Kitabı oku: «A Stolen Childhood: A Dark Past, a Terrible Secret, a Girl Without a Future»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

By the Same Author

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

If you like this, you’ll love …

Casey Watson

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About the Publisher

Dedication

Some wise person, somewhere, coined the phrase, ‘It’s the little things,’ and you know, it really is. This book is dedicated to all those who do the little things without thinking, every working day. The dinner ladies, the playground assistants, the volunteer mentors and the teachers, the classroom assistants, the school nurses, the year heads and the support staff. These people, in their dedicated roles and in the busy school environment, often have no idea what a positive effect they have on their students. Continue doing what you do, and know that every little smile you give, every pat on the back, every wink or nod in the corridor, really makes somebody’s day. I raise a glass to all of you.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my agent, the lovely Andrew Lownie, for continuing to believe in me; Carolyn and the wonderful team at HarperCollins for their dedicated and hard work; and as ever my very talented friend and mentor, Lynne, for always being there.

Chapter 1

What Lies Beneath. That was the name of the film, wasn’t it? The one where the wife thinks she’s seeing things that aren’t there? As titles went, it was a good one for a psychological thriller. But though it would soon strike a chilling chord with me for professional reasons, right now I was oblivious of what lay in store, so it came to mind for more practical ones. I was busy digging – digging deep into my capacious school satchel, to see if what lay beneath in this case was a pen that actually worked.

It was touch and go whether I’d have any success. In fact, it was an action that, at times, put me in mind of one of those celebrities in the jungle plunging a hand into a black hole while being blindfold. It was a very big satchel and there was a great deal of stuff generally at the bottom of it, which was par for the course given the nature of my job. ‘You know what?’ I said to Kelly, my sometime assistant, having turfed out half the contents in order to find one, ‘you would think that after all this time, someone would finally work out how to operate the heating system in this place, wouldn’t you? It’s not exactly rocket science, after all.’

It was mid-morning break and Kelly and I, along with a lot of the other teaching staff, were spending it in the staff-room – not just so we could warm ourselves up a bit with hot drinks, but so we could retrieve any extra clothing we might have in our lockers.

It was only the beginning of March, but it was almost as if all the radiators in the place somehow knew that the weathermen had announced that morning that it was officially the first day of spring. They had then apparently decided in unison that they should break down, quite possibly for the entire season. This in turn meant that the school was already going into the usual ‘cold weather meltdown’, with key staff bustling about the place bearing thermometers and recording temperatures, while the children – always quick to sniff an opportunity on the breeze, particularly a chilly one – could already be heard up and down the corridors making plans for a possible early exit, if there were insufficient degrees Celsius for them to be allowed to stay.

‘It’s not boiler science either,’ Kelly told me. ‘Not on this occasion, anyway. I just saw Donald on the way up here and he said it’s not the boilers. Apparently someone turned the whole system off over the weekend by mistake and it’s just taking a long time to kick in again. Still,’ she said, grabbing a biscuit from the half-opened packet on the table in front of us, ‘didn’t Ranulph Fiennes say that when it’s really cold you burn loads of extra calories through shivering? So that’s fine by me. Custard cream?’

Her enthusiasm for trying to force-feed me biscuits aside, Kelly Vickers was a godsend in my working life. One of the school’s 20 or so teaching assistants, she was assigned, first and foremost, to help me as and when required in my role as the school’s Behaviour Manager. Ours was a busy inner-city comprehensive, big enough to have a specialised behaviour unit (well, to us, just ‘the Unit’) where my job was all about helping the various children who, for one reason or another, couldn’t cope effectively in mainstream classes. It was a veritable ‘mixed bag’ of reasons, as well, including children who were in danger of being excluded, those who had problems in school (be they academic and/or social) and kids who were struggling because of problems at home – something that naturally tended to impact on a child’s progress and well-being.

The diversity of my pupils’ needs meant that no day was ever just like another and, unlike most of the mainstream teachers, who had clear curriculum-based briefs, I couldn’t plan too far ahead because I never knew from one day to the next just who I might have in my classroom.

Today, though, I was completely child-free. ‘Well, I hope they sort it out soon,’ I said, declining the proffered biscuit packet and reaching for my coffee, ‘or we’ll have a hard time engaging our new brood tomorrow, won’t we? I don’t think there’s anything moodier than a kid that’s too hot or too cold.’

Kelly nodded as she cupped her own plastic vending-machine cup. ‘Have they told you who’s coming in yet?’

I shook my head. What with all the kerfuffle over the heating, my scheduled meeting with Julia Styles, the school’s Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (or SENCO) had been knocked off the morning’s agenda. ‘No names, no pack drill, not as yet,’ I told her. ‘All I know is that there are three of them – a lad from year seven, another from year eight and a girl from year nine with long-standing learning difficulties. I’m hoping to get more up to speed on them later on today.’

‘I tell you what,’ Kelly said, ‘I think I know who the girl might be. I remember someone mentioning to me she was joining the unit when you came back. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, her name’s Chloe Jones. Mother’s a long-standing alcoholic and social services are heavily involved with them, though as far as I know there are no plans to place her in care. There are moves afoot, however, to try and get Chloe moved out of mainstream education. She can be difficult to keep an eye on, bless her.’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked, having had my fair share of serial absconders since working at the school. ‘You mean she runs off all the time?’

Kelly shook her head. ‘No, not that – it’s more that she’s rather vulnerable, particularly now she’s an adolescent; tends to put herself in potentially dangerous situations. She has this thing where she wants to hug and kiss almost everyone. She automatically assumes that everyone loves her. The other kids tease her mercilessly and she believes anything they tell her. You’ll love her though, Casey, if it is her. She’s so adorable.’

‘Well, that’s always a bonus,’ I said. ‘I’d much prefer a surfeit of hugs than tantrums and rages. And I guess we’ll see what we’ll see come the morning. Right now I’m looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet in that classroom of mine.’ I picked up the piece of paper I’d been scribbling on before my pen gave up the ghost. ‘And a little light shopping from the stationery catalogue. You know me – I do like to be organised to a fault.’

‘Well, you know where I am if you need a hand in the morning,’ Kelly said as we gathered our things together. ‘You know, to help settle them in, whoever they turn out to be. Just give me a buzz and I’ll be there. I’m only helping out in the learning support room for the rest of the week, and at the moment there are more staff than children. ‘Oh, and Casey,’ Kelly added, grinning, as I slung my satchel over my shoulder, ‘remember Baden-Powell!’

‘Baden Powell? I don’t get you.’

She handed me a nail file, a packet of tissues, my purse and some lip balm. ‘Yours, I think?’ she added, with a mocking salute. ‘Be prepared!’

Only in schools, I mused as I walked the chilly corridors on the well-trodden route to my classroom. In no other job I could think of did you hear about all the staff being sent home because the temperature had dropped by just a few degrees. A great occasion for most of the children, no doubt about it, but not so much for teachers, some of whom had travelled miles to get to work, and definitely not for working parents who would have to quickly arrange transport and unexpected childcare.

Hopefully the radiators would chunter into life before it came to that, and we could all warm up and get to grips with the day. Not that I imagined I’d be cold for long as I had lots of physical work to be doing before welcoming my new brood to the Unit. I unlocked the door and opened it onto the cold, empty room, which smelt faintly musty from its long period unused. Since coming back to school after Christmas, I had had an unusual sort of term; one where I hadn’t really had the usual set group to work with. Only three kids from the previous term had returned to me after the holidays: Gavin and Shona, who’d both returned to mainstream classes by mid-January, and Imogen, a girl who’d had selective mutism and had come to us from another school, and who was settled into a new class by the end of the month. Since then the Unit had been temporarily de-commissioned, as I’d been working away from the main school, helping set up a new off-site facility that would deliver a brand new teaching programme.

It had been a big project, led by our visionary headteacher, Mike Moore, and enthusiastically supported by our Child Protection Officer, Gary Clark. Called ‘Reach for Success’ it was the culmination of research, endless meetings, and lots of political toing and froing with the education authorities, most of which I wasn’t personally involved with, but some of which I was, and we were now the proud ‘owners’ of a dedicated teaching facility in the local youth centre. It was designed to bring out the potential of a specific group of children – those who would not, in all probability, achieve academically in the same way as the majority of the kids.

