by Angela Hart
I had to face the fact that Social Services would now close her file and, of course, we would no longer be her foster carers. The thought upset me, but at the end of the day Grace was nearly seventeen, and back then it was normal for children to leave care at that age.
On the afternoon of the concert I took a train and met Grace in the city. She met me at the station and we greeted each other like old friends, which felt bittersweet. I wanted to continue to look after her as a carer, in the way I’d done for so many years, but it was no longer my place to behave in that way. She was wearing a very thin coat despite the bitter cold, but I bit my tongue instead of ticking her off for this, as I would have done in the past. Instead, I told Grace she looked well, which she did.
‘Thanks, you do too and it’s great to see you,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed you!’
‘Same here. The house isn’t the same without you.’
‘No, it’s better isn’t it?’ she joked, laughing loudly.
I laughed too but only out of politeness, as the truth was I missed her a great deal and it felt like there was a huge Grace-shaped hole in the house.
I was happy to see that she seemed quite calm and collected throughout the evening. She chatted openly about her life back with her mum and sister, telling me they were in the process of moving.
‘It’ll be easier for me to visit you from the new house,’ she told me, which was music to my ears. Grace also said she had the chance of a part-time office job, which she was going to look into.
‘You don’t need to worry about me. And that apprenticeship wasn’t a waste of time, so don’t worry about that either. It was good experience that is going to help me get paid work.’
I didn’t argue. It was tough, but I had to accept that our relationship had completely changed. I was not Grace’s carer any longer and I realised that if I was seen to be interfering it could cause trouble for her. I imagined her family telling her she didn’t have to listen to Jonathan and me any more. It was possible they might even try to stop her seeing us if they thought I was poking my nose in, which of course was the last thing I wanted. Besides, the apprenticeship was past rescuing by now and Grace had clearly bought into the idea that she was ready to get herself an office job.
I told Grace I was pleased her mum’s move would make her journey to our house easier and reiterated that she was welcome any time and that we very much wanted to keep in touch.
‘Great, I’ve missed your Sunday lunches. Can I come soon? Maybe next week?’
‘Of course you can.’
I didn’t hold my breath as I felt Grace had said this in the heat of the moment and might change her mind on reflection, once she was back in the family fold. However, Grace was true to her word, and the following Sunday she came for lunch.
Her relationship with Robbie had survived her move and he collected her from her mum’s and drove the two of them to our house. I’d like to say it was just like old times as we sat around the table, but of course it wasn’t. Grace went bright red when one of the other teenagers asked her why she’d left.
‘I’m sixteen and I can earn a wage and stand on my own two feet now,’ she said. I wasn’t sure she believed her own publicity; she looked very uncomfortable as she spoke.
‘Don’t you miss it here? What about all your mates?’
‘Yes, but I’m with my family and my nephew is still only little. It’s important to see him grow up.’
Before Grace left she took another bag of belongings with her, including her life story books. I told her we would keep her things safe and she could collect the rest of her belongings whenever she wanted to.
From then on Grace kept in touch regularly by phone and visited at least every couple of weeks. She didn’t get the office job she wanted and had started to work in the cafe where Lily worked. It sounded like they shared a job and the childcare for Harley while Colette did various ‘cash in hand’ jobs, as Grace called them, like bar work and helping in her friend’s beauty salon.
Grace always told us she loved visiting us, and she never failed to give us a big hug and say how happy she was to see us.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before we started to see a change in Grace. She put on a great deal of weight. I could sympathise with this as I’ve struggled with my own weight all my life, but Grace’s weight gain was rapid and extreme and made her a very unhealthy size, which worried me. She had started smoking and drinking too, which she made no secret of, and very soon her hair and skin started to look terrible.
A few months after she had moved out Grace broke up with Robbie.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
I thought the distance must have taken its toll, but that was only part of the story.
‘It was just too far and I think we’ve grown apart,’ she said, sounding old beyond her years. ‘We’d been together a long time and it happens, you know?’
I was surprised at how unaffected Grace seemed by this break-up. She showed no emotion, even when she confided that he was ‘devastated’ at what had happened.
‘What can I do? The thing is, we’re very different. I’ve changed. He prefers playing sports to going out. He’s boring.’
I said I was sorry to hear this and asked if she felt they would stay friends.
‘No. What’s the point? He’s gone so boring, Angela. I’ve moved on.’
Sadly, Grace had given up all her sports and her musical theatre had gone by the board too. She had vowed to join a theatre company in her new neighbourhood, but nothing ever came of that. She had also lost contact with nearly all of her old friends from our neighbourhood. I was concerned at how disposable her former life seemed to have become.
‘How’s the job going?’ Jonathan asked. ‘I expect you’ll be busier now the weather’s warming up?’
‘Oh, you mean that crappy job in the cafe? I’m not doing that any more.’
‘What happened?’
Reluctantly, she admitted she’d been sacked, and when we asked her why she was extremely rude about her boss and used language I was very shocked to hear.
‘Grace!’ I said, afraid others in the house might hear.
‘Sorry,’ she said moodily. ‘I forgot where I was.’
