“Now, the thing is, we all know this is bollocks. Dancing bollocks. But then you think, well no, someone sat down and wrote that advert, and they know what they’re doing and they can’t be targeting me with lies can they? ’Cause it’s not lies, it’s an advert. These things get checked. By grown-ups. I’m not a grown-up. Look at me. I’m nineteen. I put Fairy liquid in the washing machine last week. Anyway, I needed a hundred and fifty pounds for a festival. Sponsored by MooLaLa, oddly enough. I had a brilliant time, bee-tee-doubleyou. Not that I can remember it, but the Facebook pics look
amazing
.
“And then came trying to pay it back, and of course I couldn’t. Not all of it. So I figured I’d let it ride for a week. No one rang me up and bollocked me. So I let it go for another week. Still no phone-call.
“Now, do you want to know how a four-thousand-one-hundred-and-twenty-four-per-cent interest rate works? A month later and I owed them three hundred quid. They let it ride another month. Then they emailed me to ask for the five hundred I now owed them.
“Also, I’d been smart. Yes, I’d ticked the box that said they could just charge my card directly. But I’d been clever and given them the details of my credit card. Which I’d then told the bank I’d lost. But that’s not good enough—’cause they’ve an agreement with the bank that lets them force through the transaction as technically it had been set up before the card was cancelled. So they went for my account. And it was empty.
“But the bank had been smart too. Fed up with workshy students like me scumming off their overdrafts, they had only let me set the account up if it was guaranteed by my mum. My mum who works fifty hours a week as a care assistant and then another twenty off the books in a care home. So, they emptied her account.
“She’s a proper grown-up. She checks her account regularly. She rang me in tears. She didn’t believe I’d just got a loan. She thought it was drugs. I told her what I’d done. She couldn’t believe it had just been for a festival. ‘At what I earn, that’s like half a week’s wages—for what? Dancing?’ She sounded so tired, so sad. And so I paid it all back. Just like that. By getting out another loan, of course.
“I went to the uni bursar to ask about the hardship fund. You know, the safety net. As I started telling them, they rolled their eyes. ‘Not them again.’ The bursar, she was a nice enough lady, for a tight-arsed cow. She told me how often she’d heard the story, and they’d made a decision. ‘So sorry, but we’ve had to draw a line in the sand. The hardship fund is for people who can’t make ends meet. Not to pay for festivals. Or servicing interest on a loan.’
“I argued with her. In the way you do when you know they’re not going to change their mind. I asked if I could lie and say it was ’cause I’d spent too much on food, and they said, well maybe, but I’d already told them what it was really for. I tried saying that hadn’t they let the company put the posters up and sponsor the festival and so on...
“And she said, ‘Oh, God, tell me about it. I’m getting ten people a week who’ve done just the same as you. Which is why we’re now saying no.’
“I’m screwed. Like utterly screwed. The only person I know who is fine is Gay Chris down the hall. You know the thing about Jap businessmen who buy schoolgirl knickers? Well, turns out the gays are just like that. They’ll
pay
, actually
pay
, for his used pants. I mean, I know Gay Chris. He’s you know, pretty typical of a student. I can’t think of anything I’d less rather shell out for than his pants. It’s probably a hazmat crime to even post them. But that’s how he got himself out of the mess. Wearing three pairs of boxers a day. He’s got no pants now, but also no debt.
“Me? Well, not gay, and don’t fancy posting out my pants. I just don’t know what to do. ’Cause it’s all very well saying ‘live on beans for a month.’ But I’m a student. Hello. I already live on beans. I live in this box. It’s got heat and light and power and it’s all paid for. But other than that, I’ve got nothing. You know. This laptop. And a heap load of books that I need for my course. And that’s it. I’ve cash-converted all my CDs and films for pence. ’Cause everyone else had done that. And that’s it. The end of the line.
“So there we go. I’ve totalled my life before I’m 20. It’s not supposed to happen to me—I’m not a single mum on a housing estate in Salford.”
J
AMIE LOOKED AS
though he was about to say something. He was starting on the carefully media-trained head shake and wry smile and launching into “We’ve heard all this before,” but then the second video played.
