This Burdened Clay: Chapter Two
The second chapter of my forthcoming sci-fi horror novel.
Hints of wider freakiness abound as we met young Blake and his fractured family, and we learn a bit more about what makes Fran tick.
Missed chapter one? Catch up here.
2: Blake
DUM BICTH said the text message, the latest in a series of elegant missives Fran had received in the last couple of weeks. ILL RUIN UR AS was a personal favourite. She dropped the phone into her bag. Office hubbub faded into a background hum while she sat waiting for her line manager, John, on the ugly breakout sofa.
The new council headquarters were fully committed to the modern office aesthetic: open plan, USB charging points at every desk, an environmentally friendly aircon system and lots of meeting hubs. Hubs, stations, niches and breakout areas everywhere. Upon opening, its sterile newness seemed to invite some kind of spectacular desecration, she recalled. A gunfight perhaps, or a receptionist spontaneously combusting.
There was always something vaguely unwell about John’s face, Fran thought as he approached, as if one were viewing it through a haze of smoke in a 1980s bingo hall. Though mild mannered, there was an indefinable quality of deep strangeness about him.
“I bum caring gifts,” he said, dropping a punnet of strawberries on the table and sitting opposite her. “I’d have got brownies, but you know, set an example. Thanks for meeting, it won’t take long. I’ve got a phone appointment with a funeral director.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I saw this thing on telly about green burials and I got to thinking about whether it’s legal to just have your body left out in the open, sat up against a tree for the birds and squirrels. Maybe there’s a license you can get. People can come and say goodbye, or not. No fuss, just sit there in the rain and sink back into the earth. The squirrels could store nuts in me for winter.” John gobbled down a strawberry, stalk and all.
“Okay John. I don’t have long either, I’m visiting Blake Fox.”
“I was his mum Chantelle’s social worker back in the day. Weird family, complicated. Chantelle’s mum Susan, Blake and Caleb’s gran that is, used to bring this big lizard to meetings for some reason, till I put my foot down. Burt, his name was, as in Reynolds. Bloody thing started eating my tie once, nearly strangled me. Anyway, speaking of Caleb, that’s why I wanted to talk to you, your little encounter with him at the hospital. You can’t be doing that, going out in the middle of the night. Leave it to the police and duty team. They’re the experts, let them handle it.”
“Yeah okay. I just like to be ahead of the game. But if you’re concerned about expertise why are we being given all these different types of cases? I mean why’s Caleb allocated to me anyway? It’s on file that he’s aggressive to females. He should have a male worker.”
“I’ve explained The Whole Journey thing, Fran. You were at the presentation. Do you want me to explain it again?” Fran scowled and imagined John’s head exploding like the poor bastard from Scanners.
The Whole Journey was a fancy new organisational philosophy imported from New Zealand, which aimed to ensure children experienced as few changes of social worker as possible throughout their involvement with social services. While nobly intended, this meant an onerous restructuring exercise and social workers being plunged into areas of practice with which they were unfamiliar, such as specialists in long-term foster care suddenly dealing with acute safeguarding cases. Fran suspected the upper echelons of management simply chose these things based on whatever local authorities with better inspection results were doing.
“We’re on our knees, Fran,” John was saying. “People on long-term sick, Gilbert’s left to do his Kentucky Fried Ostrich thing and these agency workers coming and going. In case you haven’t noticed, kids are coming into care in their droves, I’ve never seen anything like it. And not being funny, but some people can’t be too choosy about their cases, if you know what I mean.”
She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, inviting him to elaborate. He looked as if he’d been sick in his mouth.
“Your disciplinary case. I’m just saying if it was me, I wouldn’t kick up a fuss, you know? Having a reduced caseload and still getting paid the same, it can cause resentment. Some of your colleagues are still a bit wary with the whole racism thing. I mean I don’t see it that way, I take people as I find them. Your heritage is East European, so what? Maybe in your culture you’re not as up to date with things as we are here. It’s cool.”
“John, what are you talking about? I was cleared of the racism charge, for God’s sake, you know that. And you know what the disciplinary was about. No one gave a shit about that little girl because it was too awkward, damnit. And I was born in Derby.”
“Alright, I stand erected.”
Fran’s grip on her pen tightened. Visualise the anger, control it. An online therapist had advised her to picture her anger as a phenomenon external to herself, a metaphor under her control. As an example, he asked her to imagine a pot of boiling water, and to picture herself turning down the heat under it. Later, she happened to watch a documentary about the universe and was struck by a computer-generated image of a pulsar: a tiny, superdense star spinning hundreds of times per second, rendered oblate by the speed of its rotation, with colossal spears of radiation whirling about it. They could belch gamma rays which stretched for countless lightyears, sterilising anything in their path. The image spoke to her understanding of her anger, her helplessness in the face of its cosmic power. It could never be tempered, only obscured by clouds of dust and gas, the corpses of long dead stars.
