Broken

by Rosie Lewis

  Interestingly, he also explained that many of the symptoms could be alleviated by following a sensory diet. He told me to work half an hour of intense physical exercise into Bobbi’s day, both morning and evening. He also recommended giving her deep-pressure back massages as well as heavy chores to carry out throughout the day, plus tough objects to chew and thick drinks to suck through a thin straw. At the end of the consultation he also suggested that I should buy a spinning egg chair from IKEA. ‘Works better than Ritalin,’ he told me with a wink.

  Our weekly attempts at telephone contact with their mother had mostly failed, her answerphone message immediately cutting in. It seemed to me that Tanya Brady was slowly withdrawing from her children. I had little doubt that she would continue to contest their removal through the courts, however. With the availability of legal aid, most parents objected, even those who preferred life without the restrictions that children bring.

  I will always remember the look of horror on one birth mother’s face when she received the news that her three young children were being returned to her care. Her jaw dropped, her eyes goggling in panic. She was so gobsmacked that she fled to the nearest pub for a bender. When she turned up to afternoon contact with the children, she could barely stand upright.

  Often, the absence of contact with birth parents helps children to settle quicker. I certainly sensed a softening in Bobbi’s outbursts and she rarely asked to see her mum, even at bedtime. I suspected that she had begun grieving for her mother the day she came into the world, never having experienced what it was really like to be loved.

  My new ploy of engaging her in helping us to get ready in the mornings was working a treat as well. She and Megan seemed to revel in the challenge of making it to nursery and school with time to spare and loved the new routine of half an hour’s frantic bouncing on the trampoline before washing and dressing for school. Most of the time they hurried me along with an encouraging: ‘Come on, Rosie, come on!’

  By the end of their first month with us we had it down pat, arriving at Millfield Primary, on Friday 30 January, more than five minutes before the bell was due to ring. The morning was bright but very cold and I stamped my feet to try and warm them up as we stood in the playground. Bobbi copied me, her heart-shaped face crumpling into a grin when I picked up speed. She struggled to keep pace, giggling as she lost balance.

  It was as I reached out to stop her from toppling over that I noticed a couple of mothers looking at us askance. I straightened, Bobbi pulling on my hand and hopping from foot to foot as she tried to get me to copy her. As soon as they caught on that I’d seen them they turned away, but as I joined in Bobbi’s game I was aware of their eyes on us again. I wasn’t sure whether it was the same mothers I had seen last week at the gates, but there was something unfriendly about the jut of their chins, something far more potent than mild curiosity.

  When I returned to the school that afternoon no one seemed to pay me any interest, negative or otherwise, but there was a general frostiness amongst the group of mothers waiting outside the Early Years playground. Even an unfettered rendition of ‘Let it Go’ from Megan as she skipped at my side did little to thaw the tight smiles coming my way.

  ‘Where’s Bobs?’ Megan asked a few minutes later, as the last stragglers emerged from the Reception classroom.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, frowning. Bobbi was usually at the front of the queue at the end of the day, though I wasn’t sure whether that was through her own eagerness to leave or by Miss Granville’s design. I reached out for Megan’s hand and was about to go to the Early Years’ gate to enquire, when I heard someone calling my name. The voice was vaguely familiar and I wondered whether it might be Lisa again, eager to have another try at bagging some gossip. I turned to see Clare Barnard hurrying across the emptying playground. ‘Sorry, Rosie,’ she puffed, wrapping her cardigan tightly around herself and folding her arms against the cold. ‘Could I have a quick word?’

  I glanced over at the Early Years’ gate where Bobbi’s teacher was standing. Miss Granville gave a tiny shrug and lifted empty hands in an apologetic What can you do? gesture. ‘Bobbi hasn’t come out yet,’ I said, my eyes still resting on Miss Granville.

  ‘No, that’s what I’ve come to talk to you about. She’s running around the PE hall at the moment with the headmistress.’

  I turned sharply to look at Clare. ‘Running around the hall?’ I repeated, frowning. For a second I wondered whether they’d decided to chase her around as a way of releasing some of her pent-up emotions. ‘What, you mean, running around and having fun?’

