Kennedy
I rarely drink, especially not on a week night, but completing my final writeup and filing Anna’s case notes into the archive room is more than enough to drive me to a few after work. I tidy my desk and take one final look at Anna’s muddy boot prints before shutting down my PC for the day.
None of us here are miracle workers. We do our best, but not every case on our books has a happy ending. I’ve watched kids grow into adults with even bigger challenges than the ones they faced in the chair opposite me. I’ve lost good kids to a life of drugs in Bristol or Birmingham once they’ve taken a one-way ticket out of our sleepy county for pastures new. You hear about them, the ones who didn’t make it. It’s not a rare event that we get enquiries from lawyers and prosecutors digging for background information for their criminal cases.
Some support workers can’t handle the disappointment. For others of us, we take the rough with the smooth – finding encouragement in the kids that we do manage to make a difference to, even just a little. We use the disappointments to harden our steel, determined to do better next time. That’s how I should be feeling about Anna. That’s how I have to feel about Anna.
My best clearly wasn’t good enough to reach her, not in five months. Maybe not in five years. Maybe not ever. Not within the framework of our agency guidelines, not with half an hour per week to work miracles and tick all the policy boxes.
It’s a hard pill to swallow.
I wonder if she’ll end up back in Gloucester. That’s where she came from before she ended up staying with Bill and Rosie. I was at one of their earliest meetings with the agency, when she was first listed on our books. The foster agency thought the countryside may agree with her, the slower pace of life may help her edginess. I can’t see that it has, but the thought was a good one.
Pam Clowes, one of my fellow support workers, pats my shoulder as I head out for the evening, giving me one of her kindly smiles that tells me we can’t win them all.
In truth, we can’t win all that many of them, not with so many factors stacked against us. We really are just small cogs in a big social machine, and our jurisdiction doesn’t carry all that much weight. Support, that’s all we can offer – giving kids an ear and a voice through us when it’s needed, but what difference can that really make to a girl who doesn’t want either?
Anna told me once that the only home she’ll ever have is on the road. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen her face truly light up, and the image is burned in my memory for all time.
I’m strangely tempted to withdraw my savings and buy her a wagon, but even if she’d accept it, that would never do. It would be against every safeguarding practice in our handbook and then some.
Being fired would be incomprehensible – both for me and all the kids who need me. But just occasionally, in bed at night, I wonder if a wild spark like Anna would be worth dropping everything for. You couldn’t get more cliché a description of a mid-life crisis, so it’s just as well I have my stable best friend, Riven, to talk me down.
I told him once, after too many whiskies, that if I was ten years younger – alright, fifteen years younger – I’d run away with a girl like Anna. We could travel around on some magical gypsy adventure, she and I, in a little wagon working the land and selling sprigs of heather.
Riven told me I was a fucking idiot and sent me back to my apartment to sleep off my crazy admission, of course. I took it all back in the morning, but there’s no fooling that guy. He knows me far too well.
His astuteness and his sensibilities are exactly the reasons I message him tonight.
He replies to my text before I’m even through the office doors.
She’s gone?
My reply is hard even to type. Gone. Done. Off my books.
I can imagine his sharp inhalation of breath. My phone pings a few seconds later.
Drury’s Tavern. I’ll be there in fifteen.
I loosen my tie as I head across the street. Our little town of Lydney is only a small place but it’s all I’ve ever known. Riven and I grew up around these parts, went to the same school then college, but I stayed local, studying social care while he aimed for the stars and landed a business management degree at Warwick.
I’m surprised he came back here, but it turns out it was a good career move on his part. He set up an insurance agency the best part of a decade ago and it’s doing great. Big premiums in agriculture, he tells me, a niche market he’s done well to crack. Just as well he’s around, considering how much I’ve needed his sound words these past few months.
On the face of it our lives are very different now. I’m still living in a bland apartment in the centre of town – he has a sprawling house on the outskirts with plenty of land. I’m driving a safe old Ford, whereas he has a Range Rover with all the optional extras.
