No Place for Nathan by Casey Watson Read Free Book Online Page A

mind, Mrs Watson,’ he said. ‘Better luck next time.’
    It was in the nature of my job that children came, we did what we could with them and then they moved on with their lives. Sometimes they moved back into mainstream classes – our best-case scenario – and sometimes they moved on in other positive ways. To new homes and new schools or to other, specialist ones locally; ones better suited, where appropriate, to their needs. Sometimes – the worst-case scenario – they did neither. They just disappeared – were excluded, or were taken out of school – leaving us frustrated and wondering if we could have done anything differently to achieve a more positive outcome.
    This looked like being one of the latter. Nathan didn’t appear in school for the rest of the week and a phone call eventually established that he was ‘ill’. It wasn’t until the following week that the headmaster called me and Gary into his office, where he let us know that Nathan’s father was removing him from school, on the grounds that we weren’t meeting his needs at the moment and that they were looking into ‘other options’ for him.
    â€˜Can he do that?’ I asked him. ‘Surely the truancy officer would step in, wouldn’t they?’
    â€˜Yes, in theory, in time,’ he said, ‘but, as you know, Casey, these things
take
time.’ We all exchanged looks. He didn’t need to say more. We all knew what we thought was the problem with Nathan, but with him apparently no longer a pupil, there was nothing we could do to help him. It was now going to be in the hands of social services.
    â€˜So that’s it?’ I asked, experiencing a leaden, sinking feeling that would come to be so familiar in the following months and years. It felt all wrong, somehow, to just walk away and try to forget him.
    â€˜That’s it,’ the head agreed. ‘I’m sorry, Casey, but that’s the nature of the beast, sadly. We can only do what we can do during the time we can be of influence. That’s the bottom line. You both did your best.’
    â€˜We can only do what we can do during the time we can be of influence.’ Those words stayed with me all day.
    And all evening, and the next day and the next evening too. So much so that even Mike had to start some counselling training – with me as his very first patient. ‘The headmaster’s right,’ he said. ‘There’s only so much you can do, and you
did
it. Try to be positive. Social services are aware of the allegations, and even if you can’t do anything more to help the boy, they can. They won’t have just dropped it, love; that his father’s taken him out of the school so suddenly will have rung alarm bells for them too, don’t forget.’
    But I couldn’t let it go and, at the end of the following week, I couldn’t resist making a very slight detour on my journey home. I knew I shouldn’t – I could hear Mike’s voice ticking me off even as I walked – but I knew I wouldn’t rest till I’d at least taken a look, even if I had no idea what I’d do when I got there.
    I needn’t have worried. I didn’t even need to think. Because I’d only just started walking up the front-garden path when a voice behind me made me stop and turn around.
    It was a woman’s voice, and when I turned it was to see a lady who looked in her sixties, perhaps, carrying a plastic carrier bag which she was lobbing into a wheelie bin. ‘There’s no one in, love,’ she said, nodding her head towards the house. ‘I just saw him off up the road not ten minutes ago.’
    â€˜Nathan?’ I asked hopefully.
    â€˜Their lad?’ She shook her head. ‘No, love. He’s run off. I meant his dad.’
    â€˜Run off?’ I said, startled at her matter-of-fact manner.
    â€˜So I’ve heard. So his father says, anyway.