by Mia Marconi
‘No, Mia, I’m not going,’ India would say.
‘We all have to sleep, India. If we don’t we get grumpy and can’t enjoy the day.’
‘Well, I hate sleeping,’ she would say before bursting into tears.
It was an anxious time for India because with Amy she’d had no idea what would be waiting for her when she woke up. Her mother could be lying unconscious on the floor and, worse, sleeping in her own urine. Strangers could be in the flat and there was likely to be a pool of vomit somewhere. The flat would be cold, and there was no food in the fridge and no hot water, because Amy spent every last penny on drink and never paid a heating bill. India would always have to wake her mum, and that could sometimes take quite a while. And once Amy was awake, there was no telling what mood she would be in. So India was concerned that she would have to wake me in the morning, like she did her mum, so I reassured her that she needn’t worry, I would wake her. I kept my word, and each morning, at 7.30 a.m., I knocked on her door, respecting her space.
‘Time to get up, India. Here’s some warm milk.’
People wonder how long it takes to love the damaged children who come into our home, and the honest answer is that I can love some straight away and have an immediate connection with them that happens with little or no effort, while with others it can take me months to love them and for them to love me. And with some the bond just doesn’t come, no matter how hard I try. In those cases, I am pretty sure the child tries just as hard, which is why it is so sad. And like Martine, I was finding it hard to bond with India.
She hid behind an impenetrable wall of steel and it took us years to break through it. I did everything I knew that kids loved to do. We went clothes shopping and I would tentatively hold her hand as we walked through the park, but inevitably she would pull away. We cooked together. Cake-making is sometimes a miracle worker. Believe me, I am a terrible cook and most of the time the children lead me. We often burned the buns and had the smoke alarm ringing in our ears, but we laughed and tried again. I knew that the one thing I could not do was scream and shout, because that was exactly what India expected.
It was important for India to see that if I did raise my voice it was okay, I would still love and care for her, and nothing terrible would happen. Her school uniform would still be ready for her, her breakfast would still be on the table, she would still get a kiss on the cheek when I said goodbye and, more importantly, I would come back to get her, unlike Amy, who was forever forgetting to collect her.
Consequently, India was suffering from attachment disorder, which for her meant that she steered clear of adults, rather than gravitating towards them, when she needed to feel safe. Martine had started the process of helping India to trust adults but had struggled. Hugging a child who is like a brick wall is disconcerting and, as a carer, you start to question what you are doing wrong. To a lesser degree, I was no different, but I had to remind myself that caring is all about giving to them and not wanting or needing anything back, unless of course they want to give love and affection to you.
My initial reaction if India fell over or started crying was to run over, pick her up and cuddle her, but the minute I touched her she would go rigid until I let her go. She was a pretty little girl, too, and sometimes I wanted to hug her for no reason, but the minute an arm went round her shoulder she turned as stiff as a fence post.
After this happened a good few times and there was no change, I had to take a moment then to question my own actions and intentions. Was it that I needed a hug, rather than India? And if I needed a cuddle, maybe I had to recognise that India just didn’t. I began to realise that there was an overpowering mother hen in me and that this little girl just did not like it, so I reined myself in.
The girls asked on several occasions: ‘Why doesn’t India like kisses, Mummy?’
I would answer: ‘Because the fairy kiss-mother missed her on her rounds of handing out kisses, but one day she will find India, get her magic wand and sprinkle her with special kisses. From that day on, India will love having a kiss goodnight.’
I would tell India this story, too, and she loved it and asked me to repeat it over and over again, but she never asked me for a cuddle.
I did make some breakthroughs, though, and when I did I received a much-needed confidence boost that I was doing things right.
One of my favourite afternoons was to head to the forest with Martin, the dogs and the children, and romp around in the autumn leaves. I love the smell of winter in the air as it starts to turn cold, the reds and golds of the leaves and the crunch they make under foot. On these family days the kids and dogs would race off ahead, Jack and Jill chasing the children and Martin and I enjoying a rare opportunity to chat together.
One Sunday afternoon, Isabella was in the buggy and we tramped through the forest at a leisurely pace. Suddenly the peace was shattered by a shriek from Francesca, who came running over, breathless and panting.
‘Mum! Come quick, India’s fallen over. There is so much blood!’
Francesca is the family drama queen, so I knew every minute detail of India’s accident before I arrived on the scene. She’d tripped over a tree root and gashed her leg, which to listen to Francesca you would have thought was almost severed.
I didn’t know what to make of the scene when I got there, because on the one hand it was lovely to see Ruby cuddling India so tightly; on the other, Ruby was cuddling India so tightly her face was almost obscured, but I could just about see that tears were streaming down her face. What was plain to see was the blood gushing from a deep cut on her knee. India had fallen before but usually she jumped up before I got there and never shed a tear. This time was different. India didn’t hesitate; she looked me in the eyes – she rarely made eye contact – and stretched up her arms, wanting me to pick her up.
It was an intimate moment we had both been waiting for and I didn’t pause.
‘Darling,’ I whispered, wiping her tears. ‘You are going to be okay. Let’s go home, clean your knee, have a cuddle, a hot chocolate and a biscuit.’
