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Chapter 18

      It wasn’t usual practice for a social worker to work with the children on their books at the weekends. Not that social work was ever just a nine-to-five job, because there were always occasions when the unexpected happened. But unless a social worker was on call, weekends were free time – well, in theory. They, like us, were always dogged by endless paperwork. It was also Easter weekend, and though we weren’t planning to make any sort of fuss (this year, Riley was going to be away with her in-laws, so it wouldn’t be much more than a quick Easter egg hunt for Dee Dee, at Kieron’s), others did, I knew. So I was extremely grateful when Colin Sampson agreed to help us out with Sam the following Saturday, so that Mike and me could go to Mrs Gallagher’s and talk about the potential upcoming respite.

We decided not to tell Sam where we were going, though. Just that Colin was coming over with an Easter egg, and wanted to spend time with him. It made sense – if either we or Mrs Gallagher changed our minds about Sam staying over with her, ignorance would be bliss; we wouldn’t find ourselves in the position of having built up Sam’s hopes only to dash them again.

      Not that we needed to. Sam was as oblivious to the business of Colin having weekends off from work as he was to the notion that what I did was ‘work’. He was on a high about Colin coming and the ‘big Easter adventure’ they were going on, and if it even crossed his mind that there was a reason for us going off for a few hours he was too busy thinking about his own day to ask me.

      ‘We’re going on a very long journey,’ he told me as he paced the carpet by the front window. He was speaking to me, but as much to himself. He looked deep in thought, head down, hands linked together behind his back – a bit like a little old man ruminating on life. ‘It’s a very long journey,’ he added. ‘And I think that’s a clue. I think it’s a puzzle Sampson wants me to solve.’

‘I just think Colin means you’ll be out and about for a while, love,’ I suggested, anxious that Sam might have got the wrong end of the stick and was setting himself up for disappointment. I’d heard them talking on the phone – they fell so easily into deep conversation – and though it was clear Colin had a knack of understanding Sam’s level, it also meant that I frequently lost track of what either of them were on about. Perhaps this was simply one of those occasions and Colin had indeed made plans I didn’t know about. ‘Anyway, he’ll be here soon, so I’m sure all will be clear. In the meantime, if you don’t stop all that pacing up and down, you are going to end up wearing out my carpet.’

      ‘Too late,’ Mike chipped in from his favourite chair, where he was reading. ‘He’s flattened all the pile. Uh-oh. We’re going to need a new carpet.’

      Sam stopped and looked down, then he frowned. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. But it’s okay, Mike. Don’t worry. Me and Sampson will go to the shops and buy a new one.’

      I rolled my eyes. Sam took everything so literally, and Mike knew it. ‘Stop teasing, you!’ I said, flicking him with a tea towel as I walked past. ‘Oh, and you can stop pacing now, Sam – looks like your superhero has arrived.’

      ‘Yes!’ he said, punching the air and hurrying out into the hall. ‘We are going to have the best, best day ever!’

      ‘Sure you will, kiddo,’ said Mike. ‘And make sure you leave some chocolate for me.’ He winked at him. ‘In lieu of payment.’

      A light rain had begun falling by the time we arrived at Mrs Gallagher’s, which lent an even gloomier atmosphere to the tired estate we’d driven through, and, because it was much on my mind anyway, to the life she might have lived here with her profoundly disabled child.

      And her husband? She’d said he’d been the ‘spit of his dad’. But there’d been no mention of Dad, and no hint as to where he was. Was he dead? Were they divorced? What had happened to him? I remembered the sadness in her voice, so one or the other, presumably. Perhaps we would find out today.

‘What’s she like, then?’ Mike asked, as he eyed the neat front garden. And, while trying to describe her, I realised my instinctive first impressions had already changed to more nuanced second ones. In my mind she was no longer the same outspoken, down-to-earth, strong, no-nonsense, Irish woman – who made no secret of her disdain for and disapproval of her former neighbour – but a tragic figure I had mostly fashioned from my imagination.

      So, having softened her, I was a little surprised, ten minutes later, to find her everything she’d first appeared, and more.

      Though I made new first impressions as she showed us in – this time to the kitchen – where, once again, there was a pot, ready for tea, and a plate of homemade cakes, including chocolates nests, made out of cornflakes, in which speckled eggs nestled. Part of a batch made for Sam’s brother and sister, perhaps? Possibly. My eyes were then drawn immediately to the fridge-freezer – like a magnet – where an assortment of magnets held a variety of pictures, all executed in crayon, by children’s hands.

As Mike sat down, and Mrs Gallagher stood and waited for the kettle, I touched one of the pictures automatically, imagining the little ones whose lives had also been so changed – at least very much from the idealised image I was looking at, of a typical child’s house, with smoke coiling from a chimney, clumps of grass below, a big yellow sun overhead and the sky a strip of scribbled blue above it. There was another, too, of a boat. A collection of triangles – a hull and two sails – it was bobbing along atop a deep wavy sea, with six-pointed stars daubed above it.

      ‘I had no idea you’d been looking after Sam’s siblings,’ I told Mrs Gallagher. ‘Not till my link worker told me, anyway. It must be such a comfort for them to be able to spend time with you. Bit of welcome continuity in their lives, I expect.’

      Mrs Gallagher nodded. ‘And for me,’ she said. ‘They’re a pair of little poppets.’ Then, following my eye, ‘Oh, sorry. I see what you’re saying. Those there, they’re not done by the little ones. They’re Sean’s works of art, those. His masterpieces. My own boy,’ she added, glancing across at Mike now. ‘He does love doing his pictures. He’d have a crayon in his hand all day long, given half a chance. Can’t let him near paint, of course, bless him. He’d probably try to drink it! Away with the fairies, he is, half the time,

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