Broken

by Rosie Lewis

  I shook my head, my mind still stuck on Archie’s words. ‘I’ll have a word with the centre and check,’ Danny said, writing a note on his pad. ‘But I’m pretty sure it’s been your mum that’s cancelled each time.’

  ‘Archie,’ I said. ‘When did Mum tell you this?’

  ‘When I spoke to her on the phone.’

  ‘But you haven’t spoken to her for ages.’ Tanya had only answered her phone on one occasion since telephone contact had been agreed, and I had passed the handset straight to Archie as soon as I heard her voice.

  I noticed a flicker of uncertainty in Archie’s eyes. ‘No, but she told me when we rang that time.’

  I nodded doubtfully. I couldn’t remember anything about cancelled contacts being spoken about, but then Archie had been wandering around when he spoke to her, so the conversation over the loudspeaker had been disjointed.

  ‘Anyway,’ Danny said, smiling at Archie kindly. ‘You leave the worrying to me, okay? That’s what I’m here for. You can call me if ever you have any questions that Rosie can’t answer.’ He inclined his head towards me. ‘Rosie has my mobile number. You can ask her to call me whenever you like and we can have a chat, okay?’

  Archie nodded, a glimmer of amusement back in his eyes. ‘Rosie said she’s going to get me my own mobile soon anyway.’

  I patted his hand. ‘He’s a dreamer, this one.’

  Danny laughed. ‘So, Archie, is there anything else you wanna ask me before I go?’

  ‘Will we be going home soon?’

  Danny’s expression grew serious. ‘Do you remember what I told you when I came to Joan’s house? We have to write some reports and do some assessments on your mum and dad, then the judge will make a decision about who is the best person to take care of you and your sister.’

  ‘But what happens if the judge decides that we can’t live with either of them?’

  ‘Well, we’re a long way off making any big decisions yet,’ Danny said evasively. ‘We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.’

  Archie wasn’t going to let him off that easily. ‘But you don’t even like my mum. And she says you hate Jason. You’re not going to let us go back to them, are you?’

  Danny scratched his nose. ‘It’s not up to me, son, it’s up to the judge. He’s a wise man who’s made lots of important decisions before.’

  ‘But the judge makes his decision after reading your reports. So really it’s you making the decision.’ Archie stared penetratingly at the social worker.

  Danny fell silent and drew a hand across his forehead. Archie continued with the probing questions, one after the other until the social worker, whom until that moment I had considered unflappable, looked thoroughly flustered. ‘Archie,’ I interjected. ‘The court will appoint someone called a guardian ad litem for you and Bobbi; a person who will speak to the judge on your behalf. They’ll meet with you, here probably, and ask you what you think should happen. You can tell him or her exactly how you feel. They represent children like you in court every day. It’s their job to listen to you and report back to the judge so that he, or she, knows what your thoughts and wishes are.’

  Archie’s frown faded. ‘That’s okay then. I’ll tell them I want to live with my dad.’

  ‘Oh, o-kay,’ Danny said, blinking in surprise. ‘You sound very sure about that.’

  ‘I am,’ Archie said firmly. ‘And Dad said I can, just as soon as he and Tracy sort their house out.’

  Danny looked at me and then back to Archie. ‘We’ll have to see about that. Nothing’s definite yet. Now, Rosie, is it okay if me and Archie have a little chat on our own for a minute?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, pushing my chair out. Social workers are supposed to build some one-to-one time into their visits to give children the opportunity to talk about any concerns or issues they may have with their carer. I often feel a bit uncomfortable as I busy myself somewhere in the house out of earshot, as if waiting to find out whether I’ve passed some sort of test. The worst complaint I’d ever had from a child was that I didn’t have the television on enough, but, still, it wasn’t the most enjoyable aspect of fostering. ‘I’ll get our things in from the car.’

  Archie put a hand on my wrist. ‘Don’t go, Rosie.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute, love.’

  ‘I just wanna know how you like it here, stuff like that,’ Danny said lightly. ‘It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘It’s good. I like it,’ Archie said flatly, as if that was all he was prepared to say on the matter. His brow furrowed again. ‘If I can’t go to Dad I can stay here, right?’ He looked from me to Danny.

