The Silent Witness

by Casey Watson

  ‘That works fine,’ I told him.

  But it didn’t feel fine. I was already expecting the worst.

  As I expected, Riley was only too glad to take Bella off my hands for a couple of hours. ‘I’m happy to keep her till school time, if you like,’ she said. ‘Hell, till tonight, if it suits you, Mum. I’m not sure which is climbing highest up the walls – me or the flipping ironing pile!’

  And, equally as expected, Bella was only too happy to be dropped round to play with Marley Mae. ‘I’ll take my jewellery-making kit,’ she decided, delving into her chest of drawers to pull it out. ‘She loves helping me with that. And she’s getting good at it too. She’s making a secret bracelet for Riley, for a wedding present. Though we’d better not make that while we’re at hers, had we?’

  It was all said with such happy assurance that it frustrated me anew. Bella had been with us not quite two months, yet she spoke with such confidence about her new little friend’s likes and dislikes. She was one of those children who you just knew would have made a natural older sibling. Little did she know the purpose of me taking her to the happy bustle of Riley’s was so that her being taken away from us permanently – and, the way things usually worked, at a moment’s notice, literally – could be discussed while she was safely out of the way.

  And much as I wished it otherwise, I knew it was pretty much a done deal. Which did nothing for my mood as, with Bella duly dropped off at Riley’s, smiling and blissfully ignorant that her fate was to be decided in her absence, I went back home and performed the usual pre-meeting rituals. Clearing the clutter, clearing the dining table, wielding the duster, polish and air freshener, amassing cups and saucers, rootling around in the cupboard for my trusty milk jug, laying out the usual selection of biscuits.

  It wasn’t going to be a large meeting. It didn’t need to be. Just me, John, Sophie and her line manager, Kathy, who turned out to be a nice-seeming woman in perhaps her mid-fifties. She was really well spoken, and expensively dressed – something that a few years ago would have had me feeling inferior and out of place. These days, however, despite much of my work involving kids from the ‘wrong’ side of the tracks, it had put me in rooms and in meetings with people from all walks of life, and I had learned that no matter how one dressed or spoke, basically we were all the same.

  We were all on the same team with regard to Bella, too, I reminded myself. So I really needed to stop feeling so adversarial. And, after the usual introductions, we soon got to the matter in hand – the crux of which was that Kathy, understandably, was extremely worried that an unknown (as yet) person had actually been to our house, and she was obviously concerned for Bella’s safety.

  ‘It’s not unheard of for family members to snatch a child from their carers,’ Kathy reminded us all. ‘And, yes, I know it’s unlikely, but our priority is Bella and we have to protect her as well as we can. Which is why I’ve been making enquiries into an alternative placement this morning.’

  I could feel my face drop and I looked to John for help.

  He smiled reassuringly. ‘Casey, Kathy’s been to Bella’s previous carers this morning – first port of call, obviously – to see if they were in a position to help out. Just for a few days, that’s all. Just until the police can get to the bottom of who that woman was.’

  This was encouraging news. So, if they could identify the woman, and if they didn’t think she posed a major threat, perhaps, even if Bella was taken from us temporarily, we’d be able to have her back with us very soon. Though that still left the business of the trip to London. I was just about to say so, when John raised a hand, indicating that Kathy was going to explain further.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ she went on, ‘they can’t do anything just now, as they’re busy helping look after their new grandchild. And I know you’re off for the weekend, which is great, of course, but we still have to ensure that Bella is in a place of safety when you return.’

  I decided a white lie would be a risk worth taking here. ‘Actually, things have moved on since I spoke to you earlier, John. We can take Bella away for the whole of half-term week. We have the keys to a caravan in Yorkshire, you see – Mike’s work colleague – and we’ve planned to go straight on up there after London. Does that make a difference?’

  It would definitely make for an interesting phone conversation with my husband once they’d gone. But one way or another, I knew we could do this, even if I had to play the ‘greater good’ and ‘Mike’s fostering responsibilities’ cards with his boss myself. Anyway, he was the manager, wasn’t he? Surely he could twiddle with the rota?

