by Cathy Glass
Our Christmas was just as Lucy had promised Aimee it would be. We all went to church on Christmas Eve for a lovely candlelit carol service, where we saw many of our old and dear friends. We returned home and with mounting excitement Paula helped Aimee arrange a mince pie and carrot on a plate, which they left in the porch for Father Christmas and his reindeer. Then the ‘children’ hung pillowcases on the front door, ready for Father Christmas’s visit that night. Aimee was hugely overexcited, which was how it should be for a child of eight: not a care in the world and just looking forward to Christmas. She took a long while to go to sleep and of course was awake early on Christmas morning.
‘Cathy! Come quick! Father Christmas has been!’ she called out at 6.00 a.m.
Grabbing my camera from where I’d left it ready on top of the chest of drawers, I went round to her bedroom. She was sitting in bed and staring in amazement at the pillowcase by her bed, now overflowing with presents.
‘Come on, start unwrapping them,’ I encouraged, for it seemed Aimee was so overawed she might simply look at them.
Gradually, one at a time, she carefully took the presents from the pillowcase and unwrapped them as I took photographs. ‘How did Father Christmas know I wanted that?’ she exclaimed time and time again.
‘It’s all part of the magic of Christmas,’ I said. And the look on Aimee’s face made all the hard work and planning that goes into Christmas completely worthwhile.
Adrian, Paula and Lucy woke later and unwrapped their Father Christmas presents, and then we all had breakfast together. My parents and my brother and his family arrived mid-morning to join us for Christmas Day, and we settled with drinks and mince pies in the sitting room, where we exchanged more presents. Aimee was a bit hyperactive but it didn’t matter, for so too were my niece and nephew, Fiona and Ewan, and the adults were pretty loud too! I saw that Adrian, in line with our discussion, was keeping some distance between him and Aimee, so that if, for example, she sat on the same sofa as him he made sure someone else was sitting between them. It was a pity that this and similar measures were necessary, but given what Aimee had previously told her mother, any physical contact could be turned into an allegation: ‘I sat on the sofa next to Adrian.’ Accompanied by one of Aimee’s giggles and a flutter of her eyelashes, such an accusation could easily lead to more troublemaking from Susan. I also had to keep an eye on Aimee when she was around my brother and my father to make sure they weren’t compromised either.
The dining table looked lovely with its festive tablecloth, matching napkins and holly centrepiece. I set out the food and we helped ourselves: a choice of soup or prawn cocktail for starters, and then turkey with all the trimmings for the main course. We decided to have a break from eating after the main course and before the Christmas pudding, as we were all full, added to which Aimee, Ewan and Fiona had grown restless sitting at the table. We all trooped into the sitting room, where Paula and Lucy organized some games to win prizes from the tree. Aimee behaved well and joined in all the games nicely.
Shortly after six o’clock I quietly told Aimee that we needed to leave the room to phone her mother. She pulled a face but came with me down the hall, where I used the phone on the hall table to make the call, but Susan didn’t answer. I tried three times, as I’d been told to do, but each time an automated message said It has not been possible to connect the call. Aimee wasn’t worried; indeed she was more interested in returning to the sitting room to play more games.
It was nearly midnight when my parents and my brother and his family began to leave, thanking us for the lovely time they’d had. We always have a nice Christmas, and each Christmas seems even better than the last. I was especially pleased that we’d been able to give Aimee a really good Christmas – one that she’d remember. That night as her head lay on the pillow and I kissed her goodnight she said: ‘I’m so happy. Our Christmas was just like the ones you see on television. Perfect.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
A New Year
Aimee had seen her mother on the Friday before Christmas, when they’d exchanged gifts, and they’d spoken to each other on the phone on Saturday (Christmas Eve); then we’d tried to phone on Sunday (Christmas Day), but Susan hadn’t answered. Monday, Boxing Day, was a bank holiday and there’d been no contact, as the family centre had been closed. It was now Tuesday and Aimee and I were sitting on the sofa with the phone between us, ready to make the scheduled call to her mother. Aimee would see her mother again as usual on Wednesday. I pressed ‘hands-free’ to put the phone on speaker and keyed in the numbers, wondering what sort of Christmas Susan had had, and if she would complain we hadn’t phoned on Sunday, although we’d tried.
Her mobile was answered almost immediately, but not by Susan. A male voice said, ‘Hello.’ Which made Aimee jump.
I thought I must have misdialled and was about to apologize and cut the call when Aimee, recognizing the voice, said a subdued, ‘Hello.’
‘Do you know him?’ I asked her quietly. She nodded.
‘Hello, Aimee, how are you?’ the man asked with a London East End accent.
‘All right,’ she said quietly. I noticed she had gone quite pale.
‘Who is he?’ I whispered to her.
She shrugged, either not knowing his name or not wanting to tell me.
‘What have you been doing with yourself?’ he asked familiarly. ‘It’s a long time since I saw you.’
‘I’ve been doing Christmas,’ Aimee said.
The man laughed. I didn’t know who he was or how he fitted into Aimee’s life, but there was something in his tone I didn’t like. I couldn’t simply cut him off because I didn’t like the sound of his voice, but I was supposed to be monitoring the call. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ I said. ‘I’m Aimee’s foster carer. Can I ask who you are, please?’
