They turned up on her doorstep puffing and panting and babbling about a bobby appearing out the blue in a police van with lights flashing and sirens wailing. He’d hurriedly climbed out of his vehicle, marched brusqely up to David and Anna, grabbed them roughly by their hoods and had thrust them up against the promenade wall to give them a right dressing down.  This was done under full scrutiny of passing joggers, cyclists and other kids who were playing by the waters edge.  He’d belched at them both to “Get home now.”  He called them a “stupid pair” and he had sarcastically asked them if they were, “trying to commit suicide.” This was followed by the unleashing of a continuous tirade of insults such as “You little morons, don’t you realize you could’ve been killed?” and, “You stupid cow.  You cretins…. You should thank your lucky stars that I spotted you at risk.”  He also said, “You imbeciles…. Where’s your mother?  I need to have a stern word with her.  Why aren’t you nitwits in school?  Truanting too, are you?” and “You bloody brats need teaching a lesson…. You’re out of control.”

                David panted, “Mum, he’s on his way now to see you…. But he’s lying…. You’ve gotta believe us.  He picked on us for no reason.  There were lots of other people there…. Some were drenched but he didn’t tell any of them off.  We weren’t in any danger – honest…. We were nowhere near the sea.”

            “Well I can see you’re both bone dry.  Even your feet are not wet…. Don’t worry I believe you…. Something strange is going on…. A cop wouldn’t carry on like that,” their mother assured them.

            There was a chill wind blowing. Within seconds PC Palmtree was at her door all angry and agitated.  He gushed:

            “You are lucky we were keeping an eye on your kids…. They could’ve been swept out to sea in swirling treacherous waves.  The sea is lashing up over the prom…. It’s over a foot deep under the pier.  It’s so dangerous that rocks are being strewn along the prom road.  The tide’s on its way in…. It’s a good job we spotted your two on CCTV or they could be dead now.  It’s so wild down there that they’re thinking of closing the prom.  If it happens again I’ll have to put them on this ‘At Risk’ register…. for their own protection.  Now, you’ve had a warning….”

            It was the ‘At Risk’ suggestion that really lodged in her crow. 

            “Oh, hang on a minute; hold your horses right there.  First of all it is not your job to threaten us with at risk registers – it is social services’, secondly, look at them, you can see they are completely dry - they were never in any danger and thirdly what about all the other people down there?  Did you caution them?” Sarah raged.

            “There was no one else there,” the officer corrected her.

            “He’s lying,” David whispered to his mum.

            “I want to see the evidence,” Sarah asserted.

            “Pardon?” PC Palmtree asked, looking a bit bewildered.

            “I want you to prove that my kids were in grave danger from the sea and that there was no one else there.  You said they were caught on CCTV.  Right I want to see that tape,” Sarah demanded.

            “You’ll have to contact the council,” came the response.

            “Fine; I’ll do that,” she declared.  “But I’ll tell you something…. This is a wind up…. I just know it.  It just isn’t kosher and I reckon I know the very person who’s behind all this…. Tricky Dickie Gregory Potter.”

            “No, absolutely not…. It’s nothing to do with him.”

            The PC was too abrupt with his response and too quick to then emphasise, “A member of the public raised the alarm.  He noticed that the camera was focussed on your kids so he asked us to monitor them….”

            “Nonsense,” Sarah snapped.  “Oh, come on; you know this is some kind of sick, sordid joke…. Police haven’t got time to watch the antics of two little kids…. They’re supposed to be watching for criminal activity, aren’t they?  Something shabby is going on here and I want to know the truth.  Greg Potter has got something to do with it all.  He always boasted about his police contacts…. He promised that he’d hound me forever…. He said he’d ‘fix’ things…. and that he’d make my life a living nightmare.  I’m determined to get to the bottom of it and in the doing I’m going to expose the seedy grubby police officers and whoever else is involved.”

            “You do that,” PC Palmtree remarked, unscathingly.

