No Place for Nathan (5 page)

‘So what did you do?’ I asked, while Nathan got his breath back.

‘I just ran off and came to school. I’m scared of the police, Miss. My dad says they lock people up all the time. Even good boys and good dads, sometimes.’

Not knowing what had gone on, I sent Nathan off to the Unit when the bell sounded, and I went up to see if I could find Gary. His door was open and he was on the phone but as soon as he saw me he gestured that I should come in and wait.

‘That was the police,’ he said, replacing the handset. ‘They’re on their way. And yes,’ he said, correctly interpreting my expression, ‘I did get the report you left for me on Friday. So I called the emergency duty team at social services, as I couldn’t get through to Martin, and they told me to report the disclosure to the police.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ I said.

‘Well, yes, it is, if we can make it happen. They’re on their way now. Coming up to talk to Nathan about this man he called Michael – he was already on his way here when they called at home, apparently. Have you seen him yet?’

I explained that I had, and what he’d told me. Gary nodded. ‘That figures. We’ve just been saying as much ourselves. The father is, potentially, the fly in the ointment. We don’t know what he knows or doesn’t know about this character, but they’re worried that if he
is
involved, he’ll try to get to Nathan before they do.’

‘What about the mother?’ I asked. ‘Nathan never talks about his mother. Do you know anything more about her?’

‘Only that she’s going to be no help to anyone. She has severe learning difficulties and, according to Nathan’s old primary school, she’s barely ever been a presence. Hardly in the house at all, apparently. Just wanders around the town centre all day and often doesn’t go home till Nathan is already in bed. She did turn up at parents’ evenings, occasionally, which is something, but rarely, if ever, spoke – left all that to her husband.’

I was just thinking what a sad and depressing state of affairs it all was when, as if on cue, my mobile phone rang. It was the school office to say that Mr Greaves was on his way to the school to collect Nathan because he had a doctor’s appointment.

I told the secretary I’d bring him down and Gary and I both rolled our eyes. It seemed to be playing out exactly as we’d expected.

‘I’ll stall him,’ Gary said. ‘Keep him talking for as long as possible. But why don’t you take Nathan up for a trip to the library anyway. And take your time about it. It’s a bit of a way to get back from; know what I mean?’

It was a little unorthodox, admittedly. But, then, allegations of abuse required decisive action and, though we had no right to stop Nathan’s father from collecting him, if Nathan wasn’t brought down till the police had arrived too, we could perhaps achieve more and, crucially, achieve it quicker. Who knew, after all, now he was aware we might be onto him, whether Nathan’s father would bring him back to school at all?

It wasn’t to be, though. I hurried back to the Unit, while Gary headed down to reception, and though our little ruse did the trick in that the police arrived shortly after – and before Nathan’s father showed up – it proved to be pointless in any case.

Yes, we managed to get him in a room with the police officer, but that was all. As soon as Nathan saw the uniform, he clammed up completely, apart from saying to me, in a voice that was 100 per cent Nathan, ‘I’m not telling nothing, Miss. I told you.’

Where was Jenny when we needed her?
I thought, as I sat there, unable to do anything, while Nathan remained stiff-lipped and terrified – he wouldn’t even speak to confirm his name. I felt utterly frustrated, but I knew that Nathan would have to speak freely and without coercion, otherwise nothing he said could be used anyway.

Mr Greaves arrived shortly after, angry to see the police there and generally stroppy, but without evidence or testimony from Nathan himself, we could do nothing. And as I took Nathan to him I felt again like I was delivering a lamb to the slaughter, especially when Mr Greaves grinned at me.

He spoke to me as well, just as he took Nathan’s hand. ‘Never mind, Mrs Watson,’ he said. ‘Better luck next time.’

It was in the nature of my job that children came, we did what we could with them and then they moved on with their lives. Sometimes they moved back into mainstream classes – our best-case scenario – and sometimes they moved on in other positive ways. To new homes and new schools or to other, specialist ones locally; ones better suited, where appropriate, to their needs. Sometimes – the worst-case scenario – they did neither. They just disappeared – were excluded, or were taken out of school – leaving us frustrated and wondering if we could have done anything differently to achieve a more positive outcome.

