by Angela Hart
Now, as we all walked to school together, Jill began to reiterate the fact she was so pleased Briony had made a new friend before starting school.
‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am,’ she said. ‘It was very, very tough for Briony, leaving all her old friends behind. Having Grace as a friend will help her settle in. We must fix up that play date.’
At that moment, Grace suddenly decided to run up the grass bank beside the path in front of us. It had rained the night before and the grass was wet and no doubt muddy in parts. I’d made sure she looked immaculate in her new uniform and shoes, and I wanted her to stay that way.
‘Sorry,’ I said to Jill, excusing myself as I called out to Grace and headed towards her as quickly as my sore ankle would allow.
‘Grace! Come down please! You’re going to get yourself dirty before you even get to school.’
‘What? Oh, OK!’ She raced back down as quickly as she’d run up the bank. She was panting and laughing as I picked some grass off her socks and straightened out her clothes and hairband. I’d spent ages taming her hair with tangle spray and it looked lovely. It was a joy to see Grace looking carefree and relaxed, exactly as a young girl should.
As we continued the walk to school, I gave myself a mental pat on the back for reaching this milestone. Grace was in such good spirits, and I hoped it would bode well for the start of her new school career. Another mum joined us, and I introduced her to Jill. ‘You’re so kind, Angela,’ Jill said when we reached the gate. ‘It’s lucky I’ve met someone who’s lived here for such a long time.’
I was really looking forward to seeing Grace when she came out of school at home time. I had a very good feeling about her first day and, sure enough, she came out in a really great mood, talking nineteen to the dozen about everything she had done.
‘Guess what? We get “golden time” on a Friday if we’ve been good. Do you know what that is, Angela? And I’m allowed to try for my “pen licence” because my handwriting is good enough and, if I get it, then I can swap from a pencil to a pen. There’s going to be a play. We don’t know what it is yet, but I’m going to, like, audition. My mum does auditions. I’ll be good at auditions. There’s a club for the disco dancing. Briony wants to join too. Can I join, Angela, can I, can I?’
‘Yes, Grace, I’m sure you can. Have they given you the details? I’ll just need to check the time and day, but I’m sure it will be fine. Your mum does auditions?’
She ignored that last question and thrust a piece of paper into my hand.
‘OK, great, that’s ideal,’ I said, looking at the day and time. ‘We’ll get this sorted out for you as soon as we can. I’m so pleased you’ve enjoyed your first day.’
‘Oh yeah, and my teacher’s lovely. She’s called Mrs Platt. No, Mrs Pratt. Is it? What is it? I can’t remember! It can’t be Pratt, that’s silly!’ She burst out laughing before finally telling me she’d remembered. ‘It’s Mrs Lacey.’
‘Oh,’ I said, wondering how she’d got Platt and Lacey confused. ‘Mrs Lacey? Right, I look forward to meeting her. I don’t think I know her.’ That exchange summed Grace up. She was full of enthusiasm and never failed to surprise me. I was sure starting at her new school was a really positive step and I felt a surge of optimism about Grace’s future.
It was a short week at school – they’d started back on a Thursday – and before we knew it the weekend was here again. Grace was worn out by Friday night. She seemed to have put her heart and soul into her new start and I told her I was very proud of her, which I was.
The following week, every day brought more exciting news and waves of enthusiasm from Grace. There was a singing club at lunchtime, and Grace had signed herself up for it.
‘The teacher said I’ve got a lovely, strong voice,’ she reported. ‘She wants me to be in the choir. And, guess what, Angela?’
‘What?’
‘At Harvest we’re going to go round all the old folks’ homes and sing to them.’
‘Well isn’t that lovely? I’m very pleased for you, Grace.’
The disco dance club was held at five o’clock in the hall one evening after school. Briony was there when I took Grace along, and I bumped into Jill in the corridor.
‘We could share lifts,’ Jill suggested. We’d both walked the girls home from school and then went back in the car for the club, as there wasn’t much time.
I smiled and said we could think about that, once the girls had settled down. I think I said something along the lines of, ‘I like to see what’s going on in the clubs, don’t you? They often let you watch at the end for a short while.’
Jill readily accepted this and said she agreed with me. In reality, I was stalling for time. It was still early days and I was in no rush to let Grace go in the car with Jill and Briony. If Grace were my own child I’d have been equally cautious, wanting to make sure I knew the other family well enough to trust them with the responsibility of driving my child. With Grace, there was an added element of course, in that I didn’t want to start bothering Social Services with permission requests when it wasn’t really necessary. I didn’t need help with lifts, as I always had Jonathan to share the load of whatever we had on, either with the kids or in the shop. The school was only a matter of minutes away by car in any case. However, I wasn’t going to rule out a lift share, because if Grace and Briony were good pals they would probably both enjoy going to the club together.
The two girls partnered up to start learning their first routine and afterwards Grace spent hours practising in her bedroom. She told me she wanted to be good enough to enter competitions one day, and to be picked for the school talent performance at Christmas.
‘My mum will be so impressed,’ she said, eyes widening at the thought, ‘because she used to be a dancer!’
‘She did? I didn’t know that, Grace.’
