We Own the Sky

by Luke Allnutt

  “What happened with the other ten?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking a little forlorn, not realizing I was making a joke. “It’s annoying that they haven’t responded. I don’t understand why.”

  She had become a little agitated in recent weeks, suddenly concerned about my career plans. Anna had a job lined up, with an accountancy firm in London, and had started asking questions. What would I do next? Would I join her in London and look for a job?

  My heart wasn’t really in the job search, because all I could think about was maps—maps that were alive and dripping with data, maps that could be created by a teenager with a Myspace account and a laptop.

  “I’m still hoping my maps idea will pan out, to be honest,” I said, pouring more wine into my cup and stretching out my legs.

  Anna’s face tightened. “So what is the maps thing again?” she asked, pulling her sunglasses off her face. “You never really explained it.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “Well, maybe you did. But I still don’t understand it,” she said, and she seemed angry and I couldn’t figure out why.

  “Well,” I said, sitting up and turning to face her. “It’s still early days, but the software basically allows the user to customize their own maps. So, for example, you could map out your cycle route or where you went for a jog. Or you could upload your photos on a tourist map for other people to see.”

  “You’d put the photos on the map?”

  “Yes.”

  Anna pouted. “That seems rather strange, doesn’t it. Why would anyone want to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, beginning to feel a little annoyed. “Because they can.”

  We sat in silence for a little while, and Anna started to pack away the picnic things into her backpack.

  “Anyway, you don’t know the first thing about maps, do you?” Anna said. “I mean, people study for years to be cartographers. A cousin of my father was a cartographer. It’s an incredibly skilled profession.”

  “Why are you being so weird about this?”

  “I’m not, Rob. I’m just asking.”

  “Nothing’s changed, Anna.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m still coming to London, if that’s what this is really about.”

  She snorted a little. “It’s not about that. It’s nothing to do with that.”

  “So why does it bother you so much?”

  She didn’t answer, continued packing away the picnic things. I knew why it bothered her. It was my plan to go it alone. She saw it as a risk, a deviation from the proper course. To her mind, I should be applying for a job, with benefits and a pension plan. That, after all, was why we had gone to Cambridge, why we had studied so hard.

  “You’re exasperating sometimes,” she said, staring out across the river. “You’re always so absolutely certain you’ll get what you want.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?”

  “Because it doesn’t always work like that.”

  “It has so far.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, everything I’ve worked for, I’ve got so far.”

  I knew I sounded arrogant, but I felt under attack. Anna turned away angrily and smoothed down her skirt. “Well, as long as you know what you’re doing.”

  “Why does it bother you so much?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Yes, it does. You’re pissed off now.”

  She reached across me and poured herself some wine. “It just seems impulsive, as if you haven’t thought it through. You’ve just graduated at the top of your class, Rob, companies would be begging to employ you, but you want to do this thing with maps.”

  “Right, because I think I can make it work. And besides, I don’t want to work for a company.”

  Anna exhaled deeply. “Yes, you’ve made that quite clear,” she said.

  We had reached an impasse, and we both sat and watched the punters on the Cam. Apart from a few minor squabbles, it was the first argument we had ever had.

  “It is about that,” Anna said after a while, her voice barely audible.

  “About what?”

  “What I said earlier. I said it wasn’t about London, but it is. I just want to know you’re coming.”

  I looked at her. She was so beautiful, her knees chastely tucked up to her chest, her hair peppered with tiny dandelion seeds.

  “Of course I’m coming to London,” I said, moving close to her. “But there is one thing.”

  “What?”

  “I want us to live together. I know it’s not been long, but I want to live with you.”

  2

  “Anna, can you talk, you’re not gonna fucking believe this.” I was standing outside a meeting room in an office on Old Street.

  “Is everything all right?” she said.

  I was trying to keep my voice down as the corridor walls were thin. “They want it. The software. They want to buy the fucking software.”

  A pause, a faint crackle on the line.

  “This isn’t one of your jokes, is it, Rob?” Anna said.

  “No, not at all. I can’t talk for long, but they’re in the room now, looking at the papers. I didn’t even have to pitch it. They just want it. They get it.”

  The company, Simtech, had been recommended by a programmer friend. A start-up run by someone called Scott, who had been a few years ahead of me at Cambridge.

  “That’s absolutely fantastic, Rob. Brilliant news,” she said, but it was as if she was waiting for me to tell her something else.

  “And guess how much they want to pay for it?”

  “I don’t know, um...”

  “One and a half million.”

  Even Anna couldn’t contain her excitement. “As in sterling?”

  “Yes, pounds. I still can’t believe it.”

  Anna took a deep breath, and I could hear a shuffling sound, what sounded like her blowing her nose.

  “Anna, are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she said, sniffing a little. “I just... I just don’t know what to say...”

  “I know, me too. We have to celebrate tonight.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, a note of caution in her voice. “I don’t understand, though. So what actually happened? What did they...”

  I could hear the scraping of chairs on the floor of the meeting room, the sound of people standing up.

