by R. G. Adams
They were becoming exasperated with each other, moving beyond their usual banter. This hardly ever happened, and when it did, it usually got bad. Kit tried to figure out how to calm it down.
‘Look, it’s different when it’s your own family, isn’t it? You’re not a client. I need you to tell me, that’s all. Why does it matter so much to get Christine to admit she knew something?’
Kit saw that her question had quietened him. He was still now and staring at the pavement.
‘I just kept hoping maybe she didn’t know. That she’d be able to say where she thought the cans and the money and all that came from. She never asked. She must have had an idea, but she didn’t want to know.’
It took Kit a minute to recognise the sensation in her eyes as tears. She’d given up on Christine long ago herself, but she saw now that Tyler hadn’t. He’d been let down again and again, but he still kept hoping to find his mother doing the right thing.
‘Yeah. Of course. Look, you’d better get off home. Or do you want to come to mine?’ she asked him.
‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘By the way, how did you know? About the phone call?’
Kit knew that there was no way out of this. ‘I went into Danny’s records.’ She tried to say it as if it was nothing, but Tyler was way too bright for that.
‘You what? Is that allowed?’
‘Well, no, obviously not. I’d probably get sacked if they found out. But I did. I wanted to see if Danny did speak to a social worker about it. He didn’t say much but it should have been enough for her to think Winter was dodgy. She did fuck all about it, but she did ring Christine. And Christine admitted she’d known you two were going there and drinking. Angela Maynard seemed more worried about that.’
‘So I was right. Danny did tell her.’
‘Not all of it, but enough that she should have asked more about it. He gave her a clue, you know?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. I know.’
‘If she had—’
He stopped her. ‘No, don’t. Let’s just get away from here.’
The unfinished sentence sat between them as they walked to the car and they left it where it was. Neither of them needed to fill the silence. It felt just like it had after Danny died, when their wordless understanding of each other’s grief had been their only comfort.
Kit knew now that Tyler needed to be alone, because she felt the same herself. She drove into town and dropped him outside his flat, the two of them exchanging nothing but a quick goodbye as he jumped out of the car. Then she drove home, wondering if Danny would still have been alive if Angela Maynard had made a different choice.
Chapter 12
The following morning Kit left the flat early and went to the café at the end of the road. Tyler wasn’t answering her texts and she’d spent a restless night worrying about him. She was starving and realised she hadn’t eaten anything the day before. She ordered a large cooked breakfast with extra fried bread, and a mug of coffee. After she’d eaten, she ordered a second coffee. She kept thinking about Micky Winter. The worry nagged at her mind – Tyler had said Danny hadn’t hurt anyone with the fire, but was that true? Was it possible that Winter had been in there, and that he’d died? Danny’s anger was diamond-hard and he never forgot a grudge. She reached into her bag to get out her phone and in a second found the births and deaths page of the South Wales Express.
Scrolling through the notices for the surname Winter, she found him almost at once. She saw with relief that Michael Winter had died following a short illness. The funeral details were given and donations were asked for in lieu of flowers, for a local cancer hospice and for the activities fund at Sandbeach youth centre. The date of his death was 12th October 2008. Kit frowned. That couldn’t be right. She remembered again the smell of smoke that night and walking past the wreckage of the fire the next day on her way to school. Her last year in Sandbeach Primary. But by October 2008, she had been out at Cliffside for more than two years.
As she tried to work it out, she noticed a middle-aged woman sitting at the next table. She was vaguely familiar, and she was smiling at Kit. Kit smiled back. Much to her annoyance, the woman picked up her cup of coffee and crossed to Kit’s table.
‘Mind if I sit down?’
‘I’m sorry, do I—’
‘I’m Fay. I’m Lucy’s carer. Lucy Cooper. You’re the social worker, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right.’ Fay was settling herself at the table now. Kit thought this was dead cheeky. She finished her coffee in a couple of gulps. She wasn’t in the mood for a chat.
‘How’s it going, love? With Lucy?’
Was the woman for real? ‘I can’t go into that,’ Kit said firmly.
‘Confidential, is it? I understand. She’s a lovely girl, though, isn’t she?’
‘I expect she is.’ Kit started to gather up her stuff.
‘Well, you’ve met her, so I’m sure you know.’
‘It’s hard to get to know her, though, isn’t it? With her being non-verbal.’ Kit felt bad about being so irritable, but she had wanted her coffee in peace.
‘Yes, I know what you mean, love. She does a few signs, though. I manage with those.’
Kit stopped in the process of doing up her bag and stared at Fay. ‘What signs?’
‘Makaton. I taught her back last year. Only the basics, you know. I use it with all the kids I work with. She really took to it. And I taught little Chloe, too, so she could speak to her sister. Thick as thieves those two.’
‘Lucy can do Makaton? How can she manage the hand gestures?’
‘Well, I only taught her the easy ones, and one of her arms works better than the other, you know? It’s not so tight, she can use it a bit. And she can follow some signs, too.’
Kit sat back down. ‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’ she asked.
‘No one asked me.’ Fay was starting to look put out.
‘I’m sorry, Fay, of course, you are quite right. I didn’t ask you. I should have. I just expected that, if there was a way to communicate with Lucy, the Coopers would have said.’
