Charles was a week shy of fifteen, small, slight of build, intelligent, and unknown to any, other than his mum and stepfather, he made a reasonable amount of money by working at weekends in the office of an internet trading company. Unknown to any, including his mum and stepfather, he made even more money from repairing and selling the returned faulty electrical goods which his employer said he could have as it was cheaper than putting them in a skip [US dumpster].

Charles refused to answer to any of the derivatives of his name, he’d always said Charles was bad enough without mutilating it. He lived with his mother, Alice, and Phil, his stepfather of four years. His father had died when he was three and he had no memories of him. He had no siblings and no cousins. His only relative was Julia, his father’s sister who was a widow of many years. He didn’t know whether Phil had any relatives.

He was popular at school with boys and girls alike. He played a lot of sport in order to please Phil. He wasn’t very good being so small, but the boys knew about Phil and helped him to appear better than he was. In return he helped them with their classwork. He chose to do cookery and handicrafts as one of his upper school options. It was a class of twenty-three girls and seven boys. He was reasonably good at sewing, but he especially enjoyed working with leather and making lace. Again the others helped him at what he wasn’t good at, and he helped them with other things, like writing essays, sciences and mathematics.

It was a pleasant, at least as far as the weather was concerned, Sunday evening when his entire life as seen by others changed for ever. He’d stayed after his shift was over to mend a couple of appliances. He was walking home from the bus station at just gone half past ten in the evening after a long day at work. In the park off to his left and a few hundred yards in front of him he heard a scream, he thought the voice was female. There was just one scream, and because he hadn’t been paying much attention, due to his thoughts concerning a microwave he had yet to repair, he couldn’t decide exactly where the scream came from. He carried on walking home still thinking about the microwave.

Fifteen minutes later he’d been grabbed and threwn to the ground by a policeman several times his size. He was handcuffed and roughly pushed into the back of a police van. All the time he’d been demanding to know what was going on, but the officers had refused to answer any questions and he’d been arrested. Eventually he’d been taken to a room for questioning. “What did you do with the bag?” He’d been asked.

“Which bag? Why am I here?”

Charles had refused to answer any further questions without seeing a solicitor. The police tried their usual intimidation technique of asking if he hadn’t done anything what did he need a solicitor for. He in turn asked if the interviewing officer read the papers, because if he did the recent scandal concerning police interviewing procedures and their fabricated witness statements should provide the answer. “Are you saying I’m a criminal?” He’d been asked by the officer.

“Well you're saying I am, so I want to talk to a solicitor before I answer any more questions.”

Alec the solicitor duly arrived and the subsequent interview was considerably pleasanter for Charles. There was a series of questions on both sides leading to nowhere. It was several hours later when the police concluded he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and was just a teenager going home after a long day at work. They’d checked that with his employer at Alec’s insistence. Alec told Charles on their way out that the police had broken several procedural regulations, not least since he was underage a social worker should have been there and his parents informed. He added if Charles wished to retain him as his legal representative he would be suing the police and Charles should receive a few tens of thousands of pounds in compensation, perhaps thirty. He said he’d try for fifty and believed the police would settle out of court, since the case was clear cut.

“Why didn’t you point that out to them, Alec?” Charles asked.

“Once I was there, I was covering your back, and I was your representative not theirs. If they screw up and I think I can get you some money out of it that’s their problem not mine, nor yours. Now let’s get some evidence.” He took Charles to the local casualty [ER] and added, “I’ll get a statement from someone where you work to say your face was unbruised and uninjured when you left work, Charles, and that will do it.”

Alec had rung the hospital in advance where Peter, a doctor friend of his, examined Charles and measured his height and weight. “Let’s make sure we have evidence gathered at the time that the officer used unnecessary force to restrain you, Charles. At your size there was no need for the force he used even if you had resisted arrest.” Peter said, before taking photographs of the bruises and the damage to Charles’ face caused by his impact with the ground inflicted by the officer. He also had a colleague witness that the injuries couldn’t possibly have been more than twelve hours old.

