Broken

by Rosie Lewis

  I nodded sympathetically. I wasn’t a regular migraine sufferer though I had experienced a few headaches over the years that were severe enough to affect my vision and upset my stomach, so I could imagine how disabling they might be. Entertaining Bobbi in full-on party mode while feeling that way wasn’t exactly what the doctor might order.

  ‘Would she like to come in and take some tablets before you head off?’

  ‘She’s taken some already, thanks,’ Jimmy said, pulling Archie and Bobbi into a tight hug and kissing their heads. He released them and turned to me, Bobbi climbing onto his shoes and clinging to his legs. ‘Thanks for all you’re doing for the kids. They tell me they really like it here.’

  I smiled, realising that this was where Archie’s good manners came from. ‘No need to thank me. I’m pleased to help.’

  ‘Right, I’ll be off then. I’ll see you next week. We’ll go see a film then get pizza, okay?’ Archie nodded glumly. Bobbi burst into tears and rubbed her face on his trousers. Jimmy picked her up and she snuggled into his neck.

  ‘Oh right, so contact is every Saturday then?’

  Jimmy craned his neck around Bobbi’s head and nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been told. That okay? I work during the week, you see, and what with living so far away …’

  ‘No, I understand,’ I said with a smile. The children clearly adored him. I was only too happy to fit around his working hours. It was when parents who didn’t work insisted on weekend contact that I tended to feel less accommodating. ‘Come on then, sweetie,’ I said, holding my arms out to Bobbi. She came to me willingly and cried on my shoulder. ‘They’ll be fine,’ I told Jimmy as he ruffled Archie’s hair. He nodded, looking choked.

  Archie was distant and uncommunicative during dinner. With one elbow on the table, he cradled his head in his upturned palm, his other clutching his fork, which hovered above his untouched plate.

  ‘Not hungry, love?’ I asked softly, more as an acknowledgement of his feelings than any sort of prompt. His cheeks were pale with a greenish twinge. I wasn’t about to encourage him to eat if he didn’t fancy it. He moved his head and made a little noise, dropping his fork so that it clanged against the edge of the plate.

  He wasn’t quite gloomy enough to show disinterest when I got the chocolate fountain out though, asking for some of the fruit kebabs I’d prepared earlier with almost as much urgency as the girls. They drained the chocolate tiers with enthusiasm but as I cleared the table, Bobbi burst into tears again. Emily’s face crumpled with sympathy and Megan stretched across the table to offer a hug. ‘No, you stay with Emily, Meggie,’ I told her, and then to Bobbi I said, ‘Come here, love.’

  I led her into the hall, sat on the second stair and pulled her onto my lap. ‘What’s up, sweetie?’

  ‘I want Daddy,’ she croaked, her small chest heaving. Tears rolled down her chocolate-streaked cheeks and fell onto her lap. I took her glasses off and rocked back and forth. After a minute or so she shrugged me off. ‘I just wish I could be a good girl,’ she burst out passionately. ‘Why am I always so bad?’

  ‘Oh, honey, you’re not bad,’ I said spiritedly. ‘You mustn’t think that. You’re a wonderful, lovely little girl.’

  ‘Why does Mummy not want me then? And nor Daddy neither?’ She thought that being taken away from them was a punishment – her magical thinking at work – something that really broke my heart.

  ‘They do want you, Bobbi. They want you and they want Archie as well. It’s just that Danny’s not sure yet whether they can keep you safe. That’s why you’re staying with Rosie.’

  She gave a small nod and cuddled into me docilely. She played animal hospital with Megan before her bath, but became tearful again as I got her ready for bed. ‘My tears are not going away, Rosie,’ she said, clasping Bunny to her cheek. I leaned into the bunk and stroked a few blonde strands away from her forehead.

  ‘Think of nice things,’ I said, giving her a smile. ‘Like fluffy clouds and rainbows and ducks. They’ll chase those tears away.’

  Archie went to his room about ten minutes after Bobbi dropped off to sleep. I tapped on his door just after 8 o’clock. ‘Do you want to talk, Arch?’ I said, leaning my head into the room.

