Under scrutiny

We lost Jonah today.

It had been a perfect, wholesome day. I was high as a kite. Five days of little but chicken stock, and I was flying on fresh-ish air and sunshine, half a stone down and feeling light and in control. The kids acquiesced to haircuts, and we wandered through the village, smart in brand new red Saltwater Originals sandals bought from the local boutique kidswear shop; called on Reprobate Kate, who was grumpy and tired a week and a half after an operation to remove an appendix that nearly killed her. We sat in the sun at the school’s fete, drinking tea, while the kids raced amok without teachers to patrol them, catching up with old faces, while Tom drank Pimms and the kids ate krispy cakes and gluten free Victoria sponge.

  
On a day like today, there was nothing to dislike about our gentrified corner of Hackney. We went for lunch at a local Vietnamese, me supping hot and spicy soup while the kids ate chilli squid and chicken satay. Even that did not break my mood, despite the kids moaning about the heat as if it was a bad thing, forcing us to choose a seat in the shade on the sunlit patio, my stomach too empty even to rumble.

Later, we met up with Reprobate Kate, who’d slumped off to Broadway Market in a humpf, too weak to be bothered to chat to mums she didn’t know at a school her daughter doesn’t go to, sat in a funk in a sunny bench in the playground, bemoaning the day as only the poorly sick can. On the way, we’d picked up the daughter of a friend, sweet, rambunctious Charlotte, whose parents were having a sunny pint in the local across the road. The kids hugged and ran off to play, but within minutes bickering occurred, with Jonah and Charlotte nearly tilting the littler ones off the big swing. Kate had had enough. Let’s go for a drink, I suggested.

By then, Jonah had found a friend from school and was playing in such blissful multicultural everyday harmony that makes us, in our East London bubble, feel smug that anything – even social cohesion – is possible. They ran off to the bushes with 10 year old Charlotte, whose relaxed parents were happy enough to have her playing out of sight, as long as she didn’t leave the playground and popped back every 15 minutes to let them know she was okay. It’s a philosophy to which I subscribe. Kids need to run free and explore, and this, their local park where they have visited near daily since childhood, is as safe as anywhere in a London community, in which likely as not there’ll be a face you know round every corner.

I headed to the pub with Kate, her daughter Lola and the youngest, Ava, joining Charlotte’s parents, on the street side bench that faced out over the playground, and bought a round, not even bothered that my own drink was saintly fresh lime and soda. But twenty minutes later, Tom had not returned from heading off to tell Jonah, his mate and Charlotte we were going to the pub. They were, it seemed, lost.

I left the assembled group, luckily, for once, sober as a judge (if you don’t count the starvation euphoria) on such a gloriously Saturday, and frantically searched their usual stomping ground – the bushes behind the playground, the climbing trees and then further afield, towards the Pavilion Cafe on the far side of the park. Panicking now – after all the park was busy and not with the familiar Monday to Friday faces, but beer bottled youths, the coterie of old men dog walkers who frequent to wheeze and grumble and families from further afield picnicking and bickering in the heat – and keen to return to my sun dappled conversation, I collared a cycling policeman, hoping to elicit speedy help in my search. Instead, he started taking notes – a description, how long he’d been lost, (less than twenty minutes), where I’d been in the meantime. In my anxiousness, I forgot what colour tee shirt Jonah had on (getting dressed is an activity I always seem to block from my memory), I stumbled over his birthday, and changed the colour of his hair from blonde to brown – I still think of him as my platinum boy, now sadly mousier thanks to Tom’s apparently Mediterranean heritage. Already, I could feel the seeds of suspicion being sown, a case being opened.

Luckily, at that moment, Charlotte huffed past, a 14 year old looking tweenager with an attitude to match her height. She left the boys to go to the toilet, but she knew where they were. They’d gone west, up toward the pagoda – not somewhere Jonah would normally have gone on his own. As I questioned her, the policeman raised his eyebrows, looking to find holes in the story that to be honest, I’d sketched over. After all, I’d been in the pub, not the playground as I’d said, though Tom had been responsibly assigned to tell the boys where we’d gone. Praying she would’t give me away, Jonah came gamboling over puppyish and loose-limbed, he bulked at the sight of the policeman, and the policeman puffed out his chest, ready to give a lecture.

He’s on the spectrum, I added hastily, and it took the wind out of the policeman’s sails.

You mustn’t go out of sight of your parents he said, patronisingly, more for my benefit than for Jonah’s. We always go that way, Jonah argued back, semi-truthfully, before I shot him a warning glance, which confused him into silence. There are some nasty characters around and you can never be too sure, added the policeman for good measure, which may be true, but is he any less safe among them at nearly ten than he would be at 15, I silently argued back.

We went on our way, a puffed and tetchy Tom joining us, preparing to give Jonah a lecture of his own, but I quieted him. We’ve already done it, I said. We had a chat with a policeman, he knows he should’t have gone so far. And he shouldn’t, but whether or not he should always be in sight is another question entirely, and one I think is unrealistic and even unwanted at his age, though who knows, the way it’s going, whether sooner or later, there’ll be legislation against parents’ better judgement. I rather suspect, in this age of impassive intolerance, regardless of our obedience to the law, it will be the sooner.

We left Jonah and his friend, a charming black kid in the playground, under strict instructions not to go anywhere else. It is, after all, their neighbourhood, and they are, I believe, old enough to be trusted not to get up to too much mischief, especially after a little scare. But the policeman was not through with us, and followed after, to get all our details, just in case.

As I gave up my address and phone number, it made me think twice about involving the law again. After all, we are now on the radar, should things go amiss again, as inevitably, whatever scrutiny we subject our children to, they will, perhaps more so the heavier handed we are. That’s life, and kids, like adults have to be able to live it as we see fit. We are not neglectful, no nor over prescriptive, but there are always those who look to find fault where there is none to be found, and to tell others how to mind their business even if it does not, in the end do any good; rather harm of a more creeping, intangible kind.

We had our drink, me still on water, (thank goodness I hadn’t smelled of booze), Tom his, by now, rather warm beer, Kate a necessary shandy and Charlotte’s mum, Reprobate Laura, already giggly from wine. The kids played out, and we went home in the knowledge that a quiet lesson had been learned. And though Jonah will think twice before straying without telling us where he is going, the take home was that parents can never be trusted to trust their kids where the law is concerned.