Chapter Twenty-Nine - Goth Girl

Wednesday 29^th November

‘Of course, it was deliberate,’ Ashley insisted.  ‘They could have made the announcement any time but no, they sneaked it out on the day of the royal engagement.’

‘When we were all drinking their health and celebrating – not!’ Martin scoffed.

‘Burying bad news,’ Hilary agreed.  ‘Still, the royal engagement is rather fun, if only because the Daily Mail’s readership don’t know whether they should be pleased for Harry or outraged that he’s marrying a divorcee and actress who’s also a woman of colour!  It’s really rather delicious, if you ask me.’

‘It still meant that there was no news coverage to speak of about the continuing freeze on working-age benefit rates,’ Ashley said.  ‘It’s outrageous that it isn’t even something that gets debated anymore.’

‘I’m sure it does,’ Catherine argued.  ‘There was an item on the Guardian site yesterday and quite a lot of chatter on social media.’

‘That’s no good for raising general public awareness, is it?  Unless you’re directly affected, you won’t know.  Even if you are directly affected, like you’re a low-paid worker, you probably think the budget did you a big favour putting up the Minimum Wage and tax allowances.  You won’t notice how much of that gets wiped out by freezing your tax credits until later.’

‘And for our non-working families, the Benefit Cap stays where it is too,’ Hilary reminded them.

‘I thought that Tom’s union were campaigning about that?’ Toby said to Hilary.

‘So did he, but by Scrap the Cap, they meant the cap on public sector pay.’

‘Again, if they want to help their lowest paid members, it’s the benefit freeze they need to go after,’ Ashley insisted.  ‘If tax credits stay where they are – and UC elements and work allowances – low paid workers loose sixty-three percent of whatever extra pay they gain.  It’s a scandal.’

‘I agree,’ said Catherine.

Ashley looked at her colleague, who she struggled not to think of as a rival.  With part-time work, dependent children and rent to pay, she was going to be one of these very people – handing back two pounds out of each three she earned in lost benefits.

‘Not that we expected good news,’ Toby said.  ‘But it would have been a nice surprise.  They sort of hinted at it a while back, when they were talking about the inflation figures.  I thought we might see one percent, maybe even two.’

‘There’s never good news for benefit claimants, is there?’ Catherine added.  ‘Well, not from this Government, at any rate.’

‘Nor from the two before it,’ Martin said ruefully.

'Fun though this has been, I need to set up for the IT clinic.'

'Could you use some help?' Ash asked

'I've got some.  Shane's coming in.'

'Shane the sixth-form student?  Youngest of our Walker dynasty?' asked Ashley.

'Not the youngest of all, apparently, but the youngest we have around here.  I like him.  He's a clever nipper with the computers and a good lad when it comes to putting clients at ease.'

Ashley realised from Toby's defence of his apprentice that she must have sounded sarcastic.

'I was only offering because I'm hanging about this afternoon anyway.  I'm looking at a flat this evening.'

'Somewhere nearby?' asked Hilary.

'Twyford Road.'

'Oh, good luck!  That would be so much handier for you than Millbrook.  If you'd like a lift round there after we finish today...?'

'Thanks, but I've got my bike.'

'Do you cycle in every day?' asked Catherine.

'Yeah.  I've been lucky with the weather so far.  If it gets icy or too windy, I'll have to use the bus - or the train, I suppose.  If this flat is okay, I can walk in from there.  If it isn't, I'll keep looking.'

It wasn't just the journey.  Sharing with Gavin was getting too difficult.  The flat was actually a flat share rather than exclusive use, but with another woman.  There was no point in being over-ambitious when she might be jobless again before the end of the next year.  Moving out of town would give her an excuse to end any volunteering in Totton, especially if she got her extra hours at the Project.  Alternatively, she could keep her existing hours, work them as full days and still help her old friends out.  She was torn about what to do for the best.

'We should get back to the office,' Martin said, meaning himself and Catherine. 

