by Casey Watson
‘No, I won’t be. I don’t think there’s any need. Unless you want me to, that is. I’ll be busy enough letting everyone know what the score is. I’m going to go round to see the Burkes as soon as I’ve finished making my calls. I’m sure they will be mightily relieved, aren’t you?’
‘Keeley didn’t seem to think they’d be worried in the first place. She seems to think she’s done them a favour by doing what she did. Which I really can’t get my head round. They must feel so manipulated.’
‘Well, they have been,’ Danny said, ‘but I’m also relieved. We were on very thin ice conducting an investigation like that without removing their adopted daughter from them, as you probably know. Still, at least we can move on now. And hopefully Keeley can too.’
‘So that’s the end of it? Is no one going to speak to Keeley? You know, officially? Make her aware of the seriousness of what she’s done?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll need to speak to my manager. But, to be honest, I’m not sure what purpose it would serve now. And I’m sure you’ll have already made that clear to her. Speaking of which, how have things been since we last spoke?’
‘Trying,’ I said. ‘She still seems determined to test us. Going out God knows where. Coming in when she feels like it. Staying up late, sleeping in late. Doing pretty much what she pleases. Which amounts to very little as far as I can see.’
‘But you’re still aiming to try and get her onto a college course?’
He spoke as if he didn’t hold out much hope. And perhaps I shouldn’t either. And I wavered for a moment, wondering if I should share my feelings with him. Let him know that Mike and I had reached a decision. That, as of today, Keeley was living with us on borrowed time. That we were going to give it a week and if she didn’t shape up and give us something positive to work on, I’d be having a rather different conversation with him in seven days’ time.
But there was no point in adding yet another negative to the pile. ‘My absolute level best,’ I assured him.
I left Keeley to sleep till I’d done all my chores, and, determined to maintain my positive mindset, decided that the matter was closed. So when she came down, bleary-eyed (had her night been sleepless too?), I simply told her that Danny wouldn’t be coming round to deliver any lectures, and that as far as I was concerned we’d draw a line under it all.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘And they can all move on with their sad little lives now, can’t they? And Jade’ll be okay. That’s the main thing.’
Once again, I was struck by how flippant her tone was. But elected to ignore it. She’d probably spent years perfecting it, after all. ‘Yes, she will,’ I said. ‘But you’re the one I’m interested in currently. D’you want some breakfast? Bacon sandwich? I’m going to have one. Then we’re going to sit down and talk about what we’re going to do with you.’
‘Do with me?’
‘Do with you. As in finding something for you to do. As in something more constructive than just hanging about.’
‘What, you mean work?’
‘No, I mean your education. I know you’re allergic to the word school, but –’
‘Because it’s pointless. I hate it. And I’m rubbish at it, too. Just ask them. They all think I’m thick, and I am.’
I pulled strips of bacon apart and put them into the pan. ‘You absolutely are not,’ I said firmly.
‘How would you know?’ she said, yanking the cutlery drawer open. ‘You’re not one of my teachers.’
Her voice was only mildly combative; more as if she was trotting out a well-worn line. ‘I don’t need to be,’ I said. ‘I have eyes and ears, don’t I? And I can think of lots of things that you’re good at.’
‘Like what?’
‘You’re very organised,’ I said, realising I’d now put myself in a situation where I had to think on the hoof. She’d have a keen nose for being patronised, I was sure. ‘You’ve only to look at your room to see that. To get that much stuff shoehorned into a bedroom is a remarkable skill to have, believe me. And – dare I say it – you are also resourceful. Just look at how you manipulated everything so that you could move house, for instance – even if you did it in a manner that I sincerely hope you won’t be trying again. And you’re well spoken,’ I hurried on. Maybe best we gloss over all that. ‘Well, most of the time, anyway. You’re polite. You’re intelligent. How could anyone possibly think you’re “thick”, as you put it? It strikes me that the only one who thinks that is you.’
