After work I arrive at the place that should be my real home. My house. It leaves me feeling so ashamed. My greatest gift, yet my biggest mistake. So lovely on the outside, so rotten within. It feels like a zillion years ago when I was twenty-three, deciding with youthful exuberance that it was time to stake out my own place in the world. Dad wasn’t happy, I suppose not wanting his only child to flutter away from the family nest, especially with Mum gone for the last five years.
Not only did he cave, he’d also agreed to join me on my property hunt. We’d argued good heartedly, back and forth, me wanting a flat, his professional knowhow firmly in the court of a house near a tube station. In the end it was Dad who’d sorted it all out when he’d told me that a friend of his was downgrading his property portfolio, which included a small house.
As soon as I’d seen it I knew it was The One. Nothing grand, a two-up two-down perfect for a couple starting out. Dad – wonderful Dad – had so generously put down the deposit and the cash for the first year’s mortgage. It should’ve been so easy after that. God, how had it all gone so hideously wrong?
I open the door and refuse to look down at the mini-mountain of letters I step over. Then stand so still in the hallway, arms criss-crossed tightly over my middle. It should be inviting, warm, but it isn’t. Cold is ingrained so deeply into the fabric of the walls, floor, the ceiling, that it leaves an icy skin over my already goose-pimpled flesh. The electricity, gas and water were cut off months ago. A frightening urge to bolt out of the front door suddenly overwhelms me. That’s your MO, isn’t it? My inner voice snipes. Always running. And running. Letting people down. Your dad down.
I shake off the sensation of escape and move towards the lounge. Hover on the threshold. Hell, this is so hard. So crippling hard. The acid flavour of bile laces the back of my throat. It remains lodged there as I force myself to confront the physical devastation that was once my favourite room.
Radiator ripped from the wall. Ornate ceiling border hacked off. Some floorboards forced up and out. Light fixture gone. Furniture gone. TV system gone. Every room in the house the same – gutted of what a young woman of twenty-three had found so very special. Even the taps in the kitchen and bathroom and pipes in the walls are gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.
Defeated, I slump down to the naked floor. Pull my knees to my chest, arms wrap around my legs as if to protect me from further damage. I look at the place where the cast iron fireplace had lived. Now a misshapen, grotesque, gaping hole, the wall’s screaming protest that its life companion has been forcefully taken away. I feel like screaming too. Banging my head against a wall that also offers support. How could I have been so stupid?
Then again, debt makes people do the dumbest things. If only I hadn’t followed the dazzling seductive neon-lit ‘Easy Way Out’ sign. Rent out my house to a couple of mates to pull in money to dig my way out of my financial hole while I sofa-surfed about town. Easy. What could go wrong? My so-called friends deciding to use my house as their own moneymaking scheme, that’s what. If I hadn’t turned up here unexpectedly one Thursday night I’d have never discovered they were sub-renting it out for triple the amount they were giving me.
That Thursday, the door – my bloody door – had been opened by a guy who should’ve been sporting a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Thug Number 1’ in huge print across it. The hard faces that had hovered in the background behind him had looked like they’d written the rulebook on how to throw a punch. That had been one scary, scary night. Jed had rounded up a few bouncers from the club he gigged at and got rid of the lot of them. But not before they took every last thing of value from my home and trashed the place.
I did move back in, but one after another the utilities had been disconnected. I tried, I really did, to bed down on the floor of my one-time dream house that had turned into a freezing shell of concrete. Most mornings I’d wake, teeth chattering, no water to wash in, no fuel to cook. For two weeks I kept going, refused to give up. Until the day I awoke with a hacking cough and a chest so heavy with cold I knew it was time to quit. I’d grabbed the few belongings I had, fled, and thrown myself on the mercy of Annabelle, a friend from the bar scene, and then Jed.
I know, I know, I hear Jed’s question – what about going to my dad? He’d have given me the money to reconnect myself to life, paid the mortgage arrears, put me straight. But Dad’s a smart man: if I tell him about this, somehow he’d dig deep and make me confess the rest. The past. Plus, I don’t want Dad losing his cool. Not a pretty sight.
I can’t do that. Just like I still can’t stay here. I’ve only come to get one thing. I ease up my aching body, go back into the hallway and stare down at the pile of post. I don’t want to do this but what alternative do I have. I open my bag and pull out the bulging thing that’s always with me. The self-inflicted sore that pusses with more poison every time I come here.
Minutes later, I leave, the thing I carry with me bulging bigger with more venom than ever before.
Before the whisper of courage deserts me completely, I pull it out. My poisonous unwanted bulging friend. The cheap carrier bag that stays with me twenty-four-seven. Tip it upside down. The contents scatter onto the table.
There. Done. Now the real trouble hits the fan.
I meet the unwavering stare of my newly assigned debt counsellor. It’s my first appointment with her. Polly doesn’t so much as blink; I suppose she’s seen it all before.
‘It certainly looks like we’ve got our work cut out,’ Polly remarks in a very matter-of-fact attitude.
Our attention is hooked on to the mountain of letters I’ve unleashed. My dirty laundry laid bare on her pristine desk. Red letters, warning letters, threatening letters detailing exactly what I owe to whom and how much. I’m #Broke #InDebt #Can’tAffordToHaveSex.
