Groomed: Part 3 of 3: Danger lies closer than you think

‘He reminded me of my mum,’ she said next, surprising me.

‘Your mum?’

She sniffed again. ‘In a way, you know? As in needing to be helped. You know – problems in his head. My mum was a bit like that. Not good at coping with stuff. Day-to-day stuff, you know? But she managed okay. D’you think he’ll manage okay?’

I thought about Keeley’s rose-tinted interpretation of the word ‘managing’. Her mum hadn’t managed anything, as far as I could see. Well, she’d managed to have five children and lose them to the care system. But it always needed remembering that heroin was at the top of the villainy food chain there.

But that wasn’t what we were about here in any case. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘he’s managed well enough this far in life, hasn’t he? But he’s not for you. And I don’t think you need me to tell you that, do you?’

She shook her head. Then she managed a wan, even slightly playful smile. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for sleeping in park shelters,’ she said.

I got a phone call from Danny just as I was making some bacon sandwiches for our lunch. Tyler had got up and gone off with his mates while Keeley had been showering, and since then she’d spent a little time helping me with chores. Then, because there didn’t seem any single good reason not to, I said I’d join her in watching Everybody Loves Raymond on TV, the fact that she’d even asked me to sit and watch it with her being absolutely key.

‘I’m running late,’ he said. ‘Sorry. You know how it goes. Too many cases and too few of us. And between you and me, certain people are being too flipping precious about which cases they will or won’t take. Anyway it means it’s looking like it’ll be nearer two now, I’m afraid. Is that going to mess up your schedule?’

I smiled at the notion that he thought I even had one. ‘No, not at all,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry to hear that.’ And then something struck me. Something triggered by what he’d said. The name Keeley had mentioned. A name I hadn’t heard before. ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ I finished, suddenly anxious to ring off.

I smiled across at Keeley as I’d said this, catching her yawn turn to a grimace. Despite her early start, or because of it, more likely, it was clear she was now beginning to flag.

‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘I was going to go for a nap after he’d been. Would it be okay if I go back to bed for a bit now instead then? And you can call me when he gets here? He’s only coming here to shout at me, after all.’

I didn’t need to confirm that, because she already knew the drill. So I simply said of course she could. She was still evidently very short on sleep – a commodity teens needed more of than people often gave them credit for. It also gave me a chance to write up all my notes while they were fresh in my mind. And, to use Tyler’s parlance, to follow up the interesting lead I’d just been gifted.

It took no longer than fifteen minutes to confirm what I thought. That the social worker assigned to Keeley before Danny hadn’t been called Mrs Higgins. Which was what I’d already worked out, because I remembered that it had been Keeley herself that had called her previous social worker a bitch, hadn’t she? Not cool. Not nice. Far from it. A bitch.

So when was a Mrs Higgins assigned to her, then? There was nothing in the notes about a social worker called Mrs Higgins. Just an on-duty social worker for Keeley’s first few days in care. All the subsequent notes – the ones made by her social worker as opposed to those by her foster carers, panel, child and adolescent mental health services, and so on – were in the name Banks, the woman assigned to her before Danny.

Of course, it might well be that this Mrs Higgins meant nothing. She probably did. That she was just assigned to her temporarily, perhaps only very briefly. But Keeley had spoken about her warmly, which was a positive in an otherwise negative file. Except she wasn’t in there. No sign of her name anywhere that I could see. Despite knowing he was busy, I called Danny back and asked him. And he hadn’t heard of her either.

‘But certainly I’ll see what I can find out,’ he promised. ‘Cross the I’s, dot the T’s.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. Though my purpose was rather different. I just wanted to follow up any shred of evidence, however ancient, however random, however tenuous, however sentimental – that Keeley hadn’t been entirely alone.

In the meantime, of necessity, it was business as usual, and I knew that when Danny arrived to see Keeley the riot act would duly be read.

So while he composed himself in the living room as her hard-talking social worker, I went upstairs, woke Keeley and asked her to come down. I then had to listen while he sat her down and gave her a stern lecture about how badly she’d let him down, just how close to the wind she was sailing as far as this placement went, and how she was not only extremely lucky we’d agreed to continue to keep her, but, with this latest stunt, not even deserving of our largesse.

It was the first time I’d seen Danny in this different incarnation, and I realised he was going to have a brilliant career. It’s not often someone so young (not to mention young-looking) can command such respect. I could see Keeley wilting, her chin wobbling under his disappointed gaze, and in that, I also saw something positive – that he had earned her respect. Had he not, her demeanour and body language would have been so different – she would have been sullen, unresponsive, defiant.

Still, when he responded to her abject tears and saucer eyes with a sharp ‘it’s way too late for turning on the waterworks with me, Keeley!’ I wanted to run across and hug her and tell him to leave her alone, even as I understood that it was an act for her benefit; that he was only doing what he had to.

Because if you took it back to the day she was taken into care, it couldn’t help but strike me that she was the one who’d been let down – so badly – first by being born into a life that no child ever deserved, and then by a system that was financially so under-funded that it had little choice but to focus on the greater good; setting her needs against the needs, as perceived, of her siblings – four against one. No contest. So she’d languished alone, adrift from all of them not by accident, but by design.

Which wasn’t Danny’s fault, obviously. Not any one person’s fault. Just a series of assumptions and predictions and discussions, all of which had conspired – even if not wilfully – to aid her progress to the place where she fell through the gap. And because no one had subsequently questioned the decision to cut her off, the reasons for the decision had become subsequently set in stone. Immutable.

