by Danuta Kot
‘Aye. You paid for a week. Just let me know, right?’ He frowned. ‘Before you go – did you hear anything last night?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘The wife said she thought a car come off the road. I just went to take a look. There must have been a car – right mess it’s made of the ground – but it’s gone. Mind you, they see the sign, they see the road and they still come along it like fucking Brands Hatch. Someone’s going to get killed one day.’
‘Yeah. Well, I’d best be off then,’ he said.
The farmer nodded and wound up the window.
Had he covered everything? There was still that nagging feeling of something forgotten, but it was too late now.
Chapter 36
Kay was surprised and – OK – a bit flattered when Shaun Turner arrived on her doorstep the following morning with a bunch of early daffodils and a sheepish expression. ‘Kay. I was just passing, and I, well, I thought you might like these.’ He handed her the flowers.
‘Thank you.’ Kay took them, mentally noting that Lythe wasn’t really on the way to anywhere, and that if he was just passing, it was fortunate he happened to have a bunch of flowers with him. Shaun’s diffidence was more attractive than the bluff self-assurance she had seen before. ‘Would you like coffee?’
‘I wondered . . .’ He stepped around Milo, who was sniffing his shoes and trouser legs with focused intent. ‘I wondered if you’d like to come out for a drive and have lunch with me? Today? I know it’s short notice but it’s a beautiful day as I was just—’
‘That’s a lovely thought but I can’t today. I have to go to Bridlington.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘Bridlington? Why are you—’ He saw her frown. ‘Sorry. None of my business. OK, serves me right. I should have called first.’
He looked so crestfallen, Kay said, ‘Why don’t we have coffee at least? I’ve got half an hour.’
The offer of coffee cheered Shaun up. She got him ensconced in the chair by the stove and left him looking nervously at Milo, who was scouting for routes up onto Shaun’s lap as she went into the kitchen.
There was a small mirror on the kitchen wall and she checked her hair and make-up. She had dressed smartly for her Bridlington trip, and had to admit she felt relieved Shaun hadn’t caught her in her tatty dog-walking trousers, her old woolly hat and no make-up. Never too old for vanity.
She put the coffee on a tray and took it through with some of the chocolate cake she’d given to Becca the evening before. Shaun was thumbing through a book about the local coast Kay had been reading. ‘Wonderful smell,’ he said as she poured the coffee.
‘Cake?’
‘No, I— It looks very good. Did you make it?’
Kay nodded. ‘Yes. I’ve always liked baking.’ Baking was her way of distracting herself. Matt used to say he could tell if she was stressed by the number of cakes in the cupboard.
‘Then I will have some. Thank you.’
Briefly, the silence was awkward, then Shaun started talking about the project he and Matt had worked on together. ‘It got me thinking, what we talked about the other day,’ he said. ‘It’s a crying shame all that work got
cut. I know there’s nothing I can do to reinstate it, but I’m wondering if I can make a case for more funding.’
Kay gave an encouraging murmur. She felt sceptical about his chances, but it was a good idea.
‘Take this drop-in in Bridlington,’ Shaun went on. ‘That’s why I was surprised – here I am thinking about Bridlington, and you’re on your way there. Now, I happen to know that Neil Cowper is up against it financially all the time. They’re always looking for reasons to cut his budget. It’s not right, Kay.’
‘You’re in touch with Neil?’ Maybe she should discuss Becca with him. If he could get Neil Cowper to see things a bit differently . . . but it wasn’t her story to share.
‘No. I get to hear because I ask questions. I’ll be honest with you, Kay. I need something to keep myself occupied. I can’t get on with this retirement stuff. It was different when Sylvia was alive, but now, well, I don’t know what to do with myself. You seem to cope really well, but me – I’m struggling.’
Was she so different? What did her life hold? Walks with Milo, memories of Matt, baking – and trying to support Becca. That was worth something, but she couldn’t live the rest of her life through her foster-children. ‘It can be tough,’ she said, non-committally.
