The Silent Witness Read online

  I backtracked to the bathroom and pushed the door properly open, to be confronted by an unexpected, shocking scene. Bella was sitting on the bathroom floor, her legs drawn up to her chest and her arms clenched around them, while, moaning softly, she rocked back and forth. And as she did so, because of where she was sitting, beside the toilet, the back of her head was drumming rhythmically against the sink.

  Straight away I could see she wasn’t doing it deliberately. Head-banging is a particularly distressing form of violent self-soothing so I was relieved to be able to see it wasn’t that. She was simply oblivious, or, at least, not particularly concerned that the basin was in the way of her rocking. She certainly seemed out of it, like she’d gone into some kind of fugue.

  And she clearly needed to be moved before she hurt herself. I bent down in front of her, which was when I noticed the vomit. There was sick all down her front, in her hair and on the carpet, as well as liberally decorating the bottom of the toilet seat and loo, the former presumably only having just been raised in time. How hadn’t I heard all this? But perhaps it had happened while I’d been down in the conservatory, sorting the washing. Which meant she’d been here for quite a while. I cursed myself for not having checked on her since I’d come down at seven.

  ‘Bella, love,’ I said, automatically reaching to feel her forehead for a high temperature. ‘What’s wrong, sweetie? Do you feel ill?’

  I pushed my hands under her armpits as I spoke, in order to help her up, and she raised her eyes to look at me in a way that made me realise she was only just becoming aware of her surroundings.

  ‘Are you okay, lovey?’ I said. ‘You’ve been sick. Did you realise? Come on, let’s get you off the floor and cleaned up.’

  Again, I felt that same gentle compliance as I lifted her; felt the load drop a little as her legs took some of the strain, so I was at least able to release one arm to flip the toilet seat back down, and via a natty swivel place Bella back down on it, where she remained while I ran the tap and filled the washbasin with warm water and shower gel.

  ‘I’m just going to wash your face, love, and wipe the sick up a bit,’ I said, and when she nodded I found myself feeling slightly exasperated at her continuing inability – or was it determination – to communicate properly with any of us. Had she called out earlier – just that, just my name, so I could help her – she wouldn’t be in this state now, would she? Not to mention my bathroom.

  I quashed my resentful thoughts even as I had them. This was presumably why her previous carers had said they wouldn’t have her back. And as they now had a brand new granddaughter, and all the anxiety and excitement that went with it, I could hardly blame them. They simply wouldn’t have the emotional energy left to spare.

  I had no such complications to excuse me. So, having elicited that she no longer felt ill, and that she didn’t have a temperature, I dipped a flannel in the fragrant water, wrung it out and washed her down, making eye contact and willing her to respond to it. Which she sort of did, by way of heavy tears that sped down her newly cleaned cheeks – a picture of intense and perfect misery; ethereal, as if a character from a Victorian novel.

  That job done, her hands dunked and dried, and her pyjama top wiped down, I helped her up and led her back into her bedroom. She needed to get out of her soiled pyjamas, obviously, but at twelve I hardly imagined she’d want me to help her with that, so instead I instructed her to strip them off and get dressed while I went back and sorted out the bathroom.

  ‘If you want to have a shower and go back to bed, that’s fine too, of course …’ But I had barely said the words when she became suddenly galvanised, crossing the room and flinging the duvet back over the bed, before furiously straightening it all out. It was almost as if she was terrified she’d get a slap if she didn’t, and I filed the observation away for future reference.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said, going across to her chest of drawers, where I pulled out a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and her new Christmas hoodie, which she had told me – on being asked – had been from her mum. Not her mum and dad, I noted. Just her mum. ‘There you are, love,’ I said, tossing them onto the bed. ‘I’ll go and sort the bathroom out while you get these on. And pop your pyjamas onto the landing for me to pop in the wash, will you? Then we’ll try to find out what’s made you sick, eh?’

  I left her gingerly undoing the buttons on her wet pyjama top.

