No Place for Nathan (3 page)

I made a decision, then. To make a detour with him, to a little café just round the corner, where he might open up more or, if he didn’t feel he could, at least return home feeling a bit calmer.

And, as it turned out to be the latter, I decided that once I’d dropped him at his house, I would hotfoot it back to school and have a chat with Gary Clark, our child protection officer, who was invariably on the premises beyond five.

‘Here we are, then,’ I said brightly, as we stopped at Nathan’s front gate – a sad affair, listing forlornly on one hinge. I’d made no more mention of his bruises and neither had he, and I didn’t want to bring them up again now. ‘I’ll see you on Monday,’ I said, as he headed down the short path, upon which he turned back.

‘It’s okay, Miss,’ he said. ‘You can go now. I’ll go inside in a minute.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll wait till you get in.’

Nathan looked slightly agitated on hearing this. He shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘There’s no point you waiting,’ he admitted finally, ‘cos no one’s in yet.’

‘So what will you do?’ I asked.

‘Wait on the wall,’ he said, nodding towards it, ‘Or sometimes I go to the library to play on the computers.’

‘Do you do that every day?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Mostly. So I just go to the amusement arcade, or the library, like I said. Till it’s time to go home for my tea.’

Hmm, I thought. Maybe Gary could wait. ‘Well, you know what?’ I said, making the sort of split-second decision that I knew could work for or against me. ‘I’ll wait on the wall with you, shall I? Then you won’t be on your own.’

And not for too long, I hoped, now that we’d already made the detour to the café. So perhaps I’d finally get a glimpse of the stepfather who was so keen to play-fight with his stepson. And I was right. No more than 20 or 30 minutes had passed before a man who Nathan identified as his stepdad began walking up the street.

He was a small, skinny man, in his late thirties, I’d have guessed, wearing what looked like dirty jeans beneath an even dirtier overcoat. He didn’t look particularly menacing, but then I wasn’t 11, was I? And there was also something about his expression that unsettled me. As he approached I stood and smiled, the better to greet him, but no sooner had I extended my hand and begun to introduce myself than he brushed past me, quite roughly, scowling and grunting as he did so. ‘I know who you are,’ he said, even though he couldn’t have, surely? ‘And the kid knows his way home,’ he added rudely.

To say I was taken aback was an understatement. He’d swatted me away as if I was an irritating fly. He’d also grabbed Nathan’s wrist and was now frogmarching him up the path to the front door.

‘Bye, Nathan,’ I called out. ‘I’ll see you on Monday, okay?’ Upon which he turned and gave me a wave and an apologetic little smile, looking every inch a lamb going to the slaughter. I just hoped I hadn’t made everything worse.

As it was probably too late now to return to school and find Gary, I headed home myself, mulling over what best to do. There was probably no point in making a direct referral to the emergency duty team at social services. My previous experience, both in school and before that as a youth worker, had taught me that unless it was what they deemed a ‘real emergency’ then nobody would do anything until after the weekend anyway.

As it was I spent the next day and Sunday worrying about Nathan. I walked into town a couple of times hoping that I might see him hanging around the arcades or something, but this proved to be pointless. And when my husband Mike wanted to know what I hoped to achieve in doing so, I didn’t really have an answer for him anyway. In the end I decided that there was no more I could do until Monday, apart from writing up the usual incident report.

The bruises and scratches kept playing on my mind, though – particularly the thought that my presence at Nathan’s gate might have caused more to have been added over the weekend. So Monday morning saw me in school even earlier than usual, and straight up to the child protection office. Happily, Gary was there, so I could hand my report over, which he read then and there, very intently.

I liked Gary, and also had great respect for him. He’d been at the school for a good few years now and had helped me out with extra information on quite a few occasions. He was also big on protocol. He knew just what to do when there was a possibility that a child might be at risk. And I knew that he was passionate about the children in his care. It was no surprise, therefore, when he picked up his telephone and immediately rang social services. He explained the situation and said that he would fax them a copy of the particulars; he also said that he would like the matter to be followed up.

