Michael

 

I rarely drink, especially not on a week night, but completing my final writeup and filing Carrie’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 Carrie’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 on 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 Carrie. That’s how I have to feel about Carrie.

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 Bill and Rosie. 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.

Pam Clowes, one of my fellow support workers, pats my shoulder as I head out for the evening, giving me one of her kindly 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?

Carrie 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 do. 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 Carrie would be worth dropping everything for. You couldn’t get more cliché a description of a mid-life crisis, so it’s just as well I have my stable best friend, Jack, 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 Carrie. We could travel around on some magical gypsy adventure, she and I, in a little wagon working the land and selling sprigs of heather.

Jack 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.

Drury’s Tavern. I’ll be there in fifteen.

I loosen my tie as I head across the street. Our little town of Lydney is only a small place but it’s all I’ve ever known. Jack 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.

Jack’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 Drury’s. 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. Drury’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 Jack orders. The first slug of ale goes down a treat, and we head over to a table in the corner by the open fire. Jack 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 Carrie Wells, 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 lie.

“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 Molly last year. That’s one thing Jack and I still have in common – we’re both not-so-lucky in love. Jack 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 Molly, Jack 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 on 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.”

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

“I achieved nothing.”

He sighs. “Who knows what difference you made to her? It’s impossible to say how our words impact another, and if your advice wasn’t welcome now there’s nothing to say she won’t remember it later.”

I raise my glass. “To your excellent words.”

He raises his. “May you heed them.”

My gut feels strangely bereft. A sense of loss below the struggle for rationality. Maybe I need a support worker myself after suffering the Carrie Wells effect.

I take a deep breath, attempting to quell my inner turmoil.

“She’s gone,” I say, as if saying it out loud will put a lid on it.

“That she is,” he replies. “May she be blessed with a long and fruitful life, wherever that may take her.”

“Far away from here most likely.”

“You should hope so, for your own sanity,” Jack says, and he’s right.

I should hope I don’t see Carrie Wells again. I should hope that she’s picked up by other agencies and they manage to succeed where I’ve failed. I should hope that she finds happiness with a young, spirited guy her own age, someone decent and caring. I should hope that she finds the love she’s so sorely missed in her life this far.

I should hope she’s found it within herself to offer up a genuine apology to Bill and Rosie and ask for another chance. Maybe she has. Maybe they’re all having a heart to heart right now down the road in Lydbrook, sharing a cup of tea in Rosie’s warm kitchen.

But no.

Of course not.

I hear her voice before I see her. I’d recognise that cackle anywhere, full of life and mischief rolled together. The bar door creaks on its big old hinges and in stumbles a guy in a hoodie who used to be on our books a few years back. Eddie Stevens, son of a bricklayer who sold drugs from the back of his van over in Gloucester.

Carrie stumbles on in after him, and my beer catches in my throat.

Her pale cheeks are flushed pink and her legs seem bandy. Drunk. She’s fucking drunk.

Eddie lurches into the bar and she follows him, points out a tequila bottle on the back shelf.

Jack turns slowly in his seat, looks from them to me and back again.

“Is that–”

“Yes,” I say.

“Sweet Jesus,” he mutters, “but she’s–”

“Underage,” I finish. “Yes, she is.”

He slams a hand on my wrist as I rise from my seat. “Not. Your. Problem,” he says and his grey eyes are icy.

I shake him off more roughly than I intend.

* * *

Carrie

 

Eddie is an idiot, but he’s fun enough and he’s paying. He brought me a couple of beers out to the back of the George and Dragon, then we dashed into the Brewers Arms for one before stumbling down the street to Drury’s Tavern. I’m already past dinner time back at Rosie and Bill’s, but who gives a shit. Not them, that’s for sure. It’s probably a relief.

Eddie swings open the big door of Drury’s and I follow him in. I’ve been drinking on an empty stomach and it’s gone to my head, but I don’t care. Why should I? Nobody else does.

I’ve barely got enough bus money to get home to Lydbrook and the timetable is pathetic here. The last bus leaves about six, and I’m sure I’ve missed it already, but that feels hazy now. Maybe I can bunk up with Eddie tonight. I don’t want him, but I’m sure he wants me, and that’s bound to be enough to get me somewhere to sleep at least.

I’ll kick him in the balls if he tries to grope me.

If he doesn’t let me stay after that, I’ll sleep outside. I’ve done it before. It wasn’t great, but I lived, and I’d better suck it up since I’ll likely be doing a lot more of it later this week.

I point to a bottle of tequila on the back shelf of the bar and Eddie raises an eyebrow.

“You sure we wanna be hitting the hard stuff? The night’s young.”

“Not being a pussy, are you?”

He gives me a smirk. “I’m no fucking pussy. You’ll find that out later.”

The barman eyes me as Eddie points to the bottle at the back, but Eddie slaps his wallet on the counter and I give my most confident expression. I’m almost old enough to drink, what’s a few days?

Then come the words I’ve been dreading. I groan as the barman clears his throat.

“Do you have ID?”

Footsteps at my back give me shivers. “No,” a voice says. “She doesn’t.”

I spin on the spot to launch abuse at the interferer, all ready to tell the nosey sonofabitch to mind his own fucking business, but as my stare crashes into Michael Warren’s, and those dark green eyes bore into mine, I take a breath.

My drunk tongue won’t function properly, my words feel garbled in my throat, but it turns out I don’t need them, because it’s him who does all the talking.

He pushes Eddie with a shunt that surprises me. “What do you think you’re playing at?” he asks him, before taking me by the elbow and pulling me away from the bar. I wrench away on instinct, fists ready to fly, but Michael doesn’t let go.

