15.

Four thirty p.m. on Christmas Eve.

I have a black bag with my stuff in it. Eighteen pounds in cash. I avoided sleeping much last night, so I look pretty rough. I haven’t washed my hair for four days and I usually need to wash it daily.

I have the name of a homeless hostel that’s not too far away. Make my way there. The streets heave with the last thrashing of a city center Christmas. Men getting tanked up in the pub before going home to face their families. Everything green and red and gold. Everything that can be made to twinkle twinkling like fury.

The hostel is full.

I don’t know what to do. It’s the one Brattenbury told me to go to. I think maybe he knew it would be full. The man at the reception desk tells me to sit down and gives me a cup of tea. I drink it slowly as he phones around. Finds a place that has space. He gives me a map and explains carefully, twice, how to get there. I say thanks. He asks me if I’ve eaten. I shrug and say, ‘sort of’. He asks if I’ve got any money, and I say, ‘I’m fine.’

Finish my tea. Walk over to the other hostel. A big white building. Those boxy modern windows that look efficient, but somehow inhuman, as if belonging to a posh sort of jail. There’s a little patch of lawn in front, pitted with black because of the season. The back and side of the hostel are protected by fiercely spiked steel-grey railings.

I find the entrance. Two men outside. Raggedy-bearded. Sharing a roll-up cigarette.

‘All right?’ one of the men says.

I duck the question and go inside. The man who asked the question holds the door for me, as I find it hard to manage with my bag.

There’s another reception desk here. Also rows of leaflets, noticeboards, chirpily phrased ads for therapy groups and back-to-work initiatives.

I say, ‘I’m Fiona. I think someone called about me.’

The woman on duty – plump, black T-shirt worn under a patterned Christmas cardigan, and a face that is both tough and loving – says, ‘Fiona, yes. Fiona Grey, right?’

‘Yes.’

She tells me her name: Abs, short for Abigail. She gives me forms to fill in. I can’t fill them all out. Partly because I don’t want that level of intrusion into my notional past. Mostly because Fiona Grey wouldn’t want to.

I fill in the main bits and wave my pen over the remaining blank areas. ‘I’m not going to stay long,’ I say.

‘Do you have a place to go to?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Friends or family?’

I shrug.

‘Have you got anything lined up with the council? Put in an application form for housing?’

I tell her no, but say they have to house me because I’m from the area.

She grimaces, tells me it doesn’t work quite like that. Asks me what money I have. I say ‘twenty quid’ and show her what I have.

‘OK, we’re going to have to do this properly, but maybe not on Christmas Eve, eh, Fiona fach? Do you have towels?’

I shake my head.

She books me in for three days. Charges me £1.00 for the towels, refundable if I return them clean. Twenty pence for a sachet of shampoo.

She takes me up to a room. Two bunk beds, two other women already sharing. Everything very clean. Lockers on the landing where I can keep my cash and papers.

‘No smoking anywhere in the building. You need to read and sign our policy on aggression, drugs and alcohol. We operate a no-tolerance policy and we do mean no tolerance. Showers down the hall there. Breakfast at eight. Christmas lunch at twelve. It’s 50p for breakfast, £1.50 for the lunch, but you won’t want to miss that.’

I say thanks. Drop my bag.

The other two women are called Sophie and Mared. I say who I am, but we don’t talk much. They’re both alcoholic, I think. There’s something brightly unstable about them anyway.

I take a shower. Wash my hair. Put on clothes from my bag. Dark jeans. Black boots. T-shirt, dark jumper and jacket. Wash my old underwear and T-shirt in the sink, take them back to my room to hang out.

Mared says, ‘There’s a laundry room, you know.’

I say, ‘oh,’ but hang my clothes out just the same.

I quite like the hostel. Christmas lunch – everything overcooked, but big portions, warm and lots of gravy – is crowded, smelly and companionable. I sit next to a man who spends the entire time telling me about his past as a butcher. He doesn’t ask a single question about me, or not really. I eat everything, then fall asleep in the TV room.

On Boxing Day, Abs sits me down and goes through my history. I say I was in a relationship in Manchester. Say that it didn’t work out.

‘Was there physical violence? Did he hit you?’

I shrug.

‘Did you report it to the police?’

I shake my head.

‘Do you have children? Are there any children involved?’

Shake.

‘OK. Are you sure?’

I nod. ‘I don’t have kids.’

She goes through other things. My connection with Cardiff. My existing family. My job history. Any skills I have.

I say, ‘I’ve always worked.’

‘OK, good. That’s good.’

Abs digs it all out of me. I’m a cleaner now. Used to do clerical work. Filing, admin. Payroll. ‘I’ve got qualifications.’

Abs wants to know more. I tell her I got all my payroll certificates.

‘Do you still have them?’

‘No.’

Abs wants me to make a Reintegration Plan with her. I don’t do it that day, or the next. But before New Year’s Eve is breaking out in the city center like a small war, I have a draft Plan. Its gist: get a job, get accommodation, get a life. Don’t live with someone who hits me. Abs says, ‘You can do this, you know. Anyone can end up here as a one-off thing. That’s just bad luck. The trick is not to end up here again.’ I say thank you, and she hugs me.