she’s quite charming, and seems to have done okay for herself, this is a woman for whom the word “empathy” might as well be written in Mandarin; someone who uses and abuses as a default. And we all know how it works, I’m sure –’ He glanced around the room and he was right. We all knew exactly what he was talking about. ‘These people are often very charismatic and independent-minded, aren’t they? They certainly don’t wear a badge saying “avoid at all costs”, do they?’
And also shrewd. Imogen’s father, cuckolded and left and hurt as he was, would have been an obvious target. Was she holidaying alone on one of his coach trips when she snared him? ‘So what will happen to her now?’ I asked, managing to feel only marginally less forgiving of her. Though, given her background, I knew I should, I still couldn’t forget what she’d done to Imogen.
‘She’s been charged and she will be prosecuted for cruelty and neglect. And if she doesn’t exactly learn the error of her ways, we can at least hope it will deter her from striking up any new relationships with men who have children to consider. We’ll obviously let you know how things progress, but as far as Imogen is concerned this period is over and we’re going to be working with the family to get her life back on track. And – hopefully – that will feed into progress with her speech therapy.’
I was just about to ask if there was anything in particular that I should or shouldn’t be doing with Imogen in the light of recent developments, when the meeting was interrupted by a knock at the door.
It was a delicate knock – one that immediately said child rather than adult – and, had anyone been talking, we might not have even heard it.
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