A Stolen Childhood

by Casey Watson

  ‘So you see?’ I explained, as we headed off to see it in person. ‘It’s going to be perfect in every way.’

  Mike sighed the sigh of a man who knew there was probably no arguing with me. ‘Have you got shares in the bloody estate agents, woman?’ he said instead.

  I was right, of course. By the time the Easter holidays had finished, we’d not only eaten half our combined body weight in chocolate, we’d also signed up to take over the bungalow in six weeks’ time, which fitted in perfectly for the half-term holiday. I couldn’t wait, and went back to work with a determined spring in my step and a smile of happy anticipation (all that lovely clearing out and cleaning up to look forward to) etched on my face.

  It was a winner all round, in fact, as it was practically across the road from Kieron’s college, and also had a bus stop 20 yards from the front gate that would ensure an extra five minutes in bed every morning.

  Till then, it was sleeves up and time to re-focus on work and my small but engaging little quartet. Or, rather, quintet-to-be, as one of the first things Gary Clark told me when I got to work (super-early) was that there was a new child potentially joining me.

  ‘I’ll fill you in more fully later, though,’ he said, ‘as I don’t have all the details yet. All I know is that she’s another one who’s new to the school. I believe Mike’s going to meet with the family first and we’ll go from there.’

  Mike Moore being the headteacher, who didn’t usually do the introductions with new pupils; that task generally fell to the deputy head, Don. Either way, there would be some reason why the girl was being considered for the Unit before she’d even started, something I’d find out in the fullness of time. I was happy for her to join us anyway – I could easily accommodate half a dozen children or more, if needed, and a new pupil always added something to the dynamic. In the meantime, since Kiara hadn’t yet turned up at school, I thought I’d start the day with a good deed, and give Chloe a quick make-over, following my first ‘domestic rationalisations’ over the weekend.

  ‘Come here, sweetie,’ I called to her as she trotted into the classroom after the second morning bell, ‘I’ve got a couple of things over here that I think you might like.’

  I’d already been unpacking my satchel and now I delved deeper, pulling out a set of old curling tongs, a mirror and a big hairbrush, all the while watching her eyes growing wider at this unexpected Mary Poppins trick. ‘According to my daughter, Riley,’ I told her, uncurling the lead from the tongs, ‘these things can do wonders with frizzy hair. Can make you look like a little princess, or so I’m told. What do you think? Because I thought we might give them a bit of try-out on you, Chloe. Would that be okay?’

  There was little doubt that it would be more than okay. ‘Oh yes, miss, it definitely would be, miss,’ she told me, beaming. ‘My Auntie Koreen has some of those and she looks beautiful. Can you make my hair pretty like hers? Are you allowed to?’

  I jumped straight on this, having never heard any mention of an aunt before. ‘Course I’m allowed to,’ I told her. ‘And, hey, what about this auntie of yours? Does she help you do your hair sometimes?’

  ‘I don’t really remember,’ Chloe said chattily. ‘I haven’t seen her since I was little. I just saw them in some holiday photos.’

  ‘She doesn’t live nearby then?’ I asked, alert to any possible support out there. This was a niece, after all – and perhaps a cherished one?

  But Chloe shook her head. ‘She lives in Spain,’ she said. ‘And my mam says she doesn’t know she’s born. I don’t think they like each other very much. What’s don’t know you’re born mean anyway?’

  So not a great deal to build on there, I decided, as I plugged in the curling tongs. Though had there been, the school probably would have known yonks ago. Well, we’d just do our best then. And right now, I’d do my best with her candyfloss hair. I had no idea about the protocol with matters of hair and make-up, nor indeed whether tonging Chloe’s hair might breach some health and safety order, but since we’d spent three days at the end of the previous term working in what had felt like Arctic temperatures, I felt I’d be on pretty safe ground if someone tried to tick me off. Besides, not asking anyone’s permission first was a tried and tested strategy – if it turned out I was wrong, I could simply plead dumb.

