No Place for Nathan Read online

  ‘Are you okay, Nathan?’ I asked, wondering what the discussion was about.

  He turned to me and smiled, holding the wig so it didn’t slip off. ‘Yes, Miss,’ he said. ‘Everything is fine, thank you.’

  ‘What’s that on your head?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s just my hair, Miss. I think I have to be Jenny today and she has long blonde hair.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Was that Jenny you were just talking to?’

  He giggled girlishly. ‘No, Miss. I told you. I am Jenny, can’t you tell?’

  ‘Ah –’ I began.

  ‘– and I was speaking to Jack,’ he explained. ‘He wants to be my boyfriend but I told him I am not a dirty girl. So I won’t be his girlfriend and that’s that.’

  I was confused now. ‘So where has Nathan gone?’ I asked him.

  He giggled again. ‘Oh, Miss, you are funny. I’m right here!’ He beamed at me then. ‘I love you, Miss, and I am so glad it’s Monday,’ he announced, jumping up then and throwing his arms tightly around my waist.

  I hugged him briefly, then gently prised his arms from around me, crouching down as I did so to talk to him. ‘Good,’ I said, ‘but listen, it’s time to tidy these things away now.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, and duly began gathering the paper and scissors and glue up.

  ‘And Nathan,’ I added, ‘you’ll need to put your hair in your drawer as well.’

  ‘But I want to wear it, Miss! I told you, I need to be Jenny today.’

  I began helping him pop things back into the box. ‘Nathan, I’m sorry, but you can’t wear your hair in school. I mean, it’s fine if it’s just you and me, but not when the others are around. The big boys might laugh at you, mightn’t they? And we don’t want that, do we?’

  He spent a few seconds considering this, and I wondered if I should be braced for a small explosion. But it seemed not. ‘Okay, Miss,’ he said, ‘I’ll take it off as soon as I’ve finished tidying up.’ Which he duly did, clearing the desk and putting the box back in its corner, before taking his wig off and placing it very carefully in his drawer.

  With such a lot to think about, I took the opportunity to go and grab a coffee from the staff room and see what else I could find out when Jim arrived and was able to take the reins in the Unit. Did Nathan have some mental health issues or did he just have an overactive imagination? I was no psychologist, but there was clearly something psychological going on. He was clearly inhabiting multiple characters – so did that mean he had multiple personalities too? It would certainly fit in with the sometimes inexplicable about-turns in his mood and behaviour – was he acting out different people? Playing different roles as a coping mechanism? There was obviously a lot I needed to learn about this child if I was going to be in a position to get him back into the mainstream.

  Coffee in hand, I went along to visit the special needs team, where I knew the head of department, Julia Styles, would probably be able to tell me more.

  ‘Well, not much,’ she confessed, when I explained about ‘Jenny’ and the wig and wondered if she knew more about it. ‘He’s kind of fallen off the radar a little. You know what it’s like, Casey. It’s mostly been fire-fighting. Everyone who’s taught him has been too busy running around trying to stop fights breaking out because of his incredible talent for offending right, left and centre.’

  ‘What about the educational psychologist?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s definitely been referred. In fact, I’m sure he’s been seen …’ She went to a filing cabinet and flicked through some papers. ‘Yes, he has. He was seen whilst still at his primary school, and we’re still waiting for the report to be sent on to us. That’s one of the reasons he’s with you – to manage and contain him till we’ve got something concrete to go on. I suppose we’ll decide what best to do with him then.’

  ‘Can you chase it up, d’you think?’

  Julia nodded. ‘Already on my to-do list.’

  ‘And do you have anything else on him that might be useful? What about his family circumstances? Anything significant there?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Julia said, scribbling another note on her pad. ‘But I can certainly find out …’ She stopped and frowned at me guiltily. ‘Sorry, Casey,’ she said. ‘This should have been chased up for you last week, shouldn’t it? You must think we treat your Unit like a kid-shaped black hole sometimes, mustn’t you?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ I reassured her. Yes, exactly, I thought.

  It was frustrating, sometimes, waiting for information. We hadn’t received anything at all on Nathan up to now, barring a few short notes on his behaviour. We did know he was statemented as having special educational needs, but without the report from his last school, we didn’t know exactly why. I knew these things took time, of course, sometimes as long as months, but I also knew that if somebody didn’t push for information, it could take even longer.

  My little nudge, however, quickly paid dividends. By the middle of that week I was suddenly awash with information about Nathan – child-protection files that might be key to unlocking the mystery surrounding the odd and worrying behaviours of this lonely, troubled boy. I learned that social services had already been involved with Nathan’s family on a number of occasions.

  But as I delved into the paperwork I was to be disappointed once again, as there was very little that enlightened me. An only child, Nathan apparently lived with his mother and stepfather (he no longer had contact with his dad) and there had been indications of neglect. It had been neighbours who had first alerted the authorities about the family, when, as a younger child, Nathan had so often been left at home alone. And action had been promptly taken. It was recorded that the mother and stepfather had undergone family therapy, but the notes were vague, only summarising that following the intervention no further action had been deemed required.

