Chapter 20
In Conversation with Luca Veste
No one believes you. Nothing you say is the truth. They know it every time you open your mouth and start speaking, hoping to be believed. Everything is just a lie in disguise, dressed up nice, trying to be something it’s not.
Mutton dressed as lamb.
That’s just how it is. You go down the social – or the jobcentre as they call it now, although that’ll probably change to something else soon enough – and try to explain why you’re still worth sixty quid a week of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. Trying to justify yourself even though you haven’t worked in years. Get that look which seeps into you after a little while.
I’ve heard it all before, love.
There’s no let-up. Being judged at every turn. Lucky enough to have more than one kid? Unlucky enough to lose your part-time job working the till at some shitty shop? For your fella to piss off with some slag from around the corner? Doesn’t matter, shouldn’t have had more kids than you can afford. Doesn’t matter that you’re a single parent – I’m paying your benefits.
You live on a council estate, on benefits, and that’s it. You’re scum. Do not pass go, here’s a few hundred quid to pay some dickhead landlord who thinks five ton isn’t too much for a terraced house that’s overrun with damp. Mould growing on the walls if you dare put any furniture too close to it.
Your kids then become scum as well. Shit schools, shit kids. Bored with life, constantly pissed off because you can’t afford the latest frigging gadget that Sony or Apple put out. Every six months without fail, something new that every other kid in the school has, that they can’t be without.
You try. You really do. But it’s never enough. Sixteen hours working in a supermarket, a few hours doing cleaning. Bits of crap here and there. Never enough.
No one believes you.
Your kids get older. Get in trouble. Bizzies knocking on your door at two in the morning, hand on the back of your fifteen-year-old son.
He’s had too much to drink. Could have got himself into a lot more trouble. Should keep an eye on him more, love.
That judgement again. Always there, surrounding you.
You try and explain. Tell them he’d said he was staying at his mate’s, or staying at his uncle’s house. With his cousins.
Get that look back.
I’ve heard it all before, love.
You want to scream. You want to pull the little bastard into the house by his stupid frigging head and beat the shit out of him. Like your dad would do to your brothers if they ever got caught doing stupid shit.
You try your best. Every day. It’s never enough. The crap wages you get for working two, three, different jobs barely matches what you were getting on benefits. So you think, what’s the point? You’re tired. You want to be lazy. Exhausted by the sheer weight of being alive. Everyone else around you seems to be doing sod all. You want to do that for a while.
The kids get worse. All boys, so the house is either deathly quiet whilst they’re all out, getting up to God knows what. Or, it’s a cacophony of noise. The moaning, the groaning. The smells of teenagers on the cusp of manhood, burning into your nostrils, hanging in the air.
No one believes you.
When one of them doesn’t come home for days, you shout and scream as much as you possibly can, but no one cares.
They
