There are
four numbers on it. One is his mother. One is a man called Dessie who had lent him money in 2023. One is a claims line.
And the fourth, which he rang eleven times between the August and the October, is a helpline.
I did not know what it was on the twenty-first of September. I looked it up on the twenty-eighth, on my phone, standing in the utility room at about half one in the morning.
It is a debt helpline. Free, anonymous, open till eight.
Eleven calls. The longest is thirty-four minutes, on the ninth of September, which is three days after I photographed the policy.
That man sat somewhere, eleven times in nine weeks, and rang strangers about money, and then came home and told me the water heater was playing up.
And I stood in my own utility room at half one in the morning and