By the time Charles got home it was time to change for school. Phil had left for work, and his mother was still in bed. He was tired, but didn’t want to miss school. He said nothing about what had happened at school, and was expecting to have to explain where he’d been all night to his parents when he got home. He wasn’t expecting to be grabbed by the throat by his step father and slammed against the wall with his feet a foot off the floor. “After all I’ve done for you you little shit, and a fucking pervert too, you pull a stunt like this.”

Phil beat him up so badly that his mother persuaded him to come with her for a drink at their local. “Leave him, Phil, if you hit him any more you’ll only get into trouble.”

Once they left, Charles packed everything he wanted into three suitcases and stole enough money from where he knew his mother hid her reserve, that Phil didn’t know about, to pay for a taxi to his Aunt Julia’s house on the other side of town. Julia had always been like a second mother to him, but now thinking about it on the way to her house he considered she’d always treated him better than his mum had since Phil came on the scene, and he couldn’t remember much before that. He knew Julia would never sacrifice him for anyone else. It took Julia a long time to get the story out of Charles who was traumatised by events. She took him to casualty too, where Alec’s friend examined him again and took a further set of photographs. He said he’d make the same arrangements for those as he’d done for the first set and Alec would have his copy over the internet in minutes.

Alec took out a court injunction against Phil from going within fifty meters of Charles no matter where he was and sent a copy of it to the school. It turned out that a thirteen year old girl had been attacked in the park, dragged into the bushes and struck unconscious with a tyre lever. The tyre lever had been left behind, but it had no finger prints on it, and it was of the most common type available. Her clothes had been ripped off and she’d been found naked. It was believed the assailants had intended to rape her, but had been disturbed before they could by the timely arrival of the police on the scene. There were footprints at the scene, but they were neither clear nor guaranteed to be those of the assailants.

The girl was the daughter of one of Phil’s workmates who had heard Charles had been arrested for the crime which had been enough for Phil to beat Charles up. Not the brightest of folk it had not occurred to Phil to listen to Charles, and even after he found out the police had not pressed charges and Alec was suing them on Charles’ behalf he refused to accept that Charles had not done it. He wouldn’t have Charles back in his house, which was not in fact his but belonged to Alice, and said he’d beat the truth out of him next time he saw him despite the injunction unless he confessed to what he’d done.

Alice had never really got on with Julia because she thought Julia was even more old fashioned than George her dead husband had been and her manners were formally polite to the point of embarrassment. However she went round to Julia’s, not being able to think of anywhere else Charles would have gone. She told Charles to admit to his crime because it was making her choose between her husband and her son. “I won’t admit to what I didn’t do, Mum.”

“I have to take your father’s side, because one day you’ll leave home, and he’ll still be there. If you don’t admit you did it you’re choosing to walk out of my life and will be losing everything.”

“He’s not my father, Mum, thank God, but if that how it is, so be it. I’ll tell the truth, all of it, but I’ll tell it in my own time. For the now, I’ll tell you that I hate sport. I’ve always hated sport, yet I always did my damnedest to be the son that your sport mad mountain of an arsehole wanted. I’ve done the best I could at every bloody manly activity possible, and still it wasn’t enough for that bastard. I’m not scum just because shit for brains says so. Well, no more. From now on I’m going to be the me I want to be. The me I’ve always been and never been able to be. You may not be ok about that, but Auntie Julia is, and she’s said I can stay with her as long as I need to. I never told you, but I earn enough to pay for my keep, and she won’t accept it because I’m her brother’s child. You’re my mother, yet you’ve never loved me unconditionally like that. She’s a far better mother to me than I can ever remember you being.

“And just for the record, I didn’t hurt that kid. I didn’t have time to hide her handbag with the money in, so where is it? I didn’t even see her. The police let me go because they hadn’t enough to keep me, and my solicitor is suing them for wrongful arrest when the only reason they arrested me was because I was two hundred yards from where it happened. I was walking towards where they found her. You’d think if I’d done it I’d have been going the other way, away from where it happened. And if you think I’m ever going to live in the same neighbourhood as that tosspot you married you must be wrong in the head. If I were you I’d throw the bastard out before he loses his temper with you, because you’ve seen what he’ll do if you make him angry.”

