Don't Let Me Go (52 page)

‘Indeed, Mr Goodman,’ and frowning at Kentley she turned her attention back to Charlotte. ‘You may continue,’ she said.

‘The first time I saw her,’ Charlotte began softly, ‘was at a park, here in Kesterly. I was with my sister and niece and nephew who were playing on the slide, when I noticed a little girl sitting alone on a swing. She was watching me, and because I couldn’t tell if she was with someone I went over to make sure she was all right. She didn’t appear to be afraid when I spoke to her, but when I asked her her name she didn’t answer. She just kept looking at me, and I remember wondering if she knew me. I tried to remember if I’d seen her before – I come across so many children – but I just knew that if we had met I wouldn’t have forgotten her.’

‘Where were her parents at this point, do you know?’ Anthony asked.

‘There didn’t seem to be anyone around at first, but then a man appeared telling me she was shy and seeming in a bit of a hurry to lift her out of the swing. She didn’t call him Daddy, and there didn’t seem to be much of a connection between them, but on the other hand, she didn’t act as though he was a stranger, and when he led her away she seemed to go willingly enough. I just couldn’t help feeling uneasy. Something wasn’t right, I felt sure of it, but he hadn’t done anything wrong so I could only stand there and watch them walk away.’

‘Did you see her again that day?’

‘No, it was a few weeks later that our paths crossed again, but during that time I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I kept thinking of how troubled I’d felt when she’d been led away, and seeing her face in my mind’s eye when she’d glanced over her shoulder to see if I was still there. I began connecting it with how I’d waited for my mother to come and rescue me when I was about the same age as the little girl, and how she never had. I was too young to realise at the time that my mother had been badly injured in an attack so had been unable to come, I just remember trying to reach a door handle to let myself out so I could get to her, but it was too high. For some reason I kept thinking it was the same for the little girl, that she needed rescuing and no one was responding.’

‘So how did you meet her again?’

‘An anonymous call came into the office asking us to check on a child on North Hill. I had no idea at the time that it was the little girl from the park, but when I finally managed to set up a meeting at the house – her father kept resisting and her mother wouldn’t answer the phone – I recognised the child straight away.’

‘Who else was present at this meeting?’

‘Both her parents. I don’t think her father had any memory of me, but I felt sure that she knew we’d met before. She didn’t say so, because she didn’t speak, not then, but she almost never took her eyes off me. Her father insisted she was a bit of a chatterbox when no one else was around, but I found that very hard to believe. Chatty children are usually that way with everyone, and this little girl was speaking to no one, not even her mother.’

‘Tell us something about the mother. What were your initial thoughts about her?’

‘That she was very detached and seemed to have no natural warmth towards the child. It was sad to see, because she was such a lovable little girl. In fact, I was worried enough to suggest in my initial assessment that the mother should undergo a mental-health check, because something obviously wasn’t right with her.’

‘And did she go for this check?’

‘No. Her husband kept putting it off and putting it off until . . . Well, until it was too late.’

Anthony nodded gravely. ‘We’ll come to that later. For now I’d like you to continue telling us about your first visit to the house on North Hill. Did anything happen while you were there to make you think the child was at risk?’

‘Nothing specific, but I was as uneasy about the father as I’d been that day in the park, more so now I was seeing them at home, especially when Chloe, or Ottilie as we knew her then, kept pulling her lips between her teeth. I suspected he’d told her I was a wicked witch who’d steal her tongue if she spoke. This is a common threat used by adults who are abusing children, and sucking their lips between their teeth is a common reaction, particularly with the very young.’

Anthony allowed a murmur of revulsion to fade from the room. ‘Go on,’ he prompted.

‘While she was doing this with her lips,’ Charlotte said, ‘she was showing me how good she was at jigsaws, and for her age she was good. With her father being a primary-school teacher I suspected she could probably read and write a little by now, though he’d already admitted that she didn’t attend a nursery. Nor did she have any other family or friends. I felt very worried to think of her shut up in that house with only her parents for company, and her teddy bear who she told me that day was called Boots.’

‘So she did speak?’

‘Just that one word, but I was sure she could say more than that. She didn’t get the opportunity though, not that day, because her father came into the room before I could encourage her to go further and as soon as he was there she clammed up again.’

