And today was no different. ‘Gwandad,’ she was asking him. ‘Can I sit on your knee? Casey got bony knees so I don’t like going on her lap. But can I sit on yours to do the painting?’
Dad laughed, as he settled her instead onto a chair. ‘Much easier to paint on your own chair,’ he suggested. I smiled to myself. And much less chance of him getting paint all down his trousers. ‘Come on,’ he said, as Mum began opening up the pots they’d bought. ‘What shall we paint? How about a picture of your nice bedroom?’
But Olivia was having none of it. She pestered and pestered, till Dad eventually conceded and let her sit on his lap after all. And before long, the noise level had fallen to a hush, as both children immersed themselves in the task at hand.
Leaving them to it, I turned around to find some biscuits for everyone and pour out Mum and Dad’s mugs of tea. But within moments, I heard my dad speaking sternly. ‘No, Olivia,’ he was saying. ‘You mustn’t do that. If you don’t keep still,’ he went on, ‘then you’ll have to get down.’
‘But I was only wiggling for you, Gwandad,’ she said, her expression completely guileless. ‘Don’t you like it when liccle girls wiggle for you?’
Dad looked every bit as horrified as I felt. I rushed across and plucked Olivia from his knees. I could see that he was completely at a loss for words. And with good reason. ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ I said to a bewildered Olivia. ‘Come and sit here by your brother. Granddad’s going to have his cup of tea now and it’ll be hot.’ She pursed her lips now, clearly miffed to have been relocated next to Ashton, then folded her arms on the table and placed her chin on them. ‘I miss my gwandad,’ she said, pouting. ‘When can I see him?’
‘I don’t know, sweetie,’ I said. ‘But I will try to find out. I know. How about you paint a pretty picture, just for him? Then Anna could take it to him for you.’
This didn’t mollify her. She pulled a face. ‘Gwandad hates Anna. She stoled us from him, an’ we’re not to tell her nuffink!’ She was becoming quite animated, and I knew she had my parents’ full attention. She certainly had mine. She lifted her arms now, waggling them to emphasise how exasperated she was by this. ‘Speshly my special Gwandad cuddles. It’s not right! My poor gwandad don’t have no more liccle girls to wiggle for him. An’ he’ll be lonely!’
Her curious form of words was as arresting as ever, but it was the words themselves that shocked most. I could sense how uncomfortable Mum and Dad were becoming, as the import of what she’d said hit home. ‘It’s okay, love,’ I soothed, stroking her hair. ‘It’s okay. I’m sure your granddad knows how much you love and miss him. Tell you what, why don’t we leave the painting for a bit, and you and Ashton go and play in the garden with Bob, while Nan and Granddad and me have our drinks?
Thankfully, this idea seemed to appeal to Olivia. She jumped down off the chair and grabbed her brother by the hand. ‘C’mon Ash,’ she said. ‘Let’s go play ball with Bob.’ The two off them then trotted off.
Dad shook his head as he watched them go. ‘Dear me, Casey, love. That was just all so wrong. What the bloody hell was she going on about? Special granddad cuddles?’ He was silent for a moment. We all knew exactly what she’d been going on about. Not the extent or the detail, perhaps, but certainly the implication, and I could see it made my father’s flesh creep.
And my mother’s, too.
‘I wonder what’s happened to her?’ she said, as I passed her the mug of tea. ‘What she’s seen …’
‘Way too much, by the sound of it, way, way too much,’ Dad finished.
‘It’s just horrible,’ Mum said. ‘I mean, it’s the most natural thing in the world to give little ones cuddles. But when you don’t know what they’ve been through … had done to them …’ she shuddered. ‘Well, it just makes it all so awkward, doesn’t it? I mean, it shouldn’t do, should it? But it does.’
What it most did for me, though, was answer my unspoken question. This granddad, if Olivia’s innocent comments were based in fact, would appear to have been up to no good. I tried to think if a granddad had been mentioned in any of the reports we’d been given, but I had no recollection of it. I resolved to take another good look later. And to continue to keep a close eye on Olivia. Ashton, too. Just how grim a can of worms had her words inadvertently begun to reveal?
And there was more to come. As we notched up a full second week with the children, I began to realise how knowledgeable they were about their bodies, and how lacking in personal boundaries they were. That they were close was obviously good, but they were physically a bit too close, touching one another in inappropriate places, and with what looked like very clear sexual overtones.
It’s generally not useful to over-analyse sexual touching in young children. It’s normal for little ones to want to explore their whole bodies, and to introduce sanctions, or adult notions of sex and propriety, can only result in creating a tension around it, which can lead to emotional problems later on. But these little ones seemed so sexual, it was confirming my suspicion that whilst their parents might have neglected them in terms of attending to their needs, someone – this granddad, almost certainly, and others? – had actually been paying them quite a lot of attention. Children simply didn’t do some of the things these two were doing, not without there being some adult input.
It was to be Lauren, Kieron’s girlfriend, who’d get the next piece of tangible evidence of what I was fast believing to be a worrying state of affairs.
Lauren was currently on her summer break from college, where she was studying dance and drama, and was often round at the moment, helping Kieron with his job-hunting. It was the following Tuesday, and the two of them were on the computer, in the living room, trawling the internet while the children were playing on the floor with building bricks. Kieron had come out in the kitchen to get a drink, and the two of us were having a chat about progress, when Lauren appeared in the doorway, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘Um, Casey,’ she said. ‘Can you come back in the living room a second? It’s the kids.
They’re … well …’
She didn’t finish her sentence and didn’t need to. I could tell by her expression that something weird must be going on.
I put my mug of coffee down and followed her back in, wondering what it was I might find.
I saw Ashton first. He was lying face down on the sofa, on top of Olivia, who was lying face up. Ashton was busy gyrating his torso, as if simulating sex, while his little sister lay, pretty much passively, beneath him, except for the fact that she was doing something else. She was rhythmically patting his bottom.
‘Ashton!’ I snapped. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing? Stop that immediately! Get off your poor sister!’ I crossed the room and pulled the two of them up. I then sat them down, side by side, on the settee. ‘Now,’ I said sternly. ‘I need you to tell me what you were doing.’
There was a predictable silence from both for a moment, Ashton looking doggedly at the floor, his shoulders drooping, though little Olivia was grinning from ear to ear. Then she spoke, and at the same time placed her hand inside her shorts. ‘We were just tickling our pee pees, that’s all.’
I kept my stern face in place, but knelt down to their level. ‘Stop that, Olivia,’ I said. She pulled her hand back out again. ‘We don’t do things like that in front of other people, okay, sweetheart? Your body is private,’ I explained.
‘Yeah,’ said Ashton, who’d suddenly become animated, watching her. ‘We can only do that in our bedroom, Liv, stop it!’ He leaned towards her. ‘Remember – walls have ears!’ ‘An’ eyes, too!’ she answered, dramatically, gesturing to her own now. ‘Sorry, Ash,’ she finished. ‘I forgetted.’
If the implications of what they were saying hadn’t been so awful, their choice of words would have almost sounded comic. As it was, it was chilling, and a picture