by Angela Hart
Contents
1. ‘What have we done?’
2. ‘I’m not staying long’
3. ‘She was always there for me’
4. ‘My mum frightened me’
5. ‘I had to lie to keep myself safe’
6. ‘STOP! I’M GETTING OUT … !’
7. ‘She made me watch’
8. ‘Vicky can go to hell!’
9. ‘You’re the biggest mistake I ever made’
10. ‘I don’t want to know about Vicky’
11. ‘It’s too much to take’
12. ‘You don’t know how much she terrified me’
13. ‘When I was living with her I had to be resourceful’
14. ‘My head hurt a lot when I was little’
15. ‘I don’t want to talk about it or think about it or ANYTHING!’
16. ‘It was our mum who did this’
17. ‘It’s not fair! It’s torture!’
18. ‘I used to live in a scary house’
19. ‘Everything is different’
Epilogue
1
‘What have we done?’
‘Shall we have a Chinese tonight?’ I said to my husband, Jonathan.
‘Definitely,’ he replied. ‘I think we’ve earned it’
It was 5.20 p.m. on a balmy Friday evening in July 1989 and we were shutting up our florist shop. As usual it had been an exhausting week and it wasn’t over yet; Saturday was always our busiest day.
‘Perhaps we could rent a video?’ I said as I swept the floor and pulled down the shutters. ‘What would we all like, do you think?’
As Jonathan listed a few of the recent releases, like A Fish Called Wanda and My Stepmother Is An Alien, the phone rang. It was Tricia, the social worker we’d dealt with ever since we started fostering two years earlier.
‘Hi Angela, sorry to call you on a Friday evening, but I wondered if you’d be interested in taking in a girl of thirteen?’
‘When were you thinking?’
‘Tonight, actually. Just a short-term placement. She’s been living with her sister, but the sister needs a break, because she’s heavily pregnant. I thought of you because you’re doing so well with Michelle.’
Michelle had recently turned fourteen and had been with us for two years. She was a quiet, sweet-natured girl who was always very welcoming to other children who came to us for short stays. It was nice of Tricia to acknowledge our success with Michelle, and I felt my energy levels lift as I asked the social worker to hold the line for a moment while I swiftly relayed the request to Jonathan. He smiled instantly, and I knew he felt the same way as I did, and was more than happy to help.
Jonathan and I had been together for sixteen years, since meeting in our teens in the early seventies, and for as long as I can remember we have had an almost telepathic understanding of one another. We swapped animated glances, and I told Tricia we’d be delighted to accept the placement.
‘Fantastic! Thanks, Angela. We’ll be with you within the hour, if that’s all right. She’s with me at the office now. Her name’s Vicky.’
I had a spring in my step as I finished lifting the flowers into the cold storage room at the back of the shop. In the relatively short time we’d been fostering I’d come to know this feeling quite well. Waiting to meet a new foster child is always very exciting and nerve-racking.
We lived in a large town house attached to the shop, with three bedrooms and a bathroom on the top floor, the lounge and our bedroom and bathroom on the middle floor, and the kitchen and dining room sharing the extended lower floor with the shop. This meant I had enough time to quickly nip up to my bedroom to get changed, tell Michelle about Vicky’s imminent arrival and then open the windows in the bigger of our two spare bedrooms at the top of the house. As the room aired, Michelle offered to help me put fresh covers on the bed, choosing a pink and white duvet set with candy canes on that had just been washed. It was Michelle’s favourite bedding; she loved anything pretty and pink.
‘I think Vicky will like her room,’ Michelle said, looking round approvingly. Sunlight was beaming through the window, reflecting dancing squares of light off the shiny lampshade and onto the freshly painted white walls. ‘Do you think she’ll be into Whitney Houston?’
‘I don’t think she’ll have any choice, will she?’ I smiled.