‘Ah, well, perhaps they wouldn’t, though, see.’
‘I’m not following you. Why wouldn’t they tell me?’
‘Mrs Cooper’s got very set ideas, you know? About how she wants Lucy looked after. I don’t blame her, mind; I’d be the same if she was one of mine. Mrs Cooper didn’t feel the Makaton was helping. Felt she could look after Lucy just fine without it.’
Fay was looking put out again now. Kit took a guess at what might have happened. ‘Was she annoyed with you about it, Fay?’
Fay nodded. ‘The thing is, when they found out I’d been doing it . . . well, Mrs Cooper, she had her hair off with me. Said her husband didn’t want me teaching it to Lucy, he reckoned it stressed her out. Nothing like that has ever happened with them before, they’ve always been very happy with my work. So I told the other kids not to do it anymore. Me and Lucy kept it a secret then. But I think it’s a shame, I do really. Then I heard Mrs Cooper, that day when I was in the kitchen and you had been in with Lucy, do you remember?’
Kit thought back to her first visit to Lucy, and remembered Fay quietly drinking coffee at the kitchen table in the kitchen while Annie and Kit were locking horns over Lucy’s communication.
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘She didn’t tell you the truth. Not completely. It is possible to communicate with Lucy and there’s more going on in her mind than anyone knows, let me tell you.’
‘Is that right?’ What was Fay getting at?
‘Oh yes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Lucy’s not well looked after. Mrs Cooper’s devoted to her. It’s just . . .’
‘Go on,’ Kit encouraged her.
‘Well, I found it funny. It might just be me, mind. The younger girls who used to work there, they all loved him to bits. Thought
he was handsome. But I never quite took to Mr Cooper myself. Very charming and all that, but there’s something not right if you ask me. I mean, why wouldn’t he want Lucy to learn to sign? Even if it’s only a few words, it’s something, isn’t it?’
Kit smiled at her. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ She pondered for a minute. ‘But the school didn’t tell me either. They said they had never really found a way to communicate with her. They said they’d tried communication boards, iPad, the lot. Surely they would have at least tried to teach her Makaton?’
‘That’s what I mean about Mr Cooper, though, see. I’ve been in meetings with him, and he’s got that dozy head teacher wrapped right round his little finger if you ask me. If he says jump, she asks how high, you know? And that social worker, too – Jean Collins, is it? All over him like a rash that one. Always going on about how fantastic he is. But it’s Mrs Cooper who does all the donkey work with us carers. No one’s got anything to say about that, have they?’
‘No, they haven’t.’ Kit smiled at her. ‘Thank you, Fay. I am so glad I ran into you.’
‘Well, that was just luck, wasn’t it? I mean, you’re welcome, but perhaps next time you’ll think to ask the carers straight off, eh?’
‘Yes, I will. Definitely. Thanks, Fay, goodbye.’ Kit picked up her bag and went to the till, where she paid for Fay’s coffee as well as her own breakfast. Then she went back to the flats to collect her car and drove straight to the office. The usual queue of cars was waiting to get into the car park, overspilling onto the road. After a few minutes of waiting, she became exasperated and pulled out from behind them. Passing the queue, she drove to the back of the building where she parked in a loading bay, crossing her fingers the security guy wouldn’t come for a walk round just yet. After locking her car, she made her way into the building and up the stairs to the office.
There was no sign of Vernon yet. She made him coffee, knowing she wouldn’t get any sense out of him until he’d had one. When he arrived, she clocked his grim expression and added a couple of custard creams to his saucer before following him into his office. She put the coffee and biscuits down on his desk.
‘You’re keen this morning,’ he said. ‘What’s up? Best get straight to the point, I’m not in the best of moods. I’ve just found out I’m being taken to Torquay next year.’
‘Doesn’t sound like too much of a crisis.’
‘It’s right in the middle of the Six Nations. Me and Dai always get tickets or else we watch the rugby in the pub. Martin and Nell are a menace with that bloody Groupon, I kid you not.’
‘There’s pubs in Torquay, you know, Vern.’ Kit realised she was going to have to work hard to avoid becoming sidetracked into Vernon’s anxiety.
‘But Torquay’s in England,’ he snapped.
‘I know that. I’m still pretty sure they have pubs.’
‘Dai reckons they won’t have the rugby on. The English only bother with football, so he says. Do you think that could be right?’
‘I couldn’t say. I expect you’ll find a way. Can I ask you something about the Coopers?’
‘Oh, all right, if you must.’
‘I found out Lucy knows some Makaton. The Coopers never said a word. What do you make of that?’
‘How do you know it?’ Vernon asked, starting in on his custard creams.
‘Her carer told me. Fay.’
‘When?’
‘I just saw her in the café. She says she taught all the kids a bit. She said the Coopers didn’t like it. And they certainly never told me.’
‘Perhaps they just didn’t think to mention it.’
‘Don’t be so bloody soft, Vern.’ Kit could see that his mind wasn’t on what she was saying at all. The Torquay plan had rattled him.
‘All right, I give in, what do you make of them not having mentioned it?’ Vernon was making an effort to focus on the matter at hand.