It was an important step, not least because it meant we could target those kids that might leave school feeling academic ‘failures’ but were of course supremely capable of succeeding beyond school, and deliver an alternative and more appropriate teaching programme for them, including cookery, health and social care, basic food hygiene, childcare, beauty and more manual training in mechanics and carpentry than they could get in the main school. It was to be delivered as a rolling six-week course of learning exciting new, career-focused skills, and would also include targeted work on behaviour and self-development, which was where I came in, of course. I’d also had to provide the teaching staff down there with some specific agendas, which could be implemented during timetabled lessons.

All the hard work now completed, and the key staff in place, we were almost ‘open for business’, as it were. All that remained for me to do was to help identify the first group of pupils that we would send on the programme, make a weekly visit to the centre to check on their progress, and keep teachers and parents in the loop about how each individual was performing. It was a really exciting and innovative development for our school and I was proud of how much we’d achieved in a relatively short space of time.

It had been a pretty full-on job over the past few weeks, as well. So much so that it meant that I had spent even less time at home with my husband Mike and my own two children. Who weren’t exactly children any more, to be fair. Riley, my daughter, was almost 19 now, and my son Kieron had just turned 17, though sometimes, when I came home after a physically exhausting day spent painting and decorating at the centre, you’d think they were kids. I’d more than once come in to find the house in complete chaos – which I hated – and to find two starving teenagers and a husband with a hangdog expression, all obviously of the opinion that a law had been passed forbidding them to eat until I arrived home.

Not that it wasn’t a situation of my own making. I might stomp about a bit, do a lot of martyred sighing and so on, but that didn’t mean I was blind to my own failings. In fact, it often amused me that I spent all day teaching other people’s kids how to look after themselves, only to then go home and insist on doing absolutely everything for my own.

‘You’re making a rod for your own back, Casey!’ my mother was rather fond of saying, and even though I’d huff and puff at her, I was inclined to agree. Not that I’d have it any other way of course. I secretly loved still being needed by my two older teens, no matter how much I pretended to protest.

Right then, Casey, I said out loud to myself, since there was no one else to talk to. Best get cracking – these walls aren’t going to sort themselves out! I then rolled my sleeves up, both actually and metaphorically, and, after placing a hopeful hand on the nearest radiator and having my hopes dashed, prepared to do battle with the displays. With any luck, I’d have an uninterrupted hour and a half now, so, before tackling the remaining backlog of paperwork in my pigeonhole, I could do a good job of stripping down all the previous students’ work, and prettying it up again, ready for the work my new charges would produce.

But that’s the thing about school life; it was almost always unpredictable. So much so that I could probably have predicted that the sudden rap on the classroom door 20 minutes later would mean a complete change of plan.

And it did.

Chapter 2

My room wasn’t like a regular classroom. For one thing it was half the size, and for another, it wasn’t even a classroom. It had been once, back in the dark ages, when the school had first been built, but after a spell as a learning support room, it had gone the way of many a backwater space – home to a small, motley collection of tables and chairs, and not a great deal else. It had been passed over, forgotten, trapped in a time warp at the end of a corridor, and it suited my purposes perfectly.

The headmaster, Mike Moore, who showed me various options when I’d first secured the job, had expressed surprise; in terms of size and spec he’d definitely shown me better. But there was something about that little room that had chimed with my sensibilities, both as a work space for me and as a safe space for my pupils – who I had an inkling would know all about being passed over and forgotten.

Best of all – and, to be honest, it was probably the deal-breaker – it had double doors that opened out onto a lovely grassy area, tucked away at the back of the school. Oh, the things we could do out there, I’d thought.

And, if I did say so myself, I thought I’d made it quite special. I sectioned off an area at the front for myself, which contained a desk, a set of drawers and (important, to my mind) space to make hot drinks and toast. This last addition had caused a few raised eyebrows. In these days of health and safety consciousness, one couldn’t just turn up and plug in a toaster as one might do at home – no, Mike Moore had been required to call an engineer in specially, to test and ‘pass safe’ my two electrical appliances, which I heard on the grapevine caused a ripple of mild disgruntlement in some quarters, due to the ‘unnecessary’ expense.

I believe I then made matters worse (no, to be fair, I know I did) by going out and spending some of my precious teaching budget on such fripperies as bright emulsion, half a dozen floor cushions and a selection of potted plants – all of which I deemed essential too. Essential to the creation of the warm, calm environment I was after, so, knowing all about politics after years spent working with vulnerable young adults for the local council, I simply ignored the whispered grumbles and exasperated glances, which, once it became common knowledge that my Unit would mop up the most challenging children, did not continue very long, to no one’s surprise.

I had several large display boards and had got to work on them quickly, taking down what remained of the previous bunch of students’ work and, while I was at it, wondering how they were all doing. Being out of school for a few weeks meant being somewhat out of the loop, and I made a mental note to try and track them down when I could. In the meantime, I decided, surveying the newly barren walls, I’d hang on to the gold card frames that we’d put up for Christmas but would be perfectly serviceable for a while yet. I could then turn my attention to my ‘quiet’ area.

A good number of the children who came to me had a tendency to become volatile, so a ‘chill out’ space was another essential. It was a place I could send kids to calm down if they needed to and, equally, it was a place that might prove preventative on that front – not to mention being somewhere a shy child could escape to, should the bustle of the classroom get too much.

It was a simple space – the only seating being those half-dozen floor cushions – and bound on two sides by a pair of bookcases at right angles, facing inwards. There were books, of course, but also a selection of stationery: trays of paper, pens and pencils, in case creativity blossomed and the urge to be artistic took hold.

The knock at my door came just as I was deciding if I had time to rearrange the muddle of books, while putting a new label on the crayon tray. I bobbed up to find Donald Brabbiner, the deputy head, had put his head round the now open door.

‘Casey, do you have a minute?’ he asked, looking stressed. Not that Don looking stressed was anything unusual in itself, currently. The school was in the middle of preparing for an OFSTED visit, and there wasn’t a member of the senior staff who wasn’t stressing about it – the furrowed brow and frazzled expression was very much the look of the moment.

But, no – he looked more stressed than even that, I decided. ‘Yes, of course, Don,’ I said, pulling myself upright and brushing chalk dust from my skirt. ‘I don’t have any children in till tomorrow, and I’m about done here. Is there a problem?’

He nodded grimly. ‘Apparently so.’

He was obviously keen to return to it, too, I decided, as he was already turning and heading back out into the corridor. I quickly followed him, opting for grabbing my satchel, rather than spending time finding my key and locking the door. There was nothing in there worth pinching currently, after all. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked. I was having to jog intermittently to keep up with him as we headed off down the corridor, and not just because I was five foot nothing to his six foot two. He was the sort of man who was born to lead and a great asset to the school, and with his brisk manner and his ‘everything must be done yesterday’ attitude, he was hard to keep up with at the best of times. But he was well liked by both the staff and the students, because he was down to earth, fair to a fault and enjoyed a laugh with the children, attributes that made for the best kind of teacher – well, in my humble opinion, anyway.

‘Year eight assembly,’ he said, directing his words half over his shoulder. ‘Some sort of incident going on involving two of the pupils. I was told I was needed and so were you –’ He turned and smiled a grim smile. ‘And as you were on the way, I thought I’d scoop you up en route.’

So he was on his way to it. Which meant he must have been sent for or paged. ‘A fight?’ I asked.

‘I believe so. Though I’m not yet quite sure … Ah –’

He didn’t need to finish whatever it was he was about to say as we could hear the commotion before we saw it; well, the tell-tale sound of massed kids who, as our eyes soon confirmed, were all being herded out of the hall, most of them over-excited, chatting nine to the dozen about something exciting that had obviously gone down – and which probably livened up their morning no end.

‘Settle down,’ Donald barked, to no one in particular. He didn’t need to – just his presence in the area was enough. The various form teachers were busy trying to wrestle back some order too, but the decibel levels suggested that whatever had happened was something more serious than just some radiator-related unrest.

That too was soon confirmed, as Andrea Halstead, one of the year eight form tutors, emerged from the hall and beckoned us to both follow her in.