Back at her desk, she navigated through the vast, arcane social care database to familiarise herself with the family’s chronology. After a frustrating ten minutes scanning through a mess of observations and assessments, she stumbled upon a Word document laying out a concise chronology. She printed it off and took a quick look through before tucking it into her bag.
Susan Fox, formerly McGregor, née Williams, was the keystone of the family network. She married the alcoholic wastrel Marty McGregor in the early eighties and bore two girls by him, Kate and Natalie, Caleb’s mother. After her parents died, Susan descended into a spiral of mental illness, drug abuse and prostitution, while Marty struggled to care for the two girls. Susan met Jed Fox, possibly a former pimp and/or client, and he lived with the family sporadically. Though the nature of his relationship with them remained ambiguous, he brought stability to the family home.
In 1995 Marty McGregor died after falling down a cliff on a family holiday. Within four months Jed and Susan were married and moved to the Midlands. Their only child together, Chantelle, was born soon afterwards. Kate, the oldest of the girls, moved to Ireland as soon as she could, ceasing all contact with Susan and Jed, and apparently doing well for herself.
Fran took the lift down to the basement carpark, got in the Toyota and entered Blake’s address into the satnav: Lilton, a one-pub no-shop village out in the sticks. Before she released the handbrake her phone burped a notification sound she didn’t recognise. She’d had a match through her dating app with someone called Marcel. His picture showed a tall, pleasant-looking man standing by a well in some dusty foreign village, surrounded by happy brown children beaming into the camera. A cheesy look-at-my-halo profile picture, for sure, but he was very handsome and his About Me section was self-deprecating and funny. A few messages later and they had arranged to meet for dinner. She left the carpark humming The Twilight Zone theme tune.
Many of the villages dotted about the area were chocolate box pretty, quaint little places nestled amid rolling farmland. All thatched roofs, Norman churches, cosy pub restaurants and long driveways behind security gates. But she could never shake the feeling that such rustic charm must disguise some profound awfulness. This feeling was heightened as she was about to pull out of a junction; a middle-aged man in an expensive suit strolled across the road in front of the car to stand on the manicured village green. With his eyes closed and a beatific smile plastered on his face, he stretched out his arms to stand motionless like a scarecrow. Fran watched him for some seconds and realised he was barefoot. The sight was unnerving, like footage of congregants in American mega-churches moved to blissful imbecility by the power of God’s love. Some kids nearby filmed him on their phones.
The house Blake shared with his mother, Chantelle, nestled at the far end of a quiet close. Case files suggested the place would stand out like a diseased mongrel at Crufts; a recent photograph showed a broken wardrobe on its side in a tiny, overgrown front garden, mouldering children’s toys, dog turds, discarded beer cans and soggy cardboard taped over the front door window. But the rubbish had been cleared, the front door replaced and the grass cut back. A pair of wellington boots had been co-opted as planters for pink and purple hellebore. Fran checked the address again; she had the right place.
Before leaving the car Fran took another look at the case chronology. Aged seventeen, Natalie had given birth to Caleb. A few years later her half-sister Chantelle, then fifteen, had Blake. So the boys were half-cousins, sharing only one grandparent, Susan. Concerns for their welfare simmered away over the years, occasionally boiling over into crises. Chaotic parenting, low level neglect, substance misuse and a grim cast of transient proto-dads, varying between the harmless but useless, and the outright abusive.
“You must be Adway,” Fran said to the tall man with the messy afro who answered the door. “I’m Fran, Blake’s new social worker. Can I come in?”
“Oh, okay. Er, yeah, come on in. Blake’s up in his room at the minute. Chantelle’s just boiled the kettle.”
She followed him through to a small kitchen, her trained eyes assimilating and recording. She didn’t believe in spirits, but was convinced that houses could retain an aura of abuse. It was something to which she was attuned, like pigeons sensing magnetic fields. Beneath a shelf was a telltale rash of nicks from hurled glassware, and a discoloured part of the kitchen door frame had been damaged and inexpertly repaired. But these were old scars and the place was now clean and in good order. A long to-do list was written on a whiteboard on the kitchen wall: bathroom mould, school trip money, skirting boards, ring gas.
