Four metres of wet tile, and he took them slowly, and about halfway across he understood that he had no plan at all for what happened when he got there.
Ttk. Ttk. Water off his hair, onto the floor, marking every step.
The blue panel came with him.
It had followed his head when he turned it, and it followed him now, hanging about forty centimetres in front of his face, over the top of her, and he could read every word of it while he walked.
[QUEST: GIVE HER WHAT SHE CAME IN HERE FOR (0/1)]
Who are you?
Reece Angell.
And what does Reece Angell do?
He had been saying that to himself since a coach at Schalke made him do keepy-uppies in front of the first team as a joke when he was seventeen.
It had held him together in a tunnel at Signal Iduna Park with eighty thousand people in the ground. It was doing nothing for him at all.
Marcel Weiss had seen things.
Marcel had been nineteen and in the same age group, and it started with lights at the edge of his vision in November, and by April he was in a bed in Essen with a shaved head and a line of staples in it.
Angell had gone twice. The second time, Marcel had been very polite and asked him who he was.
He stopped a metre short of her and put his hand over his right eye.
The panel stayed.
He covered his left. It stayed. He shut both and counted to three and opened them, and it had not moved a millimetre, and the girl on the floor underneath it had not looked up, because there was nothing above her head to look at.
Ka-thunk. Ka-thunk. Ka-thunk.
Next door the machine went into its spin and started walking on the tiles, and it was the only sound in the building.
"Hey," he said.
"...Yes?"
It came out about the size of a coin.
She had her leggings back up over her hips and her arms folded across her knees, and her face was scarlet all the way up from her throat, and she was looking at a point on the floor about a foot to the left of his ankle.
Right. The head is a Monday problem. There is a twenty-year-old on the floor who works here.
"It went in the wash and came out, and you were checking it," he said. "That's what happened."
Nothing.
"That's what happened," he said again. "Say that."
Ellie looked at the shirt on the floor by her hip. She did not pick it up.
"No," she said.
"Sorry?"
"...I can't."
"You can. It's easy. It went in the wash, and you were checking it."
"I can't." She got about half a breath in. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
"Don't apologise."
"I'm sorry."
He crouched down, because standing over her had stopped being possible about thirty seconds ago, and the moment he did it he wished he had not, because now he could hear her breathing.
"Listen," he said.
"Nobody's in the building. Denise went at half six. There's two stewards, and they're both up at the turnstiles. The cameras are on the tunnel and the car park and the away end, and there has never been one in this room."
She stared at him. Nothing came out.
"I'm not telling anybody. Not tonight. Not in June when they let me go. Not ever." He got the towel round his waist, one-handed, badly.
"So get your coat and go home, and on Monday I'll say alright to you in the corridor like I always do, and that will be the end of it."
She did not move.
"Ellie."
Her head came up.
"You know my name."
He had known her name for about ninety seconds, and he was not going to be able to explain how, so he did not try.
"Get your coat," he said.
She looked at him for the first time since the door opened. Her eyes were wet and her chin was trembling, and she still did not move.
"Are you going to make me say it?" she said.
"I'm not making you do anything. That's the entire point of the last two minutes."
"...Right."
"Do you want to go home?"
"No."
That was the whole answer. One word, flat, and then her mouth shut hard.
He waited. Klunk.
Next door the machine came off its spin and slowed and stopped, and after that there was nothing in that building making a noise except the two of them.
"Then say what you do want."
Her hands were shaking. She put them flat on the tile either side of her to stop it, and it did not work.
"I can't say it."
"Alright."
"I've thought about it about a thousand times, and I still can't do it."
"Then don't."
She reached out and took hold of his wrist.
That was all she did. Both hands, round his forearm, and she pulled it about fifteen centimetres towards herself and stopped, and looked at the floor again, and went on holding on.
"Right," Angell said.
His own voice sounded a long way off.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Because I'll stand up and walk out of here now, and neither of us will ever mention it again."
"Yes," Ellie said.
"Have you done this before?"
"No."
"Right."
"Never." Her thumb was moving on his wrist, back and forth, and she did not appear to know she was doing it. "Not with anybody. Not ever. Not even nearly." She stopped. "I'm sorry."
"Stop saying sorry."
"Sorry."
He sat back on his heels and looked at the ceiling for a second, and then said it, because she was going to find out inside five minutes anyway, and he would rather she found out from him.
"I've not done it either."
Her head came up.
"What?"
"Never done it. Not once."
"You're joking."
"I'm really not."
"You played in the Bundesliga."
"I went at sixteen. I lived on my own in a flat in Gelsenkirchen, and I couldn't speak the language for a year. Then I was eighteen, and everybody wanted me for about six months, and I was too frightened to do anything about it. Then I was nineteen with a broken ankle, and nobody wanted anything."
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Then I was twenty, and the thing happened, and after that nobody in Germany would have crossed a road for me."
She was staring at him.
"So, no," he said.
"You're twenty-two."
"I'm aware how old I am."
And then she laughed.
It got out before she could stop it, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, and her shoulders went, and after about two seconds he found he was doing it as well, and something in that room dropped by about a foot.
"Sorry," she said into her hand.
"Don't."
"I'm not laughing at you."
"I know."
"It's just that I've thought about this every day since July, and you were never frightened in a single one of them."
"I'm not frightened."
"You've gone grey."
"That's the headache."
She let go of his wrist and wiped her face with the back of her hand, and looked at him properly, and stopped looking like she was going to be sick.
"Come here, then," she said.