by Rosie Lewis
But first I wanted to try a different game – one that I had seen court-appointed guardians play with some of my previous placements and that had often produced enlightening results.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, eager to sit down and get stuck in. She loved it when she had me all to herself. I sat beside her with a bunch of colouring pens in my hand.
‘Well, we’re going to transform this piece of card into the ocean. And then we’re going to create three islands. Will you help me draw them?’
She nodded vigorously, her eyes shining. Chewing her lips in concentration, she scanned the array of felt-tips, pulling out the colours she wanted to use. The tip of her tongue popped out in concentration as she worked and when the islands were drawn she diligently added palm trees, sandy beaches, even a few beach huts. I coloured around her circles in blue, smiling at the sound of her humming. When she wasn’t swearing and making threats to kill, she could really be a very sweet child.
‘Done!’ she exclaimed, 15 minutes later. She looked really proud of herself. ‘Now what?’
‘Now we use the Plasticine to make models.’
‘Yay!’ she cheered. ‘Like dinosaurs and stuff? Or other animals?’
I shook my head. ‘No, what I’d like you to do is make a model of everyone you know.’
Her face dropped in disappointment.
‘It’s OK, you can make some animals afterwards if you like, but let’s do the people you know first.’
‘Yay!’ She reached for the yellow strips first and got to work creating faces. Craft was a wonderful escape for Phoebe; she became so absorbed in what she was doing that she barely raised her head for over 20 minutes. When she had finished she lined the models up in a row: first herself, then her mum and dad, Emily, Jamie and me, my mum and her teacher, Miss Angel.
‘That’s fabulous, Phoebe! Though you could have made me look prettier,’ I nudged her teasingly with my shoulder.
‘I gave you big yellow hair, though. Look!’
‘I can see that, cheeky!’ I laughed. ‘Now comes the really fun part – the people get to travel and live on the islands.’
‘Which one?’
‘That’s up to you. How many islands are there?’
‘Three,’ she said in a superior tone, rolling her eyes. ‘That’s so obvious, Rosie.’
‘Right. So, one island belongs to you. It’s your island and you are the chief so you get to say who lives there with you. Where do you think you’d like to live? It can be one of the islands on either side but not the one in the middle.’
Phoebe reached for the model of herself and ‘walked’ it onto the card, pursing her lips in concentration. ‘Hmm, I can’t choose.’ She sashayed her model across the page and back again, finally settling for the island on the left, the one with the sandiest beach.
‘OK, that’s good. Now we have to make a bridge.’ I picked up a strip of Plasticine and laid it between ‘her’ island and the one in the middle. She shook her head in disgust, snatching it up and moulding a much more ornate creation, finally resting it in the same place as before.
‘Great! Now, the people living on the middle island are allowed to cross the bridge and visit you on your island. But the people over here,’ I said, pointing to the one on the right, furthest from Phoebe’s, ‘they can’t ever visit your island, unless you build them a boat. So, come on, let’s give everyone else a home.’ I pointed to the models all lined up next to the card. ‘Choose who you would like to live with you on your island, then you can put everyone else where you think they belong.’
She smiled, enjoying herself. ‘I get to pick, all on my own?’
I nodded. ‘It’s all up to you – you’re the chief. As long as you choose whomever you want. You mustn’t worry about upsetting anybody, that’s the only rule.’
‘Can you pass Jamie, you and Emily over, please?’
She sat Emily and Jamie beside herself on the beach and placed the model of me on the grassy part of her island, several inches away.
‘Emily and Jamie are building sandcastles with me.’
‘Right. So what am I doing?’
‘You’re about to go in the hut and do the washing up.’
I laughed out loud. ‘That sounds about right! Now, you still have Nanny, Miss Angel, Mummy and Daddy left.’
She reached across me and scooped all of the models up in her hands. Without hesitation she laid them on the middle island then carefully separated the squished-up bodies before sitting them next to each other on the grass.
‘Well done! So now everyone has a home,’ I said, trying to disguise my disappointment. All Phoebe had done was re-create her present situation; the game hadn’t revealed anything about the way she was feeling. ‘And we can all visit each other by going across the bridge.’
She stared at me and frowned then shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not finished yet.’
Carefully she picked up the model of Miss Angel and held it by the head. At first she swung it towards the island furthest from her own then moved it back to the middle one again, frowning. She had seemed fond of her teacher and so such lengthy deliberations puzzled me.
‘Having trouble deciding?’ I prompted, wondering whether she felt her teacher had let her down in some way. ‘You’ve dangled Miss Angel for so long her neck has turned into a noodle!’
Phoebe chuckled. ‘I do like her,’ she said slowly, ‘but she didn’t listen when I told her about the noise.’
My ears pricked up. It was the second time she had mentioned a noise. ‘Well, I’d really like to hear about it. Will you tell me?’
She shook her head, decisively placing Miss Angel back beside her father on the middle island. ‘No need – I don’t hear it any more.’
I made a move to clear the game away, vaguely remembering from my research that tinnitus is sometimes an associated symptom of autism. I wondered whether Phoebe might benefit from wearing a special device to mask the noise, if it ever became a problem for her.
