A Stolen Childhood (17 page)

Eventually, by the Tuesday evening – just in the nick of time – we were settled into my perfect bungalow, even sitting out on our new decking, tired, yes, but happy to be finally installed in our new home. And as I contemplated the graft we’d put in, and the bubble bath I’d be enjoying later, I realised I’d hardly thought about work in days. Which had to be a good thing, as it had really recharged my batteries. So much so that I realised I was looking forward to going back to school and getting stuck in to whatever came next. Which is probably why you should be careful what you wish for.

But, then again, I’d missed two days, and as I’d soon learn, that mattered. Like they say, everything happens for a reason.

Chapter 13

I arrived at school refreshed and relaxed on the Wednesday after my extended half-term. The weather was sunny and warm, which matched my mood perfectly as I parked the car and strolled the short distance from the car park.

There was something about the second half of the summer term that had a positive effect on both pupils and staff. Yes, it would fall apart comprehensively during the last few days of term, but at this point the promise of the long summer holidays seemed to inspire everyone to crack on and work hard. The excitement of the holidays, for the pupils at least, seemed almost physical. It meant no work, lots of play time, late nights and lie-ins. It also meant that when everyone came back in September, there would be the thrill of change, brand new uniforms, new stationery and new starts. There was therefore a real sense of carpe diem in the air. It was the half-term most beloved by almost everyone. Particularly now it had been confirmed that our OFSTED inspection had been postponed till at least the second half of the autumn term; many a teacher’s summer would be all the brighter because of that, chiefly because so much less of it would need to be spent working.

‘Morning!’ I trilled to Barbara, the most senior of the school secretaries, as I walked by reception en route to the staff-room. She was on the phone to someone as I passed, but gestured that I should stop. I did so, musing, as I waited for her to finish, that this might be something to do with our new girl, Morgan.

‘Did you have a nice break, Barbara?’ I asked her, as she finally finished her call and swung her chair round to face me at her hatch. ‘Is it Morgan? Have the records from her tutor come through yet?’ This was something Mr Giles had assured me he’d get for me, just so we’d have some idea of what parts of the syllabuses she did and didn’t know.

She shook her head. ‘Oh no, Casey, there’s nothing on that front yet. No, I was just asked to grab you as soon as I saw you. It’s Mr Dawson, Jim. He’s waiting to see you and said he’ll be in the quiet room. Said it’s urgent.’

The quiet room was so called because it was just off the staff-room, and away from the main hubbub as it was where the staff computers were. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I was on my way to the staff-room anyway, so I’ll catch him right away.’

I headed off to the staff-room, intrigued. Jim may have just wanted to brief me on what had been happening in the Unit, but my spidey senses were telling me it wasn’t going to be that simple. So some sort of crisis, no doubt. Jim didn’t tend to bandy words like ‘urgent’ around needlessly. I wondered what urgent thing it might be. Could be something to do with Kiara of course, but it could equally be one of the others, about which I had mixed feelings; I realised I
wanted
it to be about Kiara. However much I understood the whole ‘softly softly’ thinking, I wanted action – I wanted the facts.

‘Ah, Casey,’ Jim said, springing up from one of the computer terminals as soon as I entered. ‘Sit down, sit down. How was half-term? Did the move all go okay?’

I said okay, fine and yes, and batted the queries straight back at him, though I could tell there were things other than half-term small talk on his mind. ‘Let me fill you in quickly,’ he said, glancing at his watch, once we were both seated. ‘We both need to go see Don Brabbiner before the bell goes, but as we’ve got the room to ourselves still, I’ll catch you up first.’

‘Go on, then,’ I said, intrigued now, ‘catch me up. What’s happened?’

He pulled a face. ‘I warn you, it’s not pleasant. As you know,’ he began, ‘I was asked to replace you till today, but, as it turned out, I didn’t last beyond Monday morning. Kelly had to take over – she’s with Don now, by the way, giving her statement.’

‘Statement? That sounds serious. Jim, what’s
happened
?’ My mind was already heading off over the jumps – jumping to conclusions; had Paddy Giles been down and dragged his daughter out by the hair? Jim was a male, after all.

If only. ‘It was all going fine,’ Jim continued. The kids were fine, no bother – that new gypsy girl, Morgan, she seemed lovely. No bother – just keen to get her head down and get on with her work. No problems at all until the lunch bell in fact. That was when the ordure hit the fan.’

