'Put the TV on,' Martin Connolly instructed the priest. 'There's something big happening.'
'It's a little early yet, son, and we don't usually put it on at lunchtime anyway.' Father Cornelius remained unflustered, despite the adviser's sharp tone. 'I prefer people to chat with each other or be allowed to sit and eat in peace.'
'But May's supposed to be making an important announcement,' Martin argued. 'There's speculation that she's calling a snap election.'
'She can't be doing that,' Father Cornelius answered patiently. 'They passed a law to stop it and she's said, time and again, that there won't be one.'
Nevertheless, he switched on the television in the lounge corner, where people waited for their turn to 'shop' at the Foodbank when it was busy. The picture was indeed of a podium outside 10 Downing Street but there was no sign yet of the Prime Minister.
'Something good on, nipper?' asked Terry Walker, pausing on his way to the storeroom with a little trolley stacked with plastic crates.
'Martin says Herself is after calling an election.'
'We're having one in a couple of weeks already, aren't we?' Terry said. 'Paula and the kids have been out leafleting for something or another, anyway.'
'That's the Local Elections,' Martin explained. 'This is a General Election.'
'Right,' said Terry.
'A chance to get the Tory's out and stop this Hard Brexit bullshit!' Martin insisted.
'Right,' said Terry again.
To Martin's amazement, Terry shrugged and shuffled away to the storeroom without waiting to see what Theresa May actually had to say.
'Well, I suppose we should be grateful that it wasn't the Four Minute Warning, with the way things are in the world right now.'
Mike Walker reached out and switched off the radio in the site hut as a gentle cue for the Construction Co-operative workers to finish their teas and return to their tools. Despite the news and its implications, he couldn't help smiling at the makeshift poster John 'Johnno' Jones had stuck on the cabin wall. It was a screenshot from an advert of a massively built woman with frizzy red hair wearing a hard hat, high-vis vest and safety boots with the words She's So MoneySupermarket! printed underneath. Mike hoped Sally Archer would see the funny side when she returned from her honeymoon.
Despite her size and the flaming red hair, the big woman in the advert didn't really look like Sally, although the strapline certainly worked. Sally had recycled a surprising amount of her wedding and improvised the rest, arriving in a horse-drawn carriage revealed as a made-over Traveller's pony racing cart by its rubber tyres, in a vintage dress that once belonged to one of her numerous Irish aunties which had gained an extra 300mm of lace around the hem and almost the same to the sleeves. Wedding guests and Foodbank 'guests' mixed at a reception in the Community Café, munching samosas and wedding cake and dancing to a scratch ensemble lead by brickie Joe Lennon, who styled themselves The Blacklisted Beatles. It had been a delightfully artless, somewhat anarchic celebration.
'Who do you reckon you'll vote for, Mike?'
John Archer, who had been a proud if sometimes bemused father-of-the bride, rose to his feet rather stiffly. Only a couple of years from retirement, he was clearly finding the contortions required in his trade a challenge.
'That's a tricky one. I guess it'll have to be the LibDems.'
'They sold us out to the Tories in twenty-ten. And they're against Brexit.'
Despite working happily alongside a couple of colleagues from the EU, John had voted 'out'. Mike, firmly in the Remain camp, decided against rerunning that debate.
'I know but they're still the only party that can beat them in this seat.'
'Chip said that.' John always referred to his daughter by her nickname. 'Last time she voted Green and I voted Labour, but she said we ought to have voted tactically and that if we all had, the Tory woman wouldn't have got in.'
'She's right, in a way,' said Mike. 'If I voted with my heart, I'd probably do the same as she did.'
'Really?' John's expression suggested he thought Green politics was for youthful idealists, still his perception of his astute and practical daughter, rather than for working men.
'Absolutely. I've got my children's future to think of.' They were growing up so fast. Even little Sophie was at school now. 'The problem is, what if the UKIP vote goes to the Tories?'
'I can't see that, mate. Most of the blokes I know who voted UKIP were Labour men before.'
'Will they be this time, though?'
John Archer shrugged. 'Buggered if I know, nipper.'
'That's so unfair!'
Shane Walker had divided his Easter holidays between revising for his GCSEs, gaming with his friends and leafleting for the Labour Party with his mum, sister and, occasionally, his Dad. Mum's Borough Council seat wasn't being contested this year but the neighbouring two were and Mum seemed to think they were in with a chance of winning at least one of them, as there was a block of student flats in it.
'She's a Tory,' said his mother, turning the car engine on again and preparing to pull out of the Co-op carpark. 'Of course it's unfair. She knows we've spent most of our funds and energy fighting this election so we'll struggle to find the resources to fight another one so soon. If we can stop fighting each other, that is.'
'I mean it's unfair that she's called it now when I'm still too young to vote! It was meant to happen after I was eighteen!' Politics was like everything else; Shane felt like an adult but got treated like a child, with other people - his parents, his teachers and politicians - making decisions about his future and shaping his life for him. He was going to say 'fuck' but knew his mother would tell him off if he did.
'I know, Shane,' said his mum. 'It was the same for me in nineteen-ninety seven. I wanted to vote then, but I was too young.'
'We still won.' Shane felt that his denied vote was more crucial this time around. 'Can we win this time, Mum?'
His mother didn't answer straight away, then she said, 'I don't know.'
'Is Jeremy Corbyn really crap, or is it just the media putting him down all the time?'
'What do you think?'
She had always encouraged him to think for himself but Shane knew she was a fan of the party's elderly leader and didn't want to upset her.
'I think he is a bit crap sometimes,' he started, cautiously. 'Like when he reads out questions from people. They're good questions, sometimes, but he lets the Tories wriggle out of answering them properly. He reminds me of Mr Garton, my maths teacher. He tries to treat the kids like grown-ups, but the idiots in the class take the piss and Garton has no idea how to handle them.'
'So you think he should be more aggressive?' asked Shane's mum, presumably meaning Jeremy Corbyn not Mr Garton.
'Not like rude-aggressive. He needs to be tougher, but in a good way.'
'Is he a poor teacher?'
Shane was surprised at that question. He'd thought they were still talking about politics.
'No, he's alright. He's got a way of explaining stuff that I get. I should get a B in it.'
'So is the problem Mr Garton, or the kids that don't want to learn?'
'I suppose it's the bad kids, really.'
'So what do you and your mates do when the bad kids give him a hard time?'
Shane could have lied but his mother wasn't stupid. 'We laugh.'
'Don't you think that encourages the bad kids?'
'Yeah, but...'
'Rather than improving your own chances of getting the grades you need?'
'I suppose...'
'So you're making life difficult for a decent man and spoiling your own chances rather than standing up against the bullies?'
'You don't understand!' It wasn't fair. He was helping her and, instead of being grateful, she was giving him a hard time about school.
'I'm not getting at you, Shaney. I'm answering your question about Jeremy Corbyn.'
'Uh?'
It took Shane all of the drive home to work out what she meant.
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