Riven’s made it financially, but my work matters, at least that’s what I tell myself.
I see him heading down the high street in the opposite direction before I’ve even made it to Drury’s. He cuts a fine image in his tailored suit. The dark grey matches the salt and pepper of his hair, a stylish bastard even though he’s ageing more noticeably than me. I guess that’s what building up a business does to you.
I hold the door until he joins me, and he slaps me on the back as we head inside. Drury’s is one of those typical small-town drinking holes. A dimly lit bar with a good selection of local ales and a random collection of tables and chairs that don’t match, but it suits the place. We head to the bar, and Riven orders. The first slug of ale goes down a treat, and we head over to a table in the corner by the open fire. Riven kicks back and takes off his tie. He rolls it around his fist and slips it into his inside pocket, then he eyes me with that easy smile I’ve come to know so well over the years.
“Rough day, then?”
I breathe out a sigh. “Can’t win ‘em all.”
“No,” he says. “You can’t. What’s going to become of the little madam?”
I shrug. “Hopefully she’ll be able to stay where she is. Hopefully she’ll even change her mind about college.”
He’s never seen Anna Josephine, but he’s heard enough to be as sceptical as I am. “Not your problem anymore,” he tells me. “You did what you could.”
“What if everyone just did what they could and it’s not enough?”
He leans forward. “You need to rein in that social conscience, you’ll find it easier to sleep at night.”
“I sleep just fine,” I lie.
“Dreaming of your wild princess, no doubt.” His smile is bright. “We should hit Cheltenham for a night out, see if we can’t hook you up with someone who isn’t either far too young or determined to self-destruct.”
The thought of meeting someone else seems distant. I’ve had no appetite for dating and all that crap since things ended with me and Molly last year. That’s one thing Riven and I still have in common – we’re both not-so-lucky in love. Riven was engaged for a while to some posh cow from Oxford who was far more interested in his business prospects than she was in him. That ended recently and explosively, but he doesn’t seem too hung up on it.
In the main, while I was cooped up with Molly, Riven fucked around. I wouldn’t even like to guess how many women he’s had in his bed and in his life. But still, having taken very different roads, here we both are, single and ageing a little more every month.
“Maybe you should hit Cheltenham,” I say. “The women there are more your type.”
“The women there are anyone’s type after a couple of large wines, don’t let the pretentiousness of the place fool you.” He swigs back his beer, then stares at me. “You’ll get over this. Give it some time.”
“There’s nothing to get over. She was on my books and now she’s not.”
“You give a shit about her, that’s likely more than anyone else can say about the girl.”
“Sad but true.” I sip my beer but my throat feels tight. My whole body feels tight. “I can’t just let her walk away. She’ll head straight into trouble.”
Riven straightens in his seat. “Trouble that isn’t your problem. You need to get a grip of this, Kennedy. She’s gone.”
“I achieved nothing.”
He sighs. “Who knows what difference you made to her? It’s impossible to say how our words impact another, and if your advice wasn’t welcome now there’s nothing to say she won’t remember it later.”
I raise my glass. “To your excellent words.”
He raises his. “May you heed them.”
My gut feels strangely bereft. A sense of loss below the struggle for rationality. Maybe I need a support worker myself after suffering the Anna Josephine effect.
I take a deep breath, attempting to quell my inner turmoil.
“She’s gone,” I say, as if saying it out loud will put a lid on it.
“That she is,” he replies. “May she be blessed with a long and fruitful life, wherever that may take her.”
“Far away from here most likely.”
“You should hope so, for your own sanity,” Riven says, and he’s right.
I should hope I don’t see Anna Josephine again. I should hope that she’s picked up by other agencies and they manage to succeed where I’ve failed. I should hope that she finds happiness with a young, spirited guy her own age, someone decent and caring. I should hope that she finds the love she’s so sorely missed in her life this far.
I should hope she’s found it within herself to offer up a genuine apology to Bill and Rosie and ask for another chance. Maybe she has. Maybe they’re all having a heart to heart right now down the road in Lydbrook, sharing a cup of tea in Rosie’s warm kitchen.
