No Place for Nathan Read Online Free PDF

I asked. ‘What if they’re not seeing what I see?’
    Julia shrugged. ‘Then the same still applies, Casey. Report, be observant and keep passing it on. At least then, whatever happens, no one’s going to be able to accuse you of not doing your job.’
    Which was a fair point and, no, I couldn’t do social services’ job for them – she was right. All I could really do was trust in the system and hope that trust wasn’t misplaced.
    â€˜Okay,’ I said. ‘I feel better already. Well, sort of. I’m sure if I head home and take my frustrations out on Mike, I’ll feel 100 per cent better by the morning.’
    She laughed. ‘Exactly. What else are husbands for?’
    In some ways, the business with Nathan couldn’t have come at a better time. Or a worse one, depending on your viewpoint. Either way, by the time he returned to school on the Wednesday, I was busy setting up shop in another part of the school and, apart from an early visit to pick up all my files, didn’t go down to the Unit again all day.
    With the need for behaviour-management support strategies having grown since I’d joined the school (which, I suspected, along with others, was mostly due to my post having been created), it had recently been decided that, now I’d gained my level three counselling qualification, Jim should be mostly classroom based and I should be promoted to ‘office-occupying’ status. The plan was that, with an office and some private space, I could spend time supporting the kids that most needed intense one-on-one therapy, without the distraction of other kids and their own problems. It also meant that all the kids who had been referred to the Unit could have the opportunity to spend time with me in private.
    Though I’d still be spending time doing group work within the behaviour unit itself, I would now be based in my new office, so Wednesday was mostly given over to customising it, Casey style – i.e. making it look as unlike an office as possible. I spent the whole day setting up new files and sorting out the old ones, as well as having a proper sort-out of the variety of games, art materials and work sheets I’d amassed over the past year, and had trolleyed over.
    I was also keen to extend my personalisation by getting some artwork up on the walls, but thought I’d wait and get the children themselves to design and make some for me. That way they would soon feel some ownership of the room and it would help them to settle into the new environment better.
    I spent practically all of the next day on it too – walking around the school, tracking down all of my past and current students, and letting them know where my new room was. Some of these were regulars, and some were kids I’d not seen in a while, but one thing I’d learned very quickly since I’d joined the school was that, for some kids, knowing where I could be found was key; it was like a security blanket for them to know where they could find me.
    This wasn’t just an assumption on my part, either. Some of the kids I’d spent time with even kept copies of my timetable in their school bags so that they knew my exact whereabouts at any time. And I respected this. So, if I had to make unexpected location changes, I would always leave a note pinned to my door detailing where I
could
be found.
    Which was no hardship, even though, early on, I knew my attention to these sorts of details marked me out as perhaps a little over-zealous. Which was fair enough, I supposed, because I felt very zealous. The time might one day come when I grew a touch more cynical and a bit less soft about the kids, but I couldn’t see that happening anytime soon.
    It was Thursday afternoon, then, before I next saw Nathan. Having caught up with my move via Jim down in the Unit, he came rushing in during afternoon break, in a flurry of excitement. ‘Ooh, Miss, this is lovely!’