Things you only know if… you’re a single mum on the poverty line

in the summer of 2017, I became homeless. At the time, I was in an abusive relationship and had been secretly saving so that my six-year-old daughter and I could make a safe escape, but my ex-boyfriend found the money and held us hostage. The police arrested him but he wasn’t charged, so we were moved to a safe house on the other side of London, in Ladbroke Grove.

In an instant, we lost autonomy over our lives. We were assigned a support worker, we were handed clear plastic bags filled with basic toiletries, we were given a social worker, a counsellor and a safe-house buddy – a refuge woman who has served more time than you. Homelessness, I found, is a lot like prison, only you don’t have a release date. Sure, we could come and go as we pleased, but we weren’t allowed visitors or able to reveal to friends which part of London we were living in. When the support workers took us out on day trips, they never let us out of their sight. This was to ensure our safety, but it bugged me that despite leaving the abuse behind, I still wasn’t completely free. Still, I did as I was told: filled out the housing benefit form, quit my job, discarded my SIM card and the friends that filled it and applied for a new school for my daughter.

I was on good terms with the other women in the refuge, but I neither sought nor offered friendship. During extreme stress, it’s like I have the ability to stop my heart beating. I become cold and feel nothing – except around my daughter. She’s the only person who gets to experience the real, loving, honest me. I’m not cruel, just cautious; time has taught me that when bad people spot a vulnerable woman navigating the world, they’ll find a way to abuse her. A solo mother like me can never truly let her barriers down, even around other women.

Meanwhile, I tried to normalise this experience to my daughter, but there is no way to make a situation like this normal to a young child, not least because the view from our refuge bunk bed looked out directly on the burnt shell of Grenfell Tower. My daughter made me pinkiepromise that we wouldn’t die like the poor people across the road. I told her we were safe – that this was a safe house. A few nights later, the ceiling collapsed on our heads. No one lost their life, but it wasn’t safe to retrieve our possessions from the condemned building. The council moved us into a B&B, and then another, and then another, and then into a temporary flat.

With only the clothes on our backs and having to survive on Universal Credit, I was given the address of a local clothing bank. They’re different to food banks. Food banks are filled with a sad bravado – like the invisible loudmouths drinking at a pub lock-in – but at the clothes bank you feel a subtle shame as you beg for clean underwear. My daughter, though, loved rifling through the donations and made the volunteers laugh as she starred in her own fashion show.

Then, as we were leaving with bin bags containing our wardrobe, a volunteer handed me a voucher from a high-end make-up brand. I fought to hold back the tears. I hadn’t worn make-up in months – you don’t have much time or money to spend on your appearance when you’re fighting to survive. We ran to the shop, where the woman behind the counter put expensive products on my face before I handed over the voucher to buy a £35 foundation and a £15 lipstick. Wrapping them in fancy packaging, she placed my treats in a paper bag. Then we took the bus to the food bank, armed with a different kind of voucher. The irony was not lost on me.

Others were not so kind. People call women like me bad mothers and scroungers. A life of poverty is one of chaotic loneliness, and Instagram became my confidante – a place to dump my anti-aspirational life. Then, having seen my honest posts, someone wrote online that I should put my child up for adoption – that the daughter I love more than anything should be removed from my care because we are poor. This stranger, they said that the circumstances of our life were of my making. But who could actually believe that living below the poverty line is a choice? There are 4.1 million children living in poverty in the UK right now, according to official figures. No parent made that choice.

In one 12-month period, my daughter and I lived in a refuge, five B&BS, two temporary flats and one homeless shelter. Then we were given the choice between spending another eight years in temporary accommodation waiting for a social housing tenancy in our London borough, or taking pot luck and being housed anywhere in the country. After living under nine different roofs and starting at three schools, my daughter and I agreed that we just wanted to stand still. About to turn eight, she just wanted a party like all the other kids. You don’t get to do those normal things when you’re on the run. So we took what we were given and moved to a deprived estate 50 miles away from London, from our support networks, and started again.

Here, we still live below the poverty line, but thanks to having a stable, affordable home, we have finally regained autonomy and haven’t had to rely on a food bank in almost a year. All things considered, this is a happy ending.

‘Skint Estate: A Memoir Of Poverty, Motherhood And Survival’ by Cash Carraway is out on 11 July (£14.99, Ebury Press)

Cash Carraway lays bare the reality of bringing up a child when you’ve lost everything

People call women like me bad mothers and scroungers. It is a life of chaotic loneliness