You Can't Have My Daughter by Elizabeth McDonnell

Author:Elizabeth McDonnell [McDonnell, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

10

Finding Lara

Things with Lauren were definitely more stable and settled, but one sunny afternoon in June a police officer cycling along the bottom of our road glanced up and saw Lauren and a friend sitting on a wall in our front garden smoking. There being no matters of crime or disorder in Oxford for him to bother himself with, he turned round and came up to our house, into our garden, snatched the cigarettes from Lauren and her friend, leaned over our garden wall and threw them in our neighbour’s bin. I heard Lauren shouting for me and went out. He was standing looking rather like Spiderman, with Lycra-clad legs planted far apart, arms akimbo, wraparound sunglasses and a cycle helmet. It was clear from his pose he was trying to intimidate or provoke. He was, he informed me, enforcing a new act of Parliament that made it a criminal offence for anyone under sixteen to smoke.

‘The prime minister has personally asked all police officers to be vigilant. He feels strongly about smoking.’

Fortunately I was fairly clued up on the piece of legislation to which he was referring. ‘It’s an offence for anyone under sixteen to smoke . . . in public,’ I corrected. ‘You are on private property, and so is Lauren. I may not like her smoking, but she is doing no one but herself any harm here, and at least she is not in Bonn Square cadging cigarettes off drug addicts. If you’re in touch with Mr Blair, perhaps you could tell him that . . .’

But he had already jumped on his bike and was pedalling off to right more wrongs.

Lauren said, ‘He’s horrible. He’s always looking for me to have a go at me.’

I was pleased I had been there to back her up this time.

Two days later the long arm of the law overreached itself again. Lauren and two girlfriends had, with permission, got the train to Reading to go shopping. It was, I knew, not without risk, but I was anxious to allow and encourage some freedoms and independence to show that normal life for a teenage girl didn’t mean being tied to apron strings. But, perhaps inevitably, it did not go to plan. One of the girls had friends in Reading, the friends had lager, and they all went off to a park to drink it, arriving back at Reading Station at 9 p.m., not 4 p.m. as agreed. Three slightly inebriated young girls drew the attention of some police at the station, who questioned them and ran their names through the computer. Lauren rang me, very distressed, saying the police officer was insisting she had an ASBO and was in breach of it. The officer came on the phone and I tried to explain that she didn’t have an ASBO, rather an approved behavioural contract, which was a voluntary agreement. The officer refused to listen and arrested and handcuffed Lauren. By the time the mistake was realized and the girls were released, the last train to Oxford had gone.

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