Chapter 30
‘It was great to hang out with you last night.’ Carrie Finder is leaning on the blue partition fixed to Jamie’s desk, so that all he can see is a pair of forearms and a head. ‘Alan and Chris are cool, aren’t they?’
‘Interesting guys.’ Jamie carries on checking his emails, hoping Carrie will take the hint.
‘They thought you were great, too . . . Mohammed!’ She laughs.
Jamie glances around the office. He had intended his response to be cutting – a sarcastic riposte that would prompt an awkward silence, maybe even cause Alan and Chris to reflect on their so-called jokes.
Instead, Jamie had been taken as one of them; someone ready to take the piss out of refugees.
‘We wondered if you fancied coming with us to a protest against the immigration centre at the weekend,’ Carrie says. ‘The petition’s had more than seventy-four thousand signatures, but we need feet on the ground to make a real impact.’
‘I actually don’t know much about the centre,’ Jamie says. ‘I haven’t read up on the background, or what the need is around here for—’
Carrie stops leaning on his partition. ‘The need is for local housing.’ She walks around into Jamie’s cubicle, and he tenses as though bracing himself for a punch. ‘Did you know that eighty-two per cent of young people who leave the area do so because they can’t find suitable housing?’
‘I didn’t know that, no.’
‘So will you come?’ Carrie puts a leaflet on his keyboard.
The top half has the words Charity Begins at Home superimposed on to a Union Jack flag.
Beneath it is a photograph of a man and a woman with two fair-haired children, the whole family looking almost comically glum.
It’s captioned Mr and Mrs Williams have been waiting for local authority housing for three years.
‘They’re all living in one room,’ Carrie says. ‘They were supposed to get a three-bed near the kids’ school, but the council decided to put migrants there instead.’
‘Carrie . . .’ Jamie looks around the office again. ‘I’ve got to say, I’m not really very comfortable—’
‘Talking about this at work?’
‘Well . . .’
‘That’s why I hang out with Alan and Chris, plus a few others . . . they get it, you know? But don’t worry.’ She nudges Jamie’s shoulder. ‘You can speak freely with me.’ She turns over the leaflet. ‘So, what do you think?’
Facilities at the new ￡200m immigration centre will include a state-of-the-art gym, cinema room, library and FREE WIFI, Jamie reads.
If you agree that foreign migrants shouldn’t be housed in luxury hotels while homeless British military veterans are left to beg on the streets, march with us and make your voice heard!
‘Eleven a.m. Saturday,’ Carrie says. ‘It would be great to have you with us.’ She smiles at him as she leaves, as though she’s just delivered a training guide on manual handling instead of a leaflet packed with racist rhetoric.
Jamie picks up the flyer between thumb and forefinger and drops it into the bin beneath his desk.
He tries to concentrate on his emails, but nothing’s going in.
He keeps hearing the fervour in Carrie’s voice; keeps seeing the words on the back of the leaflet.
March with us and make your voice heard!
Jamie hesitates. Then he bends down and retrieves the flyer from the bin.
At lunchtime, he walks to the nearest police station, a small outpost which looks as though it might once have been someone’s house.
The front door is locked, a sign taped to the glass telling visitors to use the yellow phone to report a crime.
Jamie turns the leaflet over in his hands.
What if he just wants to pass on information? Can he use the yellow phone for that?
Just as he’s deliberating, a police car turns into the driveway.
The driver opens his window. ‘This isn’t an operational station any more, mate.’ He has deep grooves under his eyes. ‘You can use the yellow phone to—’
‘Report a crime. Thanks. Actually, I just wanted to give you this.’ Jamie hands him the leaflet. ‘Someone at work invited me to a protest against the immigration centre they’re building near the bypass, and I thought you should know about it.’
‘Saturday, right?’ The police officer drops the leaflet on to the passenger seat beside him. ‘It was mentioned in morning briefing.’
‘Great. Do you need anything from me?’ Jamie waits. ‘A statement . . . or . . .’
‘You’re all good, mate. Cheers.’
Jamie feels rather flat as he walks back to the office. He had psyched himself up to deliver the leaflet, feeling faintly subversive, like a member of a resistance movement. But of course the police already know about it; that’s what they’re there for.
He doesn’t see Carrie again until the end of the day, when she runs to catch up with him as he’s leaving the office. She mimes tipping a glass to her mouth. ‘Quick one? If we hurry, we’ll make Happy Hour.’
