slipping an arm around Annie’s ample frame and feeling a surge of pity for how much weight she’d lost this last year, all in a bid to win back her children. They would be just as devastated when they found out it wasn’t going to happen – like their mother, they’d invested all their hopes in today.
‘I’ve done everything,’ Annie was sobbing after they’d said goodbye to the lawyer who’d been appointed to her case. ‘I keeps my house up together now, I been learning to cook, I’ve got me little cleaning job, what more do he want? Oh, Alex, Alex, I can’t go home without my babies. I just can’t.’
Easing her gently into the passenger seat of her car, Alex went quickly round to the driver’s side and got in next to her. ‘Annie, look at me,’ she said, reaching for Annie’s shaking hands.
Annie raised her fleshy, tear-ravaged face to stare out at the drizzling rain. ‘It’s that stupid cow Maureen Day’s fault,’ she growled angrily. ‘If she hadn’t started mouthing off at me the way she did I wouldn’t of thumped her, but she deserved it, Alex. The names she called me, they was horrible, disgusting and none of it was true. I was never on the game and I never, ever beat my kids. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do, and you shouldn’t have listened to her. You know she’s a troublemaker.’
‘Everyone does, so why didn’t the bloody magistrate understand that? I was provoked ...’
‘You were also drunk, Annie, and you know that one of the conditions you had to meet was to join AA.’
‘I did join AA and I goes regular. It was only the once, Alex, I swear it. It all just got too much. I was that nervous about today and all worked up about everything, then she started going on, shouting out terrible stuff so everyone could hear ...’
‘It’s OK, I can understand how it happened, but unfortunately getting yourself arrested was only ever going to result in setting your case back.’
The anguish, the unbearable strain of it suddenly overwhelmed Annie again and as she sobbed with despair Alex held her as comfortingly as she could, while wishing, as she always did at these moments, that there was more she could do.
‘Come on,’ she said when Annie was finally a little calmer, ‘I’ll drive you home now and make you a nice cup of tea – and remember, no matter how bad the pressure gets, don’t reach for the bottle, OK? If you feel overwhelmed, or worried, or you just need to chat, you have my number, so call me.’
After delivering Annie back to her council flat on the edge of Temple Fields, Alex drove on to the children’s residential home in Cliff Down, about four miles away, to check on Kylie. On being told that her charge was in the middle of a therapy session, she left a note so Kylie would know she’d been, and returned to her car to check what was next in her diary. A Nigerian family who’d recently arrived in the area. Though she hadn’t yet met either of the parents, she’d spoken to the mother several times on the phone and if the woman’s surprise and concern at finding herself on the social services’ radar was anything to go by, then this meeting today should go well. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to school newcomers to the country in how things were done here – i.e. physical punishment of children and staff was not allowed, even if it was the norm where they came from.
What she found when she got to the Adebayos’ freshly painted home in the affluent area of Bradshaw was father and son kicking a football around in the neatly mowed back garden, while mum and daughter were baking a traditional Nigerian-colour sweet cake in the kitchen. Though Alex guessed this perfect domesticity was being staged for her benefit, when she left half an hour later she felt fairly satisfied that they were good parents who simply hailed from a different culture and were now eager to adapt to the new one. When she wrote them up she’d
‘I’ve done everything,’ Annie was sobbing after they’d said goodbye to the lawyer who’d been appointed to her case. ‘I keeps my house up together now, I been learning to cook, I’ve got me little cleaning job, what more do he want? Oh, Alex, Alex, I can’t go home without my babies. I just can’t.’
Easing her gently into the passenger seat of her car, Alex went quickly round to the driver’s side and got in next to her. ‘Annie, look at me,’ she said, reaching for Annie’s shaking hands.
Annie raised her fleshy, tear-ravaged face to stare out at the drizzling rain. ‘It’s that stupid cow Maureen Day’s fault,’ she growled angrily. ‘If she hadn’t started mouthing off at me the way she did I wouldn’t of thumped her, but she deserved it, Alex. The names she called me, they was horrible, disgusting and none of it was true. I was never on the game and I never, ever beat my kids. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do, and you shouldn’t have listened to her. You know she’s a troublemaker.’
‘Everyone does, so why didn’t the bloody magistrate understand that? I was provoked ...’
‘You were also drunk, Annie, and you know that one of the conditions you had to meet was to join AA.’
‘I did join AA and I goes regular. It was only the once, Alex, I swear it. It all just got too much. I was that nervous about today and all worked up about everything, then she started going on, shouting out terrible stuff so everyone could hear ...’
‘It’s OK, I can understand how it happened, but unfortunately getting yourself arrested was only ever going to result in setting your case back.’
The anguish, the unbearable strain of it suddenly overwhelmed Annie again and as she sobbed with despair Alex held her as comfortingly as she could, while wishing, as she always did at these moments, that there was more she could do.
‘Come on,’ she said when Annie was finally a little calmer, ‘I’ll drive you home now and make you a nice cup of tea – and remember, no matter how bad the pressure gets, don’t reach for the bottle, OK? If you feel overwhelmed, or worried, or you just need to chat, you have my number, so call me.’
After delivering Annie back to her council flat on the edge of Temple Fields, Alex drove on to the children’s residential home in Cliff Down, about four miles away, to check on Kylie. On being told that her charge was in the middle of a therapy session, she left a note so Kylie would know she’d been, and returned to her car to check what was next in her diary. A Nigerian family who’d recently arrived in the area. Though she hadn’t yet met either of the parents, she’d spoken to the mother several times on the phone and if the woman’s surprise and concern at finding herself on the social services’ radar was anything to go by, then this meeting today should go well. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to school newcomers to the country in how things were done here – i.e. physical punishment of children and staff was not allowed, even if it was the norm where they came from.
What she found when she got to the Adebayos’ freshly painted home in the affluent area of Bradshaw was father and son kicking a football around in the neatly mowed back garden, while mum and daughter were baking a traditional Nigerian-colour sweet cake in the kitchen. Though Alex guessed this perfect domesticity was being staged for her benefit, when she left half an hour later she felt fairly satisfied that they were good parents who simply hailed from a different culture and were now eager to adapt to the new one. When she wrote them up she’d
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