Part one

I have been a primary school teacher for nineteen years. I teach Year Three in a small council school in Marcinelle, with a concrete playground, a chestnut tree and toilets that have been leaking since 2011. I have had about four hundred and fifty pupils. I remember almost all of them.

Tom, I will remember for the rest of my life.

He was eight. Red hair cut too short, freckles, a gap between his front teeth. A sweet, polite boy, almost too polite. He said “thank you, Miss” when I handed back a test, even a failed one. He never ran in the playground. He stayed by the wall, watching the others play football, his hands pushed deep into the sleeves of his jumper.

His sleeves. That’s what I noticed first.

In June, when it was twenty-eight degrees in the classroom, Tom was still wearing a long-sleeved jumper.

At first I thought it was about money. You see a lot of families who can’t afford new T-shirts every summer. I had a quiet word with the headmistress, who discreetly sent over a bag of clothes from the school’s little second-hand shop.

The next day, Tom was wearing one of the T-shirts from the bag, blue with a dinosaur on it. And over it, his jumper.

“Aren’t you too hot, Tom?”

“No, Miss. I’m always cold.”

He smiled. He pulled at his sleeves.

The following Tuesday, after PE, the games teacher came to find me at break. A big, usually cheerful man. He wasn’t laughing.

“Your little Tom. He refused to get changed. He locked himself in the toilets. When he came out, he pushed up his sleeve for a second to scratch himself. He’s got marks, Isabelle. On his forearm. Finger marks.”

Now I felt cold too.

We talked to the headmistress that same day. I knew the procedure by heart; they repeat it to us every year in training: you don’t question a child like a police officer, you promise nothing, you listen, you write down word for word what they say, and you report it. The school’s PMS centre, the pupil support service. And if the danger seems serious, the SOS Enfants team or the police.

The headmistress phoned the social worker at the PMS centre. An appointment was set for Thursday.

In the meantime, I looked at Tom differently. And I saw everything I hadn’t wanted to see.

He ate everything he was given. The other children’s snacks, when they left them. On Mondays especially he was starving, as if he hadn’t eaten all weekend.

He jumped when a door slammed.

He never put his hand up. When I asked him a question, he answered very quietly, watching my mouth, as if trying to guess whether the answer was right before he gave it.

And there was the stepfather.

He came to pick him up every day at half past three. A man of about forty, broad, shaven-headed, tattoos down to his wrists, always in work clothes. He never said hello to anyone. He waited at the gate, smoking, and as soon as Tom came out, he took his bag and set off with long strides, the little boy trotting behind.

The other mums had noticed too. I heard them whispering at the gate.

“I wouldn’t trust that one with my cat.”

Tom’s mum I had only seen once, at the parents’ evening in September. A slight, tired woman who apologised for everything. She worked on the tills at a supermarket in Gosselies and had impossible hours.

On Thursday, the PMS social worker came. She talked with Tom in the little library room for half an hour, with felt-tip pens and blank sheets of paper. When she came out, she told me he hadn’t said anything. Nothing at all. He had drawn a house, a dog and a sun.

“He’s very protected,” she said. “Or very frightened. We’ll call the parents in. We’ll stay vigilant.”

Vigilant. I hated that word. You don’t protect an eight-year-old with vigilance.

The next week, the parents were called into school. Tom’s mum came with the stepfather. She sat on the edge of her chair, her bag clutched on her knees. He stayed standing, back against the wall, arms folded over his tattoos.

The social worker spoke gently. The long sleeves. The marks. The tiredness on Mondays.

The mum lowered her head. She murmured that Tom was clumsy, that he fell over a lot, that he rode his bike a lot.

The stepfather didn’t say a word during the whole meeting. Not one. At the end, when the social worker suggested seeing Tom again the following week, he just nodded, held the door open for the mum, and they left.

“Did you see his jaw?” the headmistress said when the door closed. “He was clenching his teeth hard enough to break them.”

I had seen it. I had also seen something else, which I only understood later: on the way out, he had put his hand on the mum’s back. Very gently. The way you hold someone who is about to fall.

That night I slept badly. I thought of Tom in a house with that man who clenched his teeth. I thought we might have put him in danger by calling his parents in. I thought of all the stories you read in the papers, the ones where everybody had noticed something and nobody had done anything.

The following Monday, Tom arrived late. He was limping. He had a scratch on his neck, just above the collar of his jumper, and the eyes of someone who hadn’t slept.

At morning break, he didn’t go out. He stayed at his desk, his head on his arms. I sat down next to him, on one of those little chairs that are too low and hurt your back.

I didn’t ask anything. You don’t ask. I just said:

“You look very tired this morning.”

He didn’t lift his head. And then, after a long while, he murmured into his arms:

“Miss. I don’t want to go back there on Friday.”

I felt my heart thud. Friday. Not tonight. Friday.

“Where’s there, Tom?”

He looked up at me. Huge eyes, green, wet.