by Angela Hart
‘Are you all right?’ she asked in alarm.
‘Yes, no thanks to you!’ Danielle shouted. ‘I think you need to go and take your test again. You shouldn’t be on the road.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I intervened, firmly taking hold of Danielle’s arm and steering her away. ‘I think she’s probably in a little bit of shock. I’m really sorry about this. Are you all right?’
The lady managed a weak smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thankfully no harm has been done. I think you need to teach your daughter some road sense though. She might not be so lucky next time. It’s just as well I was going so slowly.’
When we got home Danielle tried on her new clothes and decided to stay in her favourite outfit, which was a blue skirt and cream-coloured top.
‘I love this,’ she said, giving a little twirl in the kitchen.
‘So do I! You look terrific, Danielle. I’m so pleased you got some things you like.’
‘Me too. Sorry if I was a bit annoying. I’m not used to shopping. Can I walk to the newsagent’s and get my magazine?’
I agreed that she could, and my heart swelled when I saw her striding confidently down the street. This was what I’d hoped for: I wanted Danielle to feel good about herself, and this certainly seemed the way to boost her confidence.
It was just before 4 p.m. when she set out, and when she hadn’t returned by 4.30 p.m. I started to wonder where she’d got to. The shop was less than ten minutes away, and she hadn’t said she was going anywhere other than straight there and back. Jonathan and I discussed whether he should walk down to the shop and look for her, but then we agreed to wait another ten minutes.
‘She was in such a good mood when she went out,’ I said. ‘I’d hate to spoil that.’
Jonathan agreed. ‘She’s probably just met one of her friends and got chatting.’
When Danielle hadn’t turned up by 4.40 p.m. I sensed something wasn’t right. She had left her phone behind so I had no way of contacting her. I dialled the home numbers I had for Shelby and Mina and she wasn’t there, though her friends were both out too. Shelby’s brother said he thought they might be up on the estate as his sister had said something about meeting her mates up there. I thanked him and hung up.
The estate is a large, sprawling conurbation of council houses on the outskirts of town. As housing estates go, it’s not the most pleasant and there are often undesirable characters hanging around. Jonathan said he’d drive up there and see if he could spot Danielle, and in the meantime I called Social Services to let them know she’d gone missing.
‘If she’s still missing at 9 p.m., call the police,’ the duty social worker advised.
‘OK. Thank you. Hopefully it won’t come to that.’
I made a note of the time of my call and then went through to the flower shop to help Barbara clear away our displays from outside the front.
‘Everything all right?’ Barbara asked.
She knew me very well and could tell something was on my mind. Also, it was fairly unusual for Jonathan not to help shut the shop up, as there’s a lot of lifting involved and pulling down of shutters.
‘Oh, the usual, Barbara,’ I said. ‘Kids!’
I never discussed any details of the children’s lives with Barbara and she understood this.
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ she said, giving me a look of admiration. ‘I’m glad mine are off my hands now.’
‘Barbara, if I had a pound for every time you’d said that to me over the years, I’d have made more money from you than from selling flowers!’
We both chuckled and got on with the job in hand. It was at moments like that when I was very glad to have the shop as a distraction. Just seeing the flowers and being surrounded by their scents never failed to lift my spirits, and it was great to have a loyal ally in Barbara. She truly helped make life easier for Jonathan and me. We could always rely on her to help out when we needed her, even at short notice, and she always had a kind word to say to brighten your day.
Jonathan drove around every street on the estate and saw no sign of Danielle. Then he scoured the town, checking the newsagent’s and even going past Pippa’s house in case the girls were up to their old tricks. At 6.30 p.m. he went back to the estate and drove around all over again. It was 7 p.m. when he finally spotted Danielle, smoking at a bus stop with Shelby, Mina and a group of boys. As soon as she spotted our car, Danielle quickly passed her cigarette to Shelby, who took it despite already having a cigarette in her other hand.
‘I’ve come to take you home,’ Jonathan said, after parking up and winding down the window.
He said nothing about the smoking, but Danielle obviously thought she had to try to defend herself nonetheless.
‘Shelby! What are you doing smoking two cigarettes!’ she said, completely unconvincingly. ‘Are you crazy?’
Shelby looked nonplussed and the boys sniggered. Jonathan rolled his eyes. It was a comical situation in hindsight, but at the time he didn’t see the funny side.
‘Please get in the car, Danielle. Can I offer you a lift home, Shelby?’
‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk.’
Danielle huffed and puffed as she got in the back of the car, pulling a face at Jonathan and looking at her friends as if to say: ‘What a loser this guy is!’
It’s a Social Services rule that foster children must sit in the back of the car when travelling with only one adult, for safeguarding reasons. It reduces the risk of the child making a malicious allegation or of simply distracting the driver. We don’t always feel it is strictly necessary with every child in our care, but we always stick to the rule, and on this occasion Jonathan was glad to have some physical distance between himself and Danielle. She was in such a negative and manipulative mood, and when she was like that it was very wise to be on your guard.