‘What
happened
, Jim?’ I asked, willing him to hurry up and get to the point.

He looked slightly flushed; not quite himself. He ran a hand through his thatch of hair. ‘What happened, Casey,’ he said, ‘if you want it in a nutshell, is that Kiara Bentley offered me a damn blow job!’

‘
What?
I squeaked. ‘Surely not.
Really?
She’s only bloody 12 for God’s sake! I mean I know you’re telling me that she did, and I’m not doubting you for a second, but,
really
? Actually used those exact words?’

‘Well, I’m certainly not bloody making it up!’ Jim said, understandably tetchy.

‘Sorry,’ I rushed to say. ‘Of
course
I don’t think you’re making it up. I just can’t get my head round it …’

Oh God, this was all beginning to stack up, wasn’t it? For me at least – was Jim even aware of Mr Bentley’s allegations?

‘Trust me, Casey,’ he said, ‘this is difficult for me to imagine too, but there you go. That’s what happened.’

‘I’m sorry, Jim,’ I said again. ‘I’m just in shock. How did it happen? Where? When?’

It seemed that Kiara had asked Jim if she could stay behind when the lunch bell went, as she needed to talk to someone about what she’d been up to during the holidays. Jim had agreed (so Gary
had
briefed him about our conversation prior to half-term) because he knew she might have stuff she needed to get off her chest. But talking, apparently, was the last thing on Kiara’s mind. She’d apparently acted in a very suggestive manner, pouting and fluttering her eyelashes at him. And when he’d sat on the edge of my desk, the better to chat to her informally, she’d actually reached out and tried to stroke his leg.

At this point Jim had naturally jumped down and told her to stop being silly, then told her to run along and go and have her lunch. But Kiara was apparently having none of it. ‘You can’t fool me, sir,’ she’d said to him. ‘I know what you want, a nice blow job. I can give you one if you like. I won’t tell.’

Poor Jim. This was horrible territory for a male teacher – well, for any teacher, in fact, because he was in the room alone with her. She could say anything about the encounter, and might feel inclined to do so, as he’d rebuffed her – and it would be extremely difficult for him; his word against hers. I really felt sorry for him, and didn’t know what to say. Well, other than ‘it’ll be alright’, which I knew wasn’t helpful in the slightest.

No, if word got around about this to pupils and staff, it could very well put an end to his career, no matter how innocent he was. If a girl did something like this and then told all her friends, they would tell their friends, and they’d then tell their friends, and before you knew it, some parent would hear the attendant whispers and giggles and the story – the fiction – would take on another life completely, and when that happened, there’d be no coming back from it, not really, even if it was proven to be a complete fabrication.

Even if a teacher survived all that, was acquitted and managed to keep their job, the taunts never went away and the whispers in the staff-room were still present; they just got a little quieter. No, this was serious,
extremely
serious, and had to be dealt with swiftly and correctly. No wonder Jim wasn’t looking quite himself.

‘I honestly don’t know what to say, Jim,’ I said, standing up and smoothing my skirt down. ‘But we’d better get along to Don’s office now, I suppose. So why’s Kelly in there?’ I asked, having just had a thought come to me. ‘Is she a witness to anything?’ I added hopefully.

Jim shook his head sadly. ‘If only,’ he said. ‘No, she’s in there because she had to take the class after I reported it, and she’s spoken to Kiara about it. Though I obviously don’t yet know what she had to say.’

Poor, poor Jim. What a start to his week. Though it was hard to take in that Kiara would do that, there was plenty of reason to believe it. The way she’d dealt with Tommy so swiftly, and so painfully, back in that assembly.
My mum showed me how to do that.
Wasn’t that what she’d said? The ‘fact’ of what sort of ‘carer’ her mum might conceivably be. That knowing, ‘older than her years’ look she’d always had. Tommy being so adamant that he hadn’t actually said the lewd things she’d accused him of. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, I thought, as we hurried along to the deputy head’s office. Everything about it was beginning to make my antennae start to twitch.

Two minutes later they were twitching fit to bust, just by virtue of the expression on the deputy headteacher’s face. It was deemed that due to the nature of what Kiara had said subsequently there was no reason why Jim and I couldn’t hear it.

At first, it seemed she’d simply denied everything. ‘Vehemently, in fact,’ Kelly explained. ‘But come yesterday morning, it seemed that she’d had a bit of a change of heart, actually asking me if she could stay behind and talk to me at break time, and then admitting to me that she’d behaved inappropriately.’

