dust that sits there I wrote the word ‘filthy’ with the tip of my finger. And do you know what I saw when I went there earlier today?’
Again she shook her head, knowing that despite asking her questions, he didn’t really want her to give him the answers, it was all part of the game.
‘This ball of paper was still there and so was my word, “filthy”. Not only do you expect this family to live in total squalor but you are also a liar. That is very bad indeed.’
Kathryn for some reason could see the humour in the fact that Mark’s definition of total squalor was that there was a film of dust on top of the medicine cabinet.
Ten minutes later, however, she found very little humour in anything as his punishment had been exacting and deliberate.
One year ago
It was a full day, but no busier than any other. Kate was preparing for a new arrival. The first few hours of interacting with a resident always told her everything she needed to know. In the four years that she had been running the house, she had honed this skill and knew what to look for, what to glean from inadvertently offered clues. The flinch at a handshake, the lack of eye contact or the false bright smile and counterfeit confidence – she had discovered that these were all ciphers. She was slowly learning how to crack the codes and read the truth that lay behind them.
It was inevitable that Kate would draw comparisons between the life that she used to live and the life that she had now, but it wasn’t always the obvious things that made her look for similarities and differences; quite the opposite in fact. When a girl trod the path to the front door, often either undernourished or overweight and malnourished, clutching all that she owned and was precious to her in a tatty carrier bag, it would make Kate think of the arrival of new boarders at Mountbriers. Eager and anxious parents would alight from shiny convertibles. Beautiful, surgically enhanced mothers and smartly suited fathers would help unload the trunk, the case, the bag, the valuables, the electronic wizardry, the designer labels, the rucksack bursting with tuck and the child’s allowance. It fascinated her how some had so much and others so very little. She had learned in the last four years – actually in the last nine years – that life was very unfair.
The sudden ring of the telephone made her jump; she had been miles away.
‘Yes, this is Kate Gavier speaking. Ah great, so all on time. Yes, yes, someone will meet her from the station. I’ll call you when she’s settled, many thanks.’
She ran her fingers over the foolscap file in front of her; a white sticky label told her that it was Tanya Wilson who was arriving on the 2.30 train. She opened the cover and scanned the front sheet, taking in only the most basic information. She hated these formulaic reports. One of her biggest frustrations was that these girls had had reports written about them and judgements passed on them from when they were tiny.
Before the first wave of adolescence hit, they were described, assessed and stamped, and their fate was sealed. There were only so many permutations of character that ‘the system’ could identify and none were particularly positive. According to the typed sheets in triplicate that Kate handled daily, these girls were nearly always helpless and hopeless.
That was where Kate and her team came in. From the first glance at Tanya’s file, she could see that she was a standard case, sadly. Tanya had been removed from her mother’s care when she was six, following sustained physical abuse. Twelve different foster homes and two residential care homes later, she found herself in a juvenile correction centre and then graduated to prison for assisting in a burglary and carrying a weapon.
Kate was certain that there would also be prostitution, drug addiction and a whole host of psychological problems. She snapped the file shut and placed it in an already cramped drawer. She would make her assessment by looking Tanya in the eye and talking to her. She no longer paid much heed to what she read, knowing that these white sticky labels were interchangeable for every girl under her roof. They had all had the same life; they were all the same person. Only they weren’t, not to her, and her job was to help them realise