Blood Family

by Anne Fine

  I wasn’t sure whether or not to touch him. Even a gentle hand can trigger such bad memories with some of these kids that they can go berserk. The place was full of dangerously sharp tools.

  ‘Eddie?’

  I would have gone to fetch Linda, except I was worried he would do a runner. And so I gradually talked him down. You know: ‘Eddie, you’re not back there. And I’m not Harris. No one in this house is angry with you. I was getting cross with the nail.’ I just kept at it – very much like soothing a horse. (Not that I’ve ever done that.) And finally I must have got through to his frozen brain, because I sensed a relaxation in the tiny ball of him.

  ‘Eddie, I’m going to touch you now. I’m going to put my hand on your shoulder and I want you to try to unfold. You don’t have to look at me, but I do want you to stick out your legs and try to straighten your back.’

  It took a bit of time, but finally he managed it. I led him in the house. He looked like death. Linda came back from next door, where she’d been fixing up to borrow wee Marie for the next swimming session. In front of Eddie I explained to her what had just happened. (He probably needed to hear a sensible account of it as much as she did.) She nodded and then led him off. I saw them sitting close together on the sofa. Her arm was round his shoulders. But it was only later, when she peeled off his shirt before his bath, that she saw all those splinters he had driven in his back when, trying to make himself invisible, he had slid down that rough, unsanded joist.

  Linda Radlett, Foster Parent

  After he wrote that postcard to his mother, one of the treasures I bought him was a tiny feathered owl. There was a shelf of them in Tanner’s toy shop – spin-offs from something on telly. Each of them had a name on its pottery base. The one I chose was called Olly. (Oh, surprise me!) Eddie was thrilled with it. We had been having quite a time persuading him there was no need to hide the things he valued at the back of cupboards. So it was rotten luck that, just a few days later, Dolores came.

  Dolores. I ask you. And anyone who looked less like a fancy Spanish dancer would be hard to find. The phone rang in the middle of the night. Less than ten minutes later she was on the doorstep, sturdy and scowling, with a nervous-looking female officer. Oh, she was angry. She had been lifted from her home at two in the morning, trying to intercede in a scrap between her mum and stepdad. It was the neighbours who had called the police as the fight ratcheted up. Both of the adults were, as the police officer put it, ‘royally rat-arsed’ and so Dolores had to be removed. (Guidelines.)

  She was dead angry with the officer. And she was angry with us.

  We had no choice but to stay up the rest of the night. I didn’t fancy leaving Alan alone with her – she was the sort who’d make up stuff just to cause trouble. And he was worried about leaving me because Dolores looked as if she could pack a smart punch. She wouldn’t go to bed. ‘I’m not going to sleep in your stupid, smelly house! Forget it!’ She turned a chair round and slumped down in it with her back to us.

  So we made tea, and listened to her beefing about the fact that it was her business where she spent the night, not anything to do with us or the police. Then the tears started and we heard the sadder side of the story, about not being able to see her real dad any more because of his mean-minded girlfriend. And how her elder sister had given up on the whole family, and gone to ground in Sheffield. Poor Dolores was obviously so lonely, downright rubbish at school and (as we gathered) pretty unpopular with teachers and classmates alike. She was a car crash of a child.

  Alan kept listening while I fetched her a Coke. (She’d been quite rude about the idea of hot chocolate.) And when I took it to her, that’s when I saw the tiny feathers around her feet. I’m sure she hadn’t ruined the owl out of spite. Quite sure. She was just picking at it nervously, the same way Eddie gnawed his nails.

  But Olly was now bald.

  Someone came round to fetch her at eight the next morning, thank God, to take her home. She went off with a cheery wave (considering) and quite a pleasant, ‘See you! Thanks for the Cokes and biscuits!’

  I held the fort while Alan waited on the toy-shop step until they opened. Luckily ‘Olly’ was popular, so Alan bought two more, one and a spare, as if we were the parents of some toddler who always had to have two comfort blankets in case one of them got lost.

  We had a chuckle later over our rusty acting skills. ‘Eddie, you know you couldn’t find your owl at breakfast? Well, here it is. I think that Alan must have moved it out of the way when he was clearing up.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Ed. It must have fallen down behind the television.’

