Triumph Over Adversity 3-in-1 Collection

The first was intriguing.

I am going to see a speshalist doctor cos my mum thinks I’m mental. Don’t tell the other kids, will you. Gavin.

I smiled and put it to one side. For all his eccentricities, Gavin certainly wasn’t ‘mental’. Did his mother think he was? I didn’t think so. He had obviously been referred, though. I wondered what for.

I smacked my little cousin and I feel bad.

This one was unsigned, but I felt sure it was from Shona. She’d written in neat capitals, presumably in an attempt to disguise her writing, but I knew that in the great scheme of things it would be worth bringing up, so that she had the opportunity of talking it through, albeit couched in more general terms.

Robert Small called me a sad sack – Molly.

Poor Molly. Although she’d started speaking up for herself a bit more, Molly attracted bullies like a flame attracted moths. I made another mental note – time for another of our regular chats about finding ways to better stand up for yourself.

The next one I picked up was definitely from Imogen – I remembered how many times she’d folded it. And, instinctively, I put it to one side for the moment, while I read the two remaining bits of paper.

The next was blank. Which was odd, as I’d seen everybody writing. Another mental note – to think about that later. And the next made me start, as well as smile:

I fancy Imogen.

Well, well, I thought, trying to work out who had written it, narrowing it down logically to either Henry or Ben, which meant it had to be Ben. With him being that bit younger, perhaps he had a bit of a crush on her, despite him always following Henry’s lead and ribbing her. That was often the way when it came to boys. Ribbing the object of their burgeoning attraction was one of the surest ways of getting their attention. I smiled to myself and added it to the pile.

And now I was back to Imogen’s herself; the prompt to get the box out in the first place. Would she finally find the wherewithal to share a little more? I unfolded the sheet of A4, not quite daring to hope, but immediately realising there was a great deal written on it, which took the form of a neatly penned list.

Gerri used to lock me in my room while she went to the cat shows.

Gerri told my dad I wet my bed when she wouldn’t let me go to the toilet. She locked me up.

Gerri told me my mum left us because I’m ugly like my dad and have gingery hair.

Gerri didn’t give me any food when dad worked away and she said she’d hit me if I told him.

Gerri pulled my hair and said she would cut it all off when I went to sleep.

She cried to my nan and said I tried to push her down the steps cos I hated her and my nan believed her.

She told my dad I stole money from her purse and that I let her cats out on purpose.

I thought she was going to set fire to me.

I set the letter down and returned the rest to the postbox, which I then returned to the back of the shelf under my desk. I then picked up the letter again, grabbed my satchel, left the classroom and locked it, before hurrying to the staffroom to see if Kelly was in there, as I needed her to come hold the fort after break so I could track Gary down.

I had what I needed. The head would surely have to take this seriously.

Chapter 16 (#uc374aa13-50dd-54e0-95f2-ea1005475a74)

They say a week is a long time in politics. By which I think they mean that an awful lot can change in a few days, what with politics being such a volatile business. A week is also a long time when you’re privy to what amounts to some pretty shocking allegations and can do absolutely nothing about them.

Gary had agreed with me, of course, that Imogen’s allegations about her stepmother were, indeed, shocking, but with the headmaster away and half-term imminent he was still of the opinion that we should sit on what we knew till his return.

‘Nothing’s changed,’ he said. ‘This is great – grim but great, assuming it’s true –’

‘Gary, trust me. I believe her completely.’

‘I trust your judgement, don’t worry. But we still need to run it by Mike. There are protocols that need to be followed here, before we go to social services, and, as she’s safe with her grandparents, which we know she currently is, let’s all enjoy our break and make this a priority as soon as we’re back, okay?’

Which had to be okay, since there was little I could do about it. But, while I understood the reasoning and, for the greater part, agreed with it, there was still a part of me that refused to stop fretting. In fact, to say I spent half-term ‘preoccupied’ was something of an understatement, and rattling round an empty house – Mike and Riley at work, Kieron busy in college – didn’t help a jot.

Suppose I’d tipped Gerri off in some way, just by visiting? Suppose she was scared now – which would be good, no doubt about it, a taste of her own medicine – but suppose she started taking it out on Imogen? Supposing she was threatening her again, even now, with all sorts of horrible punishments, if she told the social workers what she’d told me in her note? Supposing I had opened a can of worms even wrigglier than the proverbial? Supposing bad things happened as a result?

Needless to say, I was in school bright and early the following Monday and all but ran to Gary’s office to see if there was any news.

‘News?’ he guffawed. ‘Blimey, Casey, are you on something or what? I’ve barely got my coat off!’

But he was mostly teasing, because he had actually already been in school for half an hour, and had already put a note on the headmaster’s desk asking if he could speak to him as a matter of urgency about a child-protection issue.

