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The room that the council had allocated for us was in one of their large training centres, based on a small business estate, and was rather like a large classroom, which I hated. These students would not have long left at school and the last thing they would have wanted was yet another gloomy class to sit in. With that in mind, I had immediately Casey’d it up with bright pictures, comfortable scatter cushions, and colourful cups and saucers, etc. Part of the programme we offered included an adult qualification in Maths and English – it was about the only ‘schooly’ thing they did, and I wanted them to feel at ease when they did it.
    I wanted them to feel at ease, period. That was what we were all about. As they’d said in training, getting these kids comfortable was key to helping support them, because though we might know where we wanted them going – out into the world, with greater confidence – what we didn’t know was where they had been.
    We’d got off to a good start, Katie and I. An incredible start, actually, because after a week or so going round all the places that might refer kids to us – job centres, schools, the local Young People’s Service – we already had fifteen young people enrolled and had even had to set up a waiting list for the next course.
    Right now, however, we had a lot to get through with our first batch, who’d spent their first couple of days with us shyly – and in a couple of cases, slightly reluctantly – getting to know both us and one another. In just a couple of days we’d be taking all fifteen away, and that’s when we’d really start bonding. We’d be pushing them hard – taking them rock climbing, abseiling, raft building and so on – and in a team-building environment, away from usual routines, hopefully out of their comfort zones, too. That was the plan – that the intensity of the experience would get to them and that barriers might start coming down. In training we’d been told to expect some highs and lows; with so much opportunity for one-to-one time, kids would open up to us: things were got off chests, and feelings were aired.
    I was looking forward to it, too. There was only one thing niggling me: that I’d be leaving the family again (I’d had to, briefly, as part of my training), which I knew wouldn’t go down well with my son Kieron. He was fifteen, but with his Asperger’s, he still found changes like that challenging. Still, I reasoned, my husband Mike coped last time, and would do so again, and while I was doing rewarding work with my bunch of disaffected teenagers, I knew my own younger teenager would be learning valuable coping skills of his own.
    I pushed that small anxiety to one side and concentrated on the task at hand, and on one other potential problem that had already raised its head and would definitely need addressing before we left. We had seventeen-year-old non-identical twins with us, Jade and Scarlett, a pair of petite, auburn-haired girls, with the same pretty green eyes. On the face of it, they seemed well adjusted – they certainly talked a lot. Though, as Katie and I both noticed, it was mostly to one another, though there was a tension beween them that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was something we were gently trying to address by splitting them up for activities – something we were keen to encourage when we went away.
    Jade was clearly the brighter of the two – she seemed to ‘get’ things really readily – but there was one problem; she had this really, really unpleasant smell about her. It was strong, too; the day before, we’d had to throw all the windows open, just to stop from gagging – you could actually smell her coming in before you saw her. It was so bad, in fact, that the smell was still lingering when I’d arrived at work this morning, and as a consequence I’d hastily re-jigged the schedule to fit some more outdoorsy tasks in as soon as the English test was over
    ‘Did you notice?’