When he’d gone Sarah immediately went to scan the area and to study the camera in question.  The sea wasn’t rough.  It certainly wasn’t splashing up onto the promenade and spewing rocks or other debris all over the road.  The road had not been closed and ‘big brother’ remained motionless for the half hour that she stood gazing at it, pondering.  The angling shop proprietor on the pier informed her that the tide had been on its way out for a couple of hours and that although it had been choppy at high tide and that some waves had spilled over onto the prom, there was never more than about half an inch of water on the walkway under the pier or anywhere else and it had never been so rough that it might’ve been necessary to consider closing the road.

            Sarah and the kids examined the camera at other times that day and the next. It was observed closely and constantly for half an hour at a time and it didn’t budge once.  She contacted the council and was met with evasiveness and claptrap.  Such was their level of guilt that no one would reveal their names.  They tried to pretend it was “for security reasons” and they even questioned how she’d managed to get through to them.  One unidentified telephone contact tried to convince her [in the same urgent, enthusiastic tone and practised dictate that PC Palmtree had used] that he’d seen her kids playing on their bikes under the pier.  He emphasised the point that they were riding through about a foot of water and getting soaked and he kept dwelling on the fact that they were at such risk, saying that the sea was so severe that the road had been closed for a good few hours.  She also learned from him that the sea was on its way out at the time David and Anna were supposedly spotted on CCTV.

                 “Your story differs to the PC’s,” Sarah declared.  “And that camera was not and is not operating.  Furthermore, it doesn’t even focus on the area under the pier.  And not only that, I saw for myself that my kids and their clothes were perfectly dry.  I smell a rat.”

            “No rats,” the wily, nameless, conspirator ascertained.

            “I’d like to see the tape, please,” Sarah requested.

            “Sorry, we can’t allow the general public to view tapes, unless a crime has been committed,” he blathered.

            “No, of course not…. You people are sly and shifty.  You hide behind towers of silence and secrecy.  There is as much transparency as a plastic bin liner in your operations and you demonstrate your underhandedness and feebleness in your wish to remain incognito,” Sarah fumed.  “If you are going to insist that my kids were in such a state of hazardous disposition such that it warranted a police officer to reprimand and order them home and visit me all reproachful and high and mighty, then you could at least do the honourable thing and let me see the evidence.  I have a right to see exactly what my children were up to in the circumstances.  The stills will do.”

            The anonymous trickster cleared his throat, made some insipid excuse about trying to find out more information, politely promised to phone her back and hung up.

            After a couple of hours Sarah tried to phone back but was repeatedly greeted with the message that the control room was “busy right now and isn’t taking any calls.”

            “No, of course they’re not,” she blasted to one operator.  “Those sneaks are busy getting their trumped-up, galling allegations in order so’s not to be caught out red-handed.  Well their lies will come back to haunt them one day.”

            Eventually a different mystery man phoned her back to waffle on about standard 24 hour tapes and time-lapse 31 day tapes; the top and bottom of it all being that all the evidence relating to her kids had curiously been erased.

            “Well surprise, surprise,” boomed Sarah.  “You may feel proud of your little set-up and attempts to fool us, but your immoral, fraudulent games are dangerous, debased and disreputable.  Remember this; truth has a habit of surfacing when you least expect it.  I hope you lot choke on your own consciences.  I’m sure the British taxpayers would love to know what the council really get up to behind closed doors.  Well they will one day because I fully intend to expose you evildoers one way or another, even if it takes me a lifetime. You are not paid to lie, make up stories and frame innocent families.  Look at you pathetic phoneys; you haven’t even got the guts to reveal your identities.  I used to bring my kids up to trust and respect authority.  You lot should come here and learn a thing or two from them.  Compared to you, my kids are angels, with more decency and integrity in their little fingers.  You and the police have shown your true colours to them.  They nor I will not forget this and we will not allow you to forget it either – of that you can rest assured.”

