The Foster Child

by Jenny Blackhurst

  Pammy sniggers. ‘I’m surprised that place of yours actually has central heating. Are you really going to stay there? It’s a bit of a change from the penthouse.’

  I give her arm a shove. ‘Was not a penthouse. And it wasn’t even ours, remember? All that money and nothing to show for it. But yeah, we’ll stay at Nana’s for a bit, try and smarten it up before we sell.’

  Pammy holds out a wine glass in question. I shake my head.

  ‘Not for me. Bit early.’

  She shrugs. ‘Suit yourself. It’s five o clock somewhere.’ She pours herself a generous slug. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ I busy myself filling the space-age see-through kettle.

  ‘He still trying to convince you to re-create The Waltons?’

  ‘Yup. I ran out of flippant remarks. I’ve resorted to running the tap loudly in the bathroom while I pop my pill out of the foil.’

  Pammy sucks air through her teeth. ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave.’ She takes a seat at the kitchen island and gestures for me to do the same. ‘Don’t let him talk to Richard. He’ll be telling him tales of loose pants and tepid baths.’ She smiles at my raised eyebrow. ‘Got to look after the sperm, apparently. They only have one job, but turns out they’re a bit like men – have to have the exact right conditions or they do fuck-all.’

  I screw up my face sympathetically. ‘Still not working for you guys then?’

  ‘Nope.’ She grimaces. ‘Low sperm count.’

  I don’t know whether it’s sitting here like a teenager with my best friend, or the way she says it, exactly like you’d announce that you’ve got the flu, but a snort escapes my nose, instantly making my cheeks redden.

  ‘God, Pammy, I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘You can laugh, you bitch.’ She grins and tosses a balled-up piece of kitchen roll at me. ‘Richard is very sensitive about his diminishing swimmers.’

  ‘Pam, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t laughing, I just—’

  ‘Honestly, don’t apologise,’ Pammy laughs. ‘We can’t even say the word “sperm” without arguments. It’s horrendous. I’m not sure either of us wanted kids that much before we found out we probably weren’t going to have them. Now even the subject of other people’s children sets off a row.’

  I feel a pang of guilt at her words, the knowledge of what is growing inside me burning like a guilty secret. How can I deny Dan a family knowing that people like Pammy and Richard want one so much? I’ve told myself time and again that I’m thinking of the child – I know first-hand what it’s like to feel unloved and unwanted. What if I feel the same way about my child as my mother felt about me? It’s hardly ideal to wait and hope for the best.

  ‘Hey.’ Pammy leans forward and touches my hand. ‘Are you okay? You and Dan, you’re okay, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re fine.’ I feel myself begin to well up. Bloody hormones; I’ve never been this emotional before. ‘It’s just . . .’ I sigh. In light of what my best friend has just told me, this is the last thing I want to be saying, but I have to tell someone. I feel as though the words are swelling up inside me and I’m going to choke on them if I don’t spit them out. ‘I’m pregnant,’ I say.

  Pammy lets out a breath. ‘Shiiiit,’ she says. ‘Are you okay?’

  Her words are like a trigger opening the floodgates for the tears I’ve been holding back since I took the test this morning. How could I have been so stupid? I’ve been taking my pill religiously every night, but I had a sickness bug a few weeks ago and wasn’t able to ask Dan to use extra protection for the week afterwards – how would that have looked when we were supposed to be trying for a baby?

  ‘No,’ I whisper. ‘I don’t think I am.’

  Pammy envelops me in a hug and I allow myself to sob into her shoulder. When I am hoarse from crying, I sit back and wipe my eyes on my sleeve.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, as Pammy gets up to reboil the kettle. ‘After what you’ve literally just told me about how much you and Richard want kids, and here I am bawling that I got myself knocked up. After all these years, I bet you’re wishing I hadn’t bothered coming back.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ She makes my tea and hands it to me. ‘It’s decaf,’ she says, ‘two sugars. We’ve all got our problems. Mine don’t make yours any less shit for you. Have you thought about what you’re going to do?’