‘Oh, Mr Brabbiner,’ she said, sounding as if she was still getting her breath back. ‘Casey, hi. Bit of a to-do, I’m afraid. Might have been something and nothing, but Thomas over there’s hit his head and Mr Reynolds and I were thinking that someone will probably need to take him down to A and E.’

‘A and E?’ Donald went straight into accident mode. ‘What sort of head wound? Any bleeding? Did he pass out at any point?’

I looked across to where a group of assorted teachers, teaching assistants and one of the school secretaries, Janice Wells, were forming what looked like two separate human cordons around what must have been the two pupils in question, neither of whom I could properly see yet. What I could see, however, was a large muddle of chairs, several of them overturned, around which Barry, the caretaker, was methodically working, stacking the unaffected rows of chairs both in front of and behind the groups, and dragging them to their positions back against the walls. It was a circle of devastation that looked a little like something had been dropped in the middle of the hall from a great height. A fight, then, for definite.

Or perhaps not. ‘I’m not sure,’ Andrea said, ‘We don’t think so. But it’s been bleeding rather copiously. It’s up in his hair at the back –’ she gestured to her own head to illustrate. ‘Just above the back of his neck. Quite a nasty gash.’

‘Wouldn’t an ambulance be simpler?’ Donald asked.

‘We weren’t sure,’ Andrea said. ‘I was going to call one, but then Janice reminded me about the roadworks on the way to the General. We were wondering if it wouldn’t be easier for someone just to take him in their car. Mr Reynolds seems to have got the bleeding under control.’

‘You want me to take him down in my car?’ I asked. ‘Who is it, anyway?’

‘Lad called Thomas Robinson,’ Andrea said. ‘You probably haven’t come across him – he’s only been at the school for a couple of weeks or so, bless him. But, no, we were hoping you’d be able to take charge of Kiara, there. She’s in no fit state to go back to her friends.’

She nodded towards the second of the two huddles, at the centre of which I could just make out a second pupil, who I now realised wasn’t the gender I expected. ‘Kiara?’ I said. ‘So it’s a girl?’

Andrea nodded while Donald strode off to take charge of the patient and decide how best to get him to A and E. ‘Kiara Bentley,’ she confirmed. ‘Have you had any dealings with her?’

As if to underline that even if I hadn’t I might well do very soon, the subject of our discussion then started shouting. Shouting quite loudly, in fact; and making a great deal of noise for what looked like quite a small amount of pupil.

‘What happened?’ I asked Andrea, at a loss to work it out. ‘Did the pair of them have a punch-up in the middle of assembly?’

‘Not quite a full-on fight,’ she said. ‘But it certainly got physical. I didn’t have the best view because they were halfway along a row, quite a way behind me. By the time I got to it, it was hard to make out what was going on. And she’s still in a right state about it, as you can see. Come on, let’s go and see if we can calm things down a bit, shall we? Then we can all get back on with our days.’ She gave me a wry grin as we walked across the hall. ‘One of those days, eh? Still, at least it’s stopped everyone whining about the radiators.’

I’d already been involved in quite a few fight situations in the course of my job, and some things were common to all of them. The adrenalin rush, the urgent need to lower the emotional temperature and stop fists flying around, and the equally important need to establish the facts.

In that regard, coming into this one after the event left me at something of a disadvantage. On the one hand was this beefy-looking, scruffy, long-haired lad, clutching what looked like a tea-towel to his head, his white(ish) school shirt liberally splattered with blood and with the unmistakable pallor of a child who was in shock. And on the other hand was what seemed like a slip of a girl who seemed to be alternately sobbing and raging at the huddle of staff who were trying to calm her down.

But there was no point in trying to establish quite what had happened, not till the lad had been taken off to have his wound looked at and not till the girl – Kiara Bentley, that was it – was on a more even keel.

‘This is Mrs Watson,’ Andrea said, as we joined the small group surrounding her. Toni, the teaching assistant who’d been sitting beside her, immediately jumped up. ‘Here,’ she said, gesturing towards the seat she’d vacated.

I would have sat on it, too, the better to communicate with the girl, had it not been for the fact that at that exact moment Donald was leading the boy and his retinue out of the hall, which meant walking past us.

‘You’re a fucking dick!’ the girl screamed suddenly, leaping up from her own seat, and only being stopped from lashing out at the boy again by Andrea’s swift arresting arm.

‘Kiara!’ she barked, blocking her route to him. ‘Stop it!’

‘You’re a fucking bastard!’ she screeched, ignoring Andrea completely. ‘And I hope they shrivel up and fall off as well!’

Hope what fall off? I wondered as I helped Andrea gently restrain her. ‘Come on, love,’ I said. ‘This isn’t helping anything, is it? Come on, how about you come with me, eh? Then you can tell me all about it, and –’

She ignored me as well. ‘I’ve got more balls than you’ll ever have anyway!’ she yelled, shouting loud enough to make my left ear hurt, as Donald, with a short barked instruction of ‘Enough!’ disappeared with Janice and Thomas through the double doors. The boy, whose arresting mop of shoulder-length hair was flopping over his face, obscuring it, was half-doubled over, I noticed, and clearly in pain. I didn’t need to see his face. I could hear him.

The penny dropped. Balls. That was what the girl said, hadn’t she? Ouch.

‘Enough, now!’ Andrea repeated as between us we managed to guide the girl back to the seat she’d been sitting on, though, rigid with fury, she refused to sit down.

‘You get back,’ Andrea said to the two young teaching assistants still remaining, then turned her attention back to Kiara. ‘Now, are you going to go with Mrs Watson nicely, my love? I know you’re upset, but nobody can help you when you’re screaming and hollering like this, can they? Come on, try and calm yourself down, okay?’

With the boy gone, all the fight seemed to have gone out of the girl anyway. ‘I hate him!’ she said, but it was a last angry parry, before dissolving into the latest of what looked like a few bouts of tears; she was wearing mascara – well, had been. By now most of it was on her cheeks.

‘Kiara?’ I said, trying to get her to focus her attention on me. ‘What a pretty name. So, come on, how about you come to my classroom with me? You need something to drink, and to calm yourself down. Sort yourself out, eh?’

Not that she had anything with which to do that as yet, and I suddenly remembered that while delving into my bag earlier, I’d seen a half packet of tissues. I rummaged around for it and passed it to her so she could wipe her eyes and blow her nose on something a little kinder than the wodge of rough paper towel someone had obviously run and got from the loos.

She mumbled a thank you, and abruptly sat down again. It was almost as if her legs had given way beneath her, and I wondered if she was actually starting to faint. She was certainly pale enough. I sat beside her. ‘We’ll be fine if you want to get off as well now,’ I said to Andrea. ‘I’ll take Kiara down to my classroom,’ I said, glancing up at the big wall clock. Almost 12.15. It wouldn’t be long till the bell went for lunch and the crowd outside – now dispersed presumably – would all be thronging back again, on their way down to the adjacent dinner hall.

‘Come on, Kiara,’ I said firmly as she dabbed at her eyes. ‘Let’s get out of here as well, eh?’

She looked up at me as if only properly seeing me for the first time. ‘I hate him, miss,’ she said.

Kiara Bentley was a tiny thing, slight in every sense. Which was to say she was my height but there was almost nothing of her. She also looked young for a year eight – was almost doll-like, in fact, with a small oval face which was currently half hidden behind a mass of curly, chocolate-coloured hair. She looked so forlorn too, now the fight had gone out of her; like the proverbial rag doll that gets parked in the corner by a child who’s gone off in search of more interesting things to play with – a look enhanced by the two flaming spots on her pale cheeks. But the doll-like impression was at odds with the look in her eyes; a strange knowing look, causing the phrase ‘old head on young shoulders’ to pop unbidden into my mind.

‘Am I in trouble, miss?’ was the next thing she said to me, a full minute or so since Andrea departed for her tutor room, and we’d left the caretaker to finish clearing the hall. Still, at least she’d come with me readily enough.

‘That’s not going to be easy for me to answer, sweetheart,’ I told her. ‘As I have absolutely no idea what you’ve done.’

