Last Refuge Andrew Murray Scott

The Bardess house was in Aboyne Court, a group of maisonettes on the semi-derelict edge of the Tanshall estate off Aboyne Drive, a half-mile of semis under schedule of demolition. You’d to go up a dozen broken concrete steps to get to the tarmac path to the front door. It was one of the areas of Glenrothes popularly reputed to be a dumping ground for Fife Council, houses to put problem families, or challenging clients, as we in the social work department would prefer to describe them. The iron railings still stood there in front of a square of unkempt grass but were no longer connected to anything. Some kindly soul had thrown a car tyre onto the scrubby grass which had accumulated all kinds of rubbish; used pampers and newspapers blown on the wind and worse, lots of plastic cider bottles, anchored to a thicket of weed by dried-out dog turds. The building had no outer door and a cold wind whipped through the hall especially if the backdoor leading to the back greens had been left open. The front door was on the ground floor on the left where some altruist had scrawled in a heavy felt pen all along the wall Slag in among the usual spraypainted graffiti tags. There was no sound in the close, a smell of urine and I saw a dried stain against the wall. The glass panel on the door on the right had been replaced with plywood, the name J. Quinn handwritten in biro on a small patch of space between obscene graffiti. There was a musty smell of dog but no sound, no barking.

I chapped on the door. No answer. I looked out at my car across the street, parked between the motorbike and the BMW 3 Series which I was fairly sure was an abandoned vehicle because of the way it had one tyre on the kerb and its windows were all open. I used my bunch of keys to bang harder on the door and eventually heard small muffled sounds from inside. I heard movements on the door handle and a faint voice: ‘Whazzit?’

‘Social Worker,’ I said. ‘Tracey Bardess?’ I waited. The door opened a fraction and I saw a client I had previously only seen for a few minutes a month ago in the Court. I put my hand in the doorway and insinuated myself inside. We stood close together in the hall under a dim unshaded bulb. It was like being underwater and there was a smell of sweat and unwashed clothes.

‘Tracey – I’m your family liaison officer. I’m here to help you,’ I said brightly. ‘How about a cup of tea? I’ll make it.’

‘Right.’ Tracey turned and went into the living room which was almost neat in that there was little in it, a sofa, a TV, a chair, not even carpet. I could see my car through the window which had no curtain. On the walls, plastic-framed prints of Spanish scenes, garish and cheap, tourist tat. I wondered if she had been to Spain. But the bare floorboards looked clean. I remembered the daughter was fourteen. Emma.

‘Emma at school?’

She had slumped onto the sofa and pulled a blanket over her. She lifted her eyes to my face and made some sort of noise that seemed to indicate assent. I looked properly at her, what I could see of her; pinched white face that had once been pretty, thin white arms – I could see track marks even from where I was standing – and hands that seemed too big.

‘I’ll get the kettle on,’ I said, partly as an excuse to have a nosy around, and went through. She stayed on the sofa. In the sparsely-furnished kitchen I noted the lack of a microwave, no freezer. In the fridge there were some things and a bottle of milk. Emma’s work no doubt. In the handover, Simone Ricket had told me about the miracle of Emma, how she coped with it all, how her schoolwork was of good standard, seemingly unaffected by her mother’s comings and goings, on the cycle of addiction, conviction, remand, court, women’s prison, out on licence, methadone. At the root of Tracey’s problems was sexual abuse by her father and other men. There had been robust views expressed about it in case conferences; Simone had been determined that Emma remain at home. She was her mother’s carer. It was against the rules but it worked somehow.

Thanks to the Salvation Army, they had managed to get them a week’s free holiday last summer in North Berwick in a caravan, mother and daughter but it hadn’t quite gone to plan. On the second last day, Tracey had got into a fight with some local people who she claimed were ‘looking’ at her and the police got involved but Emma had managed to get her mother back to the caravan and there were no repercussions. 

