by Casey Watson
‘You must miss him terribly,’ I said, watching for her reaction over my mug.
‘I do,’ she said simply. ‘I will miss him all my life. But he’s here.’ She touched her chest. ‘And he will live on in Jakob. That was his name, you know. Jakob.’
Not the name on the birth certificate I’d seen. I said so.
She shook her head. ‘Not on paper. He was named for his father – my grandfather. Which caused great confusion when he was young,’ she explained. ‘So, for the family, always Jakob. Or “Jakobbbbbbbbb!” so my gran said. Anyway,’ she finished, finally putting jam on her toast, ‘today I have ants in my pants.’
I reached across to put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Sweetheart, remember what I told you? You must remember that today is about lots of different things, as well as perhaps arranging a meeting to see your baby. You understand that, don’t you?’
Adrianna nodded. ‘Casey, I know. Please don’t worry. It’s about him. And the other men, and the customers, too. I understand that. Don’t you worry. I will not let you down.’
‘I never thought you would for a moment,’ I reassured her. ‘I don’t think you could let me down if you tried. And it will be a good meeting – after this, everything will start to get better. You’ll meet your social worker, Jazz – well, or Jasmine, if you prefer. And –’
‘She’s nice, Jasmine? You said you don’t know her. Do you trust her?’
‘Trust her? Of course I do. She is there to help you, I told you. Why would you ask?’
Adrianna seemed reluctant to speak. But then leaned in towards me. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to speak, but I have been very anxious. Social workers take babies. I know this. My friends in London –’
‘Oh, Adrianna …’
‘No, really, Casey. Often. My friends in London, two of them have babies which were taken away from them. Both times by social workers …’
I didn’t doubt it. I could all too easily imagine the scenario. The usual tragic cocktail of runaways, teen pregnancies, drug abuse, homelessness. So where did you start? Some lives started appallingly and simply became worse, the future already pre-determined by the past.
‘You’re right,’ I said. What was the point in saying anything different? ‘That does sometimes happen. But only ever to protect the child. They would never remove a baby, or an older child, from a mother who didn’t have problems. And I even if they did, they would do all in their power to help solve it, because taking a child from its parent is the very last thing they want to do. Honestly. No one wants that to happen, Adrianna, ever. So you must learn to trust these people, sweetie. To understand what they are there for. They really do want to help and Jazz is there to help you. She is your advocate. By your side. Coming round especially for you.’
She seemed to digest this, along with her toast. ‘And with the police? She is there to help me if the police want to do mug shots and fingerprints? And DNA tests?’
‘Now you really are running away with yourself, sweetheart,’ I said, as I got up. ‘Yes, you might have to provide DNA – that’s completely normal these days. For many reasons, including proving you’re the baby’s mother. But as for the rest, I think you need not believe quite so much of what Tyler gets from CSI …’
I also made a mental note to try to get Tyler interested in something a tad less ‘criminal mayhem’. In fact, a lot less. My box sets of Downton Abbey, perhaps.
Chapter 15
Seeing the cars pull up outside took the wind out of Adrianna’s sails. Up to now she’d been surfing a wave of optimism, and, conscious that my job was to try to keep her calm and centred, I’d been at pains – well, as far as was possible, given the need to manage her expectations – not to be the one to tip her off her surfboard.
We’d prepared together, her laying out the obligatory plate of biscuits, while I got the obligatory ‘best’ china out. These were the things that had become rituals since Mike and I had started fostering. Formal meetings with professionals had become routine now; just another regular aspect of our job. But I still treated them just as I had from the very first time we were obliged to host one, and the butterflies in my stomach had taken such agitated flight.
These days, I wondered quite what all the fuss had been about. Why I used to get so stressed about having all these important people in our house. Why I’d worried so much about making the ‘right’ impression – after all, what was the right impression anyway? We were foster carers, for goodness’ sake. Not there to fly the flag for Homes & Gardens. What did it matter if I served coffee in mugs rather than cups, or that my sofa arms were possibly a little frayed? But the class divide never manifested itself quite so clearly as when strangers were in your home who might not be from your class. Strangers who might look at how you lived and judge you. Perhaps the class system in Britain would never truly go away. But what nonsense. We would be judged on what we did, not on our crockery. Even so, out it all came.
And it was thinking about all this that reminded me, as it usually did, of the importance of seeing proceedings through the eyes of a traumatised, frightened child. A child who might already be with us and be having some aspect of their eventual fate discussed or, as was so often the case, a child for whom we were complete strangers and for whom the whole business must be so much more terrifying.
I even smiled to myself as I looked at the refreshments; the shiny-foil-wrapped biscuits I always set out as a matter of course now, their jewel colours inviting and beguiling. Where the posh cups and saucers said ‘we are your equals’, the pretty biscuits said ‘we are your friends’. I hoped Adrianna would feel among friends today.
Following Adrianna’s alert, I left the dining table and joined her at the window, where she was silently observing the occupants climbing out of the two cars parked out front. I had no idea what logistics had brought them here together – had John driven to the police station and led the police officers here in convoy? Or was their arrival together simply the manifestation of split-second timing? Either way, both sets of car doors closed again in synchrony – the first having disgorged John and, presumably, Jasmine, and the second, which wasn’t a marked police car but could be nothing else, two other people, who were presumably plain-clothed police officers, one female, one male.