‘You can ask, but I ain’t telling you,’ he said with another throaty laugh.
It went quiet at the other end of the phone and the next voice we heard was Susan’s. ‘Aimee, it’s Mum here,’ she said.
‘Hello, Mum,’ Aimee said, clearly relieved to hear her mother’s voice. ‘Where are you?’
‘At JJ’s.’
‘What! I’ve told you not to go there,’ Aimee fumed, jutting her face towards the phone, and taking responsibility for her mother. ‘What do you want to go there for?’
Susan gave a small laugh. ‘I came here over Christmas to have a good time. I can do that if I want.’
‘You’re stupid!’ Aimee said.
No one had mentioned JJ before, but clearly he was well known to Susan and Aimee.
‘When are you going home?’ Aimee demanded of her mother, very worried that her mother was at JJ’s.
‘After the New Year, I guess,’ she said. ‘I’ll be at contact.’
‘When’s New Year?’ Aimee asked me with a frown.
‘Next weekend,’ I said.
‘You’re stupid,’ Aimee said again to her mother. ‘You’ll never get me back if you keep going to JJ’s!’
Susan went quiet and then said in a small voice, ‘I won’t be getting you back anyway. So it doesn’t really matter where I go or what I do.’ Aimee looked as though she was about to cry.
The reason foster carers are asked to monitor phone calls is to safeguard the child and intervene if the content of the call is inappropriate or upsetting for the child. I now decided it was time to step in. ‘Susan, I think it might be best to change the subject. Don’t you?’
‘I agree,’ she said easily, and without the angry outburst I’d anticipated. ‘Aimee, did you have a lovely Christmas at Cathy’s?’ she asked. ‘I bet you did.’ Which was a nice thing to say. Aimee began telling her mother all about Christmas, and Susan ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ in appreciation and seemed genuinely pleased Aimee had had a nice time. My thoughts went back to what the Guardian had told me about the abuse Susan had suffered that had led to drugs and resulted in all her children being taken into care, and again I felt sorry for her.
Once they’d finished and had said goodbye and hung up I asked Aimee if the man who’d answered her mother’s phone and she’d spoken to was JJ.
‘No,’ Aimee replied. ‘He’s one of Mum’s friends. Can’t remember his name. He goes to JJ’s house.’
‘Who is JJ?’ I asked.
‘Another of Mum’s friends,’ Aimee said.
‘Do you know where he lives?’
‘Sort of. It’s in an old house on the other side of town. Mum gets Big H there sometimes when the other guys get busted. It’s like the other houses we went to. Lots of people sleep there and we did a few times. It’s smelly and dark and there’s thick smoke that makes you feel sick. Horrible.’ She shivered. Aimee was clearly talking about one of the drug dens and crack houses that had supplied her mother with drugs and that she’d mentioned before. That Aimee has stayed in those houses and had breathed in that smoke was shocking.
‘I can understand why you are worried about your mum staying at JJ’s,’ I said. ‘But she is an adult and as an adult she makes her own decisions. Some of those decisions will be wrong, but that is not for you to worry about.’ I’d said similar things before, for Aimee, like other children I’d fostered, assumed responsibility for her mother, which was inappropriate and would make her anxious.
Aimee couldn’t tell me any more about JJ, his house or the man who’d answered the phone, so while she went off to play I wrote up the main points from the call in my fostering log. There wasn’t enough information as to where JJ lived to alert the police so that they could raid the house and close down the drug den, but the reference to JJ might be useful in future if more evidence came to light. And of course it was another indication of the dreadful life Aimee had led before coming in care, all of which I would pass on to her new social worker when we had one.
Aimee saw her mother at contact the following day and then again on Friday. As usual I took her into the centre at the start of contact and then waited in the car at the end of contact for the supervisor to bring her out to me. Aimee was grumpy and unsettled after each contact and it wasn’t obvious why. The contact supervisor hadn’t given me any feedback and when I asked her if contact had gone well she said ‘Yes’ and hurried back to the centre, presumably wanting to see Susan off the premises so she could go home. When I asked Aimee if she’d had a nice time with her mother she shrugged and said, ‘Suppose so.’ Seeing her mother must have stirred up many painful memoires and must have been difficult for her and Susan. Given that Aimee definitely wouldn’t be returned to live with her mother I again wondered if seeing her mother three times a week plus telephone contact was in her or her mother’s best interest. But contact had been set by the judge in accordance with family law, and until the law is changed nothing can be done for cases like Aimee’s.
Saturday was New Year’s Eve and I explained its significance to Aimee. Lucy and Paula had been invited to friends’ parties and were sleeping at their friends’ houses, so I didn’t have to worry about getting them home. Adrian was going out with a few of his mates to a nightclub in town which was holding a ticketed event, and they’d booked a cab at an extortionate fee to drop them off at their respective houses afterwards.