They had a job-share discussion booked.  Ashley tried to imagine how she would feel about that.  She had felt bad about handing 'her' appeal cases over to Roger and Jules when she left; she wasn't sure how well she would cope having another worker jointly managing her cases.  What if they disagreed on the best course of action or the merits of the case?  What if their client didn't like one or other of them?  It might work with Catherine and Martin, not least because she was so unassertive, but could Ash see herself sharing work with Hilary?  That could get intense.

As she was working late, Ash decided she could allow herself another coffee after her vape.  She dropped a couple of coins into the donations box and helped herself from the flask.  As she sat down, the door from the street opened and a youth strolled in.  Ashley smirked.  She had seen scores of boys like him all the way through college and university; long coat, torn jeans, radical T-shirt, dark, floppy hair, desperate to be a rebel, probably in a band who were probably rubbish, and almost certainly armed with the worst chat-up lines of the new millennium. 

'Hi Mum!' he said, stomping across to the counter to get a plate of lasagne.

Of course, this was Shane Walker.  Ash decided she liked him already, in an amused, big-sisterly fashion.  He endeared himself to her still further by sending the milk jug on the drinks table flying with the draping sleeve of his over-sized army surplus coat.  Fortunately, it was almost empty anyway.   

'Shane, you...!'  Paula marched over with a dishcloth

'Sorry, Mum!'

He stood for a few moments, tray in hand, trying to decide where to sit in the busy café.

'Hi!' said Ashley.  'You can sit here, if you like.  I'm going in a minute.'

'Right.  Thanks.' 

He lowered his tray towards the table, twisting it awkwardly to avoid her cup.  For a moment, Ashley thought he would tip the lot into her lap.  When he sat down, he caught the edge of the table and slopped both of their drinks into their saucers.

‘Sorry!’

‘It’s okay.  I don’t think the table legs are even, or the floor isn’t level.  You haven’t spilled much.’  She smiled at him as he tried to shrug off his coat without doing any more damage.  ‘You must be Shane.  I’m Ashley.’

‘The Goth girl?’

‘Goth girl?’

‘Yeah.  My granddad asked if I’d met you and I said no, because I hadn’t.  He said you were a Goth.’

‘I suppose I am.  I don’t regard myself as a Goth girl, though.’

‘Goth woman, then.’

‘Just a Goth.’

‘Oh.’ 

She had confused him

‘I have to go work.  Eat your lunch and I’ll see you in the IT room.’

‘Okay.’

He was quite sweet.  Not her type and too young, but quite sweet.

The afternoon clinic’s customers had started to arrive before Shane came in.  Toby and Ashley were already at work, settling people into work station, discussing their IT skill levels and assessing the help they would need.  Ashley called him over to take a woman in her fifties through the basics of operating a computer and creating safe passwords.

‘Call me back when you’re ready to start the claim,’ she told him.

‘Okay.’

Ashley spent the next twenty minutes getting a returning client’s journal updated with him, transferring his almost indecipherable scrawl recording phone calls replying to adverts and visits to building sites onto the screen.  He still hadn’t used his Universal Jobsmatch account they had created on a previous visit, which might cause him a problem with an unsympathetic work coach.

‘I don’t have a computer at home,’ he explained.  ‘Anyway, it’s all word-of-mouth in my line.’

His line was general labouring on construction sites.  Ash thought he looked well past his best before date for that.  She swapped places with Shane, setting the lad to work searching for online opportunities for Geoff the labourer to apply for, if only to keep the Jobcentre off his back, and wondering what alternatives might work for a guy who would have been on Pension Credit and twice as much money if his birthday had fallen a year earlier.

Her next customer was someone else struggling with life online, despite being no more than a third of Geoff’s age.  Megan should have mastered all this at school, only she had missed most of that due to family problems, going in and out of care, frequently excluded from school and now a lone parent with a toddler.  She had to make a new claim online, having been thrown out by her mother and new step-father and plonked into a private rented flat by the Council, too far from the college where she had tried to catch up on her education. 

