Broken

by Rosie Lewis

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was a few days later, on Monday 3 March 2015, that I gained my first real glimpse of the pain Archie had battled so hard to keep hidden away.

  I had gone to the supermarket straight after dropping the children at school, and it was just as I’d carried all the bags through to the kitchen that the telephone rang. It was Clare Barnard, the SENCO. ‘Rosie, sorry, I need you to come into school. Right now, if you can.’

  My chest tightened. ‘What’s happened? Are the children okay?’

  ‘They’re fine. I mean, they’re well, but there’s been an incident with Archie. We need to speak to you urgently.’

  I quickly stowed the cold items in the fridge and grabbed my keys. I made it to the school within fifteen minutes, nerves churning in my stomach. Clare met me in reception, her expression grim, and showed me through to her office. ‘Archie has been giving money to some of the Year Six boys,’ she said, as soon as I sat down. ‘It’s been going on for weeks apparently, but it’s only just come to the attention of the staff.’

  ‘Poor Archie,’ I said, my chest tightening with pity. The expression on Clare’s face told me that she didn’t share my feelings. Her lips were set hard, her eyes uncompromisingly clear. I felt a flare of irritation towards her. ‘You know who they are, then? The boys involved?’

  She nodded. ‘One of them came to me this morning to report it.’

  I raised my eyebrows, surprised. ‘They’re nice boys, Rosie,’ Clare continued. ‘They’ve been taking Archie’s money, but not in the way you probably think. Archie has been plying them with cash so that they’ll let him join in when they play football. They’re reluctant to let the younger ones play; you know what children are like. But it seems that Archie has been bribing his way onto the team.’

  My heart lurched. Abandoned by his family and ostracised by his peers, Archie was a boy so desperate for friendship that he’d resorted to paying other children to spend time with him. I didn’t know about Clare, but the thought of a child being that lonely made my heart bleed.

  I couldn’t understand, then, why Clare’s expression remained so impassive. I was also bemused as to why I had been summoned so urgently. My heart ached for Archie, but surely giving his pocket money away wasn’t really a matter deserving of such gravity? ‘Poor Archie. He’s all over the place at the moment.’

  Clare nodded, softening a little, but then she pressed her lips together. ‘That’s not the worst of it, Rosie, I’m afraid. The boy who came to me didn’t want to get Archie into trouble, but he was very upset by something Archie had showed him on his phone.’

  I looked up sharply. ‘On whose phone?’

  ‘Archie’s phone.’

  ‘Archie doesn’t have a –’

  My words trailed off as Clare reached into one of the trays on her desk. She pulled out a mobile phone and held it up. ‘Do you recognise this?’

  I shook my head, incredulous. ‘I’ve never seen it before. That’s an iPhone, isn’t it? It can’t be Archie’s.’

  ‘Archie has admitted that it is. You didn’t know he had one?’ She turned the handset this way and that, as if I might suddenly remember seeing it around.

  ‘No! I wouldn’t allow a child of his age to take a phone into school.’ With a slow stomach roll, I remembered Archie’s disinterest in telephone contact with his mother. Could it be that he’d been calling her while out of earshot, up in his room? My thoughts tumbled over themselves, and then rewound to what Clare had just said. ‘What was it that upset this boy?’

  Clare grimaced and lowered the phone to her desk. ‘Oh no,’ I said, covering my face with my hands. Anticipating her answer, I was beginning to feel quite sick.

  ‘I’m afraid so. It was very explicit material.’

  My stomach contracted. ‘Where has he found stuff like that? YouTube? Or one of the other sites?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re quite grasping the stuff I’m talking about, Rosie. This sort of thing isn’t new to us. Most of the Year Sixes bring phones to school; even some of the Year Fours and Fives have them. We know they circulate videos between themselves, things I personally wouldn’t want children to watch, but what Archie had on his phone is another level entirely. We’re not talking topless ladies in skimpy underwear. This is seriously nasty material. The sort of thing I’ve never seen in my life, and I’ve been around the block a few times, I can tell you.’

  I groaned, my stomach flipping somersaults. ‘So what happens now?’

