by Angela Hart
‘I’ve explained to Melissa that she has to stay here, at least for the time being,’ he said.
It turned out that the ‘aunt and uncle’ who had collected her from the police station were, in fact, family friends. There was no question she could stay there, but she said she didn’t want to, in any case.
‘I hate it where they live, it’s worse than here! I’m not staying here. I’m going to pack my stuff.’
She ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
‘Melissa . . .’ the support worker started.
‘Come back, Melissa, we can talk this through . . .’ I said.
Jonathan appeared and also implored her not to run off upstairs, but she ignored all three of us.
‘She has told me she wants to live near her friends,’ the support worker said. ‘But from what I can gather, these friends are not a good influence on her. She’d been drinking when she was picked up by the police and was with a gang who were making a nuisance of themselves, hanging around on the streets outside a takeaway in the town centre.’ The support worker had been given these latter details by the family friends who’d collected Melissa. The couple had also described Melissa as ‘boy mad’. They said she had been found with a boy, and that she had told them he was her boyfriend and she couldn’t live so far away from him.
‘Did she give a name?’
‘Not that I know of.’
Melissa’s social worker, Doreen, turned up just after the support worker left. I told her that Melissa had stomped upstairs, and I filled her in on what I’d just heard.
‘I don’t know,’ Doreen said, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m sorry she’s done this again. It looks like she’s got in with yet another bad crowd.’
Doreen explained that Melissa had never been picked up in this particular town before, at least not to her knowledge. The police at the station she had been taken to knew nothing about her history, which explains why they didn’t know straight away that Melissa was in care with Jonathan and me. This was not unusual in the early nineties, before police databases were as efficiently computerised and centralised as they are today. I can remember that there’d been a story in the news around that time, about how an eagle-eyed journalist had helped return a missing child to his parents. The young boy had accidentally got on a train and ended up in another county. As soon as he was reported missing to the police by his family their local radio station ran appeals for information. Meanwhile, when the frightened boy got off the train alone, miles from home, the police force across the border also put out an appeal for information. They were struggling to identify him, as he was very young and couldn’t remember the name of his home town. Meanwhile, a journalist who was reading the national news wires in London put two and two together and realised the missing child and the found child were one and the same. Thanks to her, the boy was reunited with his extremely relieved and grateful family, while the police were left to question how communication could be so poor between neighbouring forces.
Doreen had no information about who the new crowd of people Melissa was associating with may be, and she had not heard the name Tommy. ‘It’s always to do with the latest boyfriend, from what I can see,’ she sighed.
I asked how things were progressing with Melissa’s permanent move when her placement with us ended, and whether there was any update on her school place. Doreen said progress had been made and if everything went to plan Melissa would be moving in with her Auntie Cathy in roughly four weeks’ time. She gave us the proposed date and said there were ‘a few bits and bobs still to sort out’. I wondered if it would be possible to move her any sooner, given the circumstances.
‘It’s not possible,’ Doreen said. ‘Believe me, I’ve tried. But the good news is that Melissa can start back at her old school again next week, so that will keep her out of trouble for the rest of the time she’s with you. Everything’s in place. She’s going to have a special timetable to follow, to help ease her back in, and the teachers will treat her as if she’s on report. By that I mean she’ll have to sign in to each lesson, to help keep tabs on her.’
I took down the details, and for the first time in days and days I felt there was some light at the end of the tunnel. I thought Melissa could be a good student. She was interested in several subjects and I’d been impressed that she’d done some schoolwork independently when she first arrived. I dared to hope that returning to school might be a turning point and that Melissa might follow a better path once she was back in the education system and had other things besides boys to occupy her mind.
I knew the coming weeks weren’t going to be easy, given the fact Melissa didn’t even want to stay with us. Nevertheless, I hoped she’d see sense and things would improve once she’d had chance to calm down and settle back into our house. We’d still have to be vigilant and she might run away again, but at least if she was at school there would be fewer hours in the day we had to worry about – that’s what I thought, anyway.
I went upstairs and knocked on Melissa’s bedroom door. I could hear her stomping around.
‘Go away!’
‘Melissa, Doreen is here now. She’d like to talk to you.’
‘I don’t want to speak to her.’
It sounded like Melissa had calmed down slightly.
‘Can I come in?’
There was a pause.
‘I’ll come out.’
Melissa edged out of her room looking sheepish. She apologised for being rude and I told her Doreen had some news for her.
‘Is it good news? Can I move in with Auntie Cathy?’
I explained that yes she could but not just yet, and that in the meantime she could return to her old school.
‘If you come downstairs, Doreen will be able to tell you more.’
She shuffled down the stairs behind me, not saying a word.
When we reached the first floor landing, Ryan popped his head out of the lounge.
‘Oh my God!’ Melissa said. ‘That freaked me out! I didn’t think anyone was in there.’
I introduced her to Ryan, explaining that he was staying with us for the rest of the week. She politely asked him which school he went to and said she had once attended the same primary.
‘It sucks, doesn’t it?’ she said jokily.
