Chapters
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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…-
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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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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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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I wake up and for about three seconds I don't know where I am. Then I do. The kitchen counter. The boxes. The grey carpet under my cheek. Light coming through the window -- not nice light, not morning-sun light, just flat September light that makes everything look worse than it did in the dark. At least in the dark you can pretend a room is bigger than it is. In the daylight the walls close in and you can see every scuff and stain, and that crack above the door that's been there since we moved…
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40.2 K • Completed
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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…
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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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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.…
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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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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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