Monday 21st February

It was Monday morning and Lorraine had to drag herself up and face that god-awful job again. The house had no hot water, so she shocked herself awake with a cold splash before pulling on a nylon blouse salvaged from Oxfam, an old midi-skirt of her mum’s, American Tan tights and scuffed three-inch-heeled court shoes. She clattered down the uncarpeted stairs and clicked on the electric heater’s orange bars. God, the place was dispiriting. After the landlord of her last flat decided to sell up, the chance to rent a condemned house had looked like a clever gamble on Salford’s Regeneration Scheme. As time passed it was feeling like a bad mistake. Each month she wrote to the council about their statutory duty to rehouse her. To date no one had bothered to reply.

A blackened cast-iron cooking range dominated the front room, so unwieldy that she rarely had the energy to light a fire. Her own stuff stood around like temporary props: the upright piano and Fender copy guitar; the poster of Rachael, the replicant from Blade Runner; and prints by Escher and Kandinsky. The books from her Humanities degree were arranged on brick and plank shelves, from Kafka’s The Castle to Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, and well-thumbed textbooks: Millett’s Sexual Politics, Barthes’s Mythologies and Berger’s Ways of Seeing.

In contrast, by her armchair lay the new postgrad books she was avoiding: Employment Law, Personnel Policy and Practice and Industrial Relations. It was hardly the heady mix of ideas and inspiration she had enjoyed for three self-indulgent, grant-funded years. Warming her insides with hot tea and jam-smeared toast, she inspected the remains of yesterday’s make-up. Cold cream melted yesterday’s nubs of mascara and eyeshadows of shocking pink and peacock green. Late nights had left dark shadows which she dabbed with Hide and Heal, before brushing on lip gloss and bronze eye shadow. Finally, she tugged a brush through dry bleached hair.

The soaring melody of U2’s ‘New Year’s Day’ faded out and Dave Lee Travis announced the news for Monday 21st February. It was the same old droning resistance to seat belts and alarm at a new coin to replace the trusty green pound note. She switched it off when the announcer gave an update on that freak from the Jobcentre called Nilsen, who had been caught with a flat full of dismembered body parts.

Pulling open the curtains, she started at the reflection of her own ghostly silhouette. Fog. The usual view along Balaclava Street – dilapidated terraces, the skeletal roofless church, the corner shop advertising ‘Ales & Stouts’ – was hidden. She would be late for work. She hurtled upstairs in a panic.

Jasmine was a small bump beneath a balding candlewick bedspread, only her profile visible in strings of fair hair. The game book, dice and score-pad were scattered over the bed, witness to the previous night’s efforts to find the correct path through the labyrinthine citadel. Even her daughter’s Star Wars figures in their home-made cardboard spaceship had been abandoned for the puzzle book. The two of them had stayed up far too late, engrossed.

‘It’s all right, Mum.’ Jas’s eyes opened wide. In a few whirlwind minutes Lorraine bundled her out of bed, pulled on her daughter’s clothes and set a piece of toast in her hand before hauling her out to the rusty red Metro. Peering through the misted windscreen, she steered the car slowly, trying to dodge kerbs and bollards and the sheets of flat metal that closed off half the condemned streets.

Jas was rhythmically kicking her foot against the seat. Finally, she twisted around in the passenger seat and stared solemnly up at her.

‘You got my two pounds for the gymnastics trip, Mum?’

She did a quick calculation. No way. It was still five days till payday.

‘Mrs Dearden said it’s got to be today.’ Jas’s voice poked deep into her conscience.

‘Listen, I haven’t got much left till I get paid. Here’s a pound note. I’ll speak to your teacher if you like.’

On the main road the traffic was crawling at less than twenty miles an hour as she edged the Metro into a line of disembodied yellow headlamps. She passed the chained and padlocked entrance to Salford Docks every day, but this morning it looked especially mournful in the mist. With three million unemployed, she tried to convince herself she was one of the lucky ones driving to a job.

Clicking her band’s rehearsal tape into the cassette player, the sound of Dale’s jangly guitar riff absorbed her attention as she jerked the car forward in fits and starts. Words bubbled up in her mind and she began to sing, vocalising the melody line she had been struggling with:

‘That’s not bad, Mum.’

‘Well thank you,’ she answered gravely. This time when she sang Jas joined in:

Jas’s voice was just one of the things she loved about her; together their voices harmonised beautifully.

‘Hey, you wanna be in my band?’ Lorraine nudged her.

‘My band, my band, yeah!’ Jas echoed the Gary Glitter tune.

They both giggled for a moment. At the next set of traffic lights Lorraine scribbled down her new chorus on an old envelope.

Guilt returned as she pulled up at the Carneys’ house. It was larger but danker than her own place, its only attraction that it stood opposite St Michael’s Primary. No one answered her hammering at the peeling door, though the malevolent faces of two little Carney boys watched from an upstairs window. Eventually Mrs Carney yelled from the window above, to ‘Just leave ’er in front of th’ telly and I’ll be right down.’

Lorraine steered Jas into the grubby living room. Please, she prayed silently, let those empty cans of Special Brew not be Mrs Carney’s. She looked at the foul cat litter tray and food-spattered copy of The Sun. Why the hell did schools not open until ten to nine, far too late for any parent with a normal job? All through her degree Jasmine had been happy and safe at a well-run council nursery. Now schools and their rigid opening times were the bane of her life.

She leant down and kissed her daughter. ‘Honest sweetheart, I’ll ring the council today for a new childminder.’

All along Langworthy Road she wondered how long it might take to find a new minder for Jas. Distracted, she steered into the wrong avenue. Soon she was as lost as the persona in her song, driving in circles up and down short curving streets of identical 1930s semis. The area was familiar and yet the fog cast a deceptive veil; vapour-wreathed side roads disappeared as quickly as she spotted them. The car’s digital clock displayed two minutes to nine. ‘No, no,’ she pleaded to the Fates. ‘I cannot be late.’

A pale figure sprang into view a few yards in front of the feeble headlamps. She hammered both feet down onto the clutch and brake. The car bucked, slithered a few heart-stopping feet, and then stopped only a few inches from the pedestrian.

‘Rose!’ Standing rigid in the road was the hospital’s medical records officer, camouflaged in the kind of beige raincoat only a pensioner should wear. She was staring across the way, her face blank.

Lorraine swung the car over to some railings, clicked off the music and wound down her window.

‘It’s me. You OK? Get in, I’m late and I can’t find the hospital in this blasted fog.’

Rose was still in some sort of daze, staring backwards.

‘I’ll try not to kill you, honest,’ Lorraine shouted good-humouredly. ‘Come on. I’m going to miss the post meeting.’

Slowly Rose manoeuvred herself into the passenger seat. As she directed Lorraine in monosyllables, the maze of avenues grew familiar.

Lorraine glanced at her colleague, whose honest, girlish face was really rather lovely. Today, however, she appeared flushed and agitated.

‘You all right?’ Lorraine asked quietly.