by Casey Watson
Riley was making tuna sandwiches and coffee. ‘Mum,’ she said, as I came back into the kitchen. ‘Does your new phone have an alarm setting or a diary function or something?’ I grinned at this. I’d had my ‘new phone’ for a couple of months now, but I was still not entirely sure what all the buttons did. Hence the ribbing. ‘Because I keep hearing this beep – every five minutes or so – and it’s just occurred to me that that’s what might be making it. Could it be? I can’t think what else it might be.’
I reached for my bag. ‘Yes, it might be. It does do that. Very irritating. I’ve never been able to work out how to switch it off. I should ask Kieron …’ I fished my phone out and immediately saw what the problem was. It wasn’t an alarm. It was telling me I’d missed a call. ‘Oh, lord,’ I said. ‘It’s the school. And – oh God – they called over an hour ago. I hope it’s not something bad.’
Riley tutted as she cut the sandwiches. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘If she’s getting into trouble already, you are really going to have your work cut out, Mum!’
We both frowned simultaneously, remembering Justin. It felt like hardly a week went by when the school weren’t ringing me about some misdemeanour. And some of them pretty serious. But I shook my head. ‘I wasn’t thinking that. I was thinking more the illness.’
‘Oh, of course.’
I pushed the return call button.
The phone was answered promptly, and when I explained who I was, I was put straight through to Alan Barker, Sophia’s head of year.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to him. ‘I didn’t have my phone with me. What’s happened?’
‘Nothing to worry about too much,’ he replied. ‘So please don’t worry. It’s just that I think Sophia might have overdone it a bit during break this morning. She’s been complaining of feeling dizzy, and she doesn’t look very well, to be honest.’
I was confused by this as I’d definitely seen her take her tablets. ‘Oh, dear,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to come and get her?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ he said. ‘Just to be on the safe side. It could just be first-day nerves of course, but I’m told she has been running around a fair bit …’
‘No, that’s absolutely fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
I told Riley what Mr Barker had said, between grabbing my coat and taking mouthfuls of sandwich. ‘All a bit odd,’ I concluded. ‘She took her meds okay. She had her packed lunch and her snacks. God, I hope it’s not going to be this borderline all the time. It’s not what the doctor led us to believe, for sure.’
Riley looked sceptical. ‘Maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s just to get some sympathy, some attention. It wouldn’t be out of character, based on what we’ve seen so far.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But we can’t just assume that, can we? Not with something so potentially serious. Anyway, I’d better run. Thanks for the sandwich, love.’
‘What you had of it!’
Riley saw me out, and as I left she called me back. I turned around.
‘Just you keep your guard up, Mum, okay?’
I laughed it off, but was she already seeing things I wasn’t?
When I got to school Mr Barker and Sophia were already waiting for me in reception. I could see Sophia was giggling at something he was saying.
I didn’t know Mr Barker well, as he’d started at the school not long before I left to begin fostering, but I liked him and knew he’d keep an eye on Sophia. He was very upper crust, and was nicknamed ‘the dog’, because of his name, but I doubted that was the witticism he was sharing. But he’d obviously taken her mind off her malaise, and to me she looked the picture of health.
‘Ah, Mrs Watson,’ he said now. ‘Thank you so much for coming. As you can see, Sophia’s feeling a bit better now, aren’t you? But we obviously didn’t want to take any chances.’
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Come on, love.’ I turned to Sophia. ‘Let’s get you home so you can have a nap.’
‘I told them not to bother you,’ she said to me as we walked back across the school car park. ‘You shouldn’t have had to come out and get me. I didn’t want to come home. I told them I’d be fine in an hour, if they just let me rest.’
I patted her shoulder. She was so much taller than me that I couldn’t put a friendly arm around it. ‘Don’t worry, love,’ I said. ‘They were just being careful. They probably don’t have enough staff available to keep a proper eye on you. If you’re well you’re in class and if you’re ill you go home.’