  Danny’s expression wavered. A look passed between us. We both knew that staying with me couldn’t possibly be a long-term option; the children were getting older and were already at the upper age limit of sharing a room. ‘We’ll have to see,’ Danny said. ‘That’s all a long time in the future and –’

  ‘Anyway,’ Archie cut in quickly, refusing to dwell on negatives or uncertainties for too long, ‘I’ll tell that person you’re talking about …’ He dipped his head towards me.

  ‘The guardian.’

  ‘Yep, I’ll tell him where we want to go and that will be that.’

  ‘Whatever happens, Archie,’ I said, ‘you and Bobbi will be safe.’ I looked at Danny.

  ‘Rosie’s right, mate. We’ll find the right place for you, don’t you worry about that.’

  Emily had kindly offered to prepare dinner for us since I’d been out of the house all day, and just before six o’clock she brought her speciality dish – spaghetti Bolognese with garlic bread and salad – to the table. ‘That looks yummy,’ Archie said, helping himself to a large portion. The compliments had been oozing out of him since Danny left. In the last twenty minutes he had manically complimented my hair (and I wasn’t having a good hair day), the sound of my laugh and even the old baggy jumper I was wearing. I was growing increasingly uncomfortable with his ever more personal comments, but however much I tried to reassure him that they were unnecessary, they just kept on flowing out of him.

  ‘You smell really nice, Rosie,’ he said as I reached over the table for the serving spoon. ‘I like your perfume.’

  ‘Urgh, quit the smoozing,’ Jamie said light-heartedly as he came into the room. He sat across the table from Archie. ‘Not cool, dude, not cool at all.’

  Archie flushed instantly. I busied myself with the cheese, sprinkling some over my pasta. ‘D’you know what happened today?’ Jamie said, artfully diverting everyone’s attention away from Archie. ‘There’s this kid at school, right, he’s so annoying, always bigging himself up and taking the pee out of everyone else. Anyway, he comes into assembly doing his usual thing, jabbing one of the younger kids in the back and generally being a pain and then –’ Jamie broke off, chuckling to himself. Archie watched him, his face breaking into a smile. Soon we were all laughing as we waited for Jamie’s punchline. ‘– then he – he slips over, right onto his podgy butt.’

  Archie dropped his fork and held his stomach, rolling over with laughter.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Jamie said a bit later, as I rinsed the plates under the tap. Megan and Bobbi were watching the rest of their cartoon and Archie was up in his room.

  ‘Oh, what for? Distracting Archie?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Yes, thanks for that,’ I said. ‘But it was you that upset him in the first place.’

  ‘I’m doing him a favour, Mum. He’ll get crucified when he gets to high school if he grovels round the teachers like he does to you.’

  ‘You’re probably right. Well, thanks – I think.’

  ‘Thanks for what?’ Emily asked, coming into the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, nothing much,’ Jamie said, throwing a peanut into the air and catching it on his tongue. ‘I just rescued Mum’s whole evening, that’s all.’

  Emily pulled a face. ‘Drop-outs are useful for something then.’

  ‘Emily!’ I chided, but the pair of them were l
aughing.

  ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t respect your decision, Jamie,’ I said later, as he joined me on the sofa. It was half past eight and Archie had just gone up to bed after our ritual game of cards.

  ‘What?’ Jamie reached for the remote and switched on the television.

  I grabbed the handset and lowered the volume. ‘I said, I’m sorry I didn’t accept your inner life, or seemed not to. Because I do accept it. And you. And your decisions, unconditionally.’

  ‘Ri-ght,’ he said slowly, leaning away from me as if I’d suddenly lost my marbles. ‘And what’s this about exactly?’

  ‘Your decision not to go to university, of course.’

  ‘Oh yeah, course,’ he said, still eyeing me warily. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He took back the remote and began flicking through the channels. ‘Anyway,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the screen. ‘You’ll be pleased to know that I decided to put in an application for prefect.’

  ‘What? Really?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘But you must have missed the deadline.’

