Angels in Our Hearts

by Rosie Lewis

  I was relieved that he’d read my emails and seemed to think I was right. ‘But what do I do, John?’ I said. ‘I mean, what do we do? Confront the mother? Call the police? Get in touch with Adam’s social worker? That would be the first thing, I suppose. Share this, pronto.’

  ‘Well, in theory, yes,’ John said, ‘except that Adam doesn’t actually have an assigned worker, as such. These were very different circumstances, obviously. But now, in light of the evidence – the pills in his sick, particularly – we have no choice. Leave it with me for now. I’ll get on the phone and speak to the manager of Adam’s local team, and we’ll work out a plan of action. In the meantime, you’ll just have to sit tight I’m afraid, Casey.’

  ‘What about tonight’s visit?’ I asked, concerned. ‘Should I stay in the room with them this time?’

  ‘Oh, you can’t take him tonight, Casey,’ John said. ‘Not now all this has come to light. There’s no way we can allow him to go back, so you’ll just have to come up with something. You can do that, can’t you? If it’s true, and she does suffer from MBP, then she needs help – and fast.’

  ‘You do agree it’s probably that, then?’

  ‘I sincerely hope so. Because if it’s not that, then it’s something even more sinister, isn’t it? Which means it’ll be up to the police and the courts to decide what happens next, won’t it? But definitely no to taking him back there, okay?’

  I felt sick myself as I put the phone down. I wasn’t someone who generally felt stress in my stomach, but I really did feel nauseous thinking about the enormity of it all. That poor little boy, and now, if what I knew to be true in my gut was really true, he was probably going to lose his mother, at least in the short term. And what was that kind of trauma going to do to him?

  I tried to keep a calm head on my shoulders – for heaven’s sake, I’d dealt with enough horrible abuse situations to be able to deal with this, surely. But there was just something so eerie and disconcerting about this one. I don’t know why – all forms of child abuse were horrible and shocking – but it was perhaps just the realisation that, had Adam’s mother not had her appendicitis, she might well have continued harming Adam for years. Might even have killed him.

  I was still a bit shell-shocked when I picked Adam up from school later in the day. And I hated that I was going to have to lie to him. All the way home I kept thinking about how his whole world was about to implode – truly implode now, not just be interrupted – and it was almost a relief when he started to get angry that he couldn’t visit his mum, and demanded to know why. Having to concentrate on the confection of falsehoods I’d had to peddle at least gave me something to do.

  ‘I told you, sweetie,’ I repeated, when he refused to accept it. ‘There’s some kind of bug going around the ward – everybody’s got it. One of those superbugs they’re always talking about on the news. So all visits have been cancelled. No exceptions. Even for us, sorry. I know it’s tough, but let’s just wait and see how things are tomorrow, hey?’

  Adam eyed me suspiciously – as I knew he probably would. After all, it takes one to know one. Then he frowned, and I could see he was thinking about something. ‘Hang on,’ he said slowly. ‘Is that really true, Casey?’ I felt skewered by the intelligence of his stare. ‘You thought I had a bug, didn’t you?’ he went on. ‘Is that why I can’t go? Because you think I have a bug, and I might make Mum ill?’

  He paused, as if weighing up what, if anything, to say next. I let the pause expand. Seeing his expression, I had no interest in filling it.

  And my hunch that there was something coming was rewarded. ‘Because if that’s the reason,’ he said eventually, ‘it’s all right. You can take me. I don’t have a bug. I was sick because of the pills. I worked it out. It was just the wrong medicine.’

  ‘The wrong medicine? You’ve been taking medicine, Adam?’

  He nodded. ‘But it wasn’t the same as my normal medicine. It wasn’t the same colour as the ones I normally have. That’s why I was sick. I worked it out. At least, I think so.’

  There. He’d said it.

  I was stunned into silence for a moment, but then the training kicked in. I had to be really careful about how I questioned Adam, and would also have to try to remember every single word of this conversation. ‘So it was your mum who gave you those pills yesterday, love?’ Adam nodded. ‘And you’re telling me that you always get given pills?’ Another nod. ‘But different ones?’

