The Silent Witness

by Casey Watson

  I shook my head. ‘No, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m calm now. And I promise I’m going to stay calm as well. I’ll listen to what they have to say and then I’ll say my piece. That’s all I can do, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is, love,’ Mike agreed as he sat down beside me. ‘What about Bella, though? What are you going to say to her? What are you going to do with her? She must wonder why she keeps getting shipped out all the time.’

  ‘Sorted,’ I said, because I’d already made a plan. ‘I’ve texted Lauren –’

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘At this hour. Don’t worry. She’s already up as well. She’s going to pick Bella up after Tyler’s gone to school. They’re going to the hall to do the paperwork.’

  Mike looked confused. ‘What hall? What paperwork?’

  ‘The insurance documentation for the dance club,’ I explained. ‘She’s taking Dee Dee with her so she needs Bella to mind her while she does it. So, yes, it’s all sorted. Don’t worry. She’ll be excited to be involved.’

  And she was, too. She skipped off with Lauren and Dee Dee happy as a sandboy, and a well-rested one, too, full of all the adventures we’d had the previous week. Which left me alone with a mound of washing and a meeting to host, and as I waved them off I tried to imagine how she’d react if she returned home, all smiles, to be told she’d be leaving us right away.

  Which got my goat. She’d spent the whole week making such healing, happy memories, and if they took her now they would for ever be associated with the trauma and distress of being shipped off to strangers. I couldn’t let that happen. Well, in truth, I couldn’t stop it happening either. But it made me all the more committed than ever to fighting to keep her with us.

  I tried not to think of the three (or was it four?) horsemen of the apocalypse as the same unsmiling trio trotted up my path half an hour later. It was a damp, gloomy morning, the crystal landscapes of our beautiful and chilly corner of Yorkshire having been replaced by the drab tones of sodden pavements and heavy clouds. Still, I pasted on my oh-how-lovely-to-see-you smile, and kept my fingers crossed my masterplan would help my cause.

  ‘Ooh, something smells nice,’ John said the moment he had stepped over the threshold.

  ‘Pastries,’ I trilled. ‘Just warming through.’ It was a cheap shot, but you did what you had to.

  ‘My, Casey, you certainly know how to treat us, eh, ladies?’ Sophie and Kathy murmured their agreement. He then gave me a surreptitious, sideways, knowing glance. Yes, of course I have a game plan, my eyes said in return.

  In contrast with the pastries, which had cooled down before anyone so much as glanced at them, the conversation itself soon became heated.

  ‘No it’s absolutely not!’ I found myself saying – almost shouting – not ten minutes in. Certainly with enough vehemence to make Sophie jump. It just burst from my mouth without any conscious bidding in response to Kathy Heseltine’s predictable assertion that ‘After long and careful consideration of all the facts here, we have decided that it’s best to move Bella elsewhere as soon as possible.’

  Yes, I’d known it was probably coming, and many times, in many meetings, I had simply given my own agreement, even if it had been with a heavy heart. But not in this case. I just had to fight it.

  ‘How will it help her?’ I went on. ‘If it’s to keep her safe, I can do that. I can do that with my eyes shut. If that silly woman, or anyone else, came to the house, they wouldn’t get near Bella anyway. She already knows not to go to or answer the door. Which is set locked at all times, and has a spy hole, to boot. And obviously I would call the police immediately.’

  ‘I appreciate what you’re saying, Casey,’ Kathy said, nodding, ‘but even if that were so, it would still be upsetting for her. And as we now know, which we do, that Adam Cummings doesn’t have a sister, we also know she’s lying, and we have a duty to protect Bella.’

  ‘Have you manged to speak to him now, then?’

  ‘Not us,’ Kathy said, ‘but the police have, yes.’

  ‘And who does he think it might have been? I assume they asked him that?’

  Kathy nodded. ‘And he says he has no idea.’

  ‘Really?’ I couldn’t keep the needle out of my voice.

  ‘They think a girlfriend,’ John added. ‘Which would be why he’s not about to incriminate her, is he?’

