183 Times a Year by Eva Jordan Read Free Book Online Page B

her education as it was to her continued isolation and being suspended or expelled, the poor girl may have actually learned to read and write properly.’
    â€˜Well, what was she doing getting herself expelled? She should have had a better attitude.’
    â€˜Of course, yes, you’re
so
right. She shouldn’t have let minor things like her mother’s boyfriends trying to rape her – again – or her uncle using her arm as an ashtray for his cigarettes, affect her attitude. No, she shouldn’t let any of that affect her attendance or attitude towards school should she?’
    Andy is taken aback, his face flustered and red. He coughs and smooth’s his tee shirt over his fat belly.
    â€˜God, no, no, of course not,’ he says. ‘What …where were Social Services?’ I roll my eyes and shake my head.
    â€˜Overstretched, understaffed and at breaking point, like every other public sector service.’
    â€˜Couldn’t she at least try and get a job?’
    â€˜Doing what? What has her poor education left her qualified to do? I’ll tell you shall I? Drifting from one meagre minimum paid job to another, scratching around for a fulltime contract but most probably offered one of those god awful zero hour one’s. The sort so many employers now seem to be so fond of. Legal contracts that specify workers must be flexible and available at short notice but are only paid for the hours they work on the days the employer stipulates. These would be the same contracts that mean a disposable, throwaway workforce walking down a one-way street where employers bear no risk, avoiding sickness and holiday pay and overtime? Christ Andy, even Maisy has had trouble getting employment and she’s got us behind her. Add to that the breakdown of many industries in this country and we’re left with a whole section of society where many options are non-existent or just not available.’
    Andy looks thoughtful for a moment. I look across the kitchen. Ruby appears to be guarding the second bottle of wine she’s now opened and Simon is conversing with her. They both look in our direction from time to time, grinning and raising their eyes in mild amusement.
    â€˜So,’ I continue. ‘What does Amber and girls like her, see as their way out? Yep, you’ve guessed it, to get pregnant. This leaves respective mothers dependent on a system where yes, they receive a level of child support three times what it was twenty years ago, but that was done in a deliberate attempt to reduce child poverty. But for a lot of young women, having a baby is an opportunity to break away from their surrounding misery and start their own life, albeit a life dependent on the state. It’s a well-known fact that a lot of the young mothers you seem to be referring to mostly come from poorer backgrounds and communities.’
    â€˜Look Lizzie, step down from your feminist soap box. I was merely stating…’ I cut Andy off mid-sentence.
    â€˜And you Andy, step down from your thinly veiled, crude, cruel and misogynist one.’
    â€˜I’m not a misogynist.’
    â€˜Really? I have two teenage daughters that god knows I’m trying – and struggling sometimes – to help navigate, negotiate and fight when needed, their way through this crazy world we live in. A world where despite, and thank god for, the definite advance of women’s rights and freedoms over the years, is still a world where advertising, the internet, celebrity culture, television and the media at times, pose a real problem to young and impressionable young women. If any of those ridiculous reality programs are anything to go by for god’s sake we’re in real danger of cultivating a whole generation of unstable, over-sexualised, bullied young women with very little or no self-esteem. And, as if that isn’t hard enough, you, one of my oldest friends, is trying to preach to me the virtue of