TWENTY-SIX

‘Mmm. I just don’t like this place. The other people here . . . And the work is shit. But there’s not enough of the shit to go round, Bekka,’ Stephanie said into her phone, and then continued to gnaw at a fingernail.

‘Same all over, bab. If you can’t make a go of it down there, makes you wonder where’s any better for the rest of us, don’t it?’

‘It would only be for a while. Maybe a week, two at most. I’ve . . . I’ve just had a real setback. Please, Bekka.’

‘I’ll talk to Pete. It’s his place. He’s at football. I’ll ask him soon as he gets in. Will call you right away, yeah?’

‘Thanks.’

There was pause before Bekka said, ‘You OK, pet?’

The sympathetic concern in her friend’s voice introduced a tremor to Stephanie’s own. She moved the handset away from her face to swallow and regain control of herself. She wiped her eyes, swallowed. ‘Later then, yeah?’

‘You wouldn’t think about going back . . .’

‘Not Ryan.’ There were no bones holding her voice upright. She could barely hear herself and had to clear her throat again. ‘He’s seeing someone. Already asked.’

‘Yeah, I heard. Didn’t know whether you knew. But I meant, you know . . . Val? Home?’

‘Never.’

‘Just a thought if it’s that bad down there—’

‘I can’t. It’s Val’s house. I’m not eighteen any more. I have no rights there. Even if I wanted to go back she wouldn’t let me in. We really went at it that last time. Permanent damage.’ As Stephanie said this to her friend she wondered if she would soon have to beg her psychotic stepmother to give her shelter.

They said goodbye. Stephanie threw her phone onto the bed behind her. Three down, none to go. Joanie had been her first port of call. She was back with her mum and dad, sleeping in the spare room with twenty grand’s worth of debt from student loans. Philippa was three months pregnant – why hadn’t she told Stephanie before? – and staying with her boyfriend’s mum. Besides Bekka and her boyfriend, an Asda cashier and a tyre-fitter respectively, none of her friends or their partners had jobs, despite one degree and over ten good A Levels between them.

We are all, literally, in it together.

She’d also phoned all five temping agencies before they closed to see if they had any work for her. They had all said the same thing in the same voice: nothing’s come in yet. She’d even asked them to consider her for telesales, but they still offered nothing.

Stephanie grabbed her bag and phone and left the room she could not abide being inside any longer.