They went back to sex work for a while – it was a cash business, but after a few years and a couple of calls from the tax department they’d started to pay tax as contractors who worked in the entertainment industry, just like they’d watched people do years before because it was still illegal. It meant they could work indoors more. Businesses made exceptions for them, but they always wanted something in return. Sometimes they’d both work – together. Men liked that. Not all men. But they only got paid for one. All men understood that – that they only really needed to pay for one. Especially when they knew they were paying tax. One birth certificate, one IRD number – only paying for one girl. When anyone asked what they’d been ‘up to’, this was the sort of thing Peggy and Greta knew not to say.

Through all of it, they went to meetings and didn’t drink and called Diane and complained and Diane told them to ‘hold on’. Be honest, pay the tax, pay the bills and hold on. They’d say thanks and goodbye, look at each other, curl their lips, roll their eyes and hold on for one more day, or one more hour, or just for now. The only time they got any relief was when they were helping other people. There was something about thinking about someone else that eased it all just enough.

The sex money was barely enough to survive on, but luckily they had computers. They bought parts wholesale and built CPUs for people. They’d also fix computers that were broken. Not publicly but as favours for people they knew. People they knew would pay them for the computers and the fixes and the cheat codes for software and the pirated software, but it was a favour. The money the people gave them wasn’t taxable, they told each other and Diane. They overheard Diane talking to someone after a meeting one night. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘if everyone’s going to make it this hard for them then, fuck it, surely they can bend the rules a bit.’ Diane realised it was hard for them to make a proper living. That’s the story Peggy and Greta told each other, citing comments she’d made in exasperation when they told her about another job they didn’t get and another piece of bureaucracy unwavering in the face of logic.

‘There are two of us,’ Peggy shouted once at a WINZ case manager. ‘You are sitting here looking at both of us.’ A security guard came over and tried to grab her arm. She pulled it away. ‘We’re fucking leaving,’ Greta said, and they left without the emergency grant they’d been hoping to buy food with. That’s what they’d been ‘up to’.