  ‘I only found out this morning; I can’t be more than a few weeks. I’ve been feeling dizzy all the time, being sick for no reason. I put it down to stress at coming back here. We almost had a car accident on the way . . .’ I wave away Pammy’s concerned look. ‘It turned out to be nothing, but when I felt faint, I put it down to shock. Then a few days ago I realised I’d skipped a period. It’s taken me this long to work up the courage to take the test.’

  Pammy lays a hand over mine and I feel a rush of warmth. Thank God I have her to talk to. Ever since this morning I’ve been going crazy pacing the house while Dan tapped away on his laptop upstairs, oblivious to the life-changing event that has just taken place. I’m not sure he even knows what day of the week it is when he’s this deep in first-drafting – he sounded so surprised when I called up to tell him I was coming to see Pammy that I’m sure he thought I was at work.

  ‘I’m guessing it’s a stupid question, but have you told Dan?’

  I laugh. ‘You’re right, that is a stupid question. If I’d told Dan, you wouldn’t be able to see me for all the bubble wrap.’ I take a sip of tea and pull a face. ‘Seriously, this is what decaf tastes like? You can’t even have good tea when you’re pregnant? Bloody baby isn’t even ten weeks old and I’m making sacrifices.’

  ‘Does that tell you something?’

  ‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘It tells me nothing. What tells me something is that I have the one piece of news that my husband has been waiting for for over a year – the one thing that would make the love of my life the happiest man on earth – and I would rather stick pins in my eyes than tell him.’

  ‘Surely you can’t get rid of the baby? It would break his heart.’

  ‘He would never know,’ I reply quietly. ‘If I choose not to go ahead with this pregnancy, Dan must never, ever know I was pregnant to start with. It would break his heart and I don’t think our marriage would survive.’ I feel so awful saying this to her, talking so candidly about aborting a baby when she so desperately wants one. But I have no one else. It sounds so selfish, and I suppose it is.

  ‘And if you lie to him and terminate his baby, could you live with that? Would your marriage survive that kind of secret?’

  I sigh. ‘I don’t know. What if I have a baby I don’t want just to please my husband? Can a marriage survive that? It just seems like whatever I choose, we’re doomed. At least the secrecy route doesn’t ruin some poor child’s life.’

  ‘This is your problem, Im, this thing you have about not being a perfect mum. No one is a perfect mum. Everyone makes mistakes, loses their patience, says things they don’t mean and inadvertently screws up their children. What if everyone suddenly decided that the only way to resolve that was to not have kids? The population would die out in no time at all.’

  ‘Most people don’t have the genetic proclivity to damage their offspring,’ I argue. ‘Most people don’t have—’

  ‘Blah blah blah, bad childhood, blah blah blah, negligent mother, blah blah blah, bad genes.’ Pammy looks as though she might cry herself. ‘The fact is that you are not your mother. You make your own choices, and if you choose to love your child and do the best you can do, then you will be a good enough mum. And that is all anyone can try and be. Not perfect, just good enough.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ I snap, and instantly feel bad. But she doesn’t know what kind of mum I’d be. What kind of danger I would be. Because the last child I failed ended up dead.

  23

  Imogen

  The school smells exactly the way it did twenty-five years ago, and it throws me the instant I step inside. How can an u
nidentified smell linger for decades? The old carpets have been changed for colours that match the school’s new academy status, the walls are freshly painted, and yet the feelings of fear and inadequacy that the long corridors always threw up in me remain unchanged. Instantly I’m eleven years old again.

  I never imagined I would walk back through these doors. The reaction feels physical, like all the air has been sucked from the corridor. More so even than my childhood home, here I feel like I am swimming through treacle.

  I pass the pen back to the school secretary, who barely looks up at me before muttering, ‘Up the stairs to the left.’

  ‘I know, I used to go to this school.’ I offer a smile, but there’s no point; the plump silver-haired woman has already turned back to her computer screen behind the pane of glass.