I turned over the bacon while she pulled out two plates from the cupboard. ‘And – see? – you don’t need to be told to do things all the time. You have initiative, and you use it, and that’s a real sign of intelligence. To be honest, Keeley, I’m not even sure you even think you are thick. I think you just don’t like anyone telling you what to do. And you like to make it easy for yourself to duck out of things you don’t think have value. Like going to school. I think you peddle this line about being useless because you choose to. Brown or white?’
It was a long speech – definitely longer than I’d intended. And I’d clearly touched a nerve. Or struck a chord, or something. Because as I dished up the bacon on the bread she’d already buttered she seemed deep in thought.
‘Penny for them,’ I said, as she squirted on ketchup.
‘What?’
‘For your thoughts. What’s going on in there currently?’
‘It’s their fault. They ruined everything. You do know that, don’t you?’
‘Who did? Your foster parents?’
‘No, the social. When they took me away.’
She stopped to take a bite, and I did too. She was on a train of thought and I didn’t want to accidentally derail it. She seemed in the mood to state her case.
‘It was fine before they stuck their nose in. I was going to school. I liked school.’
‘You were still in primary school then, yes?’
She nodded. ‘They had no idea. They just decided stuff that they didn’t know anything about.’ Her tone was getting a little more strident now. ‘I did everything. They didn’t realise. They thought I was just some shitty kid, but I did everything.’ I let the word lie. ‘I had to. I wanted to. You know, to help Mum out, because she was sick all the time. I did. I did everything.’ She put the sandwich down to count on her fingers. ‘I did the cooking. Did the washing. Paid the milkman. Put the bins out. I even took Harvey to the doctors when he had chickenpox. Did you know that? I bet they didn’t put that on my file.’
Her eyes glittered. Her voice challenged me. This was already the longest and most meaningful conversation we’d had since she’d come to us. I shook my head. ‘No, I didn’t. But I’m not sure I know any ten-year-olds who’d have the presence of mind to do that.’ I picked up my coffee. ‘You should be very proud of yourself, Keeley. What are the rest of their names? Your brothers and sisters? Harvey is the youngest, right?’ She nodded. ‘And the others? We’ve not chatted about them yet, have we? Two of each, is that right?’
‘Aaron and Harvey are the boys. Harvey’s the baby. Aaron was six when they took me away.’ She frowned. ‘My sisters are Courtney – she was four. And then Lily. She was two.’
‘And you took care of all of them.’
She looked surprised that I even asked. ‘Course I did. I told you. I mean Mum did too. They don’t realise. They made out like she was so useless. But she wasn’t all the time. She didn’t want to be. It wasn’t like she didn’t try. She tried her best,’ she added plaintively.
I wondered about the conversations the ten-year-old Keeley had with whoever had become responsible for making the horrible decision to dismantle every foundation she’d ever known. A horrible, horrible job.
I also wondered if there was any mileage in speaking to someone about her past a bit more, before pressing on with her future. Was there any point? Were those ties completely severed now? Presumably someone knew the whereabouts of her siblings. It wasn’t the time to ask Keeley about that, however, not least becaus
e it could – probably would – be a road to nowhere. Or else surely it would have been looked into before.
I needed the full picture. But without the paperwork Danny had promised, I still didn’t have it. So instead I just nodded in agreement. ‘I’m sure she did, Keeley.’ I said. What mother wouldn’t, after all? Well, in theory. I knew nothing about Keeley’s mum, did I? Perhaps she was an entirely feckless mother, with heroin her only true love.
But listening to the way Keeley spoke, I suspected there must have been moments of light in the darkness. Love. At least flowing in that direction. Or perhaps she had just reprocessed her memories to make them easier to live with. Created a fantasy that was easier to bear than the reality. Of a loving mother, of giggling, clean, fresh-faced siblings. Of a functional, happy household. Almost none of this could be true. That much was obvious. And lovely as Keeley’s version of her past might be, I knew she wouldn’t be able to properly move on until she was emotionally strong enough to deal with the real past. To accept that it wasn’t all rainbows and fluff.