I waited, to see if she’d start to tell me the story. In my experience, kids either maintained a sullen silence or it all came rushing out, in one long torrent of denials, accusations and bitter recriminations, from which you then had to winkle out the facts.

‘I never hurt his head. That wasn’t me,’ she said firmly. ‘If that’s what you’re thinking. Just so you know. It wasn’t.’

‘I wasn’t thinking anything,’ I said mildly as we reached the door to my classroom. I opened it and stood aside to let her in. ‘I’m completely in the dark. So how about you put your bag down and grab a chair, while I grab you a glass of juice, and you tell me all about it. How about that?’

It seemed Kiara Bentley had no problem with that at all. She had fallen asleep in assembly, she told me. She hadn’t meant to – how could she? She hadn’t realised she’d been asleep till she woke up.

Which was logical. I agreed she had a point. And when she’d woken up, she went on, it was to find her head was in Thomas’s lap and that everyone around her was sniggering at her. ‘And he’d been saying things,’ she said, her voice now beginning to wobble, ‘and messing about with my hair, miss, and …’

Her hand went to her hair then and as it did so I noticed that close to her temple there was a bald patch about the size of a ten-pence piece. ‘Doing what things?’ I asked, trying to visualise the scenario, all too aware that not all modern 12-year-olds were the sexual innocents their pre-teen status might suggest. Particularly groups of boys in close proximity to one another; it was a myth that it was only girls who got attacks of the giggles whenever it came to matters of sex. But what about that bald patch? Had he been responsible for that?

‘Doing what to your hair?’ I asked her.

‘I don’t know, miss, but something. You know. Messing about. Putting his hands in it. Pretending that I was giving him a, you know, a blow-job or something.’

Though it was slightly startling to hear such a phrase coming from what superficially seemed such a young innocent’s mouth, this I could visualise all too easily, sadly. The sort of pubescent nonsense that young boys got up to everywhere. But one thing struck me. That must have been some nap she was having, for her to fall asleep so completely that him doing something like that didn’t wake her up. That was odd. But then, I reasoned, he’d have had to be pretty quiet about his silliness, given that they were slap-bang in the middle of an assembly.

‘And then you woke up,’ I prompted, still wondering about the head wound and the hair and the hapless lad’s testicles.

Kiara took a gulp of the orange juice I’d now poured for her before nodding. ‘And I realised where I was and what was happening, and they were all saying stuff, like “Ooh, can I have a go next, Kiara?” Stuff like that. And he was, like, “Thanks for that. You’re really good,” and laughing at me and making faces and being an absolute dick.’ Her eyes narrowed, her tears forgotten. ‘So I got him back. Where it hurts.’

Which still didn’t explain what happened next and I said so. Upon which Kiara explained, with a definite edge of pride, that she’d grabbed his balls so tightly that he’d actually screamed. ‘Right in the middle of everything,’ she said, the memory obviously firing her up all over again, ‘because I did it just like my mum showed me. And he jumped up then, but I hung on and he kind of fell backwards and then – well, I don’t know, really, because I’d let go by now and I didn’t really see properly, but he was grabbing his balls and crying and then his chair tipped up somehow, and he fell back and then someone obviously stopped him, but then he slipped and – well, I don’t know how really, but he, like, proper banged his head. On the edge of another chair I think it was. And that wasn’t anything to do with me, miss. But then everyone started yelling and shouting and there was blood going everywhere, and then his mate Connor – he’s a dick too – he went and grabbed me; grabbed my hair and started yelling in my face –’

‘And pulled that clump out?’

‘What?’ She looked confused now. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, raising a hand to where I’d pointed then shaking her head. ‘No, that wasn’t him. That’s nothing to do with it. Anyway, I told him I’d do the same to him as I’d done to his idiot friend and he let go. And then the teachers were all shouting and everyone round me’s shouting at me too, saying I did it, but I didn’t do it, miss. He fell over by himself. He banged his head by himself. Not that he didn’t deserve it, miss. He’s a dick.’

The lunch bell went then, as if to underline this assertion. And as it did so, I watched Kiara’s hand go to the bald patch, seemingly unconsciously, and watched as she wound a single strand of hair around her finger and, with a sharp tug, plucked it out. I don’t know why but something she’d said suddenly popped into my mind. Just like my mum’s showed me. I filed the thought away.

‘Doesn’t that hurt you?’ I asked.

‘Doesn’t what hurt?’ she asked, her confusion at the question evident.

‘When you pull out your hair like that,’ I said. ‘It must hurt when you do that, mustn’t it?’

She looked down at her hand then let the hair go. She blushed. ‘I know, miss,’ she said. ‘I really need to stop doing it, don’t I?’

Kiara didn’t go straight off to lunch. She didn’t feel quite ready to face the world again yet, and I was happy to let her stay for a bit while I finished my coffee. She was on school dinners, and as there was always an enormous queue at the start of lunch-break, there was no particular urgency anyway

And now she’d got everything off her chest, she looked much brighter. ‘Wow, this is cool, this place is, miss,’ she observed, draining her juice. ‘It’s not at all like I thought it would be.’

‘Oh, really?’ I asked her, smiling. ‘So you know all about my Unit, do you? So what did you think? What’s the word on the street?’

‘I dunno, miss,’ she said, getting up and placing her cup back on my desk. ‘Like a sort of cell or something – you know. Like a detention room. Not all nice and bright like this. It’s lovely,’ she added, surprising me with a smile that lit up her face. ‘Really nice. What do you teach?’

‘All sorts of things,’ I told her. ‘Though not the sort you might be thinking of. I’m not like the other teachers – we don’t do the regular lessons in here.’

She walked across to the quiet corner. ‘This is nice,’ she said, peering round the side of the bookcases. ‘Reminds me of being in the infants. You know? When you’d sit on bean bags for story time and stuff. And fall asleep halfway through,’ she added, grinning across at me.

I laughed. ‘And it’s like that in here sometimes, as well. No one’s ever too old to have a story read to them, are they? And yes, sometimes we do have the odd person nodding off. And we don’t mind too much. As I say, this isn’t like normal school.’ Something occurred to me then. ‘How about you this morning,’ I asked her. ‘You must have been out for the count and then some. Did you have a late night last night?’

I noticed her hand drift back to the same spot on her head again. It seemed to be entirely unconscious. ‘Erm, a bit,’ she admitted, but the pause before she answered was sufficient to spark a thought in me that there was possibly more to know. ‘So how do you, like, end up here?’ she added. ‘I mean not you, miss. I mean the kids who get sent here. Why’d they come to you?’

I explained what the Unit was all about as I rinsed out my mug. How we took in the kids who were having problems of one kind or another and tried to help them rally their emotional forces and change some of the choices they made. ‘So really,’ I finished, ‘it’s a bit like a port in a storm. Because it can feel pretty stormy out there for some kids at some times. Well, a bit like it must have felt for you earlier on. Not to mention poor Thomas,’ I added. ‘He’s had a bit of a time of it as well, hasn’t he? Not that he didn’t deserve you being furious with him,’ I added. ‘But it’s a shame that he got hurt. Let’s hope he’s okay, eh?’

No pause this time. ‘He’s still a di – sorry, idiot. Sorry miss, but he is,’ she added firmly. ‘You should have him in here. He’s definitely a problem kid.’

I couldn’t help but smile at this. ‘Well, he certainly has a problem today, doesn’t he? But you know, Kiara, there’s something you might not have thought about when it comes to “problem” kids – you know, the ones who are always naughty. They’re almost always the ones that have the problems. That’s what makes them naughty. And it’s my job, once they’re with me, to try and work it all out – unravel it so we can see everything more clearly, if you like.’

Kiara’s hand drifted to her head again and, before I could distract her, she had wrapped her finger around another hair and tugged it out at the root. And as she absorbed what I’d said, I began to wonder. I wasn’t sure why but there was something tugging at me too; some instinct that as yet had no real shape to it, but was persistently knocking on the door of my brain. The hair pulling was obviously a well-established tic, and a tic was a mechanism for self-soothing. And a need to self-sooth was generally a response to stress. And for an apparently fit young girl to fall fast asleep mid-morning … I didn’t know what it added up to, but it did amount to something, as did what she said next.

