Chapter 9: Interest Works Both Ways

I woke up at six with it still there. The name on Mum’s credit file. Someone I’ve never heard of, linked to her account, and a defaulted loan — four thousand two hundred quid — sitting next to it like it belonged there.

I didn’t tell Mum. I don’t know how to start that conversation. I don’t even know what it means yet, not properly. So I got dressed and went to work and the name’s still in my head, just sitting there, and I can’t do anything with it.

Saturday I bought the coat. The green one from the rack outside that shop on Darley Street, the one I’d been walking past for two weeks. Proper coat — lined, hood that actually keeps the rain off, not the Primark thing that soaks through in ten minutes. Sixty-five quid, down from ninety-five. I’d checked the budget three times. I’d been getting fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hours the last three weeks. I waited the seventy-two hours, the way I promised myself I would. Checked the budget. Checked the emergency pot. Bought it. Wore it home. Felt like someone who has her life together.

Sunday the rota came through. Four hours. One shift. Half-term week, shop doesn’t need me. I stared at the notification for a long time. Punched it in: four hours at six-forty. Twenty-five-sixty before deductions. Mum’s fifty is due Friday. I opened the emergency pot on my phone. Eighty quid in there — months of scraping. Took thirty out. Watched the number drop to fifty. It felt like reaching into one of Nani’s tins.

I did the seventy-two hours. I checked the budget. And I was still wrong, because I planned around fourteen hours. That’s what I’d been getting. I forgot that been getting and guaranteed aren’t the same word.

Tuesday. Shift.

The supermarket’s doing a meal deal promotion and every single customer wants to argue about which sandwich counts. I’ve been on tills for two hours and I’ve already explained the pasta pot situation four times. The pasta pot is not a sandwich. I know. I know it looks like it should count. It doesn’t.

Darius is on the self-checkout, which means he’s standing next to six machines pretending to help people while actually just waiting for the UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA alarm to go off so he can tap his card on the screen and reset it.

‘That’s the fourth one in ten minutes,’ I say, nodding at the machine.

‘Personal best is eleven.’ He leans against the counter. ‘Some woman tried to scan a mango and it came up as a television. I didn’t even know that was possible.’

‘How does a mango come up as a television?’

‘Barcodes, man. The system’s held together with string and prayers.’

We’re on break at half five. The break room smells like it always smells — microwaved something and the ghost of whoever’s tuna sandwich is decomposing in the bin. Darius is sitting across from me, eating a Tesco own-brand flapjack, and he’s got a face I haven’t seen before. Like he’s been thinking about something for a while and he’s finally going to say it.

‘You know my credit card,’ he says.

I don’t actually know his credit card. I know about his credit card. He’s mentioned it before — not the details, just the weight of it.

‘Yeah.’

‘I worked out when it’s gone.’

He’s sitting up. Not doing the dry thing where he shrugs it off.

‘What do you mean, when it’s gone?’

‘The debt. I worked out the date. The actual date it’ll be cleared.’

He pulls out his phone. Opens the calculator — not a banking app, just the calculator, the same one I use to work out if I can afford a meal deal and a bus fare in the same week.

‘I owe them one thousand, nine hundred and twelve quid,’ he says. ‘That’s what it is right now. After two years of paying it off.’

‘Two years?’

‘Two years. Minimum payments, every month, like clockwork.’

‘And it’s still —’

‘One thousand nine hundred and twelve quid. Started at two grand.’

I do the maths without meaning to. Two years. Twenty-four months of payments. And the balance has dropped by… eighty-eight pounds.

‘That can’t be right.’

‘It’s right.’ He puts the phone down. Picks the flapjack back up, then puts that down too, like he can’t decide which thing to hold. ‘I was paying about forty quid a month at the start. Minimum. That’s what the statement said — minimum payment, forty-odd quid. So I paid it. Every month. Thought I was being responsible.’

‘Weren’t you?’

