nose. She must control her rage, for her own sake, for Louise’s. She wants her to have as close to a normal life as possible, one with shades and contrast and variety, some optimism, hard won as that is.
The letter trembles in her hand as the tea steams on the counter in a shaft of sunlight through the window. She reads it again. She has been reported as a negligent or abusive carer and is to present herself and her son before a panel two-weeks from now to undergo assessment and possible sanctioning.
Unbelievable. First they remove any possibility of help or support, then prosecute you if you fail to meet some set of arbitrary standards.
She has Googled the three letter acronym on the letterhead and understands immediately, glancing through the discussion group on Resist: the company finds you negligent, the company fines and imposes a carer on you, it is part subsidised by the Government and the rest of the cost is to be met by the carer. She scans a linked article … Pilot schemes in the north-east … public services have been decimated … Joanna reported anonymously on a USG affiliated hotline after leaving her partner with ADS outside a supermarket for twenty three minutes … care monitoring imposed on her … unable to pay bill … converted into Give-back hours … partner taken into USG care facility, Joanna working in USG factory to pay for care costs. Accusations that USG’s care wardens are on a commission and target-based pay scale.
Once you are in the loop, they have got you for good. And they want you in there. That’s how they live.
She will fight it, of course, demand to know who this tipoff has come from, what evidence there is. She knows it’s another attempt to intimidate, pile on stress.
She is glad she has decided to go down and see Nick. He’s a decent guy, solid, dependable. She would just like to talk to someone, lie with someone she has no real history with, someone both familiar and anonymous, without expectations or presumptions.
She needs a little break, just an evening off, to recuperate, to pretend she is carefree. She won’t tell Louise, not about this new twist, this new strategy, this new assault on them. What time is it? Damn! She gulps down half her mug of tea and heads for the door patting all her pockets and double checking her bag, waving at Penny, smoking a fag in the window as she hurries past.
The first of the day’s noodl messages pings into her phone and she glances at it as she waits on the crowded platform for the delayed 8.02. Hargreaves again. She ignores it.
And throughout the day, more messages and missed calls from Alex Hargreaves. Eventually she relents, messages back. She doesn’t have much time, perhaps on Tuesday, early evening, they can have a coffee if he is willing to come over to Deptford. By now she just hopes that if she agrees to another meeting he will stop texting her all the time. She began to worry it was just her but Nick tells her he’s also receiving six, seven messages a day, many of which he finds impossible to understand.
He is willing to come over and so at 4.30 they meet in Kwofee. He seems a little different to the first time they met a fortnight or so ago, a little less polite, a little less polished, more intense, more ragged.
He tells her with a smile that he has had a lot of success tracking down Vernon’s work, packages arriving all the way from New Zealand. Yes, he has even managed to track down Sarah Peake.
So, Alex Hargreaves says. I just need your stuff now really Paula and –
Paula smiles, well, that might be tricky at the moment, she says, my daughter seems to have discovered it and taken an interest.
An interest, how so? He asks a little too rapidly, almost snaps back. Paula, he says, and she doesn’t like the patronising, chiding tone that has come into his voice and that he tries to moderate as the sentence progresses, everything needs to be brought together.
Well, she says.
An interest in what exactly?
The
The letter trembles in her hand as the tea steams on the counter in a shaft of sunlight through the window. She reads it again. She has been reported as a negligent or abusive carer and is to present herself and her son before a panel two-weeks from now to undergo assessment and possible sanctioning.
Unbelievable. First they remove any possibility of help or support, then prosecute you if you fail to meet some set of arbitrary standards.
She has Googled the three letter acronym on the letterhead and understands immediately, glancing through the discussion group on Resist: the company finds you negligent, the company fines and imposes a carer on you, it is part subsidised by the Government and the rest of the cost is to be met by the carer. She scans a linked article … Pilot schemes in the north-east … public services have been decimated … Joanna reported anonymously on a USG affiliated hotline after leaving her partner with ADS outside a supermarket for twenty three minutes … care monitoring imposed on her … unable to pay bill … converted into Give-back hours … partner taken into USG care facility, Joanna working in USG factory to pay for care costs. Accusations that USG’s care wardens are on a commission and target-based pay scale.
Once you are in the loop, they have got you for good. And they want you in there. That’s how they live.
She will fight it, of course, demand to know who this tipoff has come from, what evidence there is. She knows it’s another attempt to intimidate, pile on stress.
She is glad she has decided to go down and see Nick. He’s a decent guy, solid, dependable. She would just like to talk to someone, lie with someone she has no real history with, someone both familiar and anonymous, without expectations or presumptions.
She needs a little break, just an evening off, to recuperate, to pretend she is carefree. She won’t tell Louise, not about this new twist, this new strategy, this new assault on them. What time is it? Damn! She gulps down half her mug of tea and heads for the door patting all her pockets and double checking her bag, waving at Penny, smoking a fag in the window as she hurries past.
The first of the day’s noodl messages pings into her phone and she glances at it as she waits on the crowded platform for the delayed 8.02. Hargreaves again. She ignores it.
And throughout the day, more messages and missed calls from Alex Hargreaves. Eventually she relents, messages back. She doesn’t have much time, perhaps on Tuesday, early evening, they can have a coffee if he is willing to come over to Deptford. By now she just hopes that if she agrees to another meeting he will stop texting her all the time. She began to worry it was just her but Nick tells her he’s also receiving six, seven messages a day, many of which he finds impossible to understand.
He is willing to come over and so at 4.30 they meet in Kwofee. He seems a little different to the first time they met a fortnight or so ago, a little less polite, a little less polished, more intense, more ragged.
He tells her with a smile that he has had a lot of success tracking down Vernon’s work, packages arriving all the way from New Zealand. Yes, he has even managed to track down Sarah Peake.
So, Alex Hargreaves says. I just need your stuff now really Paula and –
Paula smiles, well, that might be tricky at the moment, she says, my daughter seems to have discovered it and taken an interest.
An interest, how so? He asks a little too rapidly, almost snaps back. Paula, he says, and she doesn’t like the patronising, chiding tone that has come into his voice and that he tries to moderate as the sentence progresses, everything needs to be brought together.
Well, she says.
An interest in what exactly?
The
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