by Casey Watson
She pulled back slightly and sniffed. ‘It’s okay … It’s okay.’ She sniffed again, ran the back of her wrist across her face. ‘He pushed me on the bed then,’ she continued, gathering a little more composure. ‘And yanked my pyjama bottoms down. And I was going mental at him. Kicking him and thumping him and screaming. He tried to hold his hand over my mouth but I was biting it, really hard.’ She looked disgusted, remembering. ‘And then he undid his jeans and then pulled them down and got his dick out and then he tried to have sex with me. I was scared to death, but I never stopped fighting him – and I’m strong …’ Thank the lord for that, I thought. ‘And I think he got scared then, about all the racket I was making, because he stopped then and he slapped me round the face. Called me a prick teaser, then, he did. Said he’d kill me if I ever opened my mouth.’
‘Oh, dear God, love, that makes me so angry! Please tell me you told your mum this time.’
She sniffed again, and wiped her eyes. ‘Oh yes,’ she laughed then, almost hysterically. ‘Oh, yes, as soon as she got home and he’d stomped off to the pub. I told her everything. All of it.’
‘Good, love. That’s good. And what did she say this time?’
‘She said …’ Her lower lip began quivering. ‘She said … She was like, you lying little cow! She said I’d destroyed one relationship and now I was trying to do it again!’ Agitated now, Sophia kicked her legs out from beneath her and, moving to the edge of the little sofa, twisted towards me. ‘You know what she said, Casey?’ I shook my head. ‘She said I really thought I was something, didn’t I? She said, and what made me think her men would prefer me? She called me a jealous bitch. Yeah, that’s exactly what she called me.’ Her anger had overtaken her pain now. ‘Yeah, and lots of other lovely mummy things like that.’
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe it!’
‘Nor could I – she was just so horrible to me – but it’s true. And that’s when I realised just what a shitty mum she really was. I warned her. I did. I told her straight. Either him or me, I said. Because I wouldn’t be sticking around if she chose him.’ She let out a heavy sigh. ‘But she did. She did anyway.’
I was stunned. Despite all the years I’d been dealing with dysfunctional families, I still found it shocking when a mother wouldn’t put her own child – her very flesh and blood – first in that kind of situation. Yes, there were mothers like Justin’s, who, addled by drug addiction, had their kids do all sorts in order to get their next fix. But to simply call your child a liar and, worse, a jealous bitch – that was quite something. And how old must Sophia have been – eleven? Ten, even? It beggared belief. And thinking of Justin made me think of something else. I knew I had to explain to her that the nature of what she’d told me meant I would have to both record it and also share it with the rest of her care team.
I took a deep breath. ‘I’m so glad you’ve managed to get all this out,’ I said, cuddling her. ‘I’m sure you’ll feel much better for having talked about it, hmm?’ She smiled wanly. Finishing her story seemed to have knocked the stuffing out of her. ‘And you know,’ I went on, ‘what has to happen now is that I’ve got to put it in my log book. Because this is serious and these men should have to pay for what they’ve done, shouldn’t they?’
But, to my astonishment, she suddenly burst out laughing. ‘What’s the fucking point of that?’ she asked incredulously, pulling back and gaping at me. ‘I mean, go ahead and tell who you want, but what difference is that going to make to anything? And how would anyone find them anyway? I barely knew the names of any of the blokes she had round. I only knew those last two because I used to have to listen to her shouting it when they were doing it,’ she spat. ‘Go on, if you want to, Casey. Tell anyone you want to. But you’ll be wasting your time, I promise. Don’t forget, she’s my only witness and she’s a fucking cabbage!’
I stared back at her, momentarily speechless, my brain whirring. The fact that she used the word ‘witness’ seemed telling. ‘Have you already told anyone about this, Sophia? I mean, anyone other than your mother?’
She shrugged. ‘What’s the point? Who’s ever going to do anything about it? Who can do anything about it?’ She stood up then. ‘Honestly, Casey, stop looking at me like that. It’s done. It’s finished. And I need to go to bed now.’
