This book is dedicated to all those who work with children in any capacity. I am filled with admiration for those who strive to make a difference in the lives of those who need someone to listen.
I would like to thank my wonderful agent, Andrew, and Vicky and her team of super beings at HarperCollins who work tirelessly to ensure my words make it out there. As ever, special thanks to my friend and mentor Lynne, who is there, always, to get me back on track no matter what dramas life bestows.
There are jobs and there are jobs, and my perfect kind of job has always been the kind where you wake up Monday morning with no idea what the week might have in store.
Which was exactly the kind of job I did have, so it was definitely a blessing that my home life was, in contrast, so predictable.
‘Mu-um!’ came my daughter’s plaintive voice from upstairs. ‘I can’t find my other black shoe! I have five minutes to get out of the door and I can’t find it anywhere! Have you seen it? Someone’s obviously moved it!’
I shook my head and sighed. That was typical of Riley. She was 18 now and we were so alike, in so many ways. Same black hair, same laugh, same taste in music and fashion. But in one important respect we were different. Where it was my life’s mission to try and make the world a tidier place, Riley was the opposite: she was just about the most disorganised person I knew. I knew where her shoe would be. It would, same as ever, be in exactly the same place as it landed when she last flung it off.
I headed upstairs anyway, however, because I had the luxury of an hour till I needed to leave for work, whereas she really did only have five – no, four – minutes. She’d secured a great job after leaving college, and she was really enjoying it. She worked in a travel agents, which she said gave her ‘that holiday feeling every day’. But it wasn’t a holiday – there was an end time and, more pertinently, a start time. Just as well she had such an understanding boss.
I was halfway up the stairs when she appeared on the landing. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, hopping as she pulled the errant shoe on to her foot. ‘Panic over. Someone must have kicked it under my bed.’
‘Er, excuse me?’ I chided, as she came down to join me. ‘Someone? Which someone might that be?’
In answer she planted a quick kiss on my cheek, then she was out of the door to catch her bus with only seconds to spare. I waved her off, thinking wistfully of how it might feel to be 18 again, off to work without a care in the world.
The children in my own world were different. Well, the ones I spent my weekdays with, at any rate. I worked as a behaviour manager in a big inner-city comprehensive school, so the kids that came my way were the opposite of carefree. They came to spend time with me for a variety of different reasons, but what they had in common was that they couldn’t cope in a mainstream school setting. My job, as well as providing a safe space in which they could work, was to assess them and decide upon the best course of action, which could involve counselling them, teaching them coping techniques and/or, in some cases, referral to outside agencies that could help them, such as professional counsellors and clinical psychologists. Sometimes it could be as simple as formulating a temporary alternative curriculum, and other times it could end up being protracted and complex – where a child’s difficulties were too severe to be dealt with using mainstream school facilities, for example, it might mean a transfer to a live-in establishment that had the staff and facilities appropriate to their needs. And in extreme cases, where the children were deemed to be at risk at home, social services might be brought in and the child placed in care.
Either way, mine was a job that, though often challenging, was never boring, but with the growing numbers of children getting referred to me in the six months since I’d been there, it could also at times be very stressful.
With Riley gone to work, that just left me and my son Kieron at home, with my husband Mike, who was a warehouse manager, long gone too. And home was where I suspected Kieron would stay most of the day. It was the end of September – three weeks into a new academic year – and Kieron was finding life hard to cope with. He was 16 now and had left school back in June without a plan. And with his friends either back in school or college, or even working, he felt a bit rootless – the change in routine had really unsettled him. Kieron has Asperger’s, a very mild form of autism, so all change is difficult for him to manage, and the big question – try for college, get a job, do an apprenticeship? – was still to be settled and was weighing heavily on his mind.
And ours too, and would continue to do so till Kieron worked out what he felt was the best path for him; something there would be no point in rushing. No point plunging into something only to find out it was the wrong thing – that would only stress him out more.
So we needed to be patient – though right now I had other things to think about anyway. Having my final cup of coffee, throwing something for dinner into the slow cooker and making sure the house looked the way I wanted it to look when I returned home at the end of the day.
Well, hopefully, anyway. I gave my work shoes a quick polish before slipping them on my feet and grimacing at my reflection in the hall mirror. That was the one major downside of doing what I did – that I had to get so trussed up to do it. Smart black skirt and jacket, black tights, shiny shoes. And a crisp stripy blouse – it was all so not me! I’ve always been much more of a jogging bottoms and T-shirt type, more a ‘bundle my unruly hair any-which-way into a ponytail’ sort of woman than one who enjoys spending hours in front of a mirror blow-drying it and having to wear make-up all day.
But there was no choice, not if I wanted to be seen as a professional. Part of my job involved meetings with fellow professionals – head teachers, social workers, educational welfare staff, educational psychologists – so I had learned quickly what the sartorial rules were. I needed to dress to impress if I was going to by taken seriously – an uncomfortable sacrifice for someone like me. I’d rather spend time with a hundred unruly teenagers than be sat around a conference table with adults of that calibre – intimidating was what it was, even if necessary.
As ever, however, all thoughts of anything other than the job in hand left my mind as soon as I walked through the school gates, and I was greeted by the usual cacophony of shrieks and yells that were synonymous with every Monday morning.
‘Morning, Miss – did you have a nice weekend?’
‘Miss! Brandon Smith’s been telling lies about me!’
‘Mrs Watson, can I come to you instead of doing PE today?’
Smiling at the little crowd that threatened to engulf me, I pointed at the oversized hall clock. ‘We’ll have plenty of time to catch up later,’ I reassured the group around me. ‘And yes, I did have a nice weekend, thank you, but right now it’s time you all got off to registration.’ I grinned at them. ‘And guess what I need?’
‘Coffee!’ came the chorus, as the kids began dispersing. ‘Coffee, Miss, you’re off to get your coffee!’
They weren’t wrong. My love of coffee was almost as well known about me as my love of creating order out of chaos. Not that the staffroom