T
HIS TIME IT
was quite a nice cottage. The camera panned around with a bit of a wobble, and was then placed back down. The picture flared slightly, but then focused on a roaring fireplace and a sleeping dog. And then a woman in her mid-forties sat down. She was sensibly dressed with sensible hair. Underneath it all she looked tired, terribly tired. She held up a letter.
“This is a letter from my mortgage firm. It’s good news. My mortgage is paid off. We now own the house.”
She leaned back, dropping the letter.
“Which is a pity really, as now BettyPoke can take it from me. Well, take it from
us
. My husband doesn’t know that yet—I hope he never sees this. He’s the local vicar. This would ruin him. It’s all my fault that it got this far, really. I tried to see a divorce lawyer a few months ago. Don’t get me wrong—I love the Rev very deeply, but I wanted to get a divorce so that he’d get the house and everything, and also, so that everyone in the parish knew it was my fault. He’d keep the house and his career at least. The problem was the divorce lawyer—oh, she was ever so kind—but she said there was little they could do if the bank suspected that I was acting to try and save the house. The irony, of course, is that when the Reverend Dearly Beloved finds out now, he’ll probably want to divorce me anyway. I know I would.
“It all started... well, about eight months ago. Yes. I’d entered the menopause, and started the HRT and all that, ’cause it was like my body was cooking in an oven. There was a tiny side-effect. Just a little bit. Insomnia. In the early days, I found it rather peaceful. You know, up and about when everyone else was asleep. It was magical. I read books, I listened to the dawn chorus. It felt like special time. Time to myself. I’ve been married nearly twenty years you know, and I’d forgotten how that felt.
“That was initially. And then, oh, I dunno... I think I was checking the telly and there it was, an advert—‘Go on, have a flutter,’ and I thought, well, what’s the harm? I mean, they gave you a thirty-pound stake to start with. The worse that would happen, I figured, was that I’d lose their thirty pounds and learn my lesson. But maybe—just maybe, I could pay for the guttering.
“I lost most of that thirty-pound voucher. But not all of it. As it nearly went, a little bit came back, a tiny win. So I ended up with twenty-three pounds. I felt really good about that.
“I’d never gambled before—you know, I mean, not beyond a tombola or a raffle. But this was ever so clever. All the games on the site were so bright and so much fun, and you could even chat to other users. Some of them were great friends immediately, others were such mardy cows that you bet against them just to bring them down. But you know, it felt like I was joining a secret society of three-am gamblers. You know,
The Midnight Folk
or something.
“I kept coming back for the community. I kept topping up my initial stake out of my housekeeping—the odd ten pounds here or there. Just keeping that thirty pounds afloat. And I was doing so well, that I dipped into the holiday fund—thinking, you know, that when we took the cruise, perhaps this time I’d be able to get us a cabin above the water level with a great sea view and a balcony—wouldn’t that be something?
“But I don’t know what happened, I guess I wasn’t looking, but I lost the lot. No cruise. Just gone, gone like that. I felt so sick. So sick and cross with myself. I’d not felt so bad since I was a little girl.” The woman on screen paused and smiled sadly. “So you know what I did, don’t you? The Christmas fund went next.” She pushed her hands through her hair and the grey roots showed through the gold. “It all went,” she said, her voice becoming empty. “I look back and I think,
My god, how mad.
But I was like someone on a ship trying to keep the engine going. You know, first I burnt the furniture, then the fittings, then the floorboards, the decks, the mast, until all there was was a raging hungry furnace and no boat, nothing to keep that fire afloat. It had all gone. Sinking in flames. I was just chucking anything in. I was borrowing from friends. I was stealing money—from my children, from the Church Benevolence Fund, from the Village Residents’ Association. Last year we had three trips for the village, even getting as far as Bruges. Not any more. They’ll be lucky if they can get to Whipsnade.
“It was amazing how far I could get before people even got suspicious. I mean, I’m the vicar’s wife. I’m rather more trusted than God. When I say I’ll do more than my fair share of the flower arranging, everyone smiles like I’m the answer to their prayers. It’s a long time before someone mutters, ‘Oh, that’s quite a thin-looking spray,’ and even then she’s answered with, ‘Well, flowers are very dear at the moment. And you know what Judy’s like—she won’t use cheap flowers from a supermarket. Not like some I could mention.’
