Fate was watching my figure even if I wasn’t. Just as I was about to dunk my first chocolate biscuit of the day, Kelly nudged me and nodded towards the classroom door. Standing outside was Gary Clark. I was surprised he didn’t just walk in, as he normally did, but from what I could see of him through the glass panel, he looked quite serious, and as he gestured to me to join him out in the corridor rather than come in, I dutifully put down my biscuit and went to the door.
‘Will Kelly be alright to watch them for ten minutes?’ he asked when I opened it.
‘Of course,’ I said, mouthing a ‘won’t be long’ back to her. I joined him outside and closed the door again and we headed back down the corridor. ‘Problem?’ I asked, wondering if I was being taken to the scene of some new adolescent ‘crime’ or fracas.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Just needed to bring you up to my office for a confidential chat. Seems Kiara Bentley is coming back to us.’
‘Really?’ I said as we fell into our usual walking rhythm – Gary striding normally, with me having to incorporate the odd hop-skip-and-jump to keep up. ‘Oh, that’s great, Gary! But what does that mean? Have they found her a local placement? Or – oh, my God – she’s not back with her mother, is she? They wouldn’t let that happen, would they? Surely not? Or, don’t tell me –’
Gary laughed. ‘Calm down, Casey, take a flipping breath, will you? There’s absolutely no point in me trying to have a confidential conversation with you, is there? Don’t worry. I’ll tell you everything when we get there.’
I hurried along beside him, feeling ever so slightly like a scolded child, though an unrepentant one, as I reflected that some people were born to be cool as the proverbial cucumbers and some people weren’t.
‘And there’s no point in giving me one of those looks,’ Gary added, obviously aware of my reverie. ‘There could be anyone lurking in these corridors.’
‘What, like spies?’ I huffed. But we were there now, so he could finally spill the beans.
‘She’s going to her father’s,’ he said, once he’d followed me inside and closed the door behind us. ‘It seems Mr Bentley has cleaned his act up somewhat, and social services have agreed that Kiara can move in with him for a trial period.’
‘Oh, that’s great news!’ I said, ‘When? When is she moving in with him?’
‘She’s already there,’ Gary explained. ‘Was taken to him yesterday, I’m told. She will be back in school from tomorrow – and back with you, obviously. At least till the end of term, we think, so you can monitor things.’
Gary could have told me all this at the classroom door, so I knew there must be more to come. Stuff that was too sensitive to be picked up by a stray ear. ‘I sense a “but” in all this, Gary,’ I said. ‘Is there?’
He nodded. ‘Sort of. It’s just that she might be a bit delicate, Casey. According to the discussion I’ve just had with Jenny Davies – that’s her social worker; the one you met? – during the past two weeks, Kiara has been extremely forthcoming about her life with her mother.’ Gary’s forehead creased then. ‘It’s appalling. There’s no other word for it. And worse is that Jenny said she spoke almost matter-of-factly about it. This is clearly quite long established, and Kiara seems to have – what would the word be? – acclimatised? She’s certainly displayed no great distress at the things she’s been made to do, so there is a lot buried deep, I don’t doubt. And the feeling is that now’s the time when she might go into meltdown – now she’s away from it and can start properly processing it.’
I couldn’t begin to imagine how a 12-year-old would work out how to deal with something like that. ‘She’s so tiny, Gary,’ I said. ‘So young. I mean, where do you start? How do your unscramble it all from her psyche? All those things she’s been subjected to …’
‘There’s one positive, at least, and that’s that she’s apparently never been raped, so we must be grateful we were able to intervene when we did. Though she has apparently been an integral part of her mother’s business – photographed in various states – presumably for marketing purposes,’ he added dryly, ‘and performing various other sex acts on a number of her mother’s clients.’