I picked up the tissue box and took it across to her, and Keeley plucked a couple up under Danny’s hard glare. It was scant consolation, I thought, as she scoured at her cheeks, to think her future couldn’t possibly be worse. Because, the way things so often went, it could.

Chapter 18 (#u4d36eb81-ed70-5cb7-9a8f-ecd836c64876)

And it was to the future, and only there, that I now resolved to look. Which was why when, a few days later, at the end of half-term week, I got an unexpected call from Danny, I had all but forgotten our recent conversation. Or, if not quite forgotten, had put out of my mind. It had been something of little consequence, after all; just my usual need to have loose threads tied up, with a fanciful bolt-on of imagining there might be something in Keeley’s file that might give her self-esteem a boost – a link to her past that we could perhaps revisit without causing her more pain. After all, I knew more than one retired social worker personally who sometimes wrote to former charges, sent birthday cards even – and, oh how precious those connections were once made.

But it turned out that there was much more to it than that. ‘I tracked her down,’ Danny was saying, once he’d reiterated why he was calling and my brain had finally clicked into gear. ‘I felt bad, to be honest,’ he said. ‘You know, after that chat we’d had before.’

‘Why on earth?’ I was shocked to hear this, having accepted his reasoning.

‘Because you made a valid point. That her future had been decided – her extremely lonely future – on the basis of a statement made by a traumatised four-year-old. Anyway, suitably humbled, I bring tentatively positive news.’

I begged to differ. One of the plus points of being at the sharp end, i.e. living with a child who was in the care system, as opposed to just visiting, was that, with a fair wind and a keen ear, there were all sorts of occasions where ‘right place, right time’ dynamics kicked in. I’d been lucky. It was often thus. I said so. ‘Anyway, what news?’ I added before he could disagree with me.

‘Tell you what – I’ll pop round, shall I? Better to run through it in person. Well, if you can come up with a time when Keeley’s otherwise engaged? I know it’s half-term, but –’

‘No problem,’ I said, excited now. ‘Leave it with me.’

So it was that the same afternoon, with Tyler out anyway, and having sneakily dispatched Keeley round to Riley’s (so she could help with some firework-night kids’ party she was making decorations for – totally spurious but credible) I opened the front door to a decidedly cheerful-looking twenty-something social worker, clutching a manila folder against his jacket.

‘I’ve managed to comb through a load of old material,’ he said after settling down on the sofa with a mug of tea and a plate of biscuits. From my stock of posh biscuits. I had a hunch he’d be deserving them. ‘Did you notice the gap in her records?’

I shook my head. I’d not paid that much attention to the dates. I rarely did.

‘Well, there is one. The small matter of an unaccounted-for couple of months. I don’t suppose you would notice – not unless you were actually looking for it. As I was, of course, because I was trying to marry up this Mrs Higgins with the dates on Keeley’s file.’

‘So what happened in the gap?’

‘Precisely my question. It wasn’t long after she entered the system – a matter of days, that’s all – and my first thought was that she might have left the system for a bit, obviously. Gone to a family member or something.’

Which could have been the case, because this happened reasonably regularly. Children were taken into care as emergencies and then a relative would step in, step up and offer to take them on, and, after all the necessary checks were undertaken this was sometimes what happened. A win-win situation for all concerned. And no more contact with social services, file closed.

But sometimes caring relatives bit off more than they could chew, and the children were subsequently returned to the system, creating a lose-lose situation instead. A child traumatised, then relieved at being back with known faces, then, their hopes dashed, traumatised all over again. I knew gaps in records were often because of situations like these.

But this hadn’t apparently been the case with Keeley. Mrs Higgins had been assigned to her after a couple of days in care, and had been looking after her when she was moved to her intended long-term foster carer, a Mrs Stewart, where Keeley had spent the first fortnight.

‘By the time the children were interviewed the other four had already been moved along,’ Danny explained. Only Keeley had remained where she was.’

I nodded. We both already knew this was often the case – a troubled ten-year-old probably being harder to place.

‘So at that point, the four-year-old’s statement had already been made?’ I asked. ‘And Keeley, in her own interview, had confirmed it?’

Danny nodded. ‘But there the plot thickened. Apparently Mrs Stewart had called Mrs Higgins a couple of days later, to report a disclosure Keeley had subsequently made, which cast doubt over the interpretation of the earlier things she’d said. In fact, it was Mrs Stewart’s belief that Keeley had in fact meant the opposite.’

‘About guarding the door for him?’

‘Exactly. Apparently Keeley had been guarding the bedroom door, but to try and keep the man out, not in. He’d gone in anyway, and apparently she’d followed him and tried to fight him, but he’d thrown her out, and she’d fallen at the door. And there she’d stayed, sobbing, while whatever went on happened, and there she’d been found when the police arrived at the scene. Mother was apparently downstairs, tripped out.’

‘So – obvious question – why has nobody seen this before?’

‘Simple answer. Because Mrs Higgins, pretty old school – liked to write stuff, apparently – I know, weird – had duly entered it in her log, but, ill with flu at the time, hadn’t called into the office with her report. Would have put it in an email eventually, no doubt, but events overtook her. She developed pneumonia and was hospitalised, meaning Keeley got reassigned to Mrs Banks, and then, shortly after that, moved on to the Burkes. And Mrs Stewart – who I’ve now spoken to – obviously thought it had, and that the decisions had been made about contact between the siblings had been made with the benefit of that new information. Or, more accurately, despite it. It was only after she twigged that Mrs Higgins might not have even relayed that information that she called the line manager to make sure it had.’

‘But it hadn’t.’