She was dead. I already knew that.
There she was, her fresh-faced picture all over the East Anglian news, confirming that no one would ever see that sad smile again. She had been my responsibility. I was meant to protect her.
I stood in the middle of the lounge, staring at the television while an overwhelming sense of helplessness washed over me. I’d known it would hit the news today — I’d been awake all night dreading it — but, somehow, seeing her face there in my living room caught me off guard. A slideshow of her life scrolled across the screen. Quirky pictures from her Facebook account. Instagram shots of her posing in school uniform. Selfies with friends in Norwich city. All lies. Emma Beale did not have a happy life.
I looked around at my own comfortable life, a life I often took for granted. My eyes flitted from the pile of mismatched shoes and boots on the floor, to the cherry-vanilla scented candle on the second-hand coffee table, to the cream sofa on which I’d curl up at the end of the day with a glass of cheap wine. It wasn’t the grandest house in the world — a standard two-up, two-down terraced house in Norwich — but it was ours. Teigan and I had everything we needed. She was safe and loved. And that was something Emma never had.
I glanced at the framed photos on the mantelpiece. Mother and daughter. My favourite picture of us on holiday in the Canary Islands, holding our ice creams and beaming like Cheshire cats. Teigan must have been about ten — before she’d become a teenager and determined that smiling in a picture with your mum was lame. My thoughts returned to Emma. She had never stepped foot in an airport, let alone jetted off to the Canaries. And now she never would.
A familiar anxiety started gnawing away at me as the inevitable questions flooded my mind. Could I have saved her? I paced around the room, scrolling through the list of missed calls from just two days before.
If only I had called her then. If only I’d known what was going to happen.
I jumped as my phone vibrated in my hand. Hilary Andrews. I should have known it was coming. A call from the boss before eight in the morning meant things were going from bad to worse.
“Hello. I’ve seen it.” I paused as the lump in my throat hardened. “I’m so sorry.”
“I told you yesterday that it’s not your fault the mother’s a delinquent.”
“But I should have got her out sooner. I knew this would happen. I knew it.”
“No, you didn’t. And don’t go saying things like that to the review panel — they’ll have a field day.”
“But —”
“It’s not your fault, Suzanne. If I remember correctly, you actually did raise your concern about two months ago that you wanted to remove Emma from the family home.”
“Yes, but it didn’t happen.”
“Well, it wasn’t your call. You know better than anyone that when senior management says there’s not enough evidence, then that’s it.”
It was true. Nothing put a stopper in the works like a senior manager saying that the threshold hadn’t been met. My mind flashed back to that day when I’d stormed out of the office. Months of hard work, and for what? I’d promised myself I’d do further assessments, gather enough evidence to get Emma out. But before I knew it, my other cases were taking over, and Emma had slipped down the priority list. The forgotten children.
“I should have done more.” My voice came out all thick, trying to fight the tears. The image of Emma’s weary face that last time I had seen her flooded back into my mind. She was turning away from the car after I’d dropped her home, steeling herself for the next round of emotional abuse.
I heard Hilary let out a sigh on the other end of the phone. She was never one for emotion, old Hilary.
“You’ll need to hold it together for the case review. I’ll be speaking to the panel, as well, so you’re not in it alone.” She paused. “What time will you be in?”
I cleared my throat. “Soon. Twenty minutes.”
“Good. The review panel will be here at nine.”
“Okay. Can you ask business support to cancel my interview about The Walker Foundation today?”
“Oh, Jesus, is that today?”
“This afternoon, yes. But, we’ll cancel it, right?” I gripped the phone between my fingers. “I can’t do it today, not after this.”
“Suzanne, do you realise how much all this PR rubbish has cost?” Hilary’s voice was stern and patronising, like an old schoolteacher. “There’s no way we’re cancelling. If it’s not until this afternoon, that’s fine. You can go to it after the review panel.”
“But isn’t that rather insensitive?”
Hilary bristled at my insinuation. “This was your bloody idea in the first place, Suzanne. You’re the one who wanted to come together with Norfolk Children’s Services to do this. Norfolk has invested a lot of resources into it, as well, so we’re not cancelling. All right?”
