Hope

by Terry Tyler

  I read on.

  'A program employed by an anonymous source compared Widow Skanky's sentence and paragraph structure, word usage and patterns, with the work of over ten thousand writers, bloggers and journalists. The program identified Nick Freer as a ninety-five per cent probable match. No other individual came close; the nearest showed a likelihood of only thirty-eight per cent.'

  The article goes on to explain how such an investigation would be undertaken, and how these programs work, but I can't take the words in.

  For about ten seconds I ponder over whether to leave Nick in blissfully ignorant sleep, and let him find out when he wakes up, but no; I imagine Global Online will be trying to get in touch with him already.

  I throw on a sweatshirt over my pyjamas and pad down the stairs, quietly, though I don't know why; there's no one to hide from. I cross the living room, knock on Nick's bedroom door, and put my ear to it. There is no reply. Carefully, inch by inch, I open it.

  I expect to see him lying in bed snoring, his TV still on with the sound turned off, but he's awake, hunched up in the bed amongst the tangle of creased sheet and duvet, staring at his phone.

  Our eyes meet; he just looks tired.

  "Global," he says, waggling his phone at me. "They called ten minutes ago."

  "Shit. Oh shit, Nick, I'm so sorry." I plonk myself down on the bed. "What did they say?"

  "Not a lot." He yawns, chucks his phone towards the end of the bed, and lies back, stretching. "They just wanted confirmation, before they told me to fuck off."

  "Did you give it to them?"

  "Yeah. I couldn't see the point of lying. They'd have told me to fuck off anyway. Even if it wasn't true, everyone would think it is." He wrinkles his nose, sniffs. "I thought they might have seen the funny side, even congratulated me, but they didn't. Anyway, I've asked them not to make a big deal out of it, and they've complied with that."

  "How do you mean?"

  "They're just going to print a small paragraph saying that Nick Freer will no longer be writing for Global because his private online activity, about which they knew nothing until today, is incompatible with the culture of the site, or some such bollocks, and that they will not be answering questions on the matter. Nick Freer officially no longer exists."

  "It's just a blip, you'll be able to get something else―"

  "Don't do the 'you'll be fine' crap with me, Lita; you know I hate that shit as much as you do. No, I won't be able to get anything that actually fucking pays, because I've been revealed as Widow Skanky. That's all over, too; the fun was in nobody knowing who I was. I might as well use an avatar of my own stupid face instead of the Widow."

  "But you're clever, you know how to do all this hiding your IP stuff―can't you pretend to be someone else and submit material to other sites?"

  "No, because without telling them I'm Nick Freer, I have no cred; I'll just be another schmuck amateur trying to get column space. But if I say I'm Nick Freer, aka Widow Skanky, no one will touch me, because I've been taking the piss out of the Morrisseys and Nutricorp for the past two years, and Nutricorp now owns most of the fucking country." He stares up at the ceiling and blows a raspberry. "Fuck it. I had four pieces all ready to send in today, for which I would have been paid immediately and handsomely. You know what this means, don't you?"

  I do. We have no money coming in.

  We're officially up shit creek.

  The October rent is due on Saturday. Today is Monday. We have five days to find fourteen hundred quid. And the bills are due.

  I just saw the paddles floating down the river, too.

  Between us, we can only scrape together five hundred and sixty-three pounds. That's with every last quid that Kendall can get on a credit card (Nick and I don't have any), and even the kitty we keep for basics like bread and toilet roll.

  Working on the theory that it's best to be honest in the hope that you can work something out, I call the landlord.

  I am so sure, because he's basically an okay guy, that he will say yes, just this once, as we are such good tenants we can delay the month's rent, but even though I make wild promises about paying extra each month from November onwards to make up the shortfall, he won't be moved.

  "Sorry, love, no can do. The flat's a prime piece of rental in a great location; I can put it on with the agent tomorrow and have a full month in advance plus a sizeable deposit in my pocket by Friday."

