I Just Want to Be Loved by Casey Watson

Author:Casey Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-01-27T20:53:01+00:00

Chapter 14

Because Elise believed she had done nothing wrong, and wouldn’t even consider the alternative, life continued pretty much as normal. After an uneventful weekend came an equally uneventful week; she got up on time every day for school, was meticulous about keeping her room clean and doing chores, was polite to a fault and always did her homework before going off out anywhere with friends. In fact, on paper, she was the poster child for a happy teenager in care and I caught myself more than once wondering exactly what my role was beyond providing the proverbial roof over her head. But I couldn’t unsee the photos I had found in her tin, and I couldn’t forget the long list of dramas she’d been involved in, most of them, no question, having been instigated by her. And though I’d had no further contact from the woman whose husband she’d sent the explicit pictures and messages to, the very fact of what she’d been up to, even if she didn’t do it again, meant she had some serious psychological issues. And if they weren’t addressed how long would it be until she got herself into equally serious trouble? Trouble was, though, that it would be me who would have to upset the apple cart and coax her to visit places in her head which she clearly didn’t want to revisit.

Still at least I had a new ally, in the form of her new social worker, Holly Davies, who had emailed to introduce herself a couple of days after I’d spoken to Christine and who’d suggested she pay a visit at the end of that week, both for us to get acquainted and, once Elise was back from school, to have a short informal meeting with her as well.

I’d decided not to tell Elise that Holly was coming, only that she needed to come straight home from school that day – I was worried that if she knew someone from ‘the social’ was coming over she might ‘accidentally’ forget or make up some excuse. Holly, who had arrived half an hour before Elise was due home, agreed with my strategy because she liked to ‘go in cold’, getting a more accurate picture of what a child was really like as opposed to the version they might present if they had time to get their guard up.

I liked Holly immediately; she had a natural warmth about her, and though she was young, as Christine had said, she seemed full of ambition, having made the switch from teaching and all that endless marking, but mostly the ‘tyranny of the school bell’.

‘You’ll still have plenty of paperwork to wade through,’ I felt the need to point out, ‘but if you want something that’s never the same two days running I reckon you’ve definitely chosen the right career. Well, as long as you’re flexible about the definition of the word “day”, that is …’

Holly assured me that the on-calls, particularly the nights, were actually one of her favourite parts of the job.

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