He says it flat. ‘Nineteen, two grand limit, what d’you think happened. I did what everyone does.’ He shrugs. ‘Forty quid a month, give or take. But the interest was thirty-six quid a month. So I was paying off about four quid. Four quid a month off two grand.’

‘That’s —’ I punch it into my phone. Two thousand divided by four. Five hundred months.

‘Over forty years,’ I say.

‘Not quite that bad because the interest drops a bit as the balance drops. But basically. If I’d kept going on minimums, I’d be paying this thing off until I was about forty-three.’

‘How’d it get to two grand?’

‘I was nineteen and someone gave me a £2,000 credit limit. That’s like giving a kid a car with no brakes.’

‘Just — like that? They just gave it to you?’

‘Applied online. Ten minutes. They didn’t check my income or nothing. I was on part-time at seventeen hours a week and they said yeah, here’s two grand, have fun.’

‘So what did you spend it on?’

‘It wasn’t anything mad. I didn’t go on holiday or buy a car.’ He leans back. ‘Buying rounds. Trainers. Deliveroo three times a week because I couldn’t be arsed cooking after a shift. It didn’t feel like spending because I wasn’t using my actual money.’

‘But it was your actual money.’

‘Yeah. Just… later. That’s all credit is, innit. Your money, later. Except with thirty-six quid a month bolted on.’

He picks up his phone again. This time he scrolls to something specific — a screenshot. Numbers in a column. Dates.

‘So I sat down. Properly sat down. First time I’ve ever looked at it without wanting to chuck my phone across the room.’ He turns the screen toward me. ‘If I pay a hundred quid a month — fixed, not minimum, a proper fixed amount — it clears in about two years. Twenty-five months. October next year.’

‘And I set up a direct debit,’ he says. ‘Not the minimum. A hundred quid. It goes out on the first of the month, before I can spend it. And I stopped using the card. Stuck it in a drawer. Balance can only go down now.’

‘How much would you have paid on minimums? Like, total, if you’d just kept going?’

‘About five grand. For a two-grand debt. More than double.’ He wraps the flapjack wrapper into a tight ball. ‘They sent me a letter, you know. The card company. Saying I was in “persistent debt.”‘

‘What’s persistent debt?’

‘Means you’ve been paying more in interest than you’ve been actually paying off. For eighteen months. So they have to write and tell you.’ He shrugs. ‘Like a doctor telling you you’re ill when you’ve had the symptoms for two years. Cheers for that.’

I think about that for a second. How that even works.

‘That letter,’ he says. ‘That’s actually what made me sit down and do it. Not the letter itself — the letter was rubbish. But the fact that they knew. They’d been watching the whole time. They could see I was drowning and they were still taking the money. So I thought, right, if you lot can run numbers on me, I can run numbers on you.’

He balls up his flapjack wrapper and flicks it at the bin. Misses. Neither of us gets up to pick it up.

He’s back on his phone. Scrolling something. I eat my flapjack and the microwave hums behind us and I want to ask more but the moment’s closed. Then the shift bell goes and we both stand up at the same time and that’s it.

After the break I’m back on tills. My hands are still cold from restocking the chiller aisle earlier and the card machine’s freezing against my fingers. The queue’s backed up to frozen foods. I scan a pasta pot. Bag it. Scan a two-litre of milk. Bag it. The woman pays contactless without looking at me. Next customer. Pasta pot again. I don’t even say the thing about it not being a sandwich any more.

On the bus home, I open my banking app. Not Monzo. Not NatWest. The building society one. The savings. The kid behind me has his music leaking out of his earbuds — drill, tinny and relentless — and I angle my phone away from him out of habit.

I haven’t checked it in a couple of weeks. I’ve been putting in my fifteen quid a month — sometimes it’s twelve, sometimes it’s the full fifteen, once it was only eight because Mum’s phone bill came at a bad time and I covered it. But it’s been going in. Mostly.

The balance loads.

£103.41.