  I thought that we were home and dry. And I was sure I’d picked up every last one of the feathers Dolores shredded. But two or three of them had floated further than I thought, and Eddie had sharp eyes. It can’t have been an hour before he noticed them, right up against the fender where the vacuum cleaner misses stuff.

  He cradled the tiny feathers in his palm as he inspected the owl for bald patches. Then, ‘Will I be going to see my mother again?’ he asked.

  ‘Any time you like,’ I told him. ‘All that you have to do is say.’

  God, what a painful silence. It’s ghastly trying to imagine what must run through these children’s minds. I made some stupid excuse to leave the room in case he thought that I was waiting for him to agree and make a date. And though he followed me a minute later, he never said a word about his mother after that.

  Charlotte Next Door

  I was amazed to see him coming into our class. I hadn’t realized he was nearly eight. Mrs Carlow brought him in. She had her hand on his shoulder and she was steering him, almost as if he was on wheels. She whispered something to Miss Bright, who turned to us and smiled and clapped her hands to stop us talking.

  ‘Class, this is Eddie. He’s new to our school, so I want everyone in this room to help him out until he finds his feet. If you see Eddie wandering down a corridor, you’re to ask if he needs to know where he’s supposed to go next. If you see him looking sad, I want to know about it. And if you have room for someone else to join in your game, I want you all to think of Eddie first.’

  It’s the same speech she made when Ethan came. And when Skye Lupin was moved down to our class after her stay in hospital because of that thing with her spine.

  People were nice to him at first. But then I think that some of them began to think he was a little creepy. He sort of copied people. If we were playing shipwrecks in the gym, he’d pick on someone – usually Neil – and follow him round, a little too close behind. If Neil did a star jump, so would Eddie. If Neil scrambled up the bars, Eddie would wait till he’d come down again, then do exactly the same, and hurry to catch up. He did what he’d have done if he was teasing Neil. Except he wasn’t. He was just copying.

  He did the same to Astrid when we did painting in wet break. He copied everything she painted, in the exact same colours. Astrid went up to complain, and she and Miss Bright whispered together for a while. Only a little bit later, Miss Bright asked Eddie to help her carry something along to the office. They were away for quite a while. I think I thought that she was probably telling him that he might have been allowed to copy people in that way back in his old school, but he couldn’t in ours.

  I didn’t let on that he lived next door. Only to Emma. And I did tell her that she wasn’t to say about him wearing Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas or playing in the sandpit with a baby. I told her twice.

  But she was cross because I’d given my last sweet to Surina, so she told on me. She slipped out of the lunch line and ran back to the classroom. I followed and I heard her telling Miss Bright, ‘Charlotte is saying really mean things about the new boy.’

  Miss Bright called me in too, and said she hoped I would try harder to be kind. I was so mad at Emma that I broke friends with her and went off with Surina. It was a horrid time till Emma and I made friends again. And after that I heard Surina crying in the lavatories, and I felt worse.

  I don’t think Eddie e
ver knew I’d told about the pyjamas. Or the sandpit.

  Nothing was ever said.

  Eddie

  I’d never worn anything that bright and red before. The trousers were grey, but the school top was redder than ketchup. When I was taken in, on that first morning, everyone in my class just thought I’d moved there from some other school. Nobody asked about it.

  The work was easy. By then I could read almost as well as everyone except for Priya. Miss Bright said my writing was neat. I had a bit of trouble with the number work because they were doing different things. But after Miss Bright called Linda in for a chat, and lent her the book, then Linda managed to explain that too, and it was easy as well.

  Rob came to check on me, and I think that it was the uniform that made him push me a bit. ‘I think your mum would like to see it. I think she’d be proud.’ He tugged me back to face him when I moved away. ‘You will feel better afterwards, I promise you. We’ll go on Saturday. I’ll fix it up.’

  And it was all right, that visit. When we arrived, Mum wasn’t in her room. The corridor was empty, so we just walked along, with Rob peering through the glass panels in the doors along one side, exactly like in school. He found her in a room with other people, sewing some brightly coloured ribbons onto a straw hat. Mum smiled as I came in, and when Rob steered me right in front of her, she said, ‘Look at my bonnet!’ and crammed it on her head, and laughed.

