People ask who I am. It is a reasonable thing to ask somebody who has written 352 pages about telling the truth.
Here is why I am not going to say.
One: the families
Everybody in the book is invented. I did not change names and move the furniture round. I made them up, from nothing.
But if you knew my name, you could find out where I have worked. And then a mother in one of those towns might read about Jade and wonder if it is her. It is not. I would never get the chance to tell her so.
A pen name is the only way I can promise that nobody is in this book. So that is the promise.
Two: the job
Social workers are registered. We have professional standards, and they cover what we say in public, as they should.
There is not a real case in the book and not a real colleague. But I have watched what happens to people in this work who say things under their own names. They get careful. The writing gets quieter. Eventually it is a policy document.
I wanted to write the version with the crying in it.
Three: you
If I tell you how old I am, and where I am from, and what I look like, you will read Maisie with my face on. She does not have my face. She is twenty-five and she has cut her own fringe with the kitchen scissors.
She is better company without me standing next to her.
Four: cowardice
I would like to pretend that all of this is principle. Some of it is that I do not want to be recognised in the supermarket by somebody whose children I once had to write a report about.
I have sat in courtrooms and said things about people’s lives that they will never forgive. I believed every word and would say them again. I still do not want to meet them by the yoghurts.
What you do get
You get the job, as truly as I can tell it. You get somebody who has done it for a long time, and who has sat on those sofas and stood in those corridors.
You get the feelings, all of which are real.
You get a reply, if you write to me.
And you get the car. I have no complaints about the car as a likeness.
Maisie x
Next in the notebook: If a social worker knocks on your door