by Casey Watson
‘God,’ Sarah retorted, really shocking me. I had expected concern, yes, but not to be snapped at. But she was certainly snapping now. ‘You just don’t give up, do you?’ She exhaled angrily. ‘Look, she’s always been a quiet child, okay? She’s never much done friends. And believe me, I’m well aware of the part I’ve played in that. Well aware. So I don’t need it rubbing in. But when are you people going to give this up? I’ve told you, there isn’t anyone. Why d’you think I’m in this shitty bloody position?’
I blinked at the swearing. It was so sudden. And so vehement. ‘I’m sorry, I –’
‘There is no one,’ she snapped over me. ‘No parents, no grandparents, no knight in shining armour. What part of no one do you lot not understand? God. All I get is bloody social workers interrogating me!’
I didn’t know what to say. I was still open-mouthed by her outburst. So I said nothing. And in the silence she seemed to gather herself a little. Perhaps most of this was what she’d wanted to say to Bridget – or whoever her own social worker was. Had she even been appointed one yet? ‘Look,’ she said, less stridently, perhaps seeing how shocked I looked, ‘please can’t you see this from my position? I’m laid up here, in agony half the time, and I’m constantly stressed about my baby. As I’m sure you would be in my shoes –’
‘Of course I would.’
‘Exactly. So you know …’ Her voice was cracking now, her chin wobbling. ‘I really can’t be dealing with being told she’s bloody unravelling, okay? You’re the expert. You’re the one who’s supposed to be taking care of her, but now all I’m hearing is … God …’ She leaned across to try and pluck a tissue from her bedside cabinet. But she couldn’t reach it. So I grabbed the box and held it out to her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, snatching one out and quickly scouring her face with it. ‘God, Sarah, get yourself together here, will you?’ She looked up at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I didn’t mean to snap at you. I know it’s not really your fault. It’s just that I am so sick of –’
She glanced past me then. We could both hear the squeak of Abby’s trainers returning.
‘I’m sorry, too,’ I said. ‘And look, well, I’m on top of things, okay?’
Sarah noisily blew her nose. ‘Ah!’ she said to Abby, who had indeed returned now. ‘Honestly!’ she said, screwing the tissue into her palm. ‘You come into hospital, and what do you get? A streaming flipping cold! Runny nose, runny eyes … Come on up, poppet.’ She patted the covers. ‘Let’s see what you’ve brought to read to me, eh?’
I left them to it, but not before meeting Sarah’s eye again. And feeling a profound sense of unease.
Chapter 14
‘Well, well, well, Abby, it sounds like you’ve been a busy lady this week, then! I wish I’d come on Friday now, so I could see the finished masterpieces in all their glory!’
It was the following Thursday afternoon, and Abby was just home from school. An hour and a half earlier, Bridget had finally come for her visit, looking as brisk and efficient and on top of things as she had the last time, though with little more in her file that was useful. Her only news had been the news I’d half expected anyway – that they had drawn a blank where finding any family members was concerned, and that, given the current situation with Sarah’s condition, a new permanent foster family were actively being sought. ‘After all,’ she’d commented, ‘you and Mike are far too valuable a resource to be tied up for too long with a placement such as this one, who we should be able to slot into the mainstream so easily. We have two children right now who are in desperate need of places with experienced behaviour specialists.’ She’d frowned then. ‘You know how it is. We’re all so stretched.’
I’d not made it obvious, but I’d really taken issue with that. To Bridget, it seemed, Mike and I were a ‘resource’, and Abby wasn’t a desperate little girl. She was a ‘placement’, who could easily be ‘slotted into the mainstream’. And I knew why, as well – because she was a quiet girl, and she had no ‘previous’ – not in terms of bad behaviour, or a history of failed placements. So, like the cutest-looking puppy in the dogs’ home shop window, she should be snapped up in a moment. Job done.
