by Casey Watson
‘And now she knows it’s unacceptable, perhaps that will be the end of it,’ I soothed.
Perhaps. After all, she was only a little girl.
Chapter 6
John Fulshaw was sympathetic when I called him the following morning, obviously. But he was also anxious to confirm that we’d keep Darby for a bit longer, which I assured him we would, because Riley’s unexpected words had hit home. She was right. We couldn’t abandon Darby. Not at Christmas. Not at all, perhaps. Not once she’d settled in.
About which I was beginning to feel very ambivalent. ‘So we’ll be keeping a very close eye on her,’ I told John. ‘And, if you’ve no objections, I’ll have my whole our bodies are private chat with her. She’s old enough to hear it. Though whether it sinks in or not is another thing.’
‘A good idea,’ John agreed. ‘Because I’m certainly not going to be able to get anything organised with CAMHS before Christmas. Flying pigs being pretty thin on the ground right now.’
CAMHS stood for the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. Usually, with foster children, anything that constituted counselling was dealt with by them. Which was the best way – we provided care, and a safe place and routine; matters of emotional health, when it came to the big, complicated things, were best left to those who’d been trained to give such help. ‘And I’ll stop by tomorrow, if you’re around,’ he said, ‘because some other things have come to light now, and I’d like to put you properly in the picture.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said, ‘that sounds ominous. Is it more bad news?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ he said.
Visit arranged, I hung up, took a deep breath and joined Mike and Darby in the living room. No visit from Riley today, but Mike being home was a blessing. Though I was only too happy for Tyler to be off round at his friend Denver’s, because the events of the previous day had made me doubly cautious about him acting as any kind of child-minder either.
Mike was helping Darby do a jigsaw on the coffee table. And the peaceful domestic scene was so at odds with the reality that it sunk me into an uncharacteristic gloom. Darby was beautiful to look at. And clearly a sweet, polite girl. It made me feel sick to know that she had been exploited by the very people who were meant to protect her, and I realised that her exquisite features probably added to the allure that attracted sick paedophiles to seek her out.
‘You okay, sweetie?’ I asked as I knelt down at the table to help. ‘Oh, The Little Mermaid. This is my absolute favourite jigsaw.’
‘I love The Little Mermaid,’ she said, inspecting a piece she’d just picked up. ‘I’m a little mermaid sometimes, too.’
I braced myself. ‘Are you?’
‘Yes, sometimes, at bath time. We don’t have bubbles, though.’ She looked up at me. ‘It’s all right if you both want to bath me. I don’t mind.’
I was going to grab a puzzle piece, but I stopped mid-reach. Mike was growing pale again. He looked horrified. ‘No, no,’ I quickly answered. ‘It will be just me who baths you, Darby. And as you’re such a big girl now, I think you’re probably big enough to wash yourself. I’ll just help you with your hair. How about that?’
Darby shrugged. Then she looked at Mike. ‘You can still watch, though. If you want to.’
‘No, darling,’ I said quickly. ‘Mike definitely doesn’t want to watch.’ This was probably as good a time as any, and Mike was clearly lost for words. ‘Darby, you know your body is a very private thing. Do you understand that? Do you know what “private” means?’
‘Course I do,’ she said, discarding the piece in her hand in favour of another.
‘Good,’ I said, ‘so you’ll understand that when something like your body is private, only you get to choose who sees it. D’you understand that? And you should never have to feel uncomfortable about it. Do you understand that too?’
She nodded, but I could see that her attention was all on the jigsaw. And even had it not been, this conversation – which, in theory, should be so straightforward – was very difficult. How could I tell a child that she shouldn’t allow strangers to see her naked, when I was a stranger myself? Yet here I was, calmly telling her that I’d be bathing her later.
It was all wrong. At her age, I should have been able to explain that it was safe for her mummy and daddy to see her body, but, of course, in this case, I couldn’t even do that. Which was why issues around child abuse and grooming were all so fraught in such young children. Bar the usual sanctions about hitting – lashing out and being lashed out upon – they’d yet to have the first inkling that certain types of non-hostile touching were also wrong.