  I beg, I plead, but it's no good. He's got bills to pay too, he says. Daughter at bloody private school, carpenters sending him red reminders, and the wife's car's going to cost a bomb. Eventually―because, I think, he can hear how upset I am―he says that he will give us until next Monday night.

  "To be honest, though, love, I'm a bit concerned. I thought you all had regular money coming in? What about this guarantor of yours, can't she help?"

  Esme? No way. Both our circumstances have changed out of all recognition since she signed the lease.

  However much I lie about temporary blips, I know he can hear the panic in my voice.

  "I'm afraid if you're not in a position to pay, and to keep on paying, I'm going to have to put it on with the agent next Tuesday, which means I'll need you out by next Wednesday: as per the Rented Properties Reform Act of 2026, subsection 2B, I am within my rights to do this. Sorry Lita, but I can't show new tenants around with other folks' mess cluttering up the place, can I?"

  There was me, thinking I’d got such a good deal when Esme persuaded him to waive the usual month’s rent in advance. Fellow local business owners helping each other out. I never thought it might come back to bite me on the arse.

  Without that month’s cushion, we have eight days.

  Surely we can find eight hundred and forty pounds from somewhere, in eight days?

  Much though I hate doing so, I phone Esme.

  A bad move.

  She takes ages to pick up the phone, and she sounds upset.

  She hardly even asks how I am before launching into her own catalogue of woe.

  "It's been so difficult over the past couple of months; I know we have to tighten our belts now that Aduki's gone, but Bob opened one of my credit card bills and went barmy at me, then I got angry because he'd opened my private mail, and it all got stupidly heated, you know how that happens―we both said too much, and now he's saying that we can't afford to keep Tilly at college, but I don't want her to start taking out more loans, and―"

  I can't do it. Even though I know she would probably get it for me on a credit card, I can't borrow money from a friend if I have no way of paying it back.

  I try the bank, and receive a frosty reception; some young girl who looks about eighteen and probably spends all her disposable income on hair extensions, points out that deposits into my account have 'shown a sharp decline'.

  "I know. If they hadn't, I wouldn't be here asking for a loan."

  "I'm afraid we can't offer a loan if you're not showing a healthy regular income."

  "If I had a healthy regular income I wouldn't need to borrow money."

  Etc. etc. etc.

  Nick suggests I ask Brody.

  "No way! He's not my 'partner'; he doesn't have any responsibility towards me."

  "Yeah, but he cares for you."

  "No. No way on earth. I don't even know if he has spare cash; he probably lives month-to-month and is overdrawn by payday, like most people."

  Kendall asks the mother who claimed she was so keen to have her beloved daughter back under her roof. She laughs in her face.

  She does, however, borrow a hundred from her friend, Sienna. Nick's mum gives him two hundred. He rings up a few old mates who might have some cash-in-hand labouring work; there is nothing. Wrong time of year, they say.

  Kendall tries for a Hardship Loan. I go with her; we wait in a huge, jam-packed room for over four hours to be told she doesn't qualify.

  "I can find you a place in a hostel by next week, for which the DSC would cover the cost, but your friends would need to apply
individually. We're not going to finance a fourteen hundred a month flat, either in benefits or loans."

  She gives her a leaflet about Hope Villages, its cover showing smiling Beckys and Duncans inviting her to 'join our happy community'.

  It's pissing down with rain when I turn up for my Saturday on the vegan market stall. Customers are scarce, and I can see the disappointment on Cathy's face when she returns at lunchtime and I give her the morning's takings.

  "To be honest, there's not much point in you sticking around all afternoon. Is it okay if I just pay you for the four hours?"

  Well, it's another twenty-eight pounds. She rounds it up to thirty and throws in a bag of lentils.

  Back home, Nick's playing Red Dead Redemption Six in the living room, and Kendall is curled up next to him in her pyjamas, staring at the screen.

  I dump my coat and bag, and flop down on his other side. I totally get the video game thing; why not lose yourself in another world for several hours at a time? We sit there for ten minutes without speaking, then Nick lets out a huge sigh, saves the game, and says, "Where are we at, then?"