I felt my heart sink. It was obvious she behaved very differently when she was with her family and new friends, and I was growing increasingly worried that all the progress Grace had made when she lived with us was starting to come undone.
Each time I saw her I tried to offer help and advice, such as suggesting ways she could improve her diet, telling her how Jonathan and I used to smoke and how we managed to quit, or talking about starting some form of training to get back on the career ladder. She had an answer for everything, and always knocked every positive suggestion I made. ‘Lil needs me to help with Harley so for now I can’t do a college course or get a proper job’, ‘Mum does the shopping, there’s nothing I can do about the food I eat. She buys what she likes and she’s no good at cooking’, ‘Everyone smokes and drinks and I’d be the odd one out if I didn’t’. When I challenged her on this last point she said, ‘I’ve been the odd one out for long enough.’
There were many times when I saw Lily in my mind’s eye when Grace spoke. Other times, Grace blamed her ADHD for some of the issues she was now facing in her life, which I found very annoying. She had never used it as an excuse for anything before. Yes, the ADHD was an added hurdle she had to jump, but we had always taught Grace to look for a way to move forward instead of dwelling on the problem.
‘She’s going backwards so fast it’s frightening,’ Jonathan said, after one particularly upsetting visit. Grace had told us, in a very blasé fashion, that Lily had started using drugs again. ‘But it’s only cannabis, not ecstasy like before,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘Everyone does dope.’ I was horrified, not least because this was the first time I’d been told Lily had taken ecstasy in the past, or any kind of drug for that matter.
Grace was seventeen now. I spoke in confidence to a s
ocial worker about the issue of drugs in the family home, asking for advice. She suggested I could report the drug-taking anonymously, focusing on concerns about the baby. I was considering this when Grace told me, out of the blue, that Lily and Harley had been given a council flat of their own and were moving out. I hoped this might prove to be a positive turning point for Grace, but it wasn’t.
According to Grace, when Lily and Harley moved out, Colette lost a lot of benefits and could no longer afford the house she had planned to move to. She and Grace ended up in a tiny council house on a rough estate in an area of high unemployment. When they moved in, both of them were jobless and living on meagre benefits. It was incredibly sad to hear how quickly Grace’s life had spiralled downwards. I kept telling her she was welcome back with us at any time, but it seemed that, now Lily had gone, Colette was depending on Grace emotionally and made no secret of this.
‘Mum needs me,’ Grace told me on many occasions. ‘She says she couldn’t manage without me. She says she doesn’t know what she would do without me, now Lily has gone. I’m her life, you know.’
One day, Grace brought her life story books back to us.
‘Mum said she hasn’t got room for them.’
By this time Grace had taken everything she wanted from her old bedroom in our house. Though it pained us, Jonathan and I had finally accepted she wasn’t coming back and had started to take in other foster children who needed respite care.
‘How are things going?’ I asked pointedly as I took the life story books off her.
Grace’s eyes were flicking around the room, just as they used to when she was a much smaller child. She was distracted, moody, uncommunicative and fidgety.
‘What? Hey, everything’s cool,’ she said. I wasn’t convinced.
In my mind’s eye I thought of some of the lovely images contained within the life story books. I could see Grace, triumphant on stage in a musical production, collecting the winner’s cup at a swimming gala, camping with her primary school friends, grinning as she blew out the candles on a birthday cake, barbecuing with Jonathan on a caravan holiday, beaming as she held aloft her impressive GCSE certificate and posing for the camera in her days as a young catalogue model.
I looked at Grace now. Her bloated cheeks were an angry red and puffed out, she seemed to have a permanent sheen of sweat on her brow and she had taken to dressing in nothing but huge jogging bottoms and sloppy hoodies. Even her speech was different.
‘I’m going outside for a fag, OK with you, Angela?’ She said this in a confrontational way that made it clear she was not asking a question at all.
As always, I attempted to steer Grace onto the right path while trying not to interfere, for fear of irritating or alienating her. It was an impossible tightrope to tread, and by this time Grace was starting to use that very annoying response ‘whatever’ to any attempt I made to propel her on to better things.
Jonathan put her life story books in the loft. We both told ourselves that at least she was keeping in touch, and we talked about the fact all was not lost. ‘She’s still very young. She’s still growing up. She’ll start thinking for herself before too long. Everything will work out. We’ve given her a good foundation to build on.’ We said those kinds of things often. Fortunately, the other two girls seemed to take Grace’s departure in their stride. Both were on the cusp of moving out themselves and had a lot going on in their own lives to distract them. It is sad to say, but even after living together for so many years, the bond between the three girls was not strong. I think their collective problems prevented them from forming the friendships they might have done.
The next time Grace arranged to come over for Sunday lunch she didn’t show up. Ever since she’d moved out she had always been punctual for her visits and alarm bells started ringing straight away. I tried her mobile with no luck and left a text message asking her to ring. We told ourselves not to panic, reasoning that she was just running late, or that she’d changed her plans and simply forgotten to tell us. We didn’t have her new home phone number and realised we didn’t even have her new address, as the move into the new council house was so recent and we hadn’t thought to ask her.
