Torn: A terrified girl. A shocking secret. A terrible choice.. Rosie Lewis
enough I suppose.’
There was a short pause. ‘Oh, has she not eaten?’ Maisie asked, sounding concerned.
‘No, I told you. She’s not moved from her desk since the bell went at three-fifteen.’
Another silence and then Maisie said: ‘Oh, that’s not good.’ She then went on to suggest, in all seriousness, that I aid and abet the sit-in by offering Taylor some refreshments in case she became dehydrated. Lost for words, I merely snorted.
‘The local authority will come under fire if one of their carers withholds food and drink from a child,’ Maisie droned, her tone frosting over again.
I was silent, overwhelmed by a sudden anger. In the background I could hear a door slamming and people talking. It sounded as if Maisie was walking down a corridor, probably leaving the office for the day. You come and sit here and wait for her to move then, I wanted to bite back. Her lack of support was galling.
‘Offer plenty of positive praise when she does show willing to come home,’ she continued over a loud clunk, presumably the closing of a car door and a rumble as she turned the ignition of her car. I pictured an embroidered bag full of empty Red Bull cans on the front passenger seat and Maisie behind the wheel, eager to end the call so that she could head off to the comfort of home.
After shoving the handset back into my pocket I stared out of the window, trying to gather some composure. It wasn’t easy, with Maisie’s disapproving tone reverberating in my ears and Taylor’s eyes fixed on my back.
‘Who was that?’ the ten-year-old demanded a few moments later.
I half-turned and opened my mouth to speak but then stilled, thinking.
‘Well, who was it?’
Slowly, I turned around. The words that came out of my mouth floated from the past, a well-worn phrase used by my mother when I was a child and one I had never repeated, until now. ‘Never you mind.’
She glowered. ‘It was Maisie, weren’t it?’
‘It may have been,’ I said vaguely, in a deliberate show of nonchalance. I strolled back to the window, linked my hands behind my back and pretended to study the newly swept playground.
‘What did she say?’
‘I’d rather not go into it, Taylor,’ I said calmly, keeping my back towards her.
Sensing an ensuing battle, Reece sat up sharply, his head darting back and forth between us as if watching a tennis match. Twitching, his eyes crumpled and he jabbed his fists into them, trying to rub it away.
‘You gotta tell me,’ she said, bestowing me with a violent stare. ‘I wanna know how my mum is. And Bailey. And Jimmy.’
The ‘when and then’ technique suddenly floated into my mind, something else I had learnt in training. I turned around to face her and levelled my gaze. ‘When you’re ready to come home, then I’ll tell you all about it.’
‘It ain’t my home,’ she retorted, but scraped her chair back noisily and got to her feet. I stiffened, hardly daring to hope that it had worked. Miss Cooper’s jaw tensed, her hands clenched into fists.
‘Yes!’ Jamie cheered as Taylor reached for her rucksack and sloped off towards the door. I closed my eyes, savouring the blissful moment of relief. Reece charged after Taylor and Jamie, pale with tiredness, rested his head on my upper arm. Miss Cooper and I exchanged a significant glance as we followed the siblings along the empty corridor, our footsteps echoing off the walls. We were both uncomfortably aware, I think, that in two weeks’ time, after the Easter holidays, we were likely to go through the whole experience all over again.
As soon as Taylor secured her seatbelt I thanked her for co-operating (delivering the positive praise without a trace of the resentment swirling around my chest) and then relayed the information Maisie had given me about contact. Reece cheered on hearing the news but Taylor seemed to withdraw into herself, staring moodily out of the window. Knowing how desperate she was to see her mum, her muted reaction struck me as strange.
‘Rosi-e-e,’ Reece said. My heart sank. The number-plate game might just have been enough to tip me over the edge. ‘If someone offered you five hundred thousand million pounds to have a stinky name like Poo Poo would you do it?’
Jamie giggled, his breath catching as his chest rumbled in a loud wheeze. I smiled, brightening. This struck me as an easier game and one unlikely to result in unnecessary stress. ‘Erm, yes probably.’
‘Urgh, Mom!’ Jamie shrieked as if I’d actually agreed to change my name by deed poll. Since Karron’s visit, he had taken to calling me Mom instead of Mum, the rascal, squeezing in Americanisms wherever he could. He and Reece were staring at each other, mouths stretched open in shocked hilarity.
‘Would you do it for two hundred million pounds?’
‘Yep,’ I said definitely, enjoying their disgust.
‘One hundred million?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘How about half a million?’
‘Of course I would.’
‘A quarter of a million?’
I hesitated for a moment, to give the impression I was giving the matter my most serious consideration. ‘Erm, I don’t think so, no.’
In the rear-view mirror I could see the boys looking at each other. Jamie was smiling but Reece’s forehead had crumpled. Oh no, I thought, here we go. ‘So you wouldn’t do it for anything less than half a million?’
‘No I wouldn’t,’ I said with a nod of my head, guessing that a definite answer was what he would be most comfortable with.
He was quiet for a second or two and I began to relax, but then he made an anxious noise in his throat. ‘So you’re saying if someone offered you one pound less you wouldn’t do it?’
I paused. ‘Nope, definitely not.’
He slapped his forehead and ran his fingers over and over his hair. ‘You’re saying you wouldn’t do it, not even for just one pound different?’
‘Nope.’
‘That’s crazy!’ He and Jamie carolled, shaking their heads. Since Karron’s visit, it had been another one of Jamie’s catchphrases, one that Reece had adopted as his own. Jamie laughed again but Reece bumped his head in anguish, once, twice, three times against the glass.
About half a mile from Emily’s school, Taylor began kicking the back of my seat – a gentle nudge rather than an outright assault and so I quickly decided to ignore it – but, like the soft thrum of a dripping tap, it was the sort of low-level irritation that held the potential of driving a person to distraction. I knew that simply asking her to stop wouldn’t work and was likely to escalate the situation, so, with a ferocious grip on the steering wheel, I tried to drown out Reece’s continued horror at my barmy decision-making process with a steady stream of light banter. Our progress through the rush-hour traffic was painfully slow but I was determined not to let my irritation show.
The school receptionist was waiting with Emily in the school car park as I pulled in through the gates at 6.15 p.m., her bright smile relieving some of the guilt I felt at keeping her after hours. After thanking her and apologising profusely, I climbed back into the car, the steady pulse of a foot in my back starting up the minute my seat belt was secured. Breathe, Rosie, breathe, I coached, focussing my attention on the glistening fields of rapeseed we passed as we drove towards home, and the tree-lined hills beyond.
Progress was still slow and we didn’t pull into our quiet road until nearly quarter to seven. By then everyone was famished and, fearing that tempers were in danger of fraying, I decided not