Fall From Grace (11 page)

‘I don’t regret one minute of the time we spent together, Paul, not one minute. I just couldn’t see a future for me with you. I’d have ended up hurting you sooner or later. Please try and understand that.’

‘Look Jake, what I can’t understand is why you let me worry all this time? Why couldn’t you have just come and told me it was all over?’

‘Because I was scared of facing you with it,’ Jake admitted. ‘I knew you’d have been able to tempt me into changing my mind’

‘I’d never have done that, Jake. I have some pride and self-respect. I’d never have tried to make you stay if you didn’t want to.’

Paul paused. It was the ultimate slap in the face. A man could wash another man’s clothes, cook his meals, make sure he was well looked after in the bedroom. But he couldn’t have babies for him. In the battle for a man’s love, that’s where women play their ace card.

‘That picture of you in your desert kit you sent me? It’s in a silver frame by my bed. I used to kiss that photo every night. Some nights I even went to sleep clutching it.’

‘I’m in security,’ Jake told him which was the truth but not the whole truth. ‘It pays better and we need the money. We’ve bought a little house on the edge of Burnley, a modern type place, you know, three bedrooms, a garden. We didn’t have much money left over after we’d paid for the wedding. Tiffany’s family don’t have any money and you know mine don’t so we had to sort it ourselves.’

SEVEN

Lorraine Cowley had a visit from her nephew Tyrone. He was twenty-four and had never worked since leaving school with no qualifications at the age of sixteen. It was a badge of honour amongst Lorraine and her friends while there were always immigrants to blame.

‘There’s nobody standing up for the likes of us, Tyrone,’ Lorraine asserted. We want money in our pockets and all they do is throw flaming courses at us and tell us we’ve got to prepare for work, whatever the fuck that means.’

‘It’s disgusting,’ Tyrone agreed. ‘They’re trying to tell me Dad that they might take his benefits away if he doesn’t turn up for some stupid interview at the job centre.’

‘I should hope he told them where to bloody go?’

‘Too right, Aunty Lorraine,’ said Tyrone, laughing. ‘You should’ve seen him. He gave them what for alright. He told them there was no point going to work for the crap wages they pay these days and he wasn’t going to pay Cameron’s taxes.’

‘And what I want to know is, how come they can carry on as they like whilst I get my benefits for Sam taken off me? Work that one out if you can.’

‘I can’t,’ said Tyrone. ‘No decent white English person could.’

‘And that’s it,’ said Lorraine, ‘decent white English people like us don’t get anything these days. We should be fighting back.’

‘Some of us have already started,’ said Tyrone. ‘Me and some of the lads started throwing stones at some of the Muslim kids who were walking home from school the other day. It wasn’t anything they’re not used to. I mean, they go in for stoning and all that out there. It was a right laugh.’

‘I’ll bet it was,’ said Lorraine, laughing along with her nephew. ‘And I say you did the right thing. They should be made to feel so unwelcome that they piss off out of it. Somebody should tell the same to that Paul fucking Foster as well. I’m forced to look after my granddaughter whilst her mother is at school. It’s all wrong. Our Anita thinks she can do some stupid job and get her own flat and everything. I’ve never heard anything like it in my life. Everything she needs is here with me. I’ll knock all these stupid ideas out of her if I have to, you mark my bloody word.’

‘Is our Sam at the same school now he’s in care?’

‘Search me,’ said Lorraine.

‘The reason I ask is that the Headmistress, that Price woman, says she’s clamping down on truancy and she’s threatening to take loads of parents to court if they don’t get their kids to school and that.’

‘Have you ever heard anything like it!’ Lorraine exclaimed. ‘She’s got no bloody right. She’s another one who fills our kids heads with ideas above their fucking station. Learning? What fucking good is that? Do you want another coffee?’

*

Lorraine had bitten almost all of her nails off, but she just kept on going. At this rate she’d have none left but she didn’t care. Her daughter Anita was being leaned on by that arsehole of a social worker, Paul Foster, who’d virtually forced her into taking a job at the centre he ran. It was so bloody typical of that sort to want to take a young mother away from her baby, but he even had an answer for that. There was a so-called children’s centre at this place where women from the estate could leave their kids whilst they went to work. He said it would do her and the baby good if she could take some steps towards supporting herself. He should be strung up for even suggesting it.

It was Paul Foster’s fault that she was now on the bus going to her mate Martha’s house on the Livermore estate just this side of Bolton. Foster was trying to set up a credit union on the Tatton and in the meantime had asked the police to patrol the streets for loan sharks. He had no flaming right! A credit union? More swanky rubbish he wanted to force on them but Lorraine wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of doing what he wanted her to do. She couldn’t go back to Glenn Barber for anymore money. She was too scared to even talk to him. That’s why she was going to get some money off another loan shark on another estate.

