Chapter 1: The Move

The bin bag splits on the stairs.

Like, if it had split at the top I could’ve just dragged it to the door, but no. It splits on the third step from the bottom, and everything inside it — towels, a pillowcase, Yus’s PE kit that smells like something died — spills out across the concrete.

I stand there. Staring at it. Like if I look at it hard enough it’ll climb back in by itself.

‘Maya, come on.’ Mum’s already two flights up, a box under each arm, voice coming down the stairwell.

‘Yeah. Coming.’

I scoop the stuff up. The towels have touched the stair and now they’ve got that gritty council-stairwell dust on them. Fag ash, dirt, something old and fried. I shove it all into the remaining bag, the one that hasn’t split yet, and carry it up like I’m holding a baby that’s been sick on itself.

I’ve got that Dua Lipa song in my head. The one from the advert. It’s been there since this morning and it won’t leave.

Third floor. Flat 12.

Mum’s already inside. She’s moving fast, that thing she does when she doesn’t want to think, just act. Boxes go on the floor. Bags go on the floor. Everything goes on the floor because there’s nowhere else for it to go yet.

The flat is smaller.

I know that’s obvious. We moved to a smaller flat — that’s the point, that’s the whole reason we’re here — but standing in it makes it different from knowing it. The front room is the kitchen. Or the kitchen is the front room. There’s a counter and then there’s the sofa space except we haven’t got the sofa because it didn’t fit through the door downstairs. The old one. Our sofa. It’s still sitting in the old flat, which isn’t our flat any more.

I put the bag down and look around. The carpet is grey. Used-to-be-something grey. Lost grey.

‘Where’s my room?’ Yus comes in behind me, trainers squeaking on the lino in the hallway. He’s carrying one bag, the lightest one, the one I specifically gave him because he’d complain about anything heavier.

‘Down there.’ Mum nods towards the short corridor. Two doors. One’s the bathroom. One’s the bedroom. Yus and me.

He disappears down the hall. I count to three in my head.

‘It’s TINY.’

There it is.

‘Yus, just put your stuff down.’

‘My room at the old flat was way bigger. This isn’t even — where am I supposed to put my desk?’

‘You didn’t have a desk.’

‘I had space for one though.’

I almost laugh. He’s never mentioned a desk in his life. The only flat surface in his old room was the floor, and that was covered in pants and Lego.

‘Yus.’

He goes quiet for a second. Then, quieter than before: ‘Why did we have to move?’

I open my mouth. Close it again. Because what am I supposed to say? The real answer has numbers in it. Mum’s hours got cut. The rent went up. Or both. Or something else I haven’t been told. The real answer is a conversation Mum has with the wall at two in the morning when she thinks we’re asleep.

‘It’s just — it’s closer to Mum’s work,’ I say. Which is true. Technically. In the way that a lot of things I say lately are technically true.

Yus looks at me. He doesn’t buy it. He’s eleven but he’s not stupid. He can tell when I’m lying. He just doesn’t always know what I’m lying about.

His face does something. I don’t know what. Then he’s back to being Yus.

‘Where’s your bed?’ he asks.

There’s one bedroom. Yus gets the room because he’s eleven and he’s a boy and Mum said it made sense. Mum gets the other room. Nani gets the fold-out bed in Mum’s room — her bad hip means she can’t do the floor, and she can’t do the sofa either, so she and Mum share. I get the sofa. Except we haven’t got the sofa. So right now I get a sleeping bag on the floor of the front room, which is also the kitchen, until Mum finds a sofa bed on Facebook Marketplace or Freecycle or wherever people find sofa beds when they can’t afford to buy one.

‘I’m in the front room,’ I say. Like it’s fine. Like I planned it.

‘That’s peak.’

‘It’s fine, Yus.’ Theek hai.

We do three more trips. Down the stairs, across the courtyard, through the car park, past the row of garages with the tags on them, and into the other block where the old flat is. Up to the second floor. Grab what’s left. Back again.

The courtyard is cracked concrete with weeds pushing through. Two kids on bikes circle the same patch over and over. There’s a mattress propped against the recycling bins that’s been there so long it’s got moss on it. The garages have their shutters down — half of them are padlocked, the other half don’t close properly. Someone’s written JENKO in silver paint on the side of our new block, massive letters, like a signature.

It’s September but it doesn’t feel like it. Back to school, leaves still on the trees, and you’d think it’d still be summer — but the wind cuts through the estate like it’s looking for someone specific. Proper cold for this time of year. I’m wearing Mum’s old puffer jacket, the one with the zip that only works if you hold the bottom bit, and my hands are red and stiff by the second trip.

I think I’ve got a spot coming up on my chin. I can feel it. Brilliant. Moving day and my skin’s decided to join in.

On the third trip I’m carrying a box of kitchen stuff — pans, the colander, a bag of wooden spoons — and the bottom starts to go soft from the damp. I hold it tighter. I can feel the cardboard bowing. If this goes, there’ll be pans all over the car park, and I’ll have to pick them up in front of those two kids on their bikes, and I can’t do that. It just — yeah.

