The secondary carer’s job was, he said, ‘a little unclear at this point’.
What did people ask in interviews anyway? And what if they asked me to do something practical with this old man, to feed him or bath him or something? Syed had said there was a male carer who covered his ‘intimate needs’ (I shuddered at the phrase). He suggested a weekly wage, I agreed, and once a year he told me he’d upped it a bit, usually by a little more than I would have asked for. Now, looking back, I couldn’t even remember having a discussion with him about money. It had been his first day open and he had looked almost blinded by gratitude. I had walked in and simply asked Frank if he needed a spare pair of hands. I had joined The Buttered Bun after Treena bet me that I couldn’t get a job in a day. I sat through the short bus journey feeling faintly sick. As Dad says of Mum, there’s more fat on a kirby grip.
I felt the waistband cutting into my midriff, and pulled the double-breasted jacket across. The embarrassing thing was not that I was wearing my mother’s suit, or that it was in a cut last fashionable in the late 1980s, but that it was actually a tiny bit small for me. ‘Bye love,’ he said, the corners of his mouth twitching. And I could tell Dad had been instructed not to comment on my outfit as I walked out of the house, my gait awkward in the too-tight skirt. I knew better than to argue with my mother. ‘You can wear mine, and I’ll iron you a nice blouse, and just for once don’t wear your hair up in those –’ she gestured to my hair, which was normally twisted into two dark knots on each side of my head ‘– Princess Leia things. ‘Because wearing pinstripes will be vital if I’m spoon-feeding a geriatric.’ ‘You must wear a suit to an interview,’ Mum had insisted. An ordinary girl, leading an ordinary life. Apart from an exotic taste in clothes, and the fact that I’m a bit short, there’s not a lot separating me from anyone you might pass in the street. I supposed I would probably marry Patrick, knock out a few kids, live a few streets away from where I had always lived. Up until I lost my job I hadn’t even given it any thought. I was twenty-six years old and I wasn’t really sure what I was.
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