The Girl Without a Voice

by Casey Watson

  ‘Oh, love,’ I said. ‘I wish I could tell you that, I really do. But I can’t. No one can. The only thing I can promise you is that, in time, it will get easier to bear. Not go away completely – it’ll still be there, of course it will – but it will get easier to cope with, I promise. And in the meantime, if there’s anything I can do for you, I will. Would it help if I spoke to your auntie?’

  I could hear her sniff. Then she pulled away and wiped the sleeve of her school jumper across her eyes. ‘I don’t think so, Miss,’ she said. ‘She’s been so lovely, and it’s been so hard for her as well. And my cousins are … well …’ She shrugged.

  ‘Like all little ones, I expect, sweetheart. Exhausting?’

  For which I was rewarded with a wan smile. Perhaps she’d come back to school too soon, I thought. I’d seen that sort of thing before. The bereaved were often buoyed by the attention that surrounds a sudden death, but when lives went back to normal, and the attention began to lessen – that was often when they went down like a ton of bricks. Perhaps what Shona most needed was more opportunity to talk – even just to cry when she needed to, rather than feeling like a visitor, which she must surely do in her aunt’s house right now, with the best will in the world. Always on guard. Always polite. Always being on her best behaviour. And she was clearly a good girl. Not the sort to cause trouble. ‘You know what I think I should do?’ I suggested. ‘I think I should speak to the Head and see if we can’t up your sessions with your counsellor. What d’you think? It seems to me that what might help would be you being able to be you a bit more. To say how you feel without worrying about upsetting anyone. And, of course, I’m always here as well, remember. Always. And you know another trick?’

  Shona shook her head. ‘No, Miss. I wish I did.’

  I gave her another hug and then I winked. ‘Punch a cushion. Might not be quite as satisfying as bopping Henry,’ I added, ‘but almost as good – you should give it a try. Now,’ I finished, glad to see a bit of colour in her cheeks again. ‘How about we launch a raid on those biscuits?’

  After the travails of the morning, the afternoon went like a dream. Kelly was free, which was a big help, and also helped me decide on which scenario would be the best one to film. In the end, and ever mindful of the complexity of Unit politics, we settled on Henry’s – both because of what had happened between him and Shona, and because his effort was both intelligent and relevant.

  Re-casting it solo, he had decided to make Molly the teacher instead, with him as a disruptive pupil – one half of the ongoing argument – little Ben as the teaching assistant and the others as fellow pupils. He’d written the two versions, as I’d asked – one with a bad and one with a good outcome – setting out the opening situation as one in which the teacher was trying to teach the children some chemical symbols, while the disruptive pupil was busy throwing pieces of paper when her back was turned, much to the amusement of the other pupils.

  In version one, the TA (played by Ben) called out the disruptive child, and castigated him angrily for behaving like an idiot. This caused the pupil to get angry too, throwing his chair on the floor, and flouncing out of the classroom, which led to even more disruption, and the lesson being interrupted, as the other pupils became disruptive then themselves.

  In the second version, however, the TA reacted differently. This time he laughed good-naturedly when the teacher turned round to see what the giggles were about, saying, ‘Oh, Miss, it’s just Henry doing his magic tricks again. First it’s the flying paper trick, as you can see, then it’s the one where he magically disappears out of the classroom for a few minutes till you call him back in.’

  This caused the other pupils to laugh along with the TA, and made Henry start giggling as well. He then said, ‘Sorry, Miss,’ to Molly. ‘Trust you, Henry,’ she chided mildly, accepting his apology. ‘Now, if you hold on a few more minutes you can do your other trick as well. The one where you tell me the chemical symbols for the first ten elements!’

  ‘You know what?’ Kelly said, putting down Henry’s workbook. ‘This is brilliant. Not to mention a lesson for me to file away for future use! Seriously, that boy’s a proper dark horse, isn’t he?’

  I nodded. Henry really was a conundrum. Given that his problems relating to his peers were thought to stem from a lack of empathy, he had incredible emotional intelligence. And, as we’d suspected would be the case, the kids really seemed to get the rationale behind the ‘good’ outcome, all of them chipping in enthusiastically when we played the film back, and getting the point of how you could use humour to change the mood in a classroom, and that resolving conflicts wasn’t all about shouting.

