The Silent Witness

by Casey Watson

  But would cancelling Christmas really help Bella anyway? Yes, she was clearly old enough to feel terrified about how her future was unravelling, but perhaps that meant she needed distraction even more.

  There was also my own family to consider. And to cancel things would be to create a logistical nightmare, not least because I was the one with the turkey and all the trimmings, and to try and rejig and/or relocate the whole shebang would cause even more upheaval, not least because of the many comings and goings that it would require.

  No, on balance, we agreed, we should probably press on with the day – envelope our frightened visitor in festive love and laughter, but with the safe haven of her bedroom, should she need it. She didn’t strike me as a child who wanted to be the centre of attention, which the alternative scenario meant she would be.

  And it was Bella herself who finally ticked the mental box. In the fact that, the presents opened (bar her own from her family, as yet) and the toast and hot chocolate dispatched, she seemed happy enough to curl up at one end of the sofa and settle down to watch a Harry Potter film with Tyler – and with her cherished soft toy – not a gremlin, but a ‘Dobby the house-elf’, according to Tyler – and the rabbit we’d got for her, which pleased me greatly. Indeed, I had much to thank J. K. Rowling for that morning, because it was a shared devotion to the young wizard that forged their first, tentative bond, and, in response to his ‘Wicked! The Deathly Hallows is on. You want to watch it?’ elicited her first proper words since she’d come to us, which were ‘Yes, please.’

  But which also caused me to wonder, as I drove the short distance to Riley’s house, what kind of mutism we were actually dealing with here. My experience wasn’t extensive – I’d only worked closely with one child who displayed similar systems, truth be told – but in doing so, I’d read up on different forms of mutism, and instinct told me this was more a conscious choice on Bella’s part than anything else. This certainly didn’t seem to fit the profile of other forms I’d come across, where the child struggled to overcome what was often a physiological as well as a psychological barrier, often unconscious. No, it was more that Bella had made a very conscious decision not to engage.

  All very intriguing, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that it was almost certainly because Bella had witnessed that attempted murder by her mother and was shutting down to avoid incriminating her further, during the endless questions she’d have doubtless already been asked in its aftermath.

  Even so, there was a difference between refusing to discuss that, and making a blanket decision not to speak to anyone at all.

  Riley, now a respite foster carer herself, agreed. ‘Though let me be the first to suggest one minor change in tonight’s entertainment,’ she commanded. ‘That the karaoke machine remains unplugged.’ Which suggestion was naturally passed unanimously.

  ‘Seriously,’ she added, ‘I think you’re right to stick with the plan, Mum, and I’m not just saying that because I don’t want to give up my Christmas dinner.’ (‘Oh, yes, you are,’ came the rousing chorus from around the table.) ‘I reckon she can distract herself better in a big crowd of kids than if she’s got everyone’s attention on her in a silent empty house. Didn’t you just say that was why things weren’t working out in the last foster place she was at? I know that’s how I’d feel, anyway. Specially given that every adult she’s had anything to do with up till now has probably been trying to get her to talk about what happened. I wonder what did happen …’ she mused. ‘Do you reckon her mother was trying to kill him?’

  It was obviously impossible to answer that question till one of two things happened – either Bella’s father recovered sufficiently to recount the facts as he remembered (as best he could, given that one fact we did know was that he was extremely drunk when admitted to A&E), or Bella herself decided to. As things stood, her mum was pleading hitting him in self-defence, and until her partner’s situation resolved itself – either he recovered or he died – there was nothing to be done. I wondered if Bella herself was almost in a state of mental breath-holding. I wondered how she felt about her dad’s possible death. How she felt about her dad.

  I didn’t stay long at Riley’s – really only long enough to talk wedding to-do lists with David’s mum. And, once I was back home, knowing the entire family were going to be with us in a scant three or four hours – not to mention our first foster child, Justin, now a strapping adult, with an appetite to match – I took advantage of Bella’s apparent desire to stay on the sofa in her pyjamas to properly attack all the food preparation. Every time I checked on her, she was either watching TV with Tyler, or had her nose in a Harry Potter book; it seemed he’d brought down the entire collection from his bedroom, and that though she’d told him she’d read them all – some of them twice (positively chatty now, at least with Ty!) – she’d be more than happy to read them all again.

  But if that had been Bella’s escape plan (and a book was always an excellent escape plan) the combined onslaught of attention from my quartet of noisy grandchildren proved too powerful a force to avoid. Very soon, though still largely silent and wary around the adults, she was immersed in their world of make-believe and dolls and Lego, and though she still didn’t speak much she was at least fully engaged – well, again, as far as I could tell.

  I sat her next to Levi for our Christmas dinner, since, my eldest grandchild being ten now, they were closest in age, but it was soon clear that the closest bond she was likely to forge was with Marley Mae. From the outset, Bella had been my granddaughter’s main topic of interest, and was fast becoming her little shadow.