  Clare tapped her fingers on the phone. ‘I’ve confiscated it, obviously. Mrs Cullum-Coggan is off today, so I’ve had to make a decision myself, and I’m going to send him home. He was in quite a state when I confronted him over it, so I think it’s best all round if he stays off for a couple of days. He’s waiting with one of the TAs at the moment. I’ll take you to him now.’

  It was almost half past eleven when we reached reception and not long until I needed to pick the girls up. Archie hung back as the TA walked towards me, his head dipped to his chest, school shirt hanging below his school jumper and wavy hair sticking out in all directions. ‘Hello, Arch,’ I said softly. He mumbled something but kept his eyes averted. Usually an expert at deadpan, there was something alarming about the discomfort so evident on his face.

  ‘Bye, Archie, love,’ the TA said when she reached me. She was a plump woman, not much taller than him. I was relieved to hear kindliness in her tone. She gave me a grim smile and patted him on the shoulder before turning and walking away.

  ‘Thank you, Rosie,’ Clare said beside me. She looked at Archie over the top of her glasses. ‘We’ll see you on Thursday, young man.’

  He said goodbye politely, his eyes flicking towards her and then quickly away. I gave Clare one last look over my shoulder before we left and she raised her eyes at me.

  ‘You’ve had quite a morning, love, haven’t you?’ I said as we crossed the playground towards the road. He gave a small nod but didn’t say anything. ‘It’s not worth going home. We have to pick the girls up soon. How about a walk beside the river?’ He gave a little shrug and followed me silently to the car.

  It may have been winter outside, but the car had a microclimate all of its own with Archie in it. I looked in the rear-view mirror as I drove towards the river. His inscrutable expression had reappeared, but hot fury simmered underneath; I could feel it radiating from him. I knew that getting him to talk about what he’d done was likely to be an uphill battle.

  We walked wordlessly through the woods leading to the river. The ground was hard, though not icy, the air having lost its bitter edge. It was windy on the riverbank though, and quite nippy. Archie sat with his head tucked into his coat and his hands deep inside his pockets while I ordered drinks from the tea hut. I handed him a hot chocolate and sat beside him, so that we were both facing the river. I blew across the steaming surface of my takeaway tea. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened, Arch?’

  He looked down at his lap. ‘Not really.’

  I was about to say something when I caught sight of a toddler running along the towpath behind the hut. There was no sign of anyone with him and he seemed to be heading directly for the water. When he got dangerously close I jumped out of my seat ready to grab him. A woman pushing a buggy ran in front of me and whipped him back. She carried him under her arm like a roll of carpet and as she passed she gave me a grateful smile. It was only then, as she strapped the little boy in the buggy and tucked a blanket around him, that my thoughts turned suddenly to Bobbi. A sensation of momentary weightlessness hit me. At the same time, I felt a cold chill run across the back of my neck.

  The thought of a boy of Archie’s age watching pornographic content was deeply concerning, but if Bobbi had been exposed to it as well … the idea made my stomach churn. I looked at Archie, filled with sadness for his loss of innocence. It was as if his childhood had been taken away from him. I wondered whether there was a way of getting it back. But then, you couldn’t ever ‘unsee’ something, could
you?

  Never had I been so grateful for the Safer Caring guidelines issued by my fostering agency than I had at that moment. At least, I told myself, there was no way that Megan could have seen the content on Archie’s phone, since she’d never been left alone with him. My rules wouldn’t have helped Bobbi though, since she had shared a room with Archie, both in my house and in their own.

  I didn’t want to cause Archie any further humiliation, but I needed to get the conversation going somehow. Feeling that his pocket money was the issue that might embarrass him the least, I said: ‘Miss Barnard tells me that you’ve been giving money to some of the boys.’

  He looked up across the river. His hot chocolate stood untouched on the table in front of him. ‘You can talk to me, Archie. I’m not cross. I just want you to help me understand.’ One of his knees began to wobble. The metal chair he was sitting on rattled against the hard ground in synchrony with his vibrating knee. And then another thought occurred to me. ‘Was that what you intended to do with my bracelet? Give it to someone at school?’

