The social-worker woman was really fucking Keisha off. It was the way she sat there, dull as shit in this awful cardie from BHS or somewhere, and the short grey hair and the glasses on a string, like a granny, for fuck’s sake. But mostly it was the way she talked, all soft and gentle, like she’d been on a course to deal with fucking retards.
Keisha slumped down in the plastic seat, squeaking her Dunlop trainers over the floor, and her mum gave her a look. Of course she was nodding along with every word Sandra said, like it was the Lord’s own gospel. Yes, Keisha, you are too unstable to have your own bloody kid living with you, even though you’ve got a flat and a job and a man. What fucking more did they want?
‘But I don’t get it, right?’ She folded her arms in her new denim jacket – one of his presents, trying to make up for yet another crappy thing he’d done. ‘I did what you said, yeah? I got her room sorted, and her bed, wardrobe, all that shit. In bloody pink ruffles.’
Keisha’s mum glared at her. ‘Language,’ she muttered, her thick voice pure Kingston even after thirty years in England. ‘Manners of a field hand.’
Sandra was staring between them probably thinking she couldn’t get enough of all this juicy unresolved conflict, as she would call it. If she loved it so fucking much, she should go and work on Trisha or something.
‘The thing is, Keisha,’ Sandra said, setting her pen down carefully. ‘The thing is, we’re still a bit concerned about the relationship you’re in.’
‘He’s her fucking dad!’
‘Don’t you be effin’ and blindin’ before the lady!’ her mother bellowed. If Keisha had been just a few years younger, Mercy would have belted her round the ear.
‘That’s OK, Mercy,’ said Sandra earnestly. ‘I understand it must be hard for Keisha, when Christopher is, as she says, Ruby’s father. But after what happened, you must see he needs to change. He’s never even come to meet with me, in all this time.’
‘He’s busy.’ She’d begged him to come, much fucking use it was. Sat at home in his pants and Arsenal top, playing on the Xbox – me time, he called it. While she had to trudge up to this depressing shithole, smelled just like her old school, same echoing corridors, and Sandra talking at her in that you-are-a-loony voice.
Her mum was nodding along again, meaty arms folded over her vast boobs. ‘Good for nothin’, that boy. Only good thing he ever do’s make that baby.’
Keisha slumped further. It wasn’t fair, these two spinster bitches telling her to leave the man she loved – her man. When everyone knew how lucky she was to even be allowed to breathe near Chris Dean. They didn’t understand a thing.
‘OK, Keisha,’ Sandra said, blinking rapidly. ‘We’ll see if Christopher will come next time. Until then my hands are tied, I’m afraid. He has to show he won’t let it happen again, what he did.’
‘He won’t.’ He’d promised her, when she screamed in his face. She’d even slapped him – now, months later, she wasn’t sure how she’d been able to do that, or why he hadn’t slapped her back harder.
‘I’ll let you out.’ Sandra got up, huffing. She wasn’t as fat as Mercy, but she still had rolls of flab jiggling under her chin. Gross.
In the crappy waiting room, all dirty windows and bent plastic seats, Ruby was playing. She had a colouring book and a tatty old Barbie doll Mercy’d bought her in the pound shop. It wasn’t even a real Barbie, just a white plastic doll with blonde hair. Didn’t look much like Ruby, with her kinky hair tied up in bunches. The kid’s big dark eyes were nervous behind her glasses. The cast was off now, thank God. Keisha had hardly been able to look at the thing. She hovered in the doorway, looking at her daughter.
Sandra obviously thought she was good with kids; probably she’d been on a course for that too. She stuck her fat face down to Ruby’s. ‘Hello, precious. Is that your dolly? Isn’t she pretty?’ Ruby ducked her head, and you could see her going in on herself. She was shy, and who could blame her after what her own dad did to her? Ruby looked from the social worker to Keisha. Then she shuffled close to Mercy, clutching hold of her cheap dolly, hiding in