Breaking the Silence Read Online Free PDF Page A

his hands, rather than washed them, and then slicked down each side of his hair. It now formed a ridge across the top of his head like some kind of strange Mohawk. Only very dirty hair could be so precisely arranged.
    ‘That will do just fine, handsome,’ I said, smiling at him for at least trying. ‘Now come on. After all this hard work, we don’t want to be late, do we? So. School stuff? School bag?’
    Jenson produced a ballpoint from his pocket. ‘Don’t need one,’ he announced. ‘Bags are for geeks.’
    And clean clothes, clean hair and clean fingernails as well
, I thought, watching with dismay a few minutes later, as Jenson clambered into the back seat of the car, because his knees were almost the same colour as the trousers they poked through. I’d taken grubby children to school before, but this one really took the biscuit. So much so that I was embarrassed to be the person delivering him.
So prepare to become geekified
, I thought as I shut the car door.
    Not that I should have worried. Though it felt like a poor reflection on my personal standards, several of the staff knew me well enough, after years of my having kids there (my own as well as foster children), to know these
weren’t
my standards. Besides, there were more important things in such situations than a clean uniform, as I was to find out when I popped in, having deposited Jenson with the right teacher, to have a quick catch-up with Andrea Cappleman, the deputy head teacher, just to touch base, really, so we were both up to speed. I didn’t know her – she’d not been at the school for very long. But long enough, clearly, to know her charges quite well.
    ‘Don’t be fooled,’ she warned, ushering me to a seat in front of her desk. ‘It’s very easy to be taken in by his sweet little “cheeky chappie” persona. He can turn on the charm when he wants to, I know. But there’s another side to Jenson. I’m afraid he’s something of a bully, and can be extremely disruptive. He also has quite a penchant for taking things that don’t belong to him …’
    ‘I imagine he lacks discipline in his life,’ I agreed, carefully, not wanting to jump the gun about a boy I’d known for a scant eighteen hours or so. ‘Though, from what I know so far, that doesn’t surprise me.’
    I didn’t want to seem as if I was prying, because it wasn’t my place. Not that she had much more to enlighten me with anyway.
    ‘I don’t know his mother well,’ she said, ‘and neither does his class teacher. She didn’t come to last term’s parents’ evening – which would figure, given the fiasco this week – but, as you say, he’s definitely a boy who lacks any sort of proper parenting. A boy who’d really benefit from some decent discipline. Boundaries. A few practical lessons in actions and their consequences.’
    I nodded. ‘Definitely. And that’s the plan,’ I told her. ‘Though I’m afraid we’ll probably only be scratching the surface. I imagine he’ll be home again by the end of next week.’
    ‘More’s the pity,’ Andrea Cappleman said, and though she said it with a smile it kind of got to me. She probably didn’t mean to – and hers was a hard job, in a big and very mixed-intake city primary school – but I kind of got the feeling Jenson had already been written off as a bit of a pain, which felt sad.
    Yes, more’s the pity
, I thought, as I walked back to my car. Because it
was
a pity. A pity that he’d be leaving us pretty much as quickly as he’d come to us, however much he looked forward to being reunited with his sister and his absent and apparently feckless mum.
    Except, as often happens with my musings about future happenings, in Jenson’s case it seemed I thought wrong.

Chapter 4
    Returning home to find nothing on the answerphone for me, I decided I’d call Marie Bateman.
    ‘What a coincidence you calling now,’ she said after she’d greeted me. ‘I’ve literally just put the phone down on Carley Jarvis’s