Part 13 (1/2)

OPERATOR 'Thank you, Sophia. Now, listen there are some police officers on their way to your house now, so you just stay on the phone talking to me until they get to you, okay? Then you must let them come in. Okay, lovey? You understand that?'

SOPHIA 'Yes, okay. But she's dead. I think she must be. [Pauses.] She's fallen down the stairs, I think, and there's blood. She's very cold.'

The unemotional nature of the typewritten transcript made the facts seem, if anything, more chilling. I read to the end of the conversation with the operator, and tried to imagine how it must feel to take such a call.

The report then went on to describe the scene. It said that officers had found two young girls in school uniform downstairs in the property. At the foot of the stairs they found Grace Johnson lying unconscious, with a head wound. Breathing was shallow, her pulse was weak and she had suspected fractures to two limbs. Paramedics had apparently arrived at 08.30, and she had been taken to nearby St Luke's Hospital. An empty container labelled as containing diazepam had been found on the table by Ms Johnson's bed.

The report went on to say that both girls had been questioned about when they had last seen Ms Johnson, and Sophia had told them that she'd last seen her at 7.30 the previous evening. She'd gone in to kiss her mother good-night as she'd told Sophia she was ill and needed to go to sleep. Caitlyn had said that she hadn't seen Ms Johnson at all, neither the previous evening nor that day. When asked if she had heard anything the noise of a fall in the night Sophia had started to cry, and apparently told the police officer, 'She told me she'd do this.' A family liaison officer had apparently then arrived at 08.50, and taken both the girls back to headquarters.

'G.o.d,' I said to John, once I'd finished reading the report. 'Set out like this ... well, it really brings it home to you, doesn't it? What sort of a state must Sophia have been in?'

'That's not all of it,' he said. 'If you turn over you'll see that there's more. The pills had been taken by Grace, some time before the fall, and then a few pages on it says that apparently when Sophia is told her mum is still alive she acts really strangely, just shrugging and saying, 'She'll probably die, though, right?' They question her again, following that, because they suspect she knows more than she's letting on. At the next interview, however, she refuses to speak at all, and in the end they put it down to her being in shock about what appears to be her mother's attempted suicide.

'This is mad,' said Mike. 'How come we never knew anything about this? How come social services weren't onto this? Seems pretty clear to me that the police thought there was a question mark hanging over the whole thing!'

John gave Mike a long look. 'You know what I think?' he said. 'My gut instinct? My hunch is that n.o.body wanted to go there, so no one asked. Attempted suicide or accident. Case closed. It wasn't that difficult for me to get hold of this, in the end. Two phone calls. That was all. And here it is.'

'But that's terrible,' I said, once again revisiting the notion that we might have a would-be murderer in our midst.

'And what do you think, John?' Mike added pointedly. 'It doesn't seem as though much was done as far as the police were concerned. They just accepted it, did they? That Sophia's mother did it to herself? That was that?'

'I know, Mike,' John answered. 'I'm with you, mate. It's down as a probable suicide attempt, and, as I said, the case has been closed.' He pushed another file across the table. 'But there's also a psychiatric evaluation in there that you both might like to read, which seems fairly unequivocal that Sophia didn't try to kill her mother. But read it yourselves. I think you'll reach the same conclusion as me that whatever did or didn't happen, this child should never have been just farmed out to foster care without some sort of proper psychological support in place. It beggars belief, really, that she was just given to us to you two without everyone concerned knowing the full facts.'

'You're certainly right there,' Mike agreed. He turned to me. 'And it's at least rea.s.suring to know that the consensus seems to be that she's not about to kill us in our beds, eh, love?'

He smiled. But it was entirely without humour.

John had been right. Reading the psychiatric report had been illuminating. And once again, it seemed crazy that this child had been with us for almost four months, and we'd only just clapped eyes on this stuff.

After it was established that Sophia's mother's injuries meant she was unlikely to ever recover consciousness, Sophia herself had been offered counselling. By now she was living with her uncle and his wife, and it seemed all the rest of the family had been for sessions too. There had been a rift in the family from the outset, as John had already told us, the grandparents Grace's parents having disowned her. But it seemed that this wasn't just because they resented her existence it was because they really did believe that if it hadn't been for Sophia, Grace would never have been driven to try and kill herself. Indeed, the grandmother, apparently, was still unconvinced that Sophia hadn't pushed her down the stairs. The uncle, as we already knew, had strongly refuted this, causing a breakdown in relations between the various factions, the grandparents disowning their granddaughter at that point and also breaking off contact with their son.

From what the report said, Sophia herself seemed to get little from the counselling. Initially, it seemed she had on a couple of occasions 'confessed' to an attempted murder, but the psychiatrist felt strongly that this was not the case. She had issues around the difficulties in her relations.h.i.+p with her mother, and he felt these 'confessions' were actually more attention seeking that cry for help and fuelled by both guilt and distress. It seemed she felt totally responsible for her mother wanting to die her very existence being the cause of her mum's unhappiness. The report concluded that this const.i.tuted an ongoing problem, as it was something that could never now be fixed.

'And we'll never know now, will we? Not really,' I said to Mike. 'That's the crux of it. We'll never know what was going through Grace's mind at any point. How she felt about her daughter, whether she loved her at all. Oh, the poor, poor child. It's just so sad, Mike. And shame on those grandparents. Shame on them.'