“And all the while I’m doing bloody wonders with some tired things from the Asda bargain bucket and some tulips I’ve stolen from the garden. And... and the graves.
“Just to feed a ravenous, stupid hunger. Not to get rich. Not to do anything really except scrabble back to where I was. Just a few months before.
“The funny thing about money is that you assume that if you can just give it back to people that’ll square everything up. Forgetting the hurt I’ve caused. The way I’ve betrayed everyone.
“And for what?”
Here she laughed, and it was the laugh of a carefree young girl. “Sounds so stupid doesn’t it? To confess you’ve lost the house to bingo?”
“W
E HAVE A
helpline,” Annette said, puckering her lips. Which was true. Calls to it cost 20p a minute and it operated between 9am and 5pm. It was of no use whatsoever at 2am when you were throwing the money for the council tax bill on Number 9.
Wilson was stood up, his school teacher air wrapped tightly around him. “I suppose it’s now my turn to be lectured by some barrack-room lawyer with a sob story,” he shrugged. “I hope they’ve chosen well. I don’t know about you, but I’m praying for a little old lady with a wheelchair. They always play well.”
I
NSTEAD THE SCREEN
now showed a video of a quiet, mousy-looking man, sort of like a young Wilson. He was sat in an office decorated with Ubanker logos.
“Hey, my name is Charlie, and I’m a manager at Ubanker. Probably won’t be for very much longer, but hey-ho. I’d like to start by reading you a letter from Wilson O’Reilly. He sent it out last winter:
“‘Dear Team Member,
“‘When we set up Ubanker, we made it a new kind of bank. The bank doesn’t own you, you own it. We all do. Every investor, every worker. And, at this time of year, as a valued worker and co-owner, you’d normally be expecting to receive a share of the bank’s profits based on your share of our firm. But I’m afraid I have bad news. For the period January to June we made an operating loss, so we don’t have a profit to distribute. I know that times are tough for all of us, and I know how disappointed you’ll feel about this news. But the good thing is that the bank is strong. We’re doing all we can. Stick with us.
“‘Wilson.’”
The young man sneered and screwed up the letter. “Of course, what Wilson didn’t tell us was that, even though the bank had performed really badly, some people were still being paid their dividends. It seemed there were two kinds of shareholder. The secret top tier were the people who’d overseen the nosediving investment division, the fraudulent tax deal with Sodobus, the insurance mis-selling, the failed attempt to open high street branches, the disastrous merger with a bank in Iceland, the attempt to rig the exchange rate, and some insider dealing. The people looking after all these cock-ups, yeah? They were getting rewarded. But not us—not the people who answered the phones to worried people, who took the flack after we’d obeyed instructions to sell insurance that people didn’t need.
“Last year was the bank’s worst year. We all got nothing. But Wilson O’Reilly got a million on top of his two-million salary.”
The little man smiled. “I’m here to tell you why he’s worth every penny. Because he’s a very shrewd investor. I found this out through my girlfriend. Yes, I have one, thanks. We met at a party and it was a while before I realised what she did. She kept saying she was ‘sort of’ an estate agent. I just assumed she was a bit sheepish about it. No.
“Her firm identified areas that were up-and-coming. Specialising in rubbish bits of London and Manchester that were little more than slums. They were able to identify them as areas that ‘had potential’ in about five or ten years time. This was fed back to my bank, who then fed these postcodes into their mortgage-lending criteria.
“Basically, if you rang up the bank and wanted a mortgage in one of these areas, you got it. It didn’t matter if you didn’t have quite enough dough, or were a bad bet. In fact, it actually weighed in your favour. The bank was, if you’ll forgive me, banking on you taking all the risks for them. It hoped that your area would indeed be up-and-coming, partly thanks to nice people like you moving into the area. It was hoped that you’d keep your head above water for a few years—right up until the interest rates soared. Then, yeah, your mortgage would get a little more pricey. With luck you’d default and the bank could then seize your property and sell it off. According to projections the property would have doubled or trebled in value. So the bank would be left with a tidy little return on their original outlay. Especially as Wilson had a relationship with a property speculation consortium.