It was possible to buy a one-day pass for the local buses but Lorraine couldn’t be arsed. The driver had said that it would save her money especially as she’d told him she was going to go shopping in Manchester afterwards before going home to the Tatton. But she’d just told him to give her a single ticket to Harrison Road. She didn’t like to shell out all her money in one go even if it would end up saving her. She didn’t like to think that far ahead and she didn’t like anybody telling her what to do.

When she got there Martha made them both a coffee and the two of them sat in the living room drinking the coffee and smoking a cigarette each.

‘I wouldn’t mind but the social say that now our little Jim is at school I’ve got to think about getting a job,’ said Martha, all affronted. ‘Can you believe that? How can I get a job when my nerves are like they are?’

When the loan man arrived Lorraine got the shock of her life. It was Glenn Barber. He told Martha to leave them and she did as she was told, noting the look of terror on her friend’s face as she walked out of the room. There was another bloke with Barber whom she hadn’t seen before but who Barber kept referring to as Jake. Barber was in his usual long black leather coat with gloves to match. This Jake character was in a zipped up bomber jacket and jeans. He too was wearing black leather gloves.

‘Please, sir, I’m desperate!’ Lorraine begged, ‘I’ve lost all the benefits I got for my son and I didn’t know what else to do, sir, please! Please don’t hurt me, sir, please don’t hurt me!’

‘My network stretches far and wide, Lorraine,’ said Glenn in a quiet voice that terrified Lorraine even more. ‘Did you think you’d escape me by coming over here?’

‘I didn’t want to escape you, sir, I just needed some money!’ she wailed. Barber and the other bloke who answered to the name of Jake, towered above her making her feel the most vulnerable and petrified she’d ever felt. What were they going to do to her?

‘Well if you’d needed some money then why didn’t you just come to me?’ Barber wanted to know. ‘Do you really want to have to satisfy two paymasters? How stupid would that be, Lorraine? But then, you weren’t in the front of the queue when brains were handed out, were you. You’ve always known that a condition of your loan is that you don’t go anywhere else if you need any further funding. Now you’ve broken that condition, Lorraine, and you need to be punished. And that grieves my heart, Lorraine, because it means I’ve got to hurt you.’

Jake held Lorraine down whilst Martha came in with a steam iron that she plugged in and handed to Barber. She looked at Lorraine and for a moment their eyes met before Martha quickly looked away again.

Barber placed his hand over Lorraine’s mouth before lifting up the front of her sweater to expose the naked flesh of her stomach.

Lorraine was so frightened she couldn’t move or even make the most basic of protests over her predicament. All she’d come here for was a few quid to help her through. That’s all she needed. Just a few quid to help get her back on her feet after the benefits she’d received for Sam had been taken away now that he was in care. The rotten little bastard. He’d be alright now. He’d be with some do-good middle class family who’d never known what it is to suffer.

‘You can’t have any more money, Lorraine,’ said Barber, holding the iron in the air whilst it heated up. ‘Your existing debt is already sky high. You’ve no idea. You’ve no idea how to manage your money but you see, the thing is, Lorraine, I should applaud that. I should thank you for being so fucking stupid. But there are limits, Lorraine. There are limits to what even I can tolerate and I’ve reached the level of my tolerance. You thought you’d give your business to some other loan man. Well let me show you what I mean by the word disloyalty.’

Glenn Barber pressed the button which made the steam blast through the small holes on the iron’s stainless steel surface. Then he placed it down onto the skin of Lorraine’s stomach, branding her like some piece of cattle. She struggled, she cried, she looked like it had really hurt. Barber was pleased.

‘So don’t try and go behind my back again, Lorraine,’ said Barber after he’d put the iron down and watched as Lorraine bent over double in pain. ‘Otherwise, it might not be so easy for you next time. Now, you can have some money, Lorraine.’

Barber gripped her chin firmly. ‘That’s my business. But she won’t be home for her tea tonight and not again for some time. And if you open up your ugly little mouth to about it to anyone then I really will hurt you. Understand?’

*

Paul was woken up by a creaking sound coming from the stairs. He swallowed hard. He’d always dreaded a burglar getting in. He could’ve sworn he’d locked the doors. He went cold. He looked at the clock on his bedside table. It was just after half one. He picked up the phone and was about to call the police when his bedroom door opened and Jake came in. Paul sat bolt upright and exclaimed. ‘Fuck’s sake, you gave me a fright!’