I sank down onto the sofa, my shoulders sagging in defeat. I knew all too well that you had to pick your battles carefully with Hilary. “Okay … as long as it’s handled sensitively.” I hung up the phone and looked back to the television. You could tell May was coming. Emma Beale’s death would soon be drowned out by all the politicians fighting for power. For most, she would fade into a distant memory, into nothing. But for me, she would always be someone I had failed.
“MUM!”
Teigan’s agitated voice pulled me out of my gloomy thoughts as she thudded down the stairs and sulked into the room. She had a face like thunder.
“Mum, what have you done with my purple scarf?” Teigan stood with one hand on her hip, the other clutching her phone in its rainbow-coloured case. Her long, dark hair fell forward, half obscuring her face.
“What scarf?” I spoke as clearly as I could, trying to hide the muffled tears from my voice.
“My purple one! With the butterflies.”
“I haven’t done anything with it.”
She crossed her arms and huffed. “You always do this. You move things to where you think they should be, then completely forget you’ve done anything.”
My cheeks flushed red with indignation. If only she knew. Teigan clocked the expression on my face and stopped, uncrossing her arms as my stroppy teenaged Teigan gave way to the caring girl underneath.
“Mum? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just … work.”
Teigan nodded. “Is it to do with that Emma girl that was on TV this morning? Was she one of yours?”
I hung my head, ashamed at the reminder that Emma was mine to protect. “Yes. She was.”
“I’m sorry, Mum.” She shuffled closer and gave me a hug, her long hair tickling my arm. I blinked the tears back, willing myself not to cry.
“Thank you, sweetheart.” I tucked her hair behind her ears as we broke apart. “Try looking in the cupboard under the stairs for that scarf — I think I saw it in there.”
“Ah, so you did move it!” She grinned, triumphant.
“We’ll agree to disagree on that one.”
I walked through the middle room — the dining room turned general storage area — and spotted two loads of Teigan’s washing still hanging on the clothes-horse in the corner.
“I asked you to put these away last night, Teigan.”
“What?” She looked up briefly from her phone, which, now that her scarf had been found, had her full attention again. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”
Of course she did. I”d been trying to teach her some of the basics, domestic-wise. By her age, I was well-rehearsed in washing, ironing, cleaning, and cooking. I’d had to be. So far, it had been a battle just showing her how to use the washing machine. “Right, well, can you put them away now, please?”
“In a minute,” she mumbled, her gaze not leaving her phone screen.
“Now, please.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed heavily.
I walked into the kitchen to make my lunch for work — it still stank of last night’s fish. The once cheery yellow paint looked tired and grubby. My eyes wandered to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival leaflets I’d been collecting on the fridge. It was coming up again. May always came around so quickly. I grimaced as I remembered last year. We’d managed to get a pair of highly sought-after Speigeltent tickets for the 1920s night, and I’d ended up having to let Teigan down at the last minute because of a work emergency. I’d promised her then that we’d make it this year. No emergencies.
“Teig, would you circle the events you want to go to at the N&N this evening? I’ll start looking at which ones we need to book.”
“Mmm.”
“Go on, otherwise we’ll miss all the good stuff. Looks like they’re doing the 1920s night again — you still up for that one?”
Still glued to her phone, Teigan made her way through to the kitchen.
“Watch out for the —”
She missed the step down into the kitchen and stumbled, catching herself in the doorway, but dropping her beloved phone. It skidded across the kitchen floor, and she scrambled down to grab it. I cringed.
“Argh! The screen’s broken!” She stamped her feet, just like she had done when she was three — the year of the temper tantrum.
“Oh, Teigan, really? You’ve only had it — what, ten days?”
“It’s not my fault. You asked me to come through.”
“Well, it would have helped if you were looking where you were going, wouldn’t it?” I raised my eyebrows in a “don’t you blame this on me” way, before losing my resolve. She looked on the verge of tears. “Look, there’s that shop in Castle Mall that does screen repairs. We can take it there at the weekend and get it fixed, okay?”