  ‘I think it’s because she can’t ask her anything she doesn’t want to answer,’ I told Lauren, my Kieron’s other half, while we stacked and put away the dishes the men had washed up. ‘That’s my take on it, anyway.’ Lauren and Kieron’s Dee Dee was also monopolising this young stranger, though she was currently spark out, having her nap on Kieron’s chest. At only two, she still needed to take such power naps when in the company of her boisterous older cousins. ‘Makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, I know the older children don’t know what’s happened, but they’ll be curious, won’t they? And, in Levi’s case, particularly, doing the whole twenty questions thing. Give him a fair wind, and he’d have everything out of her, from what her favourite colour is to which character she’d be in Minecraft.’

  Lauren nodded. ‘I think you’re right. Whereas Marley Mae is more like an adoring puppy. Correction – more accurately, adoring limpet mine.’

  And it wasn’t just that, truth be known. With her admirable sleuthing skills, Marley Mae had sniffed out the bag of unopened presents in the corner almost as soon as she’d finished opening hers. And, working on the basis that an unopened present on Christmas night was a crime against all humanity, had badgered and badgered till Tyler had told her they were Bella’s and none of her business.

  Which, of course, meant it became Marley Mae’s urgent business to harangue Bella mercilessly till she could prise out a promise that when she did open them Marley Mae could help her.

  And it seemed that time was now. When Lauren and I returned to the living room, now inhabited mostly by quietly playing kids and noisier slumbering men (Mike’s snores alone could wake the dead), it was to meet Bella and Marley Mae coming out.

  ‘We’re going upstairs to open the presents,’ Marley Mae informed us both before I even had a chance to ask. She was looking very pleased with herself.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said, clocking the way she had Bella’s hand clamped in her own as if she were a prisoner who might abscond if left untethered. I looked at Bella. ‘You doing okay, love?’ I asked her.

  She nodded, albeit wanly.

  ‘She might have an iPodge!’ Marley Mae added breathlessly, with the sort of awe a child of her age could feel for such wonders. ‘Or even a tablet!’ She was clearly very excited.

  I wondered if I should gently prise her away and let Bella have some down time on her own. But when I sugg
ested Bella might like five minutes’ peace, it was Bella herself who responded. ‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, and I could tell she meant it. Upon which, they both trotted off up the stairs.

  ‘Don’t you sometimes wonder,’ Lauren reflected, as they disappeared out of sight across the landing, ‘how little ones have no idea how much of a part they play in all this? Just think of all the foster children Marley Mae has befriended since she was born. Do you sometimes wonder if they ever think about her? You know, have memories of her, still? It’s a nice thing to think that, don’t you think? How, in all those children, there’s a little permanent space in their brains where she lives? I love that as a concept, don’t you?’

  It was something I’d never thought about before, and I said so. ‘Oh, but I love that,’ I said. Because I really did.

  They were up there a good while, and I resisted the urge to check on them, as did Riley. Even though both of us were ever conscious that the children who came to us began as strangers, we were of a mind, as was Lauren, that Bella posed no threat to anyone. Except, perhaps, to herself. Besides, the door had been left ajar and both Tyler and Mike had been upstairs since they’d gone up – and both had reported hearing Marley Mae giggling.

  Still, once bitten, ever vigilant – and we’d certainly had our scares down the years. None of us would ever forget the day when Flip, a young girl we’d had with foetal alcohol syndrome, had taken it upon herself to give us a post-lunch break and take Marley Mae off for a walk in the local woods. So when over an hour had passed and neither had reappeared, Riley and I exchanged a ‘Let’s one of us just go and check what they’re up to’ expression. I was just rising from my chair – being the closest to the door – when my granddaughter marched in and made a beeline for the tree, below which her own sack of presents still sat.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ I said, glancing behind her to see no sign of Bella. ‘So, what was the outcome? What did Bella get?’

  I was rewarded by Marley Mae putting a finger to her lips and emitting the sort of self-defeating high-decibel ‘Shhhh!’ that was her trademark. ‘She’s going to sleep,’ she whispered, falling to her chubby little knees to dig around among her haul.

  ‘And she’s sad about her mummy,’ she added, turning around, having produced a cuddly toy; the cuddly snowman, from the film Frozen, that she’d been hoping for so much. ‘So I’m going to let her borrow Olaf.’

  Riley and I rose as one to go up with her, both first agreeing to the ‘You must be quiet!’ order she issued before agreeing to lead the way.

  We trooped up, a little battalion, led by our diminutive general, and followed Marely Mae into Bella’s bedroom through the now wide-open door.

  And it was to find a room totally transformed. Everywhere – all over the carpet, the bed, and on any and every horizontal surface – was what looked like confetti, but made out of wrapping paper. Which I immediately recognised as the paper Bella’s presents had been wrapped in. Only it had now been transformed into a million tiny pieces.

  Bella herself appeared to be asleep. She was curled in an S shape, a tiny form on the bed, with both the rabbit we’d bought for her and her Dobby close beside her, while further down the bed was the ‘iPodge’ Marley Mae had been alluding to, together with other presents: some sort of nature annual, what looked like a folded hoodie, a pair of jeans and a jewellery-making kit.

  ‘We torded it,’ Bella whispered proudly, before tip-toeing theatrically across the carpet and gently placing her precious Olaf close by Bella’s blonde curls. A holy trinity of stuffed animals to chase the nightmares away. ‘There,’ she mouthed silently, with admirable restraint, before turning back to us, placing a finger to her lips again and shooing us outside.