‘Can anyone come here, miss?’ she said. ‘You know, if they ask to?’

‘That’s not quite how it works,’ I said. ‘It’s generally the teachers who decide. But to some extent, I suppose, yes. If a pupil obviously isn’t managing in normal classes, then, as I was just saying, they can come here for a bit …’

‘Like if they’re too tired to do lessons?’

She looked directly at me, and again I got a glimpse of that rather ‘knowing’ look she had, and it made me suddenly wonder if I was being played here. It wasn’t unheard of for a child to pretend they had problems just to escape the routine, or to have a regular pass out of some subject or class or teacher they didn’t like. I’d been there before – as had Kelly, as had my alter ego, the other behaviour manager, Jim Dawson; having boys and girls practically begging for counselling, floods of tears, the whole kit and caboodle, only to find out later that they weren’t distressed at all – had just forgotten their homework, or their football boots or netball kit or something and didn’t dare turn up to class without it.

But, for all that Kiara seemed perfectly fine now, my antennae were quivering and, me being me, I needed to know why.

‘I tell you what, sweetie,’ I told her. ‘Why don’t you go off and get your lunch now. And while you’re doing that, I’ll have a word with your form teacher. You’re still looking a bit pale to me, and I think you’re still tired, aren’t you? So, if you want to, how about I ask if you can come back here to me this afternoon? I’ve got new children coming in tomorrow and I need it prettying up a bit. How’s that sound? Would you like to do that?’

‘Could I?’ This development seemed to please Kiara enormously. She reached for her backpack, which was bright pink and enormous, stuffed to bursting with goodness knows what. She’d be pretty exhausted just carrying that around all day, I mused.

‘Yes, you could,’ I said, nodding. ‘Just go back to your tutor group for afternoon registration when the bell goes as normal, and then, all being well, she can send you straight back here.’

It was like magic. She fairly skipped out of the room.

I waited for a few seconds after Kiara left, then reached for my log book, so I could quickly scribble down the events of the past quarter of an hour, as well as get down the details of her version of events. It was such an automatic thing for me these days that I did it almost on auto-pilot. It was a vital part of my job and I was meticulous about it, too, because one thing I’d learned early on was that no matter how insignificant-seeming they might be at the time, the most mundane of facts, in conjunction with any timings, could end up being key ones at some point down the line. And though I obviously drew the line at writing ‘very curiously knowing eyes’ I still filed it in my brain, before grabbing my bag again and going in search of lunch and information. I had an itch now, and I was very keen to scratch it.

Chapter 3

Knowing that, in all likelihood, I wouldn’t now get the chance to have lunch in the dining hall, I nipped into the staff-room to grab a sandwich from the new vending machine, and of course another coffee to warm me up. It was safe to say that the heating, or lack of it, was the hot topic of conversation, even if the grumbles and complaints were all about the cold. After waiting for a minute or so for the corridors to clear of the last remaining children making their way outside, I went along to the learning support department to see Julia Styles.

‘Ah, Casey,’ she said, smiling as I entered her office, ‘I thought you might be popping in. I guess you want to know a little bit more about your new students. Grab a chair and I’ll see what I can find. Not that I’m any wiser than you are at the moment, to be honest. Don’t even know who they are. What with the blasted radiators and everything, I’ve not even had a chance to look myself yet.’

‘Well, yes, that would be helpful,’ I said, sitting down on the chair to the left of her desk, ‘but no rush. Actually I’m here about a year eight girl. Kiara Bentley? I just picked her up from the assembly hall after that fracas earlier. You know about that?’

Julia nodded. ‘I do. Don stopped by before he left and filled me in.’

‘He took the boy himself then?’

Julia nodded. ‘And fingers crossed all is well. Though the consensus seemed to be that he was a great deal more fixated on – ahem – another part of his anatomy.’

I smiled. ‘I’m not surprised.’ I told her the version of events Kiara had outlined to me – a version I didn’t doubt was pretty accurate, too.

She rolled her eyes. ‘So he’s had something of an education today, by the sound of it. And how’s Kiara? She okay now? Don said she was in a right state.’

‘She’s okay now. I’ve just left her. She’s taken herself off to lunch. But I’m going to track down her form teacher and see if she can come back to me this afternoon. There’s something about her … I don’t know, Julia. It might be something or nothing, but she’s clearly over-tired, and she’s got this hair-pulling thing going on. You know what I’m like,’ I added, seeing the grin spreading on my colleague’s face. ‘Just a bit of an itch I’ve got.’

‘We-ell,’ she said, ‘funnily enough, there is something on Kiara Bentley’s record, so that itch of yours certainly isn’t way off-beam. It’s historic, though, so don’t get too excited. An incident from back at the start of year seven. Hang on,’ she said, rising from her chair, ‘I’ll pull her file out.’

It didn’t take Julia long to find the file, and to explain that not long after Kiara had joined the school, another year seven pupil had reported that she’d had cuts up her arm – cuts that, when questioned by the child, Kiara had freely admitted she’d done herself. When confronted by her teacher, Kiara had been equally upfront, brushing it off as silliness; saying that she’d read a magazine article about self-harming and, stupidly – her admission – had decided to try it herself, just to find out ‘if it hurt’.

Which naturally got my itch going all the more. ‘She was apparently quite matter-of-fact,’ Julia said. ‘I remember talking to the teacher myself. Said she had absolutely no intention of doing anything so silly ever again. Though, naturally, not entirely convinced, we brought the mum in for a chat. And she was extremely upset about it all, as you can imagine, but could offer nothing in the way of an explanation for it. Had no idea what had possessed her, apparently. Her inclination was to put it down to attention seeking, and we were inclined to agree with her. She did say she’d been working long hours – perhaps too long – and, well, we all know what it’s like for some of our working single parents, don’t we? And I don’t think there’s much in the way of extended family to provide support. Anyway, Kiara was offered counselling, obviously, but she point-blank refused, after which there was little we could do about it other than try and keep an eye on her.’

‘So it was left at that point?’ I asked. ‘No one continued to monitor her?’

Almost as soon as the words were out I felt myself redden, realising how incredulous my tone had been. I saw something flash across Julia’s face too, perhaps unsurprisingly, as if she couldn’t quite believe I might be daring to insinuate that she’d not done her job probably.

But it soon disappeared; I think she realised I really wasn’t pointing fingers. She had had a big, busy department to run, and she ran it brilliantly. And she couldn’t possibly be expected to have eyes and ears everywhere, any more than the rest of us could.

Even so, stated so baldly, it did seem surprising that something so potentially serious could have been dropped so quickly. No, I wasn’t backing down in that regard. And the itch was itching fiercely.

‘Well, of course we did what we could for a while,’ Julia assured me. ‘Kept our eyes open; informed the obvious teachers in the PE and Drama departments to be on the look-out for cuts and scratches on her arms and legs and so on. But other than that, our hands were – and are – a bit tied.’ Julia spread her palms then. ‘And, well, since then, there’s been nothing to ring alarm bells. Yes, she’s a bit of a loner. Not a garrulous child. Keeps herself to herself. But this was back at the start of year seven and we’re now more than halfway through year eight, and, as I say, no one’s flagged up any cause for concern more recently.’

Yet, I thought. Yet. And I begged to differ. ‘I think there might be now,’ I said, hoping I didn’t sound as if I knew better, but at the same time aware that it needed to be said. ‘I think she’s still self-harming, just a lot more discreetly.’

‘Really?’ asked Julia, leaning forward in her seat, if not exactly pricking up her ears. It was always a delicate balancing act, trying to observe the protocols of position and seniority; it wasn’t up to me to try and tell her her job. ‘And what makes you think that, Casey?’

‘Not cutting,’ I quickly clarified. ‘Nothing like that. But she has got a bald patch on her head – quite a big one – and I watched her myself as she was pulling her own hair out; she’s not even really aware that she’s doing it. I know that in itself doesn’t scream self-harm – it’s more like a tic – but given what you’ve just told me about her history of self-harming, I’m even more inclined to think than I was when I got in here that there’s some underlying problem still present. And she’s clearly come into school exhausted this morning.’