India nodded, wrapped her legs around my waist and put her arms around my neck, holding me so tight, as if she never wanted to let go.
I felt euphoric and could not stop smiling for the next couple of hours.
Martin winked at me and said, ‘You’re getting there, love, you’re getting there.’
A couple of weeks later, India picked up the colouring pens for the first time. I held my breath, didn’t look and carried on washing up. When she finished, I asked, ‘Can I see?’
India nodded. On the paper, she had drawn a picture of a house, garden, dogs and trees and she was standing next to the house, smiling.
‘India, that’s lovely!’ I said, trying to hide the tear running down my cheek.
She nodded, smiled, and ran away before I could cuddle her.
Chapter Five
Amy was convinced there was a reason for India’s ‘coldness’, a reason that made me want to cry. She was certain a fourteen-year-old cousin had touched India. She had said as much to social services, but nothing had been proved, and India had never made a complaint. Amy went on about it for years, though.
As the months passed and I got to know Amy better, I found out there was a good reason for this. What I heard made me so angry I wanted to weep.
Amy had her own troubled past. She was the youngest child from a big family, brought up on a council estate in Manchester. Their alcoholic father was killed in a drunken brawl one night, leaving Amy’s mum with seven children under ten to care for. She married again a few months afterwards and moved to London when Amy was a toddler. The family made their home on a rough council estate in South London, but Amy never forgot her dad. She talked about him as though he was a hero, which was a complete fantasy, as he was clearly never a knight in shining armour – he used his family and never provided for them. If he came through the front door, Amy’s mum knew that he needed cash or a bed for the night, and if there was anything in th
e fridge he would have that, too.
Idolising her dad distracted Amy from the sexual abuse she was suffering at the hands of her stepfather, Mike.
There was no doubt in Amy’s three-year-old mind that the abuse was her fault. She knew she was to blame, because Mike told her that she was time and time again.
‘If your poor mummy found out what you made me do she would cry. You must never tell her, because she would be upset and you would have upset her.’
Then he would say, ‘You’re a dirty little girl. You like this, don’t you?’
‘I don’t, Mike, I don’t,’ Amy would cry.
Then he would threaten her. ‘You do this, you dirty little cow, otherwise I’ll kill you. If you let me do this to you then I’ll leave your brothers and sisters alone.’
How could she defend herself against that monster?
Mike’s threats were venomous, evil. There was not an ounce of compassion in the man. His only thought was for his own satisfaction and manipulating Amy into silence. He was a liar, too. It didn’t matter what Amy did; he never left her brothers and sisters alone, except perhaps for one …
How Amy survived I have no idea, but she endured this abuse for two years before her brother Luke came home one Sunday afternoon and opened the bedroom door to find five-year-old Amy masturbating Mike. Luke told her later that he had fought the urge to run to a get a meat cleaver to cut off Mike’s dick, but he thought better of it and had the presence of mind to call the police. After that, the system took over and all the children were placed on the ‘at risk’ register.
Mike was arrested, charged and sentenced to eighteen months, but when he came out of prison he came straight back to live with Amy’s mother, Kathleen, and it wasn’t long before the abuse started all over again. It seems incredible but Kathleen knew what was happening and did nothing to stop it, though Amy always defended her.
‘She was just frightened, Mia. He was a bully. She couldn’t stand up to him.’
I thought how I would have fought like a lioness if any man had tried to touch my children.
But Mike was a very violent man. Kathleen was rightly terrified of him and felt powerless against him, so he just carried on as though it was his right, and no one dared stop him.
He liked young children of either sex, and the younger the better. As the youngest, Amy got the worst of it and was raped several times before her sixth birthday.
It was the Seventies. Child sex abuse was rarely discussed or thought about by decent families and its catastrophic impact was just coming to light. It sounds terrible to say this, but it wasn’t really taken that seriously, and often children who complained were told they were lying, so you can imagine how childhood for Amy was a never-ending round of torture. The terror she must have felt each time she saw him is unthinkable. She would have had no concept that anything could be different, and nothing ever was – in fact, it only ever got worse.
I never met Mike, but I was told that to look at he was just like any other bloke you might meet in the pub. I thought he would be brutish and dangerous-looking, but apparently he was a bit like an office worker, a wiry man with a moustache and glasses, someone you wouldn’t have looked twice at in a crowd.
I could never understand why Amy’s mum allowed him back in the house, but he did come back and it was another two years before social services found out what was happening. This time they removed all the children, placing them in children’s homes, deciding that Kathleen was incapable of caring for them. That might have been true, but to the kids that equalled punishment, not protection. In their eyes, Mike was more important than they were.
The worst thing was that it could have stopped there if the law had done its job properly, but Mike was arrested, charged and given another pitiful eighteen-month sentence. The family were split up, Amy was separated from Luke, whom she absolutely adored, and was sent into residential care, alone.
Once Mike was released from prison for the second time, he threatened to come and get her and was spotted a number of times outside her children’s home and school. When Amy was twelve, and when everyone’s guard was down, he caught her, dragged her into his car, took her to a wood and raped her. When he’d finished, he bundled her back in the car telling her, ‘You bitch! That’s for having me put away.’