  ‘Great choice of girlfriend,’ I muttered irritably. ‘Anyway, for what it’s worth, I think you’re right. Bella told me she’d thought about who it might be and mentioned some club he’d been going to a lot. She wondered if he might have met her there.’

  ‘What kind of club?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘She didn’t know,’ I told her. ‘But she didn’t think a sports club. So maybe a book club? A darts club? A knitting club?’ There was no need to point out the blinking obvious to any of them – that the woman who’d come to threaten me didn’t look the type to go to any of them. I leaned forward in my chair. ‘But look, Kathy, what about our other duties? Our duty to ensure she feels settled and happy? Our duty to enrich her life while she’s taken away from all she finds familiar? Our duty to encourage her to talk about her feelings, to help her process what’s happened? To talk about that night.’ I left what I hoped was an emphatic pause. They all knew that the security benefits of billeting her with a new family would need to be set against the likely damage to her emotional health. ‘We’ve been making huge progress with her just lately,’ I went on. ‘And I am quite sure it would be detrimental to her well-being to move her to yet another stranger’s house at this crucial time.’

  I shut my mouth. I had said all I wanted to on the subject. There wasn’t a great deal more to be said. It was a simple choice – between the risk to her physically and the risk to her emotionally. I clasped my hands together in my lap. There were actually shaking. I didn’t look in John’s direction. I didn’t dare to. Not until I heard him clear his throat.

  ‘I have to say, Kathy,’ he said, ‘I’m a little surprised that we can’t leave Bella here myself. I mean, yes, there is a slight risk, obviously, but can we not do a risk assessment first? Take a look at it all again? And couldn’t we perhaps monitor the situation on a daily basis and see how things go from there? Would that be a possible solution?’

  ‘I think that’s an excellent idea, John,’ Sophie said, surprising me. I felt a flicker of hope. So I had her on my side too. But would Kathy budge? Ultimately it was going to be her who’d take responsibility. Her shoulders that needed to be strong enough and broad enough if, God forbid, anything did happen to Bella. It was people like Kathy who stepped up to the front line if the press ever got hold of social-service-bashing stories, for that matter – with journalists like wolves, sniffing out the most damaging and damning – a job I would absolutely hate to have to do.

  She turned and looked at Sophie. ‘Can I count on you then – if we do this – to do a thorough risk assessment with the Watsons?’ Yes, I thought. Yesss. ‘And I will need to be able to count on all of you in this. To be extra vigilant and report even the tiniest threat. I can’t emphasise that enough, I really can’t. Is that understood?’

  I nodded like a schoolchild promising to be good for a head teacher. I think we all did. And only just stopped myself doing a Tyler fist pump. ‘Right, that’s settled then. For now, Bella can remain on a strictly day-to-day basis and we will use careful monitoring to assess the situation daily at first, and then … well, all we can hope is that her long-term plan can be sorted sooner rather than later, so she can at least find out what her future holds. Which I recognise might be optimistic, given that we don’t even yet have a trial date, but, well, we all want the same outcome here, don’t we? For this period of purdah for the poor girl to be over. And I happen to agree with you, Casey,’ she said, turning to me, ‘that, the risks notwithstanding, being with you is the best place for her right now. Let’s hope nothing happens to put that in jeopardy. Particularly with everything else you have going on. Sophie tells me Bella’s
to be a flower girl at your daughter’s wedding next weekend?’

  It seemed hardly credible, but as she said that I had a major revelation. I hadn’t thought of Riley’s wedding once since I’d got up.

  Her wedding that was in a week.

  Now I seriously had to think of nothing else.

  Chapter 15

  It was the first Saturday of March and it was the big day. The big day. The day my lovely daughter was getting married to her David, and the weather just could not have been any kinder to us. Despite the chill and snow of the previous month, this day had dawned sun-kissed and cloudless. It really couldn’t have been a more perfect day for a wedding, and Riley – who’d phoned at dawn, just to scream ‘Look out of the window!’ at me – was over the moon, and full of the usual delightful nonsense about how this was nature’s way of apologising for it not having been on Valentine’s Day.