  ‘We-ell,’ Clare said slowly, pushing her glasses further up her nose. I noticed a twinkle of amusement creeping into her eyes. ‘Bobbi may well be having fun, but I think it’s safe to say that Mrs Cullum-Coggan isn’t enjoying herself very much.’

  I stared at Clare, still not comprehending. ‘Bobbi’s spent the majority of the day in the toilets, I’m afraid,’ she said in explanation, turning towards the school building. I fell into step beside her, Megan’s hand in mine. ‘As you know, we’re not allowed to physically manhandle her out. She emerged a few times of her own free will, but as soon as someone said something she didn’t like she scrambled back in again.’

  I grimaced, waiting as Clare punched a code into the keypad beside the door to the main reception. She pulled the door open and gestured me in, but I hesitated. ‘What about Archie?’

  ‘We’ve sent him to Chess Club. He was happy to go and we thought we could use all hands on deck for now.’

  I gave her a grim smile and walked past her into reception. The plump, round-faced receptionist stood up from behind her glass partition as soon as she saw us. ‘Would your daughter like to play with me for a few minutes?’ she asked, smiling at Megan warmly.

  I leaned down to speak to Megan, who was already vigorously shaking her head. ‘Do you want to play here for a minute, Meggie?’

  She leaned closer to me, regarding the woman shyly. ‘No, thank you,’ she said, with polite firmness. She clutched my hand tight and looked up at me, her bright hazel eyes clouded with concern. ‘I want to stay with you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame. I have an iPad here,’ the woman said, lifting a thin screen enticingly into sight. ‘I thought you might be able to help Mamma Panda find her babies on Panda Pop.’

  Megan bit her lip and looked at me uncertainly. ‘I won’t be long, Meggie,’ I said brightly. ‘I’ll get Bobbi and then come straight back for you, I promise.’ She nodded, unable to resist a request for help and the lure of technology.

  The tiny glance she threw over her shoulder as she walked away made my heart constrict. I gave her a reassuring wave through the glass and she smiled and waved back, allowing herself to be lifted onto the swivel chair that the receptionist had just vacated. Clare opened an adjacent door and I followed her into a long corridor, the walls decorated with brightly coloured paintings and Star of the Week charts, photos of smiling children beaming as they held the coveted Champion’s Cup.

  We passed several open doors leading to different classrooms before a high-pitched screech reached my ears. The noise, classic Bobbi in tone, grew louder with each step. I began to gain a sense of the gravity of our ensuing conversation when Clare bypassed a set of double doors that led to the hall and continued along the corridor, stopping outside a closed door marked ‘SENCO’.

  Clare showed me into her office, a small room with fluorescent lighting and cork boards arranged on the walls. ‘Please, have a seat,’ she said with a half-smile, gesturing towards the hard-backed chair positioned alongside her desk. She took the swivel chair opposite, clasped her hands on top of her desk and looked at me. ‘So, as I said, it’s been a difficult day.’

  I nodded, waiting for her to continue. She lifted her eyebrows. ‘In fact, it’s been a difficult day at the end of a very difficult week.’

  I frowned. ‘Oh, really?’ As far as I knew, the children’s last week at school had been relatively trauma-free. There certain
ly hadn’t been any notes written in glaring red capitals in the home school diary, or any crooked fingers at the gate.

  She nodded. ‘Has Bobbi said anything to you?’

  ‘No,’ I said, slightly surprised to find myself bristling with defensiveness on Bobbi’s behalf. Though I always felt protective towards new children when they came to stay with us, it took a while for genuine affection to grow. Strangers to me a month ago, until that moment I hadn’t registered any particular attachment towards the siblings, other than a sincere commitment towards helping them heal. ‘And neither has anyone else,’ I added in a slightly barbed tone.

  ‘Well, I think perhaps Miss Granville has been trying to get on with things as best she can, but there have been several incidents of unacceptable aggression from Bobbi since we last spoke, both towards the other children and Miss Granville herself.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said slowly, the hostile glances from some of the mothers in the playground suddenly making sense.

