The Silent Witness. Casey Watson

Finally, special thanks to my inspiration, mentor and good friend, Lynne, who keeps me plodding on regardless, and helps me to always see the sunny side.

       Chapter 1

      Christmas Eve. Early evening. Tools downed. To-do lists ticked. And to say I was excited is a bit of an understatement. I had begged. I had pleaded. I had wheedled and I had whined. And in the end, because there was clearly going to be no stopping me, Mike had caved in and let me open my main present early.

      Just ten minutes ago, in fact, accompanied by heartfelt groans from Tyler, whose early mortification had just been endorsed by my first effort at channelling Beyoncé.

      Yes, it had happened. I’d got my wish. My very own karaoke machine.

      ‘What?’ I asked Tyler, who was staring at me open-mouthed, and not, from the look of it, in a complimentary way. But why the face? He’d been our foster son for a good few years now. Our son now. He already knew about my singing abilities.

      About which term we had to agree to disagree. I believed I had some, hence my list for Father Christmas, whereas Tyler believed that I must be tone deaf. ‘Mum!’ he cried, sounding mortified. ‘Have you listened to yourself? Ever? Seriously,’ he added, glancing at Mike, whereupon they shook heads in unison, ‘you need to.’

      ‘Well, exactly,’ I said, beaming, despite the assault on my singing confidence. ‘That’s precisely why I needed to open it tonight. Plenty of time to get some practice in before tomorrow’s singalong.’

      Tyler picked up a cushion and covered his face with it, groaning, as any self-respecting fifteen-year-old boy would in such a circumstance. Though he still managed to guffaw from behind it when Mike added thoughtfully that it was less Beyoncé than a pastiche of early Shirley Bassey with a touch – a big touch – of Lee Marvin. I didn’t care. I had a karaoke machine and I wasn’t afraid to use it. I riffled through the choices and prepared to delight them with some Streisand. And got a belt with Tyler’s cushion by way of gratitude.

      I didn’t care. I didn’t mind. Exchanges like these were some of the greatest joys of family life. Not just the big things – the big moments, the overt displays of affection – but also the little things. The everyday and the largely unremarkable. Such as the gentle banter that thrives in an atmosphere of love and harmony. The gentle ribbing. The wordplay. The giggles and all the nonsense. It was Christmas Eve and all was well in my world.

      Not that I was consciously thinking about that. I was too busy responding via the medium of song. But was saved, then, from further familial abuse by the sound of my mobile phone ringing. ‘That’ll be Riley,’ I said, putting my microphone down and heading towards the dining room to take the call. She’d doubtless be calling with some last-minute directive or other, having summoned us to her house at silly o’clock the following morning.

      Riley and her partner David had blessed us with three grandchildren by now – Levi and Jackson, who were ten and eight respectively, and the little mischief-making machine that was their youngest, Marley Mae, who was three going on the usual thirteen.

      In previous years, we’d done things differently on Christmas morning. Now they were a bit older, they would generally open their presents at home (no sense getting the grandparents up at 4 a.m. when you have two parents already there for the purpose) and then coming over to ours mid-morning for another gift-opening session with Tyler and our other grandchild, Kieron and Lauren’s darling little Dee Dee.

      This year, however, it was all change. David’s parents, who lived some way away now, were staying over with them, and it had been decided (unilaterally, because that’s my Riley, bless her) that we should join them at hers for a big Christmas breakfast, so we could chat about Riley and David’s upcoming wedding before they left for home.

      The wedding was to be in February – scheduled for Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t have been more excited about that either. Oh, yes, all was very well with my world.

      But it wasn’t Riley. It was a male voice. One I recognised immediately as that of my fostering link worker, John Fulshaw, even though a glance at the clock made his call something of a shock. He’d already delivered my Christmas poinsettia, after all, and, as far as I knew, all was quiet on the fostering front.

      It clearly wasn’t. ‘I’m so sorry, Casey,’ he said. He sounded weary. ‘I know this is probably the very worst time I could ring you, but we really are stuck. I mean really stuck. We desperately need someone to take a child this evening. As soon as possible in fact.’

      Mike, from the sofa, mouthed the words ‘What’s wrong?’ I mouthed back ‘Emergency’. Enough said. Tyler, all ears now, turned the television down.

      ‘Well, yes,’ I said, eyeing my abandoned microphone sadly. ‘But that’s okay. Go on, tell me then. What’s up?’

      It was a short call, because this was clearly no time for rambling on. Suffice to say, I would now be working this Christmas. Mike and I both would. And all of us, because that’s the nature of the job, would in all likelihood have our Christmas plans changed. We would be looking after a twelve-year-old girl, who was apparently called Bella, and who’d already been in the care system for a week. The details were sketchy (the usual ‘I’ll fill you in once we’re sorted’) but the gravity of the situation was not. Bella was in care because her stepfather was in a coma on a ventilator in an intensive therapy unit, having been put there with a life-threatening head injury, which had apparently been inflicted by Bella’s mother. Attempted murder, by all accounts, which Bella had apparently witnessed, and while her stepdad fought for his life her mother was in prison.

      People often ask me what kind of circumstances lead to a child being placed in care, and much of the time my responses are broadly similar. Abuse features regularly, as – equally depressingly – does neglect. The children of addicts, the children of virtual children themselves, the children who’ve been abandoned, those whose families have imploded or disappeared – the list of childhood miseries sometimes seems endless. But this was a new one. The grimmest kind of new one, to me anyway. Because the child who was coming to us had witnessed her mother attempting to kill her stepfather. Where did you start to imagine the myriad ways she must be in agony?

      And on Christmas Eve, too. Yes, just another day, but a day that was marked in most calendars every year, which for a child was a treasure trove of happy memories. It didn’t matter in the scheme of things what the date was. Of course it didn’t. But if her stepdad died tonight, and her mother was convicted of murder, Christmas would be bound up with horrible memories for ever more.

      ‘Yes, of course,’ I told John, as soon as he’d finished filling me in. ‘If there’s no one else willing or able, of course we’ll take her.’

      ‘You don’t know how relieved I am to hear that,’ he told me. I knew he meant it, too. ‘I’ll pop an email to you now,’ he added. ‘You know, just outlining what I’ve told you, and with whatever else I can find out. Ten minutes, I promise. Pronto.’

      ‘No worries,’ I said. ‘We can chat when you get here.’

      ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘That’s the thing. I have to get home. I am so sorry, Casey, but between you and me I shouldn’t be here at all. I’m only in now because I forgot to switch my bloody mobile off. And here I am, passing the buck to you.’

      I sympathised. I knew how guilty he must feel. I also knew just how many hours he clocked up in a week, many of them extremely unsociable ones, too – because fostering emergencies didn’t keep office hours and, because that’s the way life worked, often happened in the small hours, in the darkness before dawn, when the pubs turned out, the drug deals were completed, when reason went and tempers began fraying. And the wives and children of people with jobs like John’s mattered too. I knew full well how little they got to see of him.

      ‘No need to apologise,’ I reassured him.