Looking distinctly unimpressed, Anthony asked, ‘So what happened as a result of this first meeting?’

‘Well, obviously I wrote up my initial assessment which included recommendations for the child to be enrolled at a nursery school with no further delay, and to see a speech therapist. I contacted a health visitor to set those visits in motion, and I also made an appointment for her to be examined by the community paediatrician.’

‘In fact, you did everything someone in your position is supposed to do when it’s felt a child is at risk?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘Once he was over his initial anger at having his daughter declared at risk Mr Wade agreed to the health visitor and speech therapist, but he wasn’t helpful in finding a nursery placement. It was either too expensive, not good enough, already full . . . So I found one myself, and ended up taking her, because her mother, I then discovered, never left the house.’

‘She was an agoraphobic?’

‘I believe so.’

‘And the father was working?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Was the mother happy for you to take her?’

‘I’m not sure Erica Wade was ever happy, but she always had her daughter ready to go when I got there, and even suggested I leave Chloe’s car seat in my car so I wouldn’t have to keep getting it from the garage.’

‘So as far as she was concerned it was now your job to take Chloe to nursery?’

‘It certainly seemed that way, and I didn’t object because I was afraid Chloe would never get the social stimulation she needed if she didn’t go.’

‘What had happened about the appointment with the community paediatrician by then?’

‘As I said, one had been arranged, but there was a nine-week wait and since Chloe’s GP had checked her over and declared her to be in good health, I couldn’t get her in as an emergency.’

‘I see. OK, continue if you will with how the relationship then developed between you and Chloe.’

‘Well, I could sense right from the start that she was becoming attached to me, and I admit it didn’t take long for me to become very fond of her. She’s the sweetest, gentlest little soul and she seemed to love being with me, no matter where we went or what we were doing. Though she remained reluctant to speak to others, she began opening up to me, only in small ways, but as I saw her blossom I knew in my heart I had to be there for her, because she so desperately needed someone to love her and at that time I was all she had.

‘So I took her to the Pumpkin playgroup three times a week, where she made her first friend and started to gain some confidence. She didn’t like me to leave her, she got very upset when I did, but over time she learned to trust the fact that I would be back. It was very touching to see the way her little face lit up whenever she saw me; she’d run straight over and take hold of my hand. She’d even let me hold her precious bear for her sometimes, a very great honour indeed.’

As she swallowed the lump in her throat, Anthony said, ‘So was nursery the only place you took her?’

‘No, we used to go for rides on the carousel near the Pumpkin, before I took her home. It wasn’t difficult to tell that she’d never been on one before and she absolutely loved it. Round and round and round we’d go, and she was so happy it was impossible not to give in when she wanted more. Not that she ever asked for more, she didn’t have the courage for that, but I could sense it and so round we’d go again until eventually I’d tell her we had to go home. It was as though a light inside her went out whenever I said that, so after a while I began stretching things out, taking her for a glass of milk and a brownie at a seafront café, or for a ride on the donkeys if the weather was good. Actually, I took her to lots of places, the aquarium, the zoo, walks on the pier, to the park, and whenever we were together I could see how much it was all meaning to her. So much that she once smuggled herself into the back of my car and I didn’t realise she was there until I got home.’

Anthony waited a moment as she smothered another rise of emotion.

‘I’ve never seen her cry so hard as she did when I tried to explain that I had to take her back,’ she finally continued. ‘My mother was there at the time, so she saw too just how desperate she was to stay with me. It upset us a lot to see the state she got into, but obviously I had to take her home. Her father had called me by then demanding to know where she was, so faced with no alternative I put her back in the car and drove her to North Hill. It was honestly one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. She sobbed and sobbed the entire way there, and I did all the way back.’

‘Yet you’d dealt with traumatised children before, so doing the difficult thing wasn’t new to you?’

‘No, it wasn’t, but believe me it’s never easy, and because I’d become so attached to Chloe . . . I really can’t explain why it was different with her, it just was. She wanted to be with me all the time, and I admit I wanted to be with her. It wasn’t that I thought I was the only one who could help her, but there was a connection between us. I knew I was the only one she trusted, and so to try to hand her over to someone else, another social worker I mean, would have seemed cruel when I knew how much it would upset her.’

‘And when you discussed this with Tommy Burgess, your team leader, he agreed that she should remain in your caseload?’