  ‘She targets three or four children in particular, and some of the parents are now baying for retribution,’ Clare said unapologetically. ‘Whenever we report an injury to parents we have a policy of not mentioning the child responsible, but more often than not the child tells all when they get home. I’m afraid our Bobbi’s making quite a name for herself.’

  Any resentment I felt towards her melted away at the inclusive-sounding reference to ‘our Bobbi’. ‘That’s awful. I’m sorry to hear that. Can you separate her from the children she’s clashing with? Perhaps sit her with someone else?’ It seemed a simple solution, one I was sure they’d probably already considered, but it seemed worth a mention.

  ‘Our child-led learning approach for Reception children means that they work in a free-flow environment,’ Clare said, picking up a pen and opening the notepad on her desk. ‘Some of their learning will be adult initiated but, apart from carpet time, they’re free to move around the classroom as they wish.’ She paused, her pen hovering over the empty page as if waiting for me to come up with some other helpful gems.

  I looked at her in silence, already out of ideas. ‘Of course, as they’re now in care we’re organising a Personal Education Plan (PEP) for both Archie and Bobbi. You’ll be invited to a meeting soon, but in light of what’s happened today, on top of the week we’ve had, we can’t wait until then to discuss what to do about Bobbi.’

  ‘No. I see.’ I glanced out of the small window into the now-empty playground. I knew that, in an effort to close the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and those in the general population, schools were provided with additional funding from the government – nearly two thousand pounds for each adopted or looked-after child, and those entitled to free school meals – to benefit pupils and aid their learning.

  Thanks to a well-established system of social pedagogy – building a team around the child in need and nurturing well-rounded personal development – I knew that looked-after children in Germany, Denmark and Norway were far more likely to achieve educationally than their British counterparts, as well as moving into either employment or further education in far greater numbers.

  I also knew that, unless challenged noisily, many schools in England tended to absorb the pupil premium into their mainstream budget. Archie and Bobbi were entitled to receive extra support to help them in the classroom, and I was determined to make sure that’s exactly what they would get. ‘What about using the pupil premium to get some one-to-one help for Bobbi? She’s clearly in fight-or-flight mode. She might feel less fearful if she’s with someone she feels she can trust.’

  Clare’s eyes flickered. ‘Erm, well, yes –’ she faltered, perhaps surprised that I knew anything about the premium. ‘We have two teaching assistants who float between the Reception classes. They’re there for the children whenever they need it.’

  ‘But every Reception class has a TA,’ I argued, keeping my tone reasonable. ‘They would be there whether Bobbi was in the class or not. I’m talking about using Bobbi’s pupil premium to get some extra help in, specifically for her.’

  Clare folded her arms and rested them on the desk. ‘Well, as I said, the TAs are there to help any of the children when they need it.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t sound like they’re helping Bobbi very much,’ I said, tilting my head towards the door and the school hall beyond.

  ‘I don’t think there’s much anyone can do to help her if she won’t come out from under a desk.’

  ‘But perhaps she wouldn’t have fled in the first place if someone had been sitting with her,’ I argued. School was often a haven for children whose home lives were traumatic; a port in a storm and the one place they felt safe. Not so for Bobbi, or so it seemed.

  Clare pressed her lips together. ‘Look, I appreciate you’re looking out for her, really I do, but we have to balance the needs of twenty-nine other children against those of Bobbi. At the moment she’s draining all of the class teacher’s attention away from them.’

  I felt myself becoming annoyed. I glanced out of the window again to rein my irritation in. It wasn’t Clare’s fault that Bobbi’s needs were greater than the other children, or that there were limited resources to go round. It was simply that the system was geared to helping the majority of children, those capable of learning quickly or those with needs so significant that they needed full-time one-to-one help. Children like Bobbi had a tendency to fall through the net. I decided it might be best to shift the onus onto the school, or at least frame it so that they accepted some of the responsibility. ‘How do you think we might help her then?’

