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Crying? Why are you crying? I’m a very nice person. Someone who wasn’t half as nice as me wouldn’t give you a choice so you have no reason to cry.

I was a beggar too, you know. My dad left my mum and my mum was killed by her pimp when I was seven. I was all alone; just a little child. Children that age get snatched and trafficked if they’re by themselves so I sat with the other beggar-children and tried to find safety in numbers.

What I didn’t realise is that beggars aren’t just an assortment of poor people who don’t know each other. It’s organised. The whole thing. The whole thing’s a discipline. A trade. A market. Begging is an industry with training, techniques, gangs, rivals. You can be good at it, great at it, terrible at it. You have a boss.

I gave everything I earned to my boss and he kept me safe from the traffickers and paedophiles and drunks. I was given food and a blanket in return for all of the money I made. I got nothing, but I was able to stay alive.

I am not like my old begging boss. You will be treated much better than we were. My boss would beat us if we didn’t raise enough money. Sometimes he withheld food for two, maybe three days straight. That promise of meagre sustenance and warmth wasn’t reliable under him. We lived in constant fear of what he might do if we displeased him.

I will tell you a story about these days. I grew close to another beggar who worked for the boss – Jamie. Jamie was a very funny and charismatic boy, but he’d been beaten one too many times by his stepfather and was prone to mood swings and violent outbursts. We sparked up a friendship when I saw that he loved Cherry Ripes and stole one for him from a convenience store. He was my only friend, really, so I loved him very much.

The problem is, he was erratic. Some days he would cry a lot, and the boss liked that because he made more money. Other days he would be sullen and not say a single word. This also worked well as people would assume the worst when they saw the little boy with so little life in his eyes. Coins flooded in. But there were times when Jamie lashed out. He would scream at people who didn’t leave him any money, or scream at those who did. He would scream at the boss, and the boss did not like being screamed at.

The outbursts became more and more frequent until one day the boss grabbed him by the scruff and hauled him into his car. He came back hours later, a huge grin on his face. Even gave a few of us money that day. Told us to buy ourselves a treat. No one saw Jamie again and it seemed pretty clear that the boss had sold him to a trafficker or a pervert. It was on that day, when he stole my friend and gave me five dollars, that I knew I would kill him.

Oh, wipe up those tears. I am nothing like my old boss. You will stay warm even if you make me no money. You will eat even if I have to pay for you. You hear that? Even if you cost me money, I promise I will look after you. Okay?

I was talking about how Jamie was replaced within days, and his replacement only made me hate the boss even more. She was small and ugly and a cripple – some problem with her bones which made her legs shrivelled and twisted. She sobbed in this irritating way all day long (character makes some odd sobbing noises). Made twice the money we did and loved to rub it in our faces. The boss loved her and even let her play with his dog, a fact she lorded over us at every possible moment. You’d think she would be sympathetic to others, being a cripple, but she was quite a spiteful little monster. I hated her so much...

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