Casey Watson - The Girl Without a Voice - The true story of a terrified child whose silence spoke volumes

‘And?’ Mike had asked.

‘And what?’ I’d answered.

‘And how many unmarked £50 notes did you have to slip him?’

No danger of anyone getting a big head in our house.

I had never worried that I might become bored or disillusioned once the reality of working in a large city comprehensive kicked in, but neither had I reckoned on how much the job would consume me. It was just so engrossing – sometimes stressful, sometimes fascinating, but always so interesting – that on weekdays, at any rate, I ate, slept and breathed it.

And it looked like this week would be no exception. A new child always brought a little thrill of excitement, as each one was a different leap into the unknown. And this one sounded particularly intriguing. I made a mental note to see if I could find out anything about selective mutism on my computer once the children were settled with their work.

‘Right,’ I told them. ‘Let’s get this project up in the air, shall we?’

Henry, predictably, groaned at my pun. We had been doing a project on the history of aviation for the past two weeks, and had been devoting the first two hours of each day to developing it. My little group were lucky. Only the school’s IT department enjoyed the luxury of computers, and the only internet connections were on the ones in the school offices. But since my classroom was also my office, that meant I had one of those precious few, so could allow access to the children in my care for their research. And the boys had researched well. And, now, armed with all the information they needed, they had been making a magnificent model of the Wright Brothers’ first plane together with an accompanying narrative.

The girls, meanwhile, had been busy writing a first-person account of Amelia Earhart’s solo flight across the Atlantic. The whole group had also been working on a large timeline poster, complete with carefully cut-out pictures and artwork. They’d all worked hard, and I was proud of them, and would feel even prouder when they presented their work during school assembly the following week.

They worked quietly and productively for a good 20 minutes, when Henry’s hand suddenly shot up. ‘Miss,’ he said, waving it impatiently, as ever. ‘We’ve been wondering – who’s going to do all the talking when we do our presentation?’

Which, when decoded, meant ‘would it be him?’ He was very aware of his status as the oldest in the group, as he would be, given his background.

I walked across and sat down at the boys’ table. I mixed them up sometimes but most of the time the three boys sat at one and the girls at another. It was good to make them work together, obviously, but only up to a point. Most of the time, my number one priority was to have these kids relaxed and receptive – and that meant making them feel as comfortable as possible.

‘Well, that’s for you to decide. All five of you. You’ll have to get together and have a board meeting about it.’

Ben giggled and nudged Henry. ‘Bored meeting, more like. It will be a bored meeting if Molly and Shona have to speak!’

I glanced across at the girls, but they hadn’t even heard. They were, as ever, bent over their work, heads close, engrossed. ‘Don’t be silly, Ben,’ I said. ‘You know I don’t mean that sort of bored. No, you’ll have to have a meeting and discuss it. Though I think it would be nice if you all had something to say, don’t you? You’ve all worked so hard on this that you all deserve the spotlight, don’t you think? Anyway, right now, I need you to all get on, so we can get it finished. And quietly, please, because I need to go and make a phone call.’

I left the kids to it and went across to my desk in the corner, where I buzzed the Learning Support department in search of my sometime assistant, Kelly.

Kelly was a 23-year-old teaching assistant who had a wonderful rapport with the more challenging pupils, which meant she was very sought after within the school.

She answered the phone herself, and pre-empted my question. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re going to ask and I’ll be down in ten minutes. I saw Mr Brabbiner earlier and he put me in the picture.’

‘Brilliant,’ I said. ‘They’re working on their project right now, too. So you shouldn’t have any problems.’

Kelly laughed. She knew as well as I did that things could change in a split second. One minute everything could be hunky dory – as it was now – and the next all hell could break loose. Still, that was what I liked about her, and what set her apart from some of the other TAs – she seemed to thrive on the unknown element of it all, just as I did, and I’d yet to see her faced with anything she couldn’t handle. She was an expert at thinking on her feet.

I went to sit with the girls for a bit once I’d put down the phone, and had what had become a predictable response from Molly once I’d told them I’d be gone for a bit and that Miss Vickers would be looking after them. She glanced at the boys nervously. ‘You won’t be gone long, will you, Miss? We don’t like it when you leave us, do we, Shona?’

Shona put a protective arm around her friend. ‘Miss Vickers is all right, Molly,’ she reassured her. ‘She won’t stand for any nonsense, will she, Miss?’

‘No, she won’t,’ I agreed, smiling at her grown-up turn of phrase. ‘And there will be no nonsense. Will there, boys?’ I added, raising my voice so they could hear me. ‘Or it’ll be maths practice all afternoon.’

‘Where you going anyway, Miss?’ Shona wanted to know.

‘To a meeting,’ I said. ‘Not a board meeting but a meeting about a new girl who might be joining us. Her name’s Imogen and we need to see if she’s going to be right for us. I’ll be able to tell you more once I’ve been and met her.’

Both Shona and Molly exchanged looks (girls and threes didn’t readily blend well – it took time and management), but it was Gavin who spoke up. ‘Another girl ?’ he moaned. ‘We don’t want to be invaded by no more girls, Miss. Is she a retard?’

‘Gavin!’ I admonished. ‘What have I told you about name-calling? Have you remembered nothing of the exercise we did the other week?’

His brow furrowed a little as he tried to recall what I meant. We’d done an exercise I tried to fit into the schedule periodically – splitting the kids into two groups and having each one draw a picture of a gingerbread man. This wasn’t in any sense an art exercise, though. I’d then get one set to annotate theirs with any horrible names they had ever called anyone. And with no holds barred – swear words were acceptable on this occasion, if that had been the way the thing had been said. The other group had to do likewise, only this time they had to record any names they recalled having been called, by either adults or other children. I would then swap the drawings over and ask each group to write down how they would feel or how they felt when they had been called any name from the list, and then compile a separate list of reasons why they thought people might call others by these names.

It was all about developing their emotional literacy; a key part of what my role was in the Unit. And, judging by Gavin’s comment, perhaps I needed to revisit it some time soon.

‘Well?’ I said to him.

‘Sorry, Miss,’ he mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean nothing. Just wanted to know what she would be, like, doing here.’

‘Then you need to think harder about how you’re going to say something before you say it,’ I told him. ‘Because if I hear any more talk like that you will be doing maths practice all afternoon, is that clear?’

I wasn’t too worried about Gavin, however. He’d had his morning dose of Ritalin and it would be another couple of hours before his ADHD became blindingly obvious again. Then it would be another hour before he was given his meds by the school nurse – an hour when it would be hard for me to leave the classroom. Even Henry, who at 13 was two years Gavin’s senior, didn’t like what he called ‘the mad hour’.