The Girl and the Ghosts

by Angela Hart

  There was an article in the national newspapers a couple of years ago about two children who were moved to a different foster home after the foster parents were accused of holding their hands too tightly as they crossed the road. It’s because of absurdities like that, which do occur from time to time, that Jonathan and I don’t always agree with every edict and decision made by Social Services. But we do always stick to the rules, because whatever our own personal feelings might be, they are the rules and we are professionals doing a job.

  However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t sometimes find a way around doing something we know would be unfair for a particular child, which, in Maria’s case, meant giving her presents at Christmas that weren’t for Christmas. Jonathan and I discussed this at great length, and worked out exactly how to handle it.

  ‘What we’ve decided,’ I told Maria, ‘is that we are giving you some presents to congratulate you for all your achievements while you have been staying with us.’

  ‘What achievements?’

  ‘Doing well at reading. Learning to bake biscuits. Learning to crochet with my mum.’

  ‘Gerry won’t like it,’ she said flatly.

  She had a point, of course. I wished I could say, ‘he’ll never know’ or ‘don’t tell him’, but of course that would have been wholly inappropriate. Maria already held lots of secrets – her mum and Gerry made sure of that, from what I could gather. The last thing I would ever do is ask a child to keep a secret, and so I had to explain to Maria that I would discuss this with Social Services so her family knew exactly what was planned, which they did. In the event we heard no more about it.

  We all enjoyed a lovely Christmas Day at home.

  ‘Do you think he can see everything?’ Maria asked, as she fell into bed exhausted from a day full of board games, films, a long walk in the park, plus of course a turkey and Christmas pudding, and plenty of presents.

  ‘It’s what you believe that counts, sweetheart. What do you think?’

  ‘I know he does. But why has he let me get presents?’

  ‘Well, lots of people have presents at Christmas,’ I said, not quite sure what to say.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘Night, Angela. Thank you for a lovely day.’

  And that’s the best Christmas present I could have, I thought to myself.

  18

  ‘I’m going home’

  One Friday night after Christmas, Jonathan and I were getting ready for bed when he called me over to the window to see the snow that had just started to fall. By the time we woke up the next morning, the ground was completely covered in a thick white blanket. For once, Tom, Dillon and Maria all got up early without needing any chivvying or encouragement.

  As soon as they were dressed, all three ran out into the back garden and started making a snowman. It was a joy to watch, and when Tom and Dillon announced after breakfast that they were going to meet up with friends for a big snowball fight on the field, Jonathan and I decided to take Maria out sledging.

  ‘Yippee!’ she squealed. ‘I’ve never done sledging before!’

  Jonathan dug the old sledge out of the shed while I got Maria all wrapped up and ready to face the elements. There were already quite a few other children playing on the slopes beyond the playground by the time we had towed the sledge through the park.

  ‘How about that one?’ Jonathan asked Maria, pointing to a long, gentle slope with an expanse of level ground at the bottom of it, beyond which was a narrow gully and a hedge.

  ‘I’ll do it if you’ll come with me, Angela,’ she said, adding hastily, ‘but not because I’m scared or anything.’

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ I laughed. ‘We wouldn’t want two scared people on the same sledge!’

  ‘Bags I go in front,’ Maria called to me over her shoulder, as we followed Jonathan up the hill.

  Any anxiety Maria might have had about her first experience of sledging was soon replaced by exhilaration and excitement. It was good to see her laughing and relaxed as we whooshed down the hill together, leaning exaggeratedly from side to side to avoid all the other brightly coloured, snow-suited children and adults on wooden sledges and plastic trays.

  After we’d repeated the process a couple of times, Maria decided she wanted to do it on her own.

  ‘It’ll go a bit faster without Angela’s weight, so you’ll have to take it slowly,’ Jonathan told her. Then he laughed and added, ‘No offence, Angela,’ when he saw the expression on my face. ‘Although you did enjoy that tin of Quality Street over Christmas, didn’t you, dear!’

