No Place for Nathan Page 4

  I shook my head.

  ‘He says “And don’t fucking tell social services that you and your dad sleep on a mattress in your bedroom”.’

  Nathan’s expression was now mask-like – as if he really was just parroting words at me. It was so strange and unsettling that it made me shudder.

  ‘And do you and your dad share a mattress?’ I asked him, conscious that, as he had already told me this, I wasn’t leading him.

  He looked me in the eye but his lips didn’t move. Instead he shrugged, then said, ‘Miss, can I go and read in the Unit now? I’m tired. I don’t really want to chat anymore.’

  I hesitated, wondering what I could usefully say next, but in the end, unable to come up with anything that wouldn’t feel as if I was pressing him, I let him go. I then pulled my chair under my desk, ready to write up yet another report, but thought better of it. Perhaps I’d just go straight to Gary, or, better still, speak to Martin in social services myself.

  Martin was, once again, lightly irritable. Well, at least, that was how his voice sounded when I outlined Nathan’s latest comments and he explained that he had already visited the family – by appointment – and had concluded that there was nothing amiss.

  I told him again that I disagreed; that I felt Nathan was suffering some form of abuse; that I was no psychologist but that it seemed to me he’d developed these different personas as a way to both distance himself from the trauma of what was happening and to enable him to tell someone about it.

  In return, I was told – and in no uncertain terms – that the situation had been dealt with; that they were a family that were doing their level best to cope with a child with behavioural problems – one who he understood was about to be reassessed through the school. Perhaps then we’d all be in a better position to help him.

  I went back to my office and typed up my report. I wasn’t sure quite what else I could do. ‘Mattress,’ I typed. The word lingered.

  I had lots of kids to help support and an invariably full timetable, so I didn’t see or hear anything of Nathan till the following week, when he arrived for our session with a big grin on his face, having got through the intervening time without causing any trouble.

  ‘No fights,’ he said proudly, ‘and no bad language, neither. So, Miss, do I get a reward now?’

  I told him he did – I’d already had the heads-up from Jim – and presented him with a big cardboard box full of art stuff, explaining that his treat would be to make a big castle and that on each week that he was good and caused no one any trouble, we would make characters to live in it – princes and princesses and so on.

  He was soon sprawled on the floor, planning his model, happy enough to lie there and draw while I got on with some paperwork. It went like this sometimes; kids just needed space and time out from peers. It was at these times when they were often most inclined to open up to me.

  Nathan was no exception. After about 20 minutes, he looked up and casually told me that he was doing his castle to be like ‘the place me and Jodie sometimes go to’.

  I’d not heard the name – not in connection with Nathan. ‘Jodie?’ I asked. ‘Is she your friend?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah. We go to a flat to see this man and his dog, and he showed me and her how to do sex.’

  I placed my pen down but didn’t turn to look at him. ‘Oh,’ I said mildly. ‘And this is a real flat, is it, Nathan? Not part of your castle story? I mean, it’s okay if it is. I just wondered.’

  ‘No, I swear, Miss,’ he said. ‘His name is Michael an’ he stinks. But it’s fine because he gives me and Jodie money and sweets if we go there and do stuff.’

  Now I turned to look at him. ‘What stuff do you do?’ I asked evenly, aware that I was not allowed to ask leading questions.

  He glanced at me. ‘I can’t say, because you always tell and I get done for it. It’s okay, though, Miss,’ he added. ‘I was just saying.’

  And that was that. Nathan went back to drawing his castle ramparts and, with my professional code meaning it would be inappropriate to press him, I went back to my paperwork.

  By now, my file on Nathan was beginning to read like a horror story, but once he’d gone – without further mention of flats or men called Michael – I dutifully wrote up the details of our session and got it into Gary’s in-tray before the day was out. Of Gary himself there was no sign, sadly – he was out of school, at a meeting, but at least I could start my weekend secure in the knowledge that I’d done my part, even if nothing happened till Monday.

  But when Monday came, it seemed something further had happened, as explained excitably by Nathan himself. He had obviously been waiting for me to arrive for some time, because he was fit to bursting with the need to share his news.

  ‘Miss, Miss!’ he enthused as soon as he saw me.

  ‘Hi, babes,’ I said, intrigued. ‘What brings you here, then? You look like a cat on a hot tin roof!’

  I passed him my key so he could open the door for me, struggling as I was beneath an armload of books. ‘Miss, guess what happened this morning?’ he said as he unlocked the door. ‘I was just going up the road from my house on my way to school and I saw a police car, and so I stopped and then it stopped at my house, so I stood and watched and the policeman went up to my front door and knocked on it, an’ my dad answered and the policeman asked if he could talk to me – I even heard him, Miss! And my dad said that I wasn’t there, but he could see me, Miss – he could see me! I was stood right there up the road but my dad said I’d gone to school!’

  ‘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 skip
ped 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.