"I'm not here to argue about a clip," Blake said. "The clip is what it is, and people can slow it down and do their little circles and arrows, that's the internet, I don't care. I'm here because I have a record, and a record is a thing I've built since I was nineteen, and right now the top result when you type my name is seven seconds and a lady with a mop, and I can't go into my next camp with that sitting there unexplained. So. I want a formal rematch exhibition. Here, or at the arena, I don't care. Full rules, my rules, announced properly, weighed in, Sam refereeing since you trust him, doctor present, the whole card, and we settle what actually happens when both of us know what's coming and both of us have prepared. No demos. No surprises. No gi, either, no handles. Real conditions." He looked at her directly for the first time. "You beat me fair on the night, Dee, I'm not saying you didn't — Eddie, I am saying it — but you beat a man who was doing a favour in the wrong sport with one hand out for the cameras. If you can beat the other one, the one who shows up ready, then I'll say so on any microphone they put in front of me. And if you can't, then the seven seconds goes back to being what it was. A demo that got away from everybody."
Simon, behind his desk, turned both hands up in a gesture that managed to be at once an appeal and a surrender. "Ticketed," he said. "Sponsors are firm. There's good money in it for you, Dee. Real money. I checked whether I was allowed to say the number and I am allowed to say the number."
"I'm not a fighter any more," Dee said. "I was barely a fighter when I was a fighter. I was a judoka. That's a person who does judo. I left when I was twenty-six and I have been a lot of things since that are more use. I clean this building. I have cleaned it for three years. I am very good at it, and it is enough job for one person, and I am not going to turn myself into a poster so that Blake's search results come out right."
"It isn't about the search results," Blake said, through his teeth.
"No," Dee agreed, standing up, because she had floors and because the office was small and the flowers, which nobody had thrown away, were on the filing cabinet behind Simon's head, opening wider every day, entirely indifferent. "It's about a clock. And I already know what the clock says. It says seven seconds, and it says he tapped, and it says I let go. The rest is yours to carry, Blake. Not mine. No. My answer is no."
She said it once more, to Simon, in the corridor, in case the building had missed it, and she went home in the dark at the end of her shift with the word sitting in the car beside her like a passenger she was not entirely sure she had invited.
At home the kettle was where the kettle always was. Her uniform for the day shift, which she was covering on Saturday, hung over a chair. Carla arrived at eight with a bag of groceries she had not been asked to bring and a nurse's instinct for a kitchen that needed occupying, and she cooked while Dee sat at the table with her hands round a mug, and for a long while neither of them discussed it at all, which was the family's oldest and best technique. They discussed the boiler. They discussed Carla's car. They discussed a cousin's baby, who was reportedly enormous.
Then Carla put the pan down, and turned round, and leaned against the counter with her arms folded in a posture Dee recognised from the mirror.
"I've been thinking about it at work," Carla said. "All week. Mr. Whitaker on four has an opinion, by the way, he's for the rematch, he says a woman should finish what she starts. But I keep coming back to something. You keep telling everyone what it isn't. It isn't a fight, it isn't your job, it isn't about the clock, it isn't about his record. Simon asked you, and Blake asked you, and I bet Yusuf hasn't asked you, because Yusuf never asks anybody anything, he just waits until people hear themselves. So I'm asking." She unfolded her arms and put both hands flat on the counter behind her, the way a person does when they intend to stay for the answer. "Not what Simon wants. Not what Blake needs to fix. Not what the internet's decided you are. What do you actually want, Mom? If nobody was watching, and there was no clock, and the mat was just the mat — what do you actually want?"