Revenger

13

There were times when Paula Miklosko wondered why she’d ever bothered getting married or working for a living. It wasn’t that she regretted committing herself to her husband Marek. True, they couldn’t have come from much more different backgrounds: she was a half-Ghanaian, half-Welsh Baptist; he was a Czech Catholic. But they loved each other as much now as the day they’d met six years ago, and that was all Paula cared about. She wanted him, and was longing for the day when they could afford to start a family together.

In the meantime, she had something she’d always dreamed of: a little hairdressing salon of her own. She’d saved up since she left college to put down the deposit. Marek and his pals had done a great job gutting the old interior and giving it a whole new look. If she was given even half a chance, she knew she had the talent, the energy and the determination to make a real go of it.

So far, trade was holding up all right. Even in times of hardship, women still wanted their hair to look nice. But they couldn’t pay as much for it as they’d done a few years ago, and the tips were pitiful. Meanwhile, prices and taxes just kept rising all the time, and even when Marek and his crew charged rock-bottom rates they still found it hard getting building or decorating work.

After years of apparent immunity from the general decline of the British property market, London prices had collapsed in recent months. All the wealthy foreigners were leaving town, and banks had finally stopped paying bonuses. Without all that silly money the price-bubble had burst. Nobody was moving house. Nobody could afford to tart up the houses they’d got. Even if they could, what was the point? Areas that had once been promoted as up-and-coming were now little better than warzones. Even the respectable, desirable parts of the city were overrun with muggers, beggars and crazies. Any middle-class families that had country houses had fled. The rest were trying to find a way out. And those who had no choice but to stay, who were trying to live the right way, were being spat on by the system as much as those who sought to destroy it.

‘I don’t understand this crazy country!’ Marek liked to say. ‘If you work, they pay you less and less. If you just sit on your ass, then every year the benefits go up and up. No wonder the English are so lazy. Is a waste of time to work here. And having family is impossible! Maybe I should give you baby then leave. You get more money that way.’

Paula tried to explain that people on benefits weren’t living in luxury, whatever people said. She had enough friends trying to raise two or three kids by themselves in a council flat to know it wasn’t easy. But she also knew that none of those friends even tried to get jobs because they’d never earn enough to make it worthwhile. Plenty of them came from families where no one had worked for years and years. No one stayed married; no one even tried to get a decent education. Paula was desperate to avoid becoming another welfare statistic — and even if she hadn’t been, her mother would never have let her. She’d always taken the same view as Marek: lazy white folk could waste their lives away if they liked, but her children were going to make something of themselves.

That was what Paula planned to do. All she asked for was just a little help, a little recognition that she and Marek should be rewarded for at least trying to lead a productive life that would actually contribute to society.

As she cleaned up the salon after the last customer had left, Paula had the radio on. They were talking about that big rally Mark Adams was having at the O2. Paula didn’t quite know what to make of Adams. Marek often said, ‘Every other politician in this country full of bullshit — but this Adams I like.’

Paula had told him, ‘You wouldn’t think that if you were black.’ But she didn’t make a big issue of it. There were a lot of good reasons to have a fight with her husband, but politics wasn’t one of them.

She turned the radio off, closed up the salon, pulled down the security shutters and walked off to her car. It was only a little Suzuki Swift, eight years old with over a hundred thousand miles on the clock. But it was Paula Miklosko’s little luxury. She’d paid for it. And she loved it.