She had no such anxieties, which made it all doubly depressing.
‘It’s okay,’ Darby said. ‘A body’s just skin and bones. Nothing to worry about.’ She attempted to fit the piece into the jigsaw in the wrong place. I looked helplessly at Mike. What a peculiar thing to say. She’d obviously been told it often. Skin and bones. Nothing to worry about. It was sick.
But for Darby herself it was all completely normal. And that was the sickest thing of all.
Darby was still running around in her pyjamas when John was due to arrive the next day – the pyjamas we’d bought for her and which she’d whooped in delight about, and which she was only too happy to allow me to change her into after she’d had her bath and I’d washed her hair. She was an affectionate little thing, but I keenly felt the abuse she’d suffered. And Mike, usually so physical with the little ones we fostered – the king of tickles and bear hugs – was at constant pains to avoid being physically close to her.
And I completely understood that. In fact, when he had offered to take her to the park with him and Tyler while John visited – at Ty’s suggestion; he would be playing a game of five-a-side football – it was me who had vetoed the idea. Awful as it sounds, I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. Should such a vulnerable child be alone with a male adult? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to risk it. I had heard of such things before and knew that, as a precaution against any allegations, it was always better to have two adults around at all times. Instead, we decided that when John got here I would take him through to the conservatory, and Mike and Darby could make a game of preparing lunch.
She was full of beans, too, having obviously – though she never actually voiced it – come to see her little stay as something of a holiday. That worried me as well. I’d have expected her to display more of her initial behaviours, and to keep remembering she missed her mum and dad. But she didn’t. Which meant potential attachment issues were a possibility in the mix. And that didn’t bode well at all.
‘Catch me, Casey!’ she yelled as she leapt through the air from the sofa. I held out my arms and almost got knocked over for my trouble. ‘Wow,’ I said as I placed her down, ‘either I’m getting too old for this or you are actually much, much bigger than six!’
She squealed with delight. As with any little girl, age was very, very important to her. ‘I am six!’ she insisted, giggling. ‘Look,’ she said, lifting her pyjama top right up to her chin. ‘See! I don’t even got no boobies – only nipples yet!’
I gently tugged the top down. ‘Darby, love, remember what I said? Your body is private, and you shouldn’t show it off.’
She looked crestfallen – as if upset that she’d done something terribly naughty. But any further exploration of the subject would have to wait, as the knocker went and I heard Mike welcoming John.
Which was good, because at least now I’d have a little more to go on. Though what that might comprise was anyone’s guess.
‘I’ll get straight to it,’ John said after we were settled in the conservatory. ‘And it’s not good, so fair warning, Casey. They found hundreds of images online during the investigation – pictures and videos, even evidence of a pay-per-view operation. And just as many physical photographs were found hidden in the house. All depicting children – including Darby, obviously. And all very definitely being –’ He paused and shook his head, as if t
o try to shake off the pictures. ‘Well, you know the drill. Being exploited and abused.’
‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘So it wasn’t just her parents then? This was part of a bigger picture?’
John nodded. ‘Your regular common-or-garden paedophile ring, I’m afraid. The father’s still denying everything – though what good he thinks that’ll do him, I don’t know, given the evidence. Not to mention the fact that the mother’s admitted everything and is fully co-operating with the police.’
I felt a glimmer of hope. ‘What’s she said?’
‘The usual. That her husband is some kind of monster. That he is violent and controlling and that she was in fear for her life. That she was too afraid of him – and his cronies – to do anything other than exactly what he told her. Says he brainwashed her into doing everything he said.’
Shades of Rosemary West? Myra Hindley? And there were countless cases documented where women apparently ‘stood by’ and let their men abuse their children, because they were convinced that, if they didn’t, the children would come off even worse. Could this be one such case?
