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

Run off to some auntie or other somewhere.’ She flipped the wheelie-bin lid down. ‘Not surprised,’ she added drily. ‘Funny kid, that one. Weird boy.’
    She ambled back off up her path then. I hurried home.
    This development did nothing to quell my conviction that Nathan could, and probably would, now slip through the net. Was it true, even, what I’d been told? I wondered. A big part of me doubted it. Could it not just be some line the father was spinning to get people off his case? And even if it was true, what would happen about following up on his disclosures? Would that happen? In theory, it should, but what if he’d left the area altogether? If that were the case, he would presumably come under the jurisdiction of a completely different social services office. How efficient were one lot of social services at communicating with another? I didn’t know, but I didn’t feel very positive. I had been around the block too many times.
    So when a note from the head arrived in my pigeonhole a couple of days later, I read it with interest but not optimism. ‘
Could you pop in and see me later? News on Nathan Greaves
’ was all it said, and though I was keen to hear the news, I didn’t expect it to be good.
    But, in fact, it was the best news. Well, under the circumstances, at least the most encouraging. ‘He’s been temporarily taken into care,’ the headmaster told me, without preamble. ‘When they began investigating his disclosures to you regarding the Michael character, it came to light that he lived just down the road and is a convicted paedophile. Out now, but obviously breaking the terms of his discharge. So we have some progress.’
    â€˜Oh, poor Nathan …’ I murmured. ‘But progress is good.’
    â€˜Anyway,’ he continued, ‘as I was just saying to Gary here, the other reason I asked you to pop up was to see what your timetable is like. As the teacher who’s spent most time with Nathan over the past couple of months, his social worker wondered if you’d be able to spare a couple of hours this week to attend a pre-placement meeting with the pair of foster carers they’ve found for him. He’s already with them, but Nathan’s social worker felt it would be useful for you to see them – to give them some insight into his somewhat complex emotional needs.’
    â€˜How about tomorrow?’ I said.
    Nathan was being Jenny when I visited. He squealed with delight when he saw me, throwing his skinny arms around me and telling me, in his high-pitched Jenny voice, how much he had missed me. ‘We’re making Christmas decorations, Miss,’ he said excitedly, ‘and I shall make one for you specially. You can put it in your posh office then, can’t you?’
    His foster mum, a lovely middle-aged lady called Caroline, agreed that they’d do exactly that and, having promised him that they’d go up to school and deliver it personally, told him that we needed to have a chat.
    Nathan skipped off without argument and we spent a productive 20 minutes comparing notes about her singular little charge, and the various challenges he might bring in the time he was with her while social services waited on the psychologist’s assessment and decided what best to do in the short term.
    â€˜I’m going to miss him,’ I said. ‘I’ve been so anxious about what might have happened to him. I still am. It’s that horrible not-knowing thing, isn’t it?’
    She smiled. ‘I’ve racked up a fair few of those over the years, believe me, Casey. Sometimes it works out fine, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you know that, even though you can hardly bear to think about it, they will, in the end, go back to the same sort of lives they had before – and, in some cases, even do it willingly.’
    I thought about Nathan going home and nothing having changed.