I’m Max. I’m an estate agent managing rented property in the area. I’ve worked in the business for the last 30 years, and I’ve seen some changes in that time, I can tell you. Our rental department used to be very small, and now it’s the biggest part of the business. When I first started, it was just young single people, students and the like, who wanted to rent until they got settled, but now it’s everyone – families too, and long-term renting. People just can’t afford to buy their own place any more, unless they can get help from the Bank of Mum and Dad. It’s so different from the way it was when my wife and I were starting out. We both had good jobs, and after we’d saved a bit we had no problem getting a mortgage. And if you weren’t earning so much, a family could still get a council tenancy, though it got more difficult as more council homes were sold under Margaret Thatcher’s right to buy legislation. I feel sorry for young people today.

Take Gloria, for example. I’ve got to go and see her today to give her notice to quit, unless we can come up with some other solution at the last minute. I certainly hope we can, because I think she does her best, and, if the truth be told, I absolutely dread the thought of having to ask her to give up her home. I’m supposed to be professional about these things, but it would be like letting down a friend.

I’ve got to know Gloria and her kids quite well over the past four years. Gary is 12, a real live wire, bright and full of energy, always got something to say for himself. His younger sister Chantal is quieter, takes life quite seriously. She reminds me of my Sarah, though she’s a good bit younger – Sarah will be 18 next birthday. They moved in to another of our properties when Gloria’s marriage broke up, and then into this one when Gary started secondary school. Gloria was worried about the schools and the gang culture where they were living before, and she thought this would be a better area. She’s always struggled to afford the rent, but she wanted to give the kids a good chance in life – I respect that. It’s a 3-bedroom house so that they could each have their own rooms. And Gary had started hanging out with friends she didn’t approve of; he’d already been stopped by the police a couple of times, and she was worried about where that might lead. She’d seen it all before, she told me. Her ex was always in trouble with the police, in and out of prison.

It’s hard bringing up boys as a single mum, and there’s no doubt that being black doesn’t help. I do think the police are more down on the black lads. Maybe they have to be – a lot of them are troublemakers, after all. Gary’s not like that, though. He’s got lots of interests; computer games (he was telling me about some of his ideas for designing his own), karate, scouts, and he loves to talk about them. He wanted to know what computer games were like when I was his age, and what sports I liked to play, whether I’d ever done any rock climbing (that was just before he went on an outdoor pursuits weekend with the scouts, and I think he was probably a bit nervous about it, though of course he didn’t say so). I’ve spent quite a bit of time round there because there have been lots of maintenance problems with the house, and I had to be there to try and sort them out with the builders. Chatting to him made me wonder how my own lad Jack would have been if he’d been...well, normal. Don’t get me wrong, I love my son dearly, but as he grows older I do miss being able to share interests and do stuff together, and watch him grow up to become an independent adult.

So goodness knows what Gloria will do now. The house needs major work, so the owners have decided to take this opportunity to give Gloria notice, get the work done and then rent to students which will bring in a lot more money. They’re retired now, and the house is their pension fund, so it’s an understandable business decision. But it’s tough on Gloria. Because of the ongoing maintenance problems, they haven’t put the rent up for the last couple of years, and even so Gloria has struggled to afford it. She got into arrears when she had to go to Jamaica when her mum was dying, and she wanted to take the kids too to say goodbye, so that would have been a huge bill for the air fares. I guess she must have had to borrow money from somewhere. Maybe she’s in a credit union, or perhaps her church was able to help her in some way; I know she finds them very supportive. I just hope it wasn’t one of these payday loan companies.

Anyway, she’s just managed to get straight again with the rent. She had to cut back on all her other spending, and take a second job in the evenings as a cleaner. I know this because she told me when she was negotiating how she would pay off the arrears. I think she was using a food bank at one stage; she didn’t say, of course, but I saw some bags of food around there, all different basic brands. She got quite low around then. I arrived there one day just as she was getting back from work; she does care work looking after people at home. She works regularly with a young disabled woman, and also works for a care agency, and with them she never knows till the last minute what her hours will be. Sometimes she has to cut her visits short so she can get to the next place on time, and it really upsets her when she has to do that. It had been a particularly bad day like that, and now she had to get tea for the children and then turn around and go out again to her cleaning job, leaving the children with the next-door neighbour just checking on them from time to time, which she hates doing. She worries about them not doing their homework, and feels she’s letting them down by not spending time with them. She said she’d had enough; she was exhausted, and she was nearly in tears. She was only recently back from Jamaica, and I’m sure she was missing her mother too; they were very close, although they hadn’t seen each other very often since her mother went back there when she retired.

She’s a good woman trying to do the best for her children. She’s stretched financially and emotionally as it is, so I hate to think how she’ll react when I tell her she has to leave her home. I know she won’t be able to afford anything similar round here, with the deposit and all the other costs of moving. She’ll want to keep the children in their schools, because they’re both settled and doing well, but I just can’t see how that will be possible. I suppose it’s not my problem, but that’s not the way it feels.