She was understandably distressed at the news she wouldn’t get a regular payment until after Christmas.  A couple of other customers tutted at the language, but Ash had heard – and used – worse on plenty of occasions.

‘We’ll get you onto the system, then see what the arrangements are for an advance. Payment,’ she said.

‘How much should I get?’

‘A single, under twenty-fives allowance for you, plus a child credit for your little boy, and something towards your rent.  How much is the rent?’

‘Six hundred a month. It’s a rip-off.  The place is a dump.’

It was a dump within the limits of the Local Housing Allowance.

‘Does that include bills or anything?’

‘Just the rent.  Electric and gas and all that is extra.’

‘Okay.  The programme will tell us what you’ll get when we get to the end but it ought to be about two-hundred and fifty for you…’

‘A month.’

‘What?  Two-hundred and fifty for four weeks?  My mum got more than that for me when I lived at home.’

‘I expect she did.’  Benefits for young people were, as Ash knew from bitter experience, utterly inadequate.  ‘That’s for more than four weeks, too.  It’s for however many days there are in the month – like this month, it’s thirty, next month it’s thirty-one.’

‘I’ll get more when it’s a longer month?’

‘No.  You get the same, whether it’s February or July.’

‘There’s no extra for it being the winter, or Christmas?’

‘There isn’t, no.’

‘Are you sure?  My mate says I get more because I’m a lone parent.  She says it doesn’t matter how old you are if you’ve got a baby.’

‘It didn’t used to, for Income Support.  All lone parents got the over twenty-five rate.  Universal Credit is different.’

‘Why?’

‘They say it’s to make it simpler.’

‘Why couldn’t they make it simpler by paying everyone over eighteen the full amount?’

The reply because they are bastards seemed appropriate, but Ash didn’t deploy it.  She moved on to the next stage of her explanation.

‘You get some money for your baby too, and your rent.’

‘How much?’

‘Two hundred and seventy-seven for your son, plus your Child Benefit.’

‘That’s monthly too?’

‘Yeah.’

Megan looked confused.  ‘So he gets more than me?’

‘He does, yeah.’

‘That’s mental.  You can see why girls have kids to get benefits.’

‘Is that what you did?’

‘No way!  I didn’t mean to have him but when I found out I was expecting him, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid, so here he is.  He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’

Ashley said she agreed.  She didn’t actually have any time for babies and couldn’t have said whether Jacob was a nicer one than usual, but it was touching to see that his mum thought so.

‘Did your mate have her kid to get benefits?’

‘No.  She was with a bloke, but he left her.’

Ash thought about continuing with the myth-busting exercise but there wasn’t time.  She needed to get this young woman’s claim on.

‘So I reckon it should be two-fifty-one for you, two-seventy-seven for Jacob and six hundred for the rent,’ she explained.  It was astonishing really that even a cheap two-bed property was supposedly worth more per month than the life of a mother and child.  At least they lived close enough to use the foodbank and café if they needed to and maybe she could get into Shane’s college, if she could get any help with childcare.  Unsurprisingly, Shane had no idea whether there was any help for lone parents there, but he promised to find out.

At the end of the session, he shyly invited her to his band’s next gig.

‘I don’t expect I can get there,’ she apologised.  ‘It’s right over the other side of the City to me.’

‘Maybe one of the others could give you a lift?  Hilary and Tom are coming.’

‘I’ll see.  With a bit of luck, I’ll be moving.’

‘Okay.  See you next week.’

‘Probably not.  I don’t usually do afternoons.’

‘Oh.’  Shane looked downcast.  ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘You too.’

‘I’ll find that stuff out for you, about college.’

‘Cheers.’

‘Nice lad,’ said Toby, once Shane had left the room.  ‘A bit wet behind the ears, but his heart’s in the right place.’

‘In the right place, but seriously breakable,’ said Ashley. 

‘If you’d like a lift to hear him…’

‘Seriously not!’

Unless the room or her prospective flat sharer were absolutely hideous, she would be moving.