I shook my head, even so, because it still stuck in my throat. I understood the notion of a man controlling a woman in that way – we’d even had lectures about it during training – but even so, my instinct was still strong: how could a mother let such disgusting things happen to her child? Wouldn’t a mother do anything to protect her child from harm? Why hadn’t she taken Darby and run away? ‘I’m sorry John,’ I said. ‘But she must take some responsibility for this. It was her own daughter, for God’s sake.’
‘Oh yes,’ John agreed, and surprisingly quickly. ‘And trust me, she is most definitely taking responsibility. Through the courts. She has admitted her part, in detail –’
‘Good. Well, not so much good, as good for justice.’
He raised a hand. ‘And she’s been honest. Says she’s more than happy to be sent to prison –’
‘Really?’
He smiled grimly. ‘Oh, yes. Champing at the bit to be banged up, by all accounts. Apparently, she’s happy to do anything that will help her get away from him.’
His words began to sink in. So it was really that bad, then. ‘But what about Darby?’ I asked. ‘What has she said about Darby?’
‘That – and I quote – she is now in the best place.’
‘But doesn’t she care?’ Silly question. Given what we already knew.
‘Apparently not. As far as her mother is concerned, Darby seems to be dispensable. She’s expressed no interest in seeing her again. Indeed, thinks it probably best that she doesn’t.’
‘But she’s her daughter!’ I was aghast. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. So this vile woman had simply held her hands up and said, ‘Fine, you got me, now take me away, I want to forget all about it’? But almost as soon as I bridled I remembered that, in all likelihood, you’d go back into Darby’s mother’s history and find a whole host of abuses had been visited on her too. Men like Darby’s father chose their partners very carefully. And evil was invariably not born but made.
I looked out to the fairy lights Mike had wound through one of the bushes in the garden. And which one of us had, that morning, forgotten to switch off. In the daylight, the light coming from them was barely visible. But it was still shining, reminding me of the one thing we could do. Give Darby Christmas – a little light, a little respite from the darkness, by which to see her way into some sort of future.
Chapter 7
‘Morning, love,’ Mike whispered as he shook me awake. ‘Merry Christmas.’
I smelt coffee. Smelt pine. Realised what day it was. ‘6 a.m.,’ he added, obviously anticipating my first question. ‘I knew you’d want to be up early to make a start.’
He was right. Christmas Day in our house was the most hectic of the entire year and, because I was a control freak and found it hard to delegate domestically, I always had a ton of things to do. Which was not to say I minded. The day would surely come when I had to hand the reins over. When, as with my own parents, I’d be poured a sherry and told to put my feet up. And I didn’t want that happening anytime soon.
First up, I had to play Santa Claus. I had carefully wrapped up all of Darby’s presents the night before, as she slept, and then hidden them out of sight just in case she got up during the night. Like all children of her age, she needed to believe that Santa’s helpers or, ideally, the great man himself, had delivered the gifts and placed them underneath the tree in the wee small hours.
‘What, no eggnog?’ I joked to Mike as I picked up my coffee. ‘I’ll just drink this, then, and we can then take Darby’s pressies downstairs.’
Mike shook his head. ‘No need. All done,’ he said. ‘All nicely stacked beneath the tree. And I’ve even peeled a huge pan of sprouts for you.’
Sprouts were my least favourite vegetable and my least favourite chore. Well, bar the chore of eating six of them as part of my Christmas dinner, which bizarre ritual dated back to when Riley and Kieron were little. On this one day, I had this thing that if I didn’t down a few of them, I’d no business making them either.
I grinned at my husband. ‘Okay, spill. What are you after?’
He looked pained. ‘Absolutely nothing! I did it for love. Well, and as a down payment on a leave pass for the football tomorrow afternoon. But mostly for love,’ he added quickly.
And I believed him, because we both knew it would be a particularly busy day. My parents were joining us for dinner, as were Riley, David and the kids, and Kieron, Lauren and their new baby Dee Dee.