I stare at it. That’s more than a hundred pounds. I’ve never had more than a hundred pounds that stayed before. Birthday money at twelve doesn’t count because that was gone within a week. This is different. This has been building.

I scroll down to the transaction history. And there, between my last deposit and nothing, there’s a line I don’t recognise.

Interest payment: £0.67

I stare at it.

Sixty-seven p.

Nobody paid me for that. I didn’t sell anything or stack anything or stand behind a till while someone argues about a pasta pot. That sixty-seven p just showed up.

Sixty-seven p. That wouldn’t buy me a can of Coke from the vending machine at school. It’s less than ten minutes of work. It’s nothing.

Except it isn’t nothing. Because I didn’t do anything. The money just… sat there. And there’s more of it now than I put in.

Yaar.

And somewhere on Mum’s credit file, someone else’s four grand doing a third.

The bus stops outside Aldi. Someone gets off. The doors close and the engine does that wheezing thing it does on the hill. I sit there with my phone on my lap and my high-vis still on because I forgot to take it off.

Accha. I get my calculator out.

I type in Darius’s numbers first.

1912. That’s his balance now. Times 1.0183. That’s one month of interest at 22% — I divide 22 by 12 to get the monthly rate, the way he explained it. 1,947.04. Minus 100 — his payment. 1,847.04. I do it again. And again. Month after month, tapping it in on the bus, watching the number drop.

After twelve months: about 1,264.

After twenty: about 560.

After twenty-five: gone.

Then I do mine. 103.41. Times 1.00335 — that’s 4.1% divided by 12. 103.76. Plus 15 — my monthly deposit. 118.76. Again. Again.

After twelve months: about 290.

After five years — if I kept this up for five years, and that’s a massive if, because five years is a long time and life doesn’t hold still — about 1,100.

Eleven hundred quid. From fifteen pounds a month and doing nothing.

Nani would have something to say about the 67p. About riba. It flickers through. Nani’s voice in my head, quiet, the way it gets when I’m doing something she wouldn’t.

Darius is eating a meal deal when I get to the break room — the one that comes with the pasta pot that isn’t a sandwich — and I’ve been waiting all morning to ask him something.

‘Have you ever heard of an ISA?’

He looks up. ‘What, like a person?’

‘No — like, Individual Savings Account. I-S-A. Have you got one?’

‘Nah.’ He takes a bite. ‘My mum might have one. Why?’

I turn my phone toward him. I’ve got the gov.uk page open — I found it last night. I read most of it. I think I understood most of it.

‘So it’s basically a savings account,’ I say. ‘But the interest is…’ I scroll down, looking for the bit. ‘Tax-free. All of it.’

He leans over. Reads the screen himself instead of letting me explain, which is fair enough.

‘Twenty grand a year,’ he reads. ‘Who’s putting twenty grand in savings?’

‘Not us. But there’s no minimum, I think. You can put in whatever.’

‘So what’s the point? My normal savings would be tax-free anyway, wouldn’t it? I don’t earn enough to pay tax on…’ He trails off. ‘Do I?’

‘Honestly? Probably not right now. But it’s free. Same rates. And if they change the rules later, money that’s already in an ISA is protected.’

‘So there’s no downside.’

‘Basically, yeah.’

He reads the screen for another minute. I eat my sandwich and let him. My phone buzzes — Sienna: have u seen the drama on ellie’s story omg — and I swipe it away.

‘Flexible Cash ISA,’ he reads. ‘Withdraw any time. No penalty.’ He looks up. ‘It’s just a savings account with a fancy wrapper.’

‘A tax-free fancy wrapper.’

‘That currently saves me no tax.’

‘Currently.’

He half-laughs. ‘You should work in a bank, Maya. You’ve got the sales pitch down. “It currently saves you no tax, but it might one day, and it’s free, so why not?” Incredible.’

‘I’m not selling you anything. I just thought —’

‘Nah, I know. I’m taking the piss.’ He hands my phone back. ‘I’ll look into it. After work.’

