Ghosts in the machine

CHATGPT will change the written word. But is it a match for our restaurant critic Jay Rayner?

After I’d pieced everything together, it was clear we’d only had contact with social services twice, even though the violence and chaos went on for years. The first was immediately after the sexual abuse. But the dates threw me: I’d always believed it began at five, but this was when it had been reported. He’d been in our house since I was three years old. The age my son was soon to be.

The notes detailed that I wasn’t spoken to directly. (“In view of the distress Terrie has already been subjected to, I felt it inappropriate to question her further myself.”) Instead, it was concluded I seemed fine. We wouldn’t be put on the register. Case closed.

Until a year later. Report for Case Conference: ‘Terrie was referred by the GP to the Family Therapy Unit. Problem – bed wetting and wetting during the day, particularly when disciplined. Behaviour problems – ‘tantrums’.”

I thought of my six-year-old self. Traumatised. Terrified. “Particularly when disciplined” – my stomach lurched. And then: “At the time of writing this report, an anonymous telephone call was received. The caller was very concerned with regard to the standard of care given to the children.” Maybe this was the time we were spotted, and reported, for eating out of the bin behind the chippy. Maybe this was a different time. But still, the file contained no further action. After all, Terrie seemed fine. “You came in very agitated one morning, your voice all wavy, which was not like you at all,” says Mrs Webley. “You were really upset and I said, ‘I know what he did.’ You rounded on me. ‘Who told you? Do they know at secondary school? Will they all know?’”

My God. The presence of mind takes me aback. That I feared judgment, as a child. Knew what girls like me, especially girls from a council estate, could be called. That I’d already planned to kill off the me who’d been brutalised.

A meeting at school with social services followed. Mrs Webley tells me that I attended the meeting , that when she offered to come in with me, I’d decided, “Yeah, I want you with me.”

I draw a blank, just as I did with what I apparently said in the meeting: that the abuser, released from prison, was back in the house. Even as this revelation devastates me, raising yet more questions – Why? What happened? Why again? – I’m also immediately, unexpectedly comforted. That I trusted Mrs Webley that much. That I felt I had somewhere to turn. That I had someone who would, and did, intervene. That she cared enough to help.

Mrs Webley simply shrugs: “As a teacher, I just tried to make children feel safe, but also to know I was on their side.”

Perhaps the most poignant story is the final one she tells me. About the lesson she gave us in “stranger danger” (hey, it was the 80s), the advice for dealing with someone who pulled up with puppies or sweets: “The answer is, ‘No,’ and you walk away.”

She says I approached her afterwards. I had something to say. “Mrs Webley, you can’t always say no. Sometimes they pick you up and take you.”

‘I just tried to make the children feel safe, that I was on their side’

The last place I visit on the day of my homecoming is the house that didn’t feel like a home. It’s only the second time I’ve been back since I left for university. Standing on the green I crossed every day, I look up at it: the thing, that used to fill me with so much fear. I can still summon the inside from there on the grass: the Artex I’d disappear into on the ceiling of my mum’s bedroom; the rotary phone by the front door that would stretch to the bottom of the stairs.

From the outside, it’s different now. Posher (it’s no longer council-owned). Neat. Smaller. It looks, well, normal. Like it could actually be a home.

I think about what Mrs Webley says to me before I leave: “You were never the victim, Terri.”

It’s not about me any more, I realise. It’s about today’s kids, who need their own Mrs Webley to ensure that they’ll be OK in the end, too. I’ve always been desperate to reach back and grab little me, pulling her through time to be with me now, in safety. But I’m not so sure that she needs rescuing. She’ll be OK. I know that from the future I now stand in. And while I absolutely feel let down by some of what I’ve learned, I feel utterly moved by much else. My teacher. My school. Of the impact of one person on a life.