  He turned sharply. ‘That wasn’t me! Bobbi took it.’ His cheeks coloured. ‘She didn’t mean anything bad by it. She didn’t know what she was doing.’

  I held up a hand. ‘This isn’t about blame.’ He looked relieved and turned away again. ‘I wondered what had happened to the pocket money I’d given you,’ I persisted, making an effort to lighten my tone. ‘I thought there was something odd going on when we came out of the Harry Potter shop empty-handed.’

  He blinked, his lips curving ever so slightly upwards. ‘There was me asking why you weren’t treating yourself to one of the wands, and all the time you had no money left to spend in there.’ My tone grew serious again. ‘I wish I’d known, Arch.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said quietly, a clipped edge to his voice.

  ‘You don’t have to apologise, honey. But I would like to know why you’ve been giving your money away.’

  ‘They all hate me!’ he said, his eyes suddenly flashing with anger. ‘All of them.’ He dropped his head and stared into his lap again.

  ‘The children at school?’

  ‘Yes,’ he snapped. ‘Everyone else has got someone to go round with. I’m always on my own.’ When he looked at me his eyes were brimming with tears.

  ‘And you thought giving them money would make them include you?’

  He nodded. ‘It backfired though, didn’t it, cos they went and told on me.’

  ‘It’s good that they did though, love, in a way. Because now we know how you feel we can try to help you.’

  ‘No one can help! I’m weird and everyone hates me, even my own mum and dad.’ He leapt from his seat and stamped away to the water’s edge, where he picked up some stones and tossed them in the water. I dearly wanted to help him, but it was time to pick Megan up. I left him alone for another minute or so and then grabbed our drinks.

  ‘We have to go and get the girls now. We’ll talk more later.’ He ignored me, but when I walked away I sensed him behind me. It was like being shadowed by a black cloud; so visceral was his misery.

  Megan was delighted when she saw him, but for once, he didn’t respond when she spoke to him. She stared at him in puzzlement and then looked up at me. ‘Archie’s a bit tired, love,’ I said, steering her away from him.

  He wanted to wait outside the school reception while I went in to collect Bobbi. The receptionist threw me a sympathetic glance – clearly word had already got around amongst the staff. Bobbi threw her arms around Megan when she saw her and didn’t seem to notice the change in routine when she saw Archie waiting outside.

  ‘Got any chocolate?’ she asked with the merest glance at her brother. She handed her book bag to me and looked up hopefully. She may have lost the urgency over mealtimes at home but, like most children when they came out of school, she was ravenously hungry and she needed a snack. ‘NOW, Rosie!’

  I pulled some Milky Way bars out of my pocket and gave one to her and another to Megan. ‘There you go. We’ve got lunch when we get home.’ Bobbi opened the wrapper with her teeth and wolfed it down in one. The girls’ happy chatter mercifully lightened the tension in the car as we drove towards home.

  ‘I’m really tired,’ Archie said when we got in. ‘Can I go to bed?’

  I wanted to encourage him to confide in me but knew it was probably best not to push him to talk. ‘Of course you can. Shall I bring you some lunch?’ He shook his head and walked away with the gait of an elderly man. His shoulders were slumped and his movements lethargic, as if life’s troubles had knocked all the energy out of him.

  After preparing lunch for the girls I sent an email to Danny, telling him what had happened at school. I also completed my log then played a board game called Tummy Ache with the girls. At just after half past three I went up to Archie. He was sitting on his top bunk, reading his book. ‘You must be hungry, Arch. Do you want to come down for lunch?’

  ‘I’m at a really exciting bit,’ he said in an even tone. Somehow, he’d managed to fix his mask back in place. ‘Can I stay here and read? I’m not hungry yet.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll call you at dinner time if you’re not down by then.’ About half an hour later I poured some orange juice into a glass in the kitchen, picked it up, put it down again then stared at it. I couldn’t decide whether to leave him alone or remind him I was around if he needed me. In the end I took it up. ‘Thank you,’ he said before I’d taken a few steps into the room.