I wait for him to say something else. He doesn’t. He finishes his sandwich and screws up the wrapper and I can’t tell if he’s actually going to look into it or if he was just being polite. Gary sticks his head round the door and tells us break’s over and that’s that.

Home. I can hear the telly before I’ve got the door open — something loud and Urdu, one of Nani’s dramas, the ones where everyone’s shouting about a wedding or a property dispute or both. The volume’s up because Nani’s hearing isn’t what it was and she won’t admit it.

‘Assalamu alaikum, Nani.’

She waves without looking up. She’s in her chair — the one nobody else sits in, the one with the cushion she brought from the old flat — and she’s got a cup of chai balanced on the arm and her feet tucked under her. The drama’s at a good bit. Someone’s crying. Someone else is slamming a door. Nani’s mouthing along to the dialogue.

Yus is on the floor behind the sofa building something out of Lego. He’s too old for Lego. He doesn’t care. He’s got pieces spread across the carpet like a landmine field and I nearly stand on a wheel.

‘Yus. Move your stuff.’

‘I’m building.’

‘Build somewhere that isn’t the doorway.’

He ignores me. I step over him. The kitchen smells like onions and daal — Nani must’ve cooked. There’s a pot on the hob with the lid on and the stove’s off but the pot’s still warm. I lift the lid. Daal. Yellow, oily, the way Nani makes it with the tarka on top — fried cumin seeds and dried chilli and too much garlic. My stomach makes a noise.

I get a bowl. Scoop the daal in. Tear off a piece of roti from the stack wrapped in the tea towel on the counter. Eat standing up at the kitchen counter because the table’s got Yus’s homework on it — not being done, just existing there, open to a page about volcanoes.

From the living room: ‘MAYA! Tell your brother the remote is not a toy!’

‘Yus, the remote’s not a toy.’

‘I’m changing it for ONE SECOND —’

‘Yusuf!’ Nani’s voice. That’s the end of it. Yus hands the remote back. The drama resumes. Someone’s still crying.

I finish the daal. Wash my bowl. The tap drips — it’s been dripping since November, that slow pink-pink-pink that I’ve stopped hearing unless the flat’s quiet. I dry my hands on the tea towel that’s also the roti towel, which Mum says is disgusting but nobody’s bought a separate one.

Mum’s not home yet. Late shift. The flat does this thing when she’s not here — it’s louder in some ways, quieter in others. Nani and Yus fill different spaces than Mum does. Yus is noise. Nani is presence. I’m somewhere in between, eating daal and stepping over Lego and wondering if Darius is actually going to look up what an ISA is or if he was just being nice.

He texts me that evening.

opened an isa
cash isa
put a fiver in
dont laugh

I don’t laugh. I send back:

thats smart

its 5 quid
thats not smart thats a meal deal

its the start tho
when the credit cards done you switch the direct debit over
same hundred quid different direction

He doesn’t reply for a minute. Then:

same money different direction
yeah
thats actually how im gonna think about it
oct next year the card clears and the money goes in instead of out

exactly

cheers maya
for the isa thing
feels weird having an account thats supposed to go up instead of down

give it time
67p at a time

loool 67p
im basically rich

we’re both basically rich
combined savings: £108 and 67p

incredible
shift tmrw?

yh 2 til close

rip

I sit on the sofa bed looking at that last message.

I open the building society app. £103.41. I know it’s not going to change between now and sleeping. I look at it anyway.

I close the app. Put my phone on the floor next to the sofa bed. Pull the duvet up.

The name on Mum’s file comes back. Four thousand two hundred quid. I push it away. Not tonight.

I’m almost asleep when I hear Mum’s voice through the wall. Low. Careful. She’s on the phone. I can only catch fragments — benefits, and entitled, and then, quieter, but what about Ammi?

What about Nani?

Mum’s bedroom door clicks shut. I lie there listening to nothing.