a packet of biscuits, a jar of instant coffee. She took two biscuits from the packet and handed them to him; he snatched them and ran away again, back to his mother.
‘So, do you like going to the nursery, Robbie?’ she asked him, as he sat scoffing the biscuits on the floor.
He did not answer.
‘Yeah, ’e likes it,’ said Terri, slightly more awake. ‘Don’ you, Robbie? ’E likes it.’
‘When was he last there, Terri?’
‘Las’ time. Yesterday.’
‘Yesterday was Monday, he couldn’t have been there then,’ said Kay, making notes. ‘That isn’t one of the days he goes.’
‘Wha’?’
‘I’m asking about nursery. Robbie’s supposed to be there today. I need to know when he was last there.’
‘I told you, din’ I? Las’ time.’
Her eyes were more fully open than Kay had yet seen them. The timbre of her voice was still flat, but antagonism was struggling to the surface.
‘Are you a dyke?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Kay, still writing.
‘You look like a dyke,’ said Terri.
Kay continued to write.
‘Juice,’ Robbie shouted, chocolate smeared over his chin.
This time Kay did not move. After another long pause, Terri lurched out of her chair and wove her way into the hall. Kay leaned forward and shifted the loose lid of the biscuit tin Terri had displaced when she sat down. Inside was a syringe, a bit of grubby cotton wool, a rusty-looking spoon and a dusty polythene bag. Kay snapped the lid back on firmly, while Robbie watched her. Terri returned, after some distant clattering, carrying a cup of juice, which she shoved at the little boy.
‘There,’ she said, more to Kay than to her son, and she sat back down again. She missed the seat and collided with the arm of the chair on her first attempt; Kay heard the bone collide with wood, but Terri seemed to feel no pain. She settled herself back into the sagging cushions and surveyed the social worker with bleary indifference.
Kay had read the file from cover to cover. She knew that nearly everything of value in Terri Weedon’s life had been sucked into the black hole of her addiction; that it had cost her two children; that she barely clung to two more; that she prostituted herself to pay for heroin; that she had been involved in every sort of petty crime; and that she was currently attempting rehab for the umpteenth time.
But not to feel, not to care… Right now, Kay thought, she’s happier than I am.
III
At the start of the second post-lunch period, Stuart ‘Fats’ Wall walked out of school. His experiment in truancy was undertaken in no rash spirit; he had decided the previous night that he would miss the double period of computing that finished the afternoon. He might have chosen to skip any lesson, but it so happened that his best friend Andrew Price (known to Fats as Arf) was in a different set in computing, and Fats, in spite of his best efforts, had not succeeded in being demoted to join him.
Fats and Andrew were perhaps equally aware that the admiration in their relationship flowed mostly from Andrew to Fats; but Fats alone suspected that he needed Andrew more than Andrew needed him. Lately, Fats had started to regard this dependency in the light of a weakness, but he reasoned that, while his liking for Andrew’s company lingered, he might as well miss a double period where he had to do without it anyway.
Fats had been told by a reliable informant that the one fail-safe way of quitting the Winterdown grounds without being spotted from a window was to climb over the side wall by the bike shed. This, therefore, he did, dropping down by his fingertips into the narrow lane on the other side. He landed without mishap, strode off along the narrow path and turned left, onto the busy dirty main road.
Safely on his way, he lit a cigarette and proceeded past the run-down little shops. Five blocks along, Fats turned left again, into the first of the streets that made up the Fields. He loosened his school tie with one hand as he walked, but did not remove it. He did not care that he was, conspicuously, a schoolboy. Fats had never even attempted to customize his uniform in any way; to pin badges on his lapels or adjust his tie knot to suit fashion; he wore his school clothes with the disdain of a convict.
He had decided that he possessed traits that were authentic, which ought therefore to be encouraged