Shaun seemed to expand with enthusiasm. ‘Exactly, Kay. Exactly. You and me, we’re not the kind of people who can sit at home and do nothing. I was hoping – could we do this together? What I was thinking – start small, set up a fund, try and support the Bridlington place. That’s best because we both know it, but if it works, it’ll give us a starting point for expanding to set up other centres. What do you think?’ He was looking at her hopefully.
She let the idea run through her mind, not trying to conceal her doubts. It was a good idea, but Shaun was someone you’d have to be on your guard with. He was a take-charge person – so was she. They’d clash. But he’d be a good fundraiser. And – honesty now, Kay – she’d enjoy seeing more of him. And wasn’t it true that she, too, needed a project, needed something meaningful to do? She nodded. ‘I think it’s a very good idea. OK, I’m in. I’m not sure what role I could play, though.’
He beamed at her. ‘Thank you, Kay. I’ll confess, now. I’ve been having kittens thinking you’d say it was hopeless.’ He stood up and started pacing up and down, as far as the small, cluttered room would let him. ‘I’m impatient to get started now. Are you sure you need to go to Bridlington? We could have lunch, make some plans . . .’
Bridlington. The drop-in. She felt the stab of worry as his words reminded her of Becca’s visit the night before. Where was Becca? How was she? What was she doing? ‘I can’t change my plans, Shaun, but we can get together another day.’
‘Tomorrow?’
She laughed. She couldn’t get upset at his attempts to railroad her – they were so blatant. ‘Soon. But now I need to make a move or I’ll be late.’
‘Of course, of course. I’m sorry, I get carried away. I’ll call you. Listen, this is business, but we can arrange that dinner as well. And I promise I won’t talk shop.’
‘I don’t mind if it’s interesting.’
He smiled and held her gaze for a moment, then picked up his coat. ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ he said. As she closed the door behind him, she realised she was looking forward to it too.
But now, she had to get herself to Bridlington.
Chapter 37
Kay came into Bridlington on the Scarborough Road and started looking for somewhere to park. Her instinct was to march into the drop-in, confront Neil with the evidence of malicious trolling and challenge him to defend his treatment of Becca. Her conversation with Shaun had reminded her of the pressures Neil was under, but that didn’t excuse what he had done.
Her first reaction to the photos had been shock – not the sexy still of Becca reclining on the bed, but the photograph of the child. What had Becca been thinking? But as she calmed down, she realised there was no intended link – if they hadn’t been presented to her as a pair, she wouldn’t have made the connection.
The background was the same, but it took close study to identify it. In the sexy picture, the bed was central, filling the whole picture, ornamented with fluffy throws, sex toys, glitter – a kind of Barbie-world of soft porn. Becca was wearing a flimsy, almost transparent camisole top and knickers. Her tongue – Kay hadn’t known until then that Becca had a pierced tongue – touched her glistening lips. The word WOW! leaped out of a poster on the wall that was cropped by the edges of the image.
The other photograph was of a student flat – a desk, books, a laptop, the bed with a slightly rumpled throw – Becca and the child were both dressed in sun tops with spaghetti straps, but these were not the sexy, revealing tops of the other image. Both had Grrrl Power! written across the front, and they were laughing
and sticking their tongues out at the camera. The poster, and Becca herself, gave away the location to someone who really looked closely, but no one could possibly think the link was intentional.
Neil was a prat, and she was on her way to the drop-in to tell him so.
She found parking near the bus station. In summer, she would have been lucky to find street parking anywhere, but in winter, the town was empty. Kay had always liked Bridlington’s raffish air. The narrow streets of the old town, the harbour, the slightly rackety seafront had real charm despite the evidence of poverty and deprivation.
She stood by her car for a few minutes, trying to decide the best way to approach this. It was anger at Neil that had got her into the car, and a desire to challenge him about the spineless decision he’d made, but she needed a strategy. She needed a plan.
As she approached the drop-in, she saw a small group hanging around outside. Most of them drifted away as she approached, but two of them who were standing with bikes outside the entrance remained, watching her with interest.
