Chapter 12 #2
I found a spot to park, not exactly a parking space because everywhere was already full, but from experience that was what schools were like.
A few students walked along the other side of the fence, dressed in blazers and askew school ties, uniform expectations in place even though the day was already warm.
They were late and didn’t care; life had more exciting things to offer than geography and rules about lining up.
I signed in at reception, a rather grainy photo on a sticker presented to me by a woman who looked young enough to actually be a pupil.
“I’ll let Mrs Marsh know that you’re here.” She stood up, and I realised she was a pupil. Maybe I wasn’t as ancient as I thought.
Another woman, one with her hair scraped back into what became a messy bun, came over to the glass window.
“DS McAllister?”
I nodded, flashing my ID.
“I’m Nicola Marriott – it was me you spoke to earlier. I’ll take you through to Anna Marsh, the safeguarding lead.” She looked smarter than most cops, a navy blue suit and pressed shirt fastened up to the collar.
I was buzzed through a door, meeting Nicola on the other side, and followed her down a short corridor to another fobbed door. The walls were peeling in places, the paintwork scuffed and tired.
“Are you looking forward to moving into the new building?” Small talk, but I was interested.
My foster dad was a head teacher and I’d spent parts of holidays in the school building, myself and my foster sisters running in classrooms where we’d normally be forbidden, doing cartwheels across an empty school hall.
When we’d gotten older, we’d sometimes meet him after secondary school had finished if he was working late, hanging around in bittersweet corridors full with the energy of the people who swarmed there in the days.
I believed buildings stored the energy of the people who’d been there, the echoes of their words hanging in the air.
It was the same with this building, only soon it would be empty.
“Yes, I can’t wait to be in a modern office that’s functional.” She fobbed another door into another corridor, this one shorter and one side having windows that looked out into an overgrown courtyard.
“What’s happening to this place?”
“It’s becoming a new housing estate. A shame, but it’s not suitable as a school anymore and there’s such a shortage of housing in the area.
It’ll be a short walk for some kids to get to lessons, but I bet they’ll still be late.
” She knocked on the door at the end of the corridor. A voice shouted to come in.
Nicola led the way into a small office; a desk and chair, and a couple of old sofas facing each other with a table between them.
A woman with short blonde hair and a thin face stood up from behind the desk and slid out. “Detective McAllister, I’m Anna Marsh, the school’s safeguarding lead.”
“Thank you for finding time to see me.” I knew just how busy a school safeguarding lead could be.
“You got lucky. I had a child protection conference scheduled but it’s been postponed. The social worker has an emergency. Happened last week as well.” She gestured to the sofas. “Take a seat.”
The sofa was lacking springs and stuffing, just not in the same places.
Anna sat opposite me, Nicola perching next to her. “Nicola worked here at the same time Lily was a pupil, so we both knew her. I’ve often wondered what happened to her as an adult, whether she’s still in hospital or making a life somewhere for herself. She had a tough time of it.”
“Was it you who made the referral to children’s social care?” I asked Anna.
“It was. Three times. The first two times it didn’t reach threshold, even back then when the threshold was lower.
The third time social care tried to get involved, but parents wouldn’t engage.
It wasn’t enough for a child protection plan, and without that, parents only had to engage voluntarily. It was frustrating.”
“What was Lily like?” I looked between the two of them. The admin staff often knew more about the pupils than the teachers did, seeing them more frequently, particularly if they were often late or in trouble and having meetings.
Nicola leaned forward. “She was a little thing and looked like she should still have been in primary school, her blazer used to hang off her. She would get here really early in the morning and hang around at the front – we didn’t have the gates back then – until we opened at seven forty-five for the kids to come.
When she started she was really quiet and she’d always be on her own. I used to really worry about her.”
“Were there concerns then?”
Anna nodded. “Right from day one. Something was off with her. She would sit at the table in class and just shade in the paper in her exercise book, not listen to the teacher or even say a word. That was until about the November of year nine, when she was thirteen or fourteen and she started hanging around with kids from different schools”
“Which ones?”
“There was a private school that a couple of them, at least, attended, and the others were from Thornsett Academy. Both of them have closed, and years ago as well. Lily said she wanted to move to the academy, and I think her parents wanted that too, but there was no space in her year group for a transfer,” Anna said.
“Her personality completely changed, which isn’t that unusual, but she went from a quiet little mouse of a girl to this wild, fearless teenager.
I think that’s why I remember her so well; it was such a transformation. ”
“This was just before she was arrested?”
Anna tightened her ponytail, fidgeting. “Yes. The lead up to it. She started truanting, and there was petty crime – shoplifting and some vandalism; graffiti and I think she was accused of keying some cars on the council estate. She was in with an older crowd and would go to parties with them, but I don’t think she ever had a boyfriend.
She wasn’t interested, I don’t think. I used to worry about her though; she’d be so easy to take advantage of. ”
“Why did you contact social care?”
“Firstly because of how underweight she was when she started with us, and how she presented. Parents wouldn’t come in for a meeting, and her mum put the phone down on me a couple of times when I raised concerns.
I wondered about neglect, but that’s a really difficult thing to evidence.
The second time was when she told me about the group her parents were involved in; I think it was called The Holding. ”
My ears pricked up and I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I’m just going to make some notes, if that’s okay?”
“That’s fine. She said she had to go to a place every weekend and help in the gardens, or help her mother make jam.
She brought me a jar in once; she was very proud of it because she’d smuggled it out without her parents knowing.
I was concerned that she was being used for child labour as she said enough to concern me.
Social care wasn’t interested because there wasn’t enough evidence and I actually remember the social worker saying that maybe the parents were just doing a good job, keeping their daughter busy.
” Anna sat back, glancing at Nicola. “We were really upset when we found that Lily had been arrested.”
“Did you think she was capable of doing something like that?”
“I think, detective,” Nicola said, “that this job is like yours and nothing really ever surprises you. She was running wild at the time, so I wasn’t surprised that she was involved, but I was surprised she was the only one involved.
Lily was impressionable and easily led. I was shocked it was just her being accused. ”
“Who else would you have thought would’ve been involved?”
Another look passed between them. This time it was Anna who spoke.
“There were two girls in year eleven who Lily was always trying to be with; Scarlett Walton and Adele Holmes. They weren’t bad girls; I quite liked both of them, but they were always out at night, having parties and driving round in cars with older men.
” She sighed, looking out of the window.
“That never changes, the allure of an older boy who has a car.”
“Why did Lily try and hang around with them?”
Anna shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was to get at her parents.
I think she found home rather controlling and was rebelling.
She told me once she wanted to go into care because it would be better than being at home.
I tried to tell her that it wouldn’t, that being in care was hard and not every foster placement was nice, but she’d just shake her head and not look at me. ”
“Is that why she was playing up? So she’d be taken away from her parents?
” I could understand that; I’d had a whole other life before my mother took herself off on the run and left me sitting on the doorstep for Romy McAllister to find me.
She’d done it before, only before she’d left me the key to get in.
“I think so.” Anna looked at Nicola. “We wondered if that was why she set fire to the house, so she didn’t have to live there anymore.”
“I was never convinced she’d have hurt her brothers. I know she hated her parents, but she loved her brothers,” Nicola said, standing up.
“Did George come here?” I seemed to remember he did.
“He did. He was in year eleven when he died. It was a real shock for the kids. He wasn’t a popular student but no one disliked him. He just got on with things,” Nicola said, smoothing her hair back again. I wondered if I’d ever looked as pristine in my life.
“Were there safeguarding concerns about him?” If Anna had been worried about Lily, then there must have been concerns about her brother.