It wasn’t fair of me – I knew that. Bridget didn’t mean it like that; she was just talking in professional jargon out of habit. But still it rankled, because it brought it home to me how easy it was for any of us to look at the packaging – in this case, a sweet, well-behaved, biddable girl – and underestimate the damage that was going on inside. And to be fair to Bridget, once I’d spent half an hour expressing the depth of my concern about Abby’s OCD-like behaviour, she did have a bit of a perspective shift, and promised that before any placement was identified there would of course be a LAC review, which would be scheduled as a priority. The acronym LAC stood for ‘looked after child’, and it would be a review at which all Abby’s needs would be discussed and any specialist requirements flagged up, including an urgent recommendation that she see her local GP. After that, as was usual, the request for suitable carers would go to panel. This was the professional body that matched potential carers with particular children. She assured me that everything possible would be done to ensure that Abby got exactly what she needed. I was grateful to know that was happening, of course, even if it felt as if it sealed her new fate – that her mother and she were to be parted. ‘I still find it incredible,’ I admitted, ‘that Sarah has no friends to call on at a time like this, though. How do you get to be so isolated?’
Bridget had an immediate answer to that. ‘By having to keep your circumstances quiet over a very long period.’
‘Yes, but that completely? What about old friends? I don’t know – from her antenatal group or something? And neighbours – where are they? Can people really cut themselves off so much? But she was adamant. Absolutely adamant, when I asked her at the weekend.’
Bridget’s ears seemed to prick up when I said this. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I bet she’ll have loved that. She’s already sick of us lot badgering her, that’s been pretty clear.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said, wincing at the memory, which still bothered me. ‘I think I got both barrels.’
‘But I can’t say I’m surprised,’ Bridget said, her tone subtly different now. She slid a bookmark into her journal. She’d made plenty of notes, at least. Now all she had to do was act on them. And if not, I’d take Abby to my own flipping GP. ‘You know, Casey,’ she went on, placing her pen on the dining table, ‘don’t take offence or anything, but you know you really don’t want to be getting involved in Sarah’s family circumstances. She’s already made it clear to us how the land lies in that respect, as you know.’
I felt myself begin to bridle. ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘And I wasn’t interrogating her on her family tree, Bridget, simply asking her if there was friend who could support Abby, that’s all.’
‘Yes, I do know,’ she said, not quite meeting my eye. ‘But there are some things that, well … are really for us to deal with. You have enough on your plate –’ Now she did meet my eye, and smiled at me. ‘Looking after little Abby. Doing your own job …’
The rest was something of a blur, I was so angry. Where had that come from? Christ, was it my week for being got at, or what?
Then Abby’s taxi home from school pulled up, a life-saving ten minutes later. I actually thought it was silly, that she was still being taken there and back by cab. Yes, it was a long drive for me, but what a lonely business that must be for her, and I didn’t understand why it was necessary. Something I should bring up, though perhaps not today. But I couldn’t have been happier to see it at that moment, for sure.
And now all three of us were in the kitchen, having a cup of tea and some biscuits, and Abby (having washed her hands twice already – which I drew attention to, and Bridget duly noted) was showing Bridget all the cup-cake designs that, in theory, were going to be a reality by this time tomorrow.
And beautiful they all would be as well, we all agreed,
but I was counting the minutes till I could see Bridget out. How dare she speak to me like that? How dare she!
‘Can you believe it?’ I ranted at Mike as soon as he got home from work. I’d been so cross that, once we’d finished making several batches of coloured icing, ready for finishing off with Abby tomorrow, I embarked on a full-on clean-up in the kitchen. Much as I understood that Abby’s passion for cleaning was a bad thing, for me it was the best way I knew to relieve stress: stuff the cupcakeathon, what I needed was a good, full-on scrubathon, and, despite it being the opposite of what Dr Shackleton had suggested, today I let her don her marigolds and scrub along with me.
‘Calm down, love,’ Mike said, as he changed out of his work gear. I’d left Abby in the kitchen zapping the skirting boards with my germ spray, and had followed him straight upstairs. ‘She’s just being officious – you’ve got to admit, she always did look officious – and you know what social services are like with all their who-must-do-what stuff. Take no notice.’
