Read Online Wednesday's Child by Shane Dunphy - Free Book Online Page A

Betty and I had earlier that she was thirteen years old – Victor was fourteen, Ibar six. She looked, however, a couple of years older than that and projected a sense of control and maturity that made you immediately sit up and take notice. This was a young woman who knew what she wanted and would do what had to be done to get it. I could tell who was in charge in this family.
     
    The background to the McCoy case was simple and straightforward. This was something of a relief after the complicated cases I had encountered the day before. Victor, Cordelia and Ibar lived in the cottage with their father, Max, who was an alcoholic in recent recovery. The family was English. The children’s mother, Beatrice, had died from an accidental overdose when Ibar was six months old. There had been talk that the death had been suicide. The reports from English Social Services, with whom we had a reasonably good relationship, suggested that there had been some domestic violence, although it appeared to be on both sides, with Beatrice giving as good as she got.
     
    At any rate, the investigating detectives declared the death self-inflicted. Max moved from one unskilled job to another over the next few years, none of them lasting very long and many ending in his being asked to leave as alcohol began to take an ever more secure grip. Finally, as if fleeing something, Max and the children moved lock, stock and barrelacross the Irish Sea and settled in the village. Max secured a job as caretaker of the local school and his drinking went from bad to terrible. The family was befriended by some of the locals, particularly the parish priest and a couple of women who worked as cleaners in the school and the church. It was through these people that the McCoys came to the attention of the Social Work Department.
     
    This informal support network felt that the children were being sorely neglected, with Cordelia playing the role of wife and mother to the three males. Max was barely functioning in his job at the school, and Victor was regressing further and further into himself. Ibar exhibited extremely aggressive behaviour in the junior infants class he attended. What brought matters to a head was Cordelia turning up to one of Victor’s parent-teacher meetings. The teacher in question did not know how to respond to this child with the eyes of an adult sitting before him, with Victor’s report card clutched in her hand and a list of perfectly reasonable questions about his academic development written out neatly on a piece of pink stationery. Social Services had been called in. Max was immediately sent to a clinic to dry out. The children were placed temporarily in the care of one of the local women who cleaned the church. Betty had been asked to visit them on a fairly casual basis during their brief foster placement, and she had also been checking on Max after his release from the clinic, helping him to deal with his new-foundsobriety and with his role as both father and mother to these children. My role was, primarily, to do some work with Victor, who, it had been noticed by everyone in contact with him, was becoming more and more isolated. I could already see that there was genuine cause for worry.
     
    Cordelia glared into my car at Betty, who, to her credit, smiled back beatifically.
     
    ‘What are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to be visiting today.’
     
    ‘Well, we were just in the neighbourhood and thought we’d drop by. This is Shane Dunphy. He’ll be doing some work with you and Victor.’
     
    I nodded and smiled, trying to look confident but probably looking more sheepish than anything else. Cordelia was making me feel like an intruder, and I had to remind myself that
I
was supposed to be the responsible adult in this interaction.
     
    ‘Well, it’s not convenient this afternoon. Daddy has been called away and has asked me to take Victor and Ibar out for some tea. You’ll have to come back another time.’
     
    Her accent