Jonathan stayed calm on the short journey home and asked Danielle why she had gone missing like that, without letting us know.
‘I don’t know. No idea,’ she said, deadpan. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Angela and I were both worried. If you’d been gone any longer we’d have had to think about calling the police.’
‘So? What are they going to do? Arrest me for meeting my friends?’
‘Danielle, there’s no need for this attitude. You said you were going to buy a magazine and you’ve been gone for nearly three hours. If you’d have asked us if you could meet your friends we probably would have allowed it, so why cause all this unnecessary worry?’
‘It’s your job to worry about kids like me.’
Jonathan had no answer to that; he felt completely exasperated.
‘You’ve missed your dinner too, which wasn’t a thoughtful thing to do, was it? Angela made a pasta bake, enough for all of us, as we expected you to be at home for dinner. Have you eaten?’
‘No.’
‘OK. There’s plenty left and you can have it when we get in. Thank goodness you’re safe.’
‘Do you know what, Jonathan? Anyone would think you were trying to get a part in EastEnders, the way you carry on. This is such a huge drama out of nothing. I don’t know, I really don’t.’
‘What if something happened to you and we had no idea where you were?’ he said.
‘What if nothing happened to me and you had no idea where I was?’
‘Look, the point is we need to know where you are. You don’t have to stay in the house all the time. There is no need to sneak off. We’re happy to let you go out with your friends, but we do need to know where you are.’
When they got home I reiterated what Jonathan had said, staying calm and explaining to Danielle why it was important we knew where she was and what she was doing.
‘My God, you two don’t half nag all the time. You don’t have to repeat what HE said, Angela. I’m not stupid! And I know you don’t really care. You’re just scared Social Services will stop your money. I know what’s really going on!’
I bit my tongue and sw
allowed my irritation.
‘No. We want you to be safe, and we care about you very much.’
Danielle wolfed the pasta bake down at breakneck speed and went up to her room.
‘It really does seem that when things are going well, she tries to spoil everything,’ Jonathan said, looking forlorn.
‘I know. I thought how great she looked when she went out earlier. It’s like she’s deliberately sabotaged the day; like she pressed the self-destruct button.’
At that moment I heard a retching sound. Jonathan and I both dashed out of the kitchen and into the hallway, just in time to see Danielle throw up, all down the stairs.
‘Oh no, you poor love!’ I cried.
‘Sorry,’ she stuttered, her face a chalky white. ‘So sorry.’
She retched once more and was sick again. The vomit was splattered on just about every stair and splashed up the wooden banisters. ‘Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. Oh dear, what a shame. Come on, let’s get you to the bathroom.’
I helped Danielle wash her face and encouraged her to clean her teeth while Jonathan fetched a glass of water.
‘What have you eaten?’
‘Pasta bake.’
‘Anything else, while you were out?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘Well, you need to try. Let’s have a think back.’
I listed what I knew she’d eaten that day: a bowl of cereal, a piece of flapjack as a snack at the shopping centre, followed by a jacket potato with tuna and sweetcorn for lunch.
‘I went to the kebab shop before, with Shelby.’
‘Before Jonathan collected you from the estate?’
‘Yes. We went to the new one, by the bookies.’
And what did you have?’
‘A kebab, of course.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Chips. Coke. Oh, and then a packet of Monster Munch. And I finished off Shelby’s food, as she was stuffed.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d already eaten all that when I gave you the pasta bake?’
‘I thought you’d go mad and I thought I could eat it. I still had room.’
‘Danielle, there is no way I’d have wanted you to eat a meal on top of everything you had when you were out. You should have told me.’
‘Sorry. I’m not telepathic like you and Jonathan, you know.’
The following day Danielle had a session with her psychologist.
‘Today I’m going to tell her about being raped!’ she announced loudly over breakfast. She was tucking heartily into a large bowl of cereal and appeared to have made a full recovery from the night before.
‘I see,’ I said, carrying on drying the dishes, even though I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Her tone was completely at odds with the content of her shocking statement; she sounded practically upbeat, as if she was going to tell the therapist about a successful day trip or some other triumph. ‘You’ve decided you’re going to tell her, your psychologist, about being raped?’
‘Yes. I’d better tell you first though, I suppose.’
‘You can tell me anything you like, Danielle. You know you can always talk to me.’
She began drumming her fingers on the side of her steaming mug of tea.
‘It’s like this,’ she said thoughtfully.
I braced myself, as I was fully expecting Danielle to talk about what had happened in her childhood.
‘The reason I didn’t come home straight from the newsagent’s yesterday afternoon was because a man raped me.’
‘Danielle . . . you were raped by a man, when you went to buy your magazine, yesterday?’
‘Yes. I thought I’d get into even more trouble if I told you last night, that’s why I said nothing. I thought you might think it was my fault. I was worried about what to do, and that’s why I went to find my friends, you see. But what happened was—’ She stopped in mid-sentence and took a glug of her hot tea. ‘Urgh! Can I have the sugar?’
‘Yes, here you are.’
