by Casey Watson
I turned and took it in, making a quick forensic sweep over the area. There was a neat square of garden, full of neatly trimmed bushes and packed full of flowers – the last of the daffodils and crocuses, the first of the tulips, and some other bright flowers I didn’t recognise, with a path down the middle leading to a white, uPVC front door. It was a small semi, and had what looked to be brand new windows. They might not have been, but gleamed so spotlessly that it was difficult to imagine otherwise, and all sported identical bright, white nets, all tied back from the centre with equally snowy ribbon.
As first impressions went, it hinted at the sort of domestic perfection that I had to confess to aspiring to myself, even though, at times, it drove my family round the bend.
And if I was impressed with the outside, I was positively green with envy when Mrs Bentley opened the door and ushered me inside. Again, I did a quick sweep to try and get a sense of Kiara’s mum, this time taking in another set of variables. This woman, who looked to be in her late thirties, obviously liked the finer things in life. Her make-up was immaculate and she had the same elfin features as her daughter; she was strikingly good looking. Her clothes looked as though they’d been bought at some expensive boutique – I’d not seen their like in any of the chain stores I shopped in. Wearing a slim black pencil skirt, a crisp floral blouse and floaty black cardigan, she put me in mind of a solicitor or a magistrate, and straight away I felt slightly intimidated. She worked in a care home? Then she must surely be some sort of manager. Otherwise, it just didn’t compute – because though I had no idea whether there was a particular dress code for a care assistant at the home she worked at, surely comfortable clothes would be the order of the day.
‘Ah, Mrs Watson,’ she said, appearing relaxed and pleased enough to see me. ‘Please come through,’ she added, smiling. ‘It’s so nice to put a face to the voice, don’t you think?’
I let Kiara step through the small porch before me and waited a moment while she immediately took off her shoes and placed them neatly on a wooden rack alongside other female footwear. I bent down to unbuckle my sandal to follow suit but Mrs Bentley immediately stopped me. ‘Oh please, it’s fine, honestly,’ she assured me. ‘I’m sure you haven’t been trudging through muddy fields on your way here! Come on, come on through.’
I followed, but not before I noticed the look of consternation on Kiara’s face, staring at my feet as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. I smiled ruefully. I had been guilty of exactly the same behaviour in the past – telling Riley and Kieron to remove their shoes on pain of death and then pretending to other visitors that, actually, I wasn’t a fussy housekeeper at all. Oh, I knew where this woman was coming from.
Kiara’s mum led me into the kitchen, and that’s when I really began to take in the full impact of my surroundings and what they might signify. Everything that had initially impressed me – the minimalistic chic of the place, the absolute spotlessness – was now starting to make me feel slightly uncomfortable. Not only wasn’t there a single item out of place, there was also a distinct lack of the sort of items that made a house (particularly one containing a 12-year-old) a home. Admittedly, I was a clean freak – I knew that well, and had learned to live with it – but this level of clean-freakery was, well, freakish. At a guess, this was a level bordering on being a bit OCD, which, though often said in jest, was no laughing matter. I knew because I’d dealt with kids and adults afflicted with it.
I glanced at the nets – exactly seven pleats in each, and so precise that they almost looked measured, and to the millimetre. The tea towels, coloured to match the pale peach and white of the kitchen cupboards, were neatly rolled and stacked in a pyramid shape at the side of the sink, and there was nothing on show anywhere but a selection of chic kitchen appliances, which looked almost like they’d been curated for a museum exhibition. A dream kitchen? Or over the top, even by my exacting standards? It looked markedly less lived-in than a just-decorated show-home – at least when dressing a show-home they made it looked like humans were occasionally at home. This was practically clinical.
‘Do you eat early?’ Mrs Bentley asked me. ‘You’re welcome to stay for tea, if so.’
I wondered where she might magic a meal from. The only ingestible thing in evidence seemed to be a single lime on the window-sill, and my hunch was that it would be bound for a gin and tonic.
