Chapters
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It starts the way it always starts. In bed, phone too bright, eyes that should have been closed an hour ago. I've turned the brightness down to the point where the screen looks like it's underwater, but it doesn't help. My brain's doing that thing where it won't switch off. Three weeks of sehri at half four has wrecked my sleep pattern — I'm wide awake at midnight and dead by two, and the gap in between is where the scrolling lives. The flat's quiet — Mum went to bed an hour ago, Yus has been asleep…-
40.2 K • Completed
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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…
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40.2 K • Completed
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The last exam is English Language Paper 2. I've been staring at the timetable on the fridge for six weeks and the dates have stopped meaning things. They're just shapes now. Monday the eighth. Wednesday the tenth. Friday the nineteenth. I've crossed them off with a Sharpie — Mum's good Sharpie, the one she uses for labelling Yus's PE kit — and the timetable looks like a murder board from one of those Netflix crime shows except instead of suspects it's GCSE subjects and the only thing getting killed…
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40.2 K • Completed
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I've been putting it off. The adding up. Not because I don't want to know — because I sort of already do, and the number in my head is going to be different from the number on the screen, and one of those is going to be disappointing and I'm not sure which. Saturday. No shift. Yus is at his mate's house, which means the flat is quiet in a way that feels weird, like a bus with no passengers. Mum's at work — twelve till eight. Nani's watching something on her phone in the bedroom, volume up, the tinny…
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40.2 K • Completed
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Spring. The kind where Bradford can't decide if it's done with winter or not — one day you're in a T-shirt, the next it's sleeting sideways off the hills and you're pretending you brought a coat because you definitely didn't. Saturday morning. Mum's at the kitchen table with her phone and a mug of tea that's gone cold. I can tell it's gone cold because she hasn't drunk any of it. She's just holding it, like she forgot why she picked it up. 'You all right?' She doesn't look up. 'Hmm? Yeah.…
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40.2 K • Completed
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Saturday morning. Shift's finished. Three hours of shelf-stacking and I smell like cardboard and floor cleaner and I want two things: school shoes and a laptop. Eid was last weekend. Nani cooked for about forty people and Mum bought Yus new trainers she couldn't really afford and the whole flat smelled like biryani for three days. I got thirty-five quid in Eidi from the aunties. It's already in the building society. Yus spent his on a game before the Eid salah was even finished. The shoes are urgent.…
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40.2 K • Completed
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The group chat goes off at 11:47 on a Tuesday morning. I know the exact time because I'm in English and Mr Keane is talking about unreliable narrators, and I've got my phone on silent in my blazer pocket, buzzing like it's trying to escape. Sienna: omg my bday is saturdaywe HAVE to do somethinglike actual something not just hanging round town Three dots. More typing. dinner?? like proper dinner outMyLahore or something??my mum said she'd drive us there and back The replies come fast.…
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40.2 K • Completed
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Monday. Something's off. I can tell before anyone says anything. The flat has a frequency when things are wrong — not a sound, more like a weight. The air gets heavier. Mum's in the kitchen but she's not cooking. She's sitting at the table with her phone and a mug of tea that's gone cold, and she's looking at the screen like it's said something to her that she can't unhear. 'All right, Mum?' 'Hm? Yeah, fine, love.' She puts the phone face-down. That's the move. I know the move. 'You…
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40.2 K • Completed
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Seven quid. I'm sitting on the sofa bed at half eleven on a Wednesday night, banking app open, and the number is just — sitting there. £7.34. Looking at me. Like it's embarrassed for both of us. Two weeks ago I had a hundred and forty-eight pounds in this account. I know this because I checked it the day after my second pay went in. I screenshotted it. I actually screenshotted my bank balance like it was something to be proud of, because for about six hours it was the most money I'd ever…
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40.2 K • Completed
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The app says paid. I'm in the bathroom at school, lunch break, sitting on the closed toilet lid because that's my office now apparently, and the notification just came through. NatWest. A green banner at the top of the screen. Payment received: £66.56 I stare at it. Sixty-six quid. Fifty-six pence. I worked thirteen hours. Thirteen times six-forty is eighty-three pounds and twenty pence. I know this because I've worked it out about fourteen times since the rota came through. Eighty-three…
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40.2 K • Completed
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