The children lounged about, relaxed, calmed by the trickle of the stream outside, the branches scratching at the windows, at least the windows that still had glass in them and Don hadn’t had to cover with plywood. “A bit nippy,” the social worker would say, and Don would explain it was healthy to sleep in damp conditions in freezing temperatures with no heat.

“And … those aren’t real weapons, right?”

“No, no,” Don would answer, winking at the machine guns, “we made them. You know how it is; doing crafts is calming. We all have our psychological security zones, which make those affected feel they have some kind of illness they can blame for their inability to function in a socially idiotic context.”

“And what do you do when you need a doctor, are you just out of luck if you’re not registered?” the valiant fortysomething woman with energetic calves and red cheeks and, one suspects, a sip of liquor in the evening would ask while wondering whether she was breathing tuberculosis-infected air.

“Yep, that’s right, you only have access to doctors if you have a chip. But there are tutorials for everything online. We don’t need the state,” Don would say. “That’s why we’re here, that’s why we have weapons, that’s why we’ve planted potatoes out there and other stuff that will taste like potatoes when it ripens. And as for a bit of tuberculosis—everybody gets that.”

But

There were no more social workers. The last one had been rushing around Rochdale before, as if she were constantly walking headlong into a storm. She looked lost. Somehow picked apart and depressed because she couldn’t live out her calling to save the world. There wasn’t even money for boxing clubs for the area boys anymore. A service that had been very popular. After all, who wouldn’t rather be a well-trained criminal? The social worker had sat helplessly at Don’s kitchen table looking at the mold infestation and the mother, who had emerged from bed in a dirty nightshirt for the occasion. Through the open bedroom door, the metal bucket where Don’s mother relieved herself could be seen and smelled. Don’t ask. The social worker had broken out in blotches and said: “So, I wish you…”—she had stood up—“all the best, right. I must be on my way.” She had hopped up and stumbled over her bulky bag, which was filled with applications for food aid, and was gone. Suddenly,

Three weeks after their arrival

DON

Thinks

Of her family.

Who are probably still hunkered down on bunk beds in the homeless shelter. Mummified. And the social worker has surely transferred into the civil service. The place where middle-aged women who’ve been sufficiently disappointed by their leftist ideals always found a home.