But no.
Of course not.
I hear her voice before I see her. I’d recognise that cackle anywhere, full of life and mischief rolled together. The bar door creaks on its big old hinges and in stumbles a guy in a hoodie who used to be on our books a few years back. Eddie Stevens, son of a bricklayer who sold drugs from the back of his van over in Gloucester.
Anna stumbles on in after him, and my beer catches in my throat.
Her pale cheeks are flushed pink and her legs seem bandy. Drunk. She’s fucking drunk.
Eddie lurches into the bar and she follows him, points out a tequila bottle on the back shelf.
Riven turns slowly in his seat, looks from them to me and back again.
“Is that–”
“Yes,” I say.
“Sweet Jesus,” he mutters, “but she’s–”
“Underage,” I finish. “Yes, she is.”
He slams a hand on my wrist as I rise from my seat. “Not. Your. Problem,” he says and his grey eyes are icy.
I shake him off more roughly than I intend.
Anna Eddie is an idiot, but he’s fun enough and he’s paying. He brought me a couple of beers out to the back of the George and Dragon, then we dashed into the Brewers Arms for one before stumbling down the street to Drury’s Tavern. I’m already past dinner time back at Rosie and Bill’s, but who gives a shit. Not them, that’s for sure. It’s probably a relief. Eddie swings open the big door of Drury’s and I follow him in. I’ve been drinking on an empty stomach and it’s gone to my head, but I don’t care. Why should I? Nobody else does. I’ve barely got enough bus money to get home to Lydbrook and the timetable is pathetic here. The last bus leaves about six, and I’m sure I’ve missed it already, but that feels hazy now. Maybe I can bunk up with Eddie tonight. I don’t want him, but I’m sure he wants me, and that’s bound to be enough to get me somewhere to sleep at least. I’ll kick him in the balls if he tries to grope me. If he doesn’t let me stay after that, I’ll sleep outside. I’ve don
KennedyI don’t let go of Anna’s wrist as I head across the High Street towards my apartment building’s car parking area. I curse under my breath as I check for bystanders. This town is full of eyes and ears and there’s every chance the fake news that I dragged Anna back to mine will hit my office before I do in the morning. I could do without that, not least because I’ll have questions to answer that won’t look great on my employment file. I don’t give a fuck what they say about me, but if stupid rumours were to impact the kids on my caseload… It doesn’t bear thinking about.I’m crazy for getting involved, but I can’t stop. My feet take it upon themselves to keep on walking, my heart hammering while my mind spins with justifications for my actions, even though I know there are other ways to handle this.I could’ve looked up Rosie and Bill’s number and called them out to collect her. I could’ve opened up the office and made her wait in reception with me until they arrived.I pull my c
“Not anymore,” she says, and I’m pleased to pass the sign for Lydbrook. My neck feels itchy under my collar, my palms sweaty on the wheel. She points out Bill and Rosie’s on the right, but I’m already turning. I pull onto their driveway and their Labrador starts barking from the porch. Anna is out of the car in a heartbeat. She gives me nothing but a cursory thanks before she slams the passenger door and heads to the house alone, but that’s not how this ends. I follow her, catching her on the doorstep just as she’s trying the handle. It’s locked. It surprises me, but it is. She hammers on the wood with her fist. “Do you not have a key?” I ask. She shakes her head. “They don’t want me to have one.” Don’t trust her with one, more likely. I shouldn’t blame them, knowing her, but I can’t help but feel hurt on her behalf. It’s Bill who comes to the front door. He looks drawn and grey as he answers, his face a grimace until he sees me standing alongside his ward. “Kennedy,” he say
AnnaBill doesn’t even care that I hear him. In the early days they would whisper or talk about me behind closed doors where they didn’t know I was listening. But not now.Now Bill and Rosie don’t give a shit that I know what they think of me.Bill’s words carry loud and clear. The little window in the room I sleep in is open, and his voice reaches me perfectly. So does Kennedy’s.The girl is a vicious little bitch. She’s a fucking nightmare. A disgusting, vindictive little shit.Bill, please…Of course the answer was no. I knew it would be. They hate me, both of them, and I don’t blame them.I didn’t spit in Rosie’s stew though, I just pretended to. She wouldn’t believe me when I said I hadn’t really. She threw the whole lot in the sink and told me I was a horrible girl. And then she cried.She flapped her arms about and called for Bill and told him she was done with me, that they were all done with me.And I shrugged and said I didn’t care, that I didn’t give a fuck about her shitty
