be bigged up for the smallest good thing – not as a way of over-inflating their egos (these were children who’d often had their egos comprehensively trampled) but as a way of reintroducing the idea that they could be proud of themselves and that praise and reward were good feelings. It was all about breaking the cycle of feeling useless, acting in accordance with low expectations, getting punished and having your low opinion of yourself confirmed.
It was also about having fun, and I remained unrepentant. Maybe one day I’d deliver a serious lecture on the business of why fun, as a concept for kids like these, mattered. But perhaps not today. Today I had other more pressing matters to attend to, and as the bell went for break I couldn’t wait for the room to clear, so I could get my hands on my little postbox full of notes.
And I wasn’t to be disappointed.
The first was intriguing.
I am going to see a speshalist doctor cos my mum thinks I’m mental. Don’t tell the other kids, will you. Gavin.
I smiled and put it to one side. For all his eccentricities, Gavin certainly wasn’t ‘mental’. Did his mother think he was? I didn’t think so. He had obviously been referred, though. I wondered what for.
I smacked my little cousin and I feel bad.
This one was unsigned, but I felt sure it was from Shona. She’d written in neat capitals, presumably in an attempt to disguise her writing, but I knew that in the great scheme of things it would be worth bringing up, so that she had the opportunity of talking it through, albeit couched in more general terms.
Robert Small called me a sad sack – Molly.
Poor Molly. Although she’d started speaking up for herself a bit more, Molly attracted bullies like a flame attracted moths. I made another mental note – time for another of our regular chats about finding ways to better stand up for yourself.
The next one I picked up was definitely from Imogen – I remembered how many times she’d folded it. And, instinctively, I put it to one side for the moment, while I read the two remaining bits of paper.
The next was blank. Which was odd, as I’d seen everybody writing. Another mental note – to think about that later. And the next made me start, as well as smile:
I fancy Imogen.
Well, well, I thought, trying to work out who had written it, narrowing it down logically to either Henry or Ben, which meant it had to be Ben. With him being that bit younger, perhaps he had a bit of a crush on her, despite him always following Henry’s lead and ribbing her. That was often the way when it came to boys. Ribbing the object of their burgeoning attraction was one of the surest ways of getting their attention. I smiled to myself and added it to the pile.
And now I was back to Imogen’s herself; the prompt to get the box out in the first place. Would she finally find the wherewithal to share a little more? I unfolded the sheet of A4, not quite daring to hope, but immediately realising there was a great deal written on it, which took the form of a neatly penned list.
Gerri used to lock me in my room while she went to the cat shows.
Gerri told my dad I wet my bed when she wouldn’t let me go to the toilet. She locked me up.
Gerri told me my mum left us because I’m ugly like my dad and have gingery hair.
Gerri didn’t give me any food when dad worked away and she said she’d hit me if I told him.
Gerri pulled my hair and said she would cut it all off when I went to sleep.
She cried to my nan and said I tried to push her down the steps cos I hated her and my nan believed her.
She told my dad I stole money from her purse and that I let her cats out on purpose.
I thought she was going to set fire to me.
I set the letter down and returned the rest to the postbox, which I then returned to the back of the shelf under my desk. I then picked up the letter again, grabbed my satchel, left the classroom and locked it, before hurrying to the staffroom to see if Kelly was in there, as I needed her to come hold the fort after break so I could track Gary down.
I had what I needed. The head would surely have to take this seriously.
They say a week is a long time in politics. By which I think they mean that an awful lot can change in a few days, what with politics being such a volatile business. A week is also a long time when you’re privy to what amounts to some pretty shocking allegations and can do absolutely nothing about them.
Gary had agreed with me, of course, that Imogen’s allegations about her stepmother were, indeed, shocking, but with the headmaster away and half-term imminent he was still of the opinion that we should sit on what we knew till his return.
‘Nothing’s changed,’ he said. ‘This is great – grim but great, assuming it’s true –’
‘Gary, trust me. I believe her completely.’
‘I trust your judgement, don’t worry. But we still need to run it by Mike. There are protocols that need to be followed here, before we go to social services, and, as she’s safe with her grandparents, which we know she currently is, let’s all enjoy our break and make this a priority as soon as we’re back, okay?’
Which had to be okay, since there was little I could do about it. But, while I understood the reasoning and, for the greater part, agreed with it, there was still a part of me that refused to stop fretting. In fact, to say I spent half-term ‘preoccupied’ was something of an understatement, and rattling round an empty house – Mike and Riley at work, Kieron busy in college – didn’t help a jot.
Suppose I’d tipped Gerri off in some way, just by visiting? Suppose she was scared now – which would be good, no doubt about it, a taste of her own medicine – but suppose she started taking it out on Imogen? Supposing she was threatening her again, even now, with all sorts of horrible punishments, if she told the social workers what she’d told me in her note? Supposing I had opened a can of worms even wrigglier than the proverbial? Supposing bad things happened as a result?
Needless to say, I was in school bright and early the following Monday and all but ran to Gary’s office to see if there was any news.
‘News?’ he guffawed. ‘Blimey, Casey, are you on something or what? I’ve barely got my coat off!’
But he was mostly teasing, because he had actually already been in school for half an hour, and had already put a note on the headmaster’s desk asking if he could speak to him as a matter of urgency about a child-protection issue.
Which mollified me somewhat, though I was also a realist, and one thing I realised was that Mike Moore would have returned to an overflowing in-tray, and had well over 1,000 pupils to worry about, not just one. So we’d have to wait our turn, but I hoped we wouldn’t be on tenterhooks for too long, as, whatever else was going on, a child had disclosed that she’d been the victim of abuse in the not too distant past, which made it a matter of some urgency in anybody’s language.
‘Okay, Gary,’ I said, ‘but you will tell me the very minute you hear anything, won’t you? I’ll have Kelly on standby so I’ll be able to come up at a moment’s notice.’
Gary laughed his usual laid-back laugh. Perhaps keeping your cool was a prerequisite to doing the sort of full-on job that he did. ‘Don’t worry, Casey,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re like. I’ll have my carrier pigeon good to fly soon as I get word.’
The children were all like bottles of pop, which was fairly standard in the Unit after any sort of break. Fairly standard for school generally, as everyone caught up on everyone else’s important news, which was obviously much too important to be derailed by boring stuff like keeping silent during registration, something that regularly challenged at least two of my kids in