  “Anna, I’ve got to go, I’ll call you in a bit...”

  “Okay,” she said, “but don’t do anything hasty, Rob. Don’t sign anything, okay? Say you need to discuss everything with your lawyers.”

  “Yeah, yeah... I’ve got...”

  “I’m serious, Rob...”

  “Okay, okay, don’t worry. I’ll call you later...”

  * * *

  The grimy heat hit me as soon as I left the building. For a moment, I just stood, blinking into the sunlight, watching the lanes of traffic hurtle around the roundabout, the happy, dirty din of London.

  The last nine months hadn’t been easy. Living in Clapham in a rented ground-floor flat that Anna paid for. While I worked late through the night—caffeine-fueled coding binges—Anna got up early for work. We didn’t see much of each other, a wave in our bathrobes on the landing—her getting up, me turning in. It was just for a while, we agreed. It would be better when her training period was over, when I had finished writing my software.

  Anna loved her job, working in a department that audited the bank’s adherence to financial regulations. It was perfect for her: a stickler for the rules, she knew where the bank could trip up. And because she knew the rules, she also knew how to get around them, the legal shortcuts and back doors, the get-out clauses that lurked in the small print. Her talents were recognized, and s
he was promoted and fast-tracked for management in just her first six months.

  I was still buzzing and didn’t know what to do with myself, so I started walking toward Liverpool Street, the skyscrapers eclipsing the sun. I tried to call Anna but her phone was switched off, so I ducked into a pub for a beer.

  I knew I was right. All those twenty-and thirty-hour coding sessions, sleeping under an old blanket on the floor. I told people smartphones would change everything, and they rolled their eyes. But it was true. Maps used to be static, something we kept folded up in a backpack, or in the glove compartment of the car. Now they would always be with us, customized, dynamic, on our phones, in our pockets.

  The beer began to have a calming effect, and it felt like a great weight had been lifted. It hadn’t been the plan—Anna paying the rent and lending me the money to buy a new suit. She didn’t say it outright, but I knew what she thought. That I should do a business course, an internship at a gaming company, that I should put my silly maps idea on the back burner for now.

  It grated. Because everyone always thought that it would be me, that I would be the precocious wunderkind dripping in cash. Because I had a track record. I told people I would graduate at the top of my class—and I did. I told my disbelieving tutors I would win the annual Cambridge hacking competition—and I did, every year. But London hadn’t been like that. While Anna flew off to Geneva every two weeks for work, I sat on the sofa in my boxer shorts watching Countryfile and eating leftover rice from Chicken King.

  My phone rang. It was Anna.

  “Hello.”

  “You’re in a pub, aren’t you?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “I had training and I’ve finished early. Do you want to come and meet me at Liverpool Street?”

  * * *

  It was a bustling Thursday night. The streets were packed with commuters in suits, and you could hear the buzz of the workweek coming to an end. I got to the pub before Anna and stood in the crowd of people waiting for a drink.

  I saw her walk in. Even though we had lived in London for nine months, I had never seen her on her territory and it made me fall in love with her all over again: the cautious way she approached the bar; the calculations I knew she was making about the best place to stand; the way she fiddled with her new work glasses, which she said made her look like a secretary in a porno movie.

  “Hello,” I said, and she turned around and smiled. For a moment, I thought she was going to hug me, but she just stared, intently, blinking as if the light was hurting her eyes.

  “I owe you an apology,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because sometimes I wasn’t that supportive, of your idea, your software, and I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not true, Anna, and you’ve essentially funded the whole thing by paying the rent...”

  “Yes, but that’s not what I mean. It’s a horrible thing to say, but I think I doubted you. I’m very sorry. I feel very ashamed about it.”

  She swallowed, and suddenly looked very sheepish. “It’s okay, Anna,” I said, putting my arm around her waist. “I understand that sometimes it’s difficult to recognize genius.”

  She poked me in the ribs and removed my arm from around her waist. “Don’t get cocky. Wait, what on earth am I saying? You’re the cockiest man I’ve ever met.”

  “Harsh. Shall we get drinks?”

  Anna looked wistfully toward the bar. “I’m trying, although my plan of attack isn’t working.”

  Suddenly, she turned to me and awkwardly kissed me on the cheek. It was chaste, like the kiss you would give an elderly aunt, but for Anna a rare display of public affection. “I promised myself I won’t cry,” she said, “and I keep my promises, but I wanted to say how proud I am of you. Really, Rob. You’ve worked so hard, and you deserve all your success.”

  I was just about to say something when I saw Anna tighten the strap on her laptop bag. She nodded toward the bar. “Let’s go,” she said. “We have an opening.”

  * * *

  “Did you tell your dad?” Anna asked, after we had found a table and I had gone over everything that had happened at the meeting.

  “Over the moon, son. That’s footballer’s wages, that is,” I said, mimicking my dad’s East London vowels. “No, he was really pleased. You know how sentimental he gets.”

