LITMIR.BIZ

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– at which point I’m sure she’ll want to play with them instead. Besides, Dee Dee’ll be down for her nap soon, so Kieron will take a break from it anyway … Seriously, Casey,’ he said, finally plonking all the wrappings in the right bin. ‘It’s only –’

      But I never got to hear what further pearl of wisdom he was about to impart, because the back door suddenly opened, revealing a rather frazzled-looking Mum.

      ‘Sorry to interrupt, love,’ she said. Did she think Mike and I had sneaked out for a tryst? ‘But there’s been a bit of a to-do.’

      They say that sometimes it’s best to work on a need-to-know basis but, in the case of little Darby, the jury was definitely out. On the one hand, I was glad Levi and Jackson hadn’t been there to witness it but, on the other hand, had I taken the decision to be open about the horrors of Darby’s grim past, then perhaps it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

      Not that ‘it’ was anything that terrible, not by the standards we were used to, where kids came from backgrounds that made your hair stand on end and would so often scar them for life.

      All ‘it’ was, as I described haltingly to John Fulshaw on the day after Boxing Day (at 9 a.m. precisely), was Darby having started pulling her dress up, more and more, and, with everyone’s attention on her, clearly warming to the attention, gyrating around and, just as she’d already instructed my elder granddaughter, stuffing her hands down her tights and thrusting her pelvis in a fashion that left no room for doubt as to what she was enacting. She’d apparently picked up a walnut – it really didn’t bear thinking about – and had even been about to demonstrate where she could put it, to a stunned Kieron, when we’d returned to the room.

      ‘I’ve put it all in the log, John,’ I finished up, lamely. ‘But the main thing is that I’m all at sea, and I’m not sure I can cope with something like this, I’m really not. And nor can Mike,’ I added. ‘Not when it potentially involves the grandchildren.’

      John was silent for a moment, and I knew he was trying to digest the unlikely scene I’d just feebly sketched out. Funny, I mused, how we dealt with so many domestic horrors, but this particular scenario crossed an unspoken line.

      Which was odd in itself, and I’d lain awake the previous two nights, trying to get to grips with it, because I’d thought – indeed I still largely thought – I was un-shockable. I knew all about the depths to which some depraved parents sunk. Sexual abuse, violence, neglect, outright abandonment. But mostly, if not always, I could tease out the factors that went some way to explain, if never condone it. Substance abuse and addiction, for example, were so often contributory factors. Violence meted out due to alcohol addiction, or neglect and exploitation due to a parent being a slave to heroin; a heroin addict, I’d learned long ago, would do almost anything (to themselves or their child) to get a fix.

      This, though, was different, and I think that was what was troubling me. This sense that these people had so calmly and deliberately used their own daughter as a child star in the worst kind of pornography. I didn’t know how old Darby had been when they first started taking pictures of her, or precisely what acts she’d been trained to perform, and, though I usually craved – and invariably nagged John for – more information about the kids we had, I found myself in the uncharacteristic position of not wishing to know more than I already did.

      It was quite the opposite in this case, and that was what kept me awake. I didn’t want to know. In fact, I wished I could un-know it. Because I knew about the importance of those early impressionable years. Was little Darby already damaged beyond help? Beyond our help? The guilt for thinking that pressed down on me.

      ‘It’s not that she’s not a sweetheart,’ I told John now. ‘It’s just that I don’t know what to do with her. Not without psychiatric support, and a comprehensive care plan.’

      ‘Which will all be put in place immediately after the New Year,’ he said quickly. ‘You know you can trust me on that score, Casey, always.’

      ‘I know, John –’

      ‘And that you’ll be supported on all fronts,’ he added. ‘You know that too. We wouldn’t expect you and Mike –’

      ‘John.’ The guilt pressed even more. I thought of little Darby, out with the doll and buggy as I spoke, with Mike and Tyler, the former knowing the call I’d be making in their absence. The latter knowing nothing.

      ‘John,’ I said again, speaking quietly, as if that would make the impact less. ‘We can’t keep her. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to come clean. Darby’s not going to be right for us, long term.’

      The words out, I felt immediately that I should retract them. It just seemed so selfish. She was six, for God’s sake! And we’d coped with worse. We had coped with so much worse. But there was a world of difference between this and managing challenging, aggressive, violent, or even suicidal children. We knew how to do the latter; it was what we’d both trained for. But Darby was complicated, complicating psychological territory, and even if I’d felt equal to the task of trying to unravel it, I could only do so if I disclosed the extent of it to our family. And this was a burden I could not expect them to bear.

      So I was effectively disowning her, on their behalf, without even consulting them. Riley’s words – it’s ‘too cruel’ – were clamouring in my head. I was all too aware that I had no simple excuse; not like with Connor, the lad we’d briefly had, and whom we’d considered keeping longer – till it turned out that he’d waged a war for supremacy with Tyler, assuring him that, soon, he’d be our favourite. That had been easy, in the end. Because Tyler came first. But this was a six-year-old, now utterly alone in the world.

      ‘I know,’ John said simply.

      ‘You do?’

      ‘Of course I do. Casey, I knew almost immediately. It’s never been never my expectation that you’d keep Darby long term. I was just hoping you could keep her for a few weeks, that’s all. I’m expecting a call today about it, as it happens. Darby’s being pushed through immediately for adoption.’

      ‘What, just like that?’ I’d never heard anything of this kind move that fast.

      ‘There have been developments,’ he explained.

      ‘What, over and above what we already know?’

      ‘Over and above. Way over and above, as it turns out. Darby’s one of hundreds. Hundreds. Sickening, isn’t it? And there’s no question of her being placed with other family members, either. I’ve already been told of other relatives who are in the frame. No, she’ll be escaping all of it. And good bloody job too. And in the meantime, can you just keep on doing what you’re doing? Just continue to remove her from situations where you think she will react badly and keep pointing out to her the right way to behave? You can’t do much else, can you? And you’re doing a fine job.’

      ‘I’m not sure I am,’ I said, feeling terrible that I was so keen for her to leave us as soon as possible.

      ‘Oh, you are,’ he said. ‘Never forget the alternative she’d be faced with. And I’m sorry …’

      ‘John, for God’s sake, don’t apologise!’ I said.

      I heard him chuckle. ‘Well, that’s rich. You flipping started it!’

      Chapter 9

      True to his word, John was back with news just forty-eight hours later. Of a couple – the Burtons – we’d had dealings with four or five years previously, while they’d looked after one of our foster children on respite. I remembered them well, principally because they were ‘posh’, for want of a better word, and lived in the countryside on a farm. Somewhere far enough away, in every respect, to give Darby a chance of a future in a different world.

      But they didn’t want another foster child. They were looking to adopt now. To focus all their energies on a single child, like Darby, about whom they’d already been briefed. Because, according

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