Which mollified me somewhat, though I was also a realist, and one thing I realised was that Mike Moore would have returned to an overflowing in-tray, and had well over 1,000 pupils to worry about, not just one. So we’d have to wait our turn, but I hoped we wouldn’t be on tenterhooks for too long, as, whatever else was going on, a child had disclosed that she’d been the victim of abuse in the not too distant past, which made it a matter of some urgency in anybody’s language.

‘Okay, Gary,’ I said, ‘but you will tell me the very minute you hear anything, won’t you? I’ll have Kelly on standby so I’ll be able to come up at a moment’s notice.’

Gary laughed his usual laid-back laugh. Perhaps keeping your cool was a prerequisite to doing the sort of full-on job that he did. ‘Don’t worry, Casey,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re like. I’ll have my carrier pigeon good to fly soon as I get word.’

The children were all like bottles of pop, which was fairly standard in the Unit after any sort of break. Fairly standard for school generally, as everyone caught up on everyone else’s important news, which was obviously much too important to be derailed by boring stuff like keeping silent during registration, something that regularly challenged at least two of my kids in any case.

So I eased them in gently. ‘Ten minutes chatting time,’ I told them, ‘and then we get started, okay?’ Then began getting prepared for our first period, which would mostly be involving poetry.

Poetry was one of my staples at this time of year. Lock some of these children in a room with a pen and a sheet of paper with the instruction to ‘write a poem’ and from their reaction you might expect to be arrested for committing war crimes, such was the sense of cold dread it could invoke. But give them a trigger – particularly one with lots of meaty imagery and connotations – and you could, if you were gentle, coax all manner of surprising word-combinations from them.

We’d just had Halloween – plenty of meaty imagery and connotations there, for starters – and as the last half-term had fallen close to 5 November there had been lots of organised firework displays already. So there was something for everyone: dead souls and ghouls, clanking chains, and trick-or-treating or pyrotechnics, loud bangs and burnings at the stake.

I began handing out workbooks and pens and coloured pencils, and as I did so I noticed that Imogen had taken herself off to the far side of the girls’ table, while the other five were all currently gathered around the boys’ one. What was her news, I wondered? Whatever it was, she obviously wasn’t keen to share it. No, she wouldn’t have much to say, I knew, but she’d normally at least be there, close beside Shona, taking her cues from her friend.

‘Imogen, love,’ I said quietly, not wanting to make a big deal of it and start stressing her. ‘Why don’t you join the others at the boys’ table for a bit. Like I said, we’re not starting straight away.’

She’d had her head bowed, nose in book, as was standard, but now she looked up at me and I was shocked by just how wretched she appeared. Her face was pale and puffy. She’d clearly been doing a lot of crying. She shook her head by way of an answer and returned to scanning the pages.

I leaned down. ‘You okay, sweetie?’ I whispered. She shook her head, but, again, didn’t say anything. Not even in the monosyllabic way she’d become used to doing in class now. Oh God, I thought, had she slipped back to her mutism again? In so many other areas, kids did tend to slip back a little when out of school – and in this too? And what was the cause? Was it simply the week at home? The heightened anxiety about returning after the break? Or was it because of something more sinister?

I squatted beside her. ‘Imogen, love,’ I whispered, ‘I’m going to come straight to the point, okay? Have you stopped speaking again?’

I watched and waited and, presumably with no place to go, she eventually raised her gaze and met mine. Then she nodded, and as she did so I heard the door open behind me. It was Kelly. And, seeing her, Imogen immediately shrank back and lowered her head again.

Damn, I thought, standing up. This was a setback. And perhaps it wasn’t just about half-term; maybe it was because she’d been thinking. Maybe she’d been worrying that she’d said too much in her ‘secrets’ note to me, and would now be in trouble. But whatever it was, there was no way I’d find out at this moment. I went back to join Kelly – who I still needed to bring up to speed – and get the day under way.

‘Right then,’ I began, once I’d had the kids return to their usual working places, ‘from what I’ve just heard, it sounds like you’re all going to have lots to write about this morning. Not in the shape of a story, however. Today I’m after two pieces of poetry.’ There was the usual groan from the boys – something that seemed almost automatic – but I was used to that, so I carried straight on. ‘The first,’ I told them, ‘I want to be all about Halloween. Any aspect of it: how much you enjoyed it, which parts of it scared you, what you might have dressed up as; and the second piece I want to be about Guy Fawkes Night, which I know hasn’t happened yet, but did any of you go and see any fireworks over the weekend? Have bonfires? Make a guy, or …’

I stopped in mid-sentence, because Imogen, previously just sitting there, head bent, had jumped from her chair, which fell back and landed with a clatter, made a dash for the door and ran from the room.

The other kids stared, open mouthed, just as I did. ‘Imogen?’ I called. But it was too late. She’d gone. ‘Okay, everyone,’ I said, to forestall another wave of chatter. ‘You know what you’re doing now. Any questions, ask Miss Vickers, while I go and find Imogen, but come on, chop-chop, let’s get those thinking caps on, okay?’