And, of course, Darby, who had been much on my mind since John’s visit. She’d been absolutely no trouble in the intervening forty-eight hours or so, but neither had she shown very much interest in the coming revels, and I wondered about her family Christmases past. This, too, I understood, because we’d fostered all sorts of children and, difficult as it had been for me to believe it before we became foster parents, there were children for whom it really had little meaning, hard though it was to avoid.
These were kids who really did live on the edges of society. Children who were kept out of school, who had no televisions, who were part of no normal community. Children who had nothing, and no expectation of ever getting anything either; no presents, no parties, no fun. Children whose parents were so poor they actively avoided anything to do with Christmas, and children who’d been so badly abused, scarred and neglected that they didn’t really know what it was to be happy. I had a feeling Darby fitted into the latter category.
Which was why it mattered so much that we gave her a Christmas she could revisit as a happy time in her memory in years to come. And hopefully to an extent that it went some way to softening the memory of being taken away from all she knew.
Because the developments with her mother had brought it home to me that she was done with her former life now. That, although she didn’t know it, she’d in all likelihood never see either parent again. A clean break. Which, given she was still so young, was probably best. ‘Should I go wake her now?’ I asked Mike for the tenth time in as many minutes, having finished the bacon and eggs we’d prepared to set us up for the day.
He checked the time: 7 a.m. And, at long last, relented, even if it was while bearing his ‘you’re a fifty-year-old woman, for heavens’ sake’ expression. ‘Go on then,’ he said. And I was straight out of the blocks.
As Mike had already predicted, Darby was still half asleep – there was clearly no 4 a.m. badgering of parents in her repertoire. I shook her gently awake and she started, her eyes struggling to focus. ‘Father Christmas?’ she asked then, sitting upright, and presumably remembering the carrots, mince pie and sherry that we’d put out for Santa and his reindeer before she went to bed. ‘Has he left me stuff?’
‘He most certainly has,’ I said, pulling back the covers for her.
‘But Casey,’ she said as she slid her warm little body out of bed, ‘I was thinking last night. How did he find me?’
‘I sen
t him a letter, of course,’ I said. ‘That’s what we always do when we have children staying at Christmas.’
‘To the North Pole?’
‘Of course! Here, pop your dressing gown on. No need to get dressed yet, because it’s Christmas!’
Darby pushed her arms into the sleeves of the fluffy pink dressing gown I’d found for her in my just-in-case box, and, bleary-eyed, tied the belt with clumsy fingers. I wasn’t sure she was even half as excited as I was, but if I had one aim today it was to instil in her an understanding that family life could be all about laughter and love.
And presents, which, on seeing them, did elicit a response. One of disbelief. ‘Did Santa send all these for me?’
I was only too happy to answer in the affirmative, and was then able to enjoy the simple pleasure of seeing a small child who had nothing, and whose life had been so brutal, opening gifts that had been chosen just for her.
‘Oh, look!’ she cried, ‘Look, Casey! My very own baby! And she’s got a bottle and food and – look – even her own potty!’ and, ‘Oh, Casey – look – he’s sent a buggy! How did Santa know I wanted a buggy? I can take my doll for walks now! Can we take her for a walk today? And – oh – pink fluffy pyjamas! Can I wear them today? Can I wear them for Christmas?’
I grinned at her. ‘Yes, sweetie, you can wear them for Christmas if you want to. But not just yet,’ I added, forestalling an immediate strip. ‘Let’s have breakfast first, eh? Don’t want to get them dirty, do we?’
Her expression changed then, and she looked up at me with those enormous blue eyes. ‘What about after? When I go home? Can I take everything with me?’
Mike and I exchanged glances, both thinking the same thing. That there was to be no going home now. ‘Yes, of course, you can take everything,’ I reassured her, and her mouth opened in a smile.
‘That’s all right, then!’ she said, and returned to her raptures.
By the time Mum and Dad arrived mid-morning, Tyler had opened his presents too, and with the pair of them fully occupied with the construction set he’d wanted – to build a remote-control car – my to-do list was shrinking fast, and I had already allowed myself a small glass of sherry to get into the spirit of things.