  They’d cut her hair and it looked darker and redder. And she was in a flowery dress. The lady teacher said to her, ‘Lucy, why don’t you run along and take a bit of time with your little boy? The hat can wait.’

  Mum made a sort of joke I didn’t get. Something about the hat having to wait till Easter. But Rob Reed chuckled, and explained to me on the ride home that it was an Easter bonnet, though I couldn’t see why that made it a joke.

  But it was really fancy, and my mum looked good in it.

  She seemed a little baffled in the kitchen, so Rob made tea while we sat on two comfy chairs out in the lounge. She didn’t ask me questions. She just smiled. I wasn’t sure what I should do, so I just sat there. Then I said, ‘I like your hair,’ because I had heard Linda saying that to Marie’s mother when we came back from the pool one day to find her hair was very different and really short.

  Mum didn’t answer, so I said, ‘Did you cut it yourself?’

  She frowned and shook her head as if there was a bit of water in her ears. And then she said, ‘They did it.’

  I told her, ‘Linda takes me to the place on the corner. It’s called La Mode.’

  She didn’t ask about Linda. She didn’t seem to care. Then Rob brought in the tea. I saw him watching us as he went back to fetch the sugar and an extra mug to dump the tea bags in. I think he realized that I couldn’t think of anything to say, so he told Mum, ‘Look at what Eddie’s wearing. It’s his new school uniform.’

  She fingered one of my sleeves. ‘It’s very red.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Rob said. ‘I think it suits him. Gives him a bit of colour.’

  ‘One of the ribbons on my hat is red.’

  ‘I thought your hat was lovely,’ Rob said kindly and gently. ‘After we’ve had our tea, you can go back and finish it if you like.’

  She smiled so brightly that I realized that was all she wanted. So I drank my tea as fast as possible, though it was very hot. Rob stood up. So did I.

  She stared at us as if she couldn’t work out what was happening. Rob took her elbow and he sort of steered her back along the corridor into the room. They were all packing up their scissors and scraps and ribbons, but she didn’t mind. She hurried in without even saying goodbye.

  We went back to the car. As I was kicking at the gravel, Rob told me firmly, ‘I think your mother looks miles better. She’s put on weight, which makes her face look younger. That was a splendid Easter bonnet she was making. She still finds talking hard, but I think that she really liked your uniform. Don’t you think she looks better and seems happier?’

  I liked Rob, so I just said, ‘Yes.’

  Rob Reed

  A lot of people just don’t grasp some aspects of this job. Take Harry. He leaned over the allotment fence and said he thought that my first raspberries would probably be ready by midweek.

  ‘Shame, that,’ I said, ‘because I’ll be on Tyneside, so the birds will get them.’

  ‘Tyneside?’

  ‘Taking a boy in care to see his great-grandmother,’ I explained.

  ‘You get about,’ he said. ‘Were the two of them close?’

  ‘As far as I know, they’ve never met – not since he was a baby, anyhow.’

  Harry gave me quite a look. ‘So what’s the point in taking him all the way up there?’

  ‘Family ties.’

  He snorted. ‘Your time. Your fuel. Though I suppose that it’ll be Joe Taxpayer who picks up the tab. And all to no real purpose.’

  How wrong can someone be? The drive was interesting. (I heard a lot about the way the Radletts run their life.) We stopped at Huddersfield, where Eddie tasted avocado pear for the first time – and mango, now I come to think. And when we finally reached the nursing home, the carer who showed us where to go told us that Mrs Lane had been ‘bright as a button’ until a few years before. ‘It was her daughter going first that knocked the stuffing out of poor old Dinah. That’s when she came to us.’

  We walked along the carpeted hall, and there in a room with a bay window and a spare empty single bed was Eddie’s great-grandmother – propped on a heap of pillows and snoring faintly.

  The carer leaned over her. ‘Dinah? Dinah? This is Eddie. He’s your great-grandson. He is Lucy’s boy.’

  Mrs Lane opened her eyes and smiled seraphically.