  ‘Well, here goes nothing,’ I assured her, once I’d tried to make some sense out of ‘don’t know you’re born’ with her, and possibly failing. ‘And, yes, I will do my very, very best. You’ll look even more pretty than you are already,’ I added, which made her smile light up even more. I glanced over at the boys, who were working on their daily diaries and paying us no attention whatsoever. I usually had them work on dairies first thing every morning, writing about anything noteworthy that might have happened the previous day, or, in this case, anything that might have happened over the Easter holidays, meaning they’d probably have more than usual to write. ‘Boys, when you’re done with those,’ I told them, ‘you can take out your Maths workbooks and do the next three pages, please – until Mrs Watson’s beauty salon closes.’

  The boys groaned predictably, but also good-naturedly, while Chloe clapped her hands together, obviously thrilled to have been singled out for this unexpected treat. And I soon had her hair looking relatively tamed and neatly curled into Bo-Peep style ringlets, which I then gathered into a bobble to make a ponytail.

  ‘Look, boys!’ she gushed, flicking up her bouncing curls once I’d finished. ‘Just look how pretty I am! Do you like it?’

  The boys gave another grunt, this time to express mild affirmation – the making of any more gushing a gesture obviously being tantamount to a proposal of marriage.

  ‘She does look lovely, doesn’t she, Tommy?’ I prompted. ‘Doesn’t she, Jonathan?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tommy said. ‘Like that mermaid doll my sister used to have off that Disney film.’

  ‘Oh, Tommy,’ Chloe trilled, ‘you mean Ariel! I do, I look like the Little Mermaid, don’t I! I do, don’t I, Jonathan?’

  Jonathan shrugged. ‘I dunno. I don’t even know who that is. But yeah,’ he finished. ‘Yeah, you look alright.’

  Once again I was struck by the world according to Jonathan. He’d come to school accompanied by a fat file, bristling with annotations, and now I’d had the chance to delve further into his past, I’d learned that up until he’d been brought into care, he had never learned how to play, didn’t own any toys and had no idea about what all the other kids were talking about when they discussed favourite TV shows or movies. I thanked God for that neighbour who had found him scavenging in her bin for food and decided to phone social services. What sort of adult might he have become had she not?

  Speaking of which, I thought, as I closed the salon and put the still-warm tongs out of harm’s way, I wondered what mysteries would accompany our newest pupil when she came. I’d be glad to have her. It was a good time to bring in a new student, as the four I had were all now at ease with each other; possibly too comfortable in their small, safe, familiar environment, when what they needed to be was robust enough to cope when they returned to the bustle and conflict of a normal classroom setting. And speaking of which, we were still a person short. Where was our other enigma, Kiara? Might she be ill? If so, perhaps her mum had phoned in.

  At break time, I was just on my way to reception to find out when I bumped into Gary Clark in the corridor. ‘I have news,’ he said. ‘Looks like you will be getting that new girl. D’you want to pop into my office and I’ll fill you in?’

  I said yes, and turned around, Kiara’s absence temporarily on the back burner, and took a seat beside Gary’s Big Boss desk.

  ‘Morgan Giles,’ he said, flipping open a manila folder. ‘15 years old. But no form of regular education whatsoever. She’s a gypsy girl,’ he added. ‘Though I think we refer to them as a traveller these days, don’t we?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders. I might have had gypsy in my soul but mine was strictly of the
‘painted caravan pulled by a trusty shire-horse’ variety, so beloved of children’s authors and illustrators. ‘15?’ I said. ‘Wow. So she’ll be going into year 11. No formal education at all?’

  ‘Not as provided by the state,’ he said. ‘But she’s certainly not uneducated. Mike says she’s very bright, in fact. And confident with it. Though she won’t be able to go into any formal year group. In fact, the family – as in Mr Giles, and her grandmother, who goes by the name of Granny Giles and also lives with her – don’t really want her in school at all. It’s Morgan who’s insisting on it apparently. They’ve recently moved onto the council caravan site just off the Groves estate. Do you know it?’

