Dev sighed. ‘Xanthe always managed to attend meetings. Who are you seeing today?’
‘Kyle Clarkson, Ian Taylor and Jassy Greene this morning, Poppy Brooke this afternoon. Jassy’s a new client, so I’ll need to spend more time with her, and I need to chase Kyle up – he missed his last appointment and he hasn’t been keeping up with his probation officer.’ Which probably meant Kyle – seventeen, troubled, given to solving the huge problems in his life by self-medication – was back on the drugs again.
‘Poppy. You could cancel Poppy and come in for the meeting. She’s doing well. She doesn’t need this close supervision any more.’
‘Actually, I need to talk to you about Poppy.’ Nineteen-year-old Poppy had been doing well. Kay’s predecessor, a young woman called Xanthe Adamos, had found her a part-time job, and Kay had picked up her case with high hopes of getting Poppy back into college to complete the course in beauty therapy she’d dropped out of when drugs took hold of her life.
But in some way that Kay found hard to pin down, Poppy was struggling. She was keeping up with the job, but not much else. Kay had heard just yesterday that Poppy had missed two appointments with her probation officer – something the man had only just got round to telling them.
Dev listened, then shook his head. ‘But she’s reasonably stable, she’s holding down her job. I want you to start the process of moving her on – group support, I think. It’s such a shame Xanthe had to leave before Poppy was fully back on track.’
Xanthe had apparently been very cool and down with the kids, and Dev Johar never missed an opportunity to tell Kay how much she was missed. Kay was well on her way to disliking her unknown predecessor, who, for all her skills, had effectively walked out of the job. She’d gone to America to continue her academic studies and left Tania’s House in the lurch. It had taken over three months to replace her, and then only with a part-time post. Budget reasons, Johar had told her, which surprised Kay. Tania’s House had a turnover of more than £300,000 a year, thanks to some generous donors. But that wasn’t the issue now.
‘I can’t cancel my appointment with Poppy,’ she said briskly. ‘Let me have a copy of the minutes and I’ll respond. I’ll talk to you about group therapy for her after I’ve seen her today.’
Before Dev could extend the discussion – which wasn’t going to get them anywhere – she collected her files and made her escape, making it back to the car just as a traffic warden hove into view. She pulled out into the traffic, ignoring a few angry horns as she did so – if you waited for a space, you’d never get out – and drove to her favourite greasy spoon, where she had an egg sandwich and a huge mug of tea to marshal her resources for the day ahead.
But by the time her third appointment was finished, her resources had just about run out. It was almost three. Each appointment had overrun – which was par for the course – and there had been no time for a break or for any lunch. On the other hand, she was feeling optimistic. The delinquent Kyle had admitted to using pills again, but seemed ready to have another go once Kay spelled out the options to him, and the new client, Jassy, seemed well-motivated.
She ate an energy bar as she drove to her last appointment with Poppy. Kay braced herself. Things might look good on paper, but something was wrong. Poppy was starting to slip back, and Kay had to catch her before she slipped too far.
Parking on Poppy’s road was always difficult, so Kay parked on the main road and took her stuff out of the back, hoping her car would be too scruffy to interest any passing twoccers. She checked her backpack. All the folders were there – you didn’t leave confidential stuff in the car – and what she thought of as her teenage revival kit; cans of coke, cigarettes, sweets – the kind of stuff that had got her through doors in the past, and was always useful for navigating sticky periods in support sessions.
Poppy lived in a shared house in a run-down part of the city. It was an area full of industrial sheds, takeaways, budget food shops, bookies.
A steady stream of traffic flowed past her. The air made her skin smart and there was a chemical taste in her mouth. She was the only pedestrian, walking briskly along the cracked pavement. And yet there were green spaces – a patch of wasteland where a building had been demolished colonised by brambles and dandelions, an old car park, virtually empty, where weeds were forcing their way through the concrete, a buddleia clinging on to a cracked gutter.
She was in the edge lands, spaces where the urban sprawl began to decay, and nature, battered and struggling, began its fight back.
And where people who had lost their way might find a place to survive.
She turned onto the road where Poppy lived. It was a dark street, aligned so it never seemed to get the sun. On one corner there was a vacant, weed-filled space, and on the other side of the road a grey industrial shed. As she walked along the pavement, she passed houses with all the obvious signs of multiple occupancy – uncared-for gardens, overflowing bins, tatty curtains pulled across windows even during the day.
Kay came to the last house. The window was covered with what looked like an