I took a deep, slow breath. No matter how often I’d heard clues to all this over the days I’d spent with Kiara, I could never get used to the idea of what had been really going on behind that squeaky clean facade – what had been behind the hair pulling, the fatigue, that old-beyond-her-years look she always had in her eyes. Boy, how old beyond her years had she been forced to be. And who were the vile creatures for whom she performed these acts? Other girls’ fathers? Much as I wished it otherwise, I knew the answer might well be yes. No wonder I could never stop the involuntary shudder as I tried to push the mental images away.
‘Poor little girl,’ I said. ‘I don’t know about feeling delicate – it’s a wonder she can function at all. What kind of monster must that woman have been? It still doesn’t quite compute. If you’d seen her place, Gary … It really just doesn’t compute – there’s such a disconnect in my head.’
He smiled mirthlessly. ‘You’ve not heard of Cynthia Payne, then? Anyway, kid gloves are obviously the order of the day. She’s clearly going to be a work in progress for a long time – there are all sorts of doors open to her if she wants, or needs, to talk, but no one is going to put her under any pressure. Business as usual as far as school is concerned. There’s regular counselling in place via social services, but as far as we’re concerned it’s just carry on as per normal and keep an eye. You know the score, too many cooks and all that.’
I did. I knew what Gary was essentially saying was that it was important she wasn’t overwhelmed by a surfeit of anxious, hovering adults; it was overwhelming for a child to have to revisit a painful past at the best of times, so to feel that the world and its brother were all wanting to be in the know could be difficult to handle, if not unbearable.
‘At least she’s now back with her dad,’ I said. ‘Thank goodness for small mercies. I’m really pleased for her – thank God he’s come back into her life and shaped up at least. He could be key to her getting her head straight, couldn’t he?’
Gary told me they all felt equally positive. That social services had spelled out the steps he’d have to take and, with their support, and a bit of necessary financial input, he’d started to take them; which might seem like questionable use of ‘taxpayers’ money’ but, given that the alternative would be full-time foster care, was in fact the cheaper option and, in terms of Kiara’s emotional health, assuming her father could sustain his current efforts, overwhelmingly the best long-term option too.
So he’d been provided with a proper bed for her bedroom and a number of other essential items, as well as being directed towards the kinds of things he needed to be aware of when caring for a child on a full-time basis. Things like providing her with a decent diet, adhering to bedtime and behaviour rules and, most of all, keeping her safe. They had also assured him that they would be on hand 24/7, for as long as he needed them to offer any other help he might require, and for as long as they felt it was necessary. He had also got himself some temporary work as a labourer on a building site, the promise being that, if he stuck at it, it might lead to a more permanent position.
All in all, though it was early days, it sounded very promising, and I couldn’t be happier for Kiara, who I knew would start to heal so much better, and perhaps quicker, with her dad. I also couldn’t wait to tell the others that she would be joining us again, particularly poor Chloe. Which reminded me of another issue I had to tackle.
‘Gary, before I go, I just wanted to run something by you,’ I said. ‘Chloe Jones.’
‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘She’s doing really well, isn’t she?’
‘On the surface, yes,’ I agreed, ‘in terms of her social skills and learning, but I’m concerned about a deterioration in her emotional state, and I was wondering if you knew someone externally who might be able to help out over the coming weeks. Once she’s away from her support network here, I worry she’s going to badly regress.’
‘I get your point, but that’s not really our job, Casey,’ Gary said. ‘Not once school breaks up. We can’t “send the boys round” to sort her out, to put it bluntly. Or, indeed, drag her mother to AA meetings by her hair. Once we’re done for the summer, it’s all outside of our official jurisdiction.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘and I wasn’t saying that we should go and stick our noses in and get into trouble – just that you might know some charitable agency or something that could help over the summer holidays. Someone with a drugs and alcohol background or even, I don’t know, somewhere she could get some parenting classes maybe. Just anything we could offer really to help out. Chloe is really starting to notice now she’s getting older that her mum has very poor standards when it comes to child raising, and I think she’s at real risk of depression.’