She shrugged then, a teenage ‘whatever’ expression on her face, and I wondered if perhaps Riley had been right, that she’d feigned the dizziness to get attention – but not that much attention. They’d probably been used to managing her Addison’s in her old school. So perhaps she hadn’t figured on being sent home. Or maybe the opposite was true: she actually liked being sent home, and her telling me otherwise was just to keep me sweet. Oh, it was all so confusing, trying to read her.
And once at home, her manner changed again.
‘C’mon, missy,’ I said, forestalling her from flopping down on the sofa with the remote for the afternoon. ‘We need to get some water and a salty snack inside you, and then you have to go to bed for a bit.’
I was pleased by how readily the ‘rules’ came to mind. Mind you, I had studied the huge amount of info very thoroughly. She’d obviously been running around a lot, and needed to rehydrate. She also needed salt. I wasn’t sure exactly why that was – so much science! – but the advice was clear. And then she needed sleep. But she shook her head. ‘No need,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Clearly not,’ I persisted, ‘or the school wouldn’t have sent for me. Come on,’ I said. ‘Into the kitchen, so we can get you sorted before some shut-eye …’
She pointed the remote at the TV and it hummed into life. ‘I told you,’ she said slowly. ‘I am fine.’
Okay, I thought. Okay. Deep breath. ‘Sophia, you might feel fine, but I need to know you are. So would you please turn the TV off and come with me.’
Before I could even finish, she’d flung the remote onto the coffee table with a loud clatter, leapt up and turned the television off by hand.
‘Satisfied?’ she asked me, her tone caustic as she pushed past me.
I exhaled slowly and followed her into the kitchen. ‘Yes, thank you. Though perhaps next time we’ll have the teachers deal with this in school. That way, you’ll actually be able to stay there.’
I left the room feeling duped. And also cross. How did you handle something like this – something with so much scope for manipulation? You obviously couldn’t call her bluff – she might end up seriously ill. But at the same time, this amount of power over people was doing her no good. I lit a cigarette, out in the conservatory. One thing was clear. I wouldn’t be able to give my habit up any time soon. But, feeling calmer, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. This could all be related to the stress of the visit to see her mother at the weekend. I must make allowances for that. And, as if on cue, Sophia appeared then, in the conservatory doorway. ‘I’m sorry, Casey,’ she said haltingly. ‘You know, about just now. I just get a bit ratty when I have a wobble with my meds.’
I patted the seat beside me. She sat down. ‘But I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I thought your consultant said your medication levels were stable.’
She shook her head. ‘Not if I get stressed. Or if I do a lot of extra exercise.’
‘But surely you know not to do that? I know I read somewhere that if you’re doing more than normal exercise, then you need to take some extra steroid before you do it, don’t you?’
She nodded. ‘But I didn’t know I was going to be doing that, did I?’ She frowned. ‘But you can’t not, can you? Not when everyone’s got a game on, and you’re the new girl … I don’t want to look like I’m some stuck-up cow who won’t join in, do I?’
I couldn’t argue with that, and I felt sorry for her. It must be tough.
I
clasped her hand and squeezed it. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know. Now how about that sleep, eh?’
I was pleased about our chat, and, actually, it didn’t really matter. If she had made herself ill accidently, or did it on purpose, it didn’t make any odds. What mattered was that we kept on communicating. I’d have a word with the school in the morning, just to keep them in the loop, and make a point of reading up some more on her taking extra medication. This, I decided, was all completely sortable. I just needed to know exactly how to sort it.
I was in a much better frame of mind as I set about making our dinner – steak and chips with all the trimmings, plus my own home-made peppercorn sauce. And by the time Mike and Kieron got home, Sophia and I agreed that we were both absolutely starving, and that if they didn’t come to the table pronto we’d eat theirs as well.
It set the tone for a nice relaxed family dinner. We weren’t the Waltons, but sometimes it made me so happy just to sit round the table as a family, chatting about nothing. But it seemed the ‘nothing’ part was going to be short-lived.