  "We still need five hundred and twenty quid. Have we done the back of the sofa yet?"

  Kendall phones her old Zest mate Suze, who says she can lend her a hundred, no problem.

  This tiny triumph puts a huge smile on her face. "Four hundred and twenty, and going down. Another four of those, and we're good!"

  She scrolls down her contacts, calling out the names of people she can try, and all three of us are feeling just a tiny little bit better, when she stops, and puts her phone down.

  "We can't do this."

  Nick picks up the phone and hands it back to her. "Yes, we can. Get calling."

  She stares at it. "We can't. 'Cause we can't pay it back. I've been a rubbish friend to most people I used to hang around with since I've lived here, so how can I ring them up and say, hey, sorry I've blanked you for the past two years, but please can you lend me a hundred quid? Even if they do take pity on me, my name's going to be mud if it gets around that I'm ringing everyone up to borrow money."

  Nick flops back. "I don't give a shit. I just want to keep this place. Next month, we'll work something else out. We could all have jobs by then. Fuck it, we'll do what needs to be done." I feel the same, but deep down I know Kendall's right.

  "I'm not doing it," Kendall says. "I can't. It's―it's shameful."

  It is. It's worse than doing a GoFundMe. Which Nick suggests, but neither I nor Kendall will demean ourselves.

  "I think we're going to have to face the fact that it's over," I say, in the end. Neither of them react. We're all silent, lost in our own thoughts.

  Nick gets up to make tea, and when he comes back he asks me to speak to Brody, to see if he can find us some emergency housing, any old crummy bedsit, but I can't do that, either. I'd rather disappear from Brody's life than be a burden on him.

  None of us wants to say those two words. Hope Village.

  We huddle together for the rest of the afternoon and evening, watching TV. Nick puts an arm around both of us while we watch a heart-rending film about mixed race Aboriginal children being taken from their mothers in the 1930s. Rabbit-Proof Fence; watch it.

  Kendall says, "And we think we have it bad."

  I know what she means, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

  I feel as if I would do anything to keep our home, but there's nothing I can do. Four hundred and twenty pounds, that's all we need. So little money, but it might as well be forty thousand if you haven't got it.

  On Monday morning I phone the landlord to tell him that we don't have the money, and he apologises, but says he can only extend our residency until the end of the week; he'd like us out on Friday.

  "Our contract says a week's notice," I remind him.

  "Yes, and I gave you that notice last Monday. I'm actually giving you nearly a week rent free."

  Yeah. He is.

  "When will I get my deposit back?"

  "When I've inspected it. And don't forget your final readings; the electric and gas is due, isn't it? Shall we see how much the bills are before we talk about returned deposits? Because, to be honest, if you're so broke you can't afford a month's rent between you, me sending you final bills for prompt payment isn't looking too hopeful, is it?"

  Seems logical. The deposit was only five hundred pounds, and I know too much about landlords claiming excessive wear and tear to expect much of it back, bills notwithstanding.

  Any other problems we've had in the last few months seem trivial now. We're going to lose our home, and not just any home; for all three of us, it's everything. Our little haven of security, against the dark outside. Where we cosy up and watch the country's troubles on our screens, not worrying too much because we're safe in our own little world.

  Now our front door is thrown open, and the country's troubles have found us.

  Nick keeps singing that old song by The Verve. Something about life being about trying to find some money to make ends meet, then you die. Great.

  Everyone needs it to be about more than that, don't they? It has to be, or it's not worth it.

  It will be again. It must be.

  Kendall gets onto some bedsitter rental sites, and rings up a few, the idea being that she will take on a tenancy and we will all stay there. All want proof of salary or full WRC entitlement. The irony is that we could make the deposit for some of them.

  We try hotels in other areas that provide accommodation with a job, and are told that half the country is on the waiting list.

  Nick disappears, and comes back a couple of hours later with the news that his mother will put us up for a few weeks, until we can find something else.

