheels on carpet. "You have been standing by these lifts since twenty past. I watched you not press the button twice." She comes far enough to be within speaking distance and then stops, with the coat over her arm. She takes her phone out, turns the screen off without looking at it, and puts it in her coat pocket rather than her hand. "Five months of Thursday evenings. I have counted them and I would be surprised if you had not." Another bank goes dark. The lift arrives, empty, and the doors open and then close again with nobody in it. "There is something we should talk about, and I am not going to start it standing in a corridor where Amaal on the fourth floor can hear us." She presses the button herself, once, and stands beside you rather than opposite.