Free No Child of Mine by Susan Lewis

snappish reply.
    ‘I’m calling from social services ...’
    ‘Fuck off,’ and the line went dead.
    ‘Mm, that seems to have gone well,’ Saffy commented drily.
    Alex raised her eyebrows. ‘I have a way with me,’ she responded with a bit of a swagger. ‘And did I just hear you say you’d come with me when I go? That is so cool, I knew I could count on you.’
    ‘Believe me, I’d be there if I didn’t have this telly thing hanging over me,’ Saffy lied, ‘but you know how it is ...’ Being of Somali origin, Saffy was currently helping an undercover TV researcher to expose the rumoured practice of genital mutilation in the local Somali community. Since Alex couldn’t imagine anything more abhorrent being visited on a child – well, she could, because she’d seen it all too often, but it was right up there along with the worst – she was more than ready to accept that Saffy’s priorities were in the right place.
    Ten minutes later she was in her car, driving out of the dreary old business park, when she spotted a young family heading into one of the out-of-town furniture stores. Her heart immediately lifted. A small girl with a long blonde ponytail was riding her daddy’s shoulders, while the mother was pulling funny faces at a baby in a buggy. It was a warming and welcome reminder of the millions of happy homes there were in the world, places were children were safe and loved and couldn’t, thank God, even begin to imagine the kind of horrors those in Alex’s care so often had to face.
    On reaching the seafront she cast a quick glance out to the horizon and guessed she might just manage to pick up Daniel before the storm hit. There again, it might do its worst, and wait till she was delivering him to his front door to start chucking about a few thunderbolts: nature’s symphonic accompaniment to the highlight of her day.
    Turning inland past the public swimming pool to join the road that snaked up over the southerly headland to the leafier suburbs of town, she began compiling a list in her mind of all the case notes and assessments she needed to write up when she returned to the office. Annie Ashe, once a drunken, obese, horribly depressed single mother of two, now a totally reformed character, stood a very good chance of getting her kids back. Family Support Services had worked wonders with her; her weight had now dropped from a massive twenty-four stone down to fifteen – and she was still dieting, she’d assured Alex yesterday with a beaming smile that was apparently receiving some dental attention. And she hadn’t touched a drop of the hard stuff since the awful day Alex had been forced to move her children into care. Annie hadn’t fought the decision, she’d been too crushed and disgusted with herself even to try. She’d known she wasn’t coping, and the tears she’d shed when she’d admitted that she had no idea when she’d last cooked a decent meal for Becks, her son, and Vicci, her little girl, never mind got them to take a bath, had made Alex more determined than ever to turn things around for her.
    Now, she was very close to recommending that the children could return to their mother on a full-time basis, rather than just for weekend visits, and the fact that Annie had recently found the confidence to apply for a job as a part-time cleaner was going to work massively in her favour.
    Then there was Tyrone Miller, whose so-called uncle (in other words mother’s new boyfriend) was a slimeball of the first order. Alex was sure the boy was being kept locked in his room when he wasn’t at school, but neither Tyrone nor his mother would admit to it, and so far Alex had been unable to prove it.
    Always her biggest problem, being able to prove the offences she felt sure were being committed.
    As she began running through Jessie Moore’s case – a twelve-year-old bundle of fury and loathing whose mother had died a couple of years ago and whose guardian aunt kept throwing her out on the