  Back in the bathroom, I found myself in the unlikely position of ruing the fact that a day at the Christmas sales was probably a non-starter. Though logic told me Bella’s sickness could have been down to a virus (in which case, the last thing I should do is allow it to be spread) instinct and experience told me otherwise. For one thing, though she had eaten extremely poorly since she’d been with us, she had eaten something the previous evening, and showed no signs of malaise afterwards, in the way viral tummy bugs tended to reveal themselves. We’d all eaten the same, too, and there’d been nothing in dinner that would make it likely that she’d succumbed to a bout of food poisoning.

  No, instinct said she’d either been sick due to extreme distress and upset, or – a grimmer thought – that she had made herself so. Either way, given my responsibility to this distressed, highly anxious child, I needed both to log it and to consult our GP.

  I was just wondering what sort of cover they’d have in the surgery, when I was stunned into stopping scrubbing by something entirely unexpected. A tiny but nevertheless clear voice.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Casey.’

  I swivelled around, on my knees, to find Bella standing in the doorway. She was dressed in the clothes I’d laid out on the bed for her, and in her arms was a bundle comprising not only her pyjamas, but also her duvet cover and sheet.

  I stared long enough that Bella, tears once again streaming down her cheeks, came into the bathroom and stuffed the lot in the laundry basket.

  ‘I wet the bed,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, Casey. I’ll try not to do it again.’ Her cheeks were crimson. She turned around and walked back out.

  I sat back onto my heels for a moment and stared after her. It was really strange hearing her speak to me normally. Speaking clearly, her head up, making eye contact, as opposed to her previous head-down, eyes-down, mumbling norm. And for some silly reason I fixated on the timbre of it – that it wasn’t the high-pitched, tinkling little-girl voice I’d ascribed to her, given her muteness and her cherubic, baby-doll looks.

  I got to my feet. She had communicated properly with me, finally. Not the biggest breakthrough ever – particularly given the icky circumstances – but a breakthrough nonetheless. Wetting the bed had driven her to speak to me properly at long last – which hadn’t been that long, a matter of days, but, when a distressed child closes down, a matter of days feels a long time indeed. I clicked into gear, quickly wrung the cloth out and emptied the basin. The bathroom could wait. She was twelve years old, and she had wet the bed. And in a stranger’s house. She must be feeling mortified.

  I’d already heard her feet heading down the stairs, so I rattled down after her, finding her in the living room, curled up in her usual place on the sofa, and screwing the second bud of her new iPod into her ears, her eyes still damp but her tears having stopped now.

  Oh no, missy, I thought, determined that we were not going to leave it there. I signalled for her to take the earbuds out again.

  I sat down beside her. ‘Bella, love, listen, please don’t worry about the bed, okay? These things can happen, specially when you have been under a great deal of stress, and it’s no bother at all to sort out. But listen, Bella, more important is that you’ve spoken properly to me finally. And now you need to do so again. Sweetheart, do you have any idea why you might have been sick? I really need to call the doctor, you see …’

  ‘No!’ She shook her head emphatically, making me worry once again that she might have made herself sick. ‘Please no. I don’t want to go to the doctor’s. I’m fine. I don’t feel sick any more, honestly.’


  I shook my own head. ‘Bella, you’re not fine. How can you be? How could anyone in your circumstances?’ I placed my palm against her forehead again, and she didn’t pull away. She felt warm, but not hot. Stress and anxiety, I felt sure of it. ‘Sweetheart, I have to register you with the doctor anyway, so he knows you’re staying with us for a bit – that’s the law. And I will just ask him if there are any nasty sickness bugs going around, okay? And I think we’ll shelve the shopping plans today, give you a chance to rest and get your strength back.’

  I stood up. I could see she was becoming anxious to retreat again, holding the earbuds in each hand, ready for reinsertion. ‘And, you know, Bella, if you want to talk … you must be keeping so much locked inside of you … it might help. It probably would help – a problem shared and all that, you know? Anyway, I’m here, okay? Ready to listen.’

