House of Straw

by Marc Scott

  ‘Are those new shoes?’ Manning asked as he opened her case folder to review her notes.

  ‘No, I found them at the back of the wardrobe and cleaned them up a bit,’ she replied.

  Poppy looked around his office as he wiped his spectacles. It was always so tidy in there, nothing was ever out of place, nothing ever looked different. It even smelled clean. She glanced over at a photograph on his desk, the one of Manning and his family. They looked like they were on holiday somewhere on a sunny beach. Poppy thought that it was a terrible picture. He looked extremely overweight in his ill-fitting T-shirt, and his wife had a sinister and evil sort of smile. Not that Poppy would have ever told him that.

  ‘How is your job at the restaurant?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘No problems there?’

  What problems could you possibly have serving food to people in a bistro? she thought. ‘No, no problems.’

  ‘Are they giving you plenty of shifts?’

  ‘It’s long hours, but I don’t mind that. The money is alright.’

  Joe looked closer at his notes. ‘Oh, it is that Chez Blanc place, the bistro up in Welling High Street. My wife wanted to try that out. A friend of hers said they do a nice salmon teriyaki on their lunch menu.’

  Poppy said nothing. The last thing she wanted was him being a regular at her workplace. One sermon each week was more than enough for her, thank you very much.

  He began to flick his way through the growing number of pages in her folder. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘just got to update some of your information today.’ Poppy looked back up at the clock on the wall. Not even ten past yet. God, this is going to be a long hour, she thought.

  ‘Are you still at the flat in Stonely Parade in Eltham?’

  ‘’Yes.’

  ‘You share that flat with your boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes, with Cameron.’

  Poppy saw Joe’s eyebrows rise. ‘Oh yes, Mr Turner, isn’t it, Cameron Turner?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. Keep it brief, she thought, hoping he would move onto another topic. Cameron was well known to Manning and the courts, and they had discussed him at length in the past. He had been ‘in the system’ longer than she had, starting with car theft and burglary at the age of fourteen and working his way up the criminal ladder. He was twenty-seven now, a couple of years older than her. His crimes had progressed to dealing class A drugs and grievous bodily harm. However, two lengthy spells in Wandsworth prison had, in the court’s eyes, finally straightened him out.

  They had met on the Marfield estate in Woolwich, when she was sixteen years old and had just been released from the Medway Young Offenders Centre. Cameron had something of a ‘bad boy’ reputation on the estate. His six-feet-plus frame and bulging muscles meant that few people argued with him. He had ‘respect’, wherever he went. He had taken a shine to Poppy and she became part of his small clique of teenage dropouts. Cameron soon introduced her to his best friends, Ketamin and Ecstasy. She liked these companions, they took her to places she had never been before. Poppy never knew at the time whether it was Cameron she became addicted to, or the drugs he used to feed her. Either way the two of them became much more than friends before he was locked up for three years for a racially aggravated assault.

  ‘Is Mr Turner working?’ Joe asked. ‘Does he have a full-time job?’

  Poppy never liked this type of questioning, she was always afraid of giving the wrong answer, but she did her best to respond. ‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘He is trying to get into the building trade.’ Joe scribbled away in the folder. He knew full well that there was little or no chance of seeing Cameron Turner plastering walls or laying down bricks at a building site any time soon. Another glance up at the clock told Poppy that this was going to be one of those ‘awkward’ sessions.

  ‘When was the last time our team paid you a home visit?’ Manning asked.

  ‘Just a few weeks ago,’ Poppy replied, even though she knew it had been nearly three months.

  ‘I will ask them to organise that,’ Joe said. ‘Just to make sure everything is OK there.’

  Poppy knew that the word ‘visit’ was really court code for ‘look around the flat for signs of drug use’, but she had little say in the matter. The last time they came to ‘inspect’ her flat, she had to spend over £10 on fresh-air sprays and cleaning products just to nullify the potent smells of cannabis in the home. Fortunately for her, the overwhelming stench of rotting meat and chip fat from the kebab shop directly beneath her living room became more of a talking point for the court-appointed visitors than the solitary joint they discovered, so the money had been well spent.

