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it!’
    I shook my head and sighed. That was typical of Riley. She was 18 now and we were so alike, in so many ways. Same black hair, same laugh, same taste in music and fashion. But in one important respect we were different. Where it was my life’s mission to try and make the world a tidier place, Riley was the opposite: she was just about the most disorganised person I knew. I knew where her shoe would be. It would, same as ever, be in exactly the same place as it landed when she last flung it off.
    I headed upstairs anyway, however, because I had the luxury of an hour till I needed to leave for work, whereas she really did only have five – no, four – minutes. She’d secured a great job after leaving college, and she was really enjoying it. She worked in a travel agents, which she said gave her ‘that holiday feeling every day’. But it wasn’t a holiday – there was an end time and, more pertinently, a start time. Just as well she had such an understanding boss.
    I was halfway up the stairs when she appeared on the landing. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, hopping as she pulled the errant shoe on to her foot. ‘Panic over. Someone must have kicked it under my bed.’
    â€˜Er, excuse me?’ I chided, as she came down to join me. ‘Someone? Which someone might that be?’
    In answer she planted a quick kiss on my cheek, then she was out of the door to catch her bus with only seconds to spare. I waved her off, thinking wistfully of how it might feel to be 18 again, off to work without a care in the world.
    The children in my own world were different. Well, the ones I spent my weekdays with, at any rate. I worked as a behaviour manager in a big inner-city comprehensive school, so the kids that came my way were the opposite of carefree. They came to spend time with me for a variety of different reasons, but what they had in common was that they couldn’t cope in a mainstream school setting. My job, as well as providing a safe space in which they could work, was to assess them and decide upon the best course of action, which could involve counselling them, teaching them coping techniques and/or, in some cases, referral to outside agencies that could help them, such as professional counsellors and clinical psychologists. Sometimes it could be as simple as formulating a temporary alternative curriculum, and other times it could end up being protracted and complex – where a child’s difficulties were too severe to be dealt with using mainstream school facilities, for example, it might mean a transfer to a live-in establishment that had the staff and facilities appropriate to their needs. And in extreme cases, where the children were deemed to be at risk at home, social services might be brought in and the child placed in care.
    Either way, mine was a job that, though often challenging, was never boring, but with the growing numbers of children getting referred to me in the six months since I’d been there, it could also at times be very stressful.
    With Riley gone to work, that just left me and my son Kieron at home, with my husband Mike, who was a warehouse manager, long gone too. And home was where I suspected Kieron would stay most of the day. It was the end of September – three weeks into a new academic year – and Kieron was finding life hard to cope with. He was 16 now and had left school back in June without a plan. And with his friends either back in school or college, or even working, he felt a bit rootless – the change in routine had really unsettled him. Kieron has Asperger’s, a very mild form of autism, so all change is difficult for him to manage, and the big question – try for college, get a job, do an apprenticeship? – was still to be settled and was weighing heavily on his mind.
    And ours too, and would continue to do so till Kieron worked out what he felt was the best path for him; something there would be no