Michelle blushed. She seemed younger than her years and was a naturally shy girl, but she loved music and we’d had one or two run-ins about the volume dial on her stereo, particularly when she blasted out her all-time favourite, Whitney’s ‘So Emotional!
We had no set house rules in those days; now, with nearly thirty years of fostering experience under our belts, we have a list of rules designed to work in everybody’s favour, but back then it was a case of using our common sense and tackling issues as best we could, as and when they came along. With Michelle’s music, we’d mutually agreed that she had to keep the volume at number six or below on the dial. It was easy to reason with her, and in many ways we’d struck lucky having Michelle as our first placement.
‘Lulled into a false sense of security, more like!’ Jonathan used to joke, and that’s not far from the truth. Michelle was incredibly willing to please and hardly ever challenged us.
‘Can I help?’ was typically the first thing she said to me when I came through to the kitchen from the shop after work to set about preparing the dinner ‘Well yes, that would be great. Now let me see . . .’
Michelle would invariably pick up the potato peeler or begin to put dishes away off the draining board before I’d even finished my sentence.
‘Are you doing anything later, Michelle?’ I’d often ask, though the answer was usually the same each night.
‘Not really,’ she’d shrug. ‘I’ve already done my homework. Do you want to watch telly later?’
‘I’d love to, sweetheart,’ I nearly always replied.
Michelle had a small but close circle of school pals who were all as polite and unassuming as she was, though she rarely went out. The two of us enjoyed watching the soaps together, and we had been glued recently to a Coronation Street storyline involving Rita Fairclough’s foster daughter Jenny Bradley, whose father, Alan, had been killed by a tram in Blackpool.
‘It must be terrible for poor Jenny, losing her dad like that,’ Michelle had commented.
The plot had struck a chord with both of us. The teenage character’s father had let her down in so many ways and had even tried to kill Rita but, just as Michelle behaved with her own dad, Jenny was very loyal to Alan and supported him unconditionally. Michelle’s father didn’t live very far away and she saw him two or three times a week. He had behaved very irresponsibly in the past and now refused to have his daughter living with him, but Michelle was very forgiving and never critical.
‘I wonder if Vicky is into the soaps?’ she said cheerfully as we finished making the bed. ‘I hope so!’
Before I had chance to reply we were interrupted by Jonathan calling up from the kitchen.
‘They’re here!’ he yelled, his voice sounding surprisingly urgent.
‘That was quick!’ I said.
‘Yes it was! I think I’ll wait up here for a bit,’ Michelle replied.
With that she scampered off to her bedroom along the landing, while I ran down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor as quickly as possible. I found Jonathan rooted to the spot and staring out of the kitchen window, with a horrified expression on his face.
‘Oh my God!’ he said. ‘Look out there!’
I followed his gaze and saw two figures in the distance, walking down the public passageway that ran adjacent to the left hand side of our house. One was clearly Tricia; you couldn’t mistake her mass of dark, permed hair and curvaceous figure. The other had
to be Vicky.
‘Oh my God!’ I said, eyes darting back to Jonathan. ‘What have we done?’
Vicky was dressed in a dark purple tracksuit that looked three sizes too big, but what was really alarming was the way she walked. You could barely describe it as a walk, to tell the truth. She swaggered like a willowy, blonde version of Mr T in The A Team.
I guess I had imagined Vicky would be just like the five other foster children who’d come to us on short-term placements over the past couple of years. Without exception they arrived for their few days or week or two of short-term care, or ‘respite care’ as it’s known, looking rather timid, dressed inconspicuously in a pair of jeans or jogging bottoms, and nervously clutching a small bag.
Vicky did have a bag in her hand – a supermarket carrier bag – but she wasn’t clinging to her possessions for dear life like most kids did. No, Vicky’s carrier bag was swinging wildly from side to side, keeping time with her exaggerated swagger.
She and Tricia disappeared from view as they got closer to the house, as we had a high fence running the length of our garden, to give us privacy from people using the busy passageway leading to the parade of shops our florists was situated in.
