Read Online Resolution Way by Carl Neville - Free Book Online Page B

to death, pain, the terror of the State. Is she coping with it all? Is Paula Adonor? Will they cope through what’s to come?
    What is to come? There are vaguely hopeful signs she doesn’t allow herself to believe in, a sense that slowly the tide is turning, more protests, more sympathy, more solidarity, a few victories, the slow drip feed of confidence building. That’s how it can go perhaps, almost miraculously. It always seems impossible until it isn’t, until it was always inevitable. At first everyone feels alone, then there’s the lone figure, the tiny group, standing in a square somewhere, occupying a building, refusing to move along or comply, slogans aloft, broadly ignored, bypassers swell their numbers, see something shared, some point of connection and more and more people realise their condition, their misery is commonplace. Yes that’s what they need, a divided, demoralised people and she refuses to be demoralised, or divided from her neighbours, from her fellow sufferers, even though it’s hard, even though she’s tired. But that’s all she is, tired. She needs to recuperate.
    It would be easier if she had more consistent help with Lee. Joolzy would be in like a shot if she let him, he has made that abundantly clear. She has thought about it, he’s a decent man, a lot more thoughtful and sensitive in private than he lets on in public. Practical, he seems to have money though she’s not exactly sure where he gets it from. Good taste in music, he was a bit of an adventurer back in his youth too, all the major raves back in the day. He insists he used to see her out at dances: not a lot of black faces, he would have spotted her, yeah he remembers clocking her and is always mock offended that she doesn’t remember spotting him. Maybe she did she tells him. How come you didn’t come up and say hello? Things could have been very different today, he says.
    Well, getting together with Joolzy would make life easier, but, while she likes him, with certain reservations of course, there’s no spark there.
    Stubborn, she has always been stubborn, oh her Dad would tell you that. He admired it in her though, she could tell, her refusal to shrug and lower her eyes and go with the flow. This stark attachment to the idea of justice she has. It seems hopeless perhaps, but she will remain quietly hopeful, will express optimism, even if those words sometimes seem dead on her tongue, because without that they have won.
    Who’s this they ? Who’s this us , who is this them you keep referring to? Am I an “us” or am I a “them”, I mean? One of her colleagues, Ralph, asked a week or so ago at an after work drink she had reluctantly agreed to. Her temper snapped at his lofty air, his puzzled face, wrinkled nose. Don’t be so fucking childish, she said, then went to stand in the toilet for a minute or two. When she returned her line manager suggested she perhaps ought to apologise as Ralph sat there, arms folded, eyebrow raised.
    Ralph, she said, I am sorry. I have been under a lot of strain recently.
    Well, he said, I don’t see what that has got to do with me, if you can’t handle social situations.
    The Police crippled my son; we have been through a long court case in which those responsible were acquitted. We have been the focus of a concerted smear campaign by the media and we are also being evicted from our home. I have had my benefits cut and have had to return to work, meaning my daughter has had to leave school to care for my son and I don’t know when she will be able to go back.
    She wants to say all this but doesn’t, just breathes out slowly and nods. She knows what Ralph will say: well what does any of that have to do with me? Why should your life impinge on mine, why should your suffering intrude into my world? She can see the anger in his face and is at a loss to know where it comes from, has seen it a thousand times before, read it in the death threats, the comments boxes, the tweets and Facebook