He’d come to England a year before. He was young and had believed that England would be waiting for him. At home in Pila, in that wonderful city with the exquisite manor house, people constantly told fairy tale–like stories of young Poles who’d become millionaires in England. And now here he was sitting in a filthy hole after he’d found no affordable accommodations in London, doing wretched jobs in Manchester. Up and out of the mattress encampment at five, in the bus to the construction site, working in questionable safety conditions (two losses in recent months, three workers severely injured, with no prospects of recovery, with no prospects of being able to pay for a bus ticket home, with poor prospects of receiving a spot in a homeless shelter).

So, days: steelwork. Evenings back. Drink in a pub. Bye-bye. On his free days (two up to now) Sergej had checked out proper life in Manchester. Well-dressed people strolling into the Radisson hotel, limousines driving up. People who shopped in Selfridges, who laughed, who had normal existences. He didn’t understand the language or the people, but he wanted a life, too, since the one currently being offered was just simply shite. And he couldn’t think of finding a wife. The Poles wanted rich British men, the local girls wanted rich British men. Or women. Or peace and quiet. None of them wanted Sergej. And. That was no way for a young man to live, a young man with job training after all, not partaking in life, feeling invisible. Nobody smiled at him when he walked through the city in his work clothes. Nobody nodded or greeted him or said: “Thanks for doing our dirty work for us, you know our own unemployed are just too depressed to do it. Too tired. They’ve been told for so long that there’s nothing for them to do that they’ve actually come to believe it. They’ve been shown for so long that they’re not worth anything that they’ve come to believe that, too. Now they’re too tired to get up, to make demands, to get upset.”