I had a quick look in the bathroom. Someone had showered that day, the towels on the rail were wet. In the cabinet, the usual Rennies, Paracetamol, toothpaste, no sign of anything dodgy. The kettle boiled. I looked back into the lounge. Tracey had not moved.

‘You take milk? Sugar?’

 ‘Yeh.’

But there was no sugar. I took the mugs through into the lounge and squeezed onto the sofa near her feet. She had small feet, quite dainty even and track marks there too. She was thirty-two but looked ten years older. I looked at my watch. It was nearly 3 p.m. I had timed my visit so that I might meet Emma when she came home from school. I had big plans for her, she was going to be my ally and I was going to pull out all the stops to support them.

She held her mug close to her, just under her chin and for a brief moment, looked like a little girl. The blanket, I was surprised to see was clean, smelled of some flowery conditioner. I cast a quick look around and could see no paraphernalia, no signs that she was using. ‘Did you go down to Lloyds today,’ I asked, ‘for your medication?’

‘Went in the morning,’ she said, lifting her eyes to mine. She seemed so listless.

‘And you’ve not been using…?’

‘Am aff it,’ she said. ‘Last time…’ she sipped her tea and didn’t notice there was no sugar. ‘Eh wis seek. Had tae go in the ambulance, like. Hospital. Since then, eh niver…’ she tailed off and seemed to fall asleep. The mug drooped and I reached over and took it off her, prising it from her fingers. I looked at my watch. 3.15. I could see a few school kids coming past now. They looked tidy, talking in twos and threes. Then I heard a key in the lock and stood up as Emma came in. She was a wee mouse of a thing and my heart went out to her.

‘Hello,’ she said, face leaking concern. ‘Is my mum alright?’

‘You must be Emma? I’m a social worker.’

She nodded. I noticed she had a plastic bag and she must have seen my glance. ‘I’ve got sugar,’ she said. ‘My mum takes sugar.’

‘So she does. I couldn’t find any but I think she’s asleep.’

Emma sniffed. ‘Need to wake her up soon. I’m making our tea.’

‘Want any help?’

Emma smiled faintly. ‘It’s only beans on toast with a poached egg, I’ll manage.’

‘I’ve no doubt you can, dear. By what I hear you’re a wee miracle.’

The girl frowned. ‘No – she’s my mum.’

‘Okay, I’ll leave you to it,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to meet you both and I’ll be back soon. I think she is keeping off the stuff. So far so good.’

Emma put down the plastic bag on the kitchen table. ‘It’s just if that man keeps away. He gets her all upset.’

‘What man?’

‘Well, there’s more than one man. Declan his name is, and there’s an older man comes too, Nazir.’

I made a note of the names on the topsheet. ‘And you think they bring her drugs?’

‘No. They pester her… you know… for sex.’

‘I see. Right, well, we’ll put a stop to that. Do you know where they live?’

Emma frowned and looked down at her shoes. She was neatly turned out, looked like any normal kid, you couldn’t guess she came from a home like this. ‘Everywhere,’ she said.

‘When do they come?’

‘Different times. In the daytime when I’m at school. Sometimes they leave money.’

‘Any particular day or days?’

‘I don’t know. But the last time was when she overdosed and went into hospital.’

‘Okay. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll drop by at different times during the day three or four times a week and I’ll see if I can get a small CCTV camera fitted. If we can get evidence of these men we can prosecute them. In the meantime, I’ll get her added to the vulnerable person’s register.’

‘I don’t want us to move away,’ Emma said. ‘This is the sixth place we’ve had in the last three years since I came back from care.’

‘No, that won’t happen. Simone told me you had discussed it.’

‘I don’t want to have to go to another school.’

‘No, of course not. But we need to make sure your mother is safe. At least we got her away from that crowd of users in the Caskieberran.’

‘They don’t come here. I don’t think they know where she is.’

