An interesting encounter

I met a stranger on the bus today, and we got talking. She was only a youngster in her twenties, but was having such a tough time. She’d been living with her boyfriend’s family, and he drove her to work each morning and picked her up at night. A week ago, when she got in the car in the morning, she discovered that he had loaded all her possessions (two plastic bags’ worth) into the car. He didn’t say a word until he dropped her off at work then said, “Don’t bother coming back again.” Then he drove off.

She said she had no idea why this had happened, and he refused to respond to texts, emails, phone calls. So she was homeless. She went to stay with her Gran, but because she’d been in trouble as a teenager, her aunts hated her so she had to leave Gran’s at the weekend as they were in the habit of popping over.

Her mother died when she was a baby, so she was brought up by Gran and Grandad, but Grandad died when she was eleven. Her father raped one of her aunts when the aunt was fifteen, so Social Services removed my new young friend from the family home. She has an elder sister but she’s on drugs, and an elder brother, but he’s now living with father, so has no contact whatsoever with his young sister.

The council say this young woman isn’t vulnerable, so cannot go on the council house list. They have offered her a place in a house in a tiny country village miles from anywhere – she was going to see it today which is why we met on the bus – but if she goes there, she’d have to give up her job because she has no transport. There are three other people living in the house – all strangers to her – and she doesn’t even know whether they are male or female.

Apart from Gran, she is utterly alone in the world, with no income and (in the tiny village) no possibility of employment.

I so wanted to help her, but all I could do was listen to her story and encourage her. Do spare her a thought and prayer or two, if you can.