Blood Family Read Free Page A

again you’ll see a small kid breaking his heart in a doorway, or some poor sod who just walked down the wrong street at the wrong time and had his head kicked in. And you’ll just want to pack in the whole boiling, go home and weep.
    That’s how I felt that day. Partly the stink of the place! Hard to believe those two had lived in that flat, hour by hour, day by day, with that reek up their noses each breath they took. I nearly gagged. I watched that social worker – Rob, was it? – prowl round the poky place, looking for something better than that manky T-shirt and those raggy bottoms to cover the kid from prying eyes. And all I could think was, ‘Get a move on, mate! I just want out of here. You can come back some other time to trawl around for your report.’
    But, no. We had to wait while he peered into every cupboard. What he was looking for I couldn’t think.
    And then he pounces. On a book .
    A book! I ask you. In that benighted, stinking hole.
    I wonder about these social workers sometimes, truly I do.
Eddie
    Outside hit me in the face, the slap of it against my skin. I had forgotten. And it smelled – oh, I don’t know. Hard, somehow. Almost harsh. Like crystal . I think air shocked me almost more than light, and once or twice since, smelling chlorine as I’ve walked past swimming pools, I’ve been swept back to that strange moment when Rob opened the downstairs door.
    I shan’t forget the police-car ride: how big and wide the world looked. The road ran through the park, and all I could think of was my old nursery because there’d been a patch of green there. It was like seeing something half-forgotten. Of course there are trees and grass on television all the time. But seeing half a park of it on either side of you is something very different. My head was swimming with green.
    And sky. Even before Harris covered up the windows, we were far enough down the flats that I had to twist my head to see even a slice of sky. The window in the car was closed, but if I leaned against it and looked up, I could see masses of blue.
    Everything rushed past so quickly. And everywhere was so bright .
    Because it was a police car, I thought that we were going to the station. (Mr Perkins once went to the station.) When the car stopped, Rob Reed said, ‘We’re here.’ And when I didn’t move, he leaned across to push the car door open. After I got out, he let me stand and stare a little while before he said, ‘Come on, Eddie. Time enough for that later.’
    This time I wasn’t so slow because I knew for certain that he meant me. (I know that probably sounds as if I was thick as a brick. But Harris had only ever called me ‘Stain’ or ‘Toe-rag’, and Mum used to call me ‘Sweetie’ when she still spoke at all, so I had half forgotten that my name was Edward.)
    Rob Reed led me to a glass door that startled me when it began to open before he even touched it. Behind it were more people than I had ever seen in my whole life. And not a single one of them was looking at me.
    ‘Come on, Eddie,’ Rob Reed said. ‘We go this way.’
    And then he led me down a corridor so long I thought we’d never reach the end.
Dr Ruth Matchett, Queen Anne Hospital
    It was astonishing, really, how well he seemed. When I was told, before I went into the cubicle, that the boy had not been out of his flat for years I do remember thinking, ‘Here we go. Vitamin deficiencies. Possible stunted growth. And no doubt so mentally impoverished he’ll be halfway to retarded.’
    There were a few faint bruises on his lower legs, as if the brute who kept on kicking him couldn’t be arsed to raise his foot far from the floor, or put much effort into it. (I heard a different story about his mum. She’d been kicked halfway to pulp and was apparently so addled she could no longer speak.) The child had got off lightly. He did have one or two scars. But nothing you could pin down to a cigarette burn, or anything like that. I’ve seen far worse.