‘Morning,’ she beams at Peter as he walks through the office door wearing his usual cords-and-green sweater combo.
He grunts a few syllables back at Grace as he shuffles past her desk. That’s another reason to be twenty-two minutes early: the acquisition of prime position in front of the office hatch. As hostel manager, it’s rightfully Grace’s spot but Peter, twenty years older than her twenty-five, seems to think he should be the one putting out all the fires when it comes to the residents. ‘I’m well aware you know what you’re doing,’ he always snaps when she says anything about it. ‘It’s just that I know what it’s like to be the other side of this hatch and you don’t.’
It’s an argument he uses for most things and each time he says it, Grace gets closer to wishing she’d never suggested to head office that they should take on an ex-resident as a staff member. She taps in her password at lightning speed, so he doesn’t have the chance to suggest they switch places, and then logs into her emails.
‘Wait till you see the interview list head office have emailed us. Tons of names. Don’t they know we only have one room to offer this week?’ Peter pulls off his crooked glasses and wipes at them with the corner of his sleeve.
He must have read his emails before he’d even come into work. Grace shakes her head. Some people are so competitive.
Monday is interview day at St Jude’s. Each week, the staff meet with prospective residents in the hope of hacking away at their ever-growing waiting list. Grace mentally reaches for the first breathing exercise from her ‘Breath of Zen’ app and tries to follow it whilst she stares at the names on the list in front of her. Peter’s not wrong; there are a lot to get through. Monday is also transaction day, so the residents will be queuing at the hatch to pay their rent top-ups and chase late benefit payments. That’s why she always opens up at eight fifty-eight. Two minutes of quiet… just to look out into the empty foyer before the storm begins.
It’s an entrance hall like no other, the other side of that hatch. A gateway between people’s lives and the big wide world; residents come and go through it, for the first time and the last, often reappearing months or years later. It’s a place where tenants come for help, to read the noticeboard and to pick up their post. It’s the hostel’s hub.
The shutters roar as they retract upwards and Grace dashes to the kitchenette in the corner of the office to pour the drinks before nine o’clock hits – she will start tomorrow with the whole giving-up-caffeine thing. She’ll just have to reset the goal date on her phone calendar. That way it won’t count, and she won’t have failed. Grace doesn’t like to fail – it’s like her parent’s always said, It’s not what Jenningses do.
‘Tea for me, ta,’ Peter says, without turning away from his computer. ‘And none of that flowery shit.’
Grace clinks the teaspoon with some extra force against the inside of the cups as she stirs the drinks.
‘They’ve arranged a relief worker to man – or woman – the office for us today, so we can concentrate on the interviews. It’s her first time, so one of us will need to show her where everything is. Then I thought we could use the residents’ lounge downstairs for the interviews. It’s homelier,’ Grace says, carrying the hot mugs back to their desks.
‘Homelier?’ Peter splutters after he’s swallowed his first gulp of tea. ‘Most of them have come from the streets or other people’s sofas. I’m sure any room we use will feel homelier.’
She ignores him while she scans through the rest of her emails. Quite a few today, all from head office. Why couldn’t they just put everything in one message? All this reading will throw her even further off-schedule. She’s about to start at the bottom of her unread list when a subject line from halfway up catches her eye.
And it makes her want to throw up her low-calorie granola bar.
‘Listen to this,’ she hisses to Peter. ‘“Please be aware that Supporting Futures are carrying out rigorous inspections across all supported housing hostels under their funding schemes. Over the last month, ten projects have been forced to close as a result of having their funding pulled…” Oh, this is bad, I’m not sure I can read any more of it.’ Grace rests her forehead in her hands and counts to ten. Well, she manages to get to five before she looks back at the screen. ‘“These checks are sporadic, but each project will receive a letter approximately two weeks before each inspection.”’
‘Ah.’
‘Ah? Do you realise how behind we are on some of our paperwork? And the laundry room is falling apart. Then there’s the incidents we’ve had lately with the…’
‘Grace. Stop. We’ve not had a letter yet. Might not even get one till the end of the year. Let’s just focus on the interviews – who’s first?’
‘The first one’s due at eleven thirty. A young lad, Shaun Michaels?’
‘You always say that like you think I know every homeless person in Kent just because I used to be one. It’s as bad as someone telling you they’re from Australia and you saying, “Oh, my Auntie Karen used to live there; perhaps you know her?”’
The office phone rings as soon as the clock strikes nine. Grace answers it, forcing her mouth into a wide smile. People can tell over the phone if you are smiling; it says so in her Women in Leadership magazine. The same issue that had inspired her last week to chop her blonde hair into a sleek bob with an edgy fringe, just like the woman on the front. ‘There’s more to maintaining a successful image than the right hairstyle,’ her mum would have said. Then in the same breath, ‘Be the best version of yourself, Grace. You really should make more of an effort, it’s important to create the right impression.’ It’s always been a bit tricky, getting the balance right. Enough make-up to impress, but not so much that she looks shallow. Professional clothes – not too expensive (she shouldn’t look as if she’s trying too hard) but not too cheap either (she has the family name to uphold after all).
It’s head office on the line and they want to add yet another name to today’s interview list. Head office oversee St Jude’s as well as four other hostels across the south-east, but they always seem to find the time to give them extra work to do.
‘Absolutely. The more the merrier,’ Grace sings, ignoring Peter’s eye roll. She puts the phone down and concentrates on helping him with the small queue that’s formed behind Teardrop Terry from Room 3.
Teardrop Terry has been a resident of St Jude’s for almost three months following many years of spending his life between prison cells and shop doorways. It hadn’t taken Grace long to notice that – despite his colourful rap sheet, bulky frame and tear tattoo below his left eye – he is, in fact, the least intimidating person you could ever meet.
‘Peter.’ Teardrop Terry pulls the front of his baseball cap down a smidgen as if showing some sign of respect. He’ll take that back in a minute when Peter tells him he’s already three weeks in arrears with his rent top-up.
‘But they’ve suspended my jobseeker’s again. I can’t pay you nothing I ain’t got yet, can I?’ Terry says at double speed, trying to squash his hat back into place over long voluminous curls that look like they’ve been cut from an eighties band photo.