  The three others in the room glanced at one another, and, seemingly unable to come up with an objection to that, Kathy nodded. ‘Well, that would certainly solve our problem in the short term …’ she mused.

  ‘Wouldn’t it?’ I said brightly, conscious that John was looking at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Perfect timing, eh? God bless that man with a van, eh?’

  ‘Right, then,’ John said. ‘Well, I suppose any more drastic plans could wait until the Watsons get back from their Yorkshire trip, can’t they? And it’ll give us a bit of space to see if we can find out who this woman might be.’

  Kathy nodded. ‘It’ll certainly give us a bit of breathing space,’ she said, then, looking pointedly at me, ‘but you do understand, Casey, don’t you, that if we haven’t resolved the matter of the so-called sister turning up at your house by the time you get back, we’ll have to revisit our plans to move Bella?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I assured her, ‘and thank you for letting us take her away, too. I really appreciate it. Bella’s finally in a place where she feels comfortable around us – the extended family too, particularly my little granddaughters. We’ve come such a long way, and I’d hate to disrupt all that now.’

  ‘I know,’ Kathy said. ‘And I absolutely sympathise. But if that’s what has to happen, then I’m afraid it still will.’ She sighed deeply, and daintily picked up a biscuit. The only one of the meeting thus far. I was put in mind of the Queen and the thing I’d once heard about no one being able to start eating at a dinner until she’d picked up her cutlery. Nothing queenly about Kathy, though. I suspected she had to make some pretty down-and-dirty decisions in her job.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Flipping Facebook.’

  ‘I think I’d use a stronger word. I know I sound like a dinosaur but I so abhor the problems all these social media channels have given us. Oh the trials of the digital age, eh?’

  Kathy broke the biscuit in two and popped half in her mouth. Respect to her. I reckoned she knew a bit more about social media than me too.

  The remainder of the meeting went as smoothly as could be expected. We had a general update and chat about how things currently were, and how they were looking longer term, and I agreed that, after Kathy and John left, Sophie would stay behind with me so that she could ask Bella if she could shed any light on who our caller might have been.

  ‘No skirting round the houses,’ Kathy said. ‘We need her to be asked outright about this so-called aunt of hers. Hopefully Adam Cummings himself will be able to clarify the position re the complement of so far unaccounted-for relatives he might have, but he’s currently not answering calls – either to us or the police. Which probably means nothing – he could be out and about, with his lawyer, anything really. But from what you’ve reported, she sounds spurious. I think we’re all agreed on that point, aren’t we?’ We all nodded. ‘And who knows,’ Kathy finished, ‘Bella herself might be able to shed light on who she actually might be. Anyway, we’ll leave you in peace.’

  ‘And, you know what, Casey,’ Sophie said, ‘I could go and grab some lunch in town, if you like. You know – give you a chance to get straight, go and pick Bella up – come back in a couple of hours? Would that suit you?’

  I agreed it made sense. No point in Sophie hanging around while I drove over to Riley’s to pick Bella up. I waved them off, telephoned Riley, and set off to fetch Bella, glad that at last we
’d been given the go-ahead to ask her. Since I felt almost certain the woman had tracked us down via Bella speaking to her friend on Facebook, I felt sure she’d be able to shed some light on things. I only hoped it didn’t plunge us into further darkness.

  It didn’t really get us anywhere, in the end. I sat in on things, and could tell straight away that Bella was as clueless as we were.

  ‘He doesn’t have a sister,’ she told Sophie, immediately she had put the question to her. ‘Or a brother. Or anyone, as far as I know. Not that I’ve ever heard talked about or met,’ she added.

  Sophie explained about the woman turning up and professing to be her stepdad’s sister, and as she did so I could see the anxiety growing in Bella. Sophie had me describe her. Again, Bella shook her head. ‘It’s definitely not a sister,’ she said again. ‘I know that for sure. He said it lots to me – that we were both only children. So who was that woman, then? What did she want?’