Phoebe flattened her hands on the card. ‘I’m still not finished, Rosie.’
She reached down and picked up the model of her mother, holding the figure up in front of her. Suddenly she plunged it onto the edge of the card, the part we had coloured blue. Forming a fist, she ground the model down hard until it was no more than a flattened blob. Her face twisted with satisfaction, as if the model were an effigy that she could inflict pain upon using magical powers.
‘Oh! What’s happened to Mummy?’
‘She’s in the sea, being gobbled up by all the sharks – they’re going to bite her face off.’
Chapter 19
Every day for the next week Phoebe asked to play the island game. She seemed to derive huge pleasure from being the chief, in control of all that happened and being able to decide everyone’s fate for herself. Her most favourite part of the game was conjuring the destiny of the figures; her mother always met a sticky end. Most of the time Mummy got ravaged by sharks or bitten to death by jellyfish but occasionally she was condemned to living alone on the uninhabited island with no boat or bridge ‘and definitely no sun cream, Rosie’. As the week went on the scenarios grew ever more elaborate: Phoebe even asked for extra Plasticine so she could model fire-breathing dragons and hungry, fierce dinosaurs ‘to keep sun-burnt Mummy company’.
By the time the weekend arrived I put the game away at the back of the cupboard, worried that I might be fuelling some sort of sadistic pleasure in her. She wasn’t impressed at all, announcing that she had had ‘some more ideas’ about what could happen to Mummy on the island. It was certainly interesting that she felt so much anger towards her mother. I wondered if it was because it was she who had hurt Phoebe’s arm and caused her to come into care. She didn’t seem to harbour any anger towards her father; he was able to cross the bridge whenever he liked, although he was never allowed to live with us on ‘her’ island.
‘Please, Rosie, p-l-ease. I want to build a bonfire on the island.’
Oh goodness, I thought, now she wants to burn Mummy to death. ‘No, we’ve finished with that game – we’ll play Fall Guy if you like.’ Fall Guy was a trust-building game where Phoebe was supposed to stand in front of us with her eyes closed and her arms in the air. She would then fall backwards and had to trust one of us to catch her.
‘OK.’
She was definitely getting better. At first she stood stock-still, hardly daring to move. With lots of encouragement she would fake a fall and stumble, shooting her own arms behind her, ready to support herself if we let her down. Now she was able to keep her body flat and drop backwards but still she couldn’t bring herself to keep her eyes closed.
With the arrival of Jamie she dropped me like a stone. Lately he had taken to lying in and at weekends only emerged from his room after nine. From the moment she got up, usually around 6am, she would bug me to wake him.
‘Jamie! Shall we play in the garden?’
‘Yep, if you like.’ My son was still playing it cool but he loved being in demand. Phoebe looked delighted. She raced off to get her pirate dress on while Jamie ate a hurried bowl of cereal without even sitting down.
As I sat watching them chasing each other around, I wondered whether she would remember the times when she had been happy with us. Since her arrival there had been moments of high tension and misery, but she had laughed lots as well. There was also an unmistakeable bond forming between her and Jamie. I hoped it would give her the confidence to form friendships with her peers, something that didn’t seem to have happened for her in the past.
She was certainly capable of forming positive relationships, which was a good sign. And the more ‘brain training’ we did, the more convinced I became that Phoebe was in the wrong school. With a bit more help I was confident she could be transferred into mainstream education.
The sound of the doorbell broke my thoughts. My heart flew into my mouth when I opened the door to a figure robed from head to foot in black, a pair of eyes staring out at me through a small slit. My first thought was that Phoebe’s parents had sent someone to snatch her back – I had been confronted on my doorstep by desperate parents before, as well as at the school gates. I always kept my mobile phone close to hand, usually in the pocket of a cardigan or in my jeans, so that I could call 999 at the first sign of trouble.
Fingering the keys of my handset, I was debating whether to slam the door and put the security chain on when I spotted a local authority ID tag with the name Nabila Hussain attached to the robe. Relaxing, I noticed a gentleness around the eyes that had evaded me in my panic and realised the visitor wasn’t a threat – it was actually a woman dressed in a burka.
‘Oh hello,’ I said, slight suspicion still lingering in my tone. ‘Can I help?’
The woman removed the veil covering her face. ‘I’ve come to collect Phoebe for contact.’
‘She doesn’t have contact today,’ I said, though even as I spoke I was already doubtful. It wasn’t unusual for contact arrangements to be bungled, but usually it was a case of contact supervisors forgetting to collect children, rather than the other way around. Unwilling to send Phoebe off with someone I’d never met before, I asked the lady to come in and wait while I checked her credentials with the contact team. They confirmed that a meeting with her parents had been arranged and that Nabila was a bona fide contact supervisor.
After calling Phoebe in from the garden I apologised to Nabila.
‘Sorry about that – I wasn’t expecting anyone to collect Phoebe today. You can’t be too careful.’
Nabila gave me a curt nod, clearly none too impressed by my caution.
Phoebe bounded in, closely followed by Jamie. When I told her she was going for contact I was surprised to see a flicker of disappointment; I thought she would be keen to see her parents – well, her father at least. ‘Run up and get changed now, Nabila’s waiting.’