  In her one-bedroomed flat, currently shared with her new boyfriend.

  "One of us will get the sofa and the other two will have to sleep on the floor, but it's better than nothing, isn't it?"

  It is; we will take turns on the sofa.

  Right. Good. So we're not homeless. Not quite.

  Sienna very kindly offers to store all the stuff we can't carry in one small backpack and holdall each, in her garage; Nick's mum has made clear that there is no room for anything other than necessities. Sienna's boyfriend, Archie, will collect it on Friday night. We're to pay him a hundred and fifty.

  "I thought he might do it for nothing, 'cause you're my BFF, but Arch can be a bit funny like that."

  I assure her that we wouldn't dream of not paying him for his time and trouble; some standards must remain, at least.

  We're surprised to find that none of us own anything we care about that much; it's mostly duvets, pillows and kitchenware, mirrors and general household stuff. Apart from Nick's TVs and Xbox. I'm tempted to give it all to charity, but Kendall says that we'll need it again when we find a new flat.

  Whenever that might be.

  I didn't realise life could suddenly turn, like this. Even though I am eons away from the MoMo philosophy of 'only the strongest deserve to survive', I've always thought that if you were prepared to use your wits, you'd make it through.

  But I see, now. If you go against or won't play along with 'the system', you're not allowed to live. You're cast out, into the wilderness.

  When I walked past those queues outside the food banks, I never thought for one moment that I might need to join one. Because I was clever. I'd recognised the money to be made in the online economy if you used your talents and played it well. I thought that no matter how many industries became automated, how many jobs disappeared, I'd keep myself afloat.

  I thought all those people in Hope must have given up too easily, and allowed life to beat them down instead of grabbing it by the nutsack and telling it who was boss.

  Now, though, I understand.

  There simply isn't enough room in GuyMo's Britain for everyone who wants to be here, and if you won't tug your forelock and click 'I accept', you're out.

  18

  Four Walls and a Roof

  Archie ha
s taken our boxes and bags, and Nick and Kendall wait for me downstairs. I sit on the bare mattress of my lovely bed, and stare at my desk. Except it's not my desk any more. Someone else will sit here and look out on my trees next spring. I feel empty. It's like a bad dream. I want to refuse to move, to cry and scream that this is my home, and I'm going nowhere.

  There was a foster family I stayed with, when I was about thirteen. I was leaving them, because the family was moving up north; the husband had got a big promotion.

  I remember helping the mother pack up boxes, and feeling embarrassed when she burst into tears. I didn't know what to say; I was a kid, I wasn't good at that stuff. I watched her sobbing as though her heart would break, as she wrapped ornaments in tissue.

  "It's my home," she kept saying. "We're so happy here, it's not worth losing because of some stupid job. I don't care about the extra money, I just want to stay here. I can't bear it!"

  At the time, I thought she was pathetic. It was only four walls and a roof; who gave a shit which ones? And she was lucky; she had her own front door and a beautiful garden, and she would have an even better one in the house they were going to.

  I get it, now. I feel as she did.

  I go downstairs and see Nick slumped on the sofa, staring at the space where his TV used to be. I hear crying from Kendall's room, but I can't bear to go in and comfort her, because no words will make any of us feel better.

  More for something to do than anything else, I take out my phone and scroll though the news feed on Twitter.

  I can't help clicking onto one article, even though I know it will wind me up.

  MoMo:

  'It's not the 1970s any more, when workers could hold the country to ransom with strike action. You don't think you're earning enough? Fine, let someone else have your job. It's not the 1990s, when women could leech funds from the state with each careless pregnancy, or the first two decades of this century, when every special snowflake thought they had the right to live as they saw fit. It's not okay to eat yourself into obesity, to fall into addictions, to give anything but your absolute best at school, college and work. This is the dawn of a new age. Your job's disappeared? Train for a new one. You've failed a medical? Get yourself fit for work―you have no excuse not to. You contribute, you earn your keep―or you sink. Your life, your choice.'