‘I was being warned off, is what was happening there,’ I persisted. ‘The cheek of it! Like it’s such a terrible thing to ask someone a perfectly reasonable question! Just what’s so bad about having a conversation about how best a mother might help her own flipping child?!’
‘But it’s not about what you asked her. It’s the fact that you asked her. And … I don’t know … maybe they know something about her that you don’t. Maybe she’s already told them to back off – sounds like she might well have done that, doesn’t it? And now Bridget’s worried they’ll get it in the neck all over again. Or that relations will break down, and things will get even more difficult. Who knows?’
I had to concede that Mike was right. He invariably was. And I knew I sometimes got my knickers in a twist about being on the periphery of all the important decisions, despite being the one who was closest to the child. It had happened to me before, and I knew – when I was thinking rationally, at least – that it was just the nature of the job of fostering. Yes, I was closest to the child, but the child was in the care of social services and there were sound reasons why, charged with responsibility for that child’s welfare, it was social services that had to make sure all the paperwork was correct. After all, social services were where the buck stopped.
When I came back downstairs to start on tea, Abby was on her hands and knees in the kitchen, scrubbing away at the place where the wall met the floor, using what looked like a toothbrush. She looked up as I came in.
‘Oh,’ she said, waving it at me. I’d been right. It was a toothbrush. ‘I hope this is all right. I found it in your box under the sink, so I thought it must be your brush for getting into all the little corners.’
I had never actually scrubbed out a little corner with a toothbrush – even my cleaning mania didn’t extend that far. It was actually what I used to scrub the mildew out of the detergent dispenser in the washing machine, but even as I thought it I didn’t bother correcting her. Perhaps there was little to choose between the two things anyway.
‘That’s fine,’ I said, ‘but, come on, enough for one day, Cinderella. Time to get ourselves straight and get the tea show on the road, eh?’
She stood up then, and went over to the sink to rinse the toothbrush. She had a peaceful look about her. What a complicated child she was. ‘Are you looking forward to Saturday?’ I asked her as I cleared the worktop. ‘I know my sister’s looking forward to meeting you. And you know my niece, Chloe, will be there. She’s fourteen. You’ll like her. She’s a big Glee fan as well.’
‘I can’t wait,’ Abby answered. And I was pretty sure she meant it.
Attachment theory is one of those subjects that can be really, really interesting, or really, really dull, depending on whom it is who’s explaining it. Halfway into our introductory lecture, which was taking place in one of those out-of-the-way centres that local councils maintain just for the purpose, the fact that I was nodding off didn’t augur well for the remaining few hours.
Not that I wasn’t interested. Attachment theory – first described by the psychologist John Bowlby – was perhaps the single most common thread that ran through everything we did as foster carers. So many ills of the world could perhaps be attributed to little children not having been able to form a strong attachment to their mums (or, to use the parlance, ‘primary caregivers’).
Almost every child we cared for had had some sort of issue in this regard, so it was a useful – perhaps necessary – part of our continuing training that we understood how these essential human attachments worked.
This had obviously not been the case for Abby, however, and it was to her that my mind kept straying. Though with the distraction of the ‘cupcakeathon’ she’d been reasonably okay this week, it was still pretty tough, because yet again it had been decided that with Sarah’s current treatment being so intense it would be best if they continued on just phone calls during the week nights, and a visit on the Sunday, as before. I had my own thoughts about that – were they stretching the gap between visits in order to start preparing her for what was to come? No one had said anything to me, but it felt that way. I was also still smarting at being ticked off by Bridget for overstepping the boundaries of ‘my position’ in wanting to try and do my best for Abby. And though I knew Mike was right in what he’d said about that, I still couldn’t help but feel huffy about it, which was making my mind stray a little.
