LITMIR.BIZ

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worry. Once you leave, she’ll get that she’s staying with us for a bit.’ I smiled reassuringly. ‘We’ll take it from here.’

      Katy sipped her coffee, and I noticed the way her hands gripped the mug, whitening her knuckles. ‘It was horrible,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘I was there. The police just burst in. And I followed.’ She looked like she was reliving it as she spoke. ‘And there was a whole filming setup in the back bedroom – camera on a tripod, arc lights. The lot. And manacles attached to the bedhead – seriously, it was horrible. The mother was screaming. The father was trying to drag Darby from me. It was just awful. The poor kid didn’t know what was going on and just kept crying for her mummy. Honestly, just when you think you’ve seen it all …’

      She left the rest of her sentence hanging. I could see she’d been badly affected by the afternoon’s events. I smiled gently at her. She was so young herself.

      ‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘And it doesn’t get any easier, does it?’

      ‘It shouldn’t,’ Mike said. ‘The day we are no longer shocked by this kind of thing is the day we become desensitised. And that can’t happen – not in this job.’ He glanced across at Darby. ‘God help us.’

      The handover paperwork was minimal, so, given that Darby had begun stealing glances across at us as she ate, I left it to Mike and went to join her in the living room.

      ‘Blow on it, sweetie,’ I prompted as she was about to load a forkful of hot potato into her mouth. ‘Do you normally have a fork, or would you like a spoon?’

      Darby blew hard as directed, and bristled a little. ‘I’m six,’ she said, before putting it to her mouth. ‘I’m allowed a fork. And a knife,’ she added accusingly. Tyler grinned.

      ‘Wow! You’re a big girl, then,’ I said, dropping down to my knees on the other side of the coffee table. ‘A fork and a knife! It’s almost like you’re seven – not six!’

      That earned me a smile, once she’d finished chewing, followed by a belch. ‘Pardon me,’ she said, smiling sheepishly. There was no faulting her manners. What kind of humans made a child say please and thank you, and, at the same time, abused her so foully?

      Darby speared a piece of broccoli. ‘Is the lady taking me back to Mummy when I’m finished? ’Cos I have to go back for bedtime.’

      ‘Sweetie,’ I said, leaning in towards her. ‘We have a lovely big girl’s room here for you to sleep in tonight. It’s got fairy lights and a pink rug. And teddy bears.’ I tried to gauge her reaction, but her blue eyes betrayed nothing. Just stared. And a horrible thought flew into my head. Did they drug her with something when they had her perform? I’d heard of such things more than once.

      But no. She was just trying to take things in, clearly. ‘There was some trouble earlier, wasn’t there?’ I persisted gently. ‘At home. You remember? And Mummy and Daddy have had to go and speak to some policemen. Which means, well –’ I glanced over at Katy, who was just closing her folder. ‘Well, Katy, there, who brought you, well, she has to leave you with us for a bit. So you’re going to spend some time with us – us and Tyler here. That’s right, isn’t it, Tyler?’ He nodded and smiled encouragingly. ‘Just till things are a bit better. Sorted out. Do you understand?’

      The broccoli sat untouched on the end of Darby’s fork. Then began to wobble, then was thrown down, fork and all, on the plate. The wailing began almost immediately. ‘I want to go home!’ Darby cried, making fists and rubbing her eyes hard with them. ‘I want my mummy and daddy! I’m sorry if I was a bad girl! Tell the lady! I’m sorry! I’ll be good! I promise I’ll be a good girl. Oh, please, lady, please let me go home!’

      I came around the table and sat beside her on the arm of the sofa, trying to pull her towards me for a hug, but was repeatedly pushed away. She was surprisingly strong.

      ‘Oh, darling, you haven’t been bad,’ I said, trying to get a grip on her, to help calm her. ‘That’s not it at all. The grown-ups just have to sort some things out so that you don’t get hurt. and then, once that’s happened, we can talk about what comes next.’

      ‘Please!’ Darby cried. ‘No one will hurt me! They won’t. I want to go home!’ She seemed to have a revelation. ‘If you take me home, Daddy will give you some of his pennies. I promise. And I’ve got some in my piggy. You can have those as well. Please, lady, please …’

      She was shaking as she sobbed now, and I finally got a hold of her, even though she was still trying to drum angry fists against my chest. Ransom money. Was that it? That she thought she’d been kidnapped?

      Behind Darby’s back, Katy took in the jerks of my head and, with a thumbs up, she mouthed her goodbyes. And in responding I obviously loosened my grip on Darby too much, because she sprang from me, almost knocking over both tea tray and coffee table, and sprinted to where her little coat was over a chair.

      Katy looked at us helplessly, and took a step to gently part child and coat, but Mike, who’s so good in such situations, beat her to it. Sweeping Darby up, with a bright ‘Come on, let’s see your bedroom, shall we?’ he took her off up the stairs, one decisive step at a time, weathering her kicking and bucking and screaming.

      Chapter 4

      Darby had cried her eyes out for almost two hours after Katy had left. Having seen the bedroom and having allowed Mike to bring her back down again, she’d sat briefly on the sofa, seemingly drained of all emotion – or, more likely, realising resistance was useless – then was off again, in some sort of panic attack, stamping her feet, pulling her hair and railing at us all to go away, then dissolving into paroxysms of gulping, racking sobs, which went on well into the evening.

      Unable to comfort her, I let her cry. She probably needed to cry it out a bit in any case. At least if she did so she’d have a chance of falling into an exhausted sleep. Because, in truth, there was almost nothing anyone could do for her – not in the short term, anyway. We couldn’t grant her wish to go home, and we couldn’t make any promises about the future. From the few details we already did know – particularly about the collusion of the mother – there seemed little possibility she’d be allowed to return home ever again.

      And she did eventually tire, and she did eventually stop, and though I had to accept that there was no way we’d be able to bath her or get her into pyjamas, I was happy enough for her to sleep in her clothes.

      And now it was morning. Tyler, being naturally curious about why she’d come to us, was bombarding me with questions I couldn’t answer.

      ‘But what did they do?’ he wanted to know. ‘Why did the police have to bang the door down?’

      ‘Tyler, they didn’t exactly bang the door down.’

      ‘But the social worker said they burst in.’

      ‘Knocked on the door –’

      ‘And wasted no time in taking Darby out, Mum.’

      ‘You, young man,’ I said sternly, ‘do a great deal of earwigging.’

      ‘So did they beat her up? She looks okay. And she obviously loves them. And they obviously didn’t want her taken away, did they?’

      I didn’t miss the look of wistfulness that visited his face briefly. No matter how much love he was showered with by his new forever family, the memory of his rejection by his father would never wholly go away.

      I pointed towards the kitchen clock. ‘Don’t you have to be showered and dressed in ten minutes, my lad?’ I asked him pointedly. Mike, who was thankfully now off till New Year, the factory he worked at being closed, was taking Tyler and Kieron, and Tyler’s mate Denver, on some tour of their beloved football club’s ground. Santa was said to be putting in an appearance but, of course, everyone was much too old to care about that. It was a gift for me, however. A big one. It meant the day I’d earmarked for a

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