The Silent Witness

by Casey Watson

  And as Mike had suggested, I did a lightning-quick Monday morning washing, drying and shopping turnaround, so that by mid-afternoon, the car loaded with children, supplies and lots of cold-weather gear, we were off on our way to what the weather forecast was already promising would be a chilly and perhaps even snowy Yorkshire. They talk about time zones – but we were crossing weather zones as well; even in the car we could see winter coming down to claim us; the hint of spring down in London already felt an impossible dream.

  ‘Anyway, we’re not going for the weather,’ Tyler said, as I ran through the weather stats on my smartphone. ‘I reckon it’ll be more exciting if the weather’s really, really bad and we have to struggle to survive.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too many Bear Grylls shows on telly,’ Mike observed, grinning. ‘And I doubt there will be any likelihood of us struggling to survive. More likely struggling to get through the lorry load of food your mum’s packed. Not to mention,’ he added darkly, as we wheezed up a steepish hill, ‘struggling to even get there, given the weight in this flipping car.’

  Oh, my, though, when we got there it was cold beyond cold, as all logic should have already told us it would be. After all, what else was a caravan if not a tin box? So whoever went to stay in one in February? Not to mention one in Yorkshire …

  ‘Lunatics, that’s who,’ Mike muttered as he returned from braving the elements – not to mention increasing flurries of the promised snow – in order to connect the gas bottle and put the water on. And it was touch and go whether we shouldn’t just pack up again and drive home, because it was cold enough to freeze the water in the pipes, too – it was only a phone call to Mike’s colleague, who assured us our body heat, plus the heater, plus the boiler and the insulation, and so on and so forth, meant we really didn’t need to fret.

  I wasn’t so sure. Even with the fire on, you could tell from its meagre output that it would be a long time before it made any sort of impression on the Arctic chill.

  Still, the kids, to a man (and a girl), thought it was brilliant.

  ‘Going to a caravan in the summer is for softies,’ Denver said decisively, once we were all installed in the little living room, huddled round the gas fire, each of us sitting in our sleeping bags.

  That had been a good idea on Tyler’s part. We’d put the little oven on as well, so we could warm up the chilli I’d brought for supper (cold, cold night, hot, hot food) and with my hands wrapped round a mug of coffee I was beginning to feel quite toasty.

  The caravan responded with what sounded like its agreement – rattling, almost vibrating even, as it shuddered under the onslaught of a particularly fierce gust of wind. Perhaps we were lunatics, I thought. We certainly seemed to be the only people currently on site if the blackness beyond the caravan curtains was anything to go by.

  ‘It sounds a bit like a helicopter landing on us, doesn’t it?’ Mike observed. ‘You know, the way it rumbles when the wind gives it a battering.’

  ‘I flipping hope not,’ I said with feeling. ‘Well, unless it was coming to pick us up and relocate us to one of the Costas,’ I added.

  ‘Oh, shurrup, Mum – you’re loving this,’ Tyler said, nudging me with his sleeping-bag-clad feet. And, of course, he was right. Despite all the obvious pointers that I shouldn’t be – the snow, the cold, the blizzard – I really was.

  ‘Perhaps it’s Bear Grylls coming,’ Denver said. ‘Perhaps he’s being winched down so he can do one of those survival programmes here, where he’s got an hour to build a shelter and make a fire out of moss and twigs before all his toes drop off.’

  ‘I can’t quite imagine that would happen,’ Mike said, chuckling. ‘Not in an hour. Not in Yorkshire. Not if he’s got his boots on, at any rate. And he really doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d forget his boots.’

  ‘Yeah, but it can still happen, Dad,’ Tyler was quick to point out. ‘If the altitude’s high enough. Mountaineers lose fingers and toes all the time. And that’s even with their gloves and boots on.’

  ‘Well, happily, we’re not up Everest,’ I chipped in, before finishing my coffee. ‘And we also have a heater, and lots of food.’

  ‘Lots of food,’ Mike agreed.