  ‘No,’ came a grunted reply. He was sitting in his usual position with a book in his hands, a stack of pillows piled up between his back and the wall, his legs dangling over the ladder of the bunk.

  I waited at the door for a moment. ‘Okay, that’s fine. It’s just that I noticed you came back a bit earlier than planned. If I’d been looking forward to seeing someone and didn’t get as much time with them as I’d hoped, I’d feel a little sad too.’

  He looked at me but didn’t say anything. ‘Well, that’s it really. I’m here if you want to talk.’ He gave a curt nod and returned to his latest book – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. My hand was on the door handle when he next spoke.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ he blasted. ‘Tracy moans about us being bad all the time, but she’s the one who’s mean!’

  I walked into the room. ‘Is that why you came back early? Because of Tracy?’

  He slammed his book to a close and tossed it aside. ‘“They’re so rude, Jim”,’ he mimicked, rocking his head from side to side and pecking at the air with fingers and thumb. ‘“I can’t get a word in edgeways, Jim; they’re giving me a headache, blah, blah, bloody blah.”’ He looked at me. ‘She didn’t have a headache, Rosie. It was just a lame excuse to get rid of us.’

  I bit my lip. There were certainly no flies on him. It was easy to imagine Tracy pouting and complaining and drawing Jimmy’s attention away from his children and onto her. I felt a bubble of irritation at the thought. While I appreciated that Bobbi and Archie were perhaps not the easiest of children to step-parent, it seemed hard to believe that Tracy couldn’t stand aside for a few hours, so that the children could enjoy the rare moment with their father. ‘We don’t know that for certain, honey.’

  ‘Yes we do!’ he shouted, angry tears glistening in his eyes. ‘She can’t stand us! She’s the reason we’re not living with Dad. I hate her.’

  I walked over and patted his leg. Part of me wanted to utter platitudes to console him but I resisted the temptation. As much as I wanted to try and make him feel better, it was no use misleading him with a lie. If Tracy’s earlier demeanour was anything to go by, what Archie had said wasn’t so very far from the truth.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Archie was withdrawn when I dropped him off at Millfield Primary on the morning of Monday 9 February. He trudged across the playground in slow motion, his shoulders so heavily stooped that it appeared as if his rucksack was laden with rocks instead of books.

  Accompanied by her new little learning friends – a small colourful pouch containing three worry dolls that I had ordered on the Internet – Bobbi was less reluctant than her brother to go in, though perhaps that had more to do with the fact that she knew she’d be out again before lunchtime. The reduced hours certainly seemed to help her, and Megan was thrilled with the idea of having Bobbi to herself each afternoon. It was a relief that they were getting on well, particularly as the half-term holiday was just a week away. Bobbi and Mungo seemed to have reached an understanding as well. Sensing her increasing calm, he was beginning to follow her around, only fleeing to the coffee table when he sensed that a meltdown was imminent.

  As soon as the gate to the Early Years playground opened Bobbi gave me a fleeting hug and pounded off, eager to check out the safe space I had built in the classroom yesterday.

  Armed with willow screens from our local garden centre, a canopy and a spinning egg chair from IKEA, I had left my mum in charge at home and met Clare Barnard, the SENCO, in the Reception classroom. We got to work straight away, clearing the floor around the book corner so that we could fix some hooks to the wall and ceiling. ‘It’s so good of you to give up some of your weekend, Clare,’ I said as I climbed a small stepladder.

  She looked up at me. ‘I’d only b
e at home, marking,’ she said, passing me a cordless drill. ‘Besides, I felt bad after our meeting the other day. Mrs Cullum-Coggan’s a bit of an old-fashioned disciplinarian, I’m afraid.’

  I drilled a small hole in the ceiling, narrowing my eyes against a fine sprinkling of plaster. I climbed down a step and passed the drill back to Clare. ‘No need. I appreciate the position she’s in. And Bobbi can be a handful.’ In truth, Mrs Cullum-Coggan’s belief in discipline probably wasn’t very far from my own. I remembered a social worker telling me recently that some local authorities were coming to realise that many of the children leaving the care system were, sadly, unemployable. Accustomed to being handled with kid gloves, they expected to receive the same treatment when they entered the workplace. As soon as they realised that they had to adhere to the same rules as their workmates, some left in disgust. Others smashed up the office. One of my duties as foster carer was to ensure that the children I cared for learned that actions have consequences. It was a simple but crucial lesson and, without it, they stood little chance of functioning in civilised society.