‘They know I’ve seen Lucy and that I couldn’t communicate with her much. They could have mentioned it then. They know exactly what the assessment is about – I went through it with both of them and they never said a word. I think they deliberately didn’t tell me. They don’t want me to talk to her, Vern. They were hoping it wouldn’t come up. Why? Are they hiding something?’
Vernon tipped his chair back into his thinking position. He regarded her with his eyes narrowed.
‘What?’ she asked him, feeling self-conscious.
‘How many other cases have you got besides this one?’
‘Fifteen, I think. Why?’ She knew exactly where this was going.
‘How much time are you spending on the Coopers?’
‘Quite a bit.’
‘Right. You need to calm down. I told you to keep an open mind but now you’re falling too far the other way. You are losing your perspective.’
‘I’m not,’ she said, knowing she was. Kit kicked herself for revealing it. It was always disorientating when Vernon decided to stop playing silly buggers and switch on his perceptive brain.
‘Yes, you are.’ Vernon’s voice was firm. ‘Maybe they are not being any more cooperative than they need to be, but don’t go over-interpreting that. Parents don’t tell us lots of things. It doesn’t mean they are hiding anything sinister, it just means they are angry and resentful about us being in their lives. They probably aren’t going to go out of their way to help. That doesn’t mean he’s an abuser, Kit. It just means he’s human. I might well do the same myself. It’s a little bit of power, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Now, you need to get this case closed, and get on with your others. How much have you got left to do on it?’
‘It’s the final visit this afternoon, to see Lucy again.’
‘OK, so go and get that done and then close it down. In fact, have the closure in my inbox by tomorrow morning. We’ve done our best, Kit, but the system has exonerated him and now you are relying on gossip, and, what’s worse, you are blowing that out of all proportion. There is nothing on record to say that Matt Cooper has ever put a foot wrong, and if we don’t get this finalised and get him back home, there’s going to be such an almighty ruck that even the lovely Councillor Desiree Palmer won’t be able to save my neck this time. Now bugger off, I need to get on to Dai and see if we can come up with a plan. And do not go asking Lucy any leading questions, all right?’
‘I would never do that.’
‘Yes, you would. You’ve got the makings of a half-decent social worker, unlike the rest of the deadbeats in this team, so don’t jeopardise it. No fishing, Kit. I mean it. Time to let this one go.’
*
Kit spent the rest of the day catching up on her recording. She put all the information she’d gathered about the Coopers onto the electronic assessment record, and then went for a late lunch. When it got close to four o’clock, she went out to her car, smoking a fag on her way and two more on the drive to the Coopers’, arriving with her heart racing from the hit of nicotine.
Chloe was waiting at the front door when Kit pulled up outside the house. ‘Are we going to do more colouring, Kit?’ she asked excitedly, as soon as Kit set foot on the drive.
‘Not today, sweetie. It’s Lucy’s turn to talk to me, isn’t it?’
Chloe pulled a face. ‘I want to do some more,’ she said.
‘Well, maybe if I’m not too long with Lucy, I can do one with you afterwards. Just a quick one, mind.’
‘The fairy again?’ Chloe was hanging in the doorway, reluctant to let Kit in until she got her own way.
‘If you like. Lucy first, though. But before that I need to talk to your mum. Where is she?’
‘In the kitchen.’ Chloe turned and went to sit on the bottom stair while Kit went into the kitchen. Annie was standing at the worktop with her back to the door. She didn’t turn around. Kit’s irritation grew by the second as she waited in silence for Anni
e to acknowledge her presence. Finally, after a lengthy period spent repositioning ingredients in a tagine, Annie threw a quick glance over her shoulder.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I have an appointment to see Lucy today. Had you forgotten?’
‘Looks like it.’ Annie turned back to the tagine and resumed her fiddling with the contents.
Kit decided to get straight to the point. ‘Annie, why didn’t you tell me that Lucy knows some Makaton?’
The back of Annie’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘I didn’t think it was important.’
‘Well, of course it’s important. You know I’ve already tried to do some work with her. You know that I need to get her views as part of the assessment. I explained all this to you. You told me she was totally non-verbal.’
‘She is.’
‘But she can sign. She can communicate.’
Annie sighed. She turned around and leant back against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms in front of her. ‘And can you use Makaton?’
‘No.’
‘Well, there you are then. No point in telling you.’ Annie picked up the tagine, opened the fridge door, and placed it carefully inside.
‘But I could have brought someone else with me, someone who can use it.’
Annie closed the fridge and turned back to Kit. She shrugged again. ‘I doubt that you’d get much out of her anyway. Fay taught her a few signs, but it was a while ago now and she hasn’t used it since. Matt felt it was too much for her. We don’t need signs to communicate with her. We understand her needs perfectly well. And quite frankly, I’d rather you didn’t troop anyone else through my home. The children find it unsettling. But I suppose then you will say I’m not cooperating. So it’s up to you. Lucy’s on her own just now, the carer isn’t due for a bit. I am taking a record of everything you do and say, and it will all go in the complaint at the end. Do what you like, as long as you are prepared to face the consequences.’