Emma had emptied a tin of baked beans into a pot and taken out two eggs. The kettle was coming to the boil, the slices of bread in the toaster. She was capable, like a housewife twice her age. And yet she was emotionally flat, I could tell that. That was no surprise. She pulled her hair back into the clasp before she broke the egg and lowered it into the boiling salty water. It was heart-breaking to watch her, thinking of all the trauma ahead, the opportunities missed, the aspiration thwarted, even though I’ve been doing this job for twenty years. I had to leave. It was time for me to go home.

‘I’ll be looking in a lot, I promise, Emma. You take care.’

But things went wrong from the start. Just three days later, there was an incident at the house and police were called. Tracey was arrested on suspicion of possession of Class A drugs and remanded in Glenochil. She was held there for three days but released without social services being informed and disappeared for two days. Emma had contacted her Auntie Lettie who lived two miles away in Macedonia and I got notified but by then, it was too late.

Tracey had been admitted to A&E after an overdose but the stuff she’d injected wasn’t pure, was cut with some filthy stuff and so she had hepatitis as well. It took them a week to clean her out. Emma adapted her routine and moved to Auntie Lettie’s so that she could visit her mum in the detox clinic.

Tracey stayed there for three months then was taken in to long-term care at the Beecham Unit. And it was agreed by everyone – although I had retired by then – that Emma should now live permanently with her Auntie Lettie. She walked the extra mile and half to Glenwood High School every day and took her Highers and passed them all. A miracle she was. An inspiration. And Auntie Lettie, it turned out, was an inspiration herself. She’d been a supervisor in the DFB factory that makes electronic components. One of the girls just, but loved. Absolutely loved, not that you’d know that from talking to her, I was told.

Some of us from the department used to meet up for a drink now and then. A good way to catch-up. Someone told me Lettie was the spirit of the place and also the longest-standing Union rep there. When the place shut suddenly after forty years in business, and everyone was made redundant, she quickly found other things to do, volunteered at a foodbank, joined a women’s exercise group, was a befriender to several older ladies living on their own, always on the go, a cheery smile and a helping hand. She was at the foodbank on the day Nicola Sturgeon visited. She was embarrassed, with all the media there, to push herself forward but someone brought the First Minister over to her and she got over her shyness and they chatted and shook hands. One of Nicola’s staff spoke to her outside. A year later she was announced as a candidate for the council by-election. No-one knew that she was even political; they had assumed she was a Labour voter. There were four other candidates but she won it on first-preferences, taking fifty-five percent of the vote. I saw a snippet about it in the paper.

On the day of her very first Council group meeting, she went up the steps of the Council Offices and standing there to congratulate her in person was… Nicola Sturgeon. And much later, quite recently in fact, a former colleague I met on the street told me that Emma Bardess got a good degree and now works as a research scientist at the Rowatt Institute. A kind of miracle really. Later, she let slip that the mother Tracey, hadn’t seen any of it. She had died at thirty-four, while Emma was doing her highers. That was very sad news and it put me quite down when I heard it. In fact, I’ve not been doing very well myself, nothing serious, just a little down. What’s needed is change, big change, the kind of change that’s never going to happen because there’s so much waste. Human potential let go down the drain, thrown out with the rubbish. I used to get so angry about it, now I’m beyond anger. In the last few years before retirement, I was on auto-pilot, then all my energy suddenly just went. Now, I potter about and try not to think of it, try not to see it. And I find a drink helps, a bottle of wine gets me through the day, as they say. A good strong red, or a dry white. Because it’s not the poverty, the misery, the inequality that gets you in the end, it’s the certainty that you won’t ever be able to sort it. That nothing you can do will make a blind bit of difference. The system is loaded to fail, like a crooked set of dice. That’s the corrosive thought that will do you in, if you let it, so you try not to let it bother you, try to numb yourself to it, remember only these little miracles and forget the hundreds who just went away, unnoticed, unremarked.

Andrew Murray Scott

Image: Drug paraphernalia – spoon, syringe, baggies from pixabay.com