Chantelle sat at the kitchen table with a cup of herbal tea and smiled at Fran as she entered. She was dressed in gym clothes, plain but fresh faced and youthful. A plastic mixing bowl full of fruit stood on the table.
Adway sat opposite Fran while Chantelle got up to make coffee. “Sorry darlin’, we ain’t got cow juice,” he said. “Chantelle’s gone dairy-free so I’ve gone dairy-free, you get me? Got every other milk, just about. Oat, rice, almond, coconut, human kindness.” He had an endearing, naughty boy quality about him and Fran liked him immediately. Blake could do a lot worse for a step-father, had done in fact. According to case notes, Chantelle either didn’t know, or was unwilling to reveal the identity of Blake’s biological father.
“Whatever’s easiest, I’m not fussy,” Fran said. “Looks nice out front now, and in here. You’ve been busy.”
“I can’t take no credit. Chantelle’s been bussin’ her fingers to the bone, getting the place tip top. She’s on a health tip n’all, jogging and whatnot. Little Miss Chariots of Fire, you get me?”
“Well you’ve done really well, both of you. Blake’s taking his meds every day? He’s got a kidney issue, I understand.”
“Chronic kidney disease, yeah,” Chantelle said. “He’s on vitamin D, phosphate binders, meds to keep his blood pressure down and another pill ‘cause of the side effects of the blood pressure meds. He’s pretty good with it, I only have to remind him now and again. We have to watch his salt intake.”
“Sounds like you’re on top of it. How long have you two been together?”
“About a year,” Chantelle said, handing Fran a coffee. “Addy moved in just before Christmas. He’s a big lump but he’s got his uses.”
“Great. Right, so Blake’s no longer on a child protection plan, and is now what’s called a child in need. It means we don’t think he’s at risk of significant harm anymore. It’s lower level but we’ve still got an action plan we need to follow, okay? I’ll visit every six weeks or so and I’ll need to speak alone to Blake. By the way, I wanted to apologise for you having yet another new social worker, but like I say to everyone, my job’s to make it so you don’t have to see me anymore. Okay, spiel over. How’ve things been? Can you talk to me a little bit about why Blake was on a child protection plan, how you see it?”
“When it comes down to it, I didn’t care for him properly,” Chantelle said, blushing. “I was in a bad place for so long, you know? I get that now. My parents never cared right for me so I didn’t know how to do it neither, the basics. And I let men walk all over me because, I don’t know. I didn’t think I was worth being treated right, I suppose.”
“Your mother’s Susan, right? And Jed Fox is your dad?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Chantelle replied, clearly restraining her frustration at having to yet again relay her history to a stranger. “And I know dad’s not allowed to see the kids. I know he’s got a history. He hasn’t seen either of them for ages.”
“You completed the domestic abuse course, I understand.”
“Yeah, yeah it was an eye opener, meeting other women and hearing all the horror stories. It helped me turn a corner, and I feel a lot better in myself. Unlost violated sunbeams.”
Fran blinked, wondering if she had misheard. She replayed Chantelle’s nonsensical comment in her head, trying to make it make sense; it sounded like a crossword clue. The woman’s face was mild, serene even, while motes danced in a shaft of sunlight through the window. Adway remained silent.
“I…I understand you were having counselling,” Fran said, peering at Chantelle. “Are you keeping up with that?”
“Yeah, I see Louise every fortnight. She’s great. I’m doing shifts at the pub as well. It’s been really good for me.”
“And a family support worker’s been helping with organising home routines, that kind of thing?”
“Yeah, she only comes once a month now. We had a good clear out, and we’ve got our list of chores on the wall. Sorting out stuff at home’s so much easier when you’ve got a plan. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t do it earlier. It’s a bit embarrassing, really.”
“Right. How about you Adway? How’ve you been?”
“Er, just doing my thing. I do twelve-hour shifts, four days on, four off. I just go with the flow.”
Fran nodded. “I’d like to have a look around and speak to Blake if that’s okay.”
Adway gave her a tour while Chantelle loaded clothes into the washer. The fridge was stocked with plenty of fresh meat and vegetables, the rear garden recently mowed though rather empty. The lounge was small but homely, with colourful cushions disguising a tattered sofa. Scrabble tiles, game controllers and a fishing magazine lay around. Lived in but not unkempt.
Addy showed her the bathroom upstairs, which was fine aside from mould around the bath seal, and led her along the hallway to Blake’s bedroom door.
“Adway,” she said, finding herself whispering, “is Chantelle okay? I don’t know if you caught it but she said something just now which seemed a bit strange.”
