by Casey Watson
‘Well, given that’s what he’s told all of us, well, yes, I suppose he did.’ He sighed. ‘But I guess all of this is going to come out in the wash at some point, isn’t it? So though I’m keener to believe he didn’t kill it – not intentionally, anyway – it’s really not the main concern now, anyway. The main problem is the family breakdown and what’s going to happen to him next. Believe me, I saw no softening of human hearts back there earlier.’
Since all was quiet upstairs, and there was no rush for them to leave (Cathy was likely to feature significantly in Paulie’s life in the coming weeks if no resolution could be found, after all), I made a pot of coffee and, while I did so, Phil filled me in on what else he could.
It seemed Paulie’s mother Jenny had had quite a few different men in and out of her life since losing her husband. The children were always reluctant to get along with any of them, always wary that if they got close, they might wake up one day and they’d be gone, something that was particularly true of her daughters. It was especially hard with the girls because, lacking a biological father, they had themselves become something of a handful.
And it seemed the family were already very well known to social services, after all. ‘Family support has been in place for about a year,’ Phil explained. ‘But up to now mainly to help with the girls – get them through school without exclusions, and so on. It’s only very recently that little Paulie’s come to our attention, and that seems to have coincided with his real dad, Adi – John’s told you about him? – making waves about having his son go live with him.’
A tickle started up on the back of my neck. ‘Really? But I thought he had major mental health issues?’
‘Yes and no. He’s adamant that he’s fine now and on medication that controls his violent episodes, but of course the danger is that when he doesn’t take his meds – which apparently does happen – then he wouldn’t be fit to take care of Paulie, would he? Which leaves us at something of an impasse – well, more a mess, really – because we’re now doubtful whether mum and stepdad are going to be able to give him the upbringing he deserves, even if they could be persuaded to have him back and accept more support. Of course, as it stands, they’ve washed their hands of him, say they can no longer cope, and have a real fear – not without grounds – that he’ll harm the baby. He’s recently threatened to choke him, did you know that?’
I shook my head. ‘And Dad’s not an option because he’s also potentially dangerous …’
‘Exactly,’ Phil agreed. ‘Terribly sad situation all round, isn’t it?’
It was indeed. A child so young, and so vulnerable, apparently killing the family pet, just so it would ‘make everything okay’. Although in what way he thought it might, I couldn’t fathom. His dad was mentally unstable, and his mum and stepfather – well, partner – were busy pushing him out of their lives like he was a broken toy. No wonder little Paulie was so angry and messed up.
As if on cue, Cathy and Paulie came down to join us at precisely that moment, the latter pink-cheeked and red-eyed but seemingly feeling much happier, and keen to replicate a magic trick Cathy had just taught him, involving a handkerchief and a disappearing coin. ‘Look, mister,’ he said to Phil, having apparently forgotten he was the hated grand inquisitor, ‘the coin will vanish, an’ I swear it’s real magic, not bullshit or anything!’
‘Paulie,’ I said on autopilot, ‘please, love – without the swearing!’ before getting up to make Cathy a cup of tea.
It was just about then that my mobile phone rang (I had to write everything down afterwards, and I remember writing: 1. My mobile phone went), which I picked up from the table and took into the kitchen with me.
The display told me it was Mike – probably calling for a Paulie update in his lunch-break – and I was just giving him exactly that, telling him what Phil had told me, about Cathy coming, about Paulie’s magic trick, when a commotion, in the form of Paulie suddenly shrieking at the top of his tiny lungs, started up in the other room.
‘Christ! Love, I’ll have to call you back,’ I told Mike, cutting him off and throwing the phone down. I ran back into the dining room and on through into the living room, where Paulie was yelling ‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’ and jumping up and down.
I had no idea what was going on, but quickly took in the elements of the scene – which involved Paulie wriggling free of Cathy, who was frantically trying to restrain him, while Phil peered anxiously out of the window towards the road.
