her I did know. ‘And I’m sure you’ll see her again,’ I said, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. She was a good three or four inches taller than me. Which, admittedly, wasn’t hard. ‘Now, you get yourself settled.’ I pointed across the landing. ‘There’s the bathroom, obviously. I’ll just go downstairs and finish up with the police then I’ll be back with your drink, sweetie, okay?’
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Keeley said.
I was confused. ‘Count on what?’
‘On me being able to see her. I’ve got four actual brothers and sisters. Did they tell you that? I bet they didn’t. I’ve never seen any of them since the day I went into care. Not even once. Social services are all bastards.’
Four. Never seen again. My heart wept for her. But now I had to speak. Start as you mean to go on and all that. Especially with a kid that’s been in the system a long time. ‘Sweetheart, I know you’re angry, and you’ve every reason to be,’ I said gently. ‘And we will sit down and talk about all this, I promise. But we don’t allow that kind of language here, okay? Me and Mike have young grandkids, so it’s just one of our rules. One of our few rules. So can you try to think of other words you can use?’
She had the grace to look embarrassed, which surprised me. From her initial demeanour, I’d been expecting more attitude. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d answered with ‘whatever’. Or told me to sod off and leave her alone. So though it was only a small thing it was an important one; it built a bridge between us. ‘Sorry,’ she said, looking downcast. ‘I’ll try not to.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I know you will.’
The consensus wasn’t quite so positive when I returned to the living room. ‘Yes,’ the female officer was saying, presumably in answer to something Mike had asked her, ‘we do think the accusation against Mr Burke is probably false. It just came out of nowhere, for one thing, and was quite a time coming. We were asking her why she didn’t want to go back there, obviously, and she was coming up with all kinds of reasons for running away. They were too strict, too fussy, too stupid and so on. The usual teenage things you’d expect. And, of course, at that point there was no question that we wouldn’t be taking her home again. Of course we would be. But when we explained that – that we had no choice but to do that – out the accusation suddenly came. With a smirk, even, like she knew exactly what she was doing. ‘‘Steve’s been touching me up,” she goes. “There! You can’t take me back now, can you?’’’ The policewoman flipped the cover of her pad back. ‘And she’s right, of course. We have to act on the allegation. But we aren’t convinced there’s any truth in it. Not as yet.’
Even though I’d had my own suspicions about the veracity of Keeley’s allegation, I was still a bit stunned. Would a fifteen-year-old really be so bad that she would make up something so horrible, and even smirk about it? I knew the answer, of course, because I wasn’t born yesterday. And as foster carers, Mike and I heard about things like this all the time. Well, if not all the time, at least often enough to scare us, because it was a situation we could potentially find ourselves in. It didn’t bear thinking about.
I shook my head, said my farewells and, while Mike showed them out, went into the kitchen to pour a glass of milk and find some Jaffa Cakes.
Then I went back upstairs with them (Mike was still on the doorstep, talking about the engines in squad cars – at this time?) and pushed the slightly ajar bedroom door open with my foot.
‘Here you go, love,’ I said as I entered.
Keeley, already in bed, yanked the duvet up to her chest. ‘Don’t we have rules about knocking?’ she asked. She also blushed, instantly and furiously.
I could have kicked myself. And now I felt my cheeks flush as well. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ I said, placing the drinks and snack down on the bedside table. ‘Of course we do. I should have knocked. I’m just tired as well, I suppose. And I didn’t think you’d be so quick getting yourself into bed.’ I smiled apologetically. ‘Next time, I will knock. I promise.’
‘It’s okay,’ Keeley said. She raised a hand holding a smartphone. ‘I just wondered. Could I have your wifi password, please? I just want to drop a message to my foster sister. You know, to let her know I’m okay and that. I won’t phone her,’ she added meekly. ‘I know it’s late.’
I could hardly say no. It was a reasonable enough request. The girl was fifteen and how many of those didn’t have a smartphone? And it made perfect sense that she’d want to tell the one person she obviously felt close to that she was okay. I recited the password – long since memorised from having to constantly give it to the grandkids and other guests – and once she’d typed it in and got connected I went back downstairs.
‘She’s online,’ I told Mike once we were back on the sofa. It was very late but, despite what I’d told Keeley, I now felt wide awake.
‘So all’s well with the world,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘Spot of James McAvoy, then?’
I was just opening my mouth to share my joy at that prospect, when my own smartphone buzzed, with no caller ID, which I knew meant the lady from EDT again.
Mike put down the remote he had only just picked up. Yes, it was late, but if there was trouble ahead, we might as well know where it was coming from.
It turned out to be a very long night. Not because Keeley herself gave us any problems, and not because I watched The Jonathan Ross Show seven times. Simply because I was on the 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