‘Thank God for that,’ I couldn’t help interrupting her to say.

‘Indeed,’ she agreed. ‘But there’s more. Once I pressed her about why she’d even thought of doing such a thing, she told me she knew that most men liked girls who could do blow jobs, and that Mr Dawson had been so lovely to her that she wanted to be sure he wasn’t one of them.’

‘Come again?’ Jim said.

‘A “nice” man,’ Kelly supplied. ‘She wanted to be sure that you were really a nice man, as opposed to the kind of men her mum knew. Testing you, in effect. She said that herself.’

I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘She actually said that, about the men her mother knew? Oh my God, so Mr Bentley
was
telling the truth then?’

‘It seems so,’ Donald said, and I could tell there was still more. Everyone suddenly had their Very Serious Faces on. ‘Casey,’ Don started, addressing me directly, ‘Gary’s been investigating things further, along with social services, naturally. He’s just been making a couple of calls and should be with us at any moment.’ He checked his watch. ‘And I was thinking that perhaps it’s best if Kelly goes back to look after your pupils, so that we can all sit down together and we can put you properly in the picture; Gary might well have some further updates from overnight.’

‘Of course,’ I said, my brain going nine to the dozen. Where was Kiara now? What ‘updates’ was he expecting? ‘Whatever you say,’ I added as Kelly left the office, thinking vaguely what a shame it was that I wasn’t there for class
again
, but at the same time hungry to know what the heck was going on.

And learn I did. And the first thing I learned – and learned good – was that you should never judge a book by its cover. I felt so stupid that I’d been completely taken in by Mrs Bentley. I hated to think that I was apparently so shallow that her impressive show of ultra-cleanliness had dazzled my vision, clouding my judgement, and had prevented me from looking beyond the sterile environment she called a home.

To be fair to myself, I’d had my reservations, and I’d definitely voiced them; that feeling that I was missing something, even though I hadn’t known what it was – but still, I shouldn’t have left it there.

‘Don’t blame yourself, Casey. That’s just silly,’ was almost the first thing Gary said when he’d arrived and I told him how much of an idiot I felt. ‘How were any of us to know? And though Jim’s possibly the last person who’ll thank me for saying it, it’s actually a blessing that she came on to him the way she did.’

He then filled us in on what he’d since found out. In fact, what he’d already started investigating over the half-term break, by having a quiet word with a close contact of his in social services. A contact who’d revealed that Mrs Bentley had indeed been in trouble in the past for this kind of thing, but their involvement had ended several years back, after monitoring her for three years, during which time it appeared that she’d cleaned up her act and was concentrating on being a good parent to her daughter.

Gary had then done some other snooping around – he didn’t go into details – and had apparently found out one of the neighbours had recently put a complaint in to the council about the stream of men going in and out of the house at all hours. The police also had a record of another neighbour (a local neighbourhood watch official) reporting a child being left alone late at night on a regular basis.

I was shocked. And not just by the facts that were being put before me. I was shocked that a jigsaw hadn’t started to form in anyone’s mind; that the authorities hadn’t put all the pieces together. Incredible or not, though, it simply hadn’t happened. The incidents were all spaced out over too long a time and no one had connected the dots. On their own, none had been serious enough to warrant removing a child, and no one had managed to put them together.

Till now. ‘Now it’s happening,’ Gary continued, his expression grim. ‘Later today, someone will be calling into school to collect Kiara, and she will be placed with a foster family till this is all sorted out.’

I gasped. For all my ‘action, action, action’ bluster prior to half-term, now it
was
going to be done I couldn’t believe it could all happen so fast. She’d left her mum’s house, come to school and then … and then what? They’d swoop in and claim her? Just physically take her away, whether she wanted to be taken away or not? It just seemed so brutal, and I couldn’t quite imagine standing by while they dragged her off with them. I couldn’t quite conceive that, however much she professed to hate her mum, she would just meekly trot off with strangers. I couldn’t quite conceive that she did hate her mum, come to that. She was a 12-year-old girl; she’d obviously have her spats with her mother and, given the terrible state of play when it came to her parents’ warring, I don’t doubt she had more spats than most. But this was still her mum, and her home, and, bar her dad’s place, all she knew. It seemed more than brutal, in fact. It seemed too horrible to actually be happening, and I really couldn’t imagine being a part of it. What if she clung to me, traumatised, pleading for them not to take her?