A Stolen Childhood: A Dark Past, a Terrible Secret, a Girl Without a Future
Bestselling author and teacher Casey Watson shares the horrifying true story of Kiera Bentley, a 12-year-old girl with a deeply shocking secret she’s too young to even understand.When Casey first meets Kiera, a small slight girl who’s just lashed out at a fellow pupil in assembly, she immediately senses something’s wrong. Something in Kiera’s eyes alerts Casey that this is an “old head on young shoulders”, and with Kiera’s constant tiredness and self-soothing habit of pulling her hair out, she follows her instinct and takes Kiera under her wing.At first the answer seems simple enough; Kiera’s parents aren’t together and they don’t get on, which makes life hard for Kiera as she’s so close to her dad. But as the weeks roll on, Casey begins to understand that there’s something much darker going on behind closed doors. And when she finally learns the truth, she’s terrified she won’t be able to save Kiera from it.
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This book is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s experiences. In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed.
HarperElement
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First published by HarperElement 2015
FIRST EDITION
© Casey Watson 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover photograph © Marzena Kosicka/plainpicture (posed by model)
Casey Watson asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record of this book
is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007543090
Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008118624
Version: 2016-10-19
The Boy No One Loved
Crying for Help
Little Prisoners
Too Hurt to Stay
Mummy’s Little Helper
Just a Boy (short story)
Breaking the Silence
A Last Kiss for Mummy
Scarlett’s Secret (short story)
The Girl Without a Voice
Nowhere to Go
No Place for Nathan (short story)
Contents
Some wise person, somewhere, coined the phrase, ‘It’s the little things,’ and you know, it really is. This book is dedicated to all those who do the little things without thinking, every working day. The dinner ladies, the playground assistants, the volunteer mentors and the teachers, the classroom assistants, the school nurses, the year heads and the support staff. These people, in their dedicated roles and in the busy school environment, often have no idea what a positive effect they have on their students. Continue doing what you do, and know that every little smile you give, every pat on the back, every wink or nod in the corridor, really makes somebody’s day. I raise a glass to all of you.
I would like to thank my agent, the lovely Andrew Lownie, for continuing to believe in me; Carolyn and the wonderful team at HarperCollins for their dedicated and hard work; and as ever my very talented friend and mentor, Lynne, for always being there.
What Lies Beneath. That was the name of the film, wasn’t it? The one where the wife thinks she’s seeing things that aren’t there? As titles went, it was a good one for a psychological thriller. But though it would soon strike a chilling chord with me for professional reasons, right now I was oblivious of what lay in store, so it came to mind for more practical ones. I was busy digging – digging deep into my capacious school satchel, to see if what lay beneath in this case was a pen that actually worked.
It was touch and go whether I’d have any success. In fact, it was an action that, at times, put me in mind of one of those celebrities in the jungle plunging a hand into a black hole while being blindfold. It was a very big satchel and there was a great deal of stuff generally at the bottom of it, which was par for the course given the nature of my job. ‘You know what?’ I said to Kelly, my sometime assistant, having turfed out half the contents in order to find one, ‘you would think that after all this time, someone would finally work out how to operate the heating system in this place, wouldn’t you? It’s not exactly rocket science, after all.’
It was mid-morning break and Kelly and I, along with a lot of the other teaching staff, were spending it in the staff-room – not just so we could warm ourselves up a bit with hot drinks, but so we could retrieve any extra clothing we might have in our lockers.
It was only the beginning of March, but it was almost as if all the radiators in the place somehow knew that the weathermen had announced that morning that it was officially the first day of spring. They had then apparently decided in unison that they should break down, quite possibly for the entire season. This in turn meant that the school was already going into the usual ‘cold weather meltdown’, with key staff bustling about the place bearing thermometers and recording temperatures, while the children – always quick to sniff an opportunity on the breeze, particularly a chilly one – could already be heard up and down the corridors making plans for a possible early exit, if there were insufficient degrees Celsius for them to be allowed to stay.