  Clare handed me a large hook. Climbing up to the top rung, I pressed a raw plug into the hole I’d made and began screwing the hook into the ceiling. ‘She certainly demands a lot of our attention,’ Clare said when I climbed down. ‘The reduced hours have helped though. She’s been a lot calmer. And there hasn’t been a repeat of the playground incident.’

  I pulled a face. ‘Thank goodness.’

  She looked at me. ‘Actually, Rosie, it’s Archie I’m most worried about now. It sounds strange, I know, especially as I can’t put my finger on why, but … do you know what I mean?’

  I pressed my lips together. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  ‘He’s polite and charming, helpful to the teaching staff, but the other kids avoid him. It’s as if they sense something in him. It’s worrying.’

  I cleared the floor of debris with a heavy heart. Archie had been with us for just over five weeks, and it still seemed that I was no nearer to discovering what was troubling him than I had been back on New Year’s Day.

  We set to work securing the willow screens to the hooks I’d screwed into the walls using cable ties, then squared off the book corner, leaving a small gap as access for the children. I hung the canopy I’d bought from the hook in the ceiling, draped the white voile over the outside of the screens and put the egg chair inside, in front of the shelves. We stood back to admire our work.

  ‘It looks amazing!’ Clare cried, her cheeks flushed with effort. ‘I’m almost tempted to spend the afternoon in there myself.’

  I laughed. ‘Let’s hope Bobbi feels the same. Mrs Cullum-Coggan could do without her wandering at large again.’ As we left the classroom we talked about arranging a meeting to specifically discuss Archie. What we would say though, I don’t think either of us was entirely sure.

  My mobile rang just as I reached my car. I slipped the handset into my hands-free holder and flicked it to loudspeaker mode. Bright Heights had managed to book a place for me on one of the oversubscribed local authority therapeutic parenting courses at a conference centre in a neighbouring town. It was due to begin in half an hour and I didn’t want to be late. ‘Hello?’ I said, indicating to pull onto the main road.

  ‘Rosie, it’s Danny. How did contact go?’ I could hear the rush of passing traffic coming down the line and guessed that Danny was also on the move.

  I ran through a quick précis of events, making sure to tell him about Jimmy’s Samaritanly act. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been a bit neglectful of my poor old car,’ I said, owning up to the fact that it had almost run out of oil. Some birth parents file complaints against their children’s foster carers for the most trivial faux pas, and I had handed Jimmy a golden opportunity, should he decide to try and cause trouble for me.

  I was relieved to hear that Danny wasn’t interested in making an issue of it. ‘You sound as bad as my missus,’ he said mildly.

  I went on to tell him about the warmth of Jimmy’s interactions with the children. ‘The same can’t be said about his partner though,’ I said, pulling up at a red light. I stared at my phone and waited for a response, as if Danny were sitting right there in front of me on the dashboard.

  ‘No? You don’t think they get on?’ Danny sounded disappointed.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she was having an off day,’ I offered, backtracking a little. Assessments would be carried out on both Jimmy and Tracy before a decision was made about the children’s future. While it was important for foster carers to report children’s feelings about their birth parents and wider family, I didn’t want to colour Danny’s view when all I had to go on was a few comments made by Archie at the end of an emotional day.

  ‘I’m holding out hope that things might work out with Dad,’ Danny said, his deep voice booming out in my small car. ‘The assessment on Tanya isn’t looking too good. I’ll be very surprised if she comes out as viable at the end of it, what with the missed contacts and her refusal to entertain the idea of a future without Jason. With his past, there’s no way we can let the kids go back there. She also insisted she’s substance free, but her hair-strand test says different. We now have proof of a lie and, well, you know what that means.’

  I did. When social services had incontrovertible proof that they had been lied to, it didn’t look good when the case came to court. It seemed increasingly likely that Archie and Bobbi would never return home.