‘Yes. She worked in some, like, really fancy clubs and places. That’s how she met my dad, you know?’
Grace hadn’t mentioned her dad since she told me the Goldilocks story. Since then, of course, I’d learned from Barry that her father had passed away when she was five or six, and that he had died of a drug overdose.
‘So your mum and dad met in a club?’
‘Yes.’
She started looking around the kitchen and homed in on her tuck box.
‘Can I have a snack?’ She didn’t always have to ask, but she did because it was so close to dinner time.
‘Yes. Just a small one. Dinner won’t be too long.’
She helped herself to a little box of raisins and sat at the kitchen table with a drink of fresh apple juice. The tuck box was working very well. Grace loved the fact it was especially for her, and since we’d had it she hadn’t taken food up to her room once.
Unfortunately, encouraging her to unpack had not been so successful. Grace had started to leave a few things lying around her room, and she kept her school uniform in the wardrobe, as well as a few new items of clothing we’d bought for her, including a winter coat, but the big, grey suitcase still got regularly packed up with her toiletry bag, pyjamas, clean clothes and her cuddly swan. My heart tightened every time she did that, but at least Grace was progressing in the right direction and her bedroom was looking slightly more lived in. From time to time I gently reminded her that she was here to stay, and that it would be easier if she unpacked and put her things away.
‘OK, I will,’ she always said, but never followed this through.
‘Jonathan and I met at a dance,’ I told her, going back to what she’d been saying about how her mum and dad meeting in a club.
‘Did you? Was it a disco?’
I laughed. ‘Not really, no. I’m going back about twenty years, Grace. It was in the early seventies, when Jonathan and I were teenagers. It was just a village dance.’
‘Can you dance, Angela?’
‘Of course. I’m not the best, but I love to dance. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?’
‘Is it? My mum ma
de loads of money dancing. She was really good at it. That’s why me and Lily lived with Dad, because she, like, danced at night.’
‘She danced at night?’
‘Yes. She danced in special night clubs. She was a model too. Lily said Dad didn’t like it. He was jealous.’
I made an innocuous comment about the fact lots of dancers had to work in the evenings. I hadn’t forgotten Grace’s reaction to the whisky and I was treading carefully, in case bad memories were being stirred up about her dad drinking when her mum wasn’t there. At the same time, I wanted her to keep talking, if that was what she wanted, or needed, to do.
Grace sighed and took a glug of her apple juice. She had tipped the packet of raisins onto the kitchen table and was arranging them in the shape of a cross.
‘Dad didn’t like the club at all, but it was very famous. Mum’s got a baseball cap with the name of it on. And a T-shirt, I think. She keeps the cap in her bedroom, on the end of the curtain pole. She was in newspapers too, because she was so famous and people liked to look at her pictures. She said she’ll show me one day.’
Grace scrunched her face up, as if trying to remember something. Then she told me the name of the club where her parents met. I recognised it immediately. It was quite well known and I was pretty sure it used to be a strip club.
It was at this point that a thought struck me. I didn’t know for sure, but I was beginning to wonder if the local paper had been interested in Colette, and possibly Linzi too, for reasons other than their spat about the jewellery. It had seemed quite an odd story for a paper to make such a fuss about, and I couldn’t figure out why the women had gone to the papers instead of the police about the supposed jewellery theft. Now, perhaps, was it starting to make more sense? Jonathan speculated that when she was younger, Colette could have been something of a local celebrity because of her dancing and modelling. Maybe Linzi was too? It sounded feasible, from what Grace had said. We didn’t have the Internet then, so we had no way of finding out more.
I noted down Grace’s remarks for Social Services, just in case they needed to know. If all of this was in Colette’s past it might not be relevant at all, but I felt it needed passing on. If Grace did start to have any kind of therapy, the more information we had about her family history, the better.
A couple of days later we bumped into Briony and Jill again on the walk to school. ‘Which book did you bring?’ I heard Briony say.
Grace looked nonplussed. ‘Book? What, just my reading book.’
‘No, silly! What book for that, you know, that thingie?’
‘What thingie?’
‘You know, we had to bring our favourite book from home, or a poem. I’ve got Black Beauty. My nana bought it for me.’
Grace had clearly forgotten all about this.
‘Angela, have we got time to go home? Angela, have we? Angela, Angela?’
I explained that we didn’t. Grace would be late, and she would just have to tell the teacher she had forgotten to bring a book from home. This may sound a bit harsh, but I’d learned from experience that chasing home to collect forgotten things was no help to the children in the long run. They only learn from their mistakes when there are natural consequences. My ankle was still a bit sore in any case, and it would have been impossible for us to make the dash back home and arrive at school before the end of registration.
Grace huffed and puffed a bit, but thankfully she didn’t nag and accepted what I said. She also admitted she didn’t know which book to choose anyhow and said she would get one from the school library.
‘That’s a very good idea, Grace.’
She skipped off in front with Briony.
I turned to talk to Jill and found her giving me a very strange look.
‘Is everything OK?’ I asked.
I wondered if she thought I’d been too hard on Grace; lots of parents I’ve known would have raced back to fetch the book, even at great inconvenience to themselves.