  ‘You know,’ persisted the carer. ‘Lucy. Your granddaughter.’

  Mrs Lane nodded hard, doing her best. ‘Is it tea time?’ she asked.

  Eddie was mystified. The carer said, ‘They love their piece of cake at tea time.’

  A bell rang fiercely down the hall. The carer looked towards the door. ‘Are you all right for a moment?’

  ‘We won’t stay long,’ I said.

  But she’d already gone. So I took up the reins. ‘Mrs Lane, here is Eddie. He’s come up to visit you and say hello.’

  She was still smiling. ‘Will you be having cake as well?’

  ‘I hope so,’ I said politely. And the whole benighted visit went on like that. But she was a member of Eddie’s family and so a part of my job. Everyone needs a sense of self, and it is up to me to find a Life Story for even the children with the blankest slates. A newborn baby dumped on a street corner will leave the hospital with heaps of cheery photographs of nurses cuddling them, their very first blanket, even their ‘favourite rattle’. No reason why we can’t do better for someone Eddie’s age. So I took one or two photos of his great-granny smiling benignly from her pillowed nest, with Eddie at her side.

  The moment I let him, Eddie moved away and waited by the window, peering watchfully at his great-grandmother. I hovered over Mrs Lane’s bedside cabinet and the windowsill behind, looking for photos, small mementoes – anything that might give rise to questions that might lead to answers.

  On the chest of drawers there was a photo of a woman with a child. I carried it across to Mrs Lane. She didn’t need to look. She recognized the frame. ‘That is my Clare,’ she said. ‘With little Lucy. Lucy hated socks. You’d get one on, but by the time you’d forced her tiny wriggling foot into the other, the first would be off.’

  So. Eddie’s mother, in his grandmother’s arms.

  I ploughed on for a while, trying to dig out more about this Clare. Friends? Workmates? Anyone who might have known something about her daughter Lucy’s life before it was derailed by Harris. But it was obvious that Mrs Lane’s brain ran only in small circles. I could have sat for weeks and heard about nothing but socks and cake.

  I’d taken a couple of photos, anyhow. And Eddie had met a member of his family, even if he had taken to pr
etending he was invisible.

  I waved the photo of Clare and Lucy at the carer when she came back. ‘May I take a copy of this before we go?’

  Watching her worrying about which tiresome issues of privacy something so simple might raise, I pushed a little. ‘For Eddie.’

  Her face cleared. Blandly she said, ‘You know, I can’t see any reason why you and Eddie shouldn’t slip out for a while to get some coffee.’ She pointed to the bedside cabinet. ‘And if you’d like to look at some other family photos while you’re gone, peek in that drawer.’

  Treasure trove! A score of photographs. And some kind soul who must have sat with Mrs Lane as she was gradually losing her mind had taken the trouble to inscribe the names of people in them on the back, along with the odd brief note. The careful italic handwriting offered its blessed cribs to future minders: Harry – ‘He was a devil when the drink was in.’ Clare and best friend (Isabel? Elizabeth?) in Scarborough – ‘Wind bitter. June. Chip supper after at Bertie’s.’

  We took the lot. The nearest pharmacy had a copier. I needed to keep the names and notes attached to the right photo, so had to keep altering the controls to darken the lightly pencilled notes on the back enough to read, but keep the copies of the photographs from coming out too dark. I clipped the printed sheets in pairs while Eddie stood entranced by the sight of paper churning out of the machine.

  One of the photos was in a transparent folder, and as I pulled it out a shower of photographs that had been tucked behind fell to the floor.

  I picked them up. Crisper, more recent. Had they, perhaps, proved far too painful to be shared? Had they led only to tears? ‘My Clare.’ ‘My Clare with Lucy.’ ‘Clare and Lucy at Saltburn.’ ‘Me and Clare.’ ‘Lucy and little Edward.’ ‘Edward, aged 18 months.’ ‘Edward’s second birthday.’ ‘Edward on the slide at Hurlabout playcentre.’ ‘Lucy and Edward.’

  At last. At last! Something to shove in Eddie’s Memory Box apart from that gloomy-looking, mouldering book!