I left her to mourn the phone as I opened the fridge. There was hardly any food left — I made a mental note to go shopping this weekend. However, I already knew most of the weekend would be spent reviewing Emma Beale’s case history, looking for things I might have missed and tormenting myself over it. I grabbed some leftover chicken and the open packet of limp rocket leaves. A modest lunch. It would have to do.
“Why are you dressed all posh today?” Teigan said as she wrapped the purple scarf around her neck, lifting her long hair out of the way to reveal a scatter of freckles on the side of her face. My spirits lifted — asking about my outfit was her way of apologising.
Did I look posh? I was going for smart, but down-to-earth. Professional but approachable. I’d put on a skirt suit, though my tiny frame always did look a bit stupid in suits — like a child trying to play dress-up. “I’ve got an important meeting today, a case review. About Emma.”
“Oh, right.”
I fiddled with my shirt, tucked it into the skirt, and noticed the large gap between the waistband and my stomach. I’d probably been overdoing it recently. Or underdoing it, so to speak.
I pressed myself closer to the fridge as Teigan wiggled through the limited space between my back and the kitchen surface. She picked up the iPad from the mess of bills and took it through to the middle room, pulling up a chair at the unused dining table.
I drizzled some lemon juice dressing onto my salad and popped on the lid. 8:25 a.m. I needed to get going. I was in for a stressful day at work.
“Don’t forget to feed Tonks.”
“Mum, what the hell is this?”
“Teigan — language!”
She ignored me and brandished the iPad in my face — showing a tab that I had foolishly left open. “Why are you looking at houses out in the sticks?”
I groaned. “Okay, not now — we can talk about this later.”
“Garboldisham? Harleston?” She was scrolling through the listings with a look of pure panic. “Oh, my God, we’re not moving out of the city, are we?”
“I’ve just been doing some research, that’s all. They’re nice villages where you get a lot more for your money and, frankly, I’d like a kitchen we can both physically move around.” I heard the rising frustration in my voice. I didn’t have time for this.
“But we had that money. We could’ve had a bigger house right here in Norwich, but you wanted to be all Saint Teresa about it!”
“It’s Mother Teresa, Teigan. And it was my decision. That money was …” I trailed off, the memories washing over me. The mixed emotions. The guilt. “It wouldn’t have been right for me to spend it.”
“Well, it’s not right to make me move away from my friends, either.” Her eyes were wide with panic, her cheeks flushed red. “What about school? What about my life?”
“Teigan. You need to calm down. You’d still stay at the same school. I would drive you in instead of you having to walk. I just think it’s time to start thinking about moving out of the city into a nicer house.”
Teigan waved away my platitudes and started pacing. “You just want to move away because this is where your cases are, and all the families hate you,” she cried. “You don’t care what I want. I don’t want to be the weird kid whose mum drives them into school every day like they’re still in primary school. No one will want to hang out with me.”
“Teigan —” I countered, but she cut me off.
“And even if they did want to hang out with me, they won’t be able to, because I’ll have to get picked up straight after school like a kid.”
“Teigan,” I tried again, “we can talk about this later. Right now, I have to get to work.”
“You always have to get to work.” Her eyes were brimming with tears now, her voice thick with choked emotion. “You’re always worried about letting your care kids down, but what about me? You care about them more than me.”
I froze, stunned at the accusation. The look of hurt on my daughter’s face mirrored my own. Images from Emma’s case bombarded me — her sad smile, the terrible conditions of the house, the bruises on her face, the self-inflicted cuts on her arms and thighs. The difficult conversations with her mum, followed by the tense debates with Hilary about what to do. The fear I imagined in Emma’s eyes when her mum had attacked her that day.
Teigan’s accusations had faded into background noise. My mind had wandered elsewhere, a fog of stress and memories I didn’t want to remember. The newsreader’s haunting words: “Emma Beale, tragically let down by those who were meant to protect her.”
Was I letting down my own daughter, too? My heart raced, my thoughts swirled. The more I tried to focus, the less I could hold on.
Then, there was nothing.