  I could tell Dad was trying not to cry when I told him. He was still at the taxi stand, waiting for a call out. “Fuck me, son,” he kept saying. “Fuck me.”

  When he had caught his breath, he told me how proud he was. “I still can’t believe it,” he said. “First Cambridge and now this. Taxi driver and a cleaner—no idea where you got it from, son.”

  * * *

  Anna took a notebook out of her bag. “I am very pleased of course, but I do have some questions.”

  “Uh-oh. You’ve made a list, haven’t you?”

  “Of course I have.” Anna flipped a page and I could see a numbered list in her improbably neat handwriting.

  “Oh my God, you really did.”

  She blushed a little. “It’s a big opportunity for you, Rob. I’m not going to let you waste it.”

  “It’s a big opportunity for us.”

  Anna fiddled with the salt shaker and took another sip of her drink. “Seriously, can we go down my list? I’m getting nervous now.”

  “We should order some champagne first.”

  Anna slowly and demonstrably shook her head.

  “What, really? C’mon, let’s celebrate.”

  “I’m not being a killjoy, Rob. It’s just that we’ll pay the absolute earth here.”

  “Jesus, Anna. I just made one-and-a-half-million pounds.”

  “I know and that’s good,” she said, hushing her voice in case anyone was listening. “It also brings me onto my first question.”

  “You’re so sexy in your new glasses,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Thank you. That’s very kind of you. But Rob. Please.” She wiped some dust off the page. “So will they pay you a salary?”

  “What?”

  “On top of the money, will they pay you a salary?”

  I thought back to the meeting. It was all a bit of a blur, but they did say something about a salary. “They will actually. They want me to run the company for them.”

  Anna beamed. “Oh, I’m so glad.”

  “Wait, you’re happier about that than what they paid for the software?”

  “Yes, I am in a way. You’ll think me strange, but yes, the regular income does mean more to me.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Anna suddenly looked very solemn, her client face. “Really, it does. Look, the windfall is great, but it’s just a pot that will keep getting smaller. Whereas your regular income is a pot that, over time, keeps getting bigger.”

  “That makes sense I suppose.”

  “One of the many benefits of having an accountant as a girlfriend,” Anna said, smiling and turning the page of her notebook. “Now, can I get through the rest of my list?”

  * * *

  There was a strange musty smell in Anna’s parents’ house: it reminded me of Werther’s Butterscotch or the jasmine-scented handkerchiefs old people put in their drawers.

  We sat and ate in near silence, just the doom-laden tick of the clock, the scratch of cutlery on bone china. The food was a turgid affair of frozen turkey, mushy overcooked vegetables, and a glass of sherry, which Anna said had been brought out in my honor.

  “And how is your father, Robert?” Anna’s father said, putting down his fork. He was wearing a suit, a gray three-piece that was worn and tattered around the edges.

  “He’s fine, thanks. Yeah, still driving his cab. Although his health isn’t so good at the moment. Problems with his diabetes.”

  Anna’s father didn’t say anything and looke
d down at his plate.

  For the last three Christmases we had been to my dad’s. For proximity, we told Anna’s parents. Romford was much closer and Dad was all on his own. But this year, out of Anna’s sense of duty more than anything else, we decided to stay with them in their little village on the Suffolk coast.

  “And will he be spending Christmas alone?”

  “Nah, he’s going round his best mate’s...best friend Steven’s for dinner.”

  “Is that Little Steve?” Anna said with a slight smirk. It amused her, she said, how I tried to sound refined around her parents.

  “Yep, Little Steve. He’ll be fine, though. He treated himself to a big flat-screen TV, and we got him a new Sky Sports subscription so, yeah, he’s like a pig in...” I nearly choked on my sprout. “So yeah, he’s really happy...”

  At the other end of the table, Anna stifled a laugh and took a dainty sip of sherry.

  “They’re expensive, aren’t they, those new televisions,” Anna’s mother said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. As always, she was dressed in her plaid two-piece, like a stern, passed-over governess. For some reason, she had served the food wearing rubber gloves and her hands underneath were a pale white, as if they had been scrubbed clean with a Brillo pad.

  “Oh, he’s paying in installments,” I said. “He got one of those zero percent interest deals for Christmas.”

  Silence. We all listened to the ticking clock, the wind and rain hammering on the windowpanes.

  “We’ve never been in debt, Janet, have we? Never had a mortgage or bought anything on credit. Africans can teach you a lot, in that regard.”

  I smiled politely. Well, I wanted to say, that’s because the church gave you the house and because you haven’t bought as much as a new shirt in thirty years.

  He had been brilliant once, Anna said. Mercurial. Daktari they called him in Swahili, the doctor. In the village, he was a priest first and a doctor second, but also an engineer, a judge, a mediator of disputes. In all of the villages they lived in across Kenya, he was treated like nobility.

  There had been troubles, though, Anna said. That was the word she used. Troubles. Affairs with the locals, the daughters of God. In the end, the church couldn’t turn a blind eye anymore and, very quietly, they asked the family to come home.