Adway looked at her without replying, then knocked on Blake’s door. “Yo Blake. The social’s here, bruv.” He opened the door himself and retreated downstairs.
Blake lay on his bed with a science magazine propped on his knees. There were no posters of footballers or popstars on his walls, instead, he had huge pictures of the solar system, a map of the world and another of the periodic table. Tossing the magazine down, he looked at Fran with undisguised curiosity. He was smallish for his twelve years.
She had a suite of techniques at her disposal to break the ice with children, little games and such to build trust and help them express themselves, but she went with a no-frills approach. She prodded gently with questions about school and friendships and Blake’s answers were concise and polite.
“Been up to much in half term?”
“Yeah, Addy took me to play golf at the pitch and putt. I was rubbish but I got the hang of it after a while. And we went fishing but it was really boring. He uses these little ball things as bait and they really stink.”
“How do you get along with him?”
“I like him, he’s funny. I wish he didn’t have to work so much. He sleeps in the day a lot ‘cause he does nightshifts.”
“And how’s life at home now, Blake? How’s your mum?”
“Things are better, more organised. Am I going into care like my cousin Caleb?”
“No, no. Things would have to be a lot more serious for that to happen. Your mum’s done really well and it looks like things are a lot better now. Caleb’s situation is very different.”
“I heard he beat up twelve guys outside a pub and jumped over the canal on a motorbike.”
“Not quite.”
By all accounts Blake was bright, eager to please and prone to confabulation. After a wretched former boyfriend of Chantelle’s was jailed for burglary, Blake had told a teacher the man was in fact an international crime lord on par with Pablo Escobar, and had been blown to smithereens by a F-16 fighter jet during a rooftop chase in Miami. Fran sensed that this tendency to exaggerate spoke to some fundamental aspect of the boy’s personality, to his interface with the world.
“I’ve heard you’re really imaginative. Have you thought of writing stories? I bet you’d come up with some really good ones.”
“I have done, a little bit,” he said, shyly. “I wrote a couple of stories about what the aliens might be like.”
“Awesome. Maybe I could read one some time.”
“I’ve drew them as well.”
Swinging his legs off the bed, Blake rifled through a messy stack of school books and paper on his desk. He pulled out a pencil drawing of an alien and held it up to her. It was colourful and quite artistic, better than anything Fran could do at least. It looked like a giant, saggy spider marching across a beach. Tiny humans fled in terror.
“Do you think the aliens want to take over? My science teacher don’t think so. He reckons if they can send super high energy neutron beams so far through space then they must be so advanced they wouldn’t need anything from us.”
“Interesting, I’d never thought of it like that. I think it was neutrinos though, not neutrons, they’re something else.”
“Oh yeah, neutrinos.”
They smiled politely at each other until he said, “My mum got rid of Rusty.”
“Is that your dog?”
“Yeah. She really loved him. I thought she did. But she said he could make us ill because dogs carry parasites and stuff but she never worried about that before and she took him to a shelter. It’s like she’s a bit too perfect now sometimes.”
“I’m sorry Blake, that must’ve been really sad for you. The thing is, sometimes when people get a social worker they worry about doing something wrong, and they can go a bit too far trying to make everything just right. Usually things get better and the parents find the right balance, you know?”
Blake nodded. “Have you heard of the Hera movement?”
“It rings a bell.”
“It’s a thing where people get really healthy and get in touch with nature and stuff. I think mum’s into it, and my auntie Natalie’s boyfriend Ezra too. Someone on Reddit said China invented it to make people in Europe and America lazy so they don’t work hard, and…what’s that word that means being rich and, like, you only care about having a good time?”
“Decadent?”
“Yeah, decadent.” His face creased in worry and his voice dropped to barely a whisper. He seemed so small sat there, watching her like a baby owl. “Sometimes she says weird stuff that don’t make sense, but don’t seem to notice. And one time I walked in her bedroom and she was eating the soil out of a plant pot. She just looked at me and carried on like it was normal.”
Pica? Was Chantelle pregnant?
Fran considered. God only knew what was going on in his mother’s head. Like a seemingly dud firework, the repercussions of abuse could flare back into life when least expected, and in wholly unexpected ways. Ultimately, she told herself, the parenting needs only to be good enough, not perfect. If a family is unorthodox or outright weird, it’s none of the local authority’s business. The boy was finally getting the care he deserved, and the machinery of the state with its statutory guidance and protocols and key performance indicators had made that happen. A success story, no doubt. And yet she felt the tiny hairs on her neck stand on end, and a cold hollowness bloom in her stomach.
Chapter Three is a doozy and is coming soon!