  I hastily picked up a handful of snow and lobbed it playfully at Jonathan’s chest, which made Maria clap and laugh.

  ‘Again!’ she said, and we both pelted Jonathan with snowballs.

  After that Maria pulled the sledge up the slope, while Jonathan and I waited for her at the bottom.

  ‘Why isn’t she slowing down?’ I said, as she came careering down the run a few seconds later.

  ‘Brake, Maria,’ Jonathan shouted, but she either ignored him or didn’t hear. ‘You need to slow down!’

  I could see the other children dragging their boots in the snow to slow themselves down as they neared the bottom, or leaning forwards on their sledges to add to the drag, but Maria was leaning back, feet off the ground, to make herself go as fast as she possibly could.

  Jonathan and I could both could see what was going to happen, so he stepped out in front of the sledge to prevent Maria going headlong into the gully. He was sent flying when the sledge crashed into him and I heard Maria shriek with alarm as she fell off into a mound of hard snow. Fortunately, we’d insisted on her wearing a helmet, so apart from a couple of bruises and a few scratches, she wasn’t badly hurt. Jonathan came off worse and was very bruised, in fact, but at least Maria hadn’t ended up in the gully, as she could have been in a much worse state.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Maria said afterwards, once we’d trudged home and warmed up with mugs of hot chocolate.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Jonathan said. ‘I guess you just didn’t have any experience. You’ll know better next time.’

  ‘You learn and live,’ she said, trying to repeat a phrase she’d read in a book, but getting it slightly mixed up.

  ‘Indeed, and in any case, what are a few bruises between friends?’

  Jonathan grinned, but Maria froze and stared at him in horror. We both realised what he’d said and looked at each other, not quite knowing what to do next.

  ‘What I meant is, Maria, I am not in pain. It’s not great that I’ve got bruises, but I know you didn’t mean for me to get hurt. I’m fine, and they will soon heal.’

  Maria then started to cry, uncontrollably.

  ‘Can I give you a cuddle?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she snivelled.

  ‘You can talk to me,’ I said. ‘I’m here to listen.’

  Jonathan indicated that he was going upstairs. ‘I think I’ll have a soak in the bath,’ he said. ‘Leave you girls to it.’

  I gave him a nod over Maria’s head as she sobbed in my arms. She stayed like that for several minutes, not speaking, and then a seemingly amazing transformation took place.

  Maria peeled herself away from me, wiped her eyes and said bravely, ‘Shall we make some biscuits?’

  ‘Well, yes, why not? Are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘I’m fine!’ she grinned. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me! Jonathan is the one who got hurt. Poor old Jonathan!’

  I was pleased to see that Maria had cheered up, of course, but this gave me the strongest feeling yet that she was putting on a brave face. My instinct told me that she was working hard to keep secrets and, I suspected, behaving exactly how Gerry would want her to, even though I knew she didn’t like him, he wasn’t here to see her and she had no reason to want to impress him.

  We reported the sledge incident to our support social worker, and completed the necessary incident report that evening. I also mentioned the tears afterwards, and how the conversati
on about bruises appeared to trigger them. Maria told her mother about the sledge accident too, as just one of the long catalogue of events she recalled and related during a lengthy phone call they had the following week. Although I had half expected Christine to put in a complaint to Social Services, what she actually complained about wasn’t that the incident had occurred at all, but that we hadn’t reported it to her ourselves. I just ignored this; it was extremely frustrating that Christine repeatedly refused to accept that Jonathan and I had a duty to report such things to Social Services but not directly to her. Not following the rules could have easily created more trouble, and that was the last thing Jonathan and I wanted.

  Maria eventually told Jonathan that evening she was sorry she hadn’t done what he’d instructed her to do before she set off, which was to take it slowly.

  ‘I don’t want to break anything again, do I?’ she commented.

  ‘No, you don’t want to break anything again,’ Jonathan repeated.