  ‘Yes, white ones,’ he answered quietly. ‘To keep me well. I have to.’ His eyes were searching mine now, as if for some evidence that I could be trusted. That I believed him. ‘If I don’t take my pills every day I could get properly sick,’ he went on. ‘And my mum doesn’t want me to die.’

  And was slowly killing him. I forced the thought away. Steady on. But something in my expression – probably that – had clearly frightened Adam. He was looking increasingly anxious, and he now touched my arm. ‘Casey, what will happen now I’ve told?’

  I knelt down in front of where he stood, his eyes full of tears now, put my arms out to him and pulled him in for a hug. I had to be honest here. No lies. No platitudes. ‘Baby, I really don’t know,’ I said. What else could I say? The one thing I couldn’t do was reassure him that things would be okay, because I was quite, quite sure that they wouldn’t be. Not in the immediate future, anyway. ‘But it was right for you to tell me. It truly was.’ I released him sufficiently that I could look into his eyes again. ‘What I can tell you is that children who are not ill shouldn’t be given tablets. It’s the tablets that have been making you sick, sweetie. Not the other way around.’

  Adam was 11, and bright, and his answering nod confirmed that he’d already worked that out. Some time ago, probably, but what do you do when you are 11, and your mum, whom you loved, and was your only source of love and security, tells you repeatedly that white is black?

  Adam pulled off his glasses and scraped the back of his hand across his eyes. ‘Can’t you just tell Mum to stop?’ he pleaded. ‘She’s a good mum. She loves me. She really, really loves me. She doesn’t want to hurt me. Maybe she just doesn’t know it’s wrong.’

  Adam’s sobs become compulsive, and my heart was breaking for him, but all I could do was hug him tighter and try to soothe him. I just didn’t have the words to make this right.

  Chapter 8

  Friday

  The plan – after a whispered conversation with John the previous evening – was to drop Adam off at school as if it were just another normal day. Which, of course, Adam already knew it wouldn’t be, because he knew what he’d told me, making the whole thing a bit of a farce.

  Still, there was nothing for it but to hold the previous line – that, yes, there really was a bug going round the hospital and, no, I couldn’t promise him he’d see his mum the following night. And in the meantime, that he still needed to go to school.

  There’s a temptation, always, in such traumatic situations, to call normal life off and plunge in head first; focus fully on the problem and try to make things better. In reality, however, that was sometimes not the right thing to do. School mattered, and, for Adam, it would matter even more now. It was a constant – a place of routine and security in what would now become a scary and uncertain world.

  And, perhaps understandably, today Adam really didn’t want to go.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetie,’ I told him when he appeared in the kitchen, still wearing his pyjamas, his face blotchy from crying and his shoulders slumped. ‘But you really have to go in today. It’s the last day of term, and you can’t miss the last day of term, can you? Plus I have a whole ton of boring things to tick off my to-do list before my husband and son get back tonight. Come on, love,’ I said, putting an arm around him and steering him back into the hall. ‘It’ll be fine once you get there. It’ll take your mind off things.’

  In reality, I wasn’t sure it would do any such thing. But John had told me – another part of our whispered conversation – that he’d be
on to Adam’s head, was possibly speaking to him right now, so that he was in a position to offer Adam extra support. And though every nerve end was sparking, telling me to keep this poor child close to me, I knew it was the wrong thing. For all the intensity of the few days we’d spent together, I was still a stranger, whereas school represented everything he knew, from his teachers to his friends – whom he would really badly need now – to the dinner ladies and caretakers and the very fabric of the place.

  And, meekly, eventually, Adam reappeared, dressed, and though he didn’t eat much – no surprise there – he did manage a wan smile at the sight of the Kit Kat nestled atop his lunchtime cheese sandwich.

  Then I took him to school, waved him off and contemplated the probable events of the day ahead – which began as I turned the car back into our drive, the display on my ringing phone saying John Fulshaw.

