But of course the day was not over......

Meeting over, well if you could grace it with the title.

We pointed the trusty Rover towards England the nick and Vic.

Now our gps gave me a puzzling arrival time which would call for all the MD's considerable mad driving skills to bring back to the time we were supposed to arrive. This was odd but the MD put the pedal to the metal and we went for it.

Thinking that was a hell of a long time to get to where we were going, a suspiscion formed. I checked the time on the GPS, oh dear, it was still set on European time. The speed crazed MD was trying to make up an hour to get there, when I could make make it up by pushing a few buttons....

Eventually we arrived and the ritual depersonalisation of the prison system began. Through locked gate into inner cordon, empty all our lives into a locker and wait for first gate to lock before second opens. Then into a crammed waiting area jammed with the crowd, on into a dismal day centre with chairs and tables that were modern once lined in regiments and bolted to the floor.

Sitting in the corner looking in her element was the Vic. She almost looked at home regimented and arranged, cared for if not about, not a care in the world.

My heart sank.

Words are a really clumsy tool but the discourse was the same old drivel the continuous harping and lack of reflection. The devoted mother who walked off and left her child with a man who had beaten the Vic. The not going back for two whole weeks, no checking no nothing.

He was nothing but a useless druggie but he was a useless druggie with her baby and all the work all the time we had devoted hadn't made her think of anyone past herself.

I remembered what I really disliked about her at 12, this wasn't the Vic who left at 16, I wanted the 16 year old, my 16 yo the girl we grew to love, back.

The terrible thing, every pore of P's mum oozes love for her son, but she could not manage to care for him. You felt nothing from Vic, none of that, she had just walked away . Serenity has had it really rough but she has never walked away from her kids.

Vic was up for a really serious charge and all she could talk about was the police being rough with her.

She had run away from life at 9 she did it again every couple of months all the way to nearly 16.

She was running away now, well, seemed like it to me.

We felt back then maybe she had turned a corner. Had we been wrong?

Were we expecting too much?

Probably.

We sat silent a long time in the car on the way home.

Then in the morning I was one to her solicitor, Had he realised she was on Citalopram and that all the behaviour she had been arrested for was quite consistent with drug withdrawal?

He had the basis of a good defence, yes, we would see him in court on the 30th......