And then I did a double take, as I realised what was really happening. There was a man – a very big man – standing not only in my front garden, but actually in the flower bed directly in front of the window. And, as if to ram the point home, he now pounded heavily on the glass.
‘Oh shit!’ I said, before I could stop myself. ‘Phil, is that –’
He nodded briskly. ‘Yes, it is. Stay here. I think I’d better to go out and talk to him.’
‘I want my daddy!’ Paulie was screeching. ‘I want my daddy!’
‘Phil, are you sure you should?’ Cathy asked him. ‘I mean, look at him!’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Come on – what’s he going to do in front of all of us, in broad daylight?’
‘I’m not sure you should,’ I said. ‘I agree with Cathy. Why don’t we just call the police?’
‘Do that anyway,’ said Phil, already heading towards the hall. ‘I think on balance it might be better if we can talk him down before they get here …’
‘Daddy, Daddy!’ Paulie was still screeching, endlessly. ‘I want my daddy! Let me go! Let me go!’
Presumably seeing that Phil was coming out, the man had now moved away from the window and, before Phil could even get to it, there was now a loud rat-a-tat-tatting on the front door.
‘What if he barges his way in?’ I said, panicked now. Was the side door locked? I couldn’t remember. ‘Hang on tight to Paulie,’ I said to Cathy, rushing to check if it was, trying to recall if I’d left the key in it and, if not, where I’d put it, and seeing the front door slam behind Phil as I did so.
Thank God for that, at least, I thought, dashing to secure the other door. Then it occurred to me that our courageous social worker had now effectively locked himself out there. And with a mad man? I was starting to feel very scared. I’d not seen much of the man but I’d certainly seen all I needed to. He was here to get his son back and he seemed to mean business. Did mean business, I realised as I glanced through the kitchen window, which also looked out over our small front garden. The body language of the two men was unmistakeable.
I grabbed the phone again, going back in just as Cathy was manhandling the still writhing five-year-old back into the dining room. ‘Tell them his name is Adrian Selby,’ she told me, as I punched out the three digits. ‘Who he is. Why he’s come.’
‘Get off me, you fucking bitch!’ Paulie yelled as he bucked and kicked against her. ‘My daddy wants me! He’s come to get me! Let me go or he’ll kill you!’ And at such a volume that I returned to the front room to make the call, for fear of not being able to make myself understood.
Similar levels of aggression were very much in evidence out the front. It was like witnessing a real-life hooligan movie. ‘Get my fucking son out here now,’ Paulie’s father was screaming at Phil, ‘or I’ll rip your fucking throat out, you fucking nancy boy!’
To my horror – because real-life violence is nothing like a movie – he then shoved both his hands, flat-palmed, into Phil’s chest, almost knocking him off his feet. He kept his balance, however – just – and held his own arms out in front of him, connecting with Adi’s shoulders and trying to keep him at the proverbial arm’s length. ‘Adi, listen,’ he said calmly, ‘this isn’t helping your case. Paulie will see all this and he’ll be scared. Is that really what you want?’
By this time Cathy had shut the doors between the living room and dining room so that, in fact, Paulie was seeing nothing – well, as yet. Although what the cost to her might be was anyone’s
guess, because he was screaming like a banshee and presumably still attacking her.
But if I was horrified already, I was about to be more horrified still, as Adi lifted him arms, batted Phil’s from his shoulders then drew a fist back and smashed it into the side of Phil’s face. And this time he did fall down. Like a stone.
‘Shit!’ I said, wondering quite what the hell to do next, as I watched Paulie’s father calmly step over the moaning social worker, intent, presumably, on resuming battering down our front door. Did I go out and try to face him down? Was Phil badly hurt? God, where were the police when you needed them?
In fairness, this had all taken the space of ten minutes. They’d be here soon, I told myself, as Phil rolled over and started getting up onto all fours. He glanced across and up at me, and I frantically gestured to him to get away. To go round the side, where I could let him in – well, if I was quick about it – so that we could leave everything, including Paulie’s father, in the hands of the police.