She walked to the kitchen door then and turned back towards me as she opened it. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ she said again. ‘I’m okay now. I’m a big girl now. Really I am. Night.’
I stayed in the conservatory for another half an hour, just to try and get my head around the things she’d told me. If her allegations were true – and they certainly seemed to fit, instinct told me – then no wonder she had so many issues. There had obviously been massive unfinished business between her and her mother, and, since tragedy had struck, it would never now be finished; a scarily big load of psychological distress to sit on the shoulders of such a young girl. And then there was the issue of the attempted rape by her mother’s boyfriend, and Sophia’s assertion that her mother had refused to believe it. I’d seen and read about plenty of cases where mothers, fearing the loss of a boyfriend or spouse, would shut their eyes to what was being done to their kids, almost before their eyes, and that was shocking enough in itself. But to actually accuse your barely pubescent daughter of not only lying, but trying to compete with you for them – that was something else again. I would need to ask John to do some more digging, I decided. It might not be seemly to speak ill of the dead (or in a vegetative state, for that matter) but if Sophia had any hope of making a good life for herself she needed someone to step up to the plate and get the truth out there about her mother.
It was with this very much in mind that I went up to bed. Mike was still awake, reading, so once I’d undressed and snuggled up to warm my toes I told him, in hushed tones, everything Sophia had told me. He’s a gentle soul mostly, but he was angry. A lot angrier than I’d seen him in a while, in fact.
‘Fucking animals!’ he hissed.
‘Shhh, Mike. And mind your language!’
‘I’m sorry, love,’ he said, ‘but it makes my blood boil. And I’m telling you, something had better get done about this. No wonder these kids come to people like us with such messed-up heads! How come none of this is on her bloody file?’
‘Shh!’ I said again. ‘Sophia’s going to hear you!’
‘Well, good, frankly. Perhaps she should hear me! She should certainly know someone’s on her side. Fucking animals!’
I had never heard Mike quite so riled up before. Never heard him swear like that, either – not if there was a chance one of the children might hear him. He’d always been a stickler for things like that. ‘I know, love. I feel the same,’ I said, stroking his arm, trying to calm him down. ‘But she’s got us on her side now, hasn’t she? You and me, love. We’ll stick by her. And that’s a promise.’
But as I lay in bed, waiting for sleep to creep up and overtake me, all I could think of was one of my mum’s favourite sayings. Never make a promise you can’t keep.
Chapter 9
After the revelations and drama of the weekend, the following week was turning out to be something of an anticlimax, and that was absolutely fine by me.
I’d been on to John Fulshaw first thing on the Monday morning but, as Mike and I had both expected, there was nothing on Sophia’s file about an abuse allegation. ‘You know,’ John said, ‘I have to tell you, Casey, I have heard mutterings about her having a tendency to make stuff up, to be honest.’
‘But if there’s nothing on file …’
‘That may be because she has made an allegation, but it wasn’t recorded because it wasn’t deemed to be true.’
‘I don’t know, John,’ I said. ‘My instinct is the opposite. It does ring true. I know I barely know her but I’ve been around children her age for half my life. I think I have a pretty good instinct for when a child is telling the truth.’
‘And I know to trust that instinct of yours,
Mrs Watson! Look, leave it with me. I will do some sleuthing and get back to you asap.’
John had also agreed both with my feeling that such a thing would help explain some of Sophia’s inappropriate and worrying behaviours and also that, if it was true, then it should be investigated.
Sophia herself, now she’d opened up a bit about the travails of her life, seemed to be happy to forget about them. And at last she seemed to be settling in. We had no upsets, no arguments, no displays of pique or temper all week, and I allowed myself to hope that we could make some solid progress; I felt we’d become closer now she’d decided to confide in me, and if ever a child deserved a break, Sophia did. She was almost entirely alone in the world, after all.
