The house stood square and defiant. Front door in the middle, three rows of windows on either side. Big and ugly. It was large and detached, surrounded by trees and shrubs and with fields all around. ‘Georgian,’ Jon said as we trudged closer. The nearer we got the less impressive the house revealed itself to be. Paint was peeling and moss and weeds grew out of the brickwork. It had a functional, institutional look, like it was kept standing on the minimal possible budget. I noticed that some of the windows were bricked up and pointed them out to Jon and he said that would have been done years ago. He said that there was a window tax, introduced by William III and the more windows you had the more tax you paid, so people just blocked them up. There were bars on the windows of the ground floor and security cameras over the front door. I wondered if they were to stop people breaking in or escaping or both.
We stopped at a low fence, where the track continued through a gateway to the house and Jon said we’d better not go any further. He pointed to a large sign that stood just behind the fence. I had to squint to read it in the grey gloom: ‘St Liam’s Crisis and Respite Unit’. The local children’s home. He was showing me how things could be worse. I took a deep breath and tried not to be too down on the place; it could be brilliant for all I knew. I shrugged, ‘It might be all right.’ Jon pulled two newspaper cuttings out of his pocket, probably taken from his grandparents’ collection, and handed them to me. One was old, yellow and brittle and the other one was more recent, jet-black ink not yet faded. The older article had the headline: ‘Local Care Home: Den of Abuse’. It was from five years ago and according to the article the people involved had been jailed after a full investigation and the care home was under new management. Still, I looked up at the building and a goose walked across my grave. I shivered it off. The more recent piece was from the point of view of local residents from the estates we had just passed. The Duerdale Advertiser said the home had started a new scheme and as well as local children St Liam’s took in ‘troubled and violent adolescents, recently released from secure accommodation’. There were complaints of gangs congregating, vandalism and residents feeling threatened. Running battles between the estate kids and the kids from St Liam’s were reported. One resident, who wanted to remain anonymous, was quoted as saying, ‘We daren’t come out at night. There are marauding gangs, smashing cars and windows and fighting each other. They’re all on drink and drugs. We didn’t have any trouble before they shipped this lot here. The council should close it down and send them somewhere else; this is the wrong place for them. We don’t have the resources to deal with them here.’ The article said that one youth had been taken back to a young offenders’ institution after he’d stabbed another resident in a fight. I handed the cuttings back to Jon.
‘This is where they’d put me,’ he said. We looked at each other and then back to the building. Neither of us spoke. After a few seconds Jon turned around and started walking back towards a quickly darkening Duerdale. I hurried to follow, not wanting to be left behind.