LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      Gary was the child protection officer there, and with Danny’s grateful sanction and help had enough clout to push it through. So it was that, anxious to seize the initiative, I drove Keeley up for an interview with him as soon as the following Wednesday, where he did an impressive bit of sweet-talking too – and putting not only two days of hair and beauty on the educational table, but also having her agree to a further two half-days – one to brush up on her English and the other to work on her maths. It would be unlikely to get her remotely close to GCSE-sitting level, but that wasn’t the point. It was something to put on a CV, to show that despite difficult circumstances she had at least been trying to better herself – a point he was able to get across to her so much better than I could. I could have kissed him. I definitely hugged him.

      The key thing was that this wasn’t anything like school, being much more like the sort of college course she’d be able to access this time next year. The Reach for Success programme was delivered off-site, free of uniforms, to pacify the most hardy school refuseniks. And it was very much centred around adult-style learning, and focused on learning job-centred skills. And when I drove Keeley up there for her first induction half-day, before she began proper, I was pleased to see it wasn’t just surviving; it was thriving – it was bigger and better attended than it had ever been.

      I know some people might see that as a failing by society. Quite apart from the fact that it might seem that – with their freedoms to dress as they chose, and the informal approach there – they were being rewarded for not toeing the school line. Wouldn’t it be better if all school-aged children were in school? Wasn’t this evidence of greater numbers failing to thrive in education?

      I’d heard all the arguments, but those of us who worked in the social sector knew all too well that to see it like this was to miss the point. There were far too many kids who, like Keeley, were persistent non-attenders, and who, once they reached an age where they were deemed not worth hounding (or their parents worth prosecuting, more pragmatically), simply slipped out of sight and, as a consequence, out of the range of help and support, which meant they were much more likely to be problem adults down the line.

      No, the more we could identify and mop up, and actually teach something, the better for everyone, as far as I could see.

      And Keeley was apparently as enthused about it as I was. I was still pinching myself that she’d acquiesced to my ideas so readily – it was such a turnaround from her ‘leave me alone, I’m going my own way’ stance, after all, and I was still ready for it to all go ‘tits up’ – as Tyler might put it if out of earshot. But, for now, at least, Keeley seemed totally on board with it.

      ‘It’s not a bit like school, Casey,’ she had enthused when I picked her up again. ‘I can’t believe no one ever suggested me doing something like this before. Everyone’s, like, so cool.’

      I privately wondered about how much her and my interpretation of the word ‘cool’ differed in this context. After all, in my day, most of the ‘students’ were the ones the school mostly despaired of – the trouble-makers, the bullies, the self-proclaimed no-hopers (even if I refused to believe that of them), and the angry and chronically disenchanted.

      But be that as it may, the fact that she liked the look of them made it so much more likely she’d give it a good go. ‘Oh, and Gary says hi,’ she added. Gary had been one of the ones doing the induction. ‘Can you believe that? We’re actually allowed to call the teachers by their first names? And they’re just so nice. So totally not in your face.’

      Since people ‘not being in her face’ was such a big deal to Keeley I did a little mental fist pump at this news. And the rest of the family, having already sensed a touch of battle fatigue in me and Mike over the previous couple of weeks, were equally enthused.

      Well, to a point. Keeley was due to attend her first hair and beauty session the following Monday, and though Lauren and Riley had agreed to come over to be hair models over the weekend in order to allow her to practise, Tyler was a little more reticent.

      ‘You seriously think I’m going to let you loose on my gorgeous mop? You’re having a laugh, you are, trust

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