  Joe continued his interrogation. ‘And I see here you are due for another test soon, at the Verney Centre.’

  ‘The ninth of April,’ Poppy replied. ‘I have made a note of it.’ She knew the consequences of missing her regular drug tests. The establishment would come down on her like a ton of bricks if she failed to turn up there. Besides, she had been clean for over four years now, an amazing feat, considering that, thanks to the habits of her boyfriend, her flat often resembled a ‘crack den’.

  Joe continued to scribble down his notes, but suddenly became sidetracked by a yellow sticker on the top of the folder. He asked her another awkward question. ‘Have you called Mrs Bishop about the anger management course yet?’

  Poppy took a deep breath. ‘No, not yet.’ Joe stared at her, waiting for an explanation. ‘I haven’t had any credit on my phone. I will call her this week.’

  The probation officer frowned as he took off his glasses to give them another wipe. ‘You know it is compulsory, Poppy, you do know that, don’t you? It was a condition of your release programme. You have been out nearly eight months now. They will take a very dim view if you don’t start soon.’

  ‘I thought it was a voluntary thing,’ Poppy said, a poor excuse that she had used several times before.

  Manning shook his head. ‘No! You need to take a full four-month course, Poppy, that’s what it says in your notes, a full four-month course. You could have finished it by now.’

  Poppy thought for a few seconds. She wanted to move on from this subject. ‘I will call her this week when I get some credit on my phone.’

  Joe’s pen went back to work and the questioning continued. ‘You don’t seem to have a next of kin listed here. I can see here in your notes that you have never given us a next of kin, is that right?’

  ‘I don’t really have one. You can put Cameron.’

  ‘What about your father? I thought you two were back in touch.’

  ‘No!’ Poppy snapped, almost immediately regretting it. She swiftly lowered the tone of her voice. ‘No, we are not in touch, you need to put Cameron.’

  ‘You know that I met with your father, Poppy, did he tell you that?’

  Poppy said nothing. She had been seething with anger since he had taken it upon himself to let her estranged father have her mobile number. The man had never stopped calling and texting her, for weeks and weeks until she finally worked out how to block his number. What the hell did the Reverend Joe think he was doing? He may act like a preacher sometimes, but he shouldn’t be playing God with her life. It was just that, her life, and she would decide. She had nothing but contempt for the man who had not been around for more than fifteen years. She wanted it to stay that way.

  Joe rested the folder on his lap and pondered for a moment before he started one of his well-rehearsed one-liners. ‘You know it says in the old testament, ‘he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers’. Sometimes, Poppy, we have to…’ Her mind just switched off at that point and she looked back at the clock. Not even half past yet, she thought, and Joe is off on one of his bloody biblical journeys.

  As Manning continued his latest sermon, Poppy reflected on his comments about her next of
kin.

  So, you want to know why I have no family, Joe, she thought, you really want to know why I would not want that waste of space father to be my next of kin? Maybe we should go all the way back to when he could be bothered to be present in my life. Let’s start with a time when I first started school, when I made some friends, but I was afraid to invite them to my house in fear of what they might witness. Not just the screaming rows between him and my mother, no they were an everyday occurrence, or the piles and piles of empty wine and vodka bottles littered around our front garden, no, surely everyone’s parents like a drink every now and then! No, let’s talk about the violence, Joe, the fights they had, the bruises he left on her face, the time the ambulance came at three o’clock in the morning because my mother had stopped breathing. She was OK of course, a bottle of cheap ‘voddie’ and some of those anti-depressant pills she used to take made her feel better.

  When my schoolfriends would be out with their parents, visiting theme parks or having trips to the seaside, I was stuck in my tiny room with a pillow wrapped around my head, desperately trying to escape the shouting and the arguing around the house. Sometimes, Joe, I would stay in there for a whole weekend, not eating or drinking, just frightened to come out. He hit me a few times, Joe, with the buckle on his belt. He used to say that I was getting ‘too big for my boots’, so I suppose he had every right to do that. But it was different for my mum, he would hit her for no reason at all sometimes.