  On my way out I glanced under the bed, wondering whether their bounty of food had been refreshed. I couldn’t see anything and hadn’t noticed food going missing from the kitchen, but, then again, I hadn’t noticed that he’d had a mobile phone, so there was every chance he’d managed to smuggle enough for a siege.

  The events of the day spooled through my mind on a loop as I prepared dinner. I kept thinking about the allegations made by Tanya against Jimmy. I had no idea of the exact nature of her accusations, but could it be that she was somehow trying to protect the children from him? And perhaps that was why both Tanya and Jason had objected so strongly to contact between the children and their father at the LAC Review.

  I called Archie down for dinner at half past five. He joined Megan, Bobbi and me at the table and although it was his favourite – chicken fajitas – he hardly ate a thing. I found my own appetite lacking too. Neither of us, it seemed, relished the prospect of playing cards together this evening.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘But I’m really tired, Rosie,’ Archie insisted, after I’d settled the girls in bed. He was standing in the doorway of the living area, one foot edging back into the hall.

  ‘Let’s not play cards then, love.’ Grasping the nettle, I sat on the sofa and patted the cushion beside me. ‘We’ll have a quick chat, then you can go up to bed.’

  He walked forward warily, dropping down on the edge of the cushion at the opposite end of the sofa with a loud huff. ‘I don’t know why you have to keep going on about it.’

  ‘I asked you about your pocket money,’ I said gently. ‘But we didn’t speak about your phone.’

  He stiffened. ‘So, I had a phone and didn’t tell you. Sorry, okay.’

  I angled myself so that I was facing him, though he remained perched on the edge, staring straight ahead. ‘You should have told me about the phone, but that’s not what I’m most concerned about, Archie. What worries me is what you’ve been watching on it, and what you’ve been showing your friends at school.’

  ‘They’re not my friends!’ he snapped, spinning around to face me. ‘I told you, they hate me.’

  ‘I’m sure they don’t –’

  ‘It’s not fair!’ he shouted. ‘The other kids show gross stuff on their phones all the time! Ambrose in Year Four showed a clip of a snake eating a cow once. It made Chloe puke all over the playground but she still never sneaked on him. Everyone thought it was hilarious. It’s only when I do it they freak.’

  I paused. ‘I didn’t see what was on your phone, A
rchie, and I don’t want to either, but from what Clare was saying, it was pretty nasty stuff. Not just something you could have downloaded from an ordinary website.’

  A flush of shame flew across his cheeks, quickly followed by a flash of fury. ‘What would you know about it?’ he screamed. He began slapping the back of his head repeatedly, and hard. ‘You can’t even work the telly remote!’

  I gave him a long steady look.

  ‘Well, you can’t! And your phone is as old as you are. You haven’t got a clue.’

  ‘Archie …’

  He stared at me in fury but then his shoulders slumped, as if he realised it was useless to protest. He covered his face with his hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice cracking.

  I shuffled along the sofa until I was about a foot away from him. ‘It’s not actually your fault, love. None of this is. It’s the fault of whoever gave you the phone. Was it your mum?’

  His hands dropped from his face. He sniffed, keeping his face angled away. ‘No.’

  ‘Who gave it to you then? Your dad?’ Had the provider of the phone – and as far as I was concerned it was bound to be either his mother or father – also sent Archie the content on it, I wondered. Or was that something he had managed to download himself? I felt entirely out of my depth and hoped that Danny would contact me soon.

  Archie stayed silent. ‘Listen, love. Someone pays the bill for the phone. It won’t be difficult to find out who it is.’

  He turned around. ‘Find out?’

  ‘Well, I’m going to have to tell Danny about this, and he’ll –’

  ‘No, please don’t tell anyone! Please, Rosie!’

  His voice cracked again and I felt a wave of pity roll over me. ‘I have to, honey, and Danny will want to find out where the videos came from, as well as the phone.’ I wasn’t sure whether that was even possible, what with data protection and privacy rules in place. No doubt the police could find out what they needed to know, but I had already heard that CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, was operating beyond capacity. I doubted that precious resources could be spared for an investigation such as this. Still, Archie didn’t know that.