To Keep You Safe

by Kate Bradley

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That if you are confirming that you had a social worker visit Destiny today, then we potentially have a problem.’

  ‘There is a problem. I’ve been telling you about that—’

  ‘Please. The problem isn’t Destiny. The problem is the social worker.’

  *

  When I sat back at the table and pushed aside my cooled tea, my dad must have seen something in my face because he raised an eyebrow and asked: ‘You OK, Jenni love?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I told him and I didn’t.

  Friday

  13:12

  Jenni

  My dad got up, found his rolling tobacco and slowly rolled a cigarette. He wasn’t supposed to be smoking since a recent bronchial infection, but I didn’t comment. I understood.

  ‘Let me get this right. So that man, Karl Bright, walked into your school and pretended he was a social worker?’

  I nodded.

  ‘How did he get in? Don’t they have to show identification?’

  ‘Yes, they do, but I’m not sure as I wasn’t there.’ I thought for a moment. ‘But you’re right, it’s not possible. We’re all super tight on safeguarding – there’s no way anyone could get into our school who isn’t a social worker.’

  ‘Yet this woman from social services said they hadn’t yet sent out anyone and that this Bright man couldn’t have been who he said he was because she’d never heard of him?’

  I shook my head. I didn’t understand it either.

  ‘So what did happen?’

  ‘All I know is that George met him. They had a chat . . .’ I tailed off, seeing it all now, anger tightening my grip against my mug. ‘Then Karl spoke to Destiny on her own – of course he did,’ I added bitterly. ‘Then Karl repeated their conversation to George.’ I shook my head. ‘He even offered to take Destiny home. I bet he did, the scum. You see Dad, those men are not her cousins at all! That Karl man would’ve forced Destiny to say that, to throw George off the scent. And that,’ I said as I thumped my mug down, slopping tea, ‘makes me all the more suspicious as to what is going on here.’

  ‘So what did this woman say would happen now?’

  ‘They said that now they knew someone had being actively acting as an imposter, they would reassess the original safeguarding alert as more urgent.’

  Dad was silent for a minute. ‘But is that urgent or just more urgent than before?’

  ‘Exactly,’ I spat. ‘How could it not already be urgent when I saw a gun?’ Even as I said it, I understood. I stood up. ‘Of course, they don’t believe me.’ I felt sick, knowing it was true. ‘They don’t think there was a gun.’

  ‘Jenni?’ my dad’s brow furrowed further.

  I started pacing the small room. ‘What they actually said was that the police have contacted them to say they’ve picked up my report and because Destiny’s known to them and is already living in a children’s home, she is – and I quote them here – in a “low-risk environment” so she’s not their priority.’ I rubbed my eyes, exhausted. ‘I guess their top worry is about children not known to them, kids not already labelled as fantasists, because it’s clear that whoever Karl really is, the view he gave of her was the correct one as far as social services are concerned.’

  ‘What I still don’t understand,’ Dad said, ‘is how this Bright – or whatever his name is – knew to turn up?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘I told the man with the gun that I was going to call the police. It’s not a stretch for them to assume that either we or the police would also ring social services.’

  ‘Must be a crime, that, impersonating a social worker. I reckon that social worker manager lady will be straight onto the police to report what’s happened.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I nodded. ‘I’ll ring them now.’ The landline was in the front room, a modern copy of the dial phone we had when I was a kid. I’d bought it for my dad for Christmas, thinking he would enjoy the nostalgia; I think he would’ve preferred a bottle of whisky. I picked up the receiver, and dialled nine.

  Then I stopped.

  I knotted and unknotted the curled wire. Right or wrong, I couldn’t shake the feeling that calling them wasn’t safe enough. I had read the papers. I knew how bad things could be. What if this was part of something bad, something corrupt? The fake social worker, the uninterested police, perhaps even George himself?

  No, that was crazy. The police worked effing hard; like us teachers, they grinded away for the public good for little money and no applause. And George had to be one of the good guys – if he wasn’t, who was? I had to believe that the police would help Destiny. After all, there was no one else.

  I dialled another nine.

  Then paused.

  Maybe I should talk to Destiny first. Just in case. I checked my watch. I had to leave now. What harm would it do to check things out with Destiny? After all, what could happen in the two hours left of school time now people were keeping a close eye on her?

  I returned to the kitchen. My dad sat at his small table and smoked, watching me. I didn’t tell him that I didn’t make the call, but I think he knew.

  This was the first time he didn’t say goodbye. All he said was, ‘Of course, this news about this Karl Bright means those men are very determined to get hold of her.’ He ground his cigarette out as if it disgusted him. ‘Means there’s nothing good that’s gonna come of what they want this poor wee girl for. Nothing good at all.’

  My head was so full of concern for Destiny, I just nodded and left, without saying goodbye either.

  I wish I had, because I could never have guessed it was the last time I’d ever have lunch with my dad and he deserved more than that.

  He deserved a thank you and a proper goodbye.