  That’s new as well, the banking-style security screen that shields the staff from having to get too close to visitors, although it’s a change I can well understand. The school environment has changed since I was young; everything is designed for maximum safety should the worst occur. It’s a constant reminder that the world we are living in is evolving, for better or for worse.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, I swallow back the dread rising in my chest. Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself. You’re an adult. A professional. Not some wayward teen being summoned to the head’s office.

  Not that I ever was a wayward teen; even the idea of it makes me smile. Any time I went up these stairs, it was to talk about the other girls. Girls who shoved me, pulled at my uniform and pretended to catch fleas from walking past me. These stairs don’t only lead to the head’s office – they also lead to the school nurse.

  I face an office door the colour of red wine and take a deep breath, placing a hand against the jamb to steady myself. I can hardly expect Florence Maxwell to have confidence in my abilities if I walk into the office a puce-faced nervous wreck. Counting backwards from ten – a trick the school nurse taught me, as it happens – I feel better by the time I’ve reached three and give a knock on the door, pushing away the image of my eleven-year-old self doing exactly the same thing.

  ‘Come in.’

  The woman behind the desk rises as I enter, leans forward and offers her hand.

  ‘Florence Maxwell. You must be Imogen.’

  Florence Maxwell is nothing like her predecessor. Mr Thorne was as prickly as his name suggested, a spindly creature made up of thin lines and sharp edges. My only memory of him smiling was after the rugby team won the finals in my last year. By contrast, Ms Maxwell looks every inch the PE teacher I remember, someone who has accidentally found herself behind the head teacher’s desk and is still perplexed as to how. Her sandy blonde hair is cropped short, her cheeks have a slightly pinkish look, as though she’s just come back from a run, and she is athletically built. The only thing she’s missing is a tracksuit. She is wearing a flowery black and red blouse and plain black trousers that only add to her out-of-place look in this office. She shows no indication that she remembers me.

  ‘Thank you for coming. Drink?’ She inclines her head towards a sleek, shiny coffee maker.

  ‘I’d love a coffee, thanks.’

  It looks like the door and the large desk are the only things that have stood the test of time. The walls have been repainted in a pastel yellow and blue colour scheme, and there are photographs on every available surface of Florence and people I presume to be other teachers, along with Ofsted certificates declaring the school to be satisfactory. I find this odd; to be proud that it has been basically proclaimed the equivalent of a shrug and ‘all right’, but maybe satisfactory means something different to Ofsted than it does to me.

  She passes me a steaming mug of coffee and takes a seat opposite.

  ‘Now, down to business, I suppose. Oh, wait . . . I had the notes here somewhere.’ She opens a drawer and starts to shuffle around inside it, and once again I find myself wondering how she found herself in the position of head teacher. Perhaps I’m being unfair; people in authority don’t have to look stern and unyielding to be effective leaders. And the school hasn’t burned down yet, so she must be doing something right. I pull out my own notepad.

  ‘Ah, okay, here. Sorry.’ She places a thin brown folder on the desk and opens it up. It barely contains a dozen sheets of paper. ‘Okay. Ellie has been with us for a few weeks now. Her parents and baby brother died in the fire that destroyed their family home. They never even woke up – not one working smoke alarm in the entire house. If Ellie hadn’t got up to use the toilet, she’d be dead too. Firefighters heard her shouting from an upstairs window; she’d managed to get it open and had used the curtain to shield herself from the smoke.’

  ‘Any problems here so far?’

  ‘She’s not settling in as well as hoped, but it’s early days. It’s unfortunate that her former Place2Be contact left in such a hurry; we’re hoping that the integration will be smoother with your intervention.’

  My face reddens. ‘Presumably she had counselling following the death of her parents?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘And is that ongoing?’

  Florence scrunches up her face in a disgusted scowl. ‘No. Funding means she was allocated six months of sessions, with a further follow-up if needed. The grief counsellor determined that she was dealing with the situation as well as could be expected and I understand the sessions were gradually phased out after eight months.’

