Chapter Eighteen

       Reporting Concerns

      I drove home with a very heavy heart and my thoughts coursing with all that I’d seen and heard at Max’s house. The living and kitchen area could have done with a good clean and tidy, but it wasn’t the worst I’d seen – far from it. I was irritated that Caz had been leaving Max bags of sweets as treats in his bedroom when she had agreed to him being on a diet. I assumed this was because she was still refusing to truly acknowledge and address the connection between over-eating and obesity, so giving Max sweets wouldn’t be seen as counterproductive to his diet. Of course she would want to treat him, but to be honest, from what I knew, I thought the best treat she could give him was her company: to find time to sit and talk with him about what he’d been doing and was interested in, or play a card or board game, instead of letting him go to his bedroom every visit.

      But the thoughts that dominated most and were of greatest concern were those of abuse: all those years when Caz had been raped by her stepfather, and now Dan’s abuse of Paris. Caz was afraid of Dan; it had shown in her eyes and demeanour when he’d come home unexpectedly. A woman who is afraid of her partner is not going to be able to stand up to him and protect her children. What was she going to do? Not throw him out. She’d said herself she couldn’t manage without him. The dismissive language she’d used when describing his abuse of Paris had a normalizing element: ‘He was always making comments about her breasts … he kept going into her bedroom without knocking … Anyway, she woke to find … his hand on her breast.’ It had fallen to Paris’s boyfriend to fit a lock on her bedroom door. Also, when Caz had told me of the terrible abuse she’d suffered at the hands of her stepfather I noticed she hadn’t used the term rape, but had said her stepfather had been having sex with her. This has a different connotation and implies that it was in some way consensual, which rape never is.

      Last but not least in my doom-laden thoughts was that as Caz was the victim of domestic violence so, too, were her children. What parents often don’t realize is that domestic violence has as much – if not a greater – impact on their children as it does on the adult victim. Children, scared witless, have to stand by and watch their parent being abused and are powerless to intervene and protect them. It often leaves a lasting legacy and the social services view domestic violence as a form of child abuse in itself, with grounds for removing the child from the home.

      Deep in thought, I suddenly found myself outside my house and I pulled onto the driveway. Max hadn’t said anything during the journey home either.

      ‘Are you OK?’ I asked, glancing at him in the mirror.

      He nodded, but as we got out he said, ‘It’s strange without Adrian and Paula.’

      ‘Yes, it is,’ I agreed.

      I unlocked the front door and as we went in Max passed me his bag of sweets for safekeeping. ‘I think I’ve had enough today,’ he said.

      ‘Good boy. You can have some more tomorrow.’

      It was even stranger in the house without Adrian and Paula than it had been in the car, and to be honest I didn’t like it. Max didn’t either. ‘Four sleeps until they’re home again,’ he said gloomily. Adrian and Paula were either side of his age, so he always had someone to play with.

      ‘Roll on Sunday when we collect them,’ I said, then caught myself. ‘But we are going to have a nice time before then. Think about what you would like to do. Tomorrow we just have the morning, as you have contact in the afternoon, so we can go somewhere close.’

      ‘Library?’ he suggested, without giving it much thought.

      ‘Or would you like to go to a museum? There is a small one not far from here.’

      His eyes lit up. ‘Yes. I like museums. I went to one with the school on a coach.’

      ‘That’ll be the City museum. This is a smaller one, not far away and worth a visit.’

      ‘Can I take my sweets with me?’ he asked.

      I smiled. ‘Yes, a few. And we could have lunch out. There’s a café next to the museum.’ I had brightened, too, at the prospect of an enjoyable day out rather than sitting at home, missing Adrian and Paula. Although I would have liked them to come too, I knew they were having a fantastic time with their grandparents. I’d phone them in the morning to say hi.

      Max had a bath and then read in bed while I went downstairs and wrote up my log notes. I included the details of contact and what Caz had told me, using her words as far as possible when she’d described Dan’s sexual abuse of Paris. Once I’d finished I returned the folder to the lockable drawer in the front room. Max sometimes fell asleep with the light on and his book open on his bed, so I always checked on him after an hour. Sometimes he was still awake and I had to tell him it was time to go to sleep or he would be tired in the morning, but tonight he was fast asleep. Flat on his back, snoring lightly, his cherub-like features relaxed in sleep. My heart went out to him, as it often did; he was such a lovable, unassuming and good-natured child who asked for very little. Odd that in so many ways he was very different from the rest of his family, although I could see a likeness, especially between Max and his mother. His sisters clearly cared for him, but I didn’t see a lot of warmth from Caz, but then, of course, she was having to deal with a lot of problems of her own, including being abused and her present poor health and limited mobility.

      I placed the book Max had been reading quietly on his bedside cabinet, repositioned Buzz Lightyear so that his arm wasn’t digging into Max and then came out of his room, drawing the door to behind me. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I thought Max’s snoring was becoming less pronounced. I doubted he’d lost enough weight to make a significant difference, but the time he was spending playing outside in the fresh air would certainly be helping, as would living in a smoke-free household.

      Despite ending the day on a positive note, I didn’t sleep well that night. As soon as I lay down Caz’s words about abuse came back to haunt me. All those years of suffering – from the age of nine. How had she survived? It was horrendous. Little wonder she’d taken to comfort eating – it had probably been her only solace. I assumed from what she’d said that her stepfather had died before he had been brought to justice. Had his death allowed her some closure or had it left a gaping wound? Some survivors of abuse find that seeing their abuser prosecuted helps set them on the road to recovery, but Caz had been denied that. My thoughts then went again to Paris and what Caz had said about Dan’s abuse of her. Summer had told me in the car when I’d given her a lift home from the hospital that Paris was their father’s favourite. Apart from thinking that a parent shouldn’t show favouritism, I hadn’t given it any more thought. It certainly hadn’t crossed my mind that there was a darker, more sinister implication. Were Kelly and Summer aware of their father’s abuse of their sister? If so, had they been told not to say anything? When I’d told Caz that Jo needed