  Friday

  13:40

  Jenni

  I continued to think about Destiny at my computer while my year sevens dutifully worked through a long list of problems. I wanted to speak to her, but wasn’t sure how I could before the end of school – and then it would be too late. I didn’t know what to do, or who to seek out for advice. I didn’t do indecision and now I had been left unsure, nails chewed, as I tried to decide what was best.

  While the class worked, I mooched through the computer system checking up on various children that I taught. I tried to settle into acceptance that social services should be allowed the time to resolve it and, when recalling my earlier conversation with Janice Strong, started to feel a certain confidence that they would.

  For some reason, it was then that I started thinking about Billy Dawson again. It was a puzzle in itself that Billy had recently jumped back into my mind, when the door had been closed on him for the last two years.

  Now he was back, he was back all the time. All my life, I have rarely dreamt of anything and when I did, it was very straightforward, like going food shopping. But the dreams I’d started having of Billy were different. And there were so many of them. It was strange when I hadn’t thought about Billy in such a long time. Except the other day – which thinking about it now: yes, yes, I’m sure – was the start of it. Yes, it was because I saw that royal prince in the news; the younger one, who has the same hair and skin colouring as Billy had and there had been footage of him in his fatigues. But the prince came home, got married, had a family and did lots of other things and it started me thinking about all the things that Billy didn’t get to do.

  He should’ve done things; he should’ve had a life. I sighed staring at the computer. Billy didn’t and it was my fault.

  Private Dawson. Not handsome, nor an officer like the prince. He had a doughy face despite being skinny. And he wasn’t prince confident either; he was too nervous, too afraid.

  I rubbed the back of my finger across my top lip; my skin was leathery, tough. It occurred to me that I was getting older; time was running out. My mother was forty when she died. I don’t miss you, I thought, thinking of her, I don’t feel sad that you are gone.

 
; Billy was gone, too. There was no point trying to feel sad about that either – although I think I understand what sadness might feel like to other people because my dad did a painting once with watercolours using violet, dark blue and black and he told me, pointing at it with his paintbrush: ‘Jenni, love, that is sadness.’

  I wish I could feel things, rather than just irritation or agitation. I wish I knew what others felt. Real things, like love or hate. Happiness or sadness. Big feelings – important feelings. But even if I can’t do the feeling, I can do the knowing, and I do know Billy was my responsibility in every way: I was his corporal; he was in my section. And yet . . . he was gone. And it was my fault. And the trouble was, I didn’t like thinking about him, about what had happened and about the effect it had on my career, but I didn’t know how to get him out of my mind again.

  About then there’d been a knock on my classroom door. When Destiny stuck her head in and had asked to speak with me, it was the answer to my problems. Now I’d be able to speak to her like I wanted and I’d be distracted from Billy Dawson. So I’d gladly got up from my desk, cautioned my year sevens to continue working, and stepped out of the classroom and pulled the door closed, just enough to give Destiny and me privacy, but open enough that the class would know I would hear them if they were talking.

  We stood in the empty corridor and she twitched her pass at me, which meant she’d been given permission to leave her lesson. She’d told me that she was supposed to be in the toilet. I understood the clear message – she didn’t have long.

  Then she’d delivered the killer punch. She told me she was running away and that she was going to leave before the end of school. Today? I’d asked her, and she’d nodded: today. I’m leaving for good. Before they come and get me, she added. Even as she stood in front of me, I imagined the men from the van pushing her into the back and padlocking the doors behind her.

  Somehow, instinctively, I knew this was coming. After all, all any of us want to feel is safe – why would a fifteen-year-old like Destiny be any different?

  But I didn’t want her to run away. Where would she go? How would she live? To delay thinking of a careful response, I played for time and asked her about her social worker. Although I knew, I wanted to hear it from her. When she confirmed it wasn’t really her social worker who’d visited her, I realised how real this was. To hear how she’d been forced to play along in front of school staff, to think of how frightened she must’ve been, how helpless, made me understand that the system wasn’t safe enough.

  Was he one of the gang from the van, I asked. When she confirmed he was, I knew I had crossed a line. When a child makes a statement of harm, it’s important that the teacher doesn’t start asking questions. Children mustn’t be led and investigations mustn’t be started by someone without the proper authority. That was procedure. But now Destiny was in front of me, it was easy to revert to no longer trusting the procedures. Just like that, I’d changed my mind. The police had been here, and social services had been contacted twice. It was now less than two hours before the end of school, and even if I’d made peace with the slowness of the system and trusted that they would follow up with Destiny before the end of the day, it seemed that Destiny could not. And if the child doesn’t feel safe in the system, then the system has failed.

  Destiny’s safety had to come first. Had to. And she had to come above every other consideration.

  Now she’d gone back to her classroom, I was left trying to decide what to do. It wasn’t that I couldn’t help her – period six was free for me. I realised then what I had to do to keep Destiny safe. It meant putting myself into a situation that might change everything for me. For ever.

  I have always been decisive. I made my choice and never looked back and hearing that the gang had bluffed their way into the school, made it easy for me. I knew that she had to come first but it was still difficult.

