MORNING SERIAL
39
I NEED to start making money to leave, so I ask Efa if she can get me a job in The Home. She doesn’t see why not. But “It’s not nice work, you know, Iola,” she says, frowning.
“I know. I want a job anyway. Can you get me one?”
“I maybe could; they’re always looking for kids like you to do the bad shifts,” she says. “They won’t pay you much. Why d’you want it anyway?”
“To save up,” I say. I don’t tell her why. She looks at me a long while.
“It’s not such a bad idea,” she says, slowly.
On my first day at The Home, Efa walks me there. She walks me up to the door, like she used to at chapel, and then looks at the door, with that same dread, and leaves me to go in on my own. Her turned back is cold. A rejection.
I ring the bell, but no one comes. I ring again, no one answers. Is this what visitors have to do? Stand here on the step in the cold, waiting so someone lets them in to see their old Mum or Auntie?
I ring the bell one more time, and then try the handle.
It turns. The door clicks open. The porch is small. There are some plastic flowers, a visitors’ book. But I’m not a visitor, I’m staff. A worker. I open the heavy inner door.
There’s a young man with tattoos up his arms, vacuuming the blue carpet. He goes into one of the rooms with his whirring hoover, doesn’t even look up at me, as if it doesn’t matter who it is that has walked in off the street.
I walk into the hall, and stand in the middle for a second. One of the rooms has its door wide open, and there’s an old man in there, in just his underpants and a shirt, socks.
His back is curved like a swan’s neck.
He’s stood in front of his window, looking out, lost. I think of closing the door, so whoever comes in next doesn’t see his bare legs. I don’t close the door.
I take a step or two further into the hallway.
A lady comes out of the room next door, talking on her mobile phone.
CONTINUES TOMORROW