Chapter 9: The Welfare Officer Comes
The welfare officer's name was Mrs.
Hargreaves.
She arrived on a Thursday morning, forty-three hours after Paul filed the assessment request — faster than Thomas had expected, which Paul said meant the initial review had flagged something as urgent.
She was a small woman in her sixties with reading glasses on a chain and a canvas bag that looked like it had been carried to a thousand houses before this one.
She shook Thomas's hand at the door, nodded to Dolores in the hallway, and asked, in a voice that was neither warm nor cold but simply steady, whether Lily was available.
"She's in the sitting room," Thomas said.
"Good.
I'll speak with her first, if that's all right.
Alone."
"Of course."
"And the other adult resident — "
"She's been asked to remain upstairs for the duration of your visit."
Mrs.
Hargreaves looked at him over her glasses.
"Asked, or — "
"My solicitor communicated the request formally yesterday afternoon."
"All right." She glanced down the hallway toward the sitting room.
"I'll come and find you when I'm finished with Lily."
She went in.
The door closed.
Thomas stood in the hallway with Dolores.
Neither of them spoke.
The house was very quiet — the particular quiet of a place where something important is being decided in a room you cannot enter.
After forty minutes, the door opened.
Mrs.
Hargreaves came out with her canvas bag and her notepad and her reading glasses still on the chain, and she looked at Thomas with the expression of someone who has heard something they had hoped not to hear but had suspected they would.
"She's a very composed child," Mrs.
Hargreaves said.
"She's had to be," Thomas said.
"Yes." A pause.
"She showed me her arm."
Thomas nodded.
"She also showed me a photograph she'd been keeping under her pillow." Mrs.
Hargreaves held his gaze.
"And she told me about the drawing.
And about the eight months." She paused again.
"Mr.
Alderton, in my experience, children who have learned to keep that much to themselves have usually learned it because telling the truth in their own home has not been safe."
Thomas didn't answer.
"I'll be submitting my report today," she said.
"The formal recommendation will go to the court by end of week.
I can't tell you the specific content in advance, but I can tell you that what Lily told me is consistent with what your solicitor submitted, and that consistency matters."
"Thank you," Thomas said.
She nodded once, picked up her bag, and left.
Thomas went to the sitting room.
Lily was on the ottoman — the same ottoman, the same spot — with the rabbit book open in her lap.
She looked up when he came in.
"Was she nice?" he said.
"She was okay," Lily said.
"She had a pen with a cat on it."
"Did you tell her everything?"
"Yes." A pause.
"She didn't look surprised.
Is that good?"
"Yes," Thomas said.
"That's good."
Lily looked back at her book.
Then she said, without looking up, "Renata was on the landing.
When Mrs.
Hargreaves came out.
She was just standing there."
Thomas went still.
"Did Mrs.
Hargreaves see her?"
"Yes." Lily turned a page.
"She looked at her for a long time.
Renata went back to her room."
He crossed the room and sat beside his daughter.
"Lily," he said.
"This is almost over."
She looked at him.
"How almost?"
"Soon."
She considered this.
Then she held out the book — open to the page with the rabbit in the garden, the one his wife used to read in the funny voice.
"You skipped a bit last night," she said.
"When you fell asleep."
He took the book.
"Where did I stop?"
She pointed.
He read.
May you like
Upstairs, a door opened and closed.
Then silence.