  ‘How’s her work? Is she performing at the expected age levels?’

  ‘Ms Gilbert will tell you more about that. I’ve asked her to give us some time today; she’s teaching Ellie’s class now, as a matter of fact. Perhaps if we make our way down there?’

  The headmistress leads me along corridors that look so much smaller now that I’m an adult. The chairs, the doorways – it all seemed so monstrously big back then. Now it just looks like any other school in any other town and I tell myself that it’s going to be fine. I can come here and I can be an adult and I can do this.

  It’s only as we get closer to the classroom that we hear the scream.

  24

  Ellie

  The police came to her foster family’s house a week after the unfortunate event to assure Sarah and Mark that no charges would be made against Ellie for what had happened in town with Naomi Harper.

  ‘Well I don’t know why he had to come all the way here to say that,’ Mary hissed, holding Ellie’s hand as they sat at the top of the stairs. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. That woman from the car said so herself – she saw everything. That Naomi is a bloody cow to say you made her fall into the road. As if you could do that just by telling her to go away.’

  ‘You saw it too,’ Ellie hissed. ‘You saw I didn’t push her too. You said so.’

  Mary cringed. ‘Um, well I didn’t exactly see what happened.’ She looked guiltily at Ellie and put an arm around her shoulder. ‘I just said that so that horrible woman would stop shouting at you. Really, it’s no wonder Naomi is such a bitch if that’s what her mother is like.’

  ‘So how do you know I didn’t push her?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Mary held her at arm’s length and looked straight in her eyes. ‘I didn’t need to see what happened to know that you wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘I bet you’re the only one,’ Ellie replied.

  Ms Gilbert sits down at her desk and looks around for her beloved class planner.

  ‘I’m sure it was here before break time . . .’ Ellie hears her mutter, and she yanks open her desk drawer.

  A blood-curdling scream issues from the teacher’s open mouth. The entire class looks up in alarm, and in seconds it feels like all hell has broken loose in the classroom. Ellie cranes her neck to see what is wrong, and without meaning to, she breaks into a grim smile.

  A writhing black mass seems to ooze from the gaping mouth of Ms Gilbert’s drawer, and with a gleeful realisation, Ellie sees that the desk is alive with hundreds of black spiders, clambering over one another in their fi
ght to escape the confines of the drawer, fat black bodies and evil spindly legs reaching out towards her.

  The classroom is alive with the hysteria of the other children now. Ms Gilbert has frozen as shrieking students climb onto their chairs as though the floor is teeming with mice. Girls cling to one another and boys inch closer to the desk, egging each other on to put their hands into the seething mass of arachnids.

  One of the spiders falls to the floor, and as though the sight of it breaking free of the desk has flicked a switch, Ms Gilbert leaps into action

  ‘Quiet!’ she shouts, moving around the front of the desk, determinedly ignoring the spiders still scurrying across it. ‘For goodness’ sake, girls, they aren’t poisonous snakes.’

  She hesitates for an instant, as though considering the possibility that they might be poisonous, then points at the door.

  ‘Line up, we’re going to lunch early.’

  The children run to the door, all except Ellie. She packs up her things, slowly, fully aware that most of the eyes of the class – including Ms Gilbert’s – are on her. She has a sick feeling in the bottom of her stomach. Somehow she already knows that she is getting the blame for this.

  ‘Not you, Ellie. You are coming with me.’

  25

  Imogen

  ‘There weren’t even a hundred spiders,’ Florence says, her voice matter-of-fact. ‘But I’m sure to the children it seemed like much more.’ She rubs a hand across her face and gives a weary sigh. ‘Ms Gilbert was quite put out, I’m afraid. She’s refusing to teach Ellie any more, which is ridiculous, because there is absolutely no indication that this was Ellie’s doing. But Hannah is convinced that because she was less than glowing about Ellie’s pets project, she put the spiders in her desk to get back at her.’