‘There will be no diminution of effort?’ says Manon, as she and Harriet climb the echoey staircase to MIT, without Stanton, who has gone off to stoke his belly with another large lunch. ‘Bit of a mouthful, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh look, he gets right on my tits. I can’t think straight with him looking at me, thinking—’ Harriet puts on an upper-crust Sir Ian accent – ‘What manner of fuckwit are you?’
‘Yes, he’s a bit … austere.’
‘A bit?’
‘Well, he’s worried. I’d want my dad to do the same.’
‘S’pose. She’s a bloody cold fish, too.’
Manon stops, a hand on Harriet’s arm so that she turns on the stairs. ‘No, she isn’t,’ says Manon. ‘She isn’t at all. She just doesn’t put it all out there.’
‘We really need to get on and identify the people in the Post Office queue,’ says Harriet. ‘Nigel’s got the footage but some of them are shielded by hoods or they’re just standing at the wrong angle.’
‘We can get the staff to corroborate with their paperwork. Where’s Will Carter staying?’
‘Not with Helena Reed, that’s for sure. We’ve let him go home to Stoke but asked him to stay put so we can keep him informed. The Hind brother’s due in this afternoon. I want you and Davy to interview him as soon as he arrives, OK? What are you up to tonight, anything nice?’
‘Another date,’ says Manon. ‘To be honest, I’d rather look at a thousand hours of local authority CCTV.’
They sit in a row in conference room one, waiting for the child protection briefing, everyone on their smart phones. Manon has just received the latest demand for a dating update from Bryony. She’s next to Nigel, who has turned his back to the room and is hissing into his phone, a hand cupped over the mouthpiece. Dawn, obviously. Colin is downloading confirmation of his Ryanair flights. Kim is yawning, her feet up on the chair in front. The room is an oasis of police-blue – blue foam chairs, blue curtains, blue carpet – and smells of brewing coffee. It is filling up, people shuffling along the rows, slight bend at the knee: ambulance crews from Hinchingbrooke, passport control, CID. People nodding, saying hello. A few uniforms, rustling fluorescent jackets with zips and toggles and crackling radios, which make them seem larger than the rest. Amazing she can’t find a date among this lot.
Davy, to the other side of Manon, is sat bolt upright, his neck straining upwards so he can look at the woman at the podium, who is shuffling papers before she begins.
‘You should listen,’ he says to Manon. ‘This stuff’s important. You wouldn’t believe what’s happening out there.’
But Manon is texting Bryony.
‘Hello everyone, and thanks for coming,’ says the mousey voice at the podium. ‘I am Sheila Berridge, head of child protection services.’
Manon’s phone vibrates.
Manon yawns, hears the words ‘cross-sector involvement’ and ‘joined-up thinking’ waft across the room towards her.
‘We all need to be aware of the crisis in our children’s homes and how this spills out into all our sectors.’ Sheila Berridge warns of unprecedented numbers of children entering the care system as more and more families bump and skid below the poverty line. There are currently sixty-seven thousand children in care in England, she says.
Davy leans in to Manon, whispers urgently, ‘Sixty-seven thousand. That’s a city three times the size of Huntingdon.’
‘A city of children,’ says the woman at the podium, as if she and Davy are telecommunicating, ‘children with their attachments broken, the majority – seventy per cent – having experienced abuse or neglect. Once in care,’ she continues, trying to get above the shuffling and bleeping and restlessness of the room, ‘many children experience the instability of multiple short-term placements. They are more likely to go missing, making them vulnerable to harmful situations such as sexual exploitation.’
‘I see this all the time,’ Davy whispers to Manon, ‘at the youth group. I mean, they’re children.’
‘The pattern of neglect,’ says Sheila Berridge’s harried voice, ‘is getting worse. We know of gangs of men who prey on girls in care, getting them addicted to alcohol and drugs, then grooming them for sex. Paedophiles are operating in many care homes. This affects all of us, every agency in this room.’
Manon looks to the other side of her, away from Davy’s keen expression, and sees Nigel yawning. He casts her a look as if to say, ‘Boring, huh?’
‘We must be aware of how difficult these children are to help,’ says Sheila Berridge, her voice now raised and powerful, ‘and to be mindful that they must be listened to, however much they change their stories, however dangerous and unpredictable they seem. We must listen to what they tell us. We must take them very seriously indeed.’