            So there it was - the stark reality.  They had it in for her.  This had to be connected to Greg, but why does he have so much clout?  Who is he? And why did the police and council concoct such a fabricated story and then go to such drastic lengths of concealment?  The questions zoomed around Sarah’s head like moths on a light bulb.

            ‘Ok, one reason might be to ruffle my feathers,’ she reasoned.  It had certainly achieved that but there had to be more.  As if by some divine inspiration she soon had an explanation.  Her pal Lorraine breezed in through the back door waving the local paper in her face.

            “Have you seen the front page?” she enthused.  “Your kids are in the news.”

            “Bloody hell,” Sarah gasped as she scanned the print.  “That picture’s been cleverly photographed to show David and Anna risking their lives by a stormy sea…. That massive wave looks like it’s just about to crash down on top of them and suck them in but it must’ve just dropped behind them because they didn’t get wet – not by one dollop of water.  Christ, that’s it!  Now I get it.  Greg arranged all this so that he could take this photo and the blurb about David and Anna playing dangerously close to the water’s edge, to show the court welfare officer; you know, for proof of what an irresponsible, unfit mother I am…. And he can blab to her about being aware that the police were so worried about my kids’ safety that they immediately raced around to rescue them and to give them and me a swift scolding and a harsh warning.”

            “Come again,” Lol muttered, baffled.

            Sarah briefed her mate on the details.

            “Sounds like Greg was the ‘concerned’ member of the public then,” commented Lorraine.

            “Precisely,” remarked Sarah.  “Oh, he’s watching them alright, or his spies are.  The problem is, how to unmask the truth.  How do you fight corruption?  I’ll talk to the solicitor about it but I don’t expect miracles there…. I can’t exactly go to the papers, can I?” she mused.

            “Write a book,” Lol yelled at her, “about your life…. Greg…. shady Authorities….”

            “You’re right,” Sarah whooped, slapping her pal on the back.  “I’ll do it that way.  Maybe it’ll help other single mothers too.”

Sarah spent the rest of the week studying ‘big brother’ at various times of the day and for varying lengths.  It remained immobile and did not spring to life until exactly one week later.  Jimmy O was no help and shrugged off her ‘conspiracy’ theories insisting that there had been no frame up, that the police do warn kids and parents if a child is spotted on CCTV in danger and that the cameras are sometimes manually operated and could remain in one position for long periods of time.  He casually suggested that the council might have exaggerated a bit and that there might’ve been slight differences between their account and the police’s due to “careless attention to detail.”

            When Sarah mentioned witnessing for herself the past police pally-ness with Greg and their turning a blind eye to his motoring offences and that he had a special identity number, Jimmy Oliver paused for a moment and then remarked that maybe Greg did have special privileges because of his previous police work but that there’d be a national scandal if he abused his position.

            As for the uncanny likeness between her circumstances and Cara’s, Jimmy O simply dismissed it as Cara not being as determined to keep her children.  When Sarah began to protest, Jimmy O reminded her that suspicion was not enough to discredit anyone.  Sarah asked if they shouldn’t be trying just a little harder to unearth any possible wrongdoing, saying that surely it was their duty.  He remained silent.

            She brought up the role of social services and pointed out that there should be an enquiry into their activities since it was pretty evident that they’d let Kim and Lee down abysmally.  Too many people could vouch for that, including school head-teachers, but again Jimmy O fobbed her off with a remark that, “gossip isn’t enough.”  When she again made the point that if there was a whiff of corruption surely it should be exposed, he again went quiet.

            She was put off by his offhandedness and unhelpfulness but not really surprised at his stance.  His manner was rather stilted and his answers seemed rehearsed.  It was as if he had been fully briefed beforehand, for he was surely forearmed.  And yet, crazy as everything was, Sarah had expected such a reaction from him.  Everything seemed so stacked against her.  Even her dad didn’t side with her.  He preferred the easy option of blaming her kids.  In his eyes, all kids were liars and the authorities were always in the right.