  ‘No. It wasn’t my fault last time, but Mummy didn’t like it. So it’s good, nothing broken, soonest mended! Don’t want it to be third time unlucky!’

  ‘Third time unlucky?’

  ‘Yes, I broke my arm twice already.’

  This time it was Jonathan who called Social Services. Maria’s social worker was on leave, but another social worker answered the call.

  ‘I thought I’d better mention this as Maria clearly said “it wasn’t my fault last time” and she said she had broken her arm twice, but we were only aware of her breaking her arm once, when she was about five. We wanted to make sure you were aware of this, if it’s true.’

  ‘Oh, it’s true,’ the social worker said. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she went on, as she rifled noisily through paperwork, ‘I was her social worker when it happened. It’s in the notes somewhere. It must have been . . . let me see. I had just come back from maternity leave so it was, let me see . . .’

  Jonathan waited patiently as the social worker scanned the relevant pages of the file. It took her a while, and in the end she said she’d call him back.

  ‘Fractured arm,’ she said later, after eventually locating the information. ‘Fell off a slide. Maria, age three. Couldn’t, or wouldn’t, corroborate the story. That’s how she first came to our attention. We looked into it when the hospital raised concerns, but she wasn’t taken into care. There was no evidence to suggest she was being mistreated.’

  Throughout her time with us, Maria was meant to have supervised contact with her mother and stepfather once a week at a family centre on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t the easiest place to get to, and arranging a time for the contact sessions had always proved difficult. Christine couldn’t drive, so the sessions had to be at a time that suited Gerry, who she relied on to take her there. Although Gerry didn’t work, it seemed that every time of day on every day of the week that was suggested didn’t suit him. This meant that when Maria had been with us for six months I could count on one hand the number of sessions that had actually taken place.

  Those few sessions that did go ahead were hard to analyse. When I told Maria she was seeing her mum, or her mum and stepdad, she always said, ‘That’s great. I’m really happy.’ But when I looked at her or tried to give her a reassuring smile she was typically staring straight ahead and the expression on her face didn’t seem happy at all.

  Jonathan and I were not required to attend the contact sessions, and a contact support worker called Bessie generally collected Maria and took her there, or we dropped her off. However, on one occasion a temporary contact support worker called Jackie took Maria to the session. Afterwards I reminded Maria to say thanks to Jackie when she was dropped back at our house.

  ‘Oh, yeah, thanks,’ Maria called over her shoulder as she bounded up the stairs on all fours.

  ‘It was a good contact session,’ Jackie told me. ‘Aren’t they a lovely family?’

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to answer her question because all I had a chance to say was, ‘Um, ah,’ before she continued, ‘They’re so friendly and loving. I do hope it all turns out well for the little girl and that she can go home!’

  I felt glad that Maria was generally accompanied by Bessie, who in my opinion had a much more accurate view of Maria’s mother and stepfather, and was not so easily hoodwinked by them. Jackie’s influence and optimistic viewpoint seemed to have rubbed off on Maria that day, because after the social worker left she came back downstairs, babbling away about what was going to happen next. Maria seemed excited at first, but I could tell she was also full of trepidation.

  ‘I’m going home,’ she said, bending one leg up behind her and holding it by the ankle. ‘My mum says so.’

  ‘Your mum said you’re going home,’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes.’ Maria’s smile was bright but her lips were stretched into a tight, tense line. ‘She said her solicitor told her that Social Services don’t have a log to stand on and that the judge will know that the things they’re saying about her are all lies. What’s for tea?’

  ‘Leg,’ I said, buying time. Once again I was concerned by what Maria’s mother had told her, but I didn’t want to contradict what she’d said.

  ‘Leg of what?’ Maria asked.

  ‘The phrase is, “a leg to stand on”. And it’s chicken casserole tonight. In fact, it’s almost ready now. So perhaps you could use your own “logs” to transport you to the bathroom and wash your hands.’