  I shook my head, though I knew ‘of’ it all too well. I’ve never actually been there, but you couldn’t help but hear lots about it; as with pretty much any town or city anywhere there was a seemingly endless battle between the councillors, the local residents and the travellers themselves about who had which rights and which won over all the others, with plenty of factions and fights along the way. I’d also heard that it was a dirty place, a dangerous place, and that parents warned their children to keep away from it; that it was next to the landfill site, full of mangy horses and vicious dogs and, perhaps predictably, that lots of bad things happened there. It was just your everyday kind of idle gossip – possibly all of it unfounded – but even so, I’d never felt inclined to go and check myself.

  ‘Well, that’s where they live,’ Gary went on, ‘having moved back there from Newcastle because Morgan has announced that she wants to sit some GCSEs. Maths, English and possibly Geography, apparently. However, Mr Giles is strongly opposed to the idea. He hates our schools – no bones about it – and has always had some kind of tutor for his daughter. Who, I might add, he is adamant is “more than adequate for her needs, being a girl”.’

  He’d put the last bit in finger quote marks and I pulled a disapproving face.

  ‘Well, exactly,’ Gary said. ‘And I’m paraphrasing, obviously. His use of the English language is apparently much more colourful than that.’

  ‘But there’s a positive right there,’ I said.

  ‘There is?’

  ‘Course there is. She’s a girl but she’s going to get her way on this. Good for her.’

  ‘Well, sort of. She can’t at this stage just turn up and join the year 11s; she’d be all at sea. So we’ve been in touch with the examining boards and it seems she’s fine to sit the exams here, and in the run-up, to help her, we thought you could have her.’

  ‘But what about the syllabus? How can she get through all that in three months?’

  ‘Oh, she’s already onto that – with that tutor I mentioned. Like I said, she’s bright. Very able. And highly motivated, too. It’ll be more exam preparation at this stage than anything, going over old papers and so on. We’re showing willing, in essence. It’s obviously important that we’re seen to do that. Always got to keep OFSTED in mind, eh? Anyway, we can provide her with plenty of past papers, which she can practise on while she’s with you.’

  ‘As opposed to going into any regular classes?’

  ‘Mr Giles is keen that she doesn’t – doesn’t want her mixing too much with boys, especially ones that aren’t travellers – so this seems like the most workable option. Mike says she seems a nice girl. Outgoing. Friendly. Sounds like she could even be an asset to you with the younger ones. Anyway, Mr Giles is rather keen that you meet up with him to discuss things beforehand, so he can explain to you how he wants it all to work.’

  I smiled at this role reversal. This would be nothing if not a novelty. ‘I can understand that,’ I said. ‘It’ll be useful for me as well. Tell him I’ll see him any time it’s convenient for him during the school day. Or just after, if that’s easier. Granny too, if she likes.’

  ‘Ah,’ Gary said. ‘Did I forget to mention that he doesn’t do phones, and he doesn’t do school visits?’

  ‘But –’

  ‘This morning excepted. Exceptional circumstances, apparently. I get the feeling there’s been some jockeying for positon vis-à-vis his daughter. What he’d really like is for you to visit him on his site one day this week.’

  ‘Really?’ So, in effect, a summons. Now this was novel.

  ‘Yes, any day as long as it’s after four o’clock, apparently. The large blue and white caravan – you can’t miss it apparently – second right. Two gilt lions at the bottom of the steps. I think that’s right. Or was it right?’

  Right, left, up, down – he was clearly finding this funny. ‘Oh, Gary!’ I said. ‘Really? Me go on a school visit to the traveller site?’

  ‘I could come with you, if you like,’ Gary said. ‘In fact, thinking about it, perhaps I should.’

  I didn’t need to think about it at all. I could imagine Mike’s face – as in my own Mike, as opposed to the headteacher. Me go there? All five foot of me? Solo? ‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘I think I’d feel more relaxed if I had a minder. Not that I need one. Just that, well, you know …’

  ‘Deal. Now how about a Bourbon?’ Gary suggested, proffering a half pack of biscuits. ‘Sort of by way of apology.’