  She didn’t respond to that, so I thought I’d stick my neck out. What the hell. ‘You must be missing your mum so much, Bella,’ I continued. ‘Not to mention worrying about your dad …’

  ‘Stepdad,’ she immediately corrected.

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart. Stepdad,’ I said. ‘Either way, you must be at sixes and sevens worrying about everything … so, I’m here, okay? Any time you need to get stuff off your chest.’

  Again she shook her head. Again the action was emphatic. But then she surprised me by putting down both the earbuds and the iPod, uncrossing her legs and standing up as well.

  ‘I should wash the bedding myself,’ she said. ‘Do you have a washing machine? I know how to work them.’

  ‘Love, there’s no need –’ I began.

  ‘I really want to,’ she insisted, tears gathering in her eyes again. ‘I’ve caused you so much trouble.’

  I told her she’d done no such thing, but that it was fine if she wanted to, to go and fetch the washing, that I’d show her what to do. Genuine guilt, I wondered, or just a clever ruse to halt the whole ‘talking’ thing in its tracks?

  As I watched her hurry back upstairs, I suspected both held equal sway. The time for talking was clearly not yet.

  Chapter 6

  I always feel a bit ‘in limbo’ between Christmas and New Year. I’m sure most people do to a certain extent. If you’re in work, it often feels as if you’re working in a ghost town, and if you’re not, they are strange days, those short, end-of-the-year ones – all the Christmas bit – the whole gathering-of-the-clans bit – and then a lull before the next bit when the gathering happens again, which, like most people, I filled with shopping and re-stocking, scurrying round the house, catching up with missed chores and getting ready for the next round of visitors.

  Bella threw herself into it too. While Tyler grabbed any opportunity to slip away and ‘hang’ with Denver, Bella, with nowhere to go and no one she could visit, seemed to have decided to keep herself occupied by doing housework as a competitive sport.

  I wondered again about her home life and its apparently chaotic nature. About the alcoholic father and the impact it would have had on her. About how natural it was (and was so often witnessed) for a child who grew up with unpredictability the only constant to want to impose order and structure wherever they could. I wondered, given what I’d already heard about her parents, if she was something of a Snow White or Cinderella figure at home.

  Not that her sudden interest in dusting meant a great deal more progress. Yes, she spoke a little more now, but only superficially about practical matters: ‘Shall I put these in the airing cupboard?’ ‘Shall I do the drying up?’ But never entering into territory that would involve talking about her. If I asked her anything personal she would immediately clam up. So I soon learned the best thing was not to try.

  It was all a bit frustrating, this increasing attachment to the ‘Christmas shutdown’. I felt reasonably happy that if there was any change in Bella’s stepdad’s condition – good or bad – I’d have been told. But I was anxious to get Bella help too. But though I’d been promised they’d seek a counsellor for Bella as a matter of urgency, I heard nothing till after New Year.

  A quiet New Year, as it turned out, because though Bella hadn’t succumbed to any further sickness Mike went down with whatever it was that had been rife at the warehouse – not badly, just a twenty-four-hour bout of gastric gymnastics – but enough to scupper our planned family party.

  I was philosophical. It was almost as if it was meant to be. And though I dropped Tyler round to Riley’s, where they were holding it instead now, I was actually perfectly happy in front of the telly, rather than doing my usual half hour with the Radio Times and the record button. I’d never admit it, but it was a novelty, and it actually made a pleasant change.

  But when further news finally came, on 2 January, it was from John Fulshaw rather than Sophie.

  It was dark, cold and miserable, as such days so often are, particularly so in this case, since I’d risen from my bed before seven, in order to do some online research on wedding flowers while Mike showered and got ready for work. Where my daughter was so chilled about everything that she was almost horizontal, I was fast approaching that mental place where ‘There’s still so much to do!’ was my first and last thought every day. It comprised a good deal of the thoughts in between too.

  The email from John had arrived in my inbox only minutes earlier and I half-decided to phone him and say, ‘You too?’ But then I decided if he was working that early the last thing he needed was me twittering on at him, so I settled down with my coffee and simply read it.