‘Oh no, but thank you so much for asking,’ I answered. ‘My brood eat around five o’clock and I’m under strict instructions to make Hunter’s chicken and salad for them tonight.’ I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to tell her my precise dinner plans, but there was something about the atmosphere that needed filling up, somehow. ‘I’d love a coffee though, if you have some, or a cup of tea.’
Kiara was still looking bemused in the doorway, and Mrs Bentley now turned towards her. ‘Go on, Kiara,’ she said. ‘You look like you’re catching flies, standing there with your mouth open. Go up and get changed. Don’t forget to hang your skirt up and put the tops in the laundry basket. I’m going to have a chat with Mrs Watson here, so hurry along,’ she finished, making a little shooing gesture with both her hands.
Kiara smiled at me, looking distinctly nervous, before leaving. I then heard her feet on the stair treads as she ran up the stairs.
‘Coffee it is, then,’ Mrs Bentley said, filling the kettle, then, having done so, grabbing a cloth from under the sink so she could rub away the drops of water from the worktop. She then pulled out a chair from under the tiny kitchen table, and urged me to sit on it. ‘So,’ she said, ‘I assume you’ve got more questions about Kiara. Is that right?’
I duly sat down. ‘Yes – well, I mean, what I’d really like to do is chat. About the hair pulling – which she’s still doing. Are you aware of her doing it much at home? And – well, whether there’s anything else you’ve noticed. Anything you’re concerned about. And her dad,’ I added, as she pulled identical mugs from a cupboard. ‘I have been wondering about her relationship with her dad, and how that’s affecting her. I know you said that he doesn’t take on much of a role with her, but she really does seem quite fond of him. How are things in that area?’ I finished, watching for her reaction.
There seemed not to be one. ‘Instant alright?’ she asked. I nodded. She duly got some out – from another cupboard, rather than from a canister on the worktop – and proceeded to make the drinks, leading to further enquiries about milk, and then sugar, and if so, how much of each.
It wasn’t until this task was completed that she opted to answer. Thinking time, perhaps?
‘I don’t know what to tell you about the hair pulling,’ she said once she’d sat down herself, carefully placing her mug on a coaster. The kitchen table, inexplicably, was dressed with a white tablecloth, as if sitting in a Michelin starred restaurant rather than a small suburban kitchen. I didn’t imagine she and her daughter were the kind to sit down and eat pizza together on it, that was for sure. Then I checked myself. Appearances could be deceptive.
‘I really don’t know what to say about it,’ she added, sighing. ‘I’m still convinced it’s an attention-seeking ploy. She never does it at home. Never. So, to my mind, it must be to do with something that’s going on in school.’ She looked pointedly at me. ‘Are you sure she isn’t being bullied?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Not that anyone’s ever noticed anyway, and I’m sure we’d know about it if she were. We try to be very proactive about that sort of thing. How about friends, though? She seems such a solitary girl. Does she talk about friends? Have them home for tea? That sort of thing?’
‘Not these days,’ Mrs Bentley said, shaking her head. ‘Though she did have a little friend for a couple of years. Samantha her name was. They lived in each other’s pockets for a long time. I don’t know what happened but they must have had a fall-out, oh, let me see … six months ago it must have been.’
‘Did she tell you why?’ I asked, knowing how girls could hav
e such cataclysmic friendship crises.
Mrs Bentley shook her head again. ‘No, she didn’t. They just stopped hanging out. I did ask, but well, you know what my daughter’s like, Mrs Watson. If she doesn’t want to talk about something she won’t. And it wasn’t as if she seemed distraught, because she didn’t. Quite the opposite. You have to realise, she’s always been a quiet child.’
‘So there’s nothing you’ve noticed lately?’
‘There really isn’t. So I don’t really know what to tell you.’
‘What about her dad, then? How are things with him?’
‘Oh, when it comes to him there is plenty that I can tell you.’
She was instantly more animated and I braced myself for a tirade about her ex. And I got one. ‘That girl’s got rose-tinted glasses when it comes to that man. He’s an absolute waste of space. Never helped us financially – he can’t get off his backside long enough to find a job for a start. And if it wasn’t for her pushing to see him, he wouldn’t even bother with her, whatever she likes to think. I’m telling you, he’s no father, never has been and never will be. He’s good for nothing, that man.’