I also couldn’t help thinking about what was going to become of her. All the previous kids we’d fostered had been in such a bad place when they’d come to us that whatever happened to them – and good outcomes were by no means guaranteed for them – we were at least working on the premise that, however things turned out for them, it was unlikely to be worse than where they’d come from. They’d come from hellish lives – lives of neglect, abuse and heartbreak – and we were a step on the road to them reclaiming their childhoods, nurtured and supported, if not by their own parents, then by people who really cared about what happened to them, in most cases, for the first time in their lives.
This was not true – and wouldn’t be true – of Abby. Yes, if they found a caring foster home, she perhaps would reclaim her childhood, and, all being well, her mother’s illness would be controlled sufficiently that she would have many years yet in which to be a positive influence in her daughter’s life. But however socially and morally unacceptable Abby’s lifestyle had been, it was Abby’s home and Abby’s life and she’d clearly always felt safe and loved there. There was no lack of attachment between mother and daughter, so to be wrenched apart permanently would break both their hearts. What hope for Abby’s mental demons then?
We were let out eventually, and, in the end, it had been quite interesting. Though by the time I arrived at my sister’s café I was dying for a cup of tea. What was it about sitting listening that made you feel so sluggish? And, come to think of it, so parched?
I’d not had a chance to stop by at Donna’s place since Abby had been with us, and was pleased to see how well my little sis was evidently doing. Mid-afternoon on an overcast March Saturday was always going to be a good bet for a café off a high street, but I could tell the place – still busy – had been buzzing all day. And our cupcake contribution had gone down a storm.
‘They’ve all gone!’ Abby said triumphantly as I got to her. She was stationed in the little room out the back of the café, counting out a big tub of coins with Chloe, and I made a mental note to check with Donna if she and her brother would be around to come along to Jackson and Abby’s rearranged birthday party. Kieron, meanwhile, was stationed at the state-of-the-art coffee machine they’d installed – and of which I approved unreservedly.
‘Come on,’ said Donna, as Kieron presented me with one of the café’s finest, ‘let’s leave the girls to it and go out front. There’s a table free in the window. You hungry?’
‘Famished,’ I told her. ‘I skipped the buffet to drive back here. Which was no hardship, believe me. Wall-to-wall flipping sausage r
olls and egg mayo sandwiches. Ugh. Took me straight back to when we were kids. So if you’ve got something nicer …’
‘You bet,’ she said. ‘So go grab the table, while I get us a couple of decent sandwiches. If I don’t sit down soon I shall fall down.’
It was always good to catch up with my sister. Even though there were four years between us, as youngsters we’d been inseparable. I’d really missed her when she’d been living across the water, on the Emerald Isle. ‘And what a sweetie Abby is,’ Donna said. ‘She’s a darling. Massive crush on your Kieron, of course – but that’s understandable, as he has the family good looks …’ This was a standing joke. We were all short. Kieron was six foot two. We were all dark – Donna and I black-haired – Kieron was blond. He was the spit of his father, end of. ‘Anyway,’ Donna went on, through a mouthful of sandwich, ‘she’s not what I was expecting, at all.’ I’d filled Donna in a little about Abby’s situation and her problems, and how she shouldn’t worry too much about her hand-washing and her tics. ‘She’s been a treasure, she has. Worked like a little Trojan all morning. Though we did give her a lunch break, you’ll be pleased to know – Riley and the kids came in with Mike and they took her off to McDonald’s.’ Donna laughed. ‘Seems she preferred that to the idea of one of our posh designer sandwiches.’
‘Which are exceedingly posh,’ I agreed, having now finished the first half of mine.
‘Hey, sis, what you expect? You’re in the posh part of town now. No plastic ham and marge round this manor!’
I could see Abby from where we were sitting, busy making little piles of coins with Chloe. 5ps and 2ps and 20ps, in neat stacks. And it took me back to when my own two were her age, and school fêtes, and how much fun they used to have when I was on the parent–teacher association, when they’d help on the stalls and with the displays and the setting up, and how we’d all sit round afterwards – teachers and parents and kids alike – doing exactly the same thing. It was an education itself, raising money for charity. I presumed Abby had no such sense of community in her school, because her mum had so little to do with it herself.