His grip is firm on my arms, his eyes serious and burning and… pissed at me.

He’s really fucking pissed at me.

“What are you doing here?” he snaps. “You should be at home, making amends with Rosie and Bill.”

“It’s not my fucking home,” I snap back. “Rosie and Bill are dead to me. I’m having fun with Eddie. Fun, Michael. I’m having a good fucking time.”

“And that good fucking time is over now,” he snarls, and the blood rushes to my cheeks. I’ve never heard him swear before.

I feel like the whole place is staring at me. Some posh guy in a suit shakes his head from the table in the corner and it gives me the rage, right in the pit of me. I hate people laughing at me. Judging me. Taking me for a fucking loser.

“This good fucking time is over when I say it’s over!” I hiss, but Michael doesn’t let me go. His grip tightens on my arm and he takes a step toward the door. I feel myself moving, even though my boots are dragging. He’s strong, much stronger than I gave him credit for under that boring suit in his office. He’s still wearing it, but he looks different with his tie hanging loose. He looks… wired.

“This is assault!” I screech, but Michael Warren must be as trashed as I feel, because he doesn’t stop, doesn’t even pause as he marches me out and presses me up against the brickwork outside.

“I’m trying to fucking help you,” he tells me, and his breath is in my face. There’s only a hint of ale, and he doesn’t look drunk at all, not even a little bit. Fuck.

The cold air hits me hard and my legs feel like jelly. I should have grabbed something to eat from Rosie and Bill’s before I came out here, I’ve had nothing since breakfast, and that was just a flimsy slice of toast.

I take a breath and it feels like the wind has been knocked right out of my sails. Not least since Eddie hasn’t even poked his head out to make sure I’m okay.

“You can’t help me,” I tell him but my voice sounds weak and pathetic. I hate how it sounds.

“You won’t fucking let me.”

I shrug in his grip. “So? Just let me fucking go!”

He doesn’t move. “You need to get home to Bill and Rosie.”

“And I’ve fucking told you already! That’s not my fucking home!”

“So where were you planning on staying tonight? With that loser Eddie Stevens? He’s nothing but a waster.”

I shrug again. “Eddie’s alright. I like him.”

“Eddie’s a fucking prick,” he snaps. “You think he gives a shit? You think a few drinks are worth spending the fucking night with a loser like that?”

I grit my teeth. “He’s the best fucking offer I’ve got. Nobody gives a shit. At least I can get drunk and forget about it for a few fucking hours.”

I hate how I’m doing this, acting like I’m so hard when all I want to do is ask him to take me home. To his home. Ask him to stay with me awhile, until I sober up. All I want to do is tell him I’m hungry, and I don’t know how I’m going to get back to Rosie and Bill’s, and I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do when they throw me out, and I need him. I really need him.

But I don’t.

I can’t.

“I’m taking you home,” he tells me, and my heart does a jump. I don’t know whether he sees it in my eyes because he takes a breath. “To Rosie and Bill’s,” he clarifies and my heart drops.

“They don’t want me–” I begin, but his hands squeeze my arms.

“Shut up, Carrie. Just shut the fuck up.”

I’m so taken aback that I do.

Nobody’s told me to shut the fuck up for a long, long time. It’s all tight lips and careful language. All disappointment and tutting and sadness – not anger. Nobody actually pulls me up on my shitty behaviour anymore.

Because they’ve given up. Everyone’s given up on me. But not Michael.

Not even now I’m not his problem anymore.

“My bus left already…” I tell him.

“I wouldn’t trust you on the fucking bus anyway,” he says. “You’re coming with me. I’m driving you straight to their front door and handing you over.”

I smirk. “But you’ve been–”

“Drinking?” he interrupts. “Thanks to you my first beer is still on the table.”

I’m trying to summon up the voice to say thanks, or whatever I’m supposed to say to shit like this, but I don’t get a chance. The door opens to my right and the posh suited guy steps out.

They stare at each other, him and Michael, and Michael loosens his grip on me.

I wish he hadn’t. I liked the way he held me there.

“What the hell are you doing?” posh guy asks, and Michael groans.

“Taking Carrie back to her parents.”

I can’t bring myself to argue. It’s a first for me.

They stare at each other a long time, and I fidget, scuffing my boot along the brickwork.

“Text me when you’re done and make it quick. This is way out of order,” the posh guy says, and I wonder for a second if they are… but they can’t be, because I’ve seen the way Michael looks at me, even though he tries to hide it, even though he doesn’t want to.

Posh guy leaves and I let out a sigh. “He your boyfriend? He’s a bit stiff.”

“He’s a friend,” Michael tells me. “We were having a beer.”

I watch the guy walk up the street. He’s hot for an old dude, looking ripped under that pompous suit he’s wearing.

I kinda wish they were into each other, maybe I could, I dunno.

It’s stupid. Dumb. I push the thought away.

“I don’t want to go back to Rosie and Bill’s,” I say, but Michael shakes his head.

“You’re out of fucking luck,” he tells me, and he’s not playing around. His voice is edgy outside of his office, edgy and deep and dangerous, even though I don’t feel in danger at all. “I’m taking you home right fucking now.”

I hate it when people touch me. I hate walking down the street attached to someone else, but when Michael takes my wrist in his hand and leads me across the street, I don’t mind it at all.

Michael isn’t like other people. Not like anyone I’ve ever met.

He won’t be played. He won’t be pushed away. He won’t be screamed off me.

Not yet, anyway.

And I don’t mind that at all, either.