Julia picked up a pen and clicked the end a couple of times as she thought; a little tic of her own. Then she nodded. ‘I take your point. We certainly shouldn’t ignore it. And you never know, if you have a couple of hours with her, you might get her to open up – sniff out whatever’s to be sniffed out in your usual Sherlocky style. But what about the other kids you’ve got coming tomorrow? Shall we run through them quickly now together?’

I shook my head. ‘Don’t worry now,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you can spare me ten minutes at the end of the day instead? Or first thing tomorrow?’

Like me, Julia was invariably in early. In a job that often meant being reactive once the children were put into the equation, there was a lot to be said for having 30 or so precious minutes at either end of the day in which you could be proactive instead, not to mention time to organise your thoughts. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Just come and find me – I’ll be here. And right now, you need to get that sandwich down you, don’t you? Mind you, a hot toddy would be preferable today, wouldn’t it? Honestly, Casey. It’s not on, this, is it? I mean, it’s not as if it’s –’

‘Rocket science?’ I supplied for her, grinning.

I checked my watch as I hurried back to the staff-room. We had a bank of computers there, in the quiet room that was just off the main communal area, and if there was one free, I probably had just enough time to log in before the bell went, and do a bit of speed-research as I ate.

And I was in luck. I was able to get onto one right away.

I never failed to be awed by the usefulness of the internet. Luddite that I was (most new technology tended to baffle me initially) I had come to really embrace the amazing free resource that was the plethora of information on the web. What would probably be taken for granted in no time at all was, at that time (for me, at any rate), an incredibly helpful tool. You had to be savvy about it, of course – there was probably plenty of mis-information on there too – but much to my own children’s consternation and horror, I’d enrolled in a course at our local library during the last holidays; a kind of idiot’s guide or, as my son called it, ‘idiot old person’s guide’ to the magic of the internet. He might have laughed – and he did, like all smart-alec computer-savvy kids – but I’d actually found it very useful. I’d learned a lot; in fact I now considered myself able enough to even keep tabs on what the young people who came to me got up to when I allowed them to work on my computer in school – a teaching skill of increasing importance.

Having opened my typically impenetrable plastic sandwich wrapper as quietly as I could (you weren’t supposed to eat and drink near the computers) I typed ‘pulling out hair, children’ into the search engine. Up came the results, and the first was one long word: trichotillomania. Intrigued by the fancy name (I had to read it twice, slowly) I started to read.

What I learned immediately was that I was wrong to assume that Kiara’s hair pulling was a sign of continuing self-harm; in terms of something or nothing, perhaps it was a ‘nothing’ then. Because according to everything I was reading, it had nothing whatsoever to do with wanting to hurt oneself, or indeed give oneself a bald patch. It was a neurological condition, more like a compulsion than a habit – indeed a tic – and once started was extremely difficult to stop. It was more common in girls, apparently, and the usual age for onset was around 11, though it could apparently start earlier than that.

What did stand out, though, was that hair pulling wasn’t confined to any particular cultural or social group; even the happiest, most settled children could develop the compulsion, just as easily as an unhappy or abused child could. But as I’d suspected, it was a reaction to stress, and since that bald patch had clearly been there for a while, it was a stress that was ongoing.

So it was probably a case of finding out what form the stress took, and on that score I had little to go on. It might be something as straightforward as the start of puberty and anxiety about the changes that were going on inside Kiara; many girls developed issues with body-confidence around that time, and, physically, Kiara seemed quite a ‘young’ 12-year-old to me. It might be bullying – in which case, was it a response to the stress inherent in coming to school? Or was it home-based – something to do with her relationship with her mum? There could be so much going on that we didn’t know about, after all.

But it was pointless to speculate. All I could do was watch and wait and wonder – and try to tune into what it might be that gave her that look – as if she had the weight of the world on those narrow shoulders. That and the evident fatigue. What was that about?

‘Now that’s a very serious Casey face,’ came a voice from behind me. ‘I can see it in the screen. You want a coffee before the off?’

I swivelled around on the swivel chair to find Kelly in the doorway, brandishing my mug. There was an encouraging tendril of steam coming from it, too.

‘Just concentrating,’ I told her, accepting it gratefully. ‘Been trying to find out a bit about trichotillomania. Tricho – yes, I got that right. Trichotillomania. Did you hear about the hoo-hah in the year eight assembly?’

‘Sure did,’ Kelly said. ‘All poor Donald needed.’

‘Well, the girl, Kiara Bentley – I took her back to the Unit with me. Hence the search. She’s got quite some bald patch in her hair. And the whole business – I mean, just how tired d’you have to be to end up with your head in a boy’s lap?’

‘Assuming that was the case. He’ll probably say differently.’

I shook my head. ‘He might well, but I’m pretty sure I believe her.’

‘And you know what?’ Kelly said, pointing a finger towards the screen. ‘That does figure. Yes. It really does. One of the Maths teachers – whatshisface – was talking about Kiara the other day – yes, I’m sure he said the name Kiara – and saying that she kept falling asleep in lessons. Yes, I’m sure it was her. I’ll double check.’

‘Would you? And if you run into anyone else who might have dealings with her, ask them about her as well. I just have this sense that there’s more to this whole thing than meets the eye. Anyway, she’s coming back to me after lunch. Maybe I’ll get something more out of her then.’

‘And some cheap labour too,’ Kelly said, winking. ‘Nice work, Dr Watson!’

Kiara was already outside my door when I returned after the lunch break, having let her form teacher know she’d be with me for the rest of the day. Once again, I was struck by how doll-like she looked, from her petite, elfin face, to her nicely pressed school uniform, which looked as if it had only recently been bought. Now she was composed again, she positively gleamed with grooming, and I mused that if the school had to select a poster girl to reflect their sartorial benchmark, then this little girl would be she.

‘Ready to roll your sleeves up?’ I asked her, as I unlocked the door and opened it. ‘What are you getting out of this afternoon anyway?’

‘Double English,’ she said, without hesitation.

‘Well, we’ll be doing double decorating instead,’ I said. ‘That okay with you?’

‘That’s fine, miss,’ she said, taking the pink backpack from her shoulders and parking it on a nearby chair. ‘I’m good at decorating. I painted a whole bedroom wall last weekend, all by myself. Pink,’ she added, grinning.

I smiled at her. ‘How did I know you were going to say that? So, what would you like to do, sweetie? My walls all look bare, the glass in my door looks boring, and all my plants need a watering and a talking-to, so – take your pick. What are you best at?’

She chose to create some artwork for the door, which suited me fine. Doing something physical was often key to getting kids to open up. Rather than sit them down and start interrogating them, I’d learned over the years that a softly-softly, lateral approach was usually better – get them doing something alongside you that kept half their minds occupied, and a child would often relax enough to open up a little.

I was quite the expert at it, in fact. With my son Kieron, who had a mild form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome (as it was known back then, anyway), I had become well practised in winkling out the nuts and bolts of anxiety in a child who preferred to bottle everything up. If he was struggling with something, I’d nag him to help me with something in the house or garden and then, once he was ‘in the zone’ of whatever he was doing, he’d be so much more receptive to sharing what was on his mind and we’d be able to find a solution together. It was never quite as simple as that with the kids in school, obviously, because we didn’t have that history and mother/son bond. But, eventually, after building up that all-important trust, they usually did start to talk.

And hopefully Kiara would, too. ‘Right then,’ I said as I clapped my hands together. ‘The door it is. I’ll leave the design ideas to you.’

Kiara threw herself into the work with gusto. Within ten minutes, she was carefully cutting out the giant cardboard Easter egg shapes she had decided would be perfect. She’d made four of them in total, having checked with me first, one for her to write her name on – ‘Kiara woz ’ere!’ she joked – and one for each of the three children who I told her would be joining me in the morning. She was using different coloured card for each and decorating them with contrasting borders. ‘You can explain to them that they have to write their names across this middle bit,’ she said. ‘And then they can stick them to the glass in the door. That should brighten the place up a bit, miss, shouldn’t it?’

A girl after my own heart, I thought, as I remembered the flowers that had previously adorned the door, all decorated by my last brood of children. I also noted that she seemed both alert and engaged and, with her hands fully occupied, was refraining from absent-mindedly fiddling with her hair.