  I was still awaiting the report from the educational psychologist, of course, but, in the meantime, it wasn’t much to go on. And as the days went by, it seemed that, now he was based in the Unit with me and Jim, Nathan was a child very much out of sight, out of mind. For Nathan this was obviously something of a welcome development, because away from the many challenges of trying to fit into the mainstream, he was relaxing into being the person he really wanted to be.

  And it seemed it was me who was the catalyst. He’d particularly latched on to me and held nothing back now; he’d arrive early for school more often than not, and pop his wig on completely unselfconsciously. He’d also started accompanying me into the dinner hall every lunchtime – which I allowed – and it became clear that he had some odd food issues too; he would only eat pale-coloured food: rice, pasta, chicken and cheese. If there wasn’t anything the right hue, he simply wouldn’t eat. And over the next couple of weeks it became clear that there might be a pattern forming in one of his behaviours, because on the next two Friday afternoons we had the same inexplicable end-of-day meltdown; mostly with Jim but also now including me.

  ‘You know what?’ I said to Jim after Nathan’s third week in the Unit. ‘This tantrum-throwing – have you noticed how it always happens on a Friday? No other day, just the Friday, and you know what I’m thinking? I’m wondering if it’s almost like he’s setting down a marker. Giving us a good reason to keep him in the Unit for another week. What do you think?’

  I’d been pleased with my little theory, so I was even more pleased when Jim seemed to think I’d hit the nail on the head. ‘That fits,’ he agreed, ‘because I do think that’s something he’s worked out since he’s been here. That kids come and go – that there’s always talk about behaviours that will get them out or keep them in here. And let’s face it, there’s not much for him back in the mainstream compared to this, is there? It’s not like he’s missing a great bunch of friends, is it?’

  I shook my head. The truth was that Nathan didn’t seem to have a friend in the world.

  The reality was that it might not just be regular school that Nathan found difficult. As I mull
ed things over during the following days, it occurred to me that there might be somewhere else that he found traumatic currently: the home he returned to every night and weekend.

  Nathan lived fairly close to the school, on a street that was almost on my own route home, and with it still being quite balmy, it was a route I often walked – it was a good end-of-day 20-minute de-stress. On one occasion, I’d even seen him, sitting on a front-garden wall on the corner, nose buried in a comic. He’d not seen me – if he had, I knew he’d be over like a shot – but it had made me wonder what was happening behind his own front-garden wall. And perhaps there was a way to find out.

  The next Friday, I casually suggested that as I had to get home early and would be leaving school promptly, perhaps we could walk home – as far as his at least – together.

  Nathan was, as I expected, thrilled with this development, and was chattering ten to the dozen as we left the school grounds. It was only when we neared the road that joined his that he stopped talking abruptly, stood still on the pavement and said, ‘Oh, God, Miss – I need my hair!’

  ‘Your hair? You don’t normally take your hair home, do you, Nathan?’

  He looked stricken. ‘I do sometimes,’ he admitted, as if he’d been caught out in a terrible crime.

  ‘You’ll be fine without it,’ I reassured him. ‘Look, we’re not far from home now.’

  But he didn’t seem to be listening. He’d thrown down his backpack and started tearing at his school sweatshirt. ‘Can you help me get this off, Miss?’ he asked, holding his hands up like a toddler would, so I could haul it over his head. He looked quite desperate by now, so I obliged.

  Once it was free, he immediately tied the arms round his head, bandana-style, knotting it at the front so that the body of it hung down behind his head. ‘That’s better, Miss,’ he said, immediately looking calmer. Then he smiled. ‘Did you see anything on Nathan’s back when you helped him get his top off?’

  He was talking in a higher pitch now and I ran through the words in my head, realising he was now being Jenny. ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Should I have seen something?’

  ‘Just look at these bruises,’ he said, suddenly pulling up his school shirt. ‘And no, he didn’t do it falling off his auntie’s washing machine!’

  I looked at his back. There were indeed some bruises on it. Yellow-purple. Large. And some nasty scratches too.

  He pulled down the shirt again. ‘How did this happen, sweetie?’ I asked him as he picked up his backpack.

  ‘His no good fuckin’ stepfather did it,’ he said, in his strange squeaky girl’s voice, ‘cos the poor lad didn’t want no shitty curry for tea, that’s how!’

  I stopped on the pavement myself now. ‘Sweetie, can you take off your hair now, d’you think? Then you can talk to me as Nathan, can’t you?’

  He looked at me for a moment, then dropped the bag on the ground again and started undoing the knot. He’d started crying. ‘You can’t tell anyone, Miss,’ he sobbed. ‘It was only a play fight. My daddy loves me, he does. We were just playing.’

  This was clearly something he’d needed to get off his chest for a while. But now he finally had, I could see he was terrified. ‘Shush, darling, it’s okay,’ I soothed. ‘And, sweetie, you know you can tell me anything. But there’s one thing – sometimes I do have to tell someone, because it’s my job. But I will make absolutely sure you don’t get in any trouble for telling me, okay?’