‘Can’t I stay like this, Rosie? I want to show Daddy my dress.’
‘Hmm, I don’t think so. You’d best put something smart on.’ When children went on contact visits the parents often scrutinised them, hoping to deflect attention from their own failings by accusing others of neglect.
Nabila tutted and gave me a look of annoyance, clearly upset at being kept waiting any longer.
‘Oh, OK, I suppose you can. Let me do your hair quickly then.’ I ran the brush through her hair several times, still amazed at how luxuriant it was becoming. ‘There. All done.’
Phoebe left with a silent, unsmiling Nabila, looking a little unsure. It had unsettled her when I had explained that I wouldn’t be allowed to supervise her contact sessions any more and I could tell she was uncomfortable with going off with a stranger. I saw her off at the door with a reassuring wave. ‘Have a lovely time, honey.’
I was still annoyed with social services. Through the years of dealing with them I had come to expect ineptitude; in fact it was a total surprise when things actually ran smoothly. Whenever I complained about their disorganisation I was met with a general malaise. Sometimes it felt as if the children they were busy removing meant no more to them than mere names on a report. I wondered whether many of them actually cared about the welfare of the youngsters they were legally responsible for.
Chapter 20
Phoebe returned from contact in a highly agitated state, her eyes burning feverishly. It had been days since I had seen her so upset and so I was a bit thrown off-kilter, unsure of how to deal with her. Every time I asked what she had done during the hour she spent with her parents she either repeated the question back to me or made unpleasant screeching noises.
When Emily got home from her regular two-hour stint at the local charity shop I suggested that she and Jamie choose a DVD to watch while I took Phoebe out into the garden. Jamie fired a dozen questions at me but Emily had the sensitivity to agree without any fuss, throwing a knowing look over her shoulder as I led Phoebe outside.
The sun was bright and so I headed straight for the swing, settling beneath its shade. Seated at one end, I patted the middle cushion next to mine and Phoebe took the space in silence, leaning back into its quiet haven.
‘Everything OK at contact?’
Phoebe shrugged, kicking her legs so vigorously that the swing swayed from side to side instead of back and forth.
‘I can tell you’re having a difficult day, sweetie. Do you want to tell me why?’
Her legs stopped mid-swing. She huffed, throwing herself at me in a sort of aggressive hug. Elbows first, she followed with her head, burrowing into my chest. Biting my lip to suppress a yelp, I put my arm around her, guiding her into a gentler hug.
‘I wanted you to come,’ she growled, her face twisting around to fix me with an accusatory glare. Her eyes had a sunken, defeated look about them. She continued to grind her elbows aggressively into my chest.
‘I know, honey. But you still got to see Mummy and Daddy, didn’t you?’
She gave a tiny nod before burying her face in my tummy. Over the next few minutes her breathing grew louder and louder. It sounded as if she’d been running, even though she had hardly moved. After a moment I realised that she was hyperventilating and my stomach pitched and rolled with the expectation of what she might be building up to.
‘If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell anyone?’
I clenched my jaw, knowing my answer might scare her into silence. It was tempting to tell her a white lie, just to get her talking, but I knew that in the long run it would have ruined the trust between us.
‘I’m sorry, honey, I can’t do that – I might have to tell Lenke. But I do promise to keep you safe, whatever you tell me.’ At that moment I cursed her social worker for being a virtual stranger to her, certainly not someone who had inspired her with confidence. All of the muscles in my body tensed as I willed her to talk to me.
‘I don’t like it when he hurts me,’ she said eventually, gasping with the effort of releasing the words.
I felt a renewed thrashing sensation in my tu
mmy but breathed it away, trying to impersonate someone calm and professional. ‘Who hurts you?’ I asked tentatively, knowing how careful I had to be. If she were capable of expressing exactly what she had been through, enough for a criminal investigation to be launched, any conversation I had with her would count for nothing if it were believed that I had taken the lead in any way. As foster carers we were only supposed to listen and record disclosures. Questioning a child in any detail was forbidden and only carried out by experienced Child Protection Officers.
She sat up, her expression haunted. ‘The man – I hear the man coming up the stairs and then the noise starts.’
‘What man? What noise?’
She crawled away then, as if physically trying to escape from the conversation. Crouching in the corner of the swing, she covered her face with her hands. Clearly she wasn’t ready to reveal her tormentor, but already I assumed it was her father. An image of Robin Steadman came to mind, the embodiment of success with his expensive watches and immaculately pressed suits. It was difficult to marry his cool composure with the greasy, ragged picture I had always conjured of child abusers.
I waited to see if she would say any more but after a moment I realised she wasn’t going to. She was crying softly into her hands, her shoulders trembling as the sobs grew harder. Reaching out, I bridged the gulf between us by gently touching her shoulder. It was a gesture I hoped would convey solidarity as well as comfort.
‘How did he hurt you?’ I asked as the sobs subsided into little hiccups. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out some tissues and handed them to her. Palming them flat in both hands, she covered her face and breathed, slower now, into the tissues.