‘What have we done indeed!’ Jonathan stuttered, his eyes filled with a look of impending doom. ‘Is it too late to . . . ?’
The doorbell rang and I felt my stomach churn, but as I went to answer it I took a deep breath and told myself to smile. However she looked, Vicky was a thirteen-year-old girl who was in the unfortunate position of not being able to live with her own family for the time being. Whatever fears we had, hers were doubtless far greater As I’ve said many times over the years, it is hard being a foster carer, but it is a lot harder being a foster child.
‘Hello! You must be Vicky!’ I said, smiling gamely and trying to look as welcoming as possible as I swung open the entrance door on the side of the house.
‘I am!’ she grinned back proudly. As she did so, Vicky lifted her hand to her forehead and gave me one of those American soldier-style salutes. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Hart!’
‘You can call me Angela.’
‘Please to meet you, Angela!’ she said, repeating the salute.
I smiled genuinely now because, despite the fact she seemed over-confident and perhaps even a little cocky, there was something appealing about Vicky that I liked immediately. She was clearly full of life, and I couldn’t help but admire her sunny disposition under what must have been such difficult circumstances for her.
I led Vicky and Tricia across the hall and into the kitchen, where Jonathan was boiling the kettle and grinning bravely.
‘Hello!’ he said. ‘I’m Jonathan. It’s very nice to meet you. Would you like a cup of tea, or perhaps a cold drink as it’s such a warm evening?’
‘I’d love to but I can’t stop,’ Tricia cut in, addressing me even though Jonathan had spoken to her and Vicky. ‘I have a visit to make across town that I’m already late for Thanks for taking Vicky in at such short notice, Angela. I’ll leave you to it then. I’ll be in touch.’
With that she handed me some paperwork that simply had her name and Vicky’s written on it, and no contact numbers other than the general Social Services office number, which I already knew by heart. I swapped a look with Jonathan that said ‘classic Tricia’. She was always in a hurry, and she rarely acknowledged that Jonathan had anything to do with the fostering that went on under his roof, which was far from the truth.
When I first spotted an advert for foster carers three years earlier, back in 1986, Jonathan had been very supportive despite the fact that, from his point of view, my interest came quite out of the blue.
‘Foster Carers Wanted,’ I read from the local paper, feeling a surge of excitement as I studied the advert. ‘Do you fancy it, Jonathan?’
‘Fostering? It’s not something I’ve ever thought about before, Angela. I didn’t think you had either.’
‘Well I haven’t really, but this just caught my eye, that was all. I think I’d like to find out more.’
We sat down that evening and had a proper chat about it, and Jonathan listened patiently as I discussed why fostering appealed to me. I hadn’t fully realised myself where my interest came from, but as we talked I found myself reflecting on my past and exploring how experiences I’d had when I was a young girl had drawn me to the advert.
At infant school I had a friend called Belinda who was adopted, and her mother used to take in kids on short-term placements in the summer holidays. Their house would be filled with chatter and clutter, and I loved going there because it was never boring, and my friend had lots of interesting playmates.
By contrast, I was more or less raised as an only child. My older brother, Andrew, was fourteen when I was born, and he left home when I was just five years old. I missed him terribly, and every time he visited I spent the whole time dreading the moment when I’d have to say goodbye to him all over again.
‘Can we foster like Belinda’s family?’ I asked my mum longingly one summer, imagining how wonderful it would be to have other children to play with all the time.
‘Goodness me,’ she replied. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for that, Angela. Belinda’s mum has the patience of a saint! I tell you what though, if you’re looking for something to do in the holidays, Mr Roberts said he could use your help again; he said you were brilliant last time.’
Mr Roberts was one of our neighbours, and he took in wild animals from a local rescue centre, nursing them back to health. I’d helped him several times and absolutely loved it, and my mum cleverly distracted me with the promise I could do more of the same.
‘Did he really say I was brilliant?’ I smiled, delighted by the compliment.