Right now, though, she was clearly in absolutely no doubt where the real villainy lay.
‘She did,’ she said. ‘She couldn’t help being ill, could she?
That word ‘ill’ again. My heart went out to her. How else was she going to process her mother’s addiction? Except by wrapping it up in pretty paper and tying it with a ribbon? And wasn’t addiction a type of illness anyway?
But this wasn’t the moment to ignite a wave of fury at those whom she saw as having ruined everything. Not yet. ‘And having that responsibility has clearly been good for you,’ I said briskly. ‘However bad everything else must seem. You’re a proper can-do person, Keeley, and you need to find something you want to do. Not write yourself off before you’re even an adult. Come on, think. What do you like doing?’ I nodded towards the living room. ‘I have a prospectus for you to look at, bristling with courses you could have a stab at. How about catering? You said you always used to do the cooking, didn’t you? Or child care, maybe? Or hairdressing? Hair and beauty, maybe? What am I even saying?’ I added, grinning. ‘You would be perfect for hair and beauty. What do you say? Can I tempt you to take a look?’
Keeley picked up my empty plate and stacked it on top of her own. ‘Did I tell you?’ she said, as she pushed her chair back to rise. ‘My mum was a hairdresser when she left school. You know, before having us and everything.’
Progress, I thought, mentally crossing my fingers. At last.
And then, almost as if to physically underline it, I heard the letter box squeak and the sound of a heavy envelope landing on the mat. Keeley’s notes, finally. Which would be my bedtime reading that night. What a difference a couple of hours could make.
Chapter 9
To my acute disappointment, not to mention sadness, Keeley’s notes didn’t make for the best reading. There was little in them that I didn’t already know, and what little I hadn’t known only served to confirm that there had been a reason for her being parted from her siblings, in the form of a big question mark hanging over her. A question mark about her that had effectively sealed her fate. And all sparked by a disclosure from a four-year-old.
It was usual, at the point when children are removed into care following a crisis, for any who are old enough to be interviewed. In the case of the McAlister children, this duly happened, the four- and six-year-olds, Courtney and Aaron (who’d been billeted together), both having been questioned about what happened on the night when the police came.
Mike’s assumption had been right. The children had initially been fostered separately for practical reasons, there being no one available to take them all. So it was that Keeley was fostered on her own, the middle two to a temporary foster home together, and the babies – the ones with the best chance of an untroubled future – into foster care alone, with a view to being quickly adopted. All of which I already knew, of course.
What I hadn’t known, however, was that, at that point, there’d been no plan to separate them permanently. Even with the younger two going up for adoption that didn’t preclude some sort of contact being maintained. And perhaps they’d have been reunited – at least in terms of regular contact – but for one thing. That the four-year-old, Courtney, when questioned about the man who’d done horrible things to her, had mentioned that Keeley had not only been there, but had also been the one ‘guarding the door’. She’d been confused and upset – this, too, had been recorded in the notes – and apparently they’d been unsure what she meant, quite, but of course (I say ‘of course’ because I might have felt the same) alarm bells about Keeley had begun ringing – and the person who’d interviewed Courtney had been anxious for clarification.
There had already been concerns that, as the oldest (and a pretty girl), Keeley herself might well have been regularly abused by the drug dealers – this man included – who profited from her mother’s addiction. There was no evidence of abuse, because Keeley had always refused to speak to anyone about it (perhaps, I mused, because she was old enough to understand the potential consequences of sharing anything with the official-looking women who were in and out of her mother’s life) but the possibility that her mother had allowed her to be had already been discussed.
I read on, painting a picture that I really hoped I wouldn’t. A picture of a girl who might well have been sexually abused for years, and by a series of men. And I didn’t doubt that was what went through the minds of whoever was responsible for sorting out the mess, because if she had been sexually abused from a young age, there was a fair chance she might be sexually inappropriate around her younger siblings. No point wishing otherwise – I knew that. Because it was something that happened all the time.