‘Anyway, what happened was, he grabbed me when I walked past the alley by the newsagent’s, and he dragged me behind some bins. Nobody saw. There was nobody around. I was on my own. I thought you better know, before I tell the psychologist. Are you glad I told you, Angela? Are you?’
‘He grabbed you, when you walked past the alley by the newsagent’s?’
‘Yes. He looked like . . .’ She screwed up her face and thought very carefully. The description she came out with matched that of a vagrant who was well known in the town.
‘Did you tell anyone at all? Your friends? Anyone else?’
‘No, I just ran off and found Shelby, because I knew she’d be up on the estate. I knew she was meeting the boys.’
Danielle’s words just didn’t ring true. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, but I really wasn’t sure I believed her. It was just a gut feeling I had: something wasn’t right about this. If she’d been raped, surely she would have been in a terrible state, not in the mood to stand at a bus stop, smoking with her friends? But then again, I knew that traumatised children like Danielle were so used to switching off their emotions, it became second nature. Maybe because of what happened to her as a child, she was able to pull the emotional shutters down even on an event as dreadful and disturbing as a rape?
I asked several more questions, being careful to stick to what Danielle had already said and not put words in her mouth or lead her to say anything she didn’t mean.
‘Will you need to call Social Services?’
‘Yes. And the police will need to be informed.’
As soon as I said this Danielle started to clam up. I wasn’t sure if it was because she wasn’t telling the truth or because of her past experiences. I told myself to be very careful not to let Danielle see I had any doubts. I needed to show her I was on her side, and was there to help her.
‘You mustn’t worry about Social Services or the police. They are there to help you, just as I am. I’ll help you with this, Danielle.’
‘I want to talk to my psychologist,’ she said, sounding robotic. ‘I can’t talk any more to you. Can we just leave it?’
She went upstairs to brush her teeth, walking like a zombie as she did so. My brain was working ten to the dozen as I tried to process everything Danielle had said and work out how best to take things from here. I wanted to call Social Services and the police immediately, as they would need to interview her as soon as possible and gather any evidence they could.
Danielle reappeared minutes later, and as she came down the stairs and reached the hallway the support worker who was taking her to her session with the psychologist was already knocking at the front door.
‘See you later, Angela,’ Danielle said flatly, opening the door. ‘Sorry for all the hassle. Just forget what I said. I bet you wish I’d never darkened your doorstep.’
‘Don’t say that, Danielle! That’s not true at all. Are you sure you feel up to your session today?’
I was stalling for time, knowing I couldn’t just let her go without talking to the support worker at least.
‘Yes, I want to go. I’ll be fine afterwards. It will all go away. She told me it will be fine.’
I wanted to ask who ‘she’ was but there was no time. I thought perhaps she meant the psychologist and was just a bit muddled, but I wasn’t sure.
Danielle had already put her shoes on and stepped out of the house. I let her walk to the car, and as she did so I asked the support worker if I could have a word.
‘Of course. What is it?’
‘Danielle has just made a very serious allegation,’ I said, quickly explaining what she had described. ‘She clearly wants to go to her session today, but I want to put in a phone call to the office and discuss this before you take her.’
‘That’s very wise. I’ll wait in the car with her, shall I? I’ve got a new CD. I’ll distract her with that.’
‘Perfect. Thanks. Hopefully this won’t take long.’
I calle
d Social Services and was put through to a senior social worker straight away. He told me he would take things from here and that I should let Danielle go to her session with the psychologist. My job was to pass on the facts as I’d been told them; I’d learned that lesson very early on in my fostering career. All you can do as a foster carer is report what you have seen or heard. It’s not our role to express opinions or speculate; we can only deal in facts and it’s up to other professionals to carry out the relevant investigations.
I was relieved Danielle was going to see the psychologist. It seemed like good timing and I felt the therapy session could be very helpful indeed, whether Danielle was telling the truth or not.
Jonathan had been out at the wholesaler’s that morning and when he returned later on and I filled him in with what had happened, he had a similar reaction to mine. He was shocked and saddened but his instincts told him he was not entirely sure Danielle was being truthful. Jonathan commented that her description of being dragged into an alley seemed a little clichéd, and he said it was odd that she’d gone to eat a kebab and so on afterwards.
‘Also, that description she’s given. That’s the homeless guy who’s normally at the coach station, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought, straight away. He fits the description perfectly, and he always wears that distinctive coat she has described.’
‘Well, as it happens I saw him when I was driving around looking for Danielle. He was at the coach station, in his normal spot. I noticed him because he had a plaster cast on his foot and I wondered what he’d done. What time did Danielle say this happened?’
‘She didn’t, but I assume she meant when she first went to the shop, which was around 4 p.m., wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. Well, I suppose it was a good hour later when I saw him up at the coach station. Plus she was sick when she got home . . . Oh my God, I don’t know what to think or believe.’ Jonathan stopped talking and sighed.
‘Look, it’s not our job to make a judgement on this, is it? All we can do is support Danielle and do what we have to do.’
‘Quite, but I hope to goodness it isn’t true. It doesn’t bear thinking about, after all she’s been through.’