‘He did indeed.’
‘Could I feed the hedgehogs again? I loved that! The baby ones were so cute!’
Looking back this was a wonderful result for my mother It was difficult for her to take time off from the florists, but this would keep me occupied for days on end throughout the school holidays.
My parents worked incredibly hard in the shop, and in most of my childhood memories my mum and dad are either behind the counter, at the wholesalers, making deliveries or recovering from a hard day’s work at home, too tired to do much else but have a meal and an early night. The downside of this was that neither of them were what you might call spontaneous, but on the plus side my parents were always around, which generally gave me great stability.
Unfortunately, when I was seven years old my mother suffered a serious back injury and had to have an operation. With my father left in sole charge of the shop I was dispatched to stay with my Aunt Hattie for twelve long weeks while my mother was in hospital. My aunt was very kind, filling her little freezer with the Mini Milk ice lollies she knew I loved, and taking me on the bus most days to visit my mum at the hospital across town. I had a fantastic new Etch A Sketch, bought by my parents to cheer me up when my mother went into hospital, but I’d have given it back in a flash to have my mother home, and our lives returned to normal. I pined for my mum. My heart ached when I thought about her, and I cried each and every time I had to say goodbye and go back to my aunt’s house. ‘Don’t want to go there!’ I’d sulk. ‘I want to go home! I want Mummy!’
Aunt Hattie had dug out a box of children’s books from her loft, belonging to her grown-up daughter, which she tried to distract me with whenever I cried and complained. I was familiar with some of the books, like Noddy and The Famous Five, but when I looked at them at my aunt’s house they seemed so unfamiliar. Everything was odd and different and, well, just not like it was at home. The house even smelled different to ours, like a mixture between talcum powder and mothballs instead of the sweet, heady scent of flowers that had just ‘gone over’, as my mother said, which we always had in a big ceramic vase in the hallway.
I wanted to go back to my house so badly I felt sick; truly homesick. My constant questioning about how long Mum would be in hospital must have driven p
oor Aunt Hattie mad. Looking back she must have been quite frustrated by my behaviour, as she did everything in her power to try to make my stay as pleasing as possible, but she never lost her patience and was incredibly kind.
One day I was visiting my dad in the shop on my way home from school with Aunt Hattie when a customer came in and said, ‘Ooh Trevor, you must be so pleased! I heard Thelma’s home.’
My ears pricked up and I darted straight past my dad, through the back storeroom leading to the kitchen and hallway of the town house Jonathan and I live in today, and dashed up the stairs as quickly as I could. My dad couldn’t abandon the shop and probably wouldn’t have caught me even if he could; I’d never run so fast in all my life.
‘Mummy!’ I cried as I ran into her bedroom on the first floor, opposite the lounge. ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!’
‘Angela!’ she exclaimed. ‘What a wonderful surprise!’
Mum was propped up in bed, encased in plaster, and I zoned in on her as if she were a magnetic force pulling me in. In hindsight I realise my mother was planning to recuperate in peace and quiet for a little while before I came back from Aunt Hattie’s, but once I knew she was home I wasn’t leaving, ever, ever again. I clung to my mum for dear life, and to this day I can remember how euphoric and grateful I felt to have my mummy back. Life was back to how it should be, and my happy, carefree childhood could resume at long last.
Jonathan listened patiently as I described all of these memories, and then he studied the newspaper advert I’d read out. It mentioned respite care for children whose parents were unable to look after them for short periods of time, giving the example of when a parent is in hospital. There was a phone number to call for more information, and Jonathan picked up a pen, circled it and handed it to me.
‘I think you should ring them tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I can see this is something you feel strongly about. I also think you’d be good at fostering.’
‘What about you? It’s something we’d both have to want to do.’
‘I’m not sure yet, but I think you should look into it. We’ll never know unless we find out more. I guess the worst that could happen is that we find it’s not for us, but at least you’ll have followed your heart.’