  Not that Riley had much time to spare for whimsical bridal musings. There was a to-do list, this day as any day, and, item by item, it had to be gone through.

  Though this was by no means going to be a traditional wedding. Since she lived with her betrothed, as did their three children, of course, being parted on the eve of the wedding meant one of them shipping out – so she’d booted him out to spend the night at his parents, so he wouldn’t see her in her wedding dress till they got to church.

  And, unless you counted my sister Donna, my niece Chloe and the staff from Truly Scrumptious, there were no expensive caterers either. Instead, knowing my sister, they would have been up long before dawn, busy preparing the buffet they were going to be delivering to the local hotel where the reception was to be held.

  The entertainment, too, was a pleasingly low-outlay option, as one of David’s workmates was a fiddler in a bluegrass country band, no less, and he had managed to secure them for the whole afternoon at a knock-down price. I couldn’t wait. I might have been denied sufficient access to my Christmas karaoke machine, but here, finally, was a chance to throw some moves, safe in the knowledge that no one could stop me. Because as far as I was concerned, embarrassing the kids was one of my chief responsibilities.

  One among many. ‘Right,’ Riley said now. ‘We need to tick everything off.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Oh, Mother, stop it. Okay, you. So. Did you remember to double check that all the flowers were going to the right people?’

  ‘Yes, love,’ I said.

  ‘And you’re picking the hairdresser up at nine to bring her round to me?’

  ‘Yes, love,’ I said.

  ‘Dad knows how to do his and Tyler’s ties properly, doesn’t he? Because they’re not just normal ties, remember.’

  ‘Yes, love,’ I said.

  ‘Our Kieron and Lauren know where to sit in church, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, love,’ I said.

  ‘But are you sure? He didn’t turn up to the final practice, don’t forget.’

  ‘Yes, love,’ I said.

  ‘The heating! The heating! Did you remember to remind father Brennan about the …?’

  ‘Yes, love!’ I said. ‘Sweetheart, just chill out, will you? Everything is sorted and going to plan. In fact, why don’t you pour yourself a small glass of that champagne I popped in your fridge last night? You sound like you need it. Then put it back again. I’ll be round for mine in an hour.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, giggling (was she already on it?). ‘I’ll do that. That’s a very good idea. Oh, and Mum?’

  ‘Yes, love?’

  ‘No one says “chill out” these days.’

  I hung up and turned around to find Bella standing behind me. ‘Is Riley excited?’ she asked as she opened the cereal cupboard and pulled out the box of chocolate crispies. She held them up hopefully and I nodded that she could have them. It was a chocolate crispies kind of day, after all.

  ‘Beyond excited,’ I said. ‘Which is entirely as it should be. Now then, sweetie, do you remember all our plans for this morning?’

  Bella grinned at me. ‘Tyler said I have to call you sergeant major and salute you if you give me any more instructions, Casey.’ She duly executed a heel click and salute. Then she put the cereal box down and listed them on her fingers. ‘I’m having breakfast, then a shower, then putting on my trackies, then me and you are picking up the hair and make-up lady, then we’re going round to Riley’s to get ready, and I’m helping Marley Mae get into her flower-girl outfit.’

  ‘Oh, did he now?’ I huffed, rolling my eyes at our slumbering insurgent. ‘Well this sergeant major is about to go order that particular little soldier out of his pit,’ I said. ‘The cheeky sod!’

  The morning passed as the mornings of weddings generally do, in a happy but focused blur of hairspray, pins and petticoats, with a soundtrack of corks popping, glasses clinking and laughter; the air fragranced by perfume and the smell of baking pastries.

  Bella slotted in seamlessly and perfectly. It was almost as if she was an integral part of the family, which is entirely what every foster carer hopes will be the case. And she was an absolutely godsend when it came to the little ones, bridging the gap between frazzled grown-ups, trying to keep over-excitement to a minimum, and little girls who’d been slipped into yards of net and lace, and who, though looking angelic, were little devils fit to burst.