‘That’s a great idea,’ I agreed, having a bit of a re-think, ‘and since you’re so good with the art stuff, you can put up some new borders round my display panels, while I get on with sorting out the books.’

‘I’ve always been good at practical things,’ she said. ‘I get it from my mum. That’s what she always says – that we’re both really good with our hands. But I’ll help you sort the books out as well, once I’m done. I’m good at that too.’

But it turned out there was something Kiara Bentley was even better at. The decorations made, she did indeed join me in the quiet corner and between us we pulled out every single book in there, dusted them off, categorised them and put them all back in their new positions, after which I left her to it, putting labels on the front of the shelves so everyone who borrowed a book would know where to put it back, while I had a quick clear-out of my desk.

I hadn’t gleaned a great deal, only snippets of rather bland info; that this slight and pretty 12-year-old liked pink, enjoyed pop magazines and wearing make-up, that her mum didn’t like her dad so they got divorced when she was little, and that, mostly, she didn’t really have friends round the house because her mum didn’t like the place being messed up when she was out at work. There was nothing much, all told, to inflame the itch further, and perhaps, despite the hair-pulling, there wouldn’t be. Perhaps she was just a lonely-ish kind of kid, living a less than perfect childhood, with a mum who worked long hours, and who wasn’t getting enough sleep; she wouldn’t have been the first and she wouldn’t be the last, after all.

I’d try to keep an eye on her, as far as I could, and I had shared my concerns. But I knew that, come tomorrow, I’d have three new demanding charges, all with problems needing interventions that would probably fill both my time and my head. ‘You want another orange juice, love?’ I asked her as I flicked the switch on the kettle. And when she didn’t answer, I immediately went over to the quiet corner, already knowing what I would probably find there.

And I did. I put my head round the bookcases to find her curled up on a bean bag, fast asleep again and gently snoring. I stepped away again, made my coffee, finished clearing my desk, and only when it got to five minutes before the bell was due to buzz for home time did I return to the quiet corner and shake her gently awake.

She woke up wide-eyed, disorientated, blinking.

I smiled, hands on hips, as she rubbed her eyes and stood up. ‘You are definitely burning too much midnight oil, young lady,’ I told her. ‘Early night for you tonight and that’s an order.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just sat down to do the labels on the bottom shelf and … well,’ she added sheepishly, ‘I must have drifted off.’

‘Tell me, Kiara,’ I said, driven by a sudden and very powerful instinct, ‘would you like to come back here tomorrow?’

It would prove to be the best instinct I’d had in a long time. A life-saver, almost. A childhood-saver, definitely.

‘Yes, please,’ she said. And thank God she did.

Chapter 4

I slammed the car door with my usual gusto as I got out of it on our drive. Not because I wanted to make any sort of statement, but because it was the only way to be sure of it actually shutting. My poor little Fiesta was 12 years old now, but despite its little ‘idiosyncracies’ (well, that was how I liked to think of them) I was still resistant to Mike’s endless tutting and head-shaking, and banging on about how I should really look for something newer.

The noise brought Kieron to the door anyway. ‘Ah, Mum,’ he said, looking shifty, ‘just so you know, we got a half day today so I’ve brought Si home to work with me on some music. Which is important. Because it’s stuff we’re doing for college. So I don’t suppose you would put on some earmuffs or something, would you?’

‘Earmuffs?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah,’ he said, looking at me as if I was ridiculously slow on the uptake. ‘You know, so you can’t, like, hear us?’

Lovely, I thought, wondering quite why Kieron thought I’d be able to whip up a pair of earmuffs out of nothing. As far as I could remember, I had never owned a pair of earmuffs in my life – a lack that wasn’t lost on me given that I’d spent most of the day lightly chilled, like the ready-meals in the local branch of Tesco.

‘It’s that bad, is it?’ I asked him, dropping my satchel onto the hall floor for the moment, to sit among the small gathering of abandoned trainers. It was certainly odds-on that it might be. Kieron was taking a media studies course at college and had recently developed an obsession with ‘mixing beats’, whatever that was. All I knew was that it had involved Mike spending a ridiculous amount of money on some turntables and a mixing desk, and then lots of noise. That was definitely the only word to describe what was floating down the stairs to me right now. Well, to be fair, that one word was a bit of a generalisation. ‘Strangled cat mixed with several hundred fingers being scraped down a blackboard all at once’ was quite a good description too.

Si, aka Simon, was on the same course. He and Kieron had been friends since they’d both started high school, so I’d known him for years, but now I saw rather more of him than I ever did before; amazing how a pair of turntables (wash my mouth out – I must remember that they are ‘decks’) could totally take over a pair of teenage boys’ lives. Not to mention turning me into my mother. Much as I was horrified to realise it was happening, my new catch phrase seemed to be ‘Turn that down!’

I bit my lip to stop myself from saying it this time. ‘Not a chance, kiddo,’ I said instead as I slipped off my jacket. ‘Tell you what – how about you and Si put on your headphones and listen to your “tunes” through those. How’s that for an idea? I need to get dinner ready, don’t I?’

‘Mother,’ Keiron said, shaking his head in disdain. ‘You are so old school! Fine, then,’ he added, in a voice heavy with resignation. ‘We’ll try to be quiet, then.’ He then turned tail and began heading back up the stairs. But not before adding that, where dinner was concerned, just pizza for him and Si would be fine. ‘Upstairs, yeah? So we can crack on with our work,’ he explained, without so much as the tiniest pinch of irony.

What was it they said was a great leveller? Time? Death? Education? I wasn’t sure, but as I hung my jacket over the newel post, I decided ‘going home’ was probably right up there in the top ten of things that kept your feet on the ground, if not your chakras re-aligned. Evidence of recent occupation was strewn around my living room, where some living had evidently been done. My perfectly placed scatter cushions were now strewn across the sofa any old how, the TV, though muted, was playing some music station and as I looked through to my kitchen and dining area, I could see that I had the joy of a sink full of washing up that hadn’t been there when I’d left it.

What planet had I been on when I looked forward to the time when my kids were older, confident that the working day might just mean exactly that? That I wouldn’t then have to come home and start work all over again? As yet, there’d not only been no sign of that happening – it seemed to be getting even worse. Because not only was I expected to feed my own husband and offspring – these days there was more often than not someone else wanting feeding; or who just happened to be around when it was dinner time.

As a family, we’d swelled our ranks as well. Our daughter Riley was now going steady with her boyfriend David, so much so that they were currently saving up to buy a house. Which was wonderful, because he was a lovely lad, and a great foil for our feisty daughter, but with every bit of spare cash being directed towards their savings, their days of living the high life, gadding about, going out and eating in restaurants had been replaced with the more cost-effective and time-honoured tradition of either eating at our house or his parents’.

I didn’t mind all the extra work this entailed. I really didn’t. Well, I didn’t mind 99 per cent of the time, anyway; it didn’t go down well with my more rigorously twenty-first-century dwelling colleagues but I loved looking after my little family. But every day, for about five minutes, when I was feeling that enervating just-home-from-work tiredness, I wished I didn’t get home before Mike and Riley, so that it could be me walking in to the smell of something nice cooking, rather than them.

Sadly, I had no access to that universe currently, and as I wouldn’t be letting Kieron loose in the kitchen any time soon (pizza was nice, but not every day for all eternity) I rolled up my sleeves up and cracked on. And as I did so, I wondered about Kiara and what sort of home she’d be returning to tonight. I couldn’t seem to help it. I had so little to go on, and what I had was hardly earth-shattering, but there was something about that girl that had really got under my skin.

I’d not had a chance to catch up with Julia Styles after school the previous day so the following morning I set my alarm early and, having remembered to take a cardigan in case the radiators were still iffy, the first thing I did when I got into work was to pay her a visit.

‘You’ll never guess what,’ she said, almost the second I stepped into her office.

I grinned. ‘Try me. Erm … no, hang on. Let me see. They’ve decided to cancel the inspection because they already know how brilliant we are.’

She shook her head. ‘You wish. No, Thomas Robinson.’

‘Thomas who?’ I said.

‘Doesn’t ring a bell?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ I admitted. ‘No, wait. Hang on. Maybe it does. It’s definitely ringing something.’ I made a show of tipping my head from side to side to check.

