The Girl and the Ghosts

by Angela Hart

  It’s hard enough being a teenager with low self-esteem, but at that time it seemed as though all the models in the magazines aimed at teenage girls were Photoshopped, and the images portrayed by pop stars and the like were completely unattainable and ultimately demoralising to a girl like Maria. I think today we are far more aware of Photoshopping and so we can discuss this with teenagers, but back then it was more of a hidden practice, and people generally believed what they saw and felt inadequate by comparison. The catastrophic result was that insecure girls like Maria thought along the lines of, ‘I can never look like that, I’m fat and therefore I’m a failure.’

  Jonathan and I tried everything we could think of to help improve Maria’s physical health, including buying her a fantastic new bicycle, which she rode to her grandparents’ house once and then we never saw again, despite their repeated assurances that next time they brought her home in the car, they’d bring it with them. Incidentally, I never understood why they ever drove Maria home, as it was easily close enough to walk to our house.

  In the face of her grandmother’s apparent belief that ‘loving someone means never saying no’, we knew we were fighting a losing battle in our attempts to help Maria get fit for the sake of her physical and mental wellbeing. Babs was overweight herself but she did nothing about it, and I couldn’t help but notice that she always ate more biscuits or a bigger slice of cake than I did.

  ‘I won’t have another,’ I’d say sometimes, as I was always trying to lose a few pounds and hoping to drop a dress size by the next holiday or the next ‘do’ I was going to.

  Babs would snort and look me up and down.

  ‘What are you, Angela? A size fourteen?’

  ‘Well, sometimes a fourteen, sometimes a twelve depending on the cut . . .’

  ‘I ask you,’ she’d say, ‘I don’t know why you’re denying yourself the odd treat. It won’t kill you. Life’s for living, Angela. You look great!’

  That summed up her attitude to a tee: what was the point in saying no? The fact something wouldn’t kill you was her benchmark, and I wondered how many times Babs had lazily indulged Maria and justified it with that reckless attitude.

  Despite being hindered by Babs’s influence over Maria, Jonathan and I didn’t give up and continued to encourage her to go on walks with us or take part in fun activities like ice-skating, albeit with ever-decreasing success. Sadly, Maria admitted, ‘I don’t care. I don’t want to be slimmer. What’s the point?’

  As a younger child, Maria had often told us that she believed she didn’t deserve to be liked.

  ‘Gerry told me that,’ she had told us more than once. ‘I don’t deserve anything in his eyes.’

  Of course we tried to repair the damage, but I was afraid that now it already looked like it was too late. Unfortunately, I think it was probably fair to say that Maria’s soaring weight was possibly another symptom of the mental abuse she’d suffered as a child, and I was starting to become as worried about Maria’s mental state as I was about her physical size.

  ‘It seems obvious to me that another aspect of her low self-esteem is that she doesn’t think she deserves to look nice,’ I mused to Jonathan one day. ‘She doesn’t deserve it, and she doesn’t care. It’s extremely worrying.’

  ‘How sad,’ he replied, and then in typical Jonathan style he added generously, ‘but the daft thing is she does look nice. I know she is overweight, but she has a lovely face and she could look really good if she tried. Imagine how much better she’d feel if she was happy with how she looked?’

  It was incredibly frustrating. I agreed with Jonathan but he was talking from the point of view of a normal, ordinary person who hadn’t suffered the way Maria had and was lucky enough to have a balanced, optimistic outlook on life.

  Despite Babs’s well-meant but frankly dangerous overindulgence, I still felt that in the circumstances Maria was very fortunate to have the love and support of her grandmother. Babs was supportive of us in many ways, too, and was always quick to offer to help if she could and the need arose. We had a good relationship with her and with Maria’s granddad Stanley in the main, which we were careful to maintain – sometimes by taking deep breaths and counting to ten, particularly when we discovered some new deception that had been thought up to enable Maria to have something she wanted.

  I think Jonathan sometimes found it even more difficult than I did not to say anything on those occasions. What also frustrated him – although he was always civil and offered her a cup of tea – was Babs’s habit, every time she brought Maria back after a visit, of coming into the house and heading straight for the kitchen without waiting to be invited. She usually stayed for at least an hour, and I must admit that I did sometimes wonder whether, if I were to clutch my chest and then slump sideways on my chair, she would finish what she’d been saying before phoning for an ambulance.

  I often called in to have a cup of tea with my mum on Sundays, and sometimes I didn’t get back until after Maria returned from visiting her grandmother. Even if Jonathan was there on his own, watching sport on TV, Babs would still come in, hear that the television was on and head straight for the living room. Then she would settle down on the sofa and talk to Jonathan about people he’d never met who had done things he didn’t really understand, while Maria disappeared upstairs to her room.

  We were both sympathetic to the fact that Maria’s grandmother was a bit lonely. Stanley tended to keep himself to himself and was rather a curmudgeonly character. But in our house, peaceful moments are quite rare and don’t last for very long, so when you do get the chance to relax, you want to make the most of it. For Jonathan, that often meant watching sport.