Jamie makes an apologetic face. ‘Thanks, but I have to get back. Some other time, maybe.’ When hell freezes over, he thinks.
‘And you’ll think about the protest?’
‘Yeah.’ Jamie pictures Carrie’s leaflet on the passenger seat of the police car. ‘Do you reckon you’ll get any trouble from the police?’ he says, as airily as he can manage.
‘Bound to,’ Carrie says darkly. She starts walking, and Jamie finds himself walking alongside her. ‘They can dump an immigration centre on us without any consultation, but if we dare to fight back, we’re the ones getting kettled.’ She gives a hard laugh.
‘It is quite an extreme reaction,’ Jamie says mildly. He’s thinking Carrie might be less militant than Alan and Chris – that he should at least try to challenge her views – but, before he can say anything else, Carrie stops walking and clutches his arm.
‘Exactly!’ Her eyes are shining. ‘It’s totally disproportionate. I went to a demo once when it was almost all women and kids, and the local force sent about sixty cops, all in riot gear.’
Jamie tried again. ‘That’s not quite what—’
‘So much for freedom of speech, right? What they don’t seem to get is that it’s not immigration centres per se we have an issue with.’
‘It’s not?’
‘Of course not!’ Carrie laughs. ‘We’re not monsters!
’ She starts walking again. ‘But these people . . . they come by boat, right?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer.
‘But they don’t get those boats from Syria, or Pakistan, or Iran, do they?
They go to Turkey first, then maybe Germany, then France; and they’d be perfectly safe in any of those countries.
’ She throws out her hands like a barrister delivering a closing argument.
‘So let them claim asylum there. Let someone else pick up the bill. We don’t have room.
’ She looks at Jamie expectantly. ‘Do we?’
‘It’s a difficult balance,’ he says. ‘We’re a small nation—’
‘Exactly.’ Carrie nods, satisfied, even though Jamie hadn’t finished. A small nation but a compassionate one, he’d wanted to say; but there’s no point. People like Carrie – people like Alan and Chris – don’t change their minds.
‘There aren’t enough jobs for our own citizens,’ Carrie says, ‘let alone another country’s.’
They’ve reached the bus stop now. Jamie feels grubby, not only as a result of Carrie’s rhetoric but from his own cowardice in not challenging it. He tries again.
‘We’ve got quite a few lower-level vacancies at ATP, haven’t we? Adam said we’ve been struggling to fill them.’
A mischievous expression lights up Carrie’s face. ‘Shall I let you into a secret?’ She leans closer to him, even though there’s no one else around. ‘When the applications come in, I sift out the foreign names.’
Jamie’s mouth drops open. ‘That’s . . .’
‘Just doing my bit for patriotism.’ Carrie stands to attention, bringing up a hand in mock salute.
‘We might stand a chance of getting this country back on its feet if more companies did the same, but far too many seem to be doing the reverse. “Affirmative action”,’ she adds scathingly, making quotes in the air with her fingers.
‘I think that’s my bus.’ Jamie has never been so relieved to see the familiar yellow double-decker trundle around the corner.
‘I’ve started a list.’ Carrie thrusts her phone in front of Jamie’s face. The Notes app is open, showing a list of company names. Coldharrow Estates, Omnivise Analytics, Echelon Warehousing, Lumen, Ashmere Associates—
Jamie goes back. Echelon Warehousing? He manages to stop himself saying it out loud, but what the hell is Nadeeka’s company doing on this list? ‘What—’ He clears his throat, his mouth suddenly too dry. ‘What will you do with these names?’
‘Pass them on,’ Carrie says simply. The bus pulls up beside them and the doors open with a loud hydraulic hiss.
‘To who?’
She narrows her eyes, appraising him. A woman with a baby is boarding the bus, bumping her pushchair backwards up the step. Jamie leans forward and lifts up the front for her, and she smiles gratefully.
The bus driver calls to Jamie. ‘You getting on, or what?’
‘Let’s have that drink some time.’ Carrie holds his gaze challengingly. A small smile plays at the corners of her lips. ‘I’ll tell you then.’
Jamie hesitates, his right hand on the bus’s grab rail.
‘On or off, mate?’
Carrie winks at him, then turns and starts walking away.
‘On,’ Jamie says.
As the bus pulls away, he stays standing by the door.
He watches Carrie get smaller and smaller until she’s out of sight entirely, and with a growing sense of dread he realizes he will have to go for a drink with her.
He has to find out why -Nadeeka’s company is on Carrie’s list; and, more importantly, what Carrie plans to do about it.