There was to be no end to her nightmare, but she discovered that if she drank, it numbed the pain and fear. So from the age of fourteen she began drinking herself senseless, and the care home saved her life on several occasions. Deep down, Amy had no desire to live. Actually, the truth was, she had no idea how to live, and saw death as the only solution to her problems.
She did say that the children’s home saved her in many ways, but she felt abandoned there because her family only rarely came to see her. Her mother was supposed to visit every three weeks, but sometimes she didn’t turn up and at other times Amy didn’t want her to come because Mike would be sitting in the car.
Before long, Amy was bunking off school and walking round the streets, drinking strong lager and buying as many cans as she could with the guilt money her mother gave her. By the time she was eighteen and ready to leave care, she was drinking all day every day, and when she found herself in a flat by herself, with no carers to guide her, she had no idea how to deal with life and her drinking got worse. She was effectively abandoned at eighteen, like an injured, frightened animal, almost beyond saving.
Amy’s family were all very alike: dark hair, blue eyes and hard, battered faces. They looked like they had experienced a lot of pain, all except for Luke, who had blond hair and brown eyes. He was slim, well dressed, stood tall and had a completely different outlook on life. He never touched alcohol, ever, whereas the others all seemed to be addicted to drink. Luke was the only sibling who didn’t fall foul of the law and never had his children taken into care.
In Luke, there was not much family resemblance at all, and it was his son that Amy accused of touching India. I always wondered whether it was jealousy on Amy’s part and whether she wanted to find a way to spoil his life so that he had to struggle like the rest of them. They had been so close when she was little, but that attachment had been broken long ago by the system.
A dignified tower of strength, he rose above it all and was a loving and concerned uncle who visited India twice a month, always arriving with a present, usually a book, as he knew she loved them. Luke’s was the only face India had looked forward to seeing when she lived with Amy. Luke arriving meant she could escape from Amy’s wretched flat to spend an afternoon in the park. Luke arriving meant the washing would be done and the flat tidied a little, and Luke meant dinner and, most importantly, safety. Luke’s face held positive memories, of which India had precious few.
‘Hello, Uncle Luke. Have you got me a book?’ she would say when he came to our house, and Luke would produce a new one from his bag.
The two of them would settle down on the sofa and he would listen intently as India spoke about what she had done at school and what books she was reading. You could see he desperately wanted her to have a better life.
I had a lot of time for Luke and I wondered if he had survived because he had escaped the sex abuse. I never found the courage to ask him, but his demeanour, everything about him, suggested his life had been easier.
When India was eight, however, Luke’s youngest son was killed in a terrible accident on the Underground and after that all contact with India ceased. It was years before I saw Luke again. He was a broken man and I wondered just how much heartache one family could take. When he stopped visiting, India became quite subdued for a while. It was another kick in the teeth for her and she put another brick in the wall she was building to protect herself from the agony of life.
When India had first arrived in care Amy was allowed contact every three weeks. I had met her once with Martine when they were out shopping and just said hello, but didn’t notice much about her. The next time we met, India was in my care and we were at the social services offic
es. She didn’t make much eye contact, was quite aggressive and her body language, with her arms and legs firmly crossed, said she didn’t want to be there at all.
She was interested in India’s future, though, and how living with me was going to affect her. She asked lots of questions and wanted to know all about the other children in the house, whether I had any pets and if I had a garden. She was concerned that India should have some continuity and could stay at the same nursery, so she obviously cared for her in her own way. Her main concern was that India be protected from any men who might sexually abuse her, so she asked a lot of questions about the men I knew, and which men would have contact with India. I left the meeting with no strong feelings about her either way. I had seen it all before and Amy was nothing out of the ordinary.
As a mother, Amy was demanding and chaotic, and I often told her she couldn’t see India if she turned up stinking of drink.
Children in care love it if their foster carer gets on well with their parents, so when Amy was sober enough to visit, I was happy to see her. India was happy to see her, too, but equally relieved when she went home. When she waved goodbye, she never shed a tear or asked, ‘When is Mummy coming back?’
Amy was skinny as a rake – she barely ate – and looked twenty years older than she was. Her blue eyes were generally bloodshot, her face ruddy and her dark brown hair was a mess. There was usually more than one stain on her clothes somewhere and her shoes were always falling apart. She never wore a coat, either, even when the temperatures dropped and it was snowing.
‘I never feel the cold, Mia,’ she would say.
People like Amy, who have been through so much, have the gift of being able to work people out quickly, and will use that knowledge to manipulate you. Amy was very good at this; it was a skill she had mastered when growing up, as getting her own way allowed her some control over her chaotic life.
She would put on such a good act she could have won an Oscar. She learned the knack when she was a child. When her brothers and sisters needed booze, they would send her knocking on neighbours’ doors to ask for food. As the youngest, she had more chance of being believed and of coming home with a few quid. She told me how she would stand at a neighbour’s door, bottom lip quivering, a tear creeping down her cheek, and you would have had to be totally heartless to ignore her.