  I had to say this. It was one of the fundamentals of my job. When a child confided in me it was crucial that they knew I couldn’t keep secrets. That there could be no ‘don’t tell anyone this, but …’ with me. And it was of vital importance that I made this clear from the outset, so there would be no loss of trust down the line. I was anxious, though, because for all my reassurance, this was possible evidence of abuse, which I was duty bound to report. And it might end up taking us down a path where my reassurances would be worthless. One thing I did know was that abusers, on the whole, didn’t take kindly to being found out. And the best way to ensure meddlesome social services didn’t sniff around was to terrify the abused child into silence.

  I made a decision, then. To make a detour with him, to a little café just round the corner, where he might open up more or, if he didn’t feel he could, at least return home feeling a bit calmer.

  And, as it turned out to be the latter, I decided that once I’d dropped him at his house, I would hotfoot it back to school and have a chat with Gary Clark, our child protection officer, who was invariably on the premises beyond five.

  ‘Here we are, then,’ I said brightly, as we stopped at Nathan’s front gate – a sad affair, listing forlornly on one hinge. I’d made no more mention of his bruises and neither had he, and I didn’t want to bring them up again now. ‘I’ll see you on Monday,’ I said, as he headed down the short path, upon which he turned back.

  ‘It’s okay, Miss,’ he said. ‘You can go now. I’ll go inside in a minute.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll wait till you get in.’

  Nathan looked slightly agitated on hearing this. He shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘There’s no point you waiting,’ he admitted finally, ‘cos no one’s in yet.’

  ‘So what will you do?’ I asked.

  ‘Wait on the wall,’ he said, nodding towards it, ‘Or sometimes I go to the library to play on the computers.’

  ‘Do you do that every day?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Mostly. So I just go to the amusement arcade, or the library, like I said. Till it’s time to go home for my tea.’

  Hmm, I thought. Maybe Gary could wait. ‘Well, you know what?’ I said, making the sort of split-second decision that I knew could work for or against me. ‘I’ll wait on the wall with you, shall I? Then you won’t be on your own.’

  And not for too long, I hoped, now that we’d already made the detour to the café. So perhaps I’d finally get a glimpse of the stepfather who was so keen to play-fight with his stepson. And I was right. No more than 20 or 30 minutes had passed before a man who Nathan identified as his stepdad began walking up the street.

  He was a small, skinny man, in his late thirties, I’d have guessed, wearing what looked like dirty jeans beneath an even dirtier overcoat. He didn’t look particularly menacing, but then I wasn’t 11, was I? And there was also something about his expression that unsettled me. As he approached I stood and smiled, the better to greet him, but no sooner had I extended my hand and begun to introduce myself than he brushed past me, quite roughly, scowling and grunting as he did so. ‘I know who you are,’ he said, even though he couldn’t have, surely? ‘And the kid knows his way home,’ he added rudely.

  To say I was taken aback was an understatement. He’d swatted me away as if I was an irritating fly. He’d also grabbed Nathan’s wrist and was now frogmarching him up the path to the front door.

  ‘Bye, Nathan,’ I called out. ‘I’ll see you on Monday, okay?’ Upon which he turned and gave me a wave and an apologetic little smile, looking every inch a lamb going to the slaughter. I just hoped I hadn’t made everything worse.

  As it was probably too late now to return to school and find Gary, I headed home myself, mulling over what best to do. There was probably no point in making a direct referral to the emergency duty team at social services. My previous experience, both in school and before that as a youth worker, had taught me that unless it was what they deemed a ‘real emergency’ then nobody would do anything until after the weekend anyway.

  As it was I spent the next day and Sunday worrying about Nathan. I walked into town a couple of times hoping that I might see him hanging around the arcades or something, but this proved to be pointless. And when my husband Mike wanted to know what I hoped to achieve in doing so, I didn’t really have an answer for him anyway. In the end I decided that there was no more I could do until Monday, apart from writing up the usual incident report.

  The bruises and scratches kept playing on my mind, thoug
h – particularly the thought that my presence at Nathan’s gate might have caused more to have been added over the weekend. So Monday morning saw me in school even earlier than usual, and straight up to the child protection office. Happily, Gary was there, so I could hand my report over, which he read then and there, very intently.

  I liked Gary, and also had great respect for him. He’d been at the school for a good few years now and had helped me out with extra information on quite a few occasions. He was also big on protocol. He knew just what to do when there was a possibility that a child might be at risk. And I knew that he was passionate about the children in his care. It was no surprise, therefore, when he picked up his telephone and immediately rang social services. He explained the situation and said that he would fax them a copy of the particulars; he also said that he would like the matter to be followed up.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ I said, relieved that action had now been taken. ‘I can’t tell you how much of a weight that is off my mind.’

  ‘No problem, Casey,’ he said. ‘Only too happy to –’

  He was about to say ‘help’, but the word was drowned out by a sharp rat-a-tat on his office door. Since I was closest I went to answer it, only to find myself face to face with the headmaster.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Casey. That’s handy. Can I have a quick word?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Shall I come to your office? I was just leaving Gary’s …’