Little Prisoners by Casey Watson Page B

apparently engrossed in what she was watching on the other laptop, made to move from her chair as well. I placed a hand on her shoulder while her brother scuttled out. Before getting sidetracked by the offerings on her brother’s screen, she’d been watching excerpts from the movie Grease . One was still playing.
    ‘Much more fun,’ I said, sitting down on Ashton’s chair, beside her. She nodded, her eyes still on the screen.
    ‘Don’t like that porn,’ she said. ‘It’s ’scusting an’ wrong.’
    I noticed Riley had come in, bearing Levi on her hip. She too sat down, bouncing him on her knee. She’d heard everything.

    ‘You’re right,’ I said, even though I guessed she was just parroting a version of what she’d heard me say. But maybe not. Maybe she didn’t really relate this to the ‘innocent fiddling’ she practised at home. ‘And I’m so surprised Mummy let you watch it. Have you seen it lots?’
    She turned to look at me now. ‘Only when I have to. We have to watch it with our uncles an’ my gwandad sometimes.’
    I felt chilled. We have to watch it . ‘All together?’
    She nodded. ‘When Mummy goes to the mucky beer pub. She said we was good kids to watch telly wiv the family.’
    I nodded too, but I wondered if she really understood what she was saying. ‘But you know you shouldn’t.’
    Another nod. ‘I tol’ you. I don’t like it.’
    ‘And you shouldn’t be made to watch it. Not by Mummy, or your granddad. Or by Ashton. Okay?’
    She looked anxious now. ‘But what about my music and my Grease ? Can’t I watch them no more either?’
    ‘Oh, no, love. You can watch them . Of course you can. They’re fine.’
    She smiled. ‘Look,’ she said, turning her attention back to the laptop in front of her. ‘Look, Riley, it’s the best.’ She deftly moved her finger over the track pad to bring a clip up. ‘It’s where Sandy starts to grind her butt on Danny, cos she wants to sex him.’
    Riley had bought her cup of tea into the room with her. Now she almost spluttered a whole mouthful back out. ‘Olivia!’ she exclaimed. ‘You shouldn’t even know words like that!’

    I reached across and closed the second laptop. ‘Right madam,’ I said brightly. ‘Come on, out into the garden with you too. Enough sitting indoors on computers for one day.’ She smiled equally brightly, jumped down and ran off to join her brother while I turned to my daughter, who was stifling a laugh.
    ‘So, there you have it,’ I said ruefully. ‘ That’s what I’m dealing with. And, trust me, it’s really not that funny.’
    Riley composed herself and we took Levi back into the kitchen. Thank goodness he was still too young to know what had just occurred. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t help it. I do know it isn’t funny. It was just so unexpected. What do you plan to do?’
    I shook my head. ‘I wish I knew. Right now, I’m just fire-fighting, really. The more we dig, the more odious their home life seems to have been. The evidence is stacking up so plainly. But all I can do – till social services get some counselling support for them, anyway – is just observe it, and log it, and report it, and then sit on it. Honestly, it’s driving me up the wall.’
    ‘And I guess you can’t really get cross, because they think it’s all normal.’
    ‘To a great extent, yes. I mean, Ashton clearly knew watching that movie was subversive. That was obvious. But I’m faced all the time with the underlying problem that they don’t think it’s wrong, they just know it’s wrong here . In their own home it’s obviously perfectly acceptable. Take the other day, for instance, with Olivia. It’s like being sexual’s just innate with her.’

    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Oh, just a bit of light lap dancing. After school, this was, and they’d gone up to change out of their uniforms, ready for tea, but when I go up to see why they’ve not come downstairs – I’d been calling – I go