  ‘Casey,’ he said, ‘right. Lots to tell you.’ He sounded energised, like a car freewheeling down a hill, gathering momentum. As he would. This was his job and he was good at it. He was also unfettered by the emotional component, which was part of the job I had chosen to do. ‘So. The first thing is that Adam has now been assigned his own social worker. Another Adam, as it happens, and he’s been told what’s going on.’

  I locked the car as John talked, and headed indoors. ‘That’s good,’ I said, even though it was also very sad; my little crisis placement had now become a ‘case’.

  ‘And, in light of what Adam disclosed to you last night about the pills,’ John went on, ‘my manager has reported the incident to the police, who have now been in touch with the hospital, and Mandy Conley is apparently going to be interviewed this morning.’

  I tried to imagine Adam’s mum, sitting in her side room, and a pair of uniformed officers appearing in the doorway. ‘God, that’s going to come as a shock to her.’

  ‘I imagine it will,’ John agreed. ‘And what happens next will obviously depend on the outcome. I imagine she might be charged, but I’m told she’s also being seen by a specialist, to establish whether she does seem to be suffering from Munchausen’s.’

  All so quick and efficient. And so sweeping. A full-stop under a life. And perhaps a cure? I knew I’d be doing some more reading today.

  ‘So in the meantime,’ I said, ‘you want me to hang on to Adam for a bit longer? Because, either way, he won’t be able to be returned to her yet, will he?’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ John confirmed, ‘but it’s a no to your first question. We won’t be asking you to hold on to Adam.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘A stroke of luck, for a change. Two strokes of luck, in fact. We’ve been able to get in touch with the uncle in Spain. He and his fiancée are getting a flight back tomorrow. Which is a godsend, because it means Adam has somewhere to stay.’

  ‘That’s allowed, is it? Even now he’s in the system?’

  ‘Yes, in this case. They’re going to stay in Adam’s house, which is obviously the most appropriate. And fine as long as Mrs Conley isn’t there. Which she won’t be. Not for a few days – they’ll keep her in while they assess her. So at least Adam will be able to go home.’

  ‘But what about tonight?’

  ‘That’s the second stroke of luck. He can stay with his next-door neighbour.’

  ‘Wow, you have been busy.’

  ‘Haven’t we just. And she’s more than happy to have him. She’s a support worker, as it happens – not in this district, another one. Which means we’re happy to leave Adam in her care till his uncle and auntie get here. She’s also going to see if she can be assigned to his case – she’s known him since he was a baby, apparently – which will obviously help enormously when it comes to moving on arrangements.’

  ‘Moving on?’ I asked, feeling more despondent by the minute. From right in the thick of things to out on the edges. That’s pretty much what fostering felt like sometimes.

  ‘Casey, you know how it’s likely to go. With the best will in the world, I don’t think it’s likely that the uncle and aunt are just going to whisk the boy up and relocate him to Spain, even were it as simple as that now he’s in care, which it’s not. No, in all likelihood Adam will be going to mainstream carers for the time being. At least till it’s established what the outcome with his mum is likely to be – whether she might eventually be in a position to care for him again.

  ‘But what about us?’ I heard myself saying. ‘Why can’t I – we – just hang on to him for now?’

  ‘I knew you’d ask that,’ John said, ‘even though you already know the answer. There are plenty of lovely families we can billet Adam with, whereas specialist carers, for kids who have much more complex needs, are, as you already know, in very short supply. He might need permanent care, mightn’t he? And you can’t offer that and do what you do, can you? So to stay any longer with you would just make the transition more difficult.’

  John was right, of course. As difficult as it was to accept, our hands were tied. Yes, we had Tyler long term, but he was older and had already shown he could cope with the challenges that specialist children brought to the family. To add Adam to the equation would be unfair on him, and would also limit the children we could take on.

  So of course John was right. I already knew all this. It was just my usual reluctance to let go. But that was the nature of the job. And it was a job, one with guidelines and rules and, crappy as they sometimes felt, there was always sound reasoning behind them.

  But it was with a heavy heart that I picked Adam up from school that day and told him my good friend John would be coming to collect him after tea.