This looked like being one of the latter. Nathan didn’t appear in school for the rest of the week and a phone call eventually established that he was ‘ill’. It wasn’t until the following week that the headmaster called me and Gary into his office, where he let us know that Nathan’s father was removing him from school, on the grounds that we weren’t meeting his needs at the moment and that they were looking into ‘other options’ for him.

‘Can he do that?’ I asked him. ‘Surely the truancy officer would step in, wouldn’t they?’

‘Yes, in theory, in time,’ he said, ‘but, as you know, Casey, these things
take
time.’ We all exchanged looks. He didn’t need to say more. We all knew what we thought was the problem with Nathan, but with him apparently no longer a pupil, there was nothing we could do to help him. It was now going to be in the hands of social services.

‘So that’s it?’ I asked, experiencing a leaden, sinking feeling that would come to be so familiar in the following months and years. It felt all wrong, somehow, to just walk away and try to forget him.

‘That’s it,’ the head agreed. ‘I’m sorry, Casey, but that’s the nature of the beast, sadly. We can only do what we can do during the time we can be of influence. That’s the bottom line. You both did your best.’

‘We can only do what we can do during the time we can be of influence.’ Those words stayed with me all day.

And all evening, and the next day and the next evening too. So much so that even Mike had to start some counselling training – with me as his very first patient. ‘The headmaster’s right,’ he said. ‘There’s only so much you can do, and you
did
it. Try to be positive. Social services are aware of the allegations, and even if you can’t do anything more to help the boy, they can. They won’t have just dropped it, love; that his father’s taken him out of the school so suddenly will have rung alarm bells for them too, don’t forget.’

But I couldn’t let it go and, at the end of the following week, I couldn’t resist making a very slight detour on my journey home. I knew I shouldn’t – I could hear Mike’s voice ticking me off even as I walked – but I knew I wouldn’t rest till I’d at least taken a look, even if I had no idea what I’d do when I got there.

I needn’t have worried. I didn’t even need to think. Because I’d only just started walking up the front-garden path when a voice behind me made me stop and turn around.

It was a woman’s voice, and when I turned it was to see a lady who looked in her sixties, perhaps, carrying a plastic carrier bag which she was lobbing into a wheelie bin. ‘There’s no one in, love,’ she said, nodding her head towards the house. ‘I just saw him off up the road not ten minutes ago.’

‘Nathan?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Their lad?’ She shook her head. ‘No, love. He’s run off. I meant his dad.’

‘Run off?’ I said, startled at her matter-of-fact manner.

‘So I’ve heard. So his father says, anyway. Run off to some auntie or other somewhere.’ She flipped the wheelie-bin lid down. ‘Not surprised,’ she added drily. ‘Funny kid, that one. Weird boy.’

She ambled back off up her path then. I hurried home.

This development did nothing to quell my conviction that Nathan could, and probably would, now slip through the net. Was it true, even, what I’d been told? I wondered. A big part of me doubted it. Could it not just be some line the father was spinning to get people off his case? And even if it was true, what would happen about following up on his disclosures? Would that happen? In theory, it should, but what if he’d left the area altogether? If that were the case, he would presumably come under the jurisdiction of a completely different social services office. How efficient were one lot of social services at communicating with another? I didn’t know, but I didn’t feel very positive. I had been around the block too many times.

So when a note from the head arrived in my pigeonhole a couple of days later, I read it with interest but not optimism. ‘
Could you pop in and see me later? News on Nathan Greaves
’ was all it said, and though I was keen to hear the news, I didn’t expect it to be good.

But, in fact, it was the best news. Well, under the circumstances, at least the most encouraging. ‘He’s been temporarily taken into care,’ the headmaster told me, without preamble. ‘When they began investigating his disclosures to you regarding the Michael character, it came to light that he lived just down the road and is a convicted paedophile. Out now, but obviously breaking the terms of his discharge. So we have some progress.’