But I wasn’t sure I was making sense, and Adi was back in my line of vision again, though now he suddenly turned away and seemed to look up the road. At last, I thought, thank God! But then my eyes widened in shock. It wasn’t a police car. It was our car that was coming down the road.
Chapter 6
If I had been frightened before, I was terrified now, watching in mortification as the car slowed to a halt, half up on the pavement, and Mike leapt out, almost before it had even fully stopped.
‘No!’ I cried, standing up from the chair arm I’d been perching on. I banged at the window as hard as I could.
Mike barely gave me a glance, though I knew he could hear me, because he thrust a finger in my general direction and barked, ‘You stay inside!’
Which, of course, immediately made him the new focus of the ex-SAS man’s ire, and I knew – I just knew – what was going to happen next.
If Phil, fit lad though he obviously was, was a simple standing target, I could see – in that way you can’t help but see if you’re married to a big, well-toned man – that Adi had Mike sized up straight away as someone who might require a little more effort. And when that happens – again, I knew this from experience – it makes any would-be adversaries go in even harder, thinking they’d best make a good job of it first chance they got, as, should they fail, there might well not be a second.
I burst into tears as his fist met my poor husband’s nose – as I said, real violence if not remotely like the pretend stuff on screen, and I also felt a kind of sick, primeval fury; it was almost as if I’d been punched myself.
Mike apparently had no such concerns; he seemed keener to redress the balance and, though I wasn’t sure exactly what series of events caused it, within seconds, and amid much pulling and shouting, they were both rolling around together on the ground, while Phil, back on his feet, tried manfully to separate them, his pristine shirt not so pristine any more. Never has the sound of police sirens been so welcome, and when I heard them I almost crossed myself in gratitude.
‘What’s happening out there?’ It was Cathy’s voice. She’d poked her head between the double doors. I couldn’t see Paulie but I could still hear him wailing, and the way Cathy was positioned I concluded that, if not in a head-lock, she certainly had him in some sort of body-lock; perhaps firmly wedged under her arm. He had no fight left in him, evidently – that was the main thing.
‘Police,’ I mouthed, not wishing to inflame Paulie into another burst of energy. Then I motioned towards the hall, miming that I considered it safe to go and open the front door now, a decision helped in part by the sight of two burly constables bearing down on the tangle of limbs on our path that was Mike and the luckless former soldier.
It was all over, then, in a moment. By the time I’d gone into the hall and opened the front door, both men were back on their feet, Mike shaking his head, while Adi, safely held between the two grim-faced officers, was scowling his defiance even now.
‘He’s my fucking son!’ he was ranting at Phil. ‘You have no right – no fucking right – to keep him from me!’
‘Keep this up, mate, and you’ll have a lot more than a caution,’ one of the officers was saying to him. ‘Just come with us, quiet, like, and let’s get in the car, shall we?’
‘He has no fucking right!’ Adi persisted. ‘That’s my kid in there, don’t you realise? My fucking kid! And he needs me!’ He turned back to Phil again. ‘How would you like it, eh? Eh? You got kids, have you?’
‘Come on, Mr Selby,’ the other officer said, trying to coax him to turn around and go with them. But he was having none of it.
‘Can’t you give me a fucking minute, here? Can’t you? You got kids?’ he almost spat at him. ‘You?’ he asked the other. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet you have. Tucked up all nice and safe at home, are they? Safe and with you. You and the wife? Yeah. I’ll bet.’ His face contorted in distress. ‘Well, lucky old you, mate, because I haven’t!’ With his arms pinned, he had to use his head to indicate. ‘My little nipper – he’s in there, he is. In there, shut up. Can’t even see me. While his fucking slag of a mother – God!’ He seemed momentarily speechless. ‘Her and that shit of a bloke she’s got – they don’t love him, they don’t want him – they just want fucking shot of him! Shame on the bitch. Fucking shame on her!’ he was looking at me now. ‘Yeah, right. An’ what happens? My Paulie’s sent here. To fucking strangers! To –’
‘Mr Selby!’ Phil entreated, ‘we need to sit down and discuss all this like adults.’
