CHAPTER HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE

BRIAN POV

I rarely drink, especially not on a week night, but completing my final writeup and filing Moona’s case notes into the archive room is more than enough to drive me to a few after work. I tidy my desk and take one final look at Moona’s muddy boot prints before shutting down my PC for the day.

 None of us here are miracle workers. We do our best, but not every case in our books has a happy ending. I’ve watched kids grow into adults with even bigger challenges than the ones they faced in the chair opposite me. I’ve lost good kids to a life of drugs in Bristol or Birmingham once they’ve taken a one-way ticket out of our sleepy county for pastures new. You hear about them, the ones who didn’t make it. It’s not a rare event that we get enquiries from lawyers and prosecutors digging for background information for their criminal cases.

      Some support workers can’t handle the disappointment. For others of us, we take the rough with the smooth – finding encouragement in the kids that we do manage to make a difference to, even just a little. We use the disappointments to harden our steel, determined to do better next time. That’s how I should be feeling about Moona. That’s how I have to feel about Moona.

 My best clearly wasn’t good enough to reach her, not in five months. Maybe not in five years. Maybe not ever. Not within the framework of our agency guidelines, not with half an hour per week to work miracles and tick all the policy boxes.

      It’s a hard pill to swallow.

      I wonder if she’ll end up back in Gloucester. That’s where she came from before she ended up staying with Nick and Amie. I was at one of their earliest meetings with the agency, when she was first listed on our books. The foster agency thought the countryside may agree with her, the slower pace of life may help her edginess. I can’t see that it has, but the thought was a good one.

  Tina Isaac, one of my fellow support workers, pats my shoulder as I head out for the evening, giving me one of her kind smiles that tells me we can’t win them all.

  In truth, we can’t win all that many of them, not with so many factors stacked against us. We really are just small cogs in a big social machine, and our jurisdiction doesn’t carry all that much weight. Support, that’s all we can offer – giving kids an ear and a voice through us when it’s needed, but what difference can that really make to a girl who doesn’t want either?

   Moona told me once that the only home she’ll ever have is on the road. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen her face truly light up, and the image is burned in my memory for all time.

      I’m strangely tempted to withdraw my savings and buy her a wagon, but even if she’d accept it, that would never be okay. It would be against every safeguarding practice in our handbook and then some.

      Being fired would be incomprehensible – both for me and all the kids who need me. But just occasionally, in bed at night, I wonder if a wild spark like Moona would be worth dropping everything for. You couldn’t get a more cliché description of a mid-life crisis, so it’s just as well I have my stable best friend, Cain, to talk me down.

      I told him once, after too many whiskies, that if I was ten years younger – alright, fifteen years younger – I’d run away with a girl like Moona. We could travel around on some magical gypsy adventure, she and I, in a little wagon working the land and selling sprigs of heather.

   Cain told me I was a fucking idiot and sent me back to my apartment to sleep off my crazy admission, of course. I took it all back in the morning, but there’s no fooling that guy. He knows me far too well.

      His astuteness and his sensibilities are exactly the reasons I message him tonight.

      He replies to my text before I’m even through the office doors.

      ‘She’s gone?’

      My reply is hard even to type. Gone. Done. Off my books.

      I can imagine his sharp inhalation of breath. My phone pings a few seconds later.

     Sassy Ten. I’ll be there at fifteen.

      I loosen my tie as I head across the street. Our little town is only a small place but it’s all I’ve ever known. Cain and I grew up around these parts, went to the same school then college, but I stayed local, studying social care while he aimed for the stars and landed a business management degree at Warwick.

      I’m surprised he came back here, but it turns out it was a good career move on his part. He set up  an insurance agency the best part of a decade ago and it’s doing great. Big premiums in agriculture, he tells me, a niche market he’s done well to crack. Just as well he’s around, considering how much I’ve needed his sound words these past few months.

 On the face of it our lives are very different now. I’m still living in a bland apartment in the centre of town – he has a sprawling house on the outskirts with plenty of land. I’m driving a safe old Ford, whereas he has a Range Rover with all the optional extras.

 Cain’s made it financially, but my work matters, at least that’s what I tell myself.

 I see him heading down the high street in the opposite direction before I’ve even made it to Sassy. He cuts a fine image in his tailored suit. The dark grey matches the salt and pepper of his hair, a stylish bastard even though he’s ageing more noticeably than me. I guess that’s what building up a business does to you.

      I hold the door until he joins me, and he slaps me on the back as we head inside. Sassy’s is one of those typical small-town drinking holes. A dimly lit bar with a good selection of local ales and a random collection of tables and chairs that don’t match, but it suits the place. We head to the bar, and Cain orders. The first slug of ale goes down a treat, and we head over to a table in the corner by the open fire. Cain kicks back and takes off his tie. He rolls it around his fist and slips it into his inside pocket, then he eyes me with that easy smile I’ve come to know so well over the years.

      “Rough day, then?”

      I breathe out a sigh. “Can’t win ‘em all.”

      “No,” he says. “You can’t. What’s going to become of the little madam?”

      I shrug. “Hopefully she’ll be able to stay where she is. Hopefully she’ll even change her mind about college.”

      He’s never seen Moona Avii, but he’s heard enough to be as sceptical as I am. “Not your problem anymore,” he tells me. “You did what you could.”

      “What if everyone just did what they could and it’s not enough?”

      He leans forward. “You need to rein in that social conscience, you’ll find it easier to sleep at night.”

      “I sleep just fine,” I lied.

      “Dreaming of your wild princess, no doubt.” His smile is bright. “We should hit Cheltenham for a night out, see if we can’t hook you up with someone who isn’t either far too young or determined to self-destruct.”

      The thought of meeting someone else seems distant. I’ve had no appetite for dating and all that crap since things ended with me and Vivian last year. That’s one thing Cain and I still have in common – we’re both not-so-lucky in love. Cain was engaged for a while to some posh cow from Oxford who was far more interested in his business prospects than she was in him. That ended recently and explosively, but he doesn’t seem too hung up on it.

      In the main, while I was cooped up with Vivian, Cain fucked around. I wouldn’t even like to guess how many women he’s had in his bed and in his life. But still, having taken very different roads, here we both are, single and ageing a little more every month.

      “Maybe you should hit Cheltenham,” I say. “The women there are more your type.”

      “The women there are anyone’s type after a couple of large wines, don’t let the pretentiousness of the place fool you.” He swigs back his beer, then stares at me. “You’ll get over this. Give it some time.”

      “There’s nothing to get over. She was in my books and now she’s not.”

      “You give a shit about her, that’s likely more than anyone else can say about the girl.”

      “Sad but true.” I sip my beer but my throat feels tight. My whole body feels tight. “I can’t just let her walk away. She’ll head straight into trouble.”

 Cain straightens in his seat. “Trouble that isn’t your problem. You need to get a grip of this Brian. She’s gone.”