‘Oh, poor Nathan …’ I murmured. ‘But progress is good.’

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘as I was just saying to Gary here, the other reason I asked you to pop up was to see what your timetable is like. As the teacher who’s spent most time with Nathan over the past couple of months, his social worker wondered if you’d be able to spare a couple of hours this week to attend a pre-placement meeting with the pair of foster carers they’ve found for him. He’s already with them, but Nathan’s social worker felt it would be useful for you to see them – to give them some insight into his somewhat complex emotional needs.’

‘How about tomorrow?’ I said.

Nathan was being Jenny when I visited. He squealed with delight when he saw me, throwing his skinny arms around me and telling me, in his high-pitched Jenny voice, how much he had missed me. ‘We’re making Christmas decorations, Miss,’ he said excitedly, ‘and I shall make one for you specially. You can put it in your posh office then, can’t you?’

His foster mum, a lovely middle-aged lady called Caroline, agreed that they’d do exactly that and, having promised him that they’d go up to school and deliver it personally, told him that we needed to have a chat.

Nathan skipped off without argument and we spent a productive 20 minutes comparing notes about her singular little charge, and the various challenges he might bring in the time he was with her while social services waited on the psychologist’s assessment and decided what best to do in the short term.

‘I’m going to miss him,’ I said. ‘I’ve been so anxious about what might have happened to him. I still am. It’s that horrible not-knowing thing, isn’t it?’

She smiled. ‘I’ve racked up a fair few of those over the years, believe me, Casey. Sometimes it works out fine, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you know that, even though you can hardly bear to think about it, they will, in the end, go back to the same sort of lives they had before – and, in some cases, even do it willingly.’

I thought about Nathan going home and nothing having changed. ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ I said. ‘Not once they’ve got under your skin and you’ve started fretting about them. I’d be a nervous wreck, I think.’

But the foster mum shook her head. ‘It doesn’t get any easier,’ she admitted. ‘Some kids, especially the longer-term ones, you just can’t help but fall in love with them. Then it’s
so
hard – it breaks your heart. But I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve done all sorts of jobs over the years, but as soon as I started this one, I just
knew
. I can’t imagine doing anything else now,’ she said, ‘no matter how challenging the child. You can’t change the world – sometimes you feel you’ve hardly changed a thing, to be honest – but, well, if you can do
something
, that’s the best feeling
in
the world, believe me.’ She grinned. ‘You should try it yourself sometime.’

I left the foster mum’s house – and Nathan – with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I knew I would continue to worry about what might happen to him, but on the other, I felt much lighter of heart. As the head had said, you could only do what you could do while you were of influence; a feeling that seemed to be shared by the lovely lady I’d just been chatting to.

Though, as for trying if for myself, that was a whole other matter.
Hmm
, I thought, as I climbed into my car,
maybe not …

Though it was never proven that the man called ‘Michael’ had ever touched Nathan and Jodie sexually, he was returned to prison anyway for breaking the terms of his discharge, in inviting the children into his flat. As for Nathan’s father, though he admitted to having perhaps being ‘heavy-handed’ with his discipline, no charges were ever brought against him for either violence or sexual offences, and Nathan’s bruises remained unexplained. He did admit when interviewed, however, that he and Nathan did both sleep together on a mattress in his bedroom, while his wife slept on the floor in the other. For this reason, though Nathan was returned home some months later, he remained on the ‘at-risk’ list, and his mother and stepfather were ordered to attend parenting classes.

As for Nathan himself, he was moved to another school, the educational psychologist’s report having made the recommendation that a specialist unit might be better suited to his complex mental-health needs. It would be eight years before I next saw him. By that time, aged 19, he had come out as gay and seemed happy; he had a job in retail and was living with his boyfriend. I didn’t ask him about his father.

And, as for me, well, I learned some valuable lessons. That you really
can
only do what you can do, when you can, and that real life is different from stories. Sometimes you have to accept you won’t get all the answers. The main lesson I learned, however, would take a while to filter through: that a new career, down the line, had started beckoning …