The Silent Witness. Casey Watson

as such days so often are, particularly so in this case, since I’d risen from my bed before seven, in order to do some online research on wedding flowers while Mike showered and got ready for work. Where my daughter was so chilled about everything that she was almost horizontal, I was fast approaching that mental place where ‘There’s still so much to do!’ was my first and last thought every day. It comprised a good deal of the thoughts in between too.

      The email from John had arrived in my inbox only minutes earlier and I half-decided to phone him and say, ‘You too?’ But then I decided if he was working that early the last thing he needed was me twittering on at him, so I settled down with my coffee and simply read it.

      And it made for very interesting reading.

      John obviously didn’t have access to sensitive information regarding the case against Bella’s mother, but he had been given access to the information about the family that the police had shared with social services.

      Which was good news, and where multi-agency working really came into its own. Prior to the joys of the internet age, foster carers like Mike and me, not to mention a child’s new school, and even their new doctor, in some cases, were kept largely out of the loop about their background. And even if this was mostly a sin of omission (though not in all cases; people could be very protective of the fruit of their own labours) it was almost always to the detriment of the child concerned.

      Where, famously, an inability to cross-check and share information led to the infamous Yorkshire Ripper being arrested and let go an embarrassing number of times in the 1970s, there were countless far less high-profile cases, involving children in the care system, where information left unshared let them badly down.

      So thank heavens for common sense and IT progress. It obviously made much more sense for everyone working towards the same end game to pool information and share what they knew – that way, all parties could work as a single team.

      In this case, the report John had sent through about the family focused on one neighbour in particular. A widow in her late fifties, she was called Ellen Murphy, and had told police that she feared for Bella on many occasions, due to the volatile nature of her parents. They would regularly get into drunken brawls on a weekend, she’d said, and had, in fact, called and reported them more than once to the police, when she’d heard Bella screaming, thinking she might be under attack. She said that on every occasion (how many had there been, I wondered?) she had later been assured that Bella herself hadn’t been in any danger – she’d merely been yelling at her parents to stop.

      This had not, she said, lessened her fears. However much she’d been assured Bella wasn’t in danger, she had personally witnessed the child lying out in the back garden, in the dark, often, and the cold, even the rain, drumming her feet on the ground, and covering her ears with her hands. ‘I spent most weekends,’ she’d added, ‘with my finger poised over the dial button when it kicks off, just in case.’

      Well, who wouldn’t?

      I was just thinking about the fine line between being a nosey neighbour and potentially protecting a vulnerable child (one I increasingly championed crossing), when the vulnerable child in question tapped me on the shoulder.

      Thankfully, given the angle, I doubted she’d have seen anything I’d rather she didn’t, but I quickly put the screen to sleep anyway.

      ‘You’re up early,’ I said, then, following her gaze to the kitchen clock, corrected myself. Somehow, it was approaching 9 a.m. – something that seemed impossible till I remembered that at some point in my reading Mike had bent down, said ‘Bye, love,’ and kissed me on the cheek. I’d probably answered as well.

      ‘Could I have a turn on the computer when you’re finished?’ she asked shyly, and I realised she held a pencil case and exercise book in her hand. ‘It’s just that if I’m not going back to school yet, I thought I could log into my homework page and do a bit of something to stop me being bored.’

      Bella ‘not going back to school yet’ had been agreed before she’d even been delivered to us. With the likelihood of interviews, assessments, counselling sessions and the possibility of her even being moved out of county, it had been agreed that they should at least wait till the score was more properly known – a delicate way of describing the uncertainty about whether her mum would be charged with attempted murder or – please, no – just plain old murder.

      And as nothing had happened to change that particular non-status quo (not to mention Bella having expressed no interest in going anyway) it seemed she’d be off for as long as it took.

      ‘That’s a good idea,’ I said, popping the screen back to life briefly before quickly closing all the tabs I’d opened. And it was; the poor girl had only been in secondary school for a term when her world had collapsed, and a very short, no doubt fraught, term as well. I couldn’t imagine how she must feel about that one constant in her life having been dramatically ripped away from her.

      I hadn’t made a start on Riley’s flowers yet, but this was much more important. With Tyler on a last-night-of-freedom sleep-over at Denver’s, I figured I could easily do that later. ‘Here you go,’ I said, pushing my chair back and inviting her to sit down. ‘You get started while I go and make you some breakfast. Oh, and we have just the one rule about anyone who comes to us re the laptop, and it’s that it has to be done here, I’m afraid. It’s just one of those rules that we all have to follow. That okay?’

      The ‘here’ in this case was, these days, a bureau-type unit that was part of our bigger ‘entertainment’ area. (Which now also housed the redundant karaoke machine, of course.) It was a bit cramped, but it was at least in a high-traffic area, which made it nigh-on impossible for anyone (should they want to – I hoped they didn’t) to nose around in anything unsavoury. Needs must, in the fostering game.

      ‘Oh, of course,’ Bella said, as if it had never occurred to her that it might be otherwise. Which was refreshing; more and more it seemed teenagers treated laptops as extensions of themselves, to be operated from laps – ideally hidden from view, in their bedrooms. But this didn’t seem to be the case with Bella, who, as far as I knew, had never owned a laptop – or else surely she’d have brought one along with her.

      I left her to it and went to the kitchen to make some porridge with syrup – something (in fact the only thing) Bella had so far expressed a liking for. And while I stirred, I thought about the email I’d been reading and the picture I was building up of her family life before the ‘crisis’ – for want of a better word. I still felt unable to find the right one, since it was still unconfirmed – would it all too soon become Bella’s stepfather’s killing?

      Whatever the future held, the past had clearly been a very unhappy place, and though she hadn’t apparently been on the receiving end of physical violence, emotionally it must have scarred her quite profoundly. To witness violence and aggression on such a regular basis can’t have made for a very happy life at all. And judging from the comments by the neighbour, Mrs Murphy, it was a crisis that was always going to happen.

      The porridge made, I went back into the living room, to find the screen filled not with homework, but with flowers. Or homework on flowers, which was possible. And then I realised.