The buzzing of the phone woke Sandrine. She stretched her arm to grope for it across the bed, the effort to reach it a struggle. She had only got home at 2 o’clock this afternoon, having done her nightly eleven-hour shift at the care home, grabbing a coffee at Starbucks at 6:30 that morning, then going to do her cleaning jobs. Beat wasn’t even the word for how she felt.
Brrr – brrr! The buzzing noise carried on, regardless. For a moment, she thought it was her alarm but she had only just closed her eyes. She managed to grab the phone and quickly answer it before it rang out. At this precise moment, she hoped it was the agency calling to cancel her shift tonight. She would actually have paid good money for that to happen. OK, not good money, since she was trying to save the little she earned, although that
was proving difficult. There was always something. The obvious things like rent and food, of course, but last week, she had had to buy new tyres for her bicycle. She’d hoped they would last a bit longer. Not so – and £80 went just like that!
Then there was the money she had started sending for her father’s medical bills in C͠ôte d’Ivoire, which she was glad to do. The last time she saw him, she was 18. She was now 32; in the years between, there had been only photographs, and his voice on the telephone.
Nowadays, even that was becoming rare. Her mother was the one Sandrine spoke with, not her father: it was always that he was sleeping, he’d just popped out, he was taking a shower.
Then when she called specially, with the express intention of talking to him, come what may, he was put on the phone.
But his voice sounded tired – “Ah, Maman, tu vas bien?” – and tears filled her eyes.

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