  Of course, in Imogen’s case it wasn’t about any form of vocalisation, and as the day drew to a close, and I watched Shona and Molly and how they managed her, I wondered what sort of dynamic I’d get to see when I visited her at home. Would the grandparents’ conflict-resolution strategies be effective or ineffective? Imogen, too, was a dark horse, and it would be interesting to see.

  ‘Not that I’m expecting to see much conflict, based on what I’ve seen so far in school,’ I said to Kelly. ‘I know her grandmother’s said she’s very vocal at home, but I don’t think I’ll quite believe it till I actually see it. She’s like a ghost, she really is. Completely biddable, does as she’s told, obviously takes everything in, but in terms of actually contributing she really is just about invisible.’

  ‘Well, you know what you’re always saying about kids who are angels at school …’ Kelly replied.

  That they could be devils at home? That they could. Though, somehow, in this case, I doubted it.

  The Hinchcliffes lived only a few streets away from the high school, on a road that was in the middle of a post-war estate. It wasn’t an area I knew well or had much visited but I had the impression of orderly calm and mostly older residents; there were nets at most of the windows, and cars neatly parked off the road on drives, where I felt sure they’d be religiously washed and polished every Sunday. There was also a distinct lack of children to be seen and the neatly mown verges that sat in front of all the houses looked untroubled by the spectre of flying footballs. Indeed, if there were conflict here I imagined it would be more likely to stem from someone letting their bit of grass grow too long.

  I walked up a path flanked by rose bushes, mostly still bearing blooms, underneath which sat huddles of pinky-violet ground plants. And the windows, fairly recently double-glazed, by the look of it, were as nicely dressed as the square of emerald lawn. Which made the commotion I could hear as I raised my hand to use the brass door-knocker feel about as incongruous in this setting as it could be.

  It was a male voice I heard first, clear as the best crystal, at almost the same moment when the knocker struck the door. ‘I’m warning you,’ he raged, ‘any more of this and you’re out of here. I’m bloody sick of this, you hear me?’

  The response came swiftly. ‘Get off me!’ This time the voice was female. ‘Get off! I hate you! I fucking hate you!’

  Wondering quite what to do, since my knock had obviously gone unheeded, I grabbed the knocker and rapped again, only louder. This time the response was so fast it made me jump. I could hear a key being turned in the white PVC door, and it suddenly opened, revealing a rather distressed-looking Mrs Hinchcliffe. She blinked at me, then poked her head out and glanced up and down the empty street, before opening the door just wide enough that I could step inside. ‘Come in, Mrs Watson,’ she said, beckoning me to get inside quickly. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, really I am, but as you can see …’

  And I could see. And what I saw stopped me in my tracks. Because right there, no more than a few feet away from me, was Imogen, still in her school uniform, but with her hair all over the place, and looking more like she belonged to the school of hard knocks than our local comp. She was swinging her arms about wildly, obviously trying to thump her grandfather.

  It was with almost a sense of déjà vu that I watched Mr Hinchcliffe trying to restra
in her, holding on to her wrists and trying to pin her safely against the wall. And the next shock was the realisation that the voice I’d heard before had obviously been Imogen’s. ‘Get him off me, Nan!’ she growled. ‘I mean it. Get him fucking off me! I want to go to my room! I want to go to my fucking room!’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Mr Hinchcliffe?’ I began, trying to make my presence in the hall felt. Imogen could see me but I wasn’t sure she was really seeing anything, and as Mr Hinchcliffe had his back to me he definitely couldn’t.

  At the sound of my voice, though, he turned around and, as if caught red-handed in some illegal act, promptly let his granddaughter go.

  ‘See!’ he barked at me. ‘See what we have to put up with? All we do for her, and this is how she treats us! You saw that, did you? You’ve taken a note of that? I bloody hope so, because this is what she’s like – every time she can’t get her own bloody way!’

  Despite her earlier protestations, Imogen seemed in no rush to hot-foot it up to her room now. In fact, she simply sat down on the bottom step of the stairs. So perhaps my presence in the hall had changed her mind, if not her mindset. She was still busy scowling at her Grandad.