  The long-awaited court hearing was finally scheduled for a Thursday morning. When Jess told me about it I felt nervous, as if I was going to court myself and the judgement could affect my own future – which indeed it would.

  By this point in time I was feeling extremely torn. I wanted what was best for Maria, but I honestly didn’t know what that was. Her mum and stepdad had failed Maria in the past, of that I felt sure, but I forced myself to consider that maybe they had learned lessons and changed. Or was that extreme wishful thinking on my part? What if Maria was forced to live apart from them and it was ultimately the wrong thing? She was still only nine years old – she had half her childhood ahead of her.

  The courts would decide between two options: Maria could go home to live with her mother and stepfather, or the voluntary care order she was currently under would be replaced by an interim care order. At that time, an interim care order could last for eight weeks, with four-week extensions to allow more time for assessments and evidence-gathering before the final court hearing, at which a judge would make a decision about Maria’s future. The next step could be for a full care order to be put in place. In that case, Christine would then lose her parental rights, and the state would effectively be in control of decisions about Maria’s future and who was going to look after her.

  On the day before the court hearing, when we were all sitting at the table in the kitchen eating our breakfast, I told Maria and the two boys, ‘I’m stripping beds today and taking the washing to the laundrette,’ which was something I did from time to time to help support our local precinct shops. (The fact that when I picked up the bed linen later it was all washed, ironed and ready to put away was an added bonus!) ‘So who’s going to help me make up their bed when they get back from school? Maria? Tom? How about you, Dillon?’

  During the silence that followed, I noticed the children glance surreptitiously at each other. Then, almost in unison, they shrugged their shoulders and focused their attention on their toast or bowls of cereal. They still had their heads bent over their breakfast when Jonathan picked up a soft toy belonging to Maria and said, in one of his many funny voices, ‘Me! Me! Let me help you, pleeeeease. I’m good at making beds. Please let me help – I’ll earn my stripes!’ The toy was a zebra, which we’d bought for Maria as a replacement for Benji. Sadly, Christine never did give that particular toy back to her daughter, despite repeated requests. In the end, Jonathan had bought Maria the toy zebra on a day trip to an animal park. She called it Zod and loved it, and thankfully it seemed to go some way towards compensa
ting for the loss of Benji.

  I could see that Maria was suppressing a smile as Dillon sighed loudly, shook his head in mock pity, and said gamely, ‘Now that is something I’d like to see – Zod the zebra making a bed.’

  ‘What’s that, Zod?’ Jonathan raised the soft toy to his ear and listened as if it was whispering to him, then nodded and said, ‘Ah, yes, I can understand that.’

  Maria couldn’t contain herself any longer and was almost bouncing on her chair as she asked Jonathan, ‘What? What did Zod say?’

  ‘He said he’s very upset that you don’t think he can make a bed,’ Jonathan answered solemnly, and Maria grinned.

  ‘Yeah, sure he did,’ Dillon mocked rather sarcastically, although he was laughing too, despite himself. ‘Anyway, I don’t mind making my bed, with or without Zod’s help. I’ll do it after my club.’

  ‘I don’t mind helping either,’ Maria piped up. ‘Can I choose my sheets?’

  Only Tom remained silent. Although he smiled, he continued to munch on his piece of toast. He was a lovely lad, but he was typically reluctant to get drawn into having to do anything around the house.

  After the children had left for school that morning, I stripped the beds and did a few other chores in the house while Jonathan opened the shop. When I went into Maria’s bedroom, Zod was sitting on the windowsill facing outwards, as if he was watching all the people doing their shopping on the street below. Stacked neatly on the floor underneath him was a pile of bags, which, judging from their bulging sides and half-closed zips, were all full.

  Barbara our part-time assistant was having a day off, so I joined Jonathan in the shop as soon as I could and we were busy for most of the day. I was back in the house by the time the taxi dropped Maria off after school, and before Tom and Dillon got home, and I asked Maria about the bags in her room.