One of them, a smallish lad with curly hair and an engaging freckled face, grinned at her, and years of fostering put her immediately on the alert. She knew trouble when she saw it. ‘Help you?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. Why don’t we introduce ourselves?’ These two were clearly something to do with the drop-in. ‘I’m Mrs McKinnon, and you’re . . .?’
She expected them to prevaricate and go, but the small lad grinned again and said, ‘I’m Liam. He’s Tez. You here for Bex, then?’
Kay became even more alert. These lads must know who she was and know about her connection with Becca. How? And their interest suggested the whole story was common knowledge. There was something seriously wrong here. Her anger at Neil increased. ‘That’s nothing to do with you.’ She said it pleasantly but firmly, concealing her alarm. If they wanted to talk to her, then they needed to mind their manners. She wanted to get to the bottom of this, but first, she needed to talk to Neil.
‘Liam, Terry,’ came a woman’s voice, ‘either come in, or go away. Don’t hang about outside, right?’ It was the cheerful voice of authority, and Kay looked towards the door where a small woman in dungarees with short, grey hair was standing.
‘Yeah, Hannah. Sorry, Hannah,’ the freckled one chanted, and the two of them rode away.
‘Little bugger, that one,’ the woman, Hannah, said, but she said it with a kind of residual affection that suggested the lads were just lovable rogues.
‘He looks like a bit of a handful,’ Kay said neutrally.
‘I’m Kay McKinnon. I’ve come to see Neil Cowper.’
‘Neil? Is he expecting you?’
‘He should be,’ Kay said, both grimly and untruthfully.
She followed Hannah through a hall that looked a bit like the youth clubs she remembered from her teen years, where she and her friends used to go to hops with live bands, the boys all standing round the dance floor looking self-conscious and young, the girls, more sophisticated, dolled up to the nines, dancing round their handbags.
It was a bare, utilitarian room, stacking chairs pushed back against the walls, scratched lino on the floor. There was a snooker table occupying one end of the space, and a small stage at the other. The paintwork looked grubby, and the windows were hung with limp, threadbare drapes. It cried out for some colour – bright curtains at the windows, posters on the walls. She knew Neil’s budget was tight to the point of vanishing, but surely some of the kids could have been persuaded to do some work on the place to make it more welcoming, more comfortable.
Hannah tapped on a closed door, then pushed it open without waiting for a response. ‘Neil. Kay McKinnon’s here.’
The door opened onto a small office. Neil was sitting at a desk that filled most of the room. He stood as they came in. ‘Kay! I wasn’t expecting anyone. You should have called. I’m very busy.’
‘I’m sure you can find me ten minutes,’ Kay said, shifting a pile of papers from a chair and sitting down. She smiled at Neil brightly.
‘I’ll get back to work,’ Hannah said. ‘Maybe see you later.’ She winked at Kay and left.
Neil looked furious. ‘I assume you’re here about Becca. There’s no point in having this discussion. As far as I’m concerned, the matter is closed.’
‘I don’t agree. I saw the pictures,’ Kay said. ‘All you need to tell me is why you took them so seriously.’
‘Why I— Kay, there was a child. What else could I do?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. Did you actually look at the pictures?’
‘No. Of course not. Well. Only to check they were what . . . what they looked like.’
‘And what’s that? What do they look like? To you?’ He flushed and she knew she’d scored a point, but the best way to get what she wanted was to let him off the hook. ‘You didn’t look too closely, I can understand that. But it doesn’t take a minute to see that the one with the child is perfectly innocent. It’s only the fact they were sent together that made the connection between them, you know.’
‘Kay, it’s more than that. They came with an email that said – accurately – that Becca had been sex-camming online, and one of the images involved a child. I did look at the images enough to work out that the second photograph, the one with the child, was not taken during a camming session, but the link is there. It’s unmistakeable. I’m not accusing Becca of doing anything deliberate, but we have to be vigilant, you know that.’