  Here I knew Sophie would be necessarily sparing with the details. ‘We’re not sure,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t looking for you or anything like that,’ she said, glancing at me. ‘I think, in her funny way, she just wanted Casey here to know that your stepdad was, um, okay – doing well, you know? And that, well …’ She shrugged. ‘Just that she was his friend.’

  Now Bella looked animated more than scared. ‘Well, he definitely doesn’t have any of those.’

  Chapter 13

  Amazing how the prospect of adventure can take your mind off everything else, particularly when it’s an adventure tinged with an element of anxiety, as any trip to the capital would be for a homebody such as me. It had also been many years since I’d last ventured to London, and I was sure it would have changed a great deal.

  So, far from fretting about our angry visitor, the meeting, or the possible outcome of the meeting (which wobbly bridge I would cross if and when we came to it) I was almost as excited as the kids were as Mike dropped us off at the train station at stupid o’clock on Saturday morning. The kids were all puffy-eyed from lack of sleep, which – I know it’s mad – gave me enormous pleasure. In our mile-a-minute world, with so many distractions available to children round every corner, it was good to see teenagers – and one almost-teenager, in Bella – so excited about the prospect of something as ordinary as a trip on a train, to see a train platform, in the company of a diminutive and slightly naggy middle-aged woman.

  Though they’d be horrified to think it, Tyler and Denver were actually giggling together as Mike waved us off through the ticket barrier, and Bella, who’d not said a further word about recent developments, couldn’t seem to stop grinning.

  ‘Now remember your promise, kids,’ I said, for what was already probably the fourth time. ‘We all stick together, look out for each other, and never let anyone out of our sight. London is a massive place. Massive. And we could easily get lost in it.’

  Denver patted my arm. ‘Stop panicking, Mrs W. I’ve been to the smoke twice, so I know my way round it. Don’t worry. I won’t let any of you get lost.’

  Mike stuck a thumb up. ‘I’m counting on that, kiddo,’ he said. And while I wasn’t – for all his ‘smoke’ stuff, Denver couldn’t possibly know his way round more than a tiny fraction of it – I was definitely reassured by having two strapping fifteen-year-olds with me: safety in numbers. I just wished I could act on my small-hours idea, to have us all roped together, like mountaineers.

  Still, the excitement was the main thing, and once we were safely boarded I felt relaxed enough to lose myself in the moment a little more. Though it seemed Bella still had other things on her mind. We’d not been able to bag a table so were sitting in two rows of two, the boys in front of us, and we’d not long left the suburbs behind when she tapped me lightly on the forearm with Dobby, who’d she brought along for the ride. (Something of an added worry in itself; I’d seriously wondered if I could get a tracker fitted for him.)

  ‘Casey, you know that woman?’ she whispered, cupping her hand around her hand and leaning close to my left ear.

  I leaned in too. ‘Yes,’ I whispered back, as conscious as she was that we’d not discussed any of this with Ty yet.

  ‘Well, I was thinking last night about who she might be, and I wondered if she might be from the club he used to go to.’

  ‘He’ as in her stepdad. ‘What sort of club?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Bella said. ‘But he used to go there lots. And my mum used to get cross.’ She fell silent.

  ‘What, like a sports club?’ I suggested.

  She shook her head. ‘Well, I don’t think so. He didn’t wear different clothes or anything.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, not sure whether to quiz her further. ‘Well,’ I eventually replied, having opted just to file it for now. ‘That’s all very helpful, sweetie. I’ll bet that’s it. Maybe she was just wondering where he’d got to, eh?’

  Then something else obviously occurred to Bella. ‘That’s why I thought of it,’ she whispered. ‘My stepdad’s on Facebook.’

  Luddite I may be but in this I was already one step ahead of her. Not any more he wasn’t, sadly.

  ‘Is that it?’ I announced, some three and a half hours later.

  Excitement was at fever pitch by the time we had finally arrived at King’s Cross. And remained up there, despite the alarming numbers of people, the enormous queues and the real possibility that I might lose all three charges at any moment. And for this? This brick wall with a trolley embedded in it?

