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phone to Helena Curry for the best part of an hour, and then had to relate everything she’d told me to Mike. No, we might not have had a meeting, but it felt almost as good as, because she was having a quiet night, had most of the file and was happy to chat.

      Our conversation wasn’t an edifying one. As Keeley had already told us, she was indeed one of five siblings. The oldest of them, in fact, by some distance. She’d been ten when they’d been taken from their heroin addict mother, the other four ranging in age from six down to just four months old. It seemed that Keeley had been their primary carer.

      Their only carer, at the end. The poor, poor child.

      There had apparently never been any father on the horizon, Helena also confirmed – though that didn’t particularly surprise me. The mother hadn’t even come up with any father’s name (refused to, apparently) so it wasn’t even clear if the siblings shared full DNA.

      Keeley’s mother’s world was one with which I was rather too familiar. It was one in which having babies wasn’t something planned – just an inconvenient by-product of being off your face on drugs every day. And it often wasn’t just drug-fuelled abandon, either. It was something women often had to do to keep their drug-dealers – their drug lifeline – sweet. And, as with any world run by ruthless dictators, which the drug world definitely was, there were no safety nets for those at the bottom of the heap, much less family planning guidance or contraception.

      Keeley’s family had had a long history with social services. They had been known to them for several years before the children were actually taken, as is often the case. I could all too easily envisage the endless cycle of visits and recommendations, of promises made and broken, of ‘at risk’ children see-sawing between their mother’s desperate attempts to get clean, and then failing, and the inevitable neglect. The measures social services would implement would become ever more intense, then, till the point where it would be unconscionable, if not indefensible, to let the children remain in the family home.

      I wondered where and how the mother was now. Whether she was still alive even. Chances were she might not be. There was nothing on the file to say either way, apparently. In any event it was an everyday tragedy. Her life had already been that, whatever had happened to her subsequently. Five children existed, without her, to prove it.

      And however much I could sympathise with the mother (heroin is a horrible addiction) my greatest sadness was for her children. And, more than that, for the fact that they’d been separated. Helena wasn’t sure about the whys and wherefores of that, because it had all obviously been a long time ago. All she knew was that the children had all been taken one night, following a tip-off from a neighbour about hearing screams and shouts, and that when the police and social services had attended the incident a man known to the police – a local drug dealer, Helena read out – had been arrested and charged with several offences.

      The children had been scattered pretty quickly. Keeley went to one foster family, the two next oldest to another, while the little ones, as was usual in cases like these, went to a further home and were both immediately put up for adoption. ‘It looks like the middle two are still with the same foster family,’ Helena told me. ‘And it says here that the youngest went to adoptive homes pretty quickly. Or even home singular. They might have gone together, mightn’t they? Either way, I doubt there’ll be any more to know about them now.’

      But what of Keeley? Why no happy ever after for her? And how must have it felt to be wrenched away from them all? I couldn’t quite get my head around how devastating that must have been for her, particularly if, as Helena said, she’d been so responsible for their welfare. How on earth must she have processed such a horrendous trauma? One minute being a second mummy to four cherished younger siblings, the next being cast adrift and denied any contact. How could she possibly come to terms with being allowed no contact with the brothers and sisters she had looked after since they had been born?

      ‘I honestly can’t understand it,’ I said to Mike as we chatted on into the not-so-small hours. ‘Surely it would have been better to allow them to see each other. Better for all of them, too – not just Keeley. That must have been terrible for them. It’s borderline barbaric. Maybe not so much the baby, bless him, but for the others … I just can’t believe they’d do that. It honestly beggars belief.’

      I had, of course, raised the question with Helena. I’d had personal experience of children being denied access to one another, after all. In that case because the older child, who’d been horribly abused sexually, had started behaving inappropriately towards their sibling because they didn’t know any different.

      But this didn’t appear to be the case with Keeley, who’d apparently done her best – at least as far as what Helena knew of the record went. But decisions sometimes get made based on instinct and experience as much as anything. But whatever the full picture, Keeley’s care for her little brothers and sisters had been repaid by being taken away from them. That’s how it must have seemed to her. No wonder she hated social services.

      ‘They must have had their reasons,’ Mike said. ‘And don’t forget, that’s often how it goes with long-term fostering and adoption. Maybe for the new families – the ones who ended up with the others, that is – it was part of the deal. A complete new start, with no reminders of or links to the past. Maybe that was it? To give the best chance for four, at the expense of one? These must be hard choices to have to make.’

      ‘But should they even be allowed to stipulate that? I mean, why would knowledge of an older sister hurt a child? Surely it would be a comfort to them to know they had blood family to call their own?’

      ‘Or maybe, given how little they were, it was decided it would be less complicated for them psychologically, easier for the parents, not having the spectre of a complicated older sister, social services involved in their lives, and –’

      ‘But what about Keeley? What about her happiness? It just seems so wrong.’

      Mike touched my arm. I was raising my voice now. ‘How do we know they didn’t think it best for Keeley too? I know it seems insane to you now, but maybe at the time they felt she’d become too much the carer –’

      ‘But to deny all contact – why?’

      Mike shrugged. ‘Love, I honestly don’t know. But what I do know is that we don’t live in a perfect world. You of all people should know that.’

      I did know that, and maybe he was right, but still my heart ached for the poor kid. She’d been removed from everything she knew, and the siblings she loved, and was now just another kid in care, forgotten by wider society, and, after five long years, was deeply embedded in the system. How heavy must be the emotional weight she carried. And none of it her fault.

      Most depressing, however, was the knowledge that her placement with the Burkes must have felt like the best outcome imaginable. She’d been placed with emergency carers first, where she’d spent a wretched few weeks, by all accounts. Thrown into emotional chaos, she’d apparently been described as a ‘nightmare’. Then moved on, to an interim placement, with specialists like we were, before the Burkes, who fostered for the same county council, said they’d be happy to take her in long term.

      ‘To complete the adoption illusion for them too,’ I said to Mike, my voice bitter on the poor girl’s behalf. ‘Helena read me a little bit of a looked-after child review she had. You know, Keeley actually said that she felt she had been brought in as a playmate for Jade – can you imagine that? How it must have felt? To fill the gap as the couple couldn’t have children of their own. Like a toy ordered off the flipping internet for their existing child to play with, almost. Well, that’s obviously how it felt to Keeley. She said she never felt part of the family, not really. Oh God, Mike, what must her mind be like?’

      ‘I don’t know, Casey,’ Mike said, ‘but I have a feeling we’ll probably find out pretty soon, don’t you?’

      And that had been his last word on the subject. And, after finally dropping off at around four in the morning, he was already gone from the bed when I woke up. Which didn’t surprise me that

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