  There was one Sunday afternoon when he was just settling down to watch a football match he’d recorded the previous day when Babs came bustling into the living room saying, ‘Oh, that was a good game. Arsenal won that 2–1.’ On occasions like that, after having managed to avoid finding out what the score was all day, it was understandable that Jonathan felt as though his patience was being sorely tested.

  Another Sunday soon after, I had arranged to pick Maria up from her grandparents’ house on my way home from my mum’s, but Babs must have forgotten what I’d said and she brought Maria back herself, before I was due. When they got to our house, Maria went straight up to her room to do her homework, while Jonathan took a deep breath and returned to the living room, where Babs was already sitting on the sofa.

  Jonathan was very tired that day, and the whole point of my saying I’d pick Maria up was so that he could watch the match in peace. So, instead of offering her a cup of tea, as he would normally have done, he sat down and watched the match, while she sat there in silence for a few minutes and then left.

  ‘I do feel a bit bad about it,’ he told me later, after he’d explained what had happened. ‘It doesn’t take much effort to be polite to someone. But, to be honest, I’m having one of those days when it feels as though the tank is empty. It was a game I’d been looking forward to seeing. I suppose there was a silver lining to this particular clown though, because at least she didn’t know the score this time.’

  I sympathised with him. ‘Really, Babs is the only one at fault here,’ I said. ‘She should know better than to behave the way she does, but unfortunately she doesn’t seem to tune into situations the way we’d like her to.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Jonathan lamented. ‘Frustrating, isn’t it? I feel like our good nature is being exploited, but I know it’s not deliberate. If it was anyone else I’d feel able to have a civilised chat about it and explain that I just wanted to have some relaxation time to myself in my own house. Anybody else would understand, but I know Babs would take offence.’

  His guilt and irritation turned to indignation, however, when our support social worker rang a couple of days later to say that Christine had complained to Social Services that Jonathan had been rude to her mother. This was particularly galling as we hadn’t heard a peep from Christine for a long time. Thankful
ly, Jess smoothed this over by explaining the full story to Christine and making it clear that Jonathan did not intend to cause any offence. Christine apparently accepted this without any further fuss or complaint. She’d had the baby by now, but there had been no official talks with Social Services about arranging for Maria to meet her sister, despite whatever promises Christine had made to Maria in her clandestine conversations or meetings.

  We had finally sussed out by now that Christine’s attitude towards us tended to be related more to what was going on in her own life than to anything we did or didn’t do in relation to Maria. And the numerous complaints she made about us to Social Services were usually an expression of a generalised resentment of ‘the establishment’, which of course, in her mind, included foster carers like us.

  The complaints Christine made about us didn’t ever have any significant impact, apart from being a bit aggravating. What really mattered was how her behaviour affected Maria, whose progress at secondary school seemed to soar when her mother was off the scene and plummet whenever Christine re-entered Maria’s life.

  34

  ‘Something is very wrong’

  Although Maria was still sometimes very angry as a teenager, and generally found it difficult to express her emotions, thankfully she did occasionally talk to us about how she felt. A lot of children who’ve had experiences similar to hers won’t talk about them to anyone, and there’s little point trying to encourage them to do so until they’re ready and able to start compartmentalising the different parts of their life and all the things that have happened to them.

  Some children might benefit from professional counselling and therapy, which, unfortunately, are rarely offered to them, primarily due to lack of funding. The other problem is that when professional help is given, it isn’t always as useful as people hope it will be. For example, one boy who was with us for a few months as a teenager told me after he’d had a session with a therapist, ‘I’d been talking about something my dad did and she suddenly said, “I know exactly how you feel.” It made me really angry when she said that, because she can’t possibly know how I feel. Has she been through the things I’ve been through? I doubt it.’

  Of course, it’s possible that his therapist had had similar experiences as a child, although even if she had, she couldn’t have known ‘exactly’ how that particular boy felt. What was more likely, however, was that she didn’t mean it quite the way it sounded. But the boy was right to protest, because everyone’s experiences are unique. Although you might be able to imagine how a child feels, you can’t ever feel what they’re feeling, which is one of the reasons why you always have to be so careful about what you say.

  Another child we looked after, a little girl who stayed with us for a few months while Social Services were looking for a long-term foster home for her, was given several appointments with the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, or CAMHS as we called it. That in itself was proof of how serious her problems were, as the service is always so overstretched that therapy sessions are usually reserved for only the most acutely ill children. The sessions appeared to help the child a great deal, as she always returned in a calmer, more positive frame of mind, even if she had been extremely angry and aggressive in the car on the way to her appointment.

  As I’ve said before, you never know what will trigger a memory for a child who has had bad experiences; I never expect or assume they know themselves. And although Maria did sometimes talk to us about the things that had happened to her, I’m sure there were many more horrific incidents we aren’t even aware of.

  One day, when she was sitting beside me on the sofa watching television, she suddenly blurted out, ‘Whenever I think about my stepfather, my face gets really hot and I feel sort of . . . tight. As though, if he was standing in front of me, I’d punch him in the face.’