  And it made for very interesting reading.

  John obviously didn’t have access to sensitive information regarding the case against Bella’s mother, but he had been given access to the information about the family that the police had shared with social services.

  Which was good news, and where multi-agency working really came into its own. Prior to the joys of the internet age, foster carers like Mike and me, not to mention a child’s new school, and even their new doctor, in some cases, were kept largely out of the loop about their background. And even if this was mostly a sin of omission (though not in all cases; people could be very protective of the fruit of their own labours) it was almost always to the detriment of the child concerned.

  Where, famously, an inability to cross-check and share information led to the infamous Yorkshire Ripper being arrested and let go an embarrassing number of times in the 1970s, there were countless far less high-profile cases, involving children in the care system, where information left unshared let them badly down.

  So thank heavens for common sense and IT progress. It obviously made much more sense for everyone working towards the same end game to pool information and share what they knew – that way, all parties could work as a single team.

  In this case, the report John had sent through about the family focused on one neighbour in particular. A widow in her late fifties, she was called Ellen Murphy, and had told police that she feared for Bella on many occasions, due to the volatile nature of her parents. They would regularly get into drunken brawls on a weekend, she’d said, and had, in fact, called and reported them more than once to the police, when she’d heard Bella screaming, thinking she might be under attack. She said that on every occasion (how many had there been, I wondered?) she had later been assured that Bella herself hadn’t been in any danger – she’d merely been yelling at her parents to stop.

  This had not, she said, lessened her fears. However much she’d been assured Bella wasn’t in danger, she had personally witnessed the child lying out in the back garden, in the dark, often, and the cold, even the rain, drumming her feet on the ground, and covering her ears with her hands. ‘I spent most weekends,’ she’d added, ‘with my finger poised over the dial button when it kicks off, just in case.’

  Well, who wouldn’t?

  I was just thinking about the fine line between being a nosey neighbour and potentially protecting a vulnerable child (one I increasingly championed crossing), when the vulnerable child in questio
n tapped me on the shoulder.

  Thankfully, given the angle, I doubted she’d have seen anything I’d rather she didn’t, but I quickly put the screen to sleep anyway.

  ‘You’re up early,’ I said, then, following her gaze to the kitchen clock, corrected myself. Somehow, it was approaching 9 a.m. – something that seemed impossible till I remembered that at some point in my reading Mike had bent down, said ‘Bye, love,’ and kissed me on the cheek. I’d probably answered as well.

  ‘Could I have a turn on the computer when you’re finished?’ she asked shyly, and I realised she held a pencil case and exercise book in her hand. ‘It’s just that if I’m not going back to school yet, I thought I could log into my homework page and do a bit of something to stop me being bored.’

  Bella ‘not going back to school yet’ had been agreed before she’d even been delivered to us. With the likelihood of interviews, assessments, counselling sessions and the possibility of her even being moved out of county, it had been agreed that they should at least wait till the score was more properly known – a delicate way of describing the uncertainty about whether her mum would be charged with attempted murder or – please, no – just plain old murder.

  And as nothing had happened to change that particular non-status quo (not to mention Bella having expressed no interest in going anyway) it seemed she’d be off for as long as it took.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ I said, popping the screen back to life briefly before quickly closing all the tabs I’d opened. And it was; the poor girl had only been in secondary school for a term when her world had collapsed, and a very short, no doubt fraught, term as well. I couldn’t imagine how she must feel about that one constant in her life having been dramatically ripped away from her.

  I hadn’t made a start on Riley’s flowers yet, but this was much more important. With Tyler on a last-night-of-freedom sleep-over at Denver’s, I figured I could easily do that later. ‘Here you go,’ I said, pushing my chair back and inviting her to sit down. ‘You get started while I go and make you some breakfast. Oh, and we have just the one rule about anyone who comes to us re the laptop, and it’s that it has to be done here, I’m afraid. It’s just one of those rules that we all have to follow. That okay?’