  I pulled the door to, while Riley picked Marley Mae up, and as she now announced that she needed a wee we all trooped into the bathroom.

  ‘You made all that confetti yourselves, did you?’ I asked her, as Riley helped her with her pants.

  ‘It’s not confetti,’ she told us. ‘It’s snowflakes. Bella liked making snow and she let me help her. I was good at it.’ Then she frowned. ‘But then she was sad,’ she said. ‘She cry-ded a lot when we were doing it. I tolded her you wouldn’t be cross about the snow, Nanny, but she still cry-ded.’

  ‘But I bet it looked pretty when you threw it everywhere,’ Riley observed. ‘And, oh, the joy of Hoovers,’ she added to me drily.

  I pictured the scene. Bella’s distress. The emotional meltdown of seeing it laid bare. Of seeing it laid bare with an over-excited Marley Mae, who’d known no such devastation in her happy young life. Seeing the presents from parents who weren’t with her – or each other – opened the gaping hole where the spirit of Christmas should be.

  ‘Whose idea was it to make the snow?’ I asked Marley Mae. ‘Was it yours?’

  She shook her head. ‘Bella liked it.’ She mimed a ripping motion. ‘She likes making snow. And then she throwed it, like this –’ She thrust her arms up and outwards. ‘But she’s sad now. She said. So I said I’d get Olaf for her to cuddle.’ All done, she held her arms up for Riley to scoop her up again. ‘You shouldn’t cry on Christmas Day, should you, Mummy?’

  I glanced in, as we passed, to our poor, anguished visitor, lost in dreams – good ones hopefully, please let them not be nightmares – beneath her blanket of multicoloured snow.

  No, I thought sadly, you shouldn’t.

  Chapter 5

  It’s impossible to predict how a child will respond to extreme stress unless you know that child very well. And even then it’s an inexact science. Even with more than two decades of mothering my own two under my belt, I could still find myself surprised by how they reacted in adversity, sometimes astonishing me by their fortitude and stoicism under pressure and other times collapsing under the strain of something apparently minor. Every one of us really is unique.

  Which is why, with Bella, as with any child, I assumed nothing. Yes, I’d make assumptions about what she might or might not be feeling, but how those feelings played out in terms of how she coped with her current lot was something no one could predict. She also came to us without much back-story, which would have enabled us to get a better feel for her, and which was in contrast with several of the children we’d previously fostered, such as Justin (he of the bulging, six-year, thirty-failed-placements file) and little Georgie, who was autistic and had been in care, and therefore monitored, for almost all of his life.

  Three days in, therefore (we were by now in the lull before New Year, the bedroom ‘snow’ gone and forgotten), and I felt almost as clueless about Bella’s emotional make-up as I had when she’d arrived on Christmas Eve – the moving scene on Christmas night notwithstanding. She’d clearly got something out of her system, which was obviously going to be A Good Thing, but she’d spent almost all of Boxing Day – which was a quieter one, with the little ones gone, and the day lazier – withdrawn and uncommunicative. And though she’d come out with us on a trip to town, to have a nose around the German Christmas market, she’d simply done as asked, like a biddable elderly relation almost, putting her coat on, doing the buttons up, donning the gloves I’d found for her and then trailing along, hand in mine, but completely disengaged. The most animated she’d been was eating a doughnut. And she’d only managed to eat half of that.

  Two days later, and she was still saying almost nothing to any of us bar Tyler, and what she did say – the odd ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘thank you’ – was always in response to something said to her. For much of the time, and I didn’t push it, she had her nose in the Harry Potter book we’d given her. Reading, it was becoming clear, was her main refuge.

  So today’s masterplan (which wasn’t any sort of masterplan, really; I was leaving that for John to organise once everyone was back in their various offices) was for the pair of us to go wedding-dress shopping with Riley, while her David stayed at home to mind the kids.

  I had promised my eager-beaver daughter that I’d fit some time in in the New Year to
go dress hunting, but with Mike back in work – to cover sickness; there’d been some grim virus going round – and Tyler off to spend the day with Denver, I figured today was as good as any to make a start, not only as it would stop the four walls of the silent house closing in, but also, despite the inevitably fraught nature of competitive sale shopping, it did mean we had at least a fighting chance (fighting being the operative word) of bagging a bargain. And since Mike and I were footing the bill, that would be a major bonus.

  It was now 10 a.m., however, and though I’d been happy generally to let Bella sleep for as long as she needed to, given that Riley would be over soon, keen to hit town and do battle, it was probably time I went to wake her up.

  And when I went upstairs I was pleased to find her bedroom door open; she’d obviously already woken up and gone to wash, though, in contrast to the previous three mornings, she’d left her duvet flung back and pillows awry. Perhaps evidence that she was finally beginning to settle, rather than carrying on as if in an institution, like her mother?

  ‘Morning, love,’ I called, seeing the bathroom door was also open, before heading off into my own bedroom to change.

  I hadn’t been expecting a response, but almost immediately I got one, though not in the form of words, more an anguished, groaning sob.