  Maria was nearly fifteen by now. Her love of reading had persisted throughout her time with us, and as well as reading a lot of fiction she had also started to read some self-help type books, the ones about improving your life and happiness and that sort of thing. This started after she had a lesson on psychology at school, which really interested her. I imagined her reading encouraged her not just to think about the past, but also to start to articulate her feelings about it.

  I didn’t really know how much impact the self-help books were having on Maria, and I wasn’t exactly sure what to do or say about them. As is often the case with the children I foster, I was walking on eggshells to a certain extent. I didn’t want to question Maria directly about how she felt and I was wary of saying the wrong thing. Eventually, after the remark about punching Gerry, I picked my moment and asked her, ‘Would you like to talk to someone professional about how you feel? Someone who could help you to deal with your anger so that it doesn’t build up inside you and make you miserable?’

  ‘Yes, I think that would be a good idea,’ she said, looking relieved. ‘I know I can’t really hit my stepdad or punch him in the face, so sometimes, when I get really angry, I’m afraid I might end up hurting someone else.’

  Maria had been going through a bad patch for a while before we had that conversation. There had been a few spats at school with teachers and other pupils, but she refused to discuss what they were about. Then Christine phoned one evening out of the blue. Even though Maria was older and I no longer listened to the calls, Christine was meant to call at specific times, and this was not one of them.

  On this occasion, Maria had a blazing row with her mum. I had no way of finding out what Christine had said unless Maria told me, but I heard Maria scream, ‘Why did you let that happen?’ This was followed by several outbursts like, ‘What sort of answer is that? I want to know the reason. What was going through your head? You’re mad, d’you know that? Psycho!’

  When Maria came off the phone she barged past me, her face like thunder, and ran up to her room, where she stayed for several hours.

  I spoke to her social worker about my concerns and Maria was put on a waiting list to see someone at CAMHS. ‘The services are massively overstretched,’ the social worker told me, unnecessarily, ‘so I’m afraid it’s going to be a long wait before Maria is able to see someone.’

  ‘I understand. I’m just glad she’s on the waiting list. I think it’s essential she gets the right help. I am afraid that not only is she struggling with her anger issues, but I’m concerned she also has depressive tendencies.’

  I went on to talk about Maria’s weight problem – something I had kept Social Services very well informed of – and made the point that she did not seem to care about how she looked, which to my mind was a very worrying indicator of her state of mental health. I had also mentioned her weight to her GP at the last visit, when Maria went for her annual medical check.

  I heard nothing for weeks, during which time my concerns for Maria’s mental health became more acute.

  Maria had a habit, when she was sitting at the table in the kitchen, of tipping her chair onto its back legs and reaching behind her to get whatever it was she wanted out of a drawer or the fridge.

  ‘You’re going to tip that chair right over and end up inside the fridge yourself one of these days,’ I’d said to her many times.

  ‘You’re just jealous because you can’t do it,’ she would retort, and then carry on tipping her chair.

  ‘I mean it, Maria! I don’t want you falling!’

  She did it one night when we were having a nice meal, with a lot good-humoured banter being exchanged. I didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere so I gently chided, ‘Maria, if there was an Olympic medal in balancing on two legs of a chair, I think you’d win gold.’

  ‘Very funny,’ she said, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Well, I don’t want you to get hurt, sweetheart,’ I said.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Maria tut-tutted.

  As she spoke I noticed that the sleeves of her top had risen up her forearms, as she’d twisted round in her chair and reached awkwardly to get a bottle of water out of
the fridge. To my dismay I saw that there were lots of red marks on the insides of her wrists. Suddenly my words ‘I don’t want you to get hurt’ took on a whole new meaning.

  If this was what I feared it might be, it certainly wasn’t the first time I’d dealt with a child who self-harmed. Unfortunately, self-harm is a very common problem. It’s thought around thirteen per cent of young people may try to hurt themselves on purpose at some point between the ages of eleven and sixteen, but the actual figure could be much higher as very few teenagers tell anyone what’s going on. In 2014 figures suggested a seventy per cent increase in ten- to fourteen-years-olds attending A & E for self-harm-related reasons over the preceding two years. Inevitably, the children I cared for were even more likely to be at risk from self-harm than those without specialist needs, so Jonathan and I had dealt with many incidents over the years.

  I said nothing to Maria at that moment and tried to join in the chatter around the dining table, but my mind was whirring. I wondered how long this had gone on for, and to my horror I realised I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Maria with bare arms. After she gave up PE and gained all the weight I’d never seen her in a short-sleeved top, and in fact she usually wore baggy sweatshirts or a long-sleeved top with a big hoodie layered over it. You could barely see what shape she was, let alone the skin on the underside of her wrists.

  I waited until later in the evening, when Jonathan and I were alone in the living room and Maria came in to say goodnight, before asking her, ‘What are the marks on your arms, sweetheart?’

  ‘What marks?’ she replied, instinctively pulling down the sleeves of her sweater beyond her wrists.

  ‘I saw them when you were reaching to get a bottle of water out of the fridge at dinner tonight. All those red lines on the inner surface of both of your arms.’ I tried to maintain eye contact with her as I spoke, but she looked away.