A Boy Without Hope: Part 3 of 3. Casey Watson

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СКАЧАТЬ Please.’

      No response.

      So I decided I’d start searching anyway. Whatever he was up to – whatever reason he had for squirrelling himself away from me – perhaps once I started searching he’d change his mind. I got up off the bed to begin a systematic investigation.

      Miller’s case was locked, as I’d expected, unable to give up its secrets unless I broke it. But, in the circumstances, with Miller behaving as he was, that felt too dramatic and potentially disruptive an act. I didn’t know what was going on here, but I was keen not to derail it. It might, after all, prove to be illuminating.

      But that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be things to find elsewhere, and he’d told me to go ahead, hadn’t he? So I started looking in all the places kids who’d stayed with us had stashed things over the years: inside pillowcases and under them (the little toy train was still in place), inside board games, behind books, under mattresses, above cupboards, beneath the laundry bin and, on more than one occasion down the years, taped to the slats in the bed base. I was on all fours, in fact, peering up under his bed when he began speaking again.

      ‘And, as well, I counted one hundred and fifty times one hundred and fifty, and he didn’t come back. He didn’t come back. I saw three darks and three lights. And nobody came. And, as well, all the custard creams had gone after the first dark, and I had nothing to eat at all, and I was hungry. I could see him kissing her on the couch and they were drunk, and sometimes laughing, and I had to be quiet. I had to be mouse-quiet. Or else. And, as well, there was a mouse and it scared me and I wet my pants, and had to take them off and cover myself with a big coat …’

      I stopped searching and sat back on my heels. Miller was so obviously relating something that had happened to him when he was little. And he knew I was still in there. He could see me through his spy hole. Which meant he wasn’t just talking – he was talking to me.

      God, I thought. Car, I thought. Back of the car, I thought. It was a bit of leap – strike me down, professional psychologists – but it didn’t take a genius to reach the conclusion that Miller found it almost impossible to speak about his demons unless he didn’t have to make eye contact when he was doing it. He struggled to make eye contact in lots of situations. Lots of kids did when it came to personal matters. Which was why I’d often used car journeys to encourage children to open up – not least my own too. Had I become so fixated on Miller’s distracting, sometimes dangerous in-car behaviour (well documented in his files, of course) to lose sight of the fact that they could be a tool I could use to try to get to know him better?

      I thought back to the garbled bath stuff he’d apparently disclosed to Tyler. Had he been trying to let me know about his early childhood then too? I went back to sitting on the bed, and thought about what to say.

      ‘Miller, sweetie, was this when you were little? Did you get closed in a cupboard? Was it when you lived with your parents?’

      Silence.

      ‘It’s okay, love, I won’t speak, then. I’ll just sit here for a bit. It’s okay for you to talk by yourself.’

      Another short silence, then off he went again. ‘And, as well, I got a big coat to pee on because it soaked it up. I had to, because one time he saw some leak out onto the floor in the hall, and he pulled me out, and he hit me and he spat on me. Mummy threw me a nappy in after two darks, but no more custard creams. And as well, and as well, all those babies in that earthquake. Those that are dead, they’re the lucky ones. No one likes babies. No one wants the babies. There’s too many in the world already, so they don’t need no more. Those dead ones are the happy ones. They’re the lucky ones.’

      Silence fell again. I stayed sitting where I was for five minutes. Apart from the bit about the earthquake – which had recently been on all of the news channels after a terrible disaster in the Middle East – the rest seemed so obviously his own, raw, experience.

      ‘You there, love?’ I ventured finally.

      More silence. Then off he went again, his voice soft and urgent. ‘When you’re a runt, you should die. Granny said so. You should be drowned. Because you’re no use to anyone if you’re the runt of the litter. And, as well, some animals kill and eat the runts of their litters. And if you’re a runt, you should be taken to a field and left to die there. Granny said so. And, as well, without your clothes on. So the birds can come down and pick your skin off when you’re dead. And then the worms can eat the rest. Till you’re bones. Just the bones.’

       Granny said so. Granny said so …

      A picture formed in my mind, to sit alongside that social worker’s long ago report. Damage breeds damage, I thought. This had clearly passed down a familial line.

      I waited, my breath held, wanting more. But none came. Miller had obviously done talking for the time being.

      The silence lengthened, and knowing he could see me as well as hear me, I stood up again and smoothed down my dress. ‘I’m going downstairs now, love, okay? But please don’t stay in there too long. You just come down when you want to, okay? And I’ll make you something to eat. And don’t worry, okay? We do have to have a chat about us all keeping safe in the house, but it’s nothing to worry about. And we don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,’

      I left the room, and hovered silently on the landing for a little while, hoping that now I’d left him, I’d hear the wardrobe door click open. But I didn’t. Just more of the same silence. A silence more deafening than any amount of ranting he might have done.

      Decided then, I went back downstairs. More emails to write, to Christine and Libby (I cc’ed the latter to her supervisor for good measure) while things were still fresh in my mind. Not that I kidded myself that anything would happen because of them – not immediately, anyway – but they would at least help paint a picture for any professionals who might work with Miller in the future; add to the small but growing pile of fragmented information we already had. And, hopefully, one day, all these bits of history could be put together, to create some sort of structured report that would form a timeline of his early life. In an ideal world this would have already happened. So much would have happened, to set him on a brighter path. But times were tough, money tight, children like Miller all too common. So it wasn’t an ideal world, was it?

      And perhaps Miller, muted by trauma, and deformed mentally because of it, was only now about to give up his secrets.

       Chapter 18

      Apart from emerging for food three minutes after the time I’d gone in and told the hole in the door what time it would be served, Miller spent the rest of the day and evening in his room. And, anxious not to welly in and potentially scupper what might well mark a vital watershed, I refrained from demanding that he come down unless he wanted to, and didn’t ask him to expand on some of the chilling things he’d said.

      And, having not received replies to either of my emails by mid-afternoon, I decided that I needed to be more proactive, leaving a brisk voicemail for Libby (who was out of the office) to demand that things were stepped up a gear, before the precious momentum (to quote Mr Hammond, my new favourite person) was lost. There was an urgent need, I told the answering machine, to get Miller some sort of regular counselling; to seize upon what had surely been his clearest cry for help yet. And in tandem with his endless talk of blood and gore and ‘lucky’ dead babies, it seemed to signify that there might be a very present danger of him СКАЧАТЬ