We were reading independently, Mike pa.s.sing the sheets to me as he finished them. He nudged me now. 'Hey, and look at this,' he said. He handed me another piece of paper. This was something that had been recorded by the police too, it looked like: a separate handwritten account, following up an abuse allegation. But it wasn't what I expected something to do with Grace's boyfriends. It was an allegation made against Sophia's uncle.

Sophia had told a school friend, by all accounts, that he'd been touching her inappropriately, and the school friend had alerted their teacher. It had then been investigated, clearly, but the case had been dropped. There was no evidence, and he had apparently denied it from the outset. I looked at the date; this would have been a good while after she'd moved in with them just a couple of months before she'd gone into care. There was no mention of what Sophia might or might not have said about it. But did that even matter now? The damage had been done.

'No wonder,' I said to Mike. 'No wonder he didn't keep her.'

'And it makes you think, doesn't it? About just how vulnerable we really are. What d'you think, Case?'

'I don't know what to think now, love. And that's the honest to G.o.d truth. On the one hand, it makes me think about all the things she told me about her mother's boyfriends, but at the same time ... well, the way she's been with you, and especially Kieron ...'

'Well, I know what I think. I think it's like you said to me before. She's in a mess. She hates herself. She's las.h.i.+ng out. Asking for trouble ...'

'And clearly getting it. She might have had a chance with the uncle, mightn't she?'

'But then again, if he did touch her ...'

'Do you believe that? I don't.' I stood up. My back was aching. 'I need a coffee and a cigarette. And you don't either, do you? Tell you what, though it makes not a jot of difference really, does it? Whether it's true or in her head, it's no b.l.o.o.d.y wonder she's in a mess. And she is this isn't the stuff of spoilt brats or badly behaved teenagers. This is actually scary, don't you think?'

Mike stood too. 'You're telling me, love. And it's not like we're doctors. Should we really be continuing to be involved in all this? I mean, if it's going to take time to place her, do we really want to keep her in the meantime? And ”place her”? With who, exactly? If not us, who else? I don't know, love. I think we might just have to pull out of this one ...'

'But we can't, Mike. I don't think I could have that on my conscience. What kind of damage might we do if we s.h.i.+pped out on her as well?'

'Love, this is way beyond our job description, it really is. Just think about it, is all I'm saying. Think about all of us in this.'

And I did. I thought of all of us, and how much of a toll this was taking. I worried about Mike and I worried about Kieron, especially. Was it fair of me to put this complicated child's needs before theirs?

I was still wrestling with my responsibilities as I went to bed that evening. Little did I know that, within less than a week, the problems we'd had so far would fade into insignificance.

Chapter 18.

'Sophia, love. Come on! It's time to get up!'

It was Friday morning, the last day of school before Easter, and I was down in the kitchen putting eggs on for breakfast. All was suspiciously quiet upstairs. I tried again, this time heading up the stairs as I called to her. 'Sophia! Come on! You'll be late if you don't move it!'

Once again, though, no answer was forthcoming.

Typical, I thought, as I trudged the rest of the way up to the landing. We'd already had words about school the night before, Sophia plaintively whining about having to go at all. 'It's the last day,' she kept repeating. 'No one bothers going in on the last day. There's no point. We don't actually do anything.'

But I'd been adamant, just as I'd always been with my own two. 'I don't care what everyone else does,' I told her firmly. 'You are going to school and that's that.'

I'd had no hint that she'd do anything but accept that when I'd woken, my alarm going off at 7 a.m. as usual, and hers at her regular time of 7.15. That was generally my cue to get up. While she went and showered I'd go down and start breakfast, and while she dressed and got ready I'd invariably nip out into the conservatory for a quick cup of coffee and a cigarette. Today, it being so mild, I'd taken both into the garden, relis.h.i.+ng the peace and solitude only Bob kept me company and enjoying five uninterrupted minutes to myself. It was a beautiful spring morning and the sun was already s.h.i.+ning, sending dappled shade through the pink bower of my blossom tree.

But this morning, when I'd come back into the kitchen, she hadn't appeared. I reached her bedroom door now. 'Sophia,' I said, knocking. 'You awake, love?'

Not getting an answer, and feeling the first tinge of worry about her Addison's, I turned the handle and opened the door. She was lying in bed, the duvet pulled right up under her chin, but she wasn't asleep far from it. She looked very much awake. Awake and looking stonily right through me.

'Sophia!' I said, shocked. 'What on earth are you playing at! Have you seen the time? Come on, love. Up!'

'I told you last night,' she replied, her tone sullen. 'I won't be getting up, because I'm not going to school.'

I almost laughed out loud at her insolence, her complete conviction in the matter. 'And I told you, young lady, that you are going to school,' I said. 'Now stop playing silly beggars and go and jump in that shower. Come on, or you're going to be late.'

She sat up in bed then, and flicked her blonde hair behind her. Then raised her arm and jabbed a finger in my direction.

'You don't tell me what to do,' she said. 'I thought I made that clear last night. Now get out of here, little woman, and next time you want to come in here, kindly wait to be invited, okay?'

I don't know if it was that 'little' or just the jaw-dropping cheek of her, but I felt as furious as I'd felt in a long time. A 13-year-old, barking orders, in my house?