Faith - Lesley Pearse [127]
With no one to babysit Barney she had to ring the casino and say she couldn’t come back to work, and while she was trapped in the flat, day after day, night after night, the memories of Stuart pressed in on her. He had filled the place with his warm presence; even when he was at work the essence of him remained, his smell, his voice, his laughter. But once his father had removed his belongings, there was a void which nothing could fill.
The cupboards and shelves he’d built so lovingly were a constant reproach, not only bringing back memories of him sawing and sanding, a pencil tucked behind his ear, but evidence of how much he wanted to create a stable home for them all.
For a while she could still smell him on the bedding, finding an odd sock or work shirt would bring on a wave of grief, and at night she would remain sleepless, the cold, empty space beside her a constant reminder of her infidelity.
Fleeing back to London seemed the answer to everything in the first few days, but when Jackie wrote to say Stuart was there, working for her, that door slammed in her face. Jackie obviously knew exactly what had happened. ‘He’s a good man, Laura, he deserved better than that,’ was her comment, and in the absence of any questions as to how she was managing, or even asking for her side of the story, Laura knew she could expect no sympathy or help.
After two weeks she knew that she would have to go cap in hand to the Assistance for help. She couldn’t find a job which would fit in with Barney’s school hours and the rent was due. She toyed with the idea of selling her car – she couldn’t afford to drive it after all – but she was reluctant to do that, for if a job did turn up, then she might need it.
The Assistance was now called Social Security, but to her there was still the same stigma as when she went to them with her mother as a child. The Edinburgh office had the same nicotine-impregnated walls and ceiling, and the same stale smell she remembered from London. The officials were marginally less curt and unsympathetic, but the wait was every bit as long, and her fellow claimants made her shudder. Many were drunks and down-and-outs, with filthy clothes, stinking to high heaven, and they lurched around the waiting room muttering and swearing. There were slovenly young girls with babies in their arms who looked malevolently at Laura’s smart clothes. Chain-smoking, cocky young men talked loudly about their misfortunes, peppering their speech with swear words. The handful of people who were neatly dressed like her avoided eye contact with anyone, perhaps afraid of being contaminated.
Laura burst into tears when the man who interviewed her in a booth with a glass screen between them said she must claim maintenance from her husband. ‘I daren’t let him know where I am, he’s violent,’ she burst out, and hearing snorting laughter behind her realized the whole waiting room had heard.
She whispered the rest of her story, begged them to give her something so she could pay the rent and buy food. Finally it was agreed that someone would visit her at home the following day, and providing everything was in order, she would receive an emergency payment.
As she went to leave the office, a man called out to her, ‘Hey, missus, will this help youse?’
She turned to see the question came from one of the drunks. His grinning face was bloated and purple and he had scraps of food in his thick beard. But to her shock he was holding his flaccid penis in his hand as an offering.
She fled, his raucous laughter ringing in her ears.
The money she got from the Social Security was far less than she’d expected, and the officer who came to the flat had intimidated her by saying he had the powers to insist she took steps to claim maintenance from Greg. She and Barney lived on stews made with the cheapest cuts of meat, and she couldn’t afford to have the gas fire on at all during the day, even though it was bitterly cold. At weekends she would bundle Barney into warm clothes and take him for long walks along the canal or to