I make it. Up three flights. Through the door. Put the box down. My arms are shaking.

Mum doesn’t stop. I don’t think she’s had water since we started. She carries boxes that must weigh more than Yus and she just keeps going. Her face is set — jaw tight, eyes forward. I know this face. This is her face for when she’s not going to fall apart. It’s the same one she wore when she got the letter about her hours being cut.

Nani isn’t here yet. She’s coming tomorrow — Uncle Tariq’s bringing her over in the car with the last of her things. Mum said it was easier this way. One thing at a time. But the flat already feels too full and she’s not even in it yet. And Nani’s hip has been worse lately, and the stairs here are steeper than the old place, and I keep thinking about her trying to get up three flights and I can’t — yeah. Chalo. One thing at a time.

The letting agent.

When we moved into the old flat, Mum paid a deposit — money you’re supposed to get back when you leave, as long as you haven’t wrecked the place. A lot, I think. A month’s rent, maybe more. When we moved out, the letting agent came round and did an inspection. Mum made me come with her — she didn’t say why but I think she didn’t want to go on her own. He found a scuff on the wall behind Yus’s bedroom door. Or maybe it was the hallway. No — it was behind the door, I remember because Yus was standing there looking guilty even though it wasn’t even him. A scuff. A mark the size of a fifty-pence piece. And he said that was damage, and he was keeping part of the deposit for repairs.

Mum didn’t argue. She nodded and signed whatever he put in front of her and when we got outside she walked very fast to the car and sat there for a minute with her hands on the steering wheel and her eyes closed. Then she drove us home.

I don’t know how much of the deposit we’re not getting back. I don’t know if a scuff on a wall counts as damage. I don’t know what the rules are — or if there even are rules, or if people like us just lose and that’s how it works.

I wanted to say something in that office. Like — ‘That’s not damage, that’s a scuff, you’ve had us living there for four years and this is what you’re keeping money for?’ Something like that. I had it in my head. But he’s a grown man in a shirt with a lanyard and a printed-out inventory, and I’m sixteen, and the words just — they were right there and I couldn’t get them out. I just stood there knowing it was wrong and not being able to say why.

By seven it’s getting dark. Everything’s in the flat. Not put away — just in. Bags and boxes piled up in the front room and down the hallway. Mum’s found the kettle and plugged it in. Small mercies.

She makes two cups of tea and gives me one. We stand in the kitchen area, which is also the front room, which is also where I sleep now, and we drink our tea in silence.

Yus is in his room. I can hear him through the wall — thin walls, obviously — playing something on his phone, volume up. The tinny sound of a game. He’s fine. He’s eleven. He’ll be fine.

Mum looks down at the carpet and goes, ‘Who picks grey?’ Half to me, half to herself. ‘In the old place at least the carpet was — ‘ She stops. Sips her tea.

‘You all right, beta?’ she asks. She only calls me that when she’s tired. Or worried.

‘Yeah. You?’

‘Yeah.’

Neither of us is all right. We both know it. We drink our tea.

I start thinking about — something about the old flat. The way the light came in different. It doesn’t matter.

‘I’ll sort the boxes out tomorrow,’ she says. ‘After my shift.’

‘I can do it.’

‘You’ve got school.’

‘After school.’

She looks at me. Something on her face I can’t read.

‘We’ll see,’ she says. Which means yes. Which means she’ll come home knackered from a twelve-hour shift and I’ll have already done it because I know she can’t.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out. Text from Aisha, group chat.

nooo maya did u actually move today??

And then Priya: where’s the new place

And then Aisha again: is it nice

I stare at the screen. The cursor blinks. I could say loads of things. I could make a joke about it — that’s what I’d normally do. Make it funny before anyone makes it sad.

I type: yeah it’s calm. still unpacking tho so can’t really talk x

I put my phone away before anyone replies.

I unroll my sleeping bag in the front room. Year 7 camp. Broken zip that Mum fixed with a safety pin. I lay it out on the carpet — the grey carpet — and put my pillow at the end nearest the wall, away from the kitchen, like that creates some kind of separation.

It doesn’t. I’m sleeping in the kitchen.

I lie down. Did I reply to Aisha’s last message or just read it? I can’t remember. Whatever.

The ceiling has a crack in it that runs from the light fitting to the corner. The light fitting has a bare bulb. No shade. Just the bulb, hanging there.

I get my phone out.

This is the bit I know I shouldn’t do. The bit where I open Instagram and scroll through other people’s lives. But I do it anyway. I always do it anyway.

Priya’s put up a Story — a little room tour, panning across her redecorated bedroom. New fairy lights. A desk with a ring light on it. Her duvet cover matches her curtains and I know that’s stupid, I know matching curtains don’t mean anything, but right now, lying in a sleeping bag on a carpet in a kitchen, they mean everything.

Aisha’s at Nando’s. Group shot, seven of them round a table, all laughing. That’s probably thirty quid each by the time you’ve got a main and a drink and someone orders halloumi sticks for the table. Thirty quid. That’s — I don’t even want to count what thirty quid is right now.

