tell you the truth.’
She laughed, gently nudging my upper arm with her epauletted shoulder. ‘It’d do my head in being cooped up with my lot for days on end. That’s why I always volunteer for the holiday shift.’
I gave her a complicit smile but, for me, it was more the distraction I was grateful for than an escape from the demands of close family. The initial call about Angell came through from my fostering agency just after lunchtime and since then I had made two aborted trips to collect him. There was lots to do at home but Sarah, a new-born baby I had looked after for six weeks, had moved into her forever home just seven days earlier and my arms were still feeling empty without her nestled there. The drama was just what I needed to stop me fretting about how well she was settling with her new parents.
Besides, I had made good use of the time. Children often come into care with only the clothes they were standing up in and so, in the last few available shopping hours, I had bought some essentials – a waterproof all-in-one coat, thick pyjamas, hat, gloves, tops and trousers – as well as some toys that I thought a four-year-old might like.
My own children, Emily and Jamie, were still busily wrapping the gifts when I left the house for the third time, their grandmother replacing the sparkly curtains in the spare room with a pair featuring Fireman Sam. ‘Red tape was it?’ I asked, reaching down for the duffel bag then following the officer through a security door and down a long, nondescript corridor.
‘Oh no, not this time, for a change,’ Jo said, throwing a wry smile over her shoulder. ‘I mean, they’re running a skeleton staff at social services today so it took a while to get hold of a social worker but the main issue was Mum.’ Jo half-turned towards me again when she reached another door. ‘She needs medical attention but she’s been refusing to go anywhere without the boy.’
Adeptly, the officer punched a four-digit code into an entry system and I followed her through to another corridor, loud shouts filtering through from the floor below. Heightened yells and a clunk followed, presumably the slamming of a viewing hatch or perhaps a lock being secured. ‘She’s refusing to talk to us unless we agree to keep them together. The only way we could calm her down was to promise she could meet you. I hope you don’t mind. She put up a real fight.’
‘Of course I don’t mind,’ I said, shaking my head. Maternal aggression has always fascinated me: mothers turning fearless and laying down their lives if their offspring are threatened. In the words of Stephen King, ‘There’s no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.’ Jo sounded personally affronted by what she dismissed as ‘a lot of silly fuss’ but I was happy to talk to Angell’s mother and try to put her mind at rest. Not many parents would be comfortable with sending their child off with a total stranger.
‘This whole building has been sold off. We’re moving into the civic centre in the New Year and the interview rooms are loaded with confidential files so we’ve had to accommodate mother and child in the custody suite. Not ideal,’ she said, glancing back, ‘but with Mum getting a bit feisty it probably wasn’t a bad idea to keep them somewhere secure.’
I was about to answer when the sound of a voice, shrill and unhinged, reached me. Jo charged ahead down a flight of metal stairs and an image popped into my head of an anguished woman, hair wild, face streaked with tears. I wondered whether the screams were coming from Angell’s mother – it sounded as if she wasn’t going to relinquish her child without a fight. My stomach lurched, worried about what sort of state Angell might be in. It was such a stressful situation to be plunged into. I had seen it a few times now – mothers so desperate to keep their babies that they attempted to snatch them during contact, particularly when their final, goodbye forever session loomed.
The act seemed to infuriate some of the contact supervisors. They regarded absconding as an act of selfishness but I knew that if I had found myself in that situation when Emily and Jamie were small, the lioness in me would have stirred. Most attempts fail but there have been cases where young children and even babies have gone missing from care, some never to be found again. It took me a while to realise that even neglectful or abusive mothers have a primordial instinct to hold on to their offspring.
Jo interrupted my thoughts, coming to a halt outside another heavy-looking door, this one armoured like a fortress. She turned to face me, slipping her thumbs into the top of her utility belt. A pair of handcuffs glinted silver in the artificial light. ‘How much have you been told?’
‘Well, not a lot really. I know he’s four. I know Mum was arrested this morning for assaulting a police officer. That’s about it.’
She gave a curt nod. ‘Poor little bugger was scared silly. Nicki, that’s Mum, turned up at the playground twenty minutes after he’d been found, claiming that he’d wandered off.’ Jo signalled her scepticism by making quote marks with her fingers. ‘When we told her we’d be contacting social services she kicked off big style, right in front of him. He’s very timid. Been stuck here all day and we haven’t heard a peep out of him yet, except for all the sobbing.’
My heart squeezed a little but Jo carried on, briskly and unmoved.
‘Anyway, what can you do with them?’ She asked the question with a shrug and then turned her attention back to the security pad. It struck me as a little unfair to pigeonhole Angell’s mother with all the criminals Jo had dealt with over the years, as if they were all equally culpable with no varying degrees or mitigating circumstances.
Jo swiped a security card under a flashing red laser fixed to the wall and after a series of small clicks the light turned green. Inside the custody suite there was a high counter stretching across the length of the space, punctuated at even intervals with computer terminals. Thick plastic shields were fixed to the back of each PC, presumably to protect the technology from rowdy prisoners. A heavy-set officer glanced up from behind one of the desks as I followed Jo towards a row of doors, his look of boredom giving way to one of slight surprise as I passed by.
‘In here,’ Jo said quietly and I took a breath as she opened one of the doors, daunted and faintly embarrassed by the unenviable task ahead. We walked into a small, nondescript room with nothing in it but a desk and two metal chairs. Surprised, I was about to turn and ask Jo where the family were when I noticed a cloudy glass partition in the wall. On the other side of the glass was a room mirroring our own, except there, sprawled on one of the chairs with her legs open, was a young woman. It was a relief to see that she was sitting placidly, her arms around the small boy on her lap. Framing her face in a drab black curtain was her hair, long, tangled and unwashed. Her eyes were heavily shadowed with dark rings, one of them swollen and red, as if she’d been punched. She seemed dazed but calm, her lips moving as if singing. Close to sleep, her son was leaning into her with his mouth slightly open, eyes flickering.
‘We use this room for observing interviews,’ Jo said with a tilt of her head. ‘It’s a one-way mirror so Mum can’t see us. She’s what we call a “reluctant detainee” so I just wanted to give you the heads-up on how we’re going to play it if she kicks off again. You wait by the door. I’ll introduce you and Mum can have a few words. Then I’ll take him,’ she said this with a resolute nod. ‘I’ll need you to leave straight away, no half measures. Any hesitation will only make things worse.’
I nodded but I was only half-listening to Jo, my chest beginning to tighten with anxiety.
‘Right then,’ she said and I followed her out of the room. Jo hesitated outside the next door for a fraction of a second. Rolling her shoulders back, she closed her eyes and took a little breath before bowling ahead, a telling indication of her true feelings. I felt a flash of admiration for her then: she really was quite petite, her stature incongruous with the heavy stab vest and telescopic baton dangling from her waist.
As