It was maybe three weeks later that a teacher overheard two boys bragging about having committed the assault and robbery and that the pansy in year ten had taken the heat off them for long enough for them to make a clean getaway. It was when one said, “Pity we didn’t have enough time to finish the job,” that she realised they meant raping the girl. The police found the handbag under the bed of one of the boys, and the foot prints at the scene were a perfect match for their footwear.

When Alice tried to persuade Phil to allow Charles to come back home he put her in hospital for a fortnight, the least of which was with a broken jaw. He was arrested, refused bail and eventually sent down for four years. When she came out of hospital, Alice remembered Charles saying he could pay for his keep. She knew that without Phil's income she wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage and would have to sell up and move to a much smaller place, so she went round to Julia’s to try to persuade Charles to come home.

Julia told her, “Charles is not here at the moment, but I can’t see it happening, Alice. Charles was never happy at your house and things are different here.”

“He’s my son!”

“Perhaps, but Charles warned you about Phil, and you ignored the advice. You chose Phil over your own child. And you were informed that you would be told the truth, all of it, when it suited Charles. I suspect that will be today.”

They heard the front door opening and Alice asked, “Does Charles have a house key?”

“That won’t be Charles. I doubt he’ll be back for some time. It’ll be my foster daughter, Rachael.”

Alice was surprised at that. She’d never imagined Julia would foster. It was a pretty teenager who looked to be seventeen or so wearing a printed summer frock who came into the living room and asked, “Mum, may I go to the cinema with Katie and Debby on Saturday evening. It’s ‘Girls go to War’ with Allyssia May St Claire and Petra Dawn Sommerville and we really want to see it. The reviews are fantastic. Paul, Johnny and Mike want to take us, so I’ll be safe with Paul looking after me.”

“Of course, but I want Paul to have you back before midnight. Alice, this is my foster daughter Rachael. Rachael, my sister in law Alice.”

Rachael bobbed a curtsey, and as they barely touched hands both said, “How do you do.”

Rachael left saying, “Mum, remember I’m having tea at Katie’s tonight, so I may as well go now and do my homework there. You ok with that?”

“Yes. If you stay till after dark ring me or ask one of her parents to drive you home. Ok?”

“They would insist any way. See you later, Mum. Bye, Alice.”

They heard Rachael run upstairs and a few minutes later a muffled, “Bye,” before the front door opened and clicked closed.

Alice said, “Rachael has lovely manners. How do Charles and she get on?”

“Remarkably well. I thought it might cause a few problems, but it didn’t cause any at all.”

“How come you went into fostering, Julia?”

“I never really considered it before, but I’ve known Rachael’s parents since long before she was born. She recently lost her parents, and after seeking some advice I was told given the circumstances I would have a good case to present to the magistrates. You know I always wanted kids, but Gerry couldn’t give me any and didn’t want to rear anybody else’s. Unfortunately I never met anyone I wanted to start again with after he died. To take her in seemed the proper and kindly thing to do to me, and in the end it was all very easy. The magistrates said Rachael was clearly mature enough to decide for herself where she wanted to live and approved the fostering order with a view to me ultimately adopting her. Her parents had lived on the other side of town, but to give her the independence that a girl of her age should reasonably expect she had to change schools. Fortunately our local secondary school was understanding and supportive of her circumstances, she was after all in a difficult position and almost halfway through her two years of GCSE examination preparation, though I suspect her being a high flying student helped them to take that view.

“Initially she was a little unhappy about going to another school, but she’s a nice girl and quickly made a lot of friends here, both at school and in the neighbourhood. She joined the dozen or so other girls from her school who help out at the ‘City Soup Kitchen’ on weekend afternoons. Since Paul, who is a lovely, clever and forward thinking boy who wants to go into politics, asked her to go out with him she’s become a new person, a much happier person. He’s a big lad in the year above Rachael. It’s known her father was a violent thug and her mother didn’t really love her. Children can be so cruel, but fortunately for most it’s a phase that eventually ends. Paul allows none to give her a hard time, despite her past, which she tells me they have talked about. I’m glad I asked her to live with me because she and her friends have brought a kind of joy into the house I haven’t had since Gerry and I were looking forward to children.”

Alice nodded in understanding and asked, “When will Charles be back?”

“He won’t. You just watched her walk out of your life. Weeks ago she told me she’d nothing to lose any more and I was her mum now.”