When She Was Bad(5)

Sometimes when I think about how I’m still here all these years later, I can’t breathe. I keep a paper bag in the top drawer of the desk to blow into when the panic rises.

Room 238 was the most child-friendly of all the consulting rooms. There were padded grey chairs and a low coffee table in lieu of a desk, and a filing cabinet in the corner stuffed with specially chosen toys. On the coffee table was a stack of children’s books. The Sesame Street annual was on the top, looking slightly frayed around the edges of its cardboard cover. Along the back wall was a shelving unit with more books and, discreetly positioned at the far end, a tape recorder.

‘As you know, our role here is to assess rather than to treat,’ Ed Kowalsky said. He was standing by the window with its slatted blinds which divided the view of the concrete and glass courthouse across the street into neat grey horizontal lines. I could tell he was too nervous to sit down. His hands were again busy with his hair. Flutter, pat, comb. Flutter, pat, comb.

‘With that in mind, I propose we don’t take notes during the sessions themselves. Obviously we’ll record them, and then after Laurie has left we’ll discuss and make proper records.’

Laurie. The news reports had referred to her as ‘The Minor’ or ‘Child L’. Her brother, David, whose own psychiatric assessment was being carried out in tandem by Ed and Dan Oppenheimer, was Child D. Hearing Laurie’s name gave me a jolt. That was probably the first time I’d really thought about her as a child, rather than a case study. The understanding that someone real had gone through what she went through and seen what she’d seen, caused a painful tightening in my chest. What would that do to a person?

Suddenly, I was terribly aware that I was way out of my depth.

There was a knock.

‘Come in,’ said Ed Kowalsky and I watched him unzip his smile.

First through the door was a stocky middle-aged woman with a wide moon-face and neat brown hair tucked behind her ears. She was wearing a loose-fitting cream top in the kind of linen fabric that creases easily, and a calf-length brown skirt that rubbed against her sheer flesh-coloured pantyhose, creating a static field around her legs. A large canvas bag was slung over one shoulder, while on the other arm a thin leather watch-strap cut into her wrist so that the pale flesh bulged over it on either side. On the end of that arm, her plump fingers were closed around the hand of a child.

‘Hi, y’all. I’m Debra Albright from the Child Welfare Agency. And this here is Laurie.’

You’ll think I’m just saying this with the benefit of hindsight, but I swear as the small figure followed the social worker into the room, the temperature dropped around ten degrees. Cold prickled at the back of my neck despite the balmy, early-fall day outside.

‘Hi, Laurie.’ Ed dropped into a squat, his knees creaking as he did so, and held out a hand.

The little girl gave a shy smile that was like a light going on under her skin. Without letting go of her social worker, she reached out and shook Professor Kowalsky’s hand. He shot me a brief sideways glance, so fleeting I would have missed it if I’d blinked, but I knew exactly what it meant. Despite everything that had happened to her, all the horror she had witnessed, Laurie hadn’t shied away from human contact.

It was a hopeful sign.

Given everything that came afterwards, I now realize just how alert we were for such signs, and how vulnerable that made us.

And how dangerous.





4

Amira



Paula seemed flustered when she came out. Amira instantly dropped her head and frowned intently at her computer screen, trying to look deep in concentration and not as if she’d just been staring through the glass walls of the executive manager’s office, attempting to lipread the conversation.

‘Hello, everyone, can I have your attention?’

Paula was standing awkwardly on the periphery of the open-plan office, trying to project her voice. She half raised her hand and then dropped it instantly, her cheeks flaring pink, but not before Amira had caught a glimpse of dark circles under the arms of her colleague’s pale-blue T-shirt. Poor Paula had been having a hard time of it recently. Not that she’d ever admit it.

‘Could you all gather round, please? Rachel would like to say a few words.’

‘Yeah, like “here’s your P45”,’ muttered Charlie under his breath.

Amira’s heart jolted. Though they’d all been making gallows-humour jokes about losing their jobs on the way back from the pub, the truth was, Amira was scared stiff at the possibility of being made redundant. Two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds’ worth of scared. That’s how big the mortgage was that she’d basically forced Tom to take on so that they could finally move into their own flat. Without her salary, they could not afford to carry on living there. And the way things were going in the recruitment world, she was unlikely to waltz straight into another job. She and Tom had been getting on so badly recently, partly due to the financial strain under which the move had put them, plus the added pressure of dealing with her perennially unhappy mother who still couldn’t understand why they hadn’t wanted to carry on living with her. Losing her job, Amira felt, could tip them over the edge.