  Mrs Hinchcliffe extended a hand and placed it on her husband’s forearm nervously. ‘Mick, love, let’s just all calm down a bit, eh?’ she suggested. ‘Mrs Watson’s from school, remember? Come to see Imogen. Not to stand here and listen to all this stuff.’

  I glanced at Imogen then, to find her now staring straight at me with a look of incomprehension on her face. ‘That all right with you, love?’ I ventured.

  There was no answer. Instead she leapt up from where she’d been sitting and made a bolt for the front door, but, rather than open it, she seemed to be grabbing something from it, and by the time I’d realised she wasn’t actually trying to get out through it she was already barging past me and sprinting up the stairs.

  A door slammed, shaking the air to such an extent that I feared for the grandmother clock on the wall in front of me, which had been quietly marking out time. ‘Brilliant,’ said Mr Hinchcliffe. ‘That’s it now. Bloody brilliant!’ He rolled his eyes at me, making me think perhaps I’d missed some vital trick, then turned his back and began walking towards the back of the house. ‘You weren’t in a hurry to be anywhere, were you?’ he flung over his shoulder. ‘Because you won’t be going anywhere for a good bit now, believe me.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Hinchcliffe, ‘I’m afraid he’s right, dear. She’s already got the back-door key, you see. Come on,’ she said, gesturing that I should follow her husband. ‘Come into the kitchen and we’ll get the kettle on. Least we can do is make you a cup of tea.’

  Completely bewildered, and still a little stunned at having heard Imogen speak finally, I followed Mr Hinchcliffe into a cosy country-style kitchen and, at Mrs Hinchcliffe’s invitation, took a seat at the little oilcloth-covered table while she bustled around me with a striped teapot and some teabags.

  ‘Sounds like you’re having a bit of an episode,’ I ventured.

  Mr Hinchcliffe raised his hands and slapped them back palms down on the table. He sat back and looked at me wearily. ‘Mrs Watson, you don’t know the half of it. Little sod was halfway out of her bedroom window before I managed to drag her back inside again. And threatening to jump again,’ he added, glancing in Mrs Hinchcliffe’s direction. ‘It’s getting beyond the pale now. We’re having to run the place like bloody Colditz!’

  ‘What?’ I said. This was something of an alarming state of affairs. ‘Why would she do that?’ I asked them both. ‘Has she done it before?’

  ‘Why is the sky blue?’ her grandmother said, setting down some teacups and saucers. ‘And yes, once before. Mick’s right. It’s getting worse now. The least little thing and it’s always the same. She’s going to jump out of the window and break her legs. She’s going to run in front of a bus. She’s going to throw herself on a railway line. And so on and so forth. And then we’ll be sorry, apparently.’ She sighed heavily, and I felt for her. She looked exhausted. ‘And that’s the problem, Mrs Watson. We have no idea what sets her off. Almost anything, it seems,’ she added, casting her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘Just lashes out at us, doesn’t she, Mick? So it’s no wonder, really, is it?’ She glanced at her husband again and shook her head. ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking,’ she said to me. ‘I know how it’s been. She’s silent as a thief in the night when she’s in school, isn’t she? Bottles it up, see. Keeps her nose clean. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose. And then we’re the ones who get it,’ she said, adding a milk jug to the pile of crockery. ‘We’re the ones that have to bloody pay for it as soon as she gets home!’

  I nodded sympathetically. ‘I do understand,’ I said. ‘And Imogen’s not unusual in that respect. Children need to let off steam, and it’s usually the place where they feel most secure where they feel the –’

  ‘Let off steam!’ Mr Hinchcliffe huffed. ‘She’s like Stephenson’s bloody Rocket! We’re at our wits’ end with her, Mrs Watson. And we’re too old for all this nonsense! I mean it’s one thing stepping in to help out and give our son a break – never minded doing that – but it’s been almost three bloody months and we’ve had enough of it! I’m on the list for a knee op and what’ll happen once I get my bloody date? That’s what I want to know!’