I had barely gathered my thoughts enough to make a sufficiently non-contentious reply, when a whirlwind entered the kitchen, in the shape of Kiara, dressed in what looked like a pair of pyjamas, returned from her room and clearly in high dudgeon. ‘Just you stop that!’ she screamed at her mother. ‘Why do you always have to bad-mouth my dad? He doesn’t do that about you, ever, and you’re horrid! Just because you hate him doesn’t mean I have to. I hate you!’
I stared at Kiara, shocked. Though I’d heard her launch both barrels at Tommy the first time I’d met her, she was always polite and respectful of teachers, and I really didn’t think she was the type of child who would speak to adults like this. Mrs Bentley, however, seemed completely unfazed, so I recalibrated my thinking. Some kids were angels in school and the very devil at home. And vice versa – you couldn’t second guess it.
‘Kiara, sweetheart,’ Mrs Bentley said, calmly, ‘I told you to go to your room and that I needed to speak with Mrs Watson. Snooping around and listening in to grown-up conversations will only get you into trouble.’ She then gave her daughter a clear warning look. ‘Go on. Do as you’re told. I said room, Kiara, now.’
Kiara, crying freely now, gave me a quick, helpless-looking glance, before turning on her heel and flouncing from the room. It was the kind of exchange between mother and daughter that has doubtless been played out in such circumstances for centuries, and would doubtless carry on being played out as well. I decided it was time for me to leave, because I didn’t think there was any more I could usefully do or say, and it wasn’t as if I had learned anything I didn’t already know. I stood up and picked up my bag. ‘I better get going,’ I said, anxious to convey by my light tone that I understood how things stood. ‘It was lovely meeting you, Mrs Bentley – lovely to put a face to a name, as you said – not to mention seeing your beautiful home.’
‘Likewise,’ Mrs Bentley said, standing up also and offering me a hand to shake. ‘And sorry about that –’ she rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘You know how things can get when they’re that age, I’m sure. Please feel free to call again, won’t you? Oh, but do phone in advance to check I’ll be home. I’ve managed to alter a few of my shifts, as I told your Mr Clark, but I’ve had to agree to provide cover if anyone is off ill or anything, so I might get called in at short notice.’
‘I will do,’ I said as I opened the porch door. ‘And thank you for the coffee. Will you say goodbye to Kiara for me? Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow?’
Mrs Bentley agreed and stood by the door as I walked down the path and up the road towards the school, where I’d left my car. And as I walked I reflected on the little outburst I’d just witnessed. Perhaps Mrs Bentley was half right; perhaps Kiara’s hair pulling and drifting off were simply symptoms of her distress at the dire state of her parents’ relationship. With her mum so censorious about her dad, and Kiara loving him so much, she was bound to feel torn about where her loyalties should lie. It was a nasty situation and one which the poor child should never have been brought into. And it could be, probably would be, nothing more than that. Which made the business of helping her reasonably straightforward.
But if that were so, why, oh why, was my brain screaming no! at me so loudly?
Chapter 9
Though I mulled over my brief visit to Kiara’s home all the way back to school, and then again as I drove the short journey home, by the time I got there I wondered if I wasn’t scratching an itch that was mostly in my mind.
It wouldn’t have been the first time; I knew I had a tendency to over-analyse – that was my nature, and one of the reasons I’d jumped at the job running the Unit. When ‘behaviour’ is in your job title, it kind of goes with the territory to spend half your time analysing exactly that.
But as the days passed, and we reached the start of the Easter holidays with nothing of note occurring (not in the sense of ringing alarm bells), I began to convince myself that whatever the reason for Kiara having presented to me as a child in need of extra support, the support we were giving her was reaping rewards. She was a model pupil, too – yes, she still came into school tired and slightly tense at times, but within the cocoon of the Unit classroom she seemed to be having her needs met, and, at the same time, proving a real positive in Chloe’s life, which, in turn, fed back into her own sense of self-worth.
