The Girl and the Ghosts

by Angela Hart

  ‘“Did you get off the stool?” the bad man yelled.

  ‘“No,” cried the little girl. She was very, very scared.

  ‘“Liar!” he shouted in her face. “I know what you did, and I have proof!”

  ‘The little girl trembled and the man switched on the light.

  ‘“Look at the floor! Look at your feet! You are a liar!”

  ‘When the little girl looked down she saw that there was icing sugar sprinkled all over the kitchen floor, and in it were her footprints, leading to the biscuit cupboard and back to the stool.

  ‘The little girl gasped in horror. She knew she had been caught out and she knew the bad man would throw her down the stairs. The end.’

  Maria stared at me when she’d finished her story, looking as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d recited it.

  ‘What a story,’ I said. ‘The teachers at school have commented you have a way with storytelling.’

  I stopped there. I almost said the teachers had praised her for having a good imagination, but it seemed fairly obvious this could be based on some truth, and so I memorised as much of it as I could and put it in my notes to pass to the social worker. As I did so I recalled how she’d shrieked and gone very still and quiet for a moment when we were baking biscuits one time, after I spilled a bit of flour on the floor, by her feet. I also thought about one line she had read in her story, which stuck out: ‘I think it was a snooker cue, as he had been out playing snooker with his friends, but it was dark so I couldn’t see.’ There were two odd things about this. The specific detail about the snooker cue (and yes, Gerry and his boys played snooker), and the very obvious use of the word ‘I’ where really she should have said ‘she couldn’t see’, as she was meant to be telling the story of the little girl.

  However many children we foster, Jonathan and I know that we will never stop being surprised, sometimes shocked, by the things they tell us. Over the years, with all the training and experience we have gained, we are now more confident about responding to the disclosures some children make than we were when we first started fostering. But my heart still misses a beat when a child makes any kind of possible disclosure. This is partly because it’s distressing to hear, but partly also because I know that what I say in response could make all the difference between them talking about something they really want to talk about or clamming up so that the chance is missed. It’s very important the child is aware you are simply listening to them and not judging them. At the same time, we have to be very careful not to criticise the child’s family for anything we are told, because any comments we make may well get repeated to them.

  On another day I was sitting with Maria in the car outside the house, having the conversation we often had while I waited for her to fasten her seat belt before starting the engine, when she said, ‘Well, I don’t see why I have to do it up. I didn’t have a seat belt in my stepdad’s car.’

  ‘You must have had a seat belt,’ I said. ‘Do you mean you didn’t do it up?’

  ‘No,’ she answered, heaving one of her long sighs. ‘I mean I didn’t have a seatbelt. Well, not always anyway, ’cos I sometimes went in the boot.’

  ‘You travelled in the boot of your stepdad’s car?’ I repeated, adjusting the rear-view mirror as I spoke so that I could glance at her face.

  ‘Yes.’ Maria met my eyes for a moment, and then looked away. ‘There wasn’t always room for all of us to sit in the car when his kids and my brother Colin were there. So, as I was the smallest, I had to go in the boot. I hated it though. It was all dark and smelly and sometimes I was frightened in case I used up all the air.’

  She paused for a moment and I heard the clasp on her seat belt click shut before she added, ‘I suppose wearing a seat belt is OK really. At least it’s better than being in the boot. What’s that thing they say? I know: every clown has a silver lining.’

  ‘I think it’s every cloud,’ I laughed, somewhat half-heartedly. ‘Thanks, Maria, for doing up your belt.’

  22

  ‘Dead people talk to her’

  We used to go off somewhere most weekends with the children we fostered. Sometimes, we’d go walking in a national park or along a coastal path, or we’d put the bikes on the car and head off to find a cycle route we hadn’t explored before, around a lake or along a disused railway line, for example. Maria loved scouting ahead for the arrows that marked the trails, and as time went on she became a very enthusiastic participant in whatever we did.

  The activities we do are the sort of things Jonathan and I did when we were children and usually took for granted. However, many of our foster children have never had experiences of exploring, going to the beach and cycling, for example, so we put a lot of effort into making sure they get as many opportunities as possible to enjoy themselves. Not that it really seems like effort: when they’re happy, we’re happy, and even the most difficult of the children we’ve fostered over the years have enjoyed doing the activities we’ve done with them.

  We’d had a touring caravan for a few years by the time Maria came to stay with us. A friend of ours who was a foster carer regularly took children camping, until she had a placement whose social worker refused to give permission for the child to go with them because they would all be sleeping in what was, in effect, one open-plan room. That was something Jonathan and I were aware of when we bought our touring van. Its layout was perfect for a foster family that needed separate sleeping compartments. It slept six, when the awning was attached. There were two bunk bed areas at the back of the caravan, with each bunk having its own lighting and a sliding door that could be bolted from the inside – but easily forced open in an emergency.

  All the children we took on camping holidays in that caravan loved having their own private space – which soon became christened Tardis One and Tardis Two – not least because it enabled them to read or play Nintendo games into the early hours of the morning without Jonathan and me being aware of what they were doing. In fact, we did know sometimes but we didn’t say anything, because that’s what holidays are all about: doing things you can’t normally do when you have to get up the next morning to go to work or school.