‘I’m a little bit scared now,’ Adrianna whispered.
I squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t be. You’re not in trouble, and you have nothing to fear.’
‘That is the social worker?’ she whispered again. ‘The one with the pink fluffy jacket?’
‘I think so,’ I said, watching the woman follow John up the path, ahead of the police officers. ‘She looks nice, doesn’t she?’
Adrianna nodded. ‘And she is young. I thought she would be older. I thought social workers would be always older.’
‘Oh no, not at all,’ I said. ‘They come in all shapes and sizes. Anyway, come on. The doorbell’s going to go …. right about now.’
Which it did. She followed me out into the hall.
Social workers did indeed come in all shapes and sizes. And colours, and ages, and political affiliations, and degrees of devotion to their charges and their jobs. As I was sure applied in all walks of life. And both in my time as a foster carer and, before that, as a school behaviour manager, I had come across, and worked with, a lot.
Which at least gave me a modicum of instinct about them and, on opening the front door and meeting Jasmine’s eye, my instinct was that John had chosen very well.
Well, if ‘chosen’ was the right word, which, a lot of the time it wasn’t, because in an overstretched service with an always-growing workload, who you ‘got’ was decided as much on expediency as anything, and was often more a case of Hobson’s choice. But I recalled John saying that there had been an element of choice involved with this one – and that, given that there was one, he’d pressed for someone female and young, in the cause of getting the most out of Adrianna.
I agreed with him. Given what had happened to her, both in
Poland and in Britain – not to mention her encounter with the grumpy male interpreter – I reckoned a woman would be the best bet. It was going to be hard enough to encourage her to put her trust in a stranger, and if that stranger was male, even more so.
Jasmine also had the look of a woman with a bit of steel in her. Which is difficult to describe, but always easy to spot. It was there in the pink coat, which was nothing short of shockingly exuberant, and in the way she immediately made her focus Adrianna, even as she cowered very slightly behind me. It was there in the way she held her laptop case, the way she held herself generally. It said ‘I’m here, and I’ve got your back and I relish the opportunity.’ I suspected (and, again, I have no idea why, quite) that despite her relative youth – perhaps mid- to late twenties? – that she was probably also a mum.
‘Hello!’ I said brightly. ‘Come on in out of the cold, everyone. That’s the way,’ I added as each of them passed me with the usual nod and smile. ‘Straight into the living room. Adrianna will show you and take your coats.’
John was last, having ushered the two police officers in ahead of him. ‘All well?’ he asked.
‘Yup,’ I said. ‘Any more news on anything?’
‘A little. All positive,’ he said. ‘So far.’
And the meeting began positively as well. Despite Adrianna’s earlier anxiety, she showed admirable composure. Forget 14, or 16 – her demeanour betrayed her years. It was so easy to forget that she was still a child. Or, if your definition, more accurately, be that she was actually now a minor, that she had very much been a child when her world had imploded.
Seated beside me, she listened carefully as the female officer explained who they were and what steps they were going to take next. She was a detective sergeant – hence the plain clothes – and explained that she and her colleague, who was a detective constable, were attached to the vice squad, had travelled a long way to see her and were keen to hear as much as she could tell them about the characters she’d escaped from the previous year.
Though not, it seemed, right now this very minute. ‘We’re mainly here at this stage,’ she said, ‘to reassure you, Adrianna. That you’re not going to be charged with anything, because you’re not guilty of any crime. As you know, everything you’ve told your foster mum has already been corroborated and we’re completely happy that under the circumstances you did exactly the right thing.’
‘Dzieki,’ Adrianna said, inclining her head. ‘Sorry – thank you. I am very, very much relieved.’
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said the lady officer. ‘And that you’re going to see your baby. And that you’ve agreed to try to help us if you can.’
‘Which is very much the case,’ John said. ‘Adrianna’s very keen to do that, aren’t you, Adrianna?’
‘Very keen,’ Adrianna agreed politely.
Though rather less keen, I reckoned, once they explained what kind of thing that help would entail, which included a visit or two to the local police station – though they used the term Victim Support Unit, often – both to make a formal statement detailing her experiences and her escape, and, if she was willing (and this was the heart of the matter), to spend some time looking at mug shots on their computer database to see if there were any faces she recognised.
‘Is that likely?’ John asked the male officer, who’d been explaining that part.
He nodded. ‘We’re optimistic,’ he replied. ‘Now we know the city we’re talking about, we can narrow it down a lot. And as we already have a wide-ranging investigation ongoing, there’s every chance we’ll be able to put anything Adrianna here can tell us to good use.’
The yin and yang of life, I thought, taking in Adrianna’s expression. Calculating though it might seem, there was a necessary trade-off in the mix. And Adrianna knew that too, so, though she’d been previously ‘unsure’ about any of the details of her experience as a ‘modern-day slave’ (as they’d put it), she had, since the prospect of getting Jakob back was becoming real, begun remembering more.