And as for the boys – well, they were boys, and of a certain age and persuasion, and both were benefitting from having some lessons in personal development, away from the many triggers and flashpoints of normal school life – something that was key in them adjusting to their different situations and having the tools to cope with the challenges they brought. Jonathan, in particular, had been a real revelation, making me surer still that he’d just got locked into chronically low self-esteem – I made a mental note to speak to Gary about chatting to his foster mum about not using the points chart for anything that happened at school.
All told, it was a productive quartet in the Unit currently, so I skipped off to enjoy the Easter holidays in positive mood. I also had something of a mission in mind. Mike and I had been house hunting for a while now, for no reason other than that I fancied a change. This happened to me quite frequently – there was something of the gypsy in my soul – and was the main reason I’d always preferred to rent rather than buy.
‘Itchy feet’ was what my mother called it, invariably rolling her eyes when she mentioned it, so the gypsy in my soul clearly hadn’t come from her side. Put me in the same location for more than a year or two and, sure as night follows day, I’d soon be pestering Mike to go somewhere else. It was a standing joke in our family that we never got to put up the Christmas tree more than once in any house. Though I wasn’t having that. It was rubbish – I could count at least three places where we’d done this. Still, when my mind was made up …
I usually started by throwing in the odd complaint about the current property, just to set the ball rolling; set out my stall, so to speak. I’d suddenly announce that the garden was either too big or too small, or I’d grumble about the size of the dining room or lack of a conservatory – any perceived ‘defect’ that I laid eyes on, basically.
Mike and the kids had grown accustomed to this by now, and would always roll their eyes (just like my mum did), shake their heads and then realise that however much they groaned about the prospect, before long we’d be moving house again. We never went far; always remaining close to the schools and our various friends, so nobody really minded. And, truth be known, once the process was properly under way, the kids would get excited too, proving my restless gene had been passed on to them.
This was one such time, and the Easter holidays gave us the opportunity we needed to really get stuck into viewing properties and searching the internet for something that struck my fancy. Mike had booked a week off and Kieron was off from college so,
as far as I was concerned, there were no excuses to dither either.
On this occasion, however, it seemed my kids had other plans. ‘Mum, I swear if I have to look at one more house I’m going to go nuts!’ Kieron announced when I was running around the front room with the local newspaper, assuring everyone that this time I had found the perfect place. ‘The last three flipping houses have been perfect,’ he moaned on at me irritably. ‘Can’t I please just leave it to you and dad this time, please? Honest, Mum, you’re driving me mad!’
Much as Kieron disliked change from routine (all a part of his Asperger’s) he was actually used to this process by now, and, in my defence, I always went back to what the doctor had told me when he was younger, that while I shouldn’t stress him needlessly, it was also important to challenge his various ‘security blankets’ in order to prepare him for the travails of adult life.
But he clearly didn’t want to be part of the decision-making process, and perhaps I needed to rein in just a bit. ‘I know how he feels, love,’ Mike added loyally, ‘and to be fair, he shouldn’t have to if he doesn’t want to; Riley doesn’t have to, does she? Because she’s out at work. No, Kieron,’ he said, before I had a chance to push another set of details under my son’s nose, ‘you go off with your mates or something and enjoy your time off. Me and your mum will sort this one out.’
‘Charming!’ I huffed, though, actually, I did take his point. ‘Well, just don’t either of you be moaning after the fact, then,’ I finished, putting down the newspaper and heading off to find my shoes so I could – all being well and a 30-second phone call confirmed it – drag Mike round my newest perfect prospect then and there.
And it was perfect; a beautiful little bungalow with a big bedroom downstairs, and two further ones – his ’n’ hers – nestled in the roof. It also sported a big front garden, mostly laid to hard-standing – handy for extra cars and visitors – and a back garden to die for, with both a cherry tree in it and the cherry on the top adjacent to it, in the form of a massive conservatory that led out on to the ‘must have’ of the moment: a great expanse of decking that I knew Alan Titchmarsh would approve of.
