The Silent Witness: Part 2 of 3

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‘Have you told a big lie, then, Bella? Is that it?’ I stroked her back again. ‘Something you want to tell me about?’

She chewed her bottom lip for a long time before speaking. Was she about to recount what she’d witnessed at long last? The silence stretched. ‘Because you can, you know,’ I added eventually. ‘If you want to. If you think it’ll help.’

She shook her head then, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. Did I ask her if the headshake was because she hadn’t told a lie, or if she had but had opted not to share it?

‘It’s okay, love,’ I said, conscious that to press her would be inappropriate. I must never lead. Only listen. That particular fostering edict was, rightly, set in stone. Instead, I returned to the currently pressing matter of our address being known.

‘Sweetheart, listen,’ I said, after she’d stared into the middle distance for so long that it was almost as if she’d forgotten I was there. (If this had been a moment, then it had, for the moment, passed.)

She turned her gaze back on me. ‘Have you been chatting to friends on Facebook?’ I asked.

Her answering nod was instant. Something else that had been weighing heavily?

Another pause, then: ‘You know last week, when you came up and asked me how the geography project I was researching was going? I hadn’t been doing it. I’d been on Facebook, even though I knew I wasn’t allowed to.’ I remained silent. ‘I just so wanted to speak to my best friend,’ she finished.

Her best friend. She’d been almost a month with us now and this had finally been acknowledged.

‘What’s her name?’ I asked.

‘Ruby.’

‘Ruby and Bella,’ I said. ‘Two lovely names together. You must miss seeing her. And her you. Have you been friends a long time or did you meet at high school?’

‘Since I was eight,’ she said. ‘When she came to my primary school. She doesn’t go to my high school. I wish she did.’ Bella’s chin wobbled. ‘She hates her new school. I miss us going to the library together. That’s what we did lots, at the weekends. Everyone calls us both geeks.’

‘Well they’re idiots,’ I said firmly. ‘And what utter nonsense. Don’t they realise? Libraries are one of the cornerstones of a civilised society. I read that somewhere,’ I added. ‘Probably in a library book, come to think about it …’

This elicited a ghost of a smile. I decided to seize this new moment. All these moments were still steps on the longer journey, after all. ‘Listen, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘I’m not cross about Facebook. You know you did wrong, and that’s good enough for me. And you know, as long as you don’t put our address on it – same as with your mum – you can write a letter to Ruby, too – every day, if you like. And she can write back to you, care of social services. But listen, love, might you have accidentally told Ruby where you’re staying? You know, have you told her our address?’

She lay still for a moment, then screwed up her eyes. ‘I did …’ she said, finally. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry, Casey. I did. We were just chatting …’

‘What, in a private message?’ I asked hopefully.

She frowned. ‘No, on her timeline, under a comment. Just under a comment to each other, not on the main thread, to everyone … so it’s not like people would see it automatically or anything … but … oh, I’m such an idiot.’

She might as well have been speaking to me in Finnish. ‘But her friends could still see it …’

‘Yes, but not properly. Not without clicking on the “replies” button. Oh, God, I’m so sorry. She was just asking how far away I was.’ She heaved herself back up to a sitting position. ‘And I only said your road … not your number – I didn’t even remember the number, so I wouldn’t have done. It was only because her auntie lives round here, that’s all … and she thought she might know it …’ She wiped her eyes against the backs of her hands. ‘Why? Does it matter? I can delete it all. I can do that straight away. I’m so sorry. I thought you’d be cross because I was looking at all the horrible things people have been saying … I didn’t think it was –’

‘Have they?’

She nodded miserably. ‘About my mum. And my dad, too. But mostly my mum. I hate them. They don’t know anything!’

Antennae all a-twitch now, I reached out to comfort her. ‘Hey, hey,’ I said, drawing her to me again. ‘Let’s not even given them a second thought. You’re quite right. What do they know? Nothing. About anything. Which is exactly why they are best ignored.’

And because I could sense we had arrived at a new level of openness, I decided to back-track a little, for fear of saying something that might slam the door shut again.

‘Listen,’ I said again. ‘Let’s just sort out what we can. You know, you putting where you’re staying up on Ruby’s Facebook. Let’s get that sorted, eh? And you know, it’s not even about you. It’s just that Mike and I have to be very, very careful about things like that – about who knows where we live. Because of all the other children we look after, it has to be kept private.’

Bella nodded and sniffed. ‘Well, if I go back on I can delete it all right now. Would that help?’ she asked.

‘Absolutely,’ I said, rising from the bed and holding out my hand. ‘And maybe you could message Ruby and explain you’ll write to her – the old-fashioned way – instead. Come on, kiddo,’ I said, ‘let’s go and do some damage limitation, then, shall we?’

The question, of course, was where the damage had been done. Who had seen what. Who had decided what. Who had said what. What network of connections flowed out from those timelines. What wider feeling was prevalent re Bella’s parents. Mostly about my mum, Bella had said, re all the vitriol.

This time, I would hover very closely.

Chapter 10 (#ube83fefb-7f97-5647-8086-a913db5cfa6f)

If Bella’s response to seeing her mum had been both emotional and regressive (her appetite was extremely poor for the next few days – in solidarity, perhaps?) her response to news of her stepfather was entirely different.

‘He’s been discharged from hospital,’ Sophie told her, at the beginning of the following week. She’d come round specifically for the purpose of imparting this news.

Bella’s reaction was immediate. ‘He hasn’t gone home to our house, has he?’ she wanted to know. She looked anxiously at me. ‘They wouldn’t let him, would they? There’s all the forensics! And what if he’s seen where I’m living?’ She was becoming increasingly agitated. ‘He might be angry at me and come looking for me!’

So, finally, the reasons why Bella should avoid putting stuff on Facebook had sunk in. And she was right. Her father could have seen her whereabouts as easily as anyone else. Not that our joint foray onto the site had borne much other fruit; not in terms of actual intelligence. Well, other than the fact that Bella – not long twelve – had already amassed some three hundred-odd friends, including old friends and new friends and various mums of friends, too, because, she told me, ‘Mums always like to be friends with you if you let them. It’s so they can see what you’re up to once you’re a teenager.’

I had elicited Tyler’s view on that point. ‘Course they do,’ he’d told me, looking surprised that I’d even asked about it. ‘She’s completely right. How else d’you think they’re going to keep an eye on them. D’oh, Mum!’

He’d then gone on to point out that people used social media in different ways. Some used the ‘don’t put up anything you wouldn’t want your granny seeing’ system, which obviously meant much of interest to interested adults was filtered out. ‘Anyway, we’ve got WhatsApp and Snapchat for important stuff now,’ he added, winking mysteriously.