hear Bill and Rosie in the kitchen downstairs loading up the dishwasher. My stomach rumbles, but they don’t offer me anything to eat, and I don’t expect them to.I missed dinnertime.I’ll have to sneak downstairs when they’re in bed and grab something from their pantry. They’ve started hiding stuff from me these past few weeks, but I know Rosie keeps some chocolate in her sewing tin.They’ve already got a kid lined up to replace me, I heard them on the phone to the agency talking about it. I think he’s called Leo.I hope he’s a better kid for them than I’ve been, and I hope he likes this place as much as I do.The thought of leaving here makes me feel more upset than it should. I ball my hands into fists and choke back stupid tears that I don’t deserve.I could’ve stayed if I was better.I could’ve stayed if they hadn’t seen the bruises on my arms and thought I was into drugs or self-harm, or a load of other things that made them look at me in those ways I hate.Pity and fear and dis
RivenI wait for a text from Kennedy letting me know he’s done dropping his drunk infatuation back home where she belongs, but it doesn’t come. I despair for the guy and his midlife crisis.This thing with Anna Josephine, it isn’t like him. Kennedy is responsible and considered. He plays by more rules than he should in life, certainly more than I do, and if there’s one he should choose to break it’s definitely not this one.I’m about to call the crazy sonofabitch when I hear his car pull up outside. He’s had the same car for over a decade, I’d recognise the sound anywhere.I’ve already opened the door when he reaches my doorstep. He brushes past me without a word, and I follow him on through to the kitchen to grab the beer we didn’t manage at Drury’s.I hand him a bottle and he slumps himself against my kitchen island.“They’re going to throw her onto the streets,” he says, and I sigh.“Not. Your. Problem.”“I’ve been working with her for over five months,” he tells me, like I don’t k
AnnaI walked for hours before I was too tired to keep going. I wake up feeling groggy, my neck stiff from using my backpack as a pillow. It takes me a second to remember where I am.Shit.I’m in one of the old bike sheds at the back of Lydney Primary School. My arms feel stiff as I stretch them and my feet are like blocks of ice in my crappy boots. I’m starving hungry, too. My belly rumbles the minute I sit up, and I have to fight back the panic as I realise I don’t have either food or money to help fill it back up again.Part of me wants to go back to Bill and Rosie’s and say sorry. Maybe if I asked kindly enough, maybe if I begged… but there’s no way I’m gonna beg those dicks. No way.They hate me and I hate them. I can take care of myself, just as my ancestors did.I get to my feet and shake them out a bit, trying to get back the feeling. I’m not scared of the outdoors, it’s in my blood to belong here. I’m not scared of being alone, either. I’m not scared of anything.It’s just… I
KennedyI have to use my lunch break to make agency calls on behalf of a girl who’s no longer on my books. I take a bite of my sandwich, cursing that I’m spending so much time on hold. I’ve a lot of people to speak with, and not a huge amount of time to do it in.The result: more of the same old shit.They’ll need her to register. They’ll need some form of ID. They’ll need to do an assessment.They’ll be able to do none of those things unless Anna actually agrees to toe the line.I’m exasperated by the time I look up Rosie and Bill’s number at the end of my shift. One last shot, that’s what I tell myself. One last attempt to reason with them and get them on side enough to keep her room open for her until we can get her into these appointments.It’s Rosie who answers. She sighs as she registers it’s me.I launch quickly into my monologue, telling her I know how hard they’ve worked with Anna, how much time they’ve put in, and how difficult this has been on all of them, but if she could