We agreed we wouldn’t ask her any leading questions that first session, just observe and be guided by her, but in the end she brought it up herself. Ed had asked her what games she most liked to play and she smiled and brought her hands up next to her mouth, her little fists clenched with excitement.
‘Oooh, hide and seek.’ She did a little skip.
‘And where’s your favourite place to hide?’
‘In the kitchen, under the table, or in the bedroom closet. Mustn’t hide in the basement. Mustn’t hide there.’ Laurie shook her head forcefully from side to side.
Ed didn’t look at me, but I could feel it, the tension that entered the room like a cold draught. Debra the social worker wrapped her plump arms around herself.
‘Why not the basement, Laurie? What’s in there?’
I could sense the effort it was costing Ed to keep his voice steady and measured.
Laurie, who’d been standing facing him, suddenly turned away – and it was a shock to find her eyes fixed on mine.
‘It,’ she said. ‘It is in there.’
After that she didn’t want to talk much.
‘She’s tired,’ Debra said, hoisting her canvas bag back on to her broad shoulder.
I’m embarrassed to admit that after the child left the room, I was light-headed with relief.
7
Paula
The figures were moving across the page like tiny black ants. Paula rubbed her eyes. This always happened when she was tired. Last night was the third in a row where she’d hardly slept. Her sleep had been erratic for months thanks to hideous hot flushes which woke her up in the early hours soaked with sweat – but since Rachel Masters had arrived, her insomnia had got worse. She’d go to bed early then spend hours lying awake fretting about work. The flushes, when they came, were savage – a rush of intense heat that sent her heart rate soaring. She’d fling back the duvet and lie on the sheet feeling like something melting in the sun. Through the paper-thin wall, she could hear the motorcycle-engine sound of Ian’s snoring and she’d wonder again how it was possible to have separated from a man yet still have her sleep destroyed by him night after night.
At her desk, she tried once again to focus on the printout. It was an invoice that a catering client was disputing. The company had supplied seventeen agency staff to work at a series of functions the catering client was laying on. However, the client said that three of those temporary workers had been sent home early as they hadn’t been up to the job. It happened sometimes. The staff they recruited were generally kids trying to earn money for gap years and university courses. Their hearts weren’t in it.
On her desk, her mobile vibrated and a text message flashed up.
Out of bread and OJ. Had to go shop. U owe me £3.50.
She glanced at the time on her computer screen. 12.50. At least Cam would see daylight today. That was an improvement on yesterday. She remembered how naïve she’d once been, assuming her days of having to worry about her son would be over once he went off to uni. No one had ever warned her that he’d come back after he graduated. Still, at least he’d had some experience of being independent, unlike Amy, who’d messed up her A levels and anyway baulked at the £9,000 a year tuition fees. ‘I’d much rather go straight into a career,’ she’d said. Paula could tell her daughter had been envisaging something glamorous – advertising or PR maybe. Instead, she now worked six nights a week in the local pub.
‘Paula, have you got a second?’
Her stomach contracted sharply. This happened every time Rachel spoke to her: it was her body’s reflex reaction. She followed her new boss into her office, aware all of a sudden of the dowdiness of her long, oatmeal-coloured tunic. It felt like a mail sack in comparison to Rachel’s body-hugging navy and orange dress that zipped all the way up the back from hem to neck, emphasizing her neat bottom and tiny waist.
‘Sit.’
As if she was a dog. But of course she sat in the chair opposite as indicated by Rachel’s faint inclination of the head. Woof, woof.
‘I’ve been going through the records and frankly I can’t imagine how Gill stayed in her job this long. The place is a total shambles. New client mailings that have never been followed up on, workers kept on the books despite repeated abuses of the rules. How on earth did you let things get into this state, Paula?’
Her? The unfairness of the charge took her breath away. All she’d done was sit at her desk and do what Gill asked her, and act as a first port of call so Gill wouldn’t be bothered with all the hundreds of questions and niggling complaints that came up every single day . . . and now she was to be held responsible?