By Friday, I was especially pleased to hear from Mr Barker that, while he was still a bit concerned about Sophia’s health, he was generally very pleased about how she was settling in. She was clearly a bright girl, with the potential to do well academically, and if she could achieve well in school it could make a real difference in her life.
I put the phone down and went back to the cleaning I’d been doing, feeling seriously positive for the first time since she’d come to us.
I returned to the living room to find Kieron, who had a half-day off from college, standing in front of our big living-room mantelpiece mirror, duster in one hand, spray cleaner in the other, flexing his biceps and pulling faces. Housework generally, he hated, but mirrors he liked to do. I rolled my eyes. He was honestly that vain.
‘Kieron, you big poser!’ I said. ‘I thought you were supposed to be helping me, not practising your Mr Universe pose!’
‘Mother,’ he said, sweeping his hands down his torso. ‘It takes a great deal of willpower not to keep looking at this. You may mock, but most females find me irresistible … Anyway, who was that on the phone?’
I returned to my own dusting and he to his. ‘Oh, just school.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, God. What’s she done now?’
‘Oh, it was nothing like that. They were just giving me an update. She’s actually getting on rather well, they said.’
Kieron stopped polishing then and turned to me. ‘Mum,’ he asked, ‘is it true what Dad told me, that she’s been abused?’
‘That’s what she said, love. Though there’s nothing in her file. So I’m waiting for John Fulshaw to come back to me once he’s done a bit of investigating. I mean, kids do sometimes make stuff up –’
‘Why the hell would anyone make something like that up?’
‘Oh, for lots of reasons. To get attention … to get someone they don’t like into trouble. But your dad and I are inclined to believe her. It would explain a lot of what’s happened with her, after all. But don’t you worry – we’ll get to the bottom of it, I’m sure …’
‘Oh, I wasn’t worried,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I was thinking. I mean, if she does make stuff up, she could tell lies about all of us, couldn’t she?’
What Kieron said brought me up a bit short. It had never occurred to me to think about that, and I could have kicked myself – how stupid of me. If she had been lying about her mother’s boyfriends, then she was a pretty accomplished actress, and Kieron was right to point out that she could cast him and Mike in similar roles. I shook out my duster, with a snap.
‘Good point,’ I said to Kieron. ‘We do have to be careful. Perhaps I’ll dig out the safe care paperwork so we can have a read through it again, eh? Just to check we have everything covered.’
The safe care agreement was one of the guides foster carers had, commonsense guidelines about how things were done to protect the family against false allegations. ‘Though I do believe her, as it happens,’ I said, ‘sad though that is. But don’t worry about it, eh? And remember, unless we hear differently we have to believe her. Way too many kids in care, after all, are much worse off than they might have been if just one adult had taken what they said seriously.’
‘Like Justin,’ Kieron said.
‘Just like Justin,’ I agreed.
‘Still,’ he mused, getting back to polishing his reflection. ‘Even so, you never know.’
I didn’t share what Kieron had pointed out to me with Mike. I didn’t want to stress him, given the unfortunate episode the previous weekend, and, besides, I felt it important that we stood together regarding Sophia. She’d confided in me, and both Mike and I believed what she’d said. If Mike was now having doubts about that – which I wondered about, since he’d clearly spoken to Kieron – we could so easily go down the road of just trying to deal with the symptoms, rather than really getting to grips with the root cause. I knew we were only her foster carers, and very short-term ones at that, but this girl was so messed up, and if abuse was part of the cause, then we had a duty to clarify it and address it.
And when Sophia got home from school I felt we were making progress. She had some gripes about the girls – who all still hated her, apparently, because all the boys fancied her – but listening to her woe-is-me moans was actually quite refreshing because it was just like listening to any child of her age.
But the relaxed ambience wasn’t to last. The dinner cleared away, we were all in the living room catching up on the soaps, when Sophia, quite out of the blue, began laughing.
‘Oh, I can’t wait to see my lovely mummy this weekend!’ she said gaily, as if her mummy was fit and well and going to take her for a picnic, not lying in a coma in a hospice bed. Oh God, I thought. Not that again.