  The only time I did have my friends come to my house was my sixth birthday. I didn’t get much that year from my father, but my mother did – two black eyes and a broken nose! I can’t get that out of my head, Joe, that crazy woman dancing around the living room with a half-bottle of vodka in her hand, looking like she had fought ten rounds in a boxing ring. He did one of his disappearing tricks of course, went on the missing list for a week. He was good at that, Joe, running away from his guilt, hiding his shame.

  Oh, don’t get me wrong, Joe, there were some good days. I did go to the beach once, with that nice couple from Social Services. I was so embarrassed, I had to pretend to my friends that they were my aunt and uncle. I think I secretly wished inside that they were. I couldn’t tell you where the beach was, but we had some fun. I went on roundabouts and a few fast rides, we even had candyfloss and ice cream. I felt, I don’t know, I suppose I felt good about my life that day. I was just like my schoolfriends, feeling, well, just like any normal seven-year-old girl should feel. I didn’t want to go back home. If you had lived in my house you would know what I mean.

  It was there, Joe, there at the seaside that I bought my dad that keyring. I had emptied out all the coins from my money box at home and had taken them with me. I didn’t spend them at the arcade like most kids would do, no not me, not me. You see, Joe, I was very naive back then. I looked for ages in that gift shop, trying to find the right present. It had to be special, you see it was his birthday the following week, so it had to be the perfect present. I found it, Joe, the perfect gift, it was a lion-shaped keyring. You see, that was his star sign, Joe, and it had the words ‘best dad in the world’ sitting underneath the lion’s head. Now that was the funniest thing of all, I can laugh now, but to ever think of him as the best dad there could be has been the biggest joke of my life. I never saw that keyring after his birthday, I think he just put it in a drawer somewhere or maybe just threw it away, just like he threw me away. Did I ever tell you that, Joe? Did I ever tell you that he threw me away? I was just eight years old when he got rid of me. Just as if he was throwing out an old sofa or worn-out mattress, he just threw me away.

  Hey, the time is moving on quite fast now, Joe, it is almost quarter to eleven, nearly time for me to go. I can still hear you dribbling on, you are back on that crap again now, about ‘oldest sins and longest shadows’, but I don’t get it, Joe. I am so sorry, but I really don’t understand any of this biblical bullshit at all. We haven’t got long now, so why don’t I tell you about why I have no next of kin? Before my dad – and God that word is so hard to say – threw me away, I had a mother, Joe. I wouldn’t say a caring and loving mother, in fact, sometimes I think she was so out of it she never even knew that I existed, but she was my mother.

  I was only eight years old when she left, Joe, just eight years old. It was a Thursday, I know that because that was the day the bin men came to collect the rubbish. It was raining, it had been pouring down all morning. I was not at school, it could have been half term or something. Or maybe – and there were plenty of days like that – nobody was bothered to take me to school. Anyway, I was watching the television. I wasn’t worried that I was missing lessons. No eight-year-old would be, would they? She was blind drunk, Joe. It was half past ten in the morning and she was steaming. She told me she was going to the shops. I said she should take her coat, she would get wet if she didn’t take her coat. She put the brown one on, the one with the fur collar. She liked that one, I didn’t. There was no hug or kiss, Joe, but she did smile at me. I remember that smile. She looked funny. One of her teeth was missing at the side of her mouth, probably another gift from ‘the best dad in the world’. So she smiled that funny smile at me and left. I watched her from the window, Joe, I watched her swaying all the way down the road. I remember that a young couple laughed at her as she passed them by. And that was the last time I ever saw her. I was eight years old, Joe. Was that fair, was that really fair?’