  But I was clearly in a minority of one. Just like every other person who was milling about, amid the sea of clicking smartphones, Ty, Denver and Bella were completely rapt.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re actually here,’ Bella breathed, clutching Dobby tightly to her chest, as if he was a badge of office, or a magic talisman.

  ‘Nor can I,’ I agreed, though for rather different reasons. We were now in the epicentre of noisy, smelly London – for this! ‘Don’t we get to go through anything?’ I wanted to know. ‘Isn’t that the whole point of it?’

  And was rewarded for my ignorance with a short lecture from all three of them about how only wizards could do that – didn’t I know anything? – and how this was more than enough – this was all about just being here. Apparently.

  And having your photo taken for posterity, obviously. ‘By the wall, Mum,’ Tyler explained. ‘And you have to wear a Harry Potter scarf and hold a broomstick and do a funny jump.’

  Obviously.

  ‘There’s a great shop, though,’ Denver added. ‘You’ll definitely like the shop, Mrs W.’

  So that was me told. And he certainly had my number about the shopping. But he was definitely wrong on this particular occasion. Great, I thought. So we get to queue here for God knows how long, just to see a wall with half an old trolley stuck in it, and my highlight is that I then get to shuffle round an overcrowded shop, and spend lots of money on things I neither know or care about. I was beginning to understand how Mike felt when he came shopping with me …

  But I wasn’t Mrs Grumpy for long. When we finally reached our accommodation (via the Tube, which was another scary nightmare) and the beds were variously allocated and bounced on, a bout of further online research revealed that the bit of the trip I hadn’t told them about – a visit to the actual Harry Potter Studio Tour tomorrow – would be a journey of only slightly nightmare-ish proportions in comparison to the one we’d just made. Yes, it was more of an extravagance than we could strictly afford, but I knew it would be worth every single hard-earned penny just to see the expressions on their faces.

  And I wasn’t wrong. I told them over pizza in a nearby Italian restaurant chain, and their combined response when I told them what our plans were for Sunday was sufficient to have diners at nearby tables drop cutlery, splurt drinks and leave their seats.

  ‘Best. Day. Ever,’ was Tyler’s considered response on calming down and finally releasing me from a bear hug. No amount of money could buy that.

  Thankfully, th
e studio tour was definitely of a ‘that’s a bit more like it’ kind of place. Another lengthy journey, yes, and an acquaintance with another couple of vast, busy stations, but once we were there it was as if we really had stepped into a film set. Well, film set after film set, because that’s what we were doing; from the Great Hall, to Diagon Alley – with the famous Ollivanders wand shop (a great draw for Denver) to Gringotts Bank, to Dumbledore’s office with all its treasures, and as we shuffled round (again, there was much shuffling to be done there) I realised I’d absorbed a lot more of the world of wizards than I’d known – perhaps by some wizardly osmosis.

  Best of all, however, was a call I got while they were busy sipping ‘butterbeer’ (which was, to my mind, beyond revolting).

  It was Mike.

  ‘Lost any of them yet?’ were his first words.

  ‘Certainly not!’ I huffed at him. Though this was obviously a lot more by luck than judgement. ‘Anyway,’ I said, once I’d regaled him with an update on the morning’s adventures, ‘how is your day going, home all on your lonesome? You wish you’d come now, don’t you? Admit it.’

  ‘I’m not at home,’ he said. ‘I’m in the warehouse, hard at work.’

  I was about to ask him why, but, of course, I knew straight away. ‘So does that mean …?’

  ‘Just about,’ he said. ‘Though I’ve had to jump through a lot of hoops. I’m here all day, and I’ll have to pop in for a bit tomorrow morning, but that’ll give you time to pack for the caravan, won’t it?’

  I’d half expected it, of course, because I knew that, despite what he’d said, Mike would do his very best – he wouldn’t even have mentioned it otherwise. But it was still news I’d been crossing my fingers for. I assumed he’d pulled some strings, promised goodness knew what in terms of future overtime, or he’d perhaps even explained to the big boss that it was a fostering crisis he needed to be there for. But I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth by wanting chapter and verse on it – it was simply another opportunity to make three children (and, by extension, me) very happy, and that was good enough for me.