‘How’d your first day go?’ Mike asked Sophia as he began tucking in.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I made a new friend called Lucy. She seems nice.’
‘One of many, no doubt,’ Kieron chipped in with. I was pleased. He seemed to be making a real effort to get along with her.
‘Oh, no,’ Sophia said, before delivering the news that the rest of the girls already hated her.
‘But why?’ I asked.
‘Because all the boys fancy me, of course,’ she answered. I opened my mouth to comment and then I closed it again. She was twelve. Twelve-year-olds were inclined to make pronouncements like that. Particularly pretty ones like Sophia.
‘Oh, you’ll make more,’ Kieron persisted, shrugging it off. ‘Don’t you worry.’
‘Oh, I’m not worried,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to have friends really, anyway.’
‘Why ever not?’ Mike asked.
‘Because you can’t trust them.’ Her face darkened. ‘My last best friend, Chloe, tried to turn me into a lesbian. And –’
‘Sophia, love,’ I interrupted. ‘Shall we talk about this later? Not a topic of conversation for teatime really, is it?’
‘But she did!’ Sophia persisted, now fired up, eyes flashing. ‘And my caring mother didn’t give a damn! Oh, Sophia, stop complaining, she’s just being friendly, stop moaning … Yeah, right, Mum. Like she ever gave a damn!’
‘Sophia,’ I said, shocked. ‘Please, just leave it. We can discuss all this later. Now calm down and let’s all just finish our tea, eh?’
She put her head down and continued eating, as the conversation juddered back to life.
‘Lovely steak, love,’ said Mike.
‘Flattery will get you everywhere,’ I answered.
‘Uurgh! Pass the sick bucket,’ Kieron whined. ‘Please.’
Sophia smiled too, and the tense moment seemed to have passed. And as I’d promised her, we would definitely talk about it later. It was clearly something she badly needed to get off her chest.
That and a whole heap more, besides.
Chapter 8
It’s a special place, my conservatory, especially in the evenings. It’s nice any time – my haven, my place of solitude overlooking the garden – but at night time it really came into its own. With the soft lighting, you couldn’t see the jumble of garden furniture stacked in the corner; all you really noticed were the two sofas, both covered with fleecy throws, and accessorised with piles of colourful cushions. It was cosy, too, the heating having been on all day, the perfect place to sit and relax.
The washing up done and the boys off watching football, I carried through my coffee and Sophia’s glass of milk and placed them on the little pine table that sat between the sofas. Then I sat down myself and patted the space beside me.
‘There,’ I said. ‘Peace at last. Come on, sit down and rest your legs, love.’
She duly sat next to me and leaned back. ‘It is true,’ she said. She had obviously been dying to tell me about it. ‘She did make me a lesbian, Casey. I know she did.’
‘It’s not up to her,’ I said. ‘It’s up to you. Do you think you’re a lesbian? What I mean is, do you like girls the way you like boys?’
This wouldn’t have been a conversation you’d have with many 12-year-olds, I thought. But she was very well developed, and aware of it, too. And I’d come across that many children now whose stories would make some people’s hair curl. Out of the mouths of babes and all that, sadly.
She glanced across at me. ‘Casey, I do know what a lesbian is. And no, of course I don’t. It was just that one time I, well, you know, did it with Chloe.’
I had to think carefully before speaking. ‘And it really doesn’t mean anything. You know, lots of girls experiment with kids of their own sex when they’re your age. It doesn’t mean they’ve committed to being gay. It’s just – well, like I say – experimenting.’
‘But Chloe said it made me one, because I let her.’ She pulled her legs up underneath her, so she was half-turned towards me. ‘And when I asked my mum – I was worried, I really was – she was, like, “Oh, stop going on.” She didn’t even want to know.’
I wondered then at Sophia’s overt flirting around men. Was she trying to prove a point? And to herself? ‘I think maybe your mum was trying to explain it, like I am, that it doesn’t mean anything, so you shouldn’t worry about it. After all, you have years ahead to work out who and what you are. I think you should just put it out of your mind.’