I gave Mike and Kieron warning glances before responding. I felt she was after a reaction, but the best thing would be to play it down.
‘Yes, it’ll be nice, love, won’t it?’ I responded mildly. ‘And we’ll set off nice and early, so we can …’
I trailed off as she’d now stood up and walked across the room, a strange, puzzled expression on her face. She then turned, as she reached the door. Now she looked at me. ‘By the way,’ she said. ‘I haven’t taken my last tablet today. I’m not sleeping well, and it just makes it worse.’
Mike was on his feet before I was. ‘Come on, love. You know you have to take it. Your doctor said you mustn’t start interfering with your medication, without first –’
‘Erm,’ Sophia interrupted him, grinning. ‘I think you’ll find that it’s my body, my disease and my problem,’ she responded. ‘And I’m not taking it, and that’s that, okay? If the world looks like ending, then I’ll call the doctor. End of.’
She walked out of the living room and started up the stairs. ‘Sophia!’ I called after her. ‘Get back down here. Stop being silly.’
‘Just forget it!’ she shouted down. We then heard the slam of her bedroom door.
‘What the hell was all that about?’ Mike said.
Kieron, too, looked stunned. ‘God, she’s mad, she is. Is this all about the visit to her mum?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I imagine so.’
Mike frowned. ‘Well, she obviously can’t not take it.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know. But let’s just leave her for a bit, eh? Then I’ll go up and talk to her. See if I can persuade her.’
I spent half an hour watching but not seeing the telly – I think we all did. The whole thing with her mother had really been playing on my mind. After the allegations she’d made about the boyfriends, and the ultimatum she’d given her mother, it was hardly complicated psychology to figure out how badly her mother’s attempted suicide must play on her mind. It was unfinished business of the worst kind. It couldn’t ever be finished, could it? So here she was, having to keep returning to those horrible memories; she’d wished her mother ill, and then her wish had come true. And every few weeks or so she had to stare that reality in the face. Though I felt awful thinking it, it would be better if her mother had died, because no one seemed to hold out any hope of a recovery. The chances this far down the line were frankly negligible.
Once I felt I’d waited long enough, I made my way upstairs to her room. I couldn’t find her pills, so I ass
umed she’d taken them with her, perhaps taken one, even. I knocked softly on the door. ‘Sophia?’ I called gently.
‘Go away.’
‘Can I come in, love? I just want to talk.’
‘No. Go away. I just wanna be left alone.’
‘I’m sorry, love,’ I said, ‘but I need to come in. I’m responsible for you and I need to know you’re okay.’
As she didn’t respond to that, I turned the handle and pushed the door open. She was lying on the bed, fully clothed. The lights were off but I could tell she’d been crying, and my heart went out to her. She wiped her eyes and sat up, her expression stony.
‘How dare you come in when I said no!’ she barked angrily. ‘Get out! I mean it, Casey! Get out! Leave me alone!’
She stood up then, and straight away I could see she was unsteady. She had to put her hand out against the wall to get her balance. ‘I’m not taking it, okay? I’m not taking it, so just fuck off!’ She was really yelling at me now, as she staggered towards me. Realising she meant to push me out bodily – from her own body language – I began slowly backing towards the landing. ‘Go away!’ she shrieked. ‘Go away, go away!’ Her eyes weren’t focusing, and I could see she was losing all control. And in that state she was scary; I knew I was no physical match for her. ‘All right, love,’ I tried to soothe, ‘that’s fine. Go back to bed now. I can see you’re upset, so I’ll go back downstairs again, okay? You lie back down, now. Look, I’m going. See?’
This seemed to satisfy her and she turned and lurched back onto the bed. Mike had come upstairs now, hearing the shouts. ‘What the hell?’
‘Shh!’ I whispered, frantically gesturing him to go down again. I followed close behind and went straight for the phone. ‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ I said, as I dialled 999. ‘She’s in a right state. God, this disease is a bloody nightmare!’