  The awning we added on contained two zip-up compartments and a space where we could set up a folding table and chairs, which incidentally we spent several hours clinging on to when a terrific wind threatened to snatch it away one time! The caravan itself had every mod con you could think of – a bathroom, cooker, fridge, television, radio, wardrobe and plenty of storage space. At night, the seating area became a double bed, where Jonathan and I slept behind a fitted curtain I’d made to divide the living area in two and provide us with some privacy if the children got up to use the toilet in the night.

  One of the highlights of all our caravan holidays was the many meals Jonathan cooked on the portable barbecue we always took with us. It was an activity I encouraged as it gave me a break from the everyday cooking I did at home, and the children loved helping him, particularly when he cooked what seemed to be everyone’s favourite meal of burgers and buns – preferably not ‘spoiled by salad’!

  We stayed at lots of different campsites over the years, some of them by the sea, others in the countryside, where we would spend the days swimming, walking and crabbing if we were near a beach, then play cards and board games in the evenings.

  Maria came away with us for a weekend in the touring caravan during this period, when the interim care order was in place and we were waiting for the final verdict from the court. Her mum complained that she didn’t want us to take Maria away for a whole week, but eventually agreed to a short weekend trip when I managed to give a positive response to every criticism she made, such as, ‘I don’t want Maria sleeping in the same room as Angela and Jonathan’ and ‘I don’t want them touring around places I don’t know about’. Via the social workers I provided a full description of the caravan, including pictures showing the layout, and I drew up an itinerary that stated exactly what we planned to do and where. Only t
hen did Christine reluctantly say, ‘Go on then, but I’m not paying anything towards it.’

  We didn’t want any money from her. We wanted to take Maria and the boys on a trip for the pleasure of having a fun and relaxing time together. It was as simple as that.

  It was a really good trip. We went walking in the forest, swam at a water park, where Maria must have gone down the water-slide at least a dozen times, and Maria, Dillon and I saw a Disney film while Tom and Jonathan went cycling. Maria was enthusiastic about everything, although she sulked from time to time.

  ‘Can I have Coke?’ she asked on the first night.

  ‘Yes, of course. We’re on holiday!’

  She guzzled the drink in record time, and then unbeknown to me helped herself to another large tumbler full. When I stopped her having a third glass, after realising what she was up to, Maria curled her lip.

  ‘You said Coke was allowed on holiday! You’re such a spoilsport! It won’t kill me, you know.’

  ‘Maria, I can’t let you guzzle Coke all night. It’ll make you ill. It’s not good for you to drink too much.’

  She huffed and puffed and said, ‘Mum told me this would be rubbish! I don’t know why we’ve bothered coming away.’

  Unfortunately, Christine had continued to make negative remarks to Maria when she spoke to her, despite being supervised at the contact centre and knowing I could hear her when she talked to Maria on the phone. It was something Jonathan and I had reluctantly learned to live with.

  I ignored Maria’s comment, and that tactic seemed to work. Maria didn’t have any tantrums and she didn’t run off once, although I made sure she was never out of my sight, of course. Maria was at the age where she liked to be doing things all the time, and I think the fact we had plenty to do kept her mind off other things. She seemed happy, and she liked being busy and involved in whatever activity we did, so I don’t think it crossed her mind to run off, as that was typically something she did when she was in a bad mood and needed to vent her dissatisfaction.

  However, there were a couple of incidents that meant the trip wasn’t perfect. On our second evening the people running the campsite organised a barbecue, and when the food was ready I called Maria over from the nearby play area, which I could see clearly from where I was sitting.

  I was happy to see that Maria had made friends with another little girl. They were walking towards us, laughing, and then Maria appeared to freeze. It was as if she was suddenly rooted to the spot, staring at something with an expression on her face of pure terror. When I followed her gaze I saw that she seemed to be transfixed by a man drinking a can of beer. He wasn’t drunk – no one was; they were all families with children and it wasn’t that sort of gathering. The thought crossed my mind that perhaps she knew the man, which would have been a huge coincidence as we were miles from home, but not impossible.

  However, before I had a chance to react, Jonathan had sprinted across the grass and positioned himself so that he was standing next to Maria, blocking the man from her view. Then he gently touched her arm and, after a brief hesitation, they walked back together to where I was waiting for them, holding her plate of food. Jonathan pointed to something on the other side of the campsite to distract her and give her time to relax again.

  A similar thing happened later that night and again the next day, and Jonathan and I came to the conclusion that the trigger seemed to be someone drinking beer from a can. Each time it happened, Maria would go into a sort of trance and just stand there, staring at whoever it was, clearly very frightened, until Jonathan or I noticed and did something to divert her attention. There must have been some reason for it. Maybe it was the way her stepfather took his drink, although drinking wasn’t encouraged by his religion. Or maybe some unpleasant incident had occurred related to beer that had created a subconscious link in her mind? We never got to the bottom of it, and Maria never spoke about it.

