Free Will You Love Me? by Cathy Glass

later.’
    Bonnie nodded and, carrying Lucy, went with Doris to the front door and saw her out. As Doris left the building she was already calling her office. Although she wouldn’t be taking Lucy into care today, the mother would need to start cooperating and making some changes, otherwise she’d have no alternative but to apply to the court for a care order. While this wasn’t the worst case of neglect Doris had seen – far from it – she agreed with the health visitor that the warning signs were there, and without intervention she had little doubt Lucy’s situation would deteriorate further.
    Three hours later, having spoken with her manager, Doris phoned Bonnie to arrange a meeting. An automated voice message told her the number was unobtainable, so Doris concluded that Bonnie had either accidentally or deliberately given her the wrong number. As Bonnie and Lucy’s case wasn’t the most urgent she was responsible for, and her caseload was so heavy she had to prioritize, Doris set in motion the case conference and then put Bonnie’s file to one side to concentrate on another, more pressing case. She decided to call in on Bonnie on her way home from work, check the phone number and advise her of the date of the meeting. It would also give her another chance to see how they were doing.
    When Doris returned to Bonnie’s flat at 5.45 p.m. and rang the bell there was no reply. She was about to call through the letter box when the door to the flat next door opened and the elderly lady Doris had seen that morning appeared.
    ‘She’s gone,’ the woman said bluntly, as if it was Doris’s fault. ‘Packed her bags and left with the baby about an hour after you left this morning.’
    ‘I don’t suppose you know where they’ve gone?’ Doris asked, her heart sinking.
    ‘No. Like I said, she never spoke to me.’ And, returning inside, she closed her front door.

Chapter Seven
    No Chance to Say Goodbye
    It may seem incredible in this age, when there is so much data stored on people, that someone could simply disappear. But on that fine June day when the sun was shining and the air was alive with birdsong, and Lucy was nearly eleven months old, that is what Bonnie did. Fearing Lucy would be taken away from her, she quickly packed her bags and vanished. Had Lucy been the subject of a court order the police would have been alerted, and a missing person bulletin put out. But there was no court order, only a concern of neglect, the level of which hadn’t merited the measure of applying to the court for an emergency protection order. It’s true that the social services could have applied for a court order after Bonnie had gone, but they didn’t, presumably for the same reason one hadn’t been applied for before: that though Lucy had been neglected she wasn’t, as yet, at risk of significant harm – the threshold that needed to be reached before the social services applied for a care order. Had they done so, the police would have been alerted, resulting in a better chance of finding Bonnie and Lucy, and Lucy would have been taken into care.
    With no court order and no verifiable details of Bonnie that might have helped trace her, it is likely their case stayed open at the social services for a few months – while Doris checked with Maggie and local agencies to see if anyone had heard from Bonnie – before being filed away until such time as Bonnie and Lucy reappeared. It’s on record that Maggie told Doris she’d telephoned her sister a couple of times during this period to see if she’d heard from Bonnie, but she hadn’t, and Maggie said her sister was so immersed in her own problems that she had little interest in what her daughter and granddaughter were doing or even in whether they were safe.
    With no evidence to go on, it’s impossible to know of the life Bonnie and Lucy led during the next fourteen months while they were ‘missing’, but one can guess. Living ‘underground’, away from the attention of