CHAPTER 64
We walked down to tea hand in hand, to a knowing smile from Naomi.

“Darren, dear, the special biscuits?”

He grinned, and disappeared into the kitchen. There was indeed a cuppa with my name on it, and I settled onto the sofa next to Eric with a sigh and a slurp. Darren was soon back in with a rather posh-looking tin that proved to have come from Fortnum and Mason. We were being honoured indeed.

“Annie, is he like your fella, yeah?”

I couldn’t help it. “No, love, he isn’t like my fella, he actually IS my fella”

The lad just shook his head and concentrated on getting the tin open, and then passing it round while he waited to pick his own. That was impressive, and I realised exactly how hard he was working to keep his place with the Woods. Steph and Geoff were over about an hour later, just as Albert arrived, and to groans from Naomi her husband and Darren sprawled out in front of the television with a couple of game controllers while they shot some poor aliens to pixels. I ran the idea of the wake past Steph as they saved the planet, and she was nodding before I was halfway through.

“They are a good crowd in there, a little intimidating perhaps if you aren’t confident, but talented. Timmy or Saburo?”

“Oh, wood is the way for that sort of night. Will you warn them about Eric?”

“Oh, they have a couple of Satan’s spawn there most nights. Ginny and Kate?”

“If they can, and I would really like Darren along. Give him the chance to see what we do for fun”

Geoff was chuckling. “And get frightened half to death by you two. Are you sure you weren’t separated at birth? Steph, love, what about doing something with mine, or maybe the octave mando, keep you a bit calmer. It gets crowded in there”

“Yeah…that could be fun, especially if I have some ale. Frets are more forgiving than fretless. What say we dig out the Bewick, or maybe even the Pipers’ Association books?”

I left them to their folky plotting, and with a hand on Eric’s thigh I looked over to the two boys and their game. It was a delight. Darren’s face matched Albert’s in its animation, and the way they kept looking up and grinning at each other as they scored points was so open, so natural, that I wondered how I had ever imagined the Woods to be in any sense elderly. It was dad and lad, it was mates, it was natural and wonderful. The doorbell rang, just as Darren whooped at shooting some item or other, and Naomi came back in with Polly in tow. Both motioned for silence, and Polly simply stood for a while watching two boys at play.

Darren won, apparently, and high-fived Albert with a grin to lighten the darkest heart, and Polly coughed for attention. Darren looked round, and his elation crashed and burned. That was the moment I saw exactly how far he had come. He didn’t run, he didn’t yell, he just asked, with a tremor in his voice, “Have I got to go back?”

Naomi very clearly blinked away a tear, while Albert put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Polly squatted down to where they lay.

“That is not why I am here, Darren. This is all routine. I come out, all secretly lahk, to see how you are getting on. You are what we call at risk, so I have to be sneaky. It is done so we can catch all those foster parents who waste time playing computer games, or serving the wrong sort of chocolate biscuits. Naomi, any white choc ones? Ta. Tea? Pretty please?”

Albert switched off the game after saving it, and Polly took Darren into the kitchen for a chat in private. Ten minutes later she was back, the two of them grinning at each other with shared secrets, and just then Polly’s gaze fell on me. There was a soft “shit” and then she gathered herself.

“Adam, that explains an awful lot, especially how you could have so much insight into his pain”

Darren interrupted her. “It’s Annie, to her friends. She don’t go by Adam no more”

Polly laughed. “Aren’t you the protective one, Darren?”

“Well, Sarnt Price here, yeah, she got me out of all that shit, lahk, so you be good to her, yeah?”

Polly’s smile was softer now. “Darren, Annie, all of you, I think my work here was done before I even came in the door.”

Naomi smiled back. “That means you have more time to be here as a friend. Tea to go with the white stuff will be provided as soon as one of my servants here can be bothered to move. Darren. Albert, shall we toss a coin?”

They both grinned, and Darren stuck out a hand to help his foster father to his feet and off they went for cup and milk. Polly’s smile was still there.

“Sometimes, just sometimes, I am reminded why I do this job. Thank you all. Annie, would you be OK for a quiet chat?”

“No problem, Polly, I wanted to talk to you about taking him to a pub.”

“Oh dear…I withdraw my previous comment!”

We took a few minutes together in the garden, where I had first been caught by Eric. Polly was direct.

“Do tell, Annie”

I gave her a condensed version, and she nodded throughout, as I realised that the nod was her equivalent of Sally’s flat stare and pointed one word questions.

“So this Monday’s pub trip, this is goodbye Sergeant Price, hello Sergeant Price, yeah?”

“About right”

“Music, singing, food?”

“Essentially. We are even working on a strategy to keep Stephanie calmer”

“The tall ginge?”

“That’s her. Talented as all hell, but a bit sort of wild with her playing”

“Perhaps I am a bit dense, but I sort of imagined Darren being more into three fat ugly black men shouting at the audience”

I grinned at her. “Bloom County?”

She grinned back, with real warmth. “Oh yes! But why the folk stuff?”

“Naomi says he has a real feel for how things work, probably why he was able to lift cars so easily. He understands instruments, acoustic ones, and it’s that difference between seeing, say, a violin as a machine of wood and wire, and how it is used by someone like Steph. That’s what has really caught his imagination. I worry a little, because at some point he will try one out, and if he hasn’t got the talent, well…”

Polly was doing the nod again. “Annie…would you mind if I came along? On Monday? Not as a social worker, just as someone who fancies a drink, and some time with friends, and to see a boy happy? He is, isn’t he? Happy?”

I took the risk, and then the hug, and whispered in her ear. “I really, really think so. There is also something you are not telling me, and if it involves removing him from here you can trust me, we will fight”

She slumped in my arms. “No, Annie, anyone who would ever believe such a thing to be in his best interests would need shooting. No, it’s Chantelle.”

Shit. I had almost forgotten her in the stress of current events, and there she remained, the real victim, sold by her own family to a group of bottom-feeders.

“How is she, Polly?”

“Almost catatonic. Won’t talk, hardly eats, and we still have the trial to go through. Defence are wanting to get the inquest over first, obviously, but all that time she gets no closure. I know I am hardly unbiased, but she is not even thirteen yet, for god’s sake.”

She looked up at me, and I saw the same pain, the same weariness that Andy had given me, the day of the shootings.

“It is a shitty world, Miss Price”

I looked back, giving a smile to her pain. “No it isn’t. Miss Armitage. One look at Darren should tell you that, aye? Now, we can’t work miracles with Chantelle, but you know if there is anything, you have a whole station of coppers who are there for you. We are a bit protective when it comes to children”

“I may well take you up on that. Inquest first, and trial, but then again would you mind terribly if I had one too many on Monday?”

“We would expect nothing less. You know the way?”

“Oh yes. And by the way, that was one sneaky visit I wish was more typical of what I get. Monday, then.”

She was off, and I stood for a while trying to think of ways to help one little girl among so many victims. Eric came out to me as I stood in the cool of the garden, and slipped his arms around me.

“A long way since that chat out here, Annie, a long way.”

I kissed his cheek. “A lot less of me for a start”

“How much gone so far?”

“Believe it or not, five and a half stones since Ginny changed my habits and you got me riding again. Even those visits to chip and cake shops haven’t done too much damage. If I keep it up, I’ll be able to get into some nice stuff.”

He laughed, and my mind balanced what I was feeling with what had happened to that little girl, was still happening, and I knew that what I had said to Polly was absolutely true. This was no shitty world, not with such people in it. Eric squeezed me before tugging me back into the house.

“You get into the nice stuff, love, as long as I can get you out of it afterwards”