Eventually, I tried Colette’s old mobile number. It went to answerphone so I left a message, asking if Grace was OK and saying we had been expecting her for lunch. I got a curt text message back which read: ‘You are not her foster mum any more. Please leave my daughter alone to get on with her life. Thank you.’
I was staring at the message in shock when I received another text, this time from Grace. It read, ‘Sorry Angela. I’ll be in touch.’ She signed off with a nickname we sometimes used, so I was in no doubt the message came from Grace herself.
Jonathan and I were shocked and upset but did our best to try to look on the bright side. It was Colette who had behaved badly. Grace had a mind of her own and would no doubt phone up in a few days’ time, we figured. She’d probably start chattering away as if nothing had happened, apologising and asking when she could next visit.
In fact, we didn’t hear from Grace that week, or the next, and she didn’t respond to any of our subsequent calls or messages, which we made when we started to worry all over again. Eventually, I called Social Services to ask if they could check she was safe. They did this, and said that she was, but they were not at liberty to give us any further details. If Grace did not want to keep in touch this was her prerogative. As former foster carers, we had no say, and, as our former foster child, Grace had no obligation to maintain contact with us in any way.
As week after week passed, we started to feel extremely disheartened, to say the least. Grace had obviously decided to cut contact after all, no doubt on Colette’s advice. When this realisation sunk in it was devastating, although my instincts told me this would still not be the end.
‘She’ll be back,’ I said to Jonathan. ‘I don’t know when or how, but my gut is telling me this is not the end of our relationship with Grace. We’ll just have to be patient.’
‘Do you know what? I’m glad you said that. I feel exactly the same. It’s strange, isn’t it? I know we’ll see her again. She’s been too much a part of our lives to disappear without trace. We have a bond.’
We sat tight and waited for the day when Grace would finally get back in touch. She was never far from our thoughts, and we never gave up hope, even as the weeks turned to months and the months turned to years.
23
‘I’ve made a lot of mistakes’
It was a very wet, wintery day and we’d just returned from buying our Christmas tree. One of the children had been mucking about at the garden centre and had got herself soaking wet, charging through a puddle. When I heard our doorbell ring, I was on the top floor of the house, my arms full of Chelsea’s damp clothes for the wash.
‘Jonathan!’ I called over the bannisters. ‘Can you get that?’
‘Yes, will do!’
I heard him asking Finn, the young lad who was also staying with us, to hang on to the Christmas tree. Looking back, Jonathan probably had his hands fuller than I did at that moment, as he was in the middle of fixing the tree into its stand, but thankfully he isn’t one to argue! I heard him leave the lounge and head downstairs to answer the door.
We weren’t expecting visitors and I wondered who was out in this filthy weather. It was such a dark and bitterly cold afternoon, and rain was lashing down relentlessly.
‘I’ll put this washing straight on now,’ I told Chelsea, piling the clothes into a laundry bin. ‘Enjoy your shower. There’s a clean set of clothes on your bed. Come down when you’re ready and we’ll have a hot drink.’
I started across the landing, carrying the laundry bin with me, but I stopped in my tracks when I heard Jonathan open the front door and exclaim, ‘Is that you?’ There was a momentary pause before he added incredulously, ‘Grace?’
I gasped and dropped the laundry bin at my feet. It had been five years since we’d seen or heard from Grace. I knew without calcul
ating that she would now be a twenty-two-year-old woman.
‘It IS you! Grace, well what a surprise this is!’
I ran down the stairs, heart pounding. Five years! I knew she’d get in touch one day I knew it! Wide-eyed, Jonathan turned to look at me as I rushed to join him and peered outside. Grace’s face was illuminated by our porch light. There was no mistaking her, yet I could scarcely believe what I was seeing.
‘Grace!’ I exclaimed. ‘Is it really you! Come in, come in.’
She smiled shyly but didn’t move. In that moment it felt like the years fell away. How many times had I opened our front door to Grace? How long had it been since I’d seen her standing in front of me like this? It seemed like yesterday, yet also a lifetime ago.
The rain was dancing off the pavement. ‘What a filthy night. Come in Grace, come on in.’ I wanted to rush forward and hug her, but instinctively I stepped back to make way for her. Jonathan did the same.
‘OK, but I can’t stop,’ she said anxiously. Glancing back over her shoulder, she explained, ‘Mum’s in the car.’
An old but never-forgotten image of Colette shot across my brain. I could see her as clear as day, towering over her slender little daughter. In my memory, Grace had shrunk under her mum’s critical gaze. ‘I’ve been good,’ she was telling her mother. Grace’s voice was squashed to a thin, quiet whisper. But Colette didn’t believe her daughter was capable of behaving herself.
‘Angela, here, may not be able to keep you if you start getting up to your old tricks, you know that, don’t you? Then what? You could find yourself in a children’s home.’
I can still recall the anger I felt towards Colette for saying that to Grace. She was just a child. Ten years old and desperate to please her mum, the very person who had shunned her and watched her ricochet from one failed foster placement to the next. I couldn’t understand why Colette would say such a thing to her little girl. How could she?
Jonathan’s voice brought me back to the present.
‘Let me take your coat, Grace.’