  ‘Nope, I didn’t. I put it in on the last day.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Well, that’ll be something positive for your CV if you’re chosen.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said absently, already absorbed in the match of American football playing out on screen.

  ‘Jamie’s applied for prefect,’ I told Emily later, as we stood side by side in the bathroom brushing our teeth.

  ‘Yes, I know, he wanted the parking space.’

  ‘What?’

  Emily rinsed her mouth with water and looked at me. ‘Prefects get a space of their own in the school car park. Jamie reckons he’s going to borrow your car if he passes his test and drive himself to school.’

  I couldn’t stop smiling to myself as I pulled my dressing gown on. I had been played, but I didn’t mind all that much. However strange he’d considered our earlier conversation, Jamie knew that I accepted him unconditionally, whether I agreed with the choices he’d made or not. I just wished that Archie and Bobbi could be as certain of their own parents’ love for them.

  Chapter Twenty

  The next few days passed, if not without incident, then with only a few hiccups here and there. Archie’s offers to help whenever I so much as lifted a finger still came thick and fast, but since Jamie’s comment at the dinner table he had toned down the intensity of his personal comments and stuck to heaping copious praise on my cooking skills.

  Bobbi was making progress as well. Her meltdowns still came daily, but rather than throwing herself around as if trying to injure herself, she came straight to me whenever she lost control, responding quickly when I wrapped her up in a weighted blanket and held her close.

  When I arrived to pick the children up from school on Friday 13 February though, I suspected that the improvements in their behaviour were confined to home. As soon as I parked the car in the road outside Millfield Primary I noticed Clare Barnard standing just inside the gates. She seemed to be watching the road and when she saw me on the pavement, she slipped out to see me. My heart sank.

  ‘Don’t look so queasy,’ she said with a grin, smiling fondly at Megan when I picked her up. ‘I just wanted a quick chat with you before the weekend.’

  ‘Oh, nothing’s wrong then?’

  Clare adjusted her glasses and shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. Quite the opposite. Miss Granville has put a note in Bobbi’s home school diary, but I wanted to tell you in person. Bobbi’s had a super week. Only a single incident of – well, no need to go into it – it was quickly dealt with. We’ve made real progress.’

  ‘That’s great news,’ I said, thrilled.

  Megan bobbed a little jig in my arms and clapped. ‘Yay, Bobbi’s a clever girl, Mummy.’

  Clare laughed and leaned in so that her face was close to Megan’s. ‘She certainly is, and do you know why that is? I think it’s down to the care you and your Mummy are giving her.’

  Megan beamed. I lowered her to her feet and smiled gratefully at Clare. ‘I appreciate you telling me. It’s lovely to hear some good news, especially after the week they’ve had.’ I had emailed Clare a few days earlier to inform her that contact with Tanya had been suspended. I had found over the years that most teachers were overwhelmingly sympathetic towards looked-after children. I tried to keep them updated on the inevitable twists and turns as their case progressed, ones that might upset the children and affect their behaviour at school.

  ‘Yes, that must have been a blow for them.’ Clare paused. ‘Rosie,’ she said after a time, ‘I know it sounds weird, but in a funny way, I think the children are kind of relieved. Archie’s teacher tells me that he’s participated in some of his lessons this week, instead of spending most of his time staring out the window. And Bobbi’s taken part in her phonics sessions for the first time ever.’

  I smiled. ‘That’s amazing.’

  ‘Now, whether that’s got anything to do with the masterpiece we created at the weekend or the spinning egg chair,’ she said with a grin, ‘or something else, I don’t know. She’s certainly been making use of the book corner, but only going after seeking permission, and Miss Granville was so pleased with her progress that she’s made her Star of the Week.’

  Bobbi charged out of her classroom a few minutes later, waving her Star of the Week certificate high in the air. ‘Look, Rosie, look!’ she shouted, her face a picture of delight.

  I knelt down in front of her. ‘What a super clever girl you are,’ I said, kissing her cheek.

  Bobbi couldn’t wait to tell her dad the news. I dialled Jimmy’s number as soon as we got home, set it to loudspeaker mode and rested the handset up against a bookshelf. ‘My clever little princess,’ Jimmy said, delight evident in his voice. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

  Bobbi, standing in front of the handset, gave a little wiggle. ‘I got a certificate, look.’ She waved the coveted paper in front of the phone.