  So, when she never came back, the ‘best dad in the world’ took me to the boating lake. He said that he wanted to talk to me, that he needed to explain why she had left. I used to like the boating lake. In truth I used to think that anywhere away from my house was good. But I didn’t understand him, Joe, I didn’t get what he was saying. He probably thought to himself, Let’s give the little brat a few spins around the island, buy her a nice ice cream and tell her that it was all her mum’s fault, she will feel better then. But I never did feel better, Joe, I never did feel better.

  And so, some days I wish him dead and some days I don’t think about him at all. Those are the better days for me, Joe, those are much better days for me. So let’s just put Cameron’s name down as my next of kin. I know he is not perfect. Yes, he can be violent. Yes, sometimes he hits me. There I have said it! So he would not be my first choice and God knows I know he would not be yours. But Cameron is all I have, Joe, he is all I have in this shitty little world, so he will have to do.

  I know you are not a bad man, Joe, I will try my best to forgive you for giving my useless father my phone number. You know, I really wish sometimes that I could tell you all these things, but you are not a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst or whatever they call it nowadays. To be honest I would not want to burden you with the story of my life. In truth, Joe, I don’t think you would be able to handle it. You see, you still believe that I can be saved, you really think that God would forgive me for what I did to Billy Keyes. But he wouldn’t, Joe, trust me, he wouldn’t! He knows that I have not been very good in my life, he knows that I am not sorry for the things I have done. It is far too late for me to read that big book that you keep banging on about and try to make my life better. Let’s not kid ourselves, come the day of judgment, Joe, we both know which way I will be heading.

  But I do wish that you would stop prodding at me every bloody week, prodding me, trying to get a reaction. You see they did that in Bronzefield – I am sure you have seen that in my notes – the people at the assessment unit at the prison. That is all they did, prod, prod, prod at me, all the time. Those men in their fancy suits and that strange American woman with the funny glasses, peck, peck, peck at my head. Hundreds, no, thousands of questions. Maybe the newspapers were right, Joe, maybe they should have locked me up for longer, maybe even forever. No offence, Joe, but maybe we should simply skip these weekly meetings, forget all this nonsense about rehabilitation and you should just let them have me sectioned. That is, after all, what you all want, isn’t it?

  At two minutes past
eleven Manning called a halt to the session. Poppy let out a sigh of relief. Only eighteen more bloody hours left to go, she thought.

  * * *

  Poppy exited the probation office much quicker than she had entered it, enjoying a much-needed cigarette on the way to where she had left her car. Her head was still spinning from her recent inquisition, but she had ticked off another visit and in her mind that was always good. She had an hour to kill before her shift started at the restaurant. She could have gone back to the flat, but Cameron had been in another one of his foul moods the previous night, so she thought it might be best to stay out of his way.

  Back at her car, she lit up another cigarette and counted the money in her purse. She had just over £11. She needed tobacco, phone credit and at least £5 of petrol in her car, so realised that she was going to be short. The tobacco was her priority. She couldn’t get through a day without her fix of nicotine, so the call to the anger management unit would have to wait a few more days. Poppy was confident that she would earn some tips from her job over the coming days, so she knew that she would be OK.

  Poppy loved her car. Her silver Omega 2.2 offered her a lifeline she had never previously enjoyed. Danny Riordan, the owner of Chez Blanc, had helped her to buy the car when she first started working for him. With the vehicle priced at £800, she would never have been able to afford the purchase, but he had bought the car for her and was deducting £60 each month from her wages, until the full sum was cleared. He had even helped her to arrange a cheap motor insurance plan with one of his many ‘contacts’. He justified his offer of assistance in simple terms. ‘You have some freedom to roam around the roads and I get a bloody good waitress who is never late for work.’

  Poppy had hated being locked away in prison for so long, but she would always recognise that she achieved two things at Bronzefield that changed her life. Firstly, their rehab team had got her completely clean of drugs for the first time since she was fourteen. Years and years of poisoning her body on a frequent basis had taken its toll on her, so the staff at the prison did not have an easy task. But she had been completely clean for over four years now and had found the resolution to stay that way, despite being around her boyfriend’s substance abuse on a regular basis.