‘Er, yes. She called you Angela. Grace. She called you Angela. I didn’t realise you weren’t her mum.’
Jill looked quite worried. I realised that even though we’d met on several occasions by now, Jill clearly hadn’t heard Grace call me Angela before. I had assumed she knew I was a foster carer, though I hadn’t really considered this either way, as why should I? It was no secret that Jonathan and I were carers. All the neighbours who came into the shop and congregated on the playing field at the back when their kids were playing out knew that different foster kids came and went. That said, because I only ever offered information if people asked direct questions, and I always take the lead from the child when it comes to what they want to tell people, it wasn’t that big a surprise to me that Jill didn’t realise Grace was fostered. It was clearly a surprise to her, though. Or should I say, it was a shock.
‘Oh, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘Yes, Jonathan and I have been fostering children for many years.’ I felt my hackles rising, because Jill was now regarding me with a mixture of suspicion and anger.
‘No, I didn’t. Why didn’t you tell me?’
She said this in an uncharacteristically rude way, a scowl forming on her face.
I politely told her that it wasn’t the done thing to go around volunteering information about a foster child’s private life.
‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ she blurted out. Her arms were folded in front of her chest now, and she was looking me straight in the eye.
‘Oh,’ I said calmly. ‘I’m not sure I follow you.’
I carried on walking and looking ahead, my eyes on Grace. Jill followed my gaze; the girls had their heads together and were giggling about something. Jill gulped and girded herself to go on.
‘What I mean is, I have the right to know. If she’s going to be Briony’s friend, I need to know.’
‘Know what?’
‘What’s wrong with her.’
Jill delivered this statement emphatically. I could barely believe my ears.
‘I beg your pardon?’
I’d come across attitudes like this before, but never from a mother at school like this, and never so blatantly. It took my breath away, and I almost felt embarrassed for Jill for being so ill-informed.
‘Well?’ Jill said. She softened slightly now; I think she could see how startled and unimpressed I was. ‘I don’t want to upset you or anything, but I just need to know. I have to look out for Briony. I’m sure you understand.’
I sighed and tried hard to keep my patience. I wanted to hide my annoyance and hoped my facial expression didn’t give me away, but I’m not sure I succeeded as I still needed to work hard on this.
‘Jill,’ I said, ‘there is nothing “wrong” with Grace. Children are placed in care because their parents cannot look after them, for any number of reasons.’
I could have said a lot more, but this seemed to be enough to get through to Jill.
‘I’m sorry,’ she spluttered. ‘I just thought, well, you know?’
I didn’t plug the gap in the conversation; I just looked at her questioningly.
‘You hear all these stories in the papers about kids in care, don’t you? Delinquents and tearaways and, I’m sorry to say it, but they’ve all been damaged, haven’t they? Most of them, I mean.’
‘That can be the case,’ I said, ‘which means they need as much love, care and understanding as every other child, if not more. They are all unique and you can’t tar them all with the same brush. Don’t worry Jill, I know it’s hard for people with no experience of fostering to understand all this. Kids in care are often misunderstood. I’m glad we’ve cleared this up.’
I remained calm and was reasonable for Grace’s benefit, though in that moment I could cheerfully have torn a strip off Jill.
‘Of course,’ she said, looking slightly abashed. ‘But can I just ask one thing?’ She didn’t wait for me to answer before she ploughed on. ‘What’s the reason she’s not with her parents? It would be helpful to know . . .’
‘I�
��m sorry, Jill. I’d never talk about that.’ I kept my tone pleasant and put a confident smile on my face; I always find that helps when delivering an answer someone doesn’t want to hear.
‘Oh,’ she said, looking flummoxed. ‘OK.’ She rushed ahead without saying another word, and I watched as she led Briony away from Grace.
15
‘You look so full of life’
‘Mrs Hart, can I have a word please?’
It was Grace’s teacher, Mrs Lacey.
‘Yes, of course. Shall we both come in?’
I’d just collected Grace from outside her classroom door and the teacher had beckoned me over.
‘Yes, please do.’
It was the night Grace went disco dancing and it was always a rush to get her home and changed and back to school for five. I hoped this wasn’t going to take too long.
‘Grace, would you mind taking these folders down to the office while we have a chat?’
Grace readily agreed. She was a very willing child, and she never really questioned it when she was asked to do chores. She started to run and Mrs Lacey reminded her to walk along the corridor.
‘Is everything OK?’
‘Yes and no. Grace is a clever girl. In many ways she is ahead of her peers. Her reading and writing skills are very good, she is enthusiastic and readily grasps new concepts, but she’s let down by her lack of organisation. She’s a chatterer, too, and is easily distracted by others. I feel we could get so much more out of Grace if she concentrated more and was more disciplined about doing homework on time, bringing in the right equipment and books, and generally having a tidier mind.’
I listened very carefully. I was impressed with Mrs Lacey. I felt she’d got to know Grace very well in a short space of time, and the description she gave resonated with me. I liked the fact she had talked about Grace’s good points too, and her potential. I told her I’d picked up on similar issues at home, and that the problems she mentioned had been flagged up in the past.