‘It should do,’ Julia said, beckoning to the chair beside her desk. ‘He’s the lad who banged his head in the hall yesterday after that to-do with Kiara Bentley.’

‘Of course,’ I said, the penny dropping. ‘How’s he doing?’

‘Fine, by all accounts,’ she said. She pulled a file towards her as I sat down. ‘Apparently looked much worse than it was – often the case with heads, isn’t it? Bleed like the devil. They steri-stripped it apparently. No concussion or anything. So that’s good.’ She smiled. ‘Though not from Donald’s point of view. Three hours he was down there – the mum couldn’t be found, apparently, and there was no alternative contact in his file. He’s a new lad,’ she added, by way of explanation. ‘Only been here a fortnight or so, bless him. Something of a baptism of fire!’

Certainly something of a reminder that silly, lewd behaviour was not the way to win friends and influence people – particularly girls. Though it was obviously good to know the wound was only minor. ‘Anyway, what about him?’ I asked, remembering Julia’s opening comment.

‘This’ll make you smile,’ she said. ‘He’s one of the lads you’re down to have joining the Unit. I only just realised. Only part time for the moment. To see how it goes. According to what Donald put here, he needs a bit of “socialising”.’

I smiled. Socialising could encompass all sorts of things, though from the evidence of the previous days it sounded fairly cut and dried; he needed to learn how to behave himself. He’d gone slightly feral, his file said, the family having been steadily making their way north from London over the last couple of months, staying with friends and relatives and moving around a lot, in order to escape the abusive ex who was apparently still trying to track them down.

For Thomas and his four older sisters this had meant nothing in the way of schooling, and having spent so much time away from structure and routine, he was badly in need of some boundaries and order in his life.

‘He’s been marked out as being a little “wild”,’ Julia clarified, ‘as you’ll have already noticed yourself. Wild and a little bit too streetwise for his age.’

‘Not to mention keen to make his mark,’ I said, remembering what Kiara had told me. Because I didn’t doubt all his nonsense had been much more about impressing his new friends than real sexual intention.

‘You said it,’ Julia agreed. ‘And now, given their confrontation yesterday, I’m wondering if we should have a bit of a rethink. He was only due to be with you for half the week in any case, but perhaps we should hold off? Kelly tells me you’ve suggested Kiara stay with you for a few days. Is that right?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I just feel there’s more to know, and, since she seems happy to spend a little time with me – well, you know me. I’m determined to find out what it is. You know, something else occurred to me last night as well. She really is a loner, isn’t she? I was just wondering why she’d have been sitting with that group of boys in the first place. Where were her girlfriends? Does she even have a regular group of friends? A lot of her stress might be because she’s feeling isolated, mightn’t it?’

‘Like I said, she’s always been a quiet one,’ Julia said. ‘Doesn’t mix much at all. And that’s fine, Casey. Of course it is. I trust your instincts totally. And it’s not like you’re over-run right now. But I’m not sure throwing those two together is going to be a terrifically good idea, are you? I mean, I know they’re in the same tutor group anyway so they’ll be back together for registration and so on in the fullness of time, but in the short term it’s hardly going to make for harmony in the classroom, is it?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘Probably not. But it’s a bridge we can cross when we get to it, isn’t it? Once he’s back in school.’

‘He already is,’ she said. ‘I saw him arriving earlier. He’s sitting in your very own breakfast club even as we speak, no doubt. Can’t seem to keep him away!’

Setting up the breakfast club had been one of the first initiatives I’d thrown myself into when I joined the school. It tended to be a mixture of the proverbial ‘latchkey kids’ and those whose parents left for work too early to get them up for school and make breakfast; some of these kids could just as easily get ready and eat breakfast at home but would rather have the company of friends than be alone in an empty house. I completely got that, and whatever the reasons for them attending, it made me happy to know that at least these kids could start the day after a feast of a meal. This was all thanks to the rather generous budget we had been allocated, as often was the case with new initiatives. It enabled us to provide the kids with cereals, fruit, juices, toast, peanut butter, etc. for a nourishing and balanced breakfast.

‘Really?’ I said to Julia now. ‘He’s already back? Wouldn’t the hospital have advised him to stay at home and rest for a few days?’

Julia shrugged. ‘They could well have. But it clearly hasn’t happened, has it? I think his mum has some sort of temporary job, which means Thomas goes to school. As far as I know, they don’t have anyone local who can support them as yet. My guess is that as he’s been given a clean bill of health down in A and E, it’s more a case of “go in and if you feel ill tell a teacher” than “stay home with me and I’ll mop your fevered brow”, don’t you?’

I agreed she was probably right. ‘But I’m happy to take him in anyway. No time like the present for the two of them to patch things up, is there? As I say, they’ll both be back in the same tutor group before you know it, after all. And you know me – I’ll find a way to use it to my advantage. Sex ed. Being kind. Name calling and so on. No, it’s fine. So who else do I have as well?’

Julia quickly ran through the other names and a little bit about them. The girl, Chloe, did turn out to be the one Kelly had told me about, and the other boy was a year seven lad called Jonathan, who had been living with a foster family for the past six months. He was apparently angry and disruptive and on a behaviour-modification programme with his foster mum; having to earn ‘mummy dollars’ for good behaviour, in order to have currency to spend on treats, such as TV and computer time, and having friends round.

His was a sad case; abandoned by his mother when he was just a toddler, Jonathan had been left in the care of a father who had significant learning difficulties. He’d entered the care system, aged 11, when a neighbour had found him scavenging in their dustbin in search of food.

‘This one apparently needs a bit of socialising too, Casey,’ Julia told me. ‘Looks young for his age – a bit like butter wouldn’t melt – but has a very world-weary, angry, unhappy head on his shoulders; the consensus seems to be that, despite the great work his foster mum’s doing with him, his behaviour is steadily getting worse. You’re going to have your hands full with him, by all accounts.’

I was going to have my hands full, period, I reckoned. But that was fine. That was just the way I liked it.

The next thing I had to do was telephone Kiara’s mother and let her know her daughter would be spending a few days with me. This was standard practice: it was obviously important to keep parents in the loop and, hopefully, to keep them on side. It wasn’t always possible, because some kids came from difficult, complex backgrounds, but where there was a parent or guardian at home who wanted the best for their child, then it made sense for us to work as a team. And most of the time that was what we achieved. Initial reactions could be varied, however. Some parents were grateful for the extra support, but some were not; either suspicious of our motives, or concerned about their child being labelled, or just plain defensive about the whole thing, and angry that we were trying to ‘interfere’.

I wasn’t sure whether Kiara would have mentioned the incident the previous day or not, but I decided it was worth mentioning it to her mother, if only because her response might give me a further insight into how things were at home, and perhaps shed light on Kiara’s evident fatigue. This would also provide the reason given for having her with me; not much in itself but, along with the hair-pulling habit, it was reason enough, and I hoped I’d be able to get her on side.

Before I made the call, however, I would need to clear it with Gary Clark. After grabbing my second caffeine fix of the day, and armed with the usual wodge of mail and memos from my pigeonhole, I set off down the unusually quiet staff corridor to his office, only passing Barry, the caretaker, and a heating engineer. I smiled as I saw the new sign on Gary’s door. It was a smart black placard, embossed in gold with the words Child Protection Officer, and he was as proud of it as he might have been to have a star on Hollywood Boulevard. In a school, the little things were sometimes the big things.

‘Very official,’ I said, grinning as I opened the door and nodded to it. ‘Do I need to start calling you sir or something now?’

‘Lord Clark will do just fine, Casey,’ Gary said, laughing as he pulled out a chair for me. ‘And I see you’ve already got a coffee. At the very least, we should celebrate with a choccy biscuit, don’t you think?’

I shook my head. ‘You know what it’s like with addictions, Gary. I try not to start too early in the day. I only need five minutes of your time this morning anyway. Just to let you know what I’m doing with Kiara Bentley.’

I quickly ran through my thoughts, and let him know I wanted to spend a little time working with her. ‘So I was thinking I’d try to get hold of her mum this morning. Fill her in – assuming Kiara hasn’t already told her, that is – and see if she can enlighten me at all.’