And after a good bit of work on Tyler’s part, much of it spent with Adrianna on Google Earth, we had been able to establish where she’d been during her first months in the UK, both in terms of city and probable district. And something else – that the young man who’d befriended her in Poland was, in all probability, English. Which was both a shock – a trafficking tourist? – and a plus point. If it was a British gang – as it seemed – there was a good chance the police were already on their tail. And (this shouldn’t matter, but I knew how the world worked, so imagined it probably did) it also meant that Adrianna’s baby had a British father.
And now Adrianna would have to come good on the next level of detail – the actual identities of the men who were prostituting her. I watched her blanch.
‘But if I see a man I know,’ she asked, ‘what then? Will I have to stand in court where they could see me?’
Both police officers were quick to shake their heads. ‘Absolutely not,’ the detective sergeant said, ‘not unless it’s absolutely necessary. And if it did turn out that you were required to give evidence against anyone, you could do so via a video link.’
She glanced at me anxiously. ‘That means you wouldn’t actually have to be present in court,’ I reassured her. ‘In cases where there is a risk to the victim,’ I went on, glancing at both the officers for corroboration, ‘then I think your identity can be kept secret, so you are safe. But, honestly, love, please don’t stress yourself about that now. This is all just hypothetical.’ I saw the confusion in her eyes and regrouped. ‘As in something that isn’t definitely going to happen. That’s unlikely to happen. It’s more a question of you helping the police build more of a picture.’
‘But they would kill me,’ she said, her voice rising slightly, her chin jutting. ‘You know this?’ She glanced from one officer to the other. ‘You know these men? If they find me, they will kill me.’
Sadly, I knew she wasn’t being melodramatic. Tyler hadn’t been the only one on Google in the last couple of days. Traffickers treating kidnapped girls like animals, beating them, half starving them and making them service (where the word ‘service’ meant things that were extremely difficult to read, let alone think about) multiple paying clients, often a dozen or so times a day. I could only hope that when Adrianna said she’d got away before things became unbearable she had been telling me the truth. I also knew, because the testimonies were out there, and in spades, that girls who’d been trafficked did get killed. And being here illegally, without passports, with family and loved ones so far away, they could be easily disposed of as well.
John, on the other side of me, touched my arm. Silent tears were rolling down Adrianna’s cheeks now. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ I said, curling an arm around her and pulling her close. ‘Shh, now. It’s okay.’
She shook her head. ‘I am okay. I will help. I am just thinking … That is all. There are other girls. I must help. I have trust I will be safe.’
Jasmine had spoken little up to this point. Having formally introduced herself – mostly to me and Adrianna, because it seemed she was already on first-name terms with the two officers – she had mostly just nodded affirmatives and made the odd note on the A4 pad in front of her. But now she reached across the table to throw Adrianna a packet of tissues she’d evidently whipped from her case. ‘Here you go, Adrianna,’ she said. ‘Have a blow on one of those. And you’re right to have trust. Take it from me, you can absolutely trust these guys, okay? You’re being incredibly brave just agreeing to be here. And, you know, those other girls – well, it doesn’t need saying, does it?’ Adrianna shook her head as she extracted a tissue from the packet. ‘You’re doing the right thing. And you will be kept safe, okay?’
As words, they were just platitudes, really. In reality, no one could give Adrianna that absolute assurance, and even if she moved far, far away, she might well be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life, whether she was instrumental in getting them convicted or not. All the
while these men existed, they would haunt her.
But there was something about the way Jasmine spoke that inspired confidence in me. Something about the way she just exuded commitment. That sense that she was someone who could both empathise with Adrianna and mentor her. Which was so important. There was a long road ahead now – two roads, in fact; one in pursuit of justice and the other to reclaim her child, and it struck me just how important it was that she had a constant, reassuring presence in her life now. Someone she could rely on to support her and guide her through both processes. And I knew that, before long, if all went as planned, that stalwart someone was not going to be me.
I smiled at Jasmine, so young and vibrant, and made a silent heartfelt wish; that nothing changed. That she’d be there to stay the course.
Chapter 16
I loved going to London. In the normal scheme of things, anyway. I loved going to London for all the reasons anyone would. For the musicals. The shopping. The history and culture. For the palaces and parks. The sumptuous hotels. For the sheer exuberant bigness of it all.
On the other hand, more often than not, while I was on my way to London, I didn’t love going to London at all. First, it was a very long way away, so the drive there seemed interminable. Second, the rail prices were enough to make your hair stand on end, unless you booked six months in advance, when there was a full moon in Neptune and did not, under any circumstances, miss your allocated train, on pain of paying an excess fare that could probably buy a small car. (No wonder Adrianna had always been so wedded to the humble coach.) Third, though the idea of flying there seemed exotic, there was just this thing I had – as with pulling out my mum’s posh cups and saucers – that it was something that seemed, well, bizarre.
‘And besides,’ Mike had pointed out when we’d pondered our options, ‘London’s so big that by the time we’d found some way from whichever airport to wherever the place we needed to be was, we’d have been better off driving in the first place.’