‘Yeah, look, mate,’ Mike added calmly. ‘This is doing you no good, is it? Please just do what the officers tell you. Leave us be. Go with them peacefully. No one wants this …’
Adi looked at him contemptuously. ‘Yeah, you know what, “mate”?’ he said, looking like he’d be well up for round two. ‘And you, “mate”, can fuck off, as well.’
‘Right, that’s enough,’ one of the officers said. ‘That’s it, now.’
Adrian Selby was bundled into the back of their patrol car within seconds. And he was crying. He was sobbing like a baby.
‘Well, what else was I going to do?’ Mike was saying half an hour or so later. ‘No idea what’s going on. You slamming the phone down. Some racket kicking off – God only knows what kind of racket. Tell you what – I am very glad I turned up when I did. State of your face,’ he added, grinning at Phil – and then grimacing at how much it hurt to do so. ‘Man, if I hadn’t turned up you might have been pulverised.’
Phil’s face did indeed look a tad worse for wear. When he lifted the bag of peas I’d supplied to try to help reduce the swelling, it was clear the swelling was winning the battle, for the moment, at least. ‘I perhaps should have stayed in the house,’ he admitted, echoing my thoughts. Then he grinned as well. ‘Typical social worker, eh? Always thinking we can perform miracles.’
Mike shook his head. ‘I’d have done the same, mate. You weren’t to know he’d kick off like that, were you?’
‘Well, strictly speaking, yes,’ Phil said. ‘But you do what you do, don’t you?’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Cathy, who’d just come into the kitchen. She dabbed at her lower lip, which was also swelling badly, as well as cut.
‘God, you too?’ I said, running the cold tap again so I could moisten some cotton wool for her. ‘D’you want some ice for that as well?’
She shook her head and grinned ruefully. ‘Only in a large gin and tonic.’
‘Well, I have to say, I’m impressed,’ I said. ‘Do you know any other magic tricks? Though with the one you already have you’ll probably be set for life.’
And it was true. By some miracle, Paulie was out for the count currently, having at some stage – between my going outside and the police coming and going – succumbed to whatever dark magic Cathy practised when not being a play worker, and fallen into an inexplicable and extremely convenient sleep.
Not that there wouldn’t be hell to deal with when he woke up again, as he would before long. When he
woke up and it all came flooding right back to him; that his dad had come to get him and we’d failed to hand him over, which was why, half an hour after that – Phil and Cathy having gone back to their respective offices – John informed me that in all likelihood he’d pick Paulie up that evening, because there was a chance – if Adi wasn’t kept in the cells overnight, which apparently he might well not be – of another visitation.
‘I’d like to think not,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping the sensible part of him will prevail. Mental health issues or otherwise, he can’t be so stupid as not to realise that another episode such as this will certainly scupper whatever chance he has of getting custody of his son.’
I did a double take. ‘You think there is a chance?’ I asked him, strangely unsure whether to be mortified or pleased.
‘There’s always a chance,’ John said. ‘Whatever else is true, this is a man with a distinguished military record. Whatever’s happened since … well, we all watch things like Afghanistan on the telly, don’t we? So we all know the toll it takes on servicemen and women.’
‘But if he’s that unstable, that potentially violent … actually violent, as we’ve seen …’
‘That’s true as well. And my hunch is that if anything were to be sanctioned, we’d been looking at the longer rather than the shorter term. But, you know what? I’d like to think there’s some hope here, don’t you? After all, who’s to say that his problems haven’t been exacerbated by losing his son? Who’s to say that, if Paulie does stay in care, and Adi is supported – you know, with regular contact – that he can’t get better and be the father he needs to be in order to get him back? There’s also a mum and dad – did I tell you? Adi’s parents. I’m told they’d quite like to be proper grandparents again. So that’s something too, isn’t it?’
It was. And I thought back to the teddy bear Paulie had come with. Someone did love this strange little child. Several someones, perhaps. And John was right. That was something indeed.