Instinctively then, seeing her anxious face – which now seemed very childlike – I reached an arm around her shoulder and drew her in towards me. She responded by throwing her own arms around me and hugging me so tight she nearly squeezed all the breath out of me.
‘Oh, Casey,’ she said, letting me breathe again finally. ‘Thanks. Thanks so much for listening. My mum never listened to me, ever.’
I could have said ‘I’m sure she did’, but I didn’t know that to be true, and I didn’t want to trot out platitudes. It wasn’t as if there was a relationship that could be rebuilt here. That was the tragedy. And it was also important that she work through all the issues she had around her mother. I had no idea what sort of a mother she had been, after all. So instead I just speculated. ‘Perhaps it just seemed that way, because she was trying to make light of it. Like I said –’
‘I don’t mean just about that. I mean everything. Like when her boyfriends would touch me up. She never listened. She wouldn’t listen. Des. He was the first. Used to come up – just like that – and squeeze my boobs. And when I told Mum she just laughed. I hated him.’
I felt an all too familiar sense of dismay. ‘Did you tell anyone else?’
‘Not at first. Later, yes, lots. With the next one, I did. But not at first. Not with Des.’
The next one? Oh, God … ‘But that’s serious, Sophia. Are you sure? I mean, are you sure he was doing it deliberately?’ I felt a fool for even asking. But this was a potentially serious matter. And I had Mike’s words of caution now fixed in my mind.
‘Of course I’m sure. How can you do something like that by accident?’
‘And your mum didn’t do anything?’
‘I told you. She just said I was being silly. So I just decided in the end that I would make his life hell instead.’ Her expression hardened. ‘I thought if she wasn’t going to get rid of him, I would. I just moaned about him all the time, saying how mean he was to me, and I’d refuse to eat when he was there till in the end he stopped eating with us. And they’d argue about me all the time, and he’d get mad, and in the end she threw him out. Good riddance!’
‘But afterwards,’ I said. ‘Did you tell her the truth afterwards?’
Her features changed radically, even as I watched. ‘Oh no, I didn’t need to. It was lovely again without Des. Just me and Mum, together. Girls together. We used to stay up late, watching chick flicks and eating popcorn … Or reading
girly mags together, no men to bother us. It was so lovely …’
She seemed almost lost in her own little world now, and I wondered if all these revelations had been triggered by the prospect of seeing her mother again. I couldn’t begin to imagine how hard that must be for a child. Your only parent effectively dead, and yet you had to keep going back … seeing her lying there … just awful. The poor, poor kid. She’d started to cry now, I noticed.
And then her voice changed again, her lip curling. ‘Didn’t fucking last, though, did it?’ I could feel her body stiffening now beside me. ‘Oh, no, I wasn’t enough for her, was I? Never enough. She was man mad, my lovely mother.’ She looked sharply at me now. ‘D’you know, she’d only been seeing Steve a week when she moved him in!’
‘So he came to live with you after Des, then?’
She nodded. ‘After a week, that was all!’
‘This was the “next one” you were talking about then?’
Her sudden laugh made me jump. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, still looking at me but now through me. ‘And the last. You know what that bastard did?’
I didn’t need to answer. She seemed on autopilot now, the tears streaming down her face unchecked. I took hold of her hand as she spoke. ‘He tried to rape me. He waited till my dear mother had gone out to a parents’ evening – a parents’ evening, can you believe it? I was just sitting in my room, doing my homework, listening to music, when in he came. And he was like, “All right, babe? What you up to?” Then he came over to look at my homework, and …’
She had to stop then, because she was really crying now. Huge gulping sobs. She was finding it difficult to catch her breath. And from behind her I caught sight of Kieron, just about to open the door from the kitchen, so I pulled her close to me again and waved at him not to. ‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ I soothed. ‘Take as much time as you need. You need to get all this outside of you, don’t you?’