‘Yeah!’ he said, grinning.
‘Is Mr Mace still there?’
‘Ha ha, yeah he is!’
‘Unlucky!’
I was pleased that Melissa had reverted to being her old self, but at the same time it was disconcerting to see how easily she could change. It was almost like she was controlled by a switch – and I was well aware that she could just as rapidly switch back to being the girl who wanted to run away.
‘Now what did I tell you last time I saw you?’ Doreen chastised.
Melissa shrugged and looked at the floor. I could see her shrinking back to the uncommunicative girl the support worker had brought home a short while earlier.
‘I said no more running off, young lady!’ Doreen went on. ‘Now, do you want to tell me why you’ve done this again? I mean, you could have ended up back in the secure unit, and we don’t want that, do we?’
She sounded like a nag and I could tell Melissa was not going to respond well to this veiled threat.
‘But I didn’t, did I?’ Melissa said. ‘And they won’t put me in there again, will they? Not when I can come here, even if I don’t want to be here!’ She looked angry, but was just about keeping herself in check.
‘No, you were very lucky your aunt and uncle were prepared to fetch you. It’s lucky they were close enough to where the police found you.’
‘They are not my aunt and uncle, actually. They are family friends.’
Melissa looked smug to have corrected Doreen’s minor error.
Jonathan and I were sitting quietly at the opposite end of the kitchen table while this was going on. I wondered if Melissa had deliberately gone to a town in the opposite direction to the secure unit. Had she planned it that way, to avoid ending
up there again? I doubted she was that cunning. It seemed far more likely that it was the company she kept that drove her disappearances and, as she said herself, it was unlikely she would be put in the unit while Jonathan and I were prepared to give her a home.
Melissa was now playing with her hair and refusing to give Doreen eye contact. I studied her, and her appearance and body language worried me. Her clothes were dirty, her hair was messy and when she wasn’t fiddling with it she was wrapping her arms defensively around herself. How had she got herself so dishevelled? Whose clothes was she wearing? And what was she so defensive about?
Doreen was off again, quizzing Melissa about her school uniform and reeling off all kinds of instructions for her imminent return to the classroom.
‘Whatever,’ Melissa shrugged.
By the time Doreen left I think she’d done more to alienate Melissa than to get her back onside. She meant well, but I think she left Melissa feeling irritated and scolded, which wasn’t going to get us anywhere. What we really needed, I thought, was to put Melissa at ease, tell her we were here to support her and somehow get her to open up. It was easier said than done, of course, but it was what I was going to try to do.
Jonathan went back to the shop to help close up and Melissa complained of having a headache and asked if she could go for a walk around the neighbourhood, which of course put me on my guard.
‘I’d rather you stayed in,’ I said. ‘I’m going to start making the dinner soon. Are you hungry?’
‘Yes, I’m starving. What are we having?’
I told her I was making a chicken curry and she said it was her favourite. ‘Brilliant. I won’t be out for long, honest. I’ll just get some air. I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I didn’t mean it. I like it here.’
‘Thanks for saying that. I’d still prefer it if you stayed in. It’s good to have you back. Why don’t you help me cook? I’m a bit behind and could do with some help. Or, if your headache is really bad, you could go and have a lie down while I make the dinner?’
‘OK,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I’ll help you cook if you like. Can you do white rice? I don’t like that yellow one they give you in the takeaway.’
‘Yes, I can do white rice. Jonathan and I prefer plain anyhow and I’m sure the boys won’t mind not having pilau.’
I explained about Marty staying with us, as well as Ryan, and told her he was eleven years old, in his first year of secondary school and due home soon. She said she looked forward to meeting him and went to the sink to wash her hands. As she did so she started singing the words ‘chicken tikka’ to the tune of ABBA’s ‘Chiquitita’, which made me smile. Her voice was very childish and high-pitched, but she could really sing. I complimented her and she said she’d love to be in a show and sing on a stage.
‘Well if that’s what you want to do, you should join a choir or a drama group.’
‘Me? Really, do you think I could do it?’
‘Melissa, you can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it and work hard enough.’
She helped me prepare some ingredients for a few minutes and then said she needed to go to the toilet. She went to use the bathroom upstairs, and while she was gone Marty came home from his appointment. He was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a mug of tea and telling me about his favourite football player, when Jonathan came running in. I could tell instantly there was a problem.
‘What’s going on?’
‘It’s Melissa. Did you say she could go out with TJ?’
‘What? No I did not.’
‘Well, he’s just picked her up in his van. I was taking in the displays outside the shop when he pulled up in the street. She darted in the van, quick as a flash. I shouted after them, but it was no good. She’s gone again.’
Marty looked confused and I gave him a very short but honest explanation. ‘Melissa came back earlier and has gone out when we asked her not to,’ I said.
‘Why?’ he said, looking puzzled.
Jonathan and I looked at each other, the words ‘we wish we knew’ hanging in the air between us.
13
‘Fostering is a world of worry!’