  Perhaps working on the assumption that if he didn’t make any mention of what he’d told me the previous afternoon then perhaps I wouldn’t, Adam took this on board with an uncomplicated whoop.

  ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Is Mum home? Is he coming to take me home to her?’

  Which made the rest of what I had to tell him doubly awful.

  I tried to keep it simple and imbue it with positives. And when I explained that he would be staying the night with his next-door neighbour, the spark of relief in his eyes reminded me that it was absolutely the right thing to do.

  ‘So I’m going on a sleepover with Ellie? She used to babysit me when I was little,’ he told me. ‘When Mum was doing lots of lates.’ Then his face fell. ‘But for how long? And what’s going to happen when Uncle Steve gets here? And what about Mum? Why can’t she just come home?’

  Again, I tried to explain that his mum was ill not just with her appendicitis but also in her mind, and that the doctors were going to try to make her well again.

  ‘But what if they can’t?’ he wanted to know. ‘What then?’

  And again, I couldn’t give him an answer.

  By the time John came to collect Adam, some 45 minutes later, we’d had a cuddle and he’d had a cry, and then he’d perked up a little – there was clearly a bond between him and his up till now distant uncle, and I could only hope it was one that could be strengthened. In the meantime I had to let this child go with as little ceremony and fuss as when I’d received him the previous Friday, so that he had a fighting chance of maintaining his composure.

  I, on the other hand, managed no such small feat, letting the tears slide unchecked down my cheeks as I watched the pair of them walk down my front path, John with his briefcase and Adam with his little wheelie one, knowing that it was likely I would never see him again, and that in all probability I would for ever be associated with the memory of the most difficult and traumatic week of his life. I hoped he’d remember me fondly.

  I was absolutely shattered emotionally, but there was no time to dwell on it. I had about ten minutes to get back up to the school to pick up Mike and Tyler, and I didn’t want them to see me blubbing. I splashed my face with cold water, put on a bit of foundation and lip gloss – I hadn’t seen Mike for over a week, after all. Then I dived back into my car and sped off.

  I heard Tyler before I saw him. ‘Muuuuum!’ came the f
amiliar yell – then the legs, then the rest of him, springing from the coach and sprinting across the school car park towards me. And I wasn’t one bit embarrassed by him picking me up off the floor as he hugged me – something I’d long since stopped being able to do to him.

  And then I saw Mike, hobbling down the coach steps to come and join us, and it really hit me just how much I’d missed them.

  ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you both,’ I said as I kissed them both in turn. Then I slapped Mike on the chest with my car keys. ‘And don’t ever go away and break your bloody phone again. I was frantic!’

  ‘Oh, Case, you’re such a drama queen,’ Mike said, laughing. ‘It’s me you should be feeling sorry for – me and my poor broken body.’

  Tyler scraped an invisible bow across an imaginary violin on his shoulder. ‘Yes,’ he added. ‘And don’t we know it! What’s that thing you’re always saying, Mum? Don’t make a drama out of a crisis? Well, Dad’s made a big one, out of a very small crisis. He’s not even got a sprain! Still, your boring week is over now. Normal service is resumed. Wait till you see my ten million photos!’

  ‘And the lad? What was it, Adam?’ Mike said, as he grabbed his holdall. ‘Gone now?’

  Gone now. I reached up to plant another kiss on my husband’s cheek. ‘Yes,’ I said. Time enough to talk about it later.

  Epilogue

  Hindsight is a wonderful thing. In the weeks following Adam’s departure it all fell into place for me, as I unpicked the events of that strange week. The appendicitis; it seemed the operation was completely straightforward, then the pain, and the constant need for extra medication – though it was never proven, it seemed clear that Adam’s mother had been stockpiling painkillers, and that the move to a side room was a part of that too. And it was a morphine-based pain relief, which was why it made Adam so sick.

  Adam’s mother, thankfully, wasn’t charged with any offence, but she was sectioned, and needed long-term, ongoing care for her Munchausen’s disorder, which was diagnosed within a matter of days. And Adam did go into care, just as John had predicted. Just for three months, and with a family who had a ten-year-old son, with whom Adam became great friends and still sees.