  On our last morning, we all went on a long walk together, and unfortunately Maria fell and cut her knee open quite badly on a rock that was jutting out of the nature trail path. It was a nasty cut and it must have hurt a lot, but she didn’t cry. Apparently, ‘being a baby’ was something her stepfather didn’t tolerate, and Maria always tried very hard not to cry if she hurt herself, although she didn’t always succeed.

  Fortunately, we weren’t too far away from the car so we took her straight to A & E at the local hospital, where they cleaned up the wound and put a butterfly stitch on it. Maria was very brave and good about it all, and I think that when the initial pain wore off she rather enjoyed all the sympathy and special treatment.

  We filled out an incident report and let Social Services know what had happened. As every parent and anyone else involved in childcare knows, you can take every sensible precaution to protect children, but unless you wrap them in cotton wool and make them walk sedately at your side until they’re eighteen, it isn’t possible to stop them hurting themselves in some way, by falling over or bumping into something as Maria had.

  Sadly, when Maria’s mother found out what had happened, she made an official complaint to Social Services because we hadn’t told her about the incident ourselves, although it wasn’t our responsibility to do so. As I’ve said before, it was up to Social Services to decide what Christine needed to be told. Despite this Christine was very annoyed, and she was angry with Maria too, because she had forgotten to mention it when they subsequently spoke on the phone, although she had told her grandmother and showed her the wound when we got home.

  Though Tom and Dillon were happy to come away in the caravan, they were equally happy to stay at home, especially as they were at an age where they could entertain themselves at weekends. Sometimes they helped out in the shop to earn some extra pocket money, which we encouraged as we felt it was a good way for them to learn some life skills by dealing with the public. They also spent their money more wisely when they earned it themselves!

  Dillon was keener than Tom, who usually preferred to spend his spare time doing things with his friends. One of the things Dillon seemed to enjoy most of all was setting up the shop in the morning and making sure the displays looked as eye-catching as possible. He had a very creative streak and was excellent at art at school, as well as technical drawing. Dillon still hadn’t worked out exactly what he wanted to do for a job, but he loved designing things, and he was also very interested in fashion and textiles, and in fact anything that let him use his broad imagination.

  The window displays he created were always much admired by our customers, who started asking for particular colour combinations of flowers based on how Dillon put the vases, baskets and bunches of flowers together.

  It was actually one of Dillon’s ideas that solved a problem that had been troubling many of the locals for quite some time. The issue was that rabbits had started eating the flowers that were placed at graves in the local cemetery. Someone would put a beautiful display of flowers on a grave, then go back the next day to find nothing but a bunch of chewed stalks. It was very distressing for people; one poor woman came into the shop and burst into tears while she was telling me about it. It was a topic that was often discussed by our customers, and although people did come up with various suggestions about how to stop it happening, including using only rabbit-resistant flowers such as asters or delphiniums, only a few of the methods that were tried really worked.

  Then, one day, Dillon was helping out in the shop when he put a display of imitation flowers on the counter and asked me, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I told him. ‘But why in a grave vase?’

  ‘Because that’s what it’s for,’ he said, taking a step back from the counter and looking at the arrangement critically, with his head on one side, before apparently deciding that he liked it too. ‘You’d have to be a very hungry rabbit to want to eat that!’

  ‘What a brilliant idea.’ Jonathan had just come back into the shop after carrying some bouquets out to someone’s car. ‘Why didn’t anyone el
se think of that? It’s the perfect solution.’

  We obviously weren’t the only ones who thought Dillon’s specially designed grave-vase displays were lovely, and of course practical. They were an instant hit with our customers. We always encourage youngsters to have ambition and something to strive towards when they are older, so we were very pleased when Dillon decided to start his own little business with this idea, which he ran within the flower shop.

  ‘I think it’s what’s called a win-win situation,’ Jonathan told Dillon one morning when he was checking his bank statement and exclaiming excitedly about how much money he’d saved from the profits he was making. ‘Unless, of course, you’re a rabbit!’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Dillon laughed. ‘I hear I’m public enemy number one among the rabbits. But I can live with that. I’m going to be an entrepreneur and run my own business when I’m older.’

  ‘And I’ve no doubt that it will be a great success,’ Jonathan said, ‘whatever you decide to design or sell.’

  Maria came in on the latter part of this conversation.

  ‘I’m glad they don’t put the rabbits in hutches,’ she said. ‘I don’t like rabbit hutches.’

  This rang a bell, but it took me a moment to remember why.

  ‘Oh, you had a rabbit, did you, Maria?’ I asked gently, as I remembered seeing a hutch in the photographs Babs had given us to look through for Maria’s life story book. It was in one of the photos Maria had rejected, rather forcefully.

  ‘No rabbit, just a hutch,’ she said.

  I imagined she’d been disappointed as a child to have a hutch and no rabbit, but I didn’t want to open old wounds and so I left a gap in the conversation, giving Maria the space to say whatever she wanted. Looking at the grave vases, she then said, ‘Do you think the dead people like having flowers on their grave?’