  ‘And no one’s going to be out in the elements tonight, booted or otherwise,’ he added. He looked in my direction. Like me, the thought that Tyler and Denver might just want to had probably crossed his mind.

  ‘But I wonder what it’s like,’ Denver said, confirming Mike was probably right. ‘You know, if the caravan blew away or something and we all had to camp out. I wonder how quickly we’d die.’

  ‘Denver! Enough of that,’ I said. ‘No one’s dying of exposure on my watch, I can assure you.’ I pulled the zip down and began wiggling out of my sleeping bag, to find the caravan air a welcome few degrees above freezing now, certainly sufficient for me to brave it and start on tea.

  ‘Yeah, but I wonder what it would be like, being out in this. I reckon it might be fun,’ Tyler said. ‘You remember that school canoeing trip thing we did for PE, Denv? That was in, what, April? And we sat outside half the night with Mr Curtis to look at the stars?’

  ‘Did you?’ I said. ‘You didn’t mention that bit.’

  ‘Mr Curtis told us not to,’ Denver answered. ‘In case our mums started fretting about us being out without our liberty bodices on. Whatever they are when they’re at home. But, yeah,’ he added, having drained his mug of tea, ‘I reckon it would be well fun.’

  ‘It won’t.’ We all turned. It was the first time Bella had spoken in a while. She’d been content to be snuggled down beside me on the back part of the sofa that ran round the end of the caravan, just listening, and sometimes laughing, while the boys rattled on.

  ‘Really? How would you know?’ Denver wanted to know. There was no edge in his tone, but even so I could feel Bella bristle slightly beside me.

  ‘Because I’ve slept out,’ she said simply. ‘In the winter. Hallowe’en, it was. Last year. And I didn’t have a caravan either. I didn’t even have a tent.’

  ‘You never,’ Tyler said, sitting forward now, clearly impressed. ‘What was this for? Was it in the Guides or something?’

  Bella shook her head. ‘Just at home. In my garden.’

  ‘What, for a Hallowe’en dare or something?’ Denver asked, also much impressed.

  Again Bella shook her head, and I couldn’t tell if she was revelling in the kudos or just keen to put her sixpence-worth in. In any event, she said, ‘No, just because my parents were fighting.’

  ‘So you stayed out all night, like?’ Denver asked her. A not unreasonable question. ‘Without a tent or anything? You must have been frozen.’

  Tyler glanced at me before adding his own sixpence worth. ‘But what about your mum and dad? Didn’t they even notice? Where were they?’

  ‘I didn’t know and I didn’t care,’ Bella said. ‘I just crawled under my old sandpit and slept underneath it.’

  Both boys were now agog and I sensed we should probably call a halt to this. ‘Well, that’s you two put in your place,’ I said, squeezing Bella’s forearm as I stood up. ‘And let’s be clear – there’ll be no camping out of any description tonight. Quite apart from anything else’ – I pointed – ‘there’s a cliff just over there. Right. Time we got on, I think. Bella, d’you want to help me with the food? While Ty and Denver help Mike sort the table out and everything?’

  Bella wriggled her way out of her own sleeping bag and followed me, and as she passed the boys Ty stuck a hand up to high-five her.

  ‘Reee-spect, mate!’ he said.

  ‘I did, you know,’ Bella whispered to me a couple of hours later as I tucked her and her faithful Dobby into bed. We’d given her the little bunk room to herself, while Ty and Denver shared the double sofa-bed in the living room. The snow hadn’t abated but at least the wind had dropped now. The quiet outside was absolute. Goodness only knew what we’d wake up to in the morning.

  I sat down on the edge of th
e bottom bunk, taking care not to crack my skull on the top one. ‘I don’t doubt that for a moment,’ I said. ‘Must have been scary, though.’

  ‘Actually, it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘I mean, it sort of was, but I think I was too upset to be scared. And then, when I realised they’d locked me out –’

  ‘Locked you out? What, your mum and dad did?’