  ‘I know,’ I said, anxious to steer the conversation back to Imogen and what had been the root of what was beginning to sound like an increasingly volatile situation. ‘It must feel like a huge burden on you both. Which is why we’re so keen to do what we can as a school to help get to the root of Imogen’s problems. We have a specialist coming into school on Monday, in fact, to tell us a little more about her selective mutism …’ I could see I was losing Mr Hinchcliffe at this point, as he was shaking his head in a pretty resigned way. ‘And how about your son?’ I suggested, changing tack. ‘Have you spoken to him about how difficult you’re finding things?’

  The Hinchcliffes exchanged another glance and I sensed a difference of opinion was simmering just below the surface. ‘I don’t think there’s much he can do,’ Mrs Hinchcliffe said eventually. ‘It’s complicated, Mrs Watson,’ she added. ‘They’re not really speaking at the moment.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, wondering if she’d offer any more by way of explanation. But she didn’t, and I wondered if this was a current bone of contention – that they wanted Imogen to go home to her father and he wasn’t playing ball. But I decided to leave it. For now the key thing was to get Imogen opening up. Only once she did so would I have any idea how she felt, which might be completely at odds with the line I was being peddled. Kids acted out because they were hurting, and very often because their voices weren’t being heard, or because the adults caring for them were putting their own needs first. This was a complex family dynamic, and, however saintly the new girlfriend who had launched into the fray, a teenager who’d been abandoned by her mother was a distressed teenager in most cases, and distressed teenagers could be volatile, antagonistic and aggressive, as the Hinchcliffes were undoubtedly learning.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘back in the here and now, what’s the business with the key all about?’

  Mrs Hinchcliffe poured boiling water into the teapot. ‘Like Mick says, we live like prisoners in our own home at the moment.’

  ‘But why does she take the keys? It’s not as if you lock her up, is it? I mean, she walks to school and back on her own every day …’

  ‘Oh, it’s not because she’s going to run away,’ Mr Hinchcliffe said. ‘She just does it to be bloody-minded! We lock the upstairs windows, so she takes the downstairs keys.’

  ‘An issue with control, then …’ I mused.

  ‘Is that what they’re calling it these days?’ Mr Hinchcliffe said, stirring the tea. ‘An issue with needing a clip round the ear, if you ask me!’

  Mrs Hinchcliffe placed cups on saucers and as she did so I could see her fingers were shaking. They were small hands, dainty and delicate, almost translucent in
places. I looked up to smile at her and was shocked to see tears brimming in her eyes.

  There was a slight quiver around her chin, too, but I got a strong sense that I should pretend I hadn’t seen either.

  ‘Well, as I say,’ I said briskly, turning my attention to Mr Hinchcliffe, ‘we have a specialist coming into school on Monday, and –’

  ‘Bloody doctors,’ Mr Hinchcliffe said. ‘They’re bloody simple, they are, those head doctors. Her last school sent her to one of them and where did that get us? Nowhere. No, she doesn’t need a doctor. She just needs to bloody toughen up! Not put all this stress on her nan just to get her own way. It’s wicked, that’s what it is. It’s wicked. If she wants to start on anyone she should start on the horrible little gits doing the name-calling! Not her bloody grandmother – look at the state of her!’

  Mrs Hinchcliffe bit her lip and looked daggers at her husband. ‘Well, whatever the whys and wherefores,’ I said, realising that we could go on like this till midnight, ‘how about if I go up and see if I can persuade Imogen to talk to me. Would that be okay? And maybe coax her down, too. Then we can all have that cuppa.’

  Mrs Hinchcliffe had now pulled a hankie from her cardigan sleeve and blew into it delicately while her husband poured the tea. ‘You can try,’ she said. ‘No harm in trying. Though what good it’ll do I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, if not actually talk to me, at least listen to me,’ I said. ‘And if nothing else, I need to be able to get home at some point, don’t I? Or do you have the fire brigade on speed dial?’

  It took a second or two for Mr Hinchcliffe to get the joke.

  Chapter 8

  ‘You were locked in their house?’ Mike spluttered, as I tried to explain where I’d got to. I’d called him too, but as my phone battery was almost dead to the world, it had been to tell him little more than that I was on my way. I pulled off my jacket and dumped my bag in the hall. ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ he huffed. ‘What were the school thinking of, sending you there in the first place?’