‘Thanks so much,’ I said, relieved that action had now been taken. ‘I can’t tell you how much of a weight that is off my mind.’

‘No problem, Casey,’ he said. ‘Only too happy to –’

He was about to say ‘help’, but the word was drowned out by a sharp rat-a-tat on his office door. Since I was closest I went to answer it, only to find myself face to face with the headmaster.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Casey. That’s handy. Can I have a quick word?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Shall I come to your office? I was just leaving Gary’s …’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘No need. I want to speak to you both anyway. Nathan Greaves,’ he continued. ‘Just had his father on the phone. Odd phone call. Says he’s unhappy with you having out of school contact with Nathan – specifically, walking him home on Friday afternoon. Says it’s upset him, and that you ask too many questions about his family situation, which apparently confuses him’ – he put the word ‘confused’ into finger quote marks – ‘and supposedly makes him misbehave at home.’

My eyes had been widening as he’d spoken, but not that much. A rearguard action by the sound of things, and Gary clearly thought so too.

‘Hmm, you’ll probably want to read this, sir,’ he said immediately, passing the headmaster the report I’d already given to him.

The head took the report and began to scan it. ‘In a nutshell,’ Gary continued, ‘it highlights some child protection issues that came to light
on
Friday afternoon. I suspect Nathan’s father managed to establish some of the things he’d said to Casey and he’s now concerned about how much more we might know.’

The head read to the bottom then handed Gary the file back. ‘I suspect you’re right,’ he agreed, ‘so I’ll leave it with you. Though, as a precaution, I think you’d better not walk Nathan home again, Casey – not until this is investigated, at any rate. Safer not to go against the father’s wishes at this point, I think.’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘I’d already come to that conclusion myself anyway. The last thing I want is to make life more difficult for the poor boy. On which note, I’d better get down to my classroom before he and the rest of them arrive, hadn’t I?’

The headmaster shook his head. ‘Nathan’s not coming in today, apparently. He’s ill. Or so his father tells me, anyway.’

‘Really?’ I said, my anxiety now increasing a notch or two.

‘Don’t worry, Casey,’ the head reassured me. ‘If what your report suggests is true, I suspect the last thing the father’s going to do is play into our hands.’

‘I agree,’ said Gary. ‘If he has been hurting him I’d say keeping him off school will be more about having those bruises heal before he lets us near him, wouldn’t you?’

I saw his point but I was still worried that I’d precipitated something, even though, in walking Nathan home, I’d given him the opportunity to voice something that he might not have found the courage to in school. And when the end of the day came around, I was even more dismayed to take a call from the social worker who’d apparently seen my report.

His name was Martin and he’d had dealings with the family for some time, and was keen, it seemed, to reassure me that all was well.

‘I need to explain a couple of things,’ he said, having introduced both himself and his credentials. ‘And they are that, first of all, I don’t believe that Nathan has any psychological problems really. In fact, we believe that he is attention seeking, as does his stepfather.’

I took this on board, resisting the urge to ask him if he’d had sight of the overdue psychologist’s report. My guess was not, since I hadn’t seen it yet myself and it had been the primary school rather than social services that had ordered it.

‘Secondly,’ he went on, ‘we don’t believe Nathan’s telling the truth about his dad hurting him. He’s a clumsy child – I’ve witnessed this myself when I’ve visited the family. You might well have noticed that yourself.’

I told him I hadn’t, but, in fairness, I’d not known Nathan long. It wasn’t my place to presume I knew more than he did, after all. ‘So what are your thoughts?’ I asked, braced for the sort of response that what he’d told me already seemed to be hinting at.

‘We think the family have poor social skills, basically,’ he said, ‘and that because neither parent works, they do live very poorly. They’re not the brightest of people, clearly, but we feel they’re essentially coping – doing their best in unfortunate circumstances. So, as I’m sure you’d agree, we really don’t want to go wellying in, guns blazing, though if you feel strongly that we need to have some continued input in this situation, then we’ll obviously do so,’ he finished.