Gary seemed to ponder for a few moments. ‘Leave it with me, Casey. I might have one or two ideas,’ he said finally. ‘If I can pull something together for the school holidays, that might help some, yes?’
I grinned. I knew Gary would know someone. Some friend of a friend that could pull some strings. ‘That would be more than helpful, Gary, thank you so much,’ I told him.
‘Payment preferred in biscuits, remember,’ he said as I left.
I had been expecting Kiara to be in some way fundamentally changed when she returned; to show some clear evidence of the vile abuse she’d suffered, and to appear even more fragile and young and vulnerable than she had previously. But, of course, that was probably stupid of me. All of it had been going on, all the time, since before I’d even become aware of her, and even if not exactly under our noses, certainly enough to be responsible for that episode of self-harming the previous year.
No, it was me that had changed – me that was looking at her differently, me that was hyper-aware that she might develop some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD was very much the term of the moment then, and as with any new ‘discovery’ about the human condition, professionals were bandying it about a lot and quick to use it as a label. There was nothing wrong with that – it was probably a factor in the mental malaise of tens of thousands of men returning from the trenches of the First World War, truth be told – but I still felt a little silly researching what signs I might look out for; what would suggest that, now the abuse was over, Kiara was beginning to process it – to tear down the mental wall she’d built while she was experiencing it, to protect herself, and let the distress come rushing out.
But it seemed I was barking up completely the wrong tree, because, as I observed her during the first few days of her return to the Unit, the changes I saw in her were nothing short of delightful. She rejoined us and settled back in as though she’d never been away, the only difference being the glow she had about her.
Needless to say, Chloe proved to be as fickle as the weather and, on seeing Kiara, dried her eyes and completely forgot the beloved ‘gypsy’ girl who’d stolen her heart and then disappeared. (Morgan, having taken her final exam, had now left us, and would only return – if allowed – for our end-of-term outing.)
I started to think that perhaps this term would end on an amazing high. Thrown together, Tommy and Jonathan had forged a friendship which had impacted positively on both of them, and Gary, bless him, had been as good as his word and been in touch with Chloe’s mum. And had spoken to her quite robustly, by all accounts. Apparently he’d threatened her with an aggressive onslaught of social workers and various other teams if she didn’t agree to a drugs and alcohol abuse officer going in twice a week throughout the summer holidays, to help counsel her. He’d also arranged for one of our school mentors to visit once per week especially for Chloe’s benefit. She would take her on outings and picnics and give Mrs Jones the opportunity to take a breather from her various ‘child care’ duties, which I knew would make all the difference to both mother and child, because those six weeks could test the patience of any mother.
Before that, however (and to some extent we were all counting the days now), there were my final reviews to be done, on each of the children who’d spent time with us this term. This was where I would wrap up everything, summarise any achievements or any remaining weaknesses and make my recommendations about what should happen the following term. This was normally to suggest that they were ready to go back to mainstream classes or, rarely, that a child should stay with me for another half-term.
As far as my current brood went, I thought they were all pretty much ready. Chloe might well have her place confirmed at a special school before we broke up in any case, and I’d already decided that I’d recommend that Tommy be relocated to the same class as Jonathan next year. Yes, it would mean holding him back a year, but as he’d missed so much schooling, perhaps that was the right decision in any case. It would certainly benefit both boys to remain ‘partners in crime’, I felt, as they could support each other so well during the transition. And, as for Kiara, I could see no reason why she couldn’t move back to mainstream classes too – in fact, now she was no longer in her unhappy, desperate situation, perhaps keeping her in the Unit would only be a hindrance; she was now in a position, hopefully, to begin re-forging friendships, and the sooner she did so, the better for her emotional well-being. Yes, a return to normality was very much to be desired.
In fact, I was just in the middle of recounting all that to her, when all my carefully laid plans for the summer holidays and autumn term came shuddering to a halt and slammed hard against the buffers, in the shape of a wild-eyed woman I’d never seen before.