The algorithm knows I’m lying on a kitchen floor. It must do. It keeps showing me what I haven’t got.

I put my phone face down on the carpet.

Our postcode. The kind you don’t say out loud at school. The kind where people pull a face and go ‘oh, right’ and you can hear what they actually mean.

A door slams somewhere above us. Yus’s game stops for a second, then starts again.

I shift in my sleeping bag. The zip digs into my shoulder.

Mum irons our school uniforms so sharp you could cut yourself on the pleats. She never sends us out looking like the family that can’t cope. At least if you look all right, people leave you alone.

The estate is quieter now. A car alarm going off somewhere, two streets over, then stopping.

Mum’s light is still on. I can see the strip of yellow under her door. It’s half eleven.

She’s probably doing what I just did. Lying there. Thinking about everything that’s different now and everything that still needs sorting.

The rent on this place. The deposit we won’t see again. And the shifts she needs to pick up, the food shop, all of it.

The radiator in the hallway ticks — once, twice — like it’s thinking about coming on. It doesn’t.

She doesn’t stop. She never stops. And it still —

Outside, a fox screams. That horrible sound, like a kid crying. I flinch. Then nothing. Just the wind again.

Flat 12. Whitmore Estate. Third floor. No sofa. No deposit. Grey carpet, a bare bulb, a crack in the ceiling I’m going to be staring at every night.

I roll over and close my eyes.

Mum’s light goes off.

I keep thinking about it. The strip of yellow disappearing. Half eleven. She’ll be up at five. Twelve-hour shift. Home. Boxes. Do it all again. She’s been doing this for — how long? Since Dad left? That’s six years. Six years of being the only one who. Yeah.

Her hands on the steering wheel after the letting agent. Eyes closed. One minute. Then she just drove.

I’m sixteen and I’m just — what am I even doing? Nothing. I’m doing nothing. Bas.

The sleeping bag rustles every time I move. The fridge has that uneven buzz, like it’s struggling. I lie there and I listen to it and I think about the deposit and the scuff on the wall and the way that man looked at us with his lanyard and his clipboard like we were the problem.

That Dua Lipa song is back. Just the chorus, going round and round. I can’t even remember the words properly, just the shape of it. Brilliant.

I think about the rent on this place. Whether it’s less or just different.

My feet are cold. I should’ve kept my socks on.

I don’t sleep. I half-sleep, that thing where you’re aware of every noise and every time you shift position you remember where you are. The fridge stops buzzing at some point and the silence is worse.

At about two in the morning I pick up my phone. The screen hurts my eyes. I go to Google and I type:

can landlord keep deposit for scuff on wall

It won’t change anything. We’ve already left. We’ve already lost whatever we’ve lost.

But I type it anyway. I read the first result. Then the second one. Something about a deposit protection scheme. Something about an inventory. Words I half-understand — dilapidation, fair wear and tear. Fair wear and tear. Four years we lived there. Four years of living in a place and a scuff on a wall is what they keep your money for.

I put my phone down.

I stare at the ceiling. The crack. The bulb.

I pick up my phone again.

I keep reading. There’s a whole thing about how landlords aren’t supposed to — about how tenants have rights and there are schemes and you can dispute it and. And none of it matters because we didn’t know. Mum signed whatever he put in front of her because what else was she going to do, argue? With what? She doesn’t have a solicitor. She doesn’t have time. She’s got a twelve-hour shift and two kids and her mum’s hip and a flat that needs unpacking and she doesn’t have time to dispute a scuff on a wall even if she knew she could.

Nobody tells you. That’s the bit that gets me. Not that we lost the money — that we didn’t even know we could’ve kept it.

I scroll past something else. Some article about renting rights. I don’t click it. My eyes are burning but I’m not tired. I’m that thing past tired where your body wants to sleep and your brain won’t let it because it’s found something to be angry about and it won’t put it down.

I should sleep. I’ve got school in — I check the time — five hours.

I close the tab and open another one. My thumb just goes.

Part time jobs bradford no experience

I’m not expecting anything. It’s half two in the morning and I’m lying on a kitchen floor and my thumb needed somewhere to go.

There’s a supermarket hiring. Shelf stacking, weekends. Six-forty an hour. I stare at it. Six-forty. Is that even — what does that mean when you’ve never had a job? I haven’t had pocket money since Year 8.

Six-forty. According to the Indeed listing. I think about Josh’s Sambas. The ones he posted earlier, feet up, crossed at the ankles. Hundred and twenty quid. His dad probably just bought them. I work it out on my phone calculator because my brain’s given up on maths at this point — eighteen point seven five hours at six-forty. Call it nineteen. Nearly nineteen hours of stacking shelves for a pair of trainers.

I save the link.

I put my phone face down on the carpet. The screen light fades. The kitchen goes dark again. Just the crack in the ceiling and the fridge starting up again, buzzing.

My feet are still cold.