She gave a half nod, nothing wholehearted but enough to make him relieved. On the television, the team had moved on to an armed robbery.
‘I can put another channel on.’ He held up the remote.
‘I’m not bothered, now,’ Vicky said.
Mike applied for every job going. He used the advice he got from the lad at the Jobcentre and drew up a CV. He worked out a batch of answers to use for the various questions like: What do you think you couldcontribute to our company? What are your strongestqualities? and Tell us about your hobbies and pastimes. Why some manager in a call centre had the faintest interest in Mike’s hobbies was beyond him but he played the game. He didn’t get any interviews.
Some mornings he went to the local library, read the newspapers. Every two weeks he had to go in and sign on and have a jobsearch review: give evidence of three steps he had taken each week to prove he was actively seeking work. It was better than in his dad’s time when they queued like cattle at the dole office every week and were viewed with suspicion and condescension by the staff. Mike had gone with his dad once. The place had been full of people whose lives were fragmenting or already in chaos. The air was sour with the reek of poverty, unwashed bodies and clothes, cigarettes and alcohol. The kids there were wild with boredom, their antics prompting the parents to lash out with angry slaps. The men were crazed with frustration, some of them tanked up already. A fight had kicked off and the clerks had sealed themselves in the back and the security guards turfed everyone out until things were sorted again. They filed back in, queued again and finally got seen by some pinch-faced woman whose attitude suggested she tarred them all with the same brush. The feckless, the undeserving poor.
Where Mike signed on now was a purpose-built facility with brightly upholstered chairs, wooden coffee tables, counter staff trained to smile. The culture had shifted even if some of the clients looked like those Mike remembered: the long-term unemployed, the very poor, the ill-equipped. The rest were a hotch-potch: men and women like Mike slung out of work after half a lifetime never missing a day, professional types with their shiny shoes and crisp shirts, or students highly qualified and hungry for a job. But even with the carpeted floors and the computer terminals and the fancy logos Mike felt the desperation among the people forced between its doors. He hated the place and how it made him feel.
A month after the