  Clare paused, picked her pen up again. ‘I think we’re going to have to consider reducing her hours to part-time, as I mentioned before. At least for now. We can review again if she settles.’

  ‘And if she doesn’t?’

  ‘Well, then she’ll have to go to the behaviour unit.’

  I stared at her. ‘At five years old?’ After all that she’d been through, the last thing Bobbi needed was more rejection. I could understand their wish to reduce her hours, but to throw her out of the school would be like telling her we can’t cope with you, we don’t like the way you are.

  Clare levelled her gaze. ‘Sometimes we have no choice. We have to protect the welfare of all our children. We’ve had to exclude a child from nursery before now.’

  I grimaced. The idea of expelling a child from nursery seemed ludicrous to me. I was beginning to suspect that Millfield Primary might be a little trigger-happy in their approach to discipline.

  ‘None of the local specialist behaviour units have space for Bobbi at the moment anyway. It would be a case of trying to keep on top of her education at home while the local authority figures out the best way forward.’ Clare held up a hand. ‘Don’t worry, we’re not quite there yet, but unless we have a better week next week we’re going to have to reset her schedule, for her sake as well as the other children.’

  I gave her a tight nod and looked away, wondering whether the headmistress had managed to catch Bobbi yet, or if she was still in mad pursuit in the hall. As if reading my thoughts, Clare eased her chair away from her desk and said: ‘Miss Granville spent her morning break blocking the backs of all the desks. When Bobbi noticed she ran out of the classroom and shut herself in the toilets. We locked the outer door to the toilets at lunchtime and that’s when she ran off. We’ve been taking it in turns to try and catch her ever since.’

  ‘Oh no, poor Bobbi.’ The one haven she had found outside the classroom had been cut off from her. No wonder she had panicked and fled.

  Clare’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Poor Bobbi?’

  ‘It’s terror that’s made her run, Clare, not naughtiness. If you deny her a safe space in the classroom, she’ll find one somewhere else, even if it is the loo.’

  She gave me a thoughtful look. ‘Right, I think perhaps we should see if Mrs Cullum-Coggan needs some help.’

  The school hall was empty when we got there, but there was a high-pitched wail coming from fu
rther along the corridor. We followed the sound and found a smartly dressed woman of about fifty standing in the doorway of one of the classrooms, her cheeks flushed a deep shade of pink.

  ‘Mrs Cullum-Coggan, this is Rosie Lewis,’ Clare said when we reached the open door.

  ‘Hello,’ I offered tentatively. She was a stern-looking woman, her features sharply defined.

  ‘Over to you, Rosie,’ she stated flatly. In the classroom, Bobbi was squatting on top of a cabinet near the far wall, her arms wrapped around her knees. My heart caught at the sight. ‘I’m out of ideas. We’ve tried everything to calm her. She appears to be having some sort of manic episode.’

  ‘Maybe you should have called me.’

  ‘If we rewarded every pupil for behaving badly by sending them home we’d have an empty school,’ Mrs Cullum-Coggan said, drawing the back of her hand along her forehead. I could see her point, but this wasn’t bad behaviour. Bobbi looked distraught.

  I gave a small nod and walked into the classroom. ‘Bobbi, love, it’s time to come home.’ She looked up sharply. The glazed look in her eyes took a moment to clear, but then when recognition struck she sat back on her bottom, burst into tears and held her arms out to me. I sat beside her on the cabinet, took her glasses off and pulled her onto my lap. She sobbed in my arms for several minutes as I rocked her and stroked her hair. ‘What is it, sweetie?’ I asked when she’d quietened.

  She turned her tear-streaked face towards me. ‘Everyone says Archie’s weird,’ she said, hiccoughing a sob.

  I frowned. ‘Who says that?’

  ‘Freya says it. She’s got a brother in Year 6, and Connor and Jessica.’

  ‘Why would they say that?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ she squealed, tears rolling down her cheeks again. She kicked out at the cabinet. ‘But he’s not. They’re lying. It’s not fair!’