Jaz nodded. “I cost a lot of money.”
That was, I supposed, strictly true. “Well yeah. But that’s kind of what having a kid is like, isn’t it?”
“Your own kid,” Jaz half agreed. “But I’m not. I’m just some poor little looked-after girl. Who wants to pay for that?”
I knew from my many, many terrible life choices how awful it could feel to be pitied. And I was whatever-the-opposite-of-oblivious-is enough to know that anybody who called themselves apoorlittle somethingon no account wanted to be thought of as a poor little anything. But Jesus fucking Christ, she was an actual child.
Unfortunately, my stunned silence had given Jaz’s brain ample space to answer for me. “This is the bit where you tell me how different you are and how much better it’ll be this time.”
I really wanted to. Because I really thought we were and I really hoped it would. But it also felt like a huge trap. So I said, “Would you believe me?”
Jaz glared. “Wouldyou?”
We didn’t really say much after that. We just sat in silence while Jaz ate her chips. And the rest of my sausage. And half my bacon.
* * *
“The actions,” Oliver was saying into the phone, “of your employees were unacceptable.”
Jaz was in her room. Spud was in her room with her. I was on the sofa watchingTaskmasterwith the sound off and the subtitles on. At the other end of the phone, somebody in an office was saying something evasive that I was very, very glad Oliver was dealing with instead of me.
“Contrary to what you may believe, ‘We have a zero-tolerance policy’ isn’t a blanket excuse for you to do whatever you like.”
Oliver stood stock still while the, I’m sure, extremely underpaid and underappreciated person at the other end of the line trotted out the next bit of whatever script they were working from.
“My tone is not combative.”
Okay, maybe they weren’t workingpreciselyfrom a script.
“Your working practices contravene the recommendations of the Children’s Commissioner, the UN Committee Against Torture,andthe UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
A pause. Quite a short one.
“No, I’m simply stating the facts of the situation.”
Another pause.
“I’m aware of that.”
And another.
“I’m aware of that also.”
A final, extremely long pause.
“I understand. Thank you for your time.” He hung up and sat down next to me. “Well, that could have gone better.”
“Not interested?” I asked, pausingTaskmasterat just the right moment to catch Greg Davies with his mouth hanging open like an overheated Irish wolfhound.
“Oh no, they were absolutelydelightedto have me calling them up to say that they needed to make massive changes to their working practice. There’s nothing that large institutions love more than change.”
I laid my head against his shoulder in a way that, in our private love language, saidI’m here for you, even though to an outsider it might have looked more likeI’m extremely sleepy. “So what now?”
To my…not surprise, really, but deep sadness, this was one of the few situations where Oliver didn’t have an answer. I didn’t like Oliver not having an answer. I didn’t like Oliver not having an answer almost as much as Oliver didn’t like Oliver not having an answer. “Human rights law is more Jennifer’s area than mine, and Jennifer’s a little distracted at the moment, what with…what with everything.”
He had a point. Jennifer and Peter had a whole lot of everything going on right about then. “So are we just going to drop it?”
“They delivered a child to usin handcuffs,” Oliver replied. “Dropping it shouldn’t be an option.”