  I wished social services had acted more decisively. If they had, if they’d been able to, it would’ve been a different story.

  I never blamed them for this. I never felt that there was a lack of concern from them. But I knew how it was in the public sector. I knew that they didn’t have the resources they needed to make the decisions in the way that they wanted. Having spoken to them, I was sure they were concerned for Destiny. I was also sure that they’d make a visit to see her. But it was like teaching: there was more demand than supply and that might limit what they could do for her.

  I knew that these men would stop at nothing to get Destiny. If she believed they would simply pick her up as soon as she left the building at three o’clock, then I believed her.

  I did try to reassure her. I did try to do the right thing. I did.

  I told her that I had reported the fake social worker to the real social services. I told her that they took it seriously and would treat her as a priority. She laughed.

  I looked at her: small, pretty, young-looking. What had she been through? I’d had a tough childhood losing my mother at such a young age, but I had no concept of what Destiny’s experiences had been. She was vulnerable and I knew from my child protection training and watching the news, that already vulnerable children were at risk of exploitation. Was that why they wanted Destiny? My suspicions threw new darker shadows in my mind. I thought of my dad, who said so little about anything, saying that nothing good was going to come out of what they wanted from Destiny. The feeling that I had stumbled across something more sinister returned.

  But as I worried, she’d brought me back with the simple statement: Miss, listen, because I haven’t got much time! She spoke sharply. I didn’t allow my students to speak like that to me, but Destiny was right to get me to concentrate.

  That was the point where a subtle change happened in our relationship. In a way, Destiny was my teacher: she was the shuck knife forcing me to see inside the oyster. Inside I saw the rotten flesh of a society gone wrong, but despite all that followed, all that I lost, I have no regrets, for I found Destiny, who was a rare and precious thing.

  And when it came down to it, she only wanted just a little help.

  She wanted a lift in my car four miles up the road. My aunt lives there, she told me. She’s already agreed to take me in. She has a spare room and she said that she’s always wanted me to stay. They won’t look for me there. The gang aren’t even from round here. They’ll think I’ve run and they will forget all about me.

  Miss, she said, I’ve given up on the social workers and the police. I just want to leave. Wouldn’t you want the same?

  And I would, I would want to be able to run.

  I thought about the month I’d joined the school. There had been a huge row about a teacher, Daisy Ruthborn, who’d picked up a student in the middle of a storm. Daisy had driven past the boy when it had been hailing; there had been lightning and gale-force winds. She’d given the boy a lift home to his parents, rung the door, deposited the child, received grateful thanks from the boy and his family and that should’ve been it. But somehow the school had found out and there’d been an enormous row and if the teachers’ union and the family hadn’t intervened, then Daisy would’ve received a warning.

  This felt like exactly the same thing, where rules seemed to take precedence over good sense. But, in this case, the danger was more real – a van, a gun, a gang who clearly wanted to do harm to their ‘Candydoll’. If I didn’t take Destiny to where she wanted to go, they would get hold of her. Whatever they had in mind for her was far worse than hailstones. And the awful truth was that I would never know if I’d been right to refuse her. I would never know if she ran and got to her aunt’s or if she ran and they found her. All I would know was that she’d disappeared. I would never see her in my form again. Her empty chair would remain there, reminding me of how I put my own reputation ahead of her safety.

  The only advantage of not taking her was so I could say to myself that I had done the right thing professionally. But no one would ever know that I did. All they would know was that D
estiny would not turn up to school any more, and they would contact her care home and they would confirm she was missing. How much was a missing girl in care looked for? I wondered how many kids went missing every year.

  I did a quick Google check. I gasped loud enough to draw glances from some children near me. A narrowing of my eyes was enough for them to bow their heads and carry on. Two thousand children living in care went missing every year. Many were the target of gangs. The report said that one in five would suffer from sexual abuse. I thought of that slug-like tongue and remembered a missing poster put up for a girl last year. Now, instead of the girl’s face, it was Destiny’s I saw looking back at me.

  Where did all these missing children go?

  Daisy was right: it would’ve been cruel to leave a kid out in such weather, alone.

  This was the same thing. To refuse to help Destiny, to turn my back on her, would be cruel. I understood that leaving a child defenceless was the most dangerous action of all. I had no choice. I would take her, I decided, to keep her safe.

  Friday

  14:35

  Jenni

  I sat in my car two streets away from the school, watching the empty road behind me in my rear-view mirror. I’d parked next to the recreational ground so I could leave my car running and not draw attention from curtain twitchers.

  I still couldn’t believe that I had agreed to this.

  We’d agreed that I would meet her here after she’d assured me she could climb over the gate. Her aunt only lived a few miles away, and I would be able to drive her there and still be back at my desk by four o’clock. I would make a point of speaking to some colleagues around that time so they wouldn’t think of me, if there was some trouble about it. Unless there was a fire alarm, I wouldn’t be missed. Even if there was an alarm, I’d say that my dad had had a fall and that I’d forgotten to sign out.