  ‘Not my mum,’ she corrected quickly. ‘She’d never do that. Not on purpose. I mean, she did – but she didn’t realise. She thought I was in bed.’

  ‘How would she think that, love?’

  ‘Because my stepdad was drunk and they were fighting. Just like they always do. And I had gone to bed, but then I came down to try and stop them because they were in the kitchen, which is underneath my bedroom, and it’s just unbearable having to listen to them, trying to sleep. And my stepdad was, like, screaming at me to get out of his sight, like he always does, and – I don’t know. I went into the living room and then I ran out into the garden. Just to get away from them, you know? From him. Just to get away from the shouting.’

  ‘But how did you end up spending the night out there?’

  She frowned. ‘It wasn’t quite the whole night – my mum came and found me … I don’t know. At four o’clock or something. I’m not sure.’

  ‘So almost the whole night, then,’ I said, increasingly appalled by what I was hearing. ‘But how, love?’

  ‘Because my stepdad locked the patio door,’ she said. ‘My mum was telling him to shut up – the neighbours are, like, on at them all the time. They all hate us. Mr Atkinson – he’s on one side of us – even got the police round one time. So my stepdad went across – I watched him – and banged the door shut and put the catch down.’

  ‘But what about you? You know, when you saw that. Didn’t you rush over there and try and stop him?’

  Even in the dark bedroom, I could see Bella was looking at me as if I had a screw loose. ‘You don’t know my stepdad,’ she said. ‘Even when he seems okay, if you set him off, he’s like a …’ She paused, trying to find the word. ‘Like he’s just been waiting, you know? For a reason to start up again. And, it’s like, I see my mum …’ She looked up and the light spilling in from the little corridor glinted in her eyes. ‘She just doesn’t get that. You know, when he’s been drinking and he’s like that. Like you only have to speak to him and it’s like, he’s off on one again.’ Another pause. ‘She just never gets that.’

  I touched my hand to her cheek, conscious of the bitter cold outside. It was warm. ‘So you stayed put.’

  A small nod. ‘I was just still so cross. I didn’t want to go back in there. I wasn’t that cold. I had my dressing gown on …’

  ‘But you didn’t go back and even knock on the window? I mean, even later?’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t want to. And by the time I did want to they had already turned the light off and stopped yelling. My mum had gone to bed.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have checked on you?’ I asked mildly. (She didn’t even check on her? I thought, rather less mildly.)

  Again, Bella shook her head. ‘She already had. And she wouldn’t have wanted to wake me. She knows I’d have only been all upset. And my stepdad had probably passed out. Or gone out. It’s usually one or the other. No, passed out. He was in his chair when we came back in again.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart. You must have been terrified.’

  She shook her head. ‘I really wasn’t. I wasn’t making that up. I mean, I got a bit cold … but I must have fallen asleep anyway, because I woke up to find my mum shaking me awake.’

  ‘God, she must have had forty fits when she realised you weren’t in bed!’

  ‘She just cried a lot. Casey, that’s all she does. Cry and cry. She just cries all the time.’

  I put both arms around her and held her tight, not having the first clue what to say to her. And enough time passed that, before I’d so much as come up with anything, she spoke herself.

  ‘I can’t bear it when my mum cries,’ she said.

  Chapter 14

  ‘You know what this has been?’ Mike said as he hefted our holdalls from the boot of the car four short days later. ‘It’s been a stay of execution. That’s all.’

  It was now Friday, and a world away from our little holiday snow-dome bubble, which had been punctured by John Fulshaw before we were even half way home.

  I took my bag from Mike, glancing past the car to check that the children were all in the house now, out of earshot. ‘Mike, I know that. Doesn’t mean I’m going to take it lying down, though.’

  I did know, as well, because John had obviously been at pains to get hold of me. Full of apologies (we’d been in the car, of course, when he’d finally got through to me, so we hadn’t been able to speak properly), but nevertheless keen to establish that we’d be meeting again, him, Sophie and Kathy, as was already half-arranged, first thing on the Monday morning.