But had it in this case? And would it in the future? It seemed not at all clear. Keeley – then just ten – had already been questioned about the night they’d been taken and, raging against everyone, wanting only to be back with her family, she had refused to say anything about it. So they tried again, anxious to piece together her role in what happened, because so much depended on that one central question. And eventually persistence bore fruit. It was all there in the records.
‘Your sister said that you were holding the door while it was happening,’ went the question. ‘Keeley, were you?’
‘No,’ she’d said. ‘No, I wasn’t there!’ She’d apparently said it several times, too. But eventually, perhaps sick of the endless inquisition, she’d apparently screamed that all right, yes, she was there, and that of course she’d been holding the door shut. ‘I had to!’ she’d told them. ‘It’s my job to!’
The social worker questioning her had apparently then asked, ‘So it was your job to watch, was it? To watch and guard the door when the man came?’
And Keeley had apparently confirmed it.
‘Did you know about all this?’ I asked Danny, as early as was appropriate the following morning. I was keen to get hold of him in the window of opportunity between him getting to work and Keeley waking from her lengthy slumbers. I just couldn’t stop trying to answer my own question. Guard it against whom? The nosy neighbour? Keeley’s off-her-face mother? The police?
‘Yes, of course,’ Danny said, seemingly surprised that I even felt the need to bring it up. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘EDT didn’t have all this, did they? That’s why I’ve been so keen to get my hands on Keeley’s full records. Seriously, Danny, she has absolutely no idea why she was separated from her brothers and sisters. Did you know that?’
There was a pause. Possibly pregnant. ‘Of course,’ he said again.
‘But you’ve never discussed it with her?’
‘No, of course not …’ He paused again, possibly weighing up what kind of woman he was dealing with. ‘There was no question of my doing so,’ he went on.
‘But why?’ I said, still not understanding.
‘Because what was the point?’ he said. ‘It’s not as if it was ever going to change anything, was it?’ Another
pause. I waited. He eventually spoke again. ‘I think the feeling was – still is – that we should let sleeping dogs in that department lie. After all, as I say – and I think the feeling has always been this, to be honest – that it’s not as if we can help Keeley by going back over any of this, is it? And to lay it bare to her that she herself was the reason … well, that’s only going to make her feel even worse about herself, isn’t it? Assuming that’s even possible …’
He let it hang. And I stood there and weighed things up too. And thought back to two children we’d fostered before – the elder of which (in fact, both of which) had been similarly abused over several years. They too had been separated. To break the abuse cycle. To put it behind them. And, in that case, hand on heart, I realised I couldn’t argue. It had been the right decision. Perhaps it had been the right decision for Keeley too.
So I finally had my answer. And it settled things in my mind a bit more. Depressingly, it also put the phone sex into perspective. For a teen who, as a little girl, had been systematically abused by strange men, what she did on the phone for money must feel like water off a duck’s back. As if she was calling the shots. A kind of payback.
And Danny was right. I couldn’t change her past. Only help her with her future. It made me even more determined to see beyond the stroppy fifteen-year-old I was currently dealing with, and remember the frightened, abused ten-year-old beneath.
If sympathetic, Mike was also pragmatic. I’d droned on at him about it all as soon as I’d had the opportunity, but though he understood what I was saying he took the same view as Danny. How could it help Keeley psychologically to have chapter and verse on the reasons why she’d been separated from her siblings? It was all so much water under the bridge now, after all.
And I put it behind me, because they were both right. Did Keeley need any more reasons to feel bad about herself? No. She had enough of those already. But it galvanised me to the extent that I felt even more compelled to try and help her. To the extent that within the week I’d moved mountains for her. Well, various small heaps of educational red tape (challenging enough). And I eventually managed to sweet-talk my old colleague and friend Gary Clarke to offer Keeley a place on the Reach for Success programme that, as behaviour manager at the local comprehensive in my former life, I had helped set up.