My debt counsellor is one of these happy souls and plump like a Christmas pud that can’t wait to be lit up. I suppose that comes with the training, full-on upbeatness so that clients don’t feel even more crap about their financial shit show.
I’m grateful she doesn’t request chapter and verse on how I ended up in this desperate situation. How does anyone end up in debt? To give myself credit – correction: credit – definitely the wrong choice of word – I wasn’t one of those big spenders, splashing out on the high life. I’d merely been trying to keep my head above water when I couldn’t find a job. Pay the bills, put bread on the table, cash for everyday travel. You end up borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and Paul and Paul… I shake my head as I drop on the seat opposite Polly. What a catastrophic, awful mess.
Polly stands up and I change my first impression of her. She’s like the head of a troupe of Girl Guides ready for action. I like that. I need someone who’s going to help put me straight.
‘Right,’ she announces, leaning over the table. ‘The first thing we need to do is organise these letters into some type of order.’
A half-hour later there are three piles: final warnings concerning maxed-out credit cards, mortgage arrears, and one that sits on its own.
Polly resumes her seat. Her chin tips down. ‘I can call your credit card providers and keep at bay potential court action, but your mortgage company won’t be so easy. We need to show good faith, so you’ll have to start paying the money back almost immediately. The last thing you want is to find yourself homeless.’
My house. Debt. The Big Bad Wolf threatening to huff and puff my house down. How could I have jeopardised the house Dad helped me buy out of the goodness of his heart?
Polly continues, ‘It will be easier for me to contact the relevant organisations if I can keep all your correspondence.’ I nod. She can keep the evil plastic bag. The sooner it’s gone from my life the better. ‘Rachel, you’ve come this far, so I’m not going to patronise you and say this will be easy. But, heads together, we will get this sorted out.’ Her chair creaks as she arches her back ever so slightly. ‘What about family? Can they support you?’
My throat muscles constrict, my troubled stare flickering momentarily away from this kind woman with shame. Thinking about Dad finding out about this leaves me cringing. If I tell him I’d have let him down – again.
‘No. There’s no-one.’ That voice surely can’t be mine. It belongs to someone who’s been battered black and blue.
‘No matter,’ she musters with cheerfulness, ‘we’ll get this done and dusted the best we can.’
Then her fingertip slides the letter sitting in its own pile towards her. I’m riveted by the action. It’s like watching the Titanic sailing ever closer to the iceberg. She taps it once before asking, ‘Why haven’t you opened this?’
I swallow. Tell the truth. ‘I know it’s cowardly, but I couldn’t face it.’ My head dips. I’ve spent so much of my life gazing at the ground lately I sometimes wonder if I truly know what the sky really looks like.
Seeing my dejected pose, Polly softly enquires, ‘Are you feeling depressed? There are other services I can refer you to.’
Are you happy? would be the more revealing question for her to ask. What would she say if I answered that I haven’t really known the melting abandon of happiness since that summer I was eighteen?
I ignore her kind enquiry and force my head up. ‘Will you open the letter for me?’ That’s why it remains sealed; I know whatever’s inside is bad.
The chopping sound of the paper, as her finger saws through the seal, leaves a tiptoe trail of chill bumps climbing my arms. I want to disappear. Can’t hide forever, Rachel, my sensible voice informs me with the rhythm of a skipping game. Polly pulls out a single sheet of off-white paper. Silently reads.
Places it carefully on the table and smooths it out with her fingertips like it’s the most delicate thing in the world. ‘This is a letter to inform you that since you’ve had a county court judgement against you relating to the non-payment of one of your debts, you’ve now been placed on a register—’
‘What?’ I can’t believe what she’s telling me. ‘What register? Like I’m a sex offender or something.’
Her fingers release the letter. It doesn’t lose its smoothed-out shape. ‘Let me explain. The register is not made public. Once your name’s on it, you have a month to pay off what you owe.’ She coughs delicately. ‘If you don’t pay, you’ll be on the register for six years.’
I squeeze my eyes tight. Want to slap my hands over my ears. See no evil, hear no evil, stuff evil in a cheap plastic carrier bag. Yeah, that’s worked out a real treat for ya, Rachel. What a complete fool I’ve been.
‘Are you in work?’
I nod.
For the first time her tone sharpens. ‘I need to be honest with you. I wouldn’t be advising you properly if I didn’t. If you’re going to keep your home, you need money to pay off your mortgage arrears.’ Her voice tightens with the power of a screw in my brain. ‘If you end up on this register it could affect your future employment prospects. Employers have been known to check it. You’ll have that hanging over you for six long years.’
‘But I—’
Her stare is direct. I realise that Polly’s not all jolly hockey sticks, but as tough as the seasoned leather of work boots. ‘You’re not in a position to pick and choose, which means you have to keep this job. Having a regular income is the one thing that’s going to work in your favour. So, the job’s got to stay.’
Polly’s right. Debtors can’t be choosers. My new job is a lifeline. My only one. Thank God Michael is such a generous and caring boss.