  ‘Oh dear, poor kids,’ I sighed, my heart going out to them. It was difficult enough for children to accept that they were unable to go home through parental addiction or mental health issues, but to discover that you were destined to spend the rest of your childhood in care because your mother chose a man over you – well, that was a difficult pill to swallow.

  ‘We’ve got an interim court hearing next week,’ Danny told me. ‘In light of Tanya’s unreliability – oh yeah, before I forget, she’s cancelled today’s contact as well –’

  ‘Why this time?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno, something about having to visit Jason’s mother in hospital or something. Anyway, in light of her messing around with the contacts and her reluctance to engage, I’m going to try and get the sessions reduced to once a month. All future contact is suspended for now anyway because of her failures to attend. I’ll pop over later if that’s okay, about five-ish. I need to sit the kids down and explain to them that they won’t be seeing their mum for a while.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  I knew I’d located the correct training room inside the conference centre when I read the quote on a whiteboard positioned just inside the door:

  A thing which has not been understood inevitably reappears;

  like an unlaid ghost. Freud.

  I sat next to a young woman with a long dark fringe hanging over one side of her face, the other side of her head shaved close to her scalp. She smiled, introducing herself as a student social worker on temporary placement within an adoption team.

  Our tutor, a thin, bookish man named Stuart, spent the first twenty minutes of the session trying to get the overhead projector and his laptop to communicate. When the white screen at the front of the room finally flickered into life, he stood in the centre of our semi-circled chairs, his forehead shiny with perspiration.

  Local authority courses often began with an introduction that resembled a party political broadcast, and this one, it seemed, was no different. ‘As you’ll have read on your booking forms, lunch isn’t provided,’ Stuart told us, ‘so I hope you’ve brought your own. If not, there’s a cafe in the lobby but it’s pricey. We do still provide tea and coffee, but no doubt they’ll squeeze every last drop of that out of us soon as well, so make the most of it while you can.’

  I exchanged a wry smile with the woman next to me and pulled a notepad from my bag. After introducing ourselves, Stuart asked us to share some of the difficulties we experienced in our day-to-day lives with the children we cared for. After a few minutes most of us had
shouted out, ‘Yes, I’ve had that! I’ve had that too!’ Whenever adopters and foster carers are gathered in the same room they always end up playing Behaviour Bingo or Tantrum Top Trumps.

  ‘Excellent,’ Stuart said, trying to draw us back to the agenda. ‘I think you probably all noticed the quote on the board on the way in. Can anyone tell me what it means to them?’

  ‘That it’s difficult to move forward if the past is unresolved?’ the young woman next to me offered.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Stuart nodded. ‘Yes. We have a lot of adopters in the room, as well as foster carers. When a longed-for child arrives in your home it’s a time of joy for the whole family, but do you think the child feels like celebrating?’ We shook our heads. ‘No, of course not, many of them don’t. Most children remain stuck, emotionally and developmentally, at the point of their greatest trauma.

  ‘Most people think that adoption means happy ever after because they view it through a pre-1960s lens, a time when young women gave up their babies through fear, shame and lack of support. Nowadays relinquished babies are so rare that it’s almost unheard of. Modern-day adoption involves children who’ve experienced the most severe trauma and neglect.

  ‘That may be something that happened to them when they were three or four, or damage wrought on them before they were born. An infant’s brain weighs about 400 grams at birth. By the end of the first year it weighs about 1000 grams.’ Stuart surveyed the room. ‘Our every interaction with the babies we care for is recorded in their tiny cells, our every word firing new connections between the neurons; connections that will stay with them their whole lives. Now, that’s all well and good if they’re with a loving, or at the very least, sympathetic caregiver.’

  He paused and began pacing back and forth. ‘But what happens if they’re thrust into the arms of someone who isn’t? Coming into foster care or moving into a forever home isn’t a magical process that suddenly wipes the slate clean. As Dr van der Kolk, a director of the Trauma Center in Boston says, “the body keeps score”. What he means by that is that the abuse, neglect and trauma that a pre-verbal child experiences stays with them. When a small child reaches safety they may not have the language to express what they’ve been through, but the sensory memories – the terror in their hearts, the fear in their gut – it stays with them, stored at a cellular level deep inside themselves.’