That left Aimee and me to see in the New Year together, and Aimee was soon caught up in the excitement. We cooked popcorn, made some chocolate crispy cakes, opened a bottle of fizzy drink and then settled on the sofa with our drinks and nibbles. We played with some of the games she’d had for Christmas and then watched a children’s film on television, but by eleven o’clock Aimee was fast asleep with her head resting on my shoulder, and I was starting to doze too. Then suddenly my eyes shot open as a loud cheer rose from the television, together with a male voice starting the countdown to midnight.
‘Come on, wake up, Aimee,’ I said, gently shaking her shoulder. ‘It’s nearly midnight. Soon it will be a new year.’
Aimee lifted her head from my shoulder and stared, bleary-eyed, at the screen as the revellers in central London continued the countdown. Big Ben began to strike midnight and the crowd shouted, whooped and jumped for joy; fireworks began exploding into the night sky, both on the television and outside.
‘Happy New Year,’ I said to Aimee and gave her a big hug.
‘Happy New Year,’ she returned sleepily, her eyes already starting to close.
Switching off the television, I then helped one very tired child off the sofa and upstairs. We stopped off in the bathroom for her to go to the toilet and have a quick wash and brush her teeth; then I helped her into bed. As soon as her head touched the pillow her eyes closed again. ‘Hug,’ she said dreamily without opening her eyes. I gave her a goodnight hug and kissed her forehead.
‘Night, love,’ I whispered, but there was no reply, Aimee was fast asleep.
I gave her forehead another kiss and then crept from the room. Would she be with us this time next year? I dearly hoped so, and every year.
Adrian was returning to university on Wednesday, and Paula and I helped him load the car and then kissed him goodbye in the hall. Lucy was at work – he’d said goodbye to her that morning – and at my suggestion he’d already said goodbye to Aimee. I’d then settled her at the table in the kitchen with paints and paper while we helped Adrian load the car and say goodbye, thereby avoiding any chance of her wanting to kiss Adrian goodbye and inviting another allegation from Susan. It was sad that I had to take this and similar precautions but they were necessary for Adrian’s protection, as he understood. As we waved goodbye I felt pretty confident that nothing had happened over Christmas and the New Year that if Aimee told her mother could be misinterpreted by her and result in another allegation. But it was impossible to be 100 per cent certain.
The following day Paula returned to the sixth form to continue studying for her A-level exams, and Aimee’s school returned for the spring term. It was a wrench getting back in the routine after the lovely Christmas break, made worse by the grey skies, short days and long winter nights. But once we were in the routine the weeks flew by and it was only when we reached the end of January that I realized a whole month had passed without any contact from the social services, presumably because there was no social worker assigned to Aimee’s case. Jill had phoned me for regular updates and had also visited – one of her six-weekly supervisory visits, which all support social workers should make.
During the month Aimee also had her second dental appointment to complete her treatment. The dentist still looked a bit wary when he saw her, remembering the first time when she’d bitten him, but she was good and kept her mouth open for what was an unpleasant but necessary procedure. When he’d finished he told Aimee that as long as she brushed her teeth thoroughly and didn’t eat too many sweet foods she shouldn’t need any more fillings, which I repeated to Aimee outside the surgery, and later at bedtime.
Aimee continued to make progress at school in January. I saw her TA, Heather, in the playground at the end of school and she kept me informed. Aimee also made another new friend, who lived closer to us than some of her other friends, and we invited her to tea. Contact at the family centre continued, with no feedback from the supervisor, and the phone calls to Susan were problematic – as to whether she answered or not. There were no complaints from Susan (through the duty social worker) and while Susan didn’t speak to me on the phone, neither did she go out of her way to criticize me o
r make nasty remarks as she had done previously. I thought that perhaps she was finally losing her anger and accepting that her child was in care. I’d seen parents of other children I’d fostered adjust and then work with the social services and the carer. Not that it would change the outcome for Aimee – Susan wouldn’t be allowed to keep Aimee, as there was too much history of drug addiction, abuse and neglect – but at least it could make life more pleasant for all those involved, especially Aimee, who would gradually become less anxious about her mother’s welfare.
Then at the beginning of February there was a sudden burst of activity. A team manager from the social services phoned and, having apologized that Aimee had been left without a social worker for so long, said a new permanent social worker was being appointed and would be in place the following week. Then the day after, Eva, the Guardian, phoned and said she’d like to visit me at the end of the week. I was looking forward to seeing her again, as I hoped by now she’d have read the files and have the answer to the question everyone was asking: why had Aimee been left to suffer at home for so long?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jason
As soon as we’d settled with coffee in the sitting room Eva looked at me gravely and took a moment before speaking. I’d formed the impression from when I’d met her before that she was very conscientious in her role as a Guardian Ad Litem. This was confirmed by what she now said.
‘As a society I believe we have a collective responsibility to protect our children and keep them safe, but we have failed miserably with Aimee. She was left unprotected to suffer when all the warning signs were there. Not only did her parents let her down but so too has the social care system; we are individually and collectively to blame. Just before Christmas I was given access to the social services’ files, and I took them home and read them over Christmas and the New Year. Six very thick files – one for each of Susan’s children. I was shocked and deeply saddened by what I read. There will be an inquiry into what has gone wrong; lessons need to be learned.’