  Which I’d had no choice but to agree to, and without any discussion, since Bella, Ty and Denver were all right there in the back seat. (Dozing, yes, but dozing children still have ears.) But it didn’t mean I hadn’t already been scheming, pulling together my points to support what I knew to be true; that one thing trumped all the other arguments they’d put to me for moving her: that, as long as we could keep her safe, Bella’s best interests would be so much better served if she stayed right where she was. Since her revelation that first evening (which wasn’t so much a revelation as confirmation of everything I already suspected) she was opening up to me now, no question. Her last word that night had been that she was never, ever going to drink beer when she was a grown-up, because it made people into monsters, and since then she was making more and more references to her home life. She’d even alluded to the reason why she hated her granddad. ‘He’s a horrible old drunk man as well,’ she had told me. ‘My mum hates him. She says I must never, ever marry anyone who drinks lots.’

  So the picture was developing, from a pencil sketch to the beginnings of the whole now. And it was surely only a matter of time before she finally let it go, and disclosed at least some of what had happened that particular night. Because no matter how badly she wanted to protect her mother, she was intelligent enough to know that she couldn’t keep running from the truth, and that the evidence they already had might be enough alone for a jury to convict her.

  There was also the point (and I knew it wasn’t one it would be appropriate for me to raise with her) that even if her mum had hit her dad on the back of the head (which was a stark medical fact, not a matter of opinion), what Bella had to say about the events that had preceded it could actually help her. While it was understandable that Bella didn’t want to confirm that she’d seen the actual blow, she and she alone knew what had gone on between her parents that afternoon, and all the hearsay from neighbours and concerned citizens – not to mention spurious sisters – couldn’t change that.

  And there was clearly a pattern of violence – at least of regular violent arguments, at any rate – and if Bella could share examples such as she’d shared with me that evening it could all help her mother’s case so much. She was due another visit from Katie, her counsellor, soon, too, and I could only hope that this time she would broach that conversation. I made a mental note that, as well as Bella’s new disclosures, I must also share my thoughts on all that with John.

  Well, if I was to be involved further, that was.

  ‘Love, you can’t fight this,’ Mike said. ‘Not if that’s what they’ve already decided. You know that.’

  ‘I know no such thing,’ I huffed at him. ‘It’s not like we’re dealing with an axe-murderer, after all. Just some silly, hysterical woman; honest, Mike, if you’d seen her you’d say the same, I know you would. I could have taken her down in no time.’

  Mike burst out into a loud guffaw. ‘Hark at you!’ he said. ‘Who are you? Vi Kray, or something? Or has all the Harry Potter stuff gone to your head and you think you can wave a wand and just go poof! Is tha
t it?’

  ‘No, of course not. Anyway, we need to get the bags in and get organised so you can drop Denver home while I put Bella to bed. I promised his mum we’d have him home to her before ten.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Mike, with a slight edge to his voice. ‘And meanwhile you have to promise me you’re going to calm down, Case. And that you’re not going to make any rash phone calls while I’m gone.’

  ‘It’s bloody nine o’clock on a Sunday night,’ I huffed. ‘Who exactly would I ring?’

  I reached back into the footwell for my handbag and mobile, seething quietly, out of sight, while Mike headed in to round up Denver.

  John hadn’t exactly said it outright, but I could tell from the things he had said that, in the local authority’s opinion, at any rate, Bella should definitely be moved on without delay. I hefted my bag up onto my shoulder and followed Mike inside. Well, not while I had any kind of say in it, she wouldn’t.

  I knew I wouldn’t get much sleep that night, and I was right. Mike did, at least – he had to be up for work at six, so it was good to hear him snoring, but since I was wide awake (even the marathon country walk we’d done the previous afternoon hadn’t helped) I was already up, dressed and had written a long email to John in the kitchen by the time he had showered and come downstairs.

  ‘You okay, love?’ he asked, pouring us coffees from the jug I’d made – his first, my third. ‘I could always try to get Jim to cover for me later on, if you think I should. Nip home for an hour? If you really want me to, I will.’