  As for me, well, I kept having to have my make-up touched up, because every time I looked at my beautiful daughter – my precious first born – in her antique ivory wedding dress, I burst into tears.

  Weddings come in all shapes and sizes, of course. And almost everyone has their own family-wedding anecdotes to share – some good, some bad, some (the very best kind, of course) so ugly they become classics on YouTube. Riley and David’s – well, much as everyone loves a juicy wedding anecdote (the snapped heel, the flooded marquee, the face-off between the mother-in-laws), there was very little that wouldn’t simply melt into our memories as one of those ‘hug yourself’ happy, happy days. And in a day that really couldn’t have gone any more perfectly, Bella ended it by putting a little extra icing on the cake.

  I’d hardly seen her at the reception; so fully immersed was she in the occasion that it was more the odd snapshot, of her laughing, of her showing her dress off, of her dancing with Dee Dee, of her having stepped out of her own traumatic life for the day, and having what looked like an extremely good time.

  And, like the other children, to an extent that my mother even remarked on it.

  ‘Look at them,’ she said, as we took a much-needed breather from dancing. ‘They look like Fagin’s gang from Oliver, don’t they?’ They did, too. It wasn’t a huge wedding, so there were only about fifteen children, all told – the grandkids, of course, a small smattering of nieces and nephews, plus the children of Riley and David’s closest friends – but, as with most weddings, they had that special talent for inter-family intermingling; where the adults traditionally took their time to let their hair down, the kids had got together even before they’d finished throwing confetti, and were now marauding round the reception venue as a single, cohesive mob, no doubt getting up to all sorts of mischief. And Bella was very much a part of it.

  And it had clearly borne fruit. ‘Casey,’ she whispered to me, when we were finally driving home, ‘can I tell you something?’

  We were both in the back of our own car now, Mike and Tyler up front, the pair of them chatting thirteen to the dozen about all the important football scores that had happened while we were otherwise engaged.

  ‘Sure you can,’ I whispered back.

  ‘Well, you know Hannah?’

  ‘Erm … Hannah … hang on. Oh, yes, you mean David and Riley’s friends’ daughter?’

  Bella nodded. ‘Well, she goes to the same school as Tyler now. And she’s in year 7, like me. Did you know that?’

  I told her I didn’t. The last time I’d seen her, I explained, she must have been around eight or nine. ‘How time flies, eh?’ I said. ‘Anyway, so she’s there now. Well I never. So she’s twelve, t
hen, like you.’

  ‘Not yet. Not till June.’ (It always tickled me how kids knew, to the exact month, how old every other child was.) ‘But she was saying how she’d be my friend if I went. And how much I’d like it there.’

  ‘As I’m sure you would, sweetheart.’

  ‘So I was thinking, you know, with Mum and that … and everything … and, like, all the work I’ve missed … I think I should go back to school now, don’t you?’

  Chapter 16

  Bella’s sudden and welcome interest in returning to school galvanised me. I felt certain it was the best thing for her, not least because it would fill her days in a much more appropriate and stimulating way than I could. And with it now being March, and with Easter rushing headlong to meet us, I was anxious to get her into the local comp as soon as humanly possible. If we dragged our feet, I could see the next round of school holidays being upon us, and another enforced two weeks of trying to keep her occupied at home.

  I had to press, too, because as yet ELAC (Education for Looked After Children), the body which dealt with this kind of thing, had yet to even find her a private home tutor, despite, I knew, trying their very best.

  Our local ELAC officer, Paula, was at least sympathetic. I called her as soon as possible, which was the Monday following Riley and David’s wedding, anxious to convey how much of a leap forward Bella’s newly minted enthusiasm was.

  I had a slight ulterior motive, too. We had my three eldest grandchildren camped with us for several days, and though Levi and Jackson were in school, which meant the chaos was only intermittent, we had a house full. And though this was a good thing, in that it kept Bella very, very occupied, I knew that when they left the house would feel very empty and sad. So to my mind it was vital that we didn’t miss the moment; that we could slip her straight into school the following Monday, before she became all depressed again and changed her mind.