Free Breaking the Silence by Casey Watson Page A

turns up a couple of minutes later. And can’t get in, of course. So I told him he could stop here for a bit. But I’m not happy about it. Not happy at all. If Karen finds out it was me called social services, she’ll give me a right gob full …’
    ‘So Jenson doesn’t know anything about his mum coming back yet – what’s been happening or what’s going to happen? Did you tell him?’
    ‘Good lord, no!’ the woman told me. ‘I’ll leave all that to you lot, since you’re here now.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But what about the social worker? Are you allowed to just take him, then? That’s if he’ll go with you anyway. No offence, but I doubt he will. Not without a fight.’
    ‘The social worker is on her way,’ I reassured her. ‘And don’t worry – we can leave her to deal with that side of things. I’m sure that between us we’ll be able to get him to see reason, bless him. At least I hope so. The last thing she’ll want is to have to drag him off against his will.’
    The neighbour’s expression changed a little. ‘Poor lad,’ she mused. ‘He’s a handful, I know. But it isn’t right, is it?’
    I shook my head, aware that I must be a bit circumspect. ‘It’s not good, for sure.’
    ‘But you know,’ she said, beckoning again that I should follow her into a different room, ‘it’s not his fault. It really isn’t. Sometimes I see them together and I could weep for him, I really could. It’s so obvious to everyone how different she treats them bairns. Blatant, it is. But it’s always been that way – they probably told you all about it – since all that business with the little one …’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Well, I don’t care what the circumstances were, it’s not right, it isn’t –
anyone
can see that. Anyway, cup of tea, love? Might as well.’
    My antennae twitching, I followed the woman into her small and pristine kitchen, and was just about to ask what she meant by ‘all that business with the little one’ when the poor lad himself exploded indoors through the back door, closely followed by a ‘Heinz 57 varieties’ kind of wiry-haired dog.
    The dog leapt upon me with great enthusiasm – nothing remotely Alsatian-ish about it – but Jenson, understandably, stopped dead in his tracks. As well he might. I was obviously the last person he expected to see. But he gathered himself up defiantly. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he told me, scowling. ‘I’m waiting for me mum and then I’m goin’ home and you can’t stop me.’ He looked at his neighbour, then, presumably for corroboration.
    But she was rescued from having to answer by a ring on her doorbell. Which she hurried off to answer.
    ‘I’m not,’ Jenson began. ‘I’m not coming. You can’t make me.’ Then I watched his face fall further. ‘Oh, God,’ he said, in his world-weary voice, seeing Marie approaching down the hall. ‘God! What is she doin’ here?’
    But Marie was impressive. While the neighbour – Mrs Clark – and I swapped phone numbers, in case it happened again, she calmly dealt with the situation like a pro. Within minutes Jenson had turned from a furious whirling dervish to, if not a happy, at least a calm and reasonably compliant bunny, prepared to accept, albeit grudgingly, the way things had to be.
    ‘But when
can
I see her?’ he asked mournfully, and my heart really went out to him. He’d gone to all that trouble (and what, come to think of it, had happened to his sister?) yet he’d missed his mum by minutes. And now he was being told he had to go straight back home with me. I think I would have kicked off, under the circumstances.
    ‘Well,’ Marie said, ‘I will have to double-check this, obviously, but if you go with Casey now,’ she glanced at me, ‘then I think I’m pretty safe in promising that you will be able to see Mum after school tomorrow. Assuming you
go
to school, that is. And assuming you
stay
in school, as well. No running off, or Mum will