Free Dead To Me by Cath Staincliffe

CSM came in to discuss the implications of Sean Broughton moving the duvet.
    ‘Snafu?’ Gill asked.
    ‘You could say that.’

10
     
    JAMES RALEIGH, LISA’S personal advisor, was tall, maybe as tall as Mitch, six foot two or three with blond hair, blue eyes. Made Rachel think of a tennis player. He was her sort of age, she guessed, late twenties, early thirties. He worked out of the neighbourhood office in Newton Heath, an old stone building, modernized offices inside.
    ‘It’s a terrible thing,’ he said, after offering her coffee, which she refused; if this place was anything like the nick, the coffee would be revolting. ‘Can’t believe it. I understand you want some background?’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Rachel. ‘As much as you’ve got.’
    ‘Well, I’ve only been seeing Lisa since she left Ryelands in April. When she turned seventeen. Usually the social worker stays on the case for a while so there’s some continuity, but Lisa’s social worker was retiring at the time. A lot of the background I’ve picked up from the assessment reports.’ He flipped open the file on his desk. Rachel wondered if Alison knew him, both being in social work, though Alison was doing geriatrics at the moment, dealing with old people at Oldham General.
    ‘Lisa first came into care in August 1993, as a four-month-old. Mum on her own, not managing. Dad left during the pregnancy. Older sibling, two-year-old boy, went into the care of an aunt.’
    ‘She just couldn’t hack it?’ Rachel asked. Thinking of her own mother, fleetingly.
    ‘History of depression and alcohol dependency, no record of a problem with the first child, but two was obviously more than she could manage. Lisa remained in care, with periods in foster care, until she was six. Contact maintained with the mother and brother. Her brother Nathan returned home in 1996, when Lisa would have been three.’
    ‘Must have been hard for her to understand, Nathan’s at home and she’s not.’
    ‘Yes, it would,’ he said. ‘It’s always difficult. In an ideal world the children are kept together, whether that’s in foster care or the family home, but in reality …’ He pulled a face. ‘Age six to eleven, she was back in the family home. Then things deteriorated.’ It all matched what Denise Finn had told them. He turned over the pages in the file. ‘Pattern of risk-taking behaviour, absconding, solvent abuse, picked up for disorderly conduct, vandalism.’ He looked up. ‘Got into bad company, went off the rails. That’s when the decision was made to put Lisa in Ryelands. The aim was to move her back home once Mrs Finn was deemed capable.’
    ‘Which never happened?’
    ‘No, Lisa stayed at Ryelands until April. You’ve heard about Nathan’s death?’ he said.
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Lisa took it very hard. Even though she and Nathan had been apart a lot, he was a significant person, only sibling. Her big brother.’
    Dom, Rachel thought, my little brother. It was two years now, more, since she’d seen him. He’d written at first. She’d burnt the letters.
    ‘Was Nathan living at home, then?’
    ‘Yes. You can imagine, Lisa’s gearing up to leave Ryelands, starting out on her own, and Nathan dies. Very difficult for her.’
    ‘Lisa was using drugs?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said.
    ‘Heroin?’
    ‘Amongst others,’ he said.
    ‘Her mother thought she had been introduced to drugs while she was in care.’
    ‘It happens,’ he said. ‘We’re dealing with very vulnerable kids. Drugs can be a way of fitting in, buckling under peer pressure, or an escape, a way of checking out for a bit. Most teenagers experiment, ours even more so.’ His phone rang.
    ‘Do you need …’ Rachel said.
    ‘Voicemail’s on.’
    ‘What can you tell me about Sean?’
    ‘He wasn’t helping, that’s for sure.’ James Raleigh closed the file and sat back in his chair. ‘They’d met before she began living independently. He was known as a small-time drug user. We got her