  ‘Bourbon, period, might be better,’ I said, taking one anyway. ‘Why does the phrase “The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast” spring so immediately to mind?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea at all,’ Gary said. He pushed the pack under my nose again. ‘But go ahead. Feel free to have two.’

  Chapter 10

  There’s a phrase I rather like called ‘dynamic equilibrium’. Goodness knows where I picked it up, because a scientist I am not, but it’s a phrase Mr Hunt and his science department colleagues would know all about because it was normally used in chemistry to describe a state of balance that’s achieved when all the things pulling in different directions were pulling at roughly the same rate.

  It was a bit like that in the Unit at times, and thank goodness for that. If one child was acting up, it was usually the case that it was manageable because another was being uncharacteristically good. Or we’d get a new particularly challenging child come and join the Unit just as the last particularly challenging child left. It had been thankfully rare (well, so far, anyway) to have multiple crises, and though there seemed no rational explanation why this should be so, Kelly and I were both glad that it was.

  It was a little like that now, in fact, with the summer term well under way; some children beginning to thrive, while others not so much. Jonathan, I was beginning to realise, was a very deeply unhappy boy. I knew his foster family were working hard to change things for him – he would tell me every day about how life was at home – but rather than make him realise that life should and could be better, it seemed only to make him resent his new family for being able to give him things his own family couldn’t.

  Poor, poor Jonathan. Instinct told me that was because he felt guilty; as though he was being disloyal to his flesh and blood family if he allowed himself to settle into his new life, and to enjoy aspects of it, which of course, impacted on his mood, and on his behaviour at school. It was as if he was determined to be naughty so that people wouldn’t like him and was extremely upsetting to watch, when it played out. I could only hope that sometime soon he would let his new family in – let them give him the love he so desperately needed.

  Tommy was a more straightforward character; one with a deep-seated dislike of and anger towards his stepfather – all of it justified – and a fierce, fierce loyalty towards his mother. It was part of what made him such a likeable little character, and also what made him emotionally robust, but he’d seen too much, done too much, suffered way too much trauma (both emotional and physical), and the way it played out for him – via that temper, that lashing out – meant we still had a bit of a way to go.

  Chloe, on the other hand, was coming along in leaps and bounds. I had taken to sorting out her hair for her every morning, before the day got under way, and this small thing seemed to give her the protective shield she needed
, and she was beginning to understand that her fellow pupils needed their personal space. And though I wondered how she’d fare once she was no longer in education, nothing had changed in my feeling that in the right environment – a specialist school, geared to meet her needs – there was no reason why she shouldn’t reach her potential. I did wonder though what would happen when she was no longer with me.

  Then there was Kiara, who continued to confound me. That first Monday when she’d been absent had turned out not to be a one-off. She’d been absent the following Monday, too.

  ‘So you were ill again, love?’ I’d asked her when she’d reappeared on the Tuesday morning, her father having called in the previous day – just as it had turned out he’d done the first week – to say she wouldn’t be in as she’d been suffering from a stomach bug again.

  ‘Bad tummy,’ she confirmed. ‘I think I ate too much rubbish over the weekend, miss. My dad’s not a very good cook.’

  I wondered if she’d simply latched onto a handy excuse. Our own head was currently off – which was unheard of – with a bad stomach. Did she think that would be the excuse du jour; that we might assume she had whatever he seemed to?

  But what I mostly latched onto was her admission of where she’d been. ‘You were staying at your dad’s then?’ I asked her. ‘Staying over?’

  This surprised me. The impression I’d been given was that a sleep-over with dad would be a no-no; that Kiara’s mother wouldn’t trust her ex to look after a hamster.

  She nodded. ‘Yeah, she lets me now,’ she said, ‘because she works so much at weekends. Silly me being at home on my own when he’s just round the corner, isn’t it? Saves her having to worry about what I’m up to,’ she added. ‘And being bored. When I’m with dad we have fun.’