Read Hotel World for Free Online Page B

That’s a promise, not a threat. You hear me? Hear me? Eh? (a man, at the station)
    Can’t you get it through your thick skull that decent people hate scum like you? You’re scum of the earth. You spoil it for the rest of us. The scum of the fucking earth. (a woman, at the station)
    Here you go, darling. Milk? Sugar? Give it a good stir, it’s all powdered stuff at the bottom. (a man, at the station)
    Did you have a look at the noticeboard up there, Elspeth? No? You’re eligible for police counselling. It’s on Thursdays, here, on the third floor. You’re eligible. That means it’s free, you don’t have to pay if you’re too poor. That’s what we’re here for, to help people. You only have to register. You only have to ask. (a woman, at the station)
    Else remembers that word, from school. Poor. Then it was a word from history, from the times when there were such things as philanthropists (another word from history), which is what Robert Owen was, who built the workers in his factory a church and a school and a hospital, and didn’t employ the very youngest of their children until they were a bit older than the age that other men who weren’t philanthropists employed children at. New Lanark was the name of his mills, like his philanthropy made a new place in the world. The poor. What history worked to improve, to make things better for. But that was then. This is now. In one of the newspaper pages wrapped round one of her feet (her boots are too big) there is an article written by somebody suggesting that boxes for contributions of money, from people who have it for people who have to ask for it, could be set up in shops like Sainsbury’s, so that money could still be given out by those who want to, but those who have it won’t actually be
(Spr sm chn?)
    asked for it by anybody. A deal like that (she dares a laugh to herself and something in her chest ricochets, then settles down) could put Else out of a job.
    The penny by Else’s foot, the one she will reach for in a minute, is head-up, she can see, and it is quite a recent coin, it has the paunchy head of the queen in her later years. Else watches it. It’s not going anywhere. She’ll get it in a minute.
    She likes to wrap relevant things round her feet.
BRITAIN MASSIVELY MORE UNEQUAL THAN 20 YEARS AGO. ONE IN FIVE PEOPLE LIVES BELOW BREADLINE. These subheadings are cushioning her heel. Ha. She tore them out of the paper in the library. This historic city she’s sitting on the pavement of, full of its medieval buildings and its modern developments teetering on top of medieval sewers, is all that’s left of history now; somewhere for tourists to bring their traveller’s cheques to in the summer. Actual history is gone. Else knows; she’s clever, she always was. Today she can remember how to spell philanthropist. But all the same, today she can’t remember which hand means which on a clock, whether it’s the short one that means the minutes or the long one that does.
(Spr sm chn? Thnk y.)
    Chn. Spr sm.
    F y cn rd ths msg y cd bcm a scrtry n gt a gd jb.
    First it’s the thought of herself gttng a gd jb, with done hair and skimpy smart clothes from the shops, legs thefashionable colour of nylon and the right kind of shoe strapped on, coming out of an office building like that one over there above World Of Carpets. Then it’s the thought of the way she imagined it when she was a small girl with her father on the Tube reading those gt a gd jb adverts when they visited London, sharp-eyed girl with her hair tied back and the neat clothes on that her mother had made, way back then when reading the advert, knowing what it meant, was one more proof of her cleverness in getting it right, the shorthand for what was possible. It makes her laugh. The laugh blurts out; she can’t stop it. The coughing does too, loud and sudden enough to spook a passing dog who jerks on his lead and starts to bark, and as the coughing and the barking racket out and an arm drags the