‘Yes, he did. By then we weren’t far off an appointment with the community paediatrician, so it made sense for me to see it through.’

‘And during this time were there any signs of abuse that you noticed?’

‘Yes, there were, but Brian Wade always had an explanation ready – she’d either fallen off the bed, or had an infection that had been diagnosed by their doctor . . .’

Anthony put up a hand. ‘I think it’s important for the jury to note that the GP that’s been referred to twice now was later found to be a member of the same paedophile ring as Brian Wade. At the time Ms Nicholls had no way of knowing that, so she had no reason to distrust his diagnosis.’ To Charlotte he said, ‘Please continue.’

‘Actually, I wasn’t happy with the doctor’s diagnosis,’ she told the jury, ‘but as the paediatrician’s assessment was imminent I decided I should wait for that.’

‘What were you expecting from this assessment?’

‘I was hoping he would tell me that Chloe was still intact.’

‘And did he, after the appointment took place?’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Meaning she wasn’t intact?’

‘No.’

‘So at the age of three she was no longer a virgin?’

Charlotte’s eyes were closed as she said, ‘No.’

The horror of a child so young being subjected to any kind of act that would deprive her of her virginity spread another murmur of revulsion through the court.

‘So what happened next?’ Anthony prompted.

Taking a breath, Charlotte said, ‘Brian Wade insisted that her hymen had been ruptured in a fall from a tyre swing. Disproving that was almost impossible. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Chloe would sometimes say to me what sounded like “not tyre, not tyre”. I only realised later that what she was actually saying was “not tiger.” Tiger was the euphemism her father used for his genitalia. One of his commands while raping her was, “Ride the tiger.”’

As more disgust reverberated around the room the judge looked sickened too.

‘When did it become clear to you that she was saying “not tiger”?’ Anthony asked.

Trying to blank the images from her mind, Charlotte said, ‘When I saw the video footage Erica Wade sent me.’

‘Because this footage contained . . . ?’

‘Graphic images of the rape and what he was telling her to do.’

‘He was saying, “Ride the tiger”?’

Remembering the agony on Chloe’s face, the tears, the sobbing and violent jerking as she was forced to obey her father, Charlotte could barely manage a yes.

Anthony’s head went down.

The court was so silent it was as though no one was breathing.

‘And when,’ Anthony asked, looking up again, ‘did Erica Wade send the footage?’

‘It was sent on the night of 6th October, but as it was a Sunday I didn’t actually open the email until the following morning.’

‘And why do you think she sent it to you?’

‘Because she wanted me to help her daughter.’

‘Did she say so in an accompanying message?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did the message say?’

‘She told me to get Chloe away from him.’

‘Anything else?’

‘She said, “My daughter needs a mother. It can’t be me, but it can be you. Watch what I’ve sent you and don’t let her down.”’

‘Where is this message now?’

‘I deleted it along with the footage.’

‘But only after forwarding it to the police?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you didn’t actually see the message, or the video, until the morning of 7th October?’

‘No.’

‘So it wasn’t Mrs Wade’s request, or the video, that led you to remove Chloe from the house on the night of 6th October?’

‘No.’

‘Then why did you take her that night? Please talk us through what happened.’

As he stood aside, so as not to distract the jury, Charlotte felt herself starting to tremble as she allowed her mind to return to that fateful Sunday. ‘My mother had just returned to New Zealand,’ she began hoarsely. She cleared her throat. ‘We’d spent two weeks together, for the first time in over twenty-five years, so I was feeling quite emotional about that, and I was worried about Chloe, because I was always worried about Chloe. I’d driven myself down to the seafront, because I sometimes find it calming to watch the waves, but for some reason that day I couldn’t shake my gloom. I didn’t know if or when I was going to see my mother again, and having just found out that Chloe was no longer a virgin . . . It was tearing me apart, because I
knew
her father was responsible, but I didn’t have a way of proving it. He was clever, manipulative, and being who he was no one was going to want to believe he was capable of doing something like that to his own child, especially not when he had so many children from the South Kesterly community in his care. Yet somehow I had to get to the truth so I could get her out of that house on North Hill. Leaving her behind after playgroup had become so hard by then that I almost dreaded going to pick her up, although nothing in me, not a single shred of me, would ever have let her down.