‘Of course you do. But there’s vigilance, and there’s . . .’ Kay, Matt-in-her-head cautioned, and she caught herself. ‘The way to look at it is this: if you’d seen the picture of Becca and the little girl on its own, what would you have thought?’
Neil smiled. ‘Ah, but, Kay, I didn’t see it on its own, so that’s irrelevant, isn’t it now?’
‘Not at all. You saw it in a fabricated context – not the context Becca intended. You know she wasn’t the photographer, don’t you? The image was part of her friends and family collection on Facebook, which had no connection whatsoever with her chat room – which, if you want to check it out, is Bexgirl.’ That crack about checking it out was probably unhelpful, but Neil had got right up her nose.
‘I’m not interested in the chat room.’
‘Of course not – but maybe you should be. You see, Becca wasn’t doing anything wrong there. She did what a lot of young girls do today – she made a bit of money out of web camming. And she used her own place to do it because she didn’t have anywhere else. It’s all . . .’ The word that came into her mind was ‘innocent’. ‘I expect there are loads of pictures from that flat that have nothing to do with the camming – it’s only because someone wanted to cause trouble that you were sent those two and made the connection.’
‘I can make up my own mind, be very certain of that, Kay.’
‘Then look again and do that.’ She showed him the photograph with Becca and the little girl – best not remind him of the sexy one again. ‘It’s just a snapshot,’ Kay said. And it was true; there were no prurient elements – except for the prurience in the viewer’s mind.
‘There’s no connection,’ she finished. ‘This is a photo. The other one’s a camera still.’
‘Yes, I see all that, but the connection is there. The college thought the same.’
Kay was temporarily silenced. She hadn’t thought about that. So this was why Becca had left college. Oh, Becca, why didn’t you tell me . . .?
‘We’ve got our funding review coming up – I can’t take any risks, Kay. There’s more than just Becca to think of.’
‘And you think that giving in to mean-spirited bullying is the way to make this place work? Someone’s been chasing Becca with these, you must see that.’
‘I do, Kay. I told you – I’m not making accusations against Becca, but she behaved recklessly. She put a child at risk.’
‘Oh, rubbish. Tell me, if Becca had shown you this picture –’ she slapped it down on the desk in front of him – ‘w
ould you have sacked her?’
‘I don’t know. That didn’t happen.’
‘This picture. Would you have sacked her? Come on, Neil. It’s a simple question.’
‘No it isn’t. You know and I know that one person’s innocent picture of a child can be another person’s pornography. Becca put this child in the position of appearing in an image that could be used as pornography.’
‘Becca is not responsible for other people’s minds, Neil.’
‘Kay, I understand you want to protect her, but you must know how attractive the sex industry can be made to seem for some of the girls here. It offers money, relationships, attention – I know it’s not like that, but if one of our workers makes it look like an alternative to a steady job, then that’s not good.’
He wasn’t going to shift. His argument about the sex industry was a hard one to counter. But she wasn’t giving up. ‘You realise any of your employees might be vulnerable to this kind of malice. If you let it succeed now, with Becca . . .’ She trailed off.
Neil sighed. ‘I didn’t want to lose Becca, to be honest. She was good at the job and the kids liked her. She was also responsible – she reported it at once when one of them got involved in something a bit dodgy.’
‘The car episode? The attack?’
He nodded. ‘We still don’t know if that was one of ours, but Becca did everything right.’
‘Then give her another chance.’
‘I can’t. Or not yet. The Head of Youth Services is asking questions – someone sent the pictures to him as well.’ Kay felt a sinking sensation in her stomach and had a vision of herself barging through doors higher and higher up the social services building in defence of Becca. ‘I could talk to him again I suppose. But not right away. Tell Becca to contact me in a couple of weeks, but I can’t make any promises.’
Kay was retired. She didn’t have an official position she could take, not anymore. She couldn’t act as an intermediary. ‘You need to tell her yourself, Neil,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure where Becca is.’