It was already dark when Melissa disappeared in TJ’s van and so we only waited an hour before calling the social services out-of-hours number to report her missing. They told us to call our local police station.
‘I can give you the nickname of the boy she’s with and I know where he works and what vehicle he was driving,’ I said to the sergeant on the desk. Jonathan had managed to see the registration number of TJ’s van and had scribbled it down on a pad he kept in his apron pocket. We already knew it was a small white Ford, and Jonathan even knew the name of the model, being the avid reader of Auto Trader he’s always been.
The police officer took down the information and assured me that patrols would be alerted and we’d get a call as soon as there was any news. Then he asked me if I had any concerns that TJ had taken Melissa against her will.
‘No, I have no reason to think that,’ I said. ‘He’s her boyfriend, and she’s run away before.’
‘Gotcha,’ the officer said casually, as if that explained everything.
I told him that even though this was not Melissa’s first disappearance, I was as concerned as any parent or guardian of a missing twelve-year-old would be in the circumstances. I also mentioned we had a recent photograph of her.
‘What’s her date of birth?’
I gave it to him and he commented cheerfully that she was nearly thirteen, as if that made the situation somehow less serious or pressing. Then I heard a colleague in the background ask him if he wanted a cuppa.
‘OK, love. I’ve got all this. Leave it with us. Thanks for phoning. If you could bring in the photo to copy that would be helpful.’
The line went dead.
I know now that police usually come out to the house to collect a photo in the case of a missing child. At the same time they sometimes check the child is not hiding in the house, as this is not unusual. But, just like the first time Melissa had gone missing, the police did not volunteer to come to the house, and it was up to us to take the photo in to the station to be copied. I didn’t question this as I didn’t have experience of dealing with a missing child and had no idea what the normal police routine was. In hindsight, I wonder if the officer who took my call knew there would already be a file on her, because of her history? However, if that were the case, nobody spelled this out to me and I was left feeling that Melissa’s disappearance was not being taken as seriously as it would have been if she’d had no history of going missing.
I tried to eat some chicken curry with the boys but I didn’t have much of an appetite. I couldn’t compute how Melissa had been merrily singing ‘chicken tikka’ to an ABBA tune one minute, and then disappearing in TJ’s van like that the next. As I’d thought before, it was almost like she’d been put under a spell, one that instantly transformed her from a sweet young girl into a reckless rebel, and all at the click of a boy’s fingers.
Meanwhile, Jonathan drove up to the takeaway where TJ worked. ‘I know Wilf’s advice is to leave it to the police,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think this is going to do any harm. I’ll be able to see straight away if the van’s there.’
I agreed. Jonathan always thinks before he acts and I trusted him to handle the situation in the right way, whether he saw the van and found Melissa there or not. As soon as he left I called Lynne. Unfortunately she had heard nothing. She knew we had Ryan and Marty staying with us and she told me plainly that she wasn’t impressed with Social Services for putting us in this situation.
‘I thought the whole idea of placing Melissa with you was that there were no other kids in the house. What if she comes back then sneaks out in the middle of the night again, while you’re all in your beds? It’s not a pleasant experience, I can tell you, knowing the house has been left wide open with kids asleep in their rooms. It’s not on, Angela.’
Lynne was angry and I wanted
to reassure her. I told her Jonathan and I weren’t sleeping well, and if Melissa did return then break out in the night, I was sure we would wake up. ‘We may not be able to stop her running off, but we’d be able to lock up and keep the boys safe in the house,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about us, Lynne. We’re quite happy having the boys. They’re both good lads and no trouble really. We’re doing fine.’
Lynne sighed and said she admired my positive attitude but was still cross with Social Services. ‘It’s all about money. That’s what annoys me. Social Services is always stretched to breaking point. If only the government would invest in recruiting more social workers and foster carers – not to mention training more specialist carers and increasing the budget for mental health services for kids. That would solve a lot of problems, and a lot of money in the long term.’
‘I can’t argue with any of that,’ I said. I admitted that I didn’t feel I had much choice in taking the boys in, but told Lynne I didn’t regret it and felt it was the right thing to do. ‘Don’t worry, I would have said no if I thought for any moment I couldn’t keep them, or us, safe.’
‘OK, Angela. We must be mad, you know. Fostering is a world of worry! I’ll call if I get any news.’
‘Thanks Lynne, and I don’t care what time it is. If you hear anything at all from Melissa, phone me straight away. I’ll pick up the phone any time, day or night.’
I was playing cards with the boys when Jonathan returned. He’d been gone for about half an hour and the boys were beating me hands down. I’m not bad at cards normally, but that evening I couldn’t concentrate.
‘Any luck?’
‘Nothing,’ he shrugged. He’d driven round the town after going past the takeaway but there was no sign of Melissa or the van anywhere.
‘Can I join in?’
The boys shuffled up and made room for Jonathan on the sofa while I dealt a new hand.
It was Ryan’s turn now to ask about Melissa.
‘She seemed, like, normal,’ he said. ‘She seemed all right. Why did she run away?’
We simply said we didn’t know, which was the truth.