Read Online Straight Back by David Menon - Free Book Online Page B

sir.”
    “Right, well, we’ll wait for everyone to come back and then we’ll go over what we’ve got so far. But there are two people we definitely need to speak to urgently. One is Liam Nightingale and the other is Mr Leo McKenzie.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    NINE
    Hayley Adams had always been a particularly needy child. She absolutely had to have one hundred percent of your attention or else she thought you didn’t want her around. It sorely tested her mother’s patience at times. Jeanette Adams would have to admit that, although she loved her daughter, she wasn’t always very easy to like. Hayley was now thirteen and there was still at least one episode of tears every single day. Jeanette’s son, Stefan, was completely different. He was just two years older than his sister but Jeanette could rely on him to take care of his own breakfast if she was running short of time and she didn’t really need to worry about him at all. He was self-confident and able to act like the young man that he was.
    Jeanette was worried about Hayley in another way. Jeanette had now been divorced from her ex-husband, Steve, for two years and Hayley hadn’t adjusted to her parents being divorced at all. It had been the cause of all her tears since it happened because she’d got it into her head that her dad and her dad’s family had rejected her.
    “And yet far from it,” Jeanette insisted. “My ex-in-laws have gone out of their way to make her feel as much a part of their family as before but she just won’t have it and then we get these tears, tears and more tears. I’ve tried my best to understand. I’ve tried my best to sit down and talk to her, just her and me. Her dad has sat her down and her grandparents have sat down with her and tried to reassure her. But none of us are getting anywhere. My ex-husband has Hayley and Stefan every other weekend and at least one night a week but those visits are always on a knife edge because, if the slightest thing goes wrong, she starts crying and tells my ex that he doesn’t want her. It’s starting to affect Stefan too because, of course, her constant tears are having an impact on his visits to his dad and he hardly speaks to Hayley now because he’s simply had enough of her behaviour. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
    “I can see it must be exhausting,” said Leo McKenzie. He was Hayley’s form teacher at school and Jeanette wanted him to keep an eye on Hayley, who’d got herself a boyfriend in her class called Craig. That’s why she’d come into school for a meeting with Leo who she’d met several times before on parents’ evenings. “What’s your worry with regard to Craig?”
    “She thinks that she can replace all the love that she thinks she’s lost by having a baby,” Jeanette explained. “And I’m worried sick that she’ll use Craig to get herself pregnant.”
    “Ah, I see,” said Leo.
    “Craig is a sensible lad and I know his parents,” said Jeanette. “But a lad who’s newly full of testosterone and a girl who may be only too willing … well, I don’t need to spell it out, do I?”
    “No, you don’t,” said Leo. “But, tell me, if you could be completely honest with Hayley and say to her whatever you felt like, then what would that be?”
    Jeanette paused. Not because she didn’t know what she’d say but because of how harsh it would sound.
    “I’d want to say “come on you, selfish little madam, it’s not all about you and you’ve got to grow up and get on with it like your brother has”.”
    “I can understand all of that, yep.”
    “I’m really sorry to land all of this on you this week, Leo, after all this terrible business about Sheridan Taylor. You used to teach her I understand?”
    “Yes I did,” said Leo, as neutrally as he could. “And her sister, Paige, is in my class now, as you know.”
    “To be burned alive in that car,” said Jeanette, who then shivered. “The poor girl. Her poor mother as well. Have you