Which left me at something of a loss. Of course no one wanted social services ‘wellying in’, as he put it, making pariahs of poor, innocent parents. But something stuck in my craw. If they weren’t earning then why weren’t they ever at home? And another thing – weren’t there grounds for accepting Nathan’s words as truth? It was hardly as if he’d been eager to broadcast it to the world, was it? He hadn’t told me it at all – that had been Jenny.

But perhaps that would be lost on the man I was currently speaking to. He clearly had his own views on the subject. I took a deep breath.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I
would
like social services to take some action, because though I obviously respect your views, I don’t share them. I have a strong gut instinct that something isn’t right here. I’ll obviously continue to work with Nathan and support him while in school, but yes, I’d be grateful,’ I said again, ‘if you could as well.’

He promised he would, but his tone seemed to suggest differently, and when I put down the phone I realised my hands were shaking.

By the time I reached the staff room, in search of caffeine and solace, my dismay had worked itself up into anger. Fortunately, Julia Styles, the special needs co-ordinator, was one of my soulmates at work and as she was already in there I cornered her and offloaded all my angst.

When I finished she was smiling sympathetically. ‘You remind me of a little pit bull,’ she observed. ‘You get your teeth into something and you won’t let go, come hell or high water.’ Her expression changed then. ‘But, you know, Casey, all you can really do is
your
job. Be there for Nathan, report any single thing that makes you uneasy and trust that, ultimately, social services will also do theirs.’

‘But what if they don’t?’ I asked. ‘What if they’re not seeing what I see?’

Julia shrugged. ‘Then the same still applies, Casey. Report, be observant and keep passing it on. At least then, whatever happens, no one’s going to be able to accuse you of not doing your job.’

Which was a fair point and, no, I couldn’t do social services’ job for them – she was right. All I could really do was trust in the system and hope that trust wasn’t misplaced.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I feel better already. Well, sort of. I’m sure if I head home and take my frustrations out on Mike, I’ll feel 100 per cent better by the morning.’

She laughed. ‘Exactly. What else are husbands for?’

In some ways, the business with Nathan couldn’t have come at a better time. Or a worse one, depending on your viewpoint. Either way, by the time he returned to school on the Wednesday, I was busy setting up shop in another part of the school and, apart from an early visit to pick up all my files, didn’t go down to the Unit again all day.

With the need for behaviour-management support strategies having grown since I’d joined the school (which, I suspected, along with others, was mostly due to my post having been created), it had recently been decided that, now I’d gained my level three counselling qualification, Jim should be mostly classroom based and I should be promoted to ‘office-occupying’ status. The plan was that, with an office and some private space, I could spend time supporting the kids that most needed intense one-on-one therapy, without the distraction of other kids and their own problems. It also meant that all the kids who had been referred to the Unit could have the opportunity to spend time with me in private.

Though I’d still be spending time doing group work within the behaviour unit itself, I would now be based in my new office, so Wednesday was mostly given over to customising it, Casey style – i.e. making it look as unlike an office as possible. I spent the whole day setting up new files and sorting out the old ones, as well as having a proper sort-out of the variety of games, art materials and work sheets I’d amassed over the past year, and had trolleyed over.

I was also keen to extend my personalisation by getting some artwork up on the walls, but thought I’d wait and get the children themselves to design and make some for me. That way they would soon feel some ownership of the room and it would help them to settle into the new environment better.

I spent practically all of the next day on it too – walking around the school, tracking down all of my past and current students, and letting them know where my new room was. Some of these were regulars, and some were kids I’d not seen in a while, but one thing I’d learned very quickly since I’d joined the school was that, for some kids, knowing where I could be found was key; it was like a security blanket for them to know where they could find me.

This wasn’t just an assumption on my part, either. Some of the kids I’d spent time with even kept copies of my timetable in their school bags so that they knew my exact whereabouts at any time. And I respected this. So, if I had to make unexpected location changes, I would always leave a note pinned to my door detailing where I
could
be found.