  Jimmy laughed. ‘I can’t see it, darlin’,’ he said softly. ‘You can show me tomorrow. I can’t wait.’

  Bobbi tickled her own tummy in excitement. Mungo stared up at her, his tail thumping against her legs. There was a pause and then came the inevitable question all young children seemed to ask when having a telephone conversation. ‘What you doing, Daddy?’

  ‘I’m having a coffee with Tracy. I’ve got to be getting ready for work soon, sweetheart.’

  There was another pause while Bobbi absorbed this information. Archie gave her a little shove and knelt down in front of the phone. ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Oh, Archie, hi, son,’ Jimmy said, but Bobbi began to wail.

  ‘Rosie, it’s my turn to speak to Daddy and Archie just pushed me!’

  ‘Archie, let your sister finish what she was saying,’ I said softly.

  ‘But she’s not saying anything! She’s just standing there!’

  ‘She’s thinking. You can have your go in a minute.’

  There was a soft, disembodied laugh, and then Jimmy’s voice came over the loudspeaker. ‘Thanks, Rosie. What else did you want to say to Daddy, Bobbi, darlin’?’

  ‘Erm,’ Bobbi said, her brow furrowed with concentration. She picked up the hem of her dress and screwed it up in a ball, her fingers twirling the material over and over as she tried to think of something to say. ‘Erm … Daddy, can I speak to Tracy?’

  There was a pause, a rustle, and then Jimmy spoke again, his voice slightly strained. ‘Sorry, darlin’, she’s just gone into the other room.’

  ‘We’re going to Pizza Hut!’ Archie said a few minutes later, as he handed my phone back to me. His eyes were shining with excitement. ‘And Dad says if there’s time we might go to that new splash park that just opened.’

  I smiled. ‘That’s wonderful!’ I said, thrilled to see him so genuinely happy.

  His expression grew thoughtful. ‘What do you think I might need to take, apart from my shorts and a towel? Will I need goggles?’ I opened my mouth to speak but he raced to the stairs breathless
ly, his voice quivering with excitement. ‘I think I might, you know, Rosie, cos there’s that big slide that ends in a plunge pool and you go right down under the water. I’ll pack my bag now. There won’t be much time in the morning. Dad says he’s coming early so we get the whole day together!’

  I waited until he disappeared upstairs and then switched the computer on and overrode the parental controls to pull up some promotional videos posted by the splash park. ‘Shall we take a look?’ I asked Archie when he came down.

  ‘Oh, cool! Thanks, Rosie!’ He sat Bobbi on his lap and watched the videos over and over again, his face flushed pink.

  I woke to the sound of thunder on Saturday 14 February 2015, but by 7 a.m. the storm had cleared, leaving a bright blue sky in its wake. I sat on the sofa sipping my coffee, the only sounds a solitary bird call coming down the chimney and Archie tapping at the screen of the iPad next to me.

  ‘How do you think they got those massive slides inside the dome?’ He scrolled through the photos on the splash park website. ‘They probably transported them in small pieces and fixed them together inside,’ he added, answering his own question. I smiled at him. He’d already had the exact same conversation with Jamie when he’d got in from band practice last night. ‘What’s the time now, Rosie?’

  ‘About three minutes after the last time you asked,’ I said, laughing. ‘Why don’t you go and get washed and dressed? That will pass some time.’

  I followed him into the hall. ‘Here we are, Arch,’ I said, reaching into my handbag. I handed him fifteen pounds. ‘That’s this week’s pocket money plus a bit extra, in case you spot something special while you’re out.’

  Foster carers are paid a weekly wage for each child they look after, usually between £120 and £170 per week, depending on the local authority responsible for the child. We’re also provided with an allowance on top of this amount, to cover the cost of clothes, shoes and other expenses, as well as pocket money (between five and ten pounds a week) and savings for the child. Archie hadn’t shown much interest in the money I’d given him in the last few weeks, but now his face lit up. ‘Wow, thanks, Rosie!’