The Girl and the Ghosts

by Angela Hart

  ‘Oh, those marks,’ she said, hunching her shoulders and pushing her hands into the pockets of her trousers. ‘They’re nothing. We were playing this stupid game at school today, where you flick each other with elastic bands to see who can hold out longest.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like much fun,’ said Jonathan, who was fully aware of my concerns.

  ‘I know,’ Maria laughed. ‘You’re right. It wasn’t. Well, anyway, goodnight.’

  I wanted to believe this was the truth, and the way Maria said it did make it sound just about plausible, but of course I couldn’t be sure and I was very worried. I made a note of it in my diary to show the social worker and debated whether to put in an emergency call to them first thing in the morning. After sleeping on it, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to cause undue alarm just yet, so instead I decided I would be extra vigilant and would keep a close eye on Maria to see if I could spot any more marks or other signs that something was badly wrong.

  She seemed chirpy enough over breakfast the next morning. When I asked her if the red marks had gone down she said very convincingly, ‘What marks?’

  ‘The ones on your wrists.’

  ‘Oh, those,’ she laughed. ‘Forgot all about them! Yes, no problem.’

  Even though I decided to hold off on calling Social Services, I couldn’t get the marks out of my mind, and I thought about ways to talk to Maria. By the afternoon, after talking things through with Jonathan during quiet moments in the shop, I decided I was going to casually ask Maria to show me her wrists, just so I could make sure she didn’t need any cream on them or anything to soothe them after the ‘elastic band game’.

  Unfortunately, when she came in from school my plan changed, as Maria had little specks of blood on the back of her hands.

  ‘What has happened there?’ I asked, taking her hands in mine.

  She wriggled free and pulled her sweatshirt down so that only her fingertips were visible.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been in the wars again!’ she said. ‘Forgot all about that. It was just another game at school, mucking around.’

  ‘Oh dear. What kind of game makes you bleed like that?’

  The ‘explanation’ Maria gave this time was that she and her friends at school had all been writing their names on their hands with pins. This seemed much less plausible than her elastic band story, and I told her I was a bit worried about this ‘game’.

  ‘Why?’ she said, immediately retreating out of the kitchen, even though she usually helped herself to a drink and a snack as soon as she got in from school.

  ‘I’m going to do my homework, got loads. What time’s tea ready?’

  ‘But I’m worried . . .’

  Before I could finish my reply, Maria was already heading up the stairs, saying as she did so, ‘Oh, Angela, didn’t you ever do any silly things at school? I bet you did! You’re just so old you can’t remember.’

  She said this playfully rather than rudely, and she was out of earshot before I had time to give any answer at all.

  Standing alone in the kitchen, I knew I had to take action. Something is very wrong, I thought. I don’t like this one bit.

  35

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it’

  As soon as I heard Maria’s music go on I phoned her latest social worker, Suzy, and told her of my concerns.

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ Suzy told me.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave it with you. My instincts are telling me this is self-harm, I’m afraid, so I hope you can talk to her very soon.’

  ‘I understand. I’ll prioritise Maria, even though my diary is packed. I know you don’t make calls unless you think they are necessary, Angela, and I trust your instincts.’

  Suzy was quite young and inexperienced, but she was very friendly with a couple of the older social workers who Jonathan and I had worked with for years. I knew they had all been talking, as Suzy had popped into the shop one day when she was off duty and buying flowers for her sister’s twenty-first birthday.

  ‘I’ve been hearing all about you and Jonathan, and all the children you have fostered over the years, and I just want to say I admire you,’ she had said sweetly.

  I was taken aback as I hadn’t expected a compliment like that. I appreciated her kind words, and I was pleased to have Suzy on our side, as that could only be a good thing for Maria.

  Unfortunately, by the time Suzy did speak to Maria, things had escalated. I’d noticed knives going missing out of the drawer in the kitchen, and when I checked Maria’s room one morning after she went to school I found blood on towels and bedding and a stash of blades that looked as if they had been pulled out of pencil sharpeners and razors. Jonathan and I were extremely careful not to leave sharp objects lying around, and we only kept essential knives in the kitchen and all razors were stored out of harm’s way in our own bathroom. It’s very difficult to remove every single sharp object from around your house, which as foster carers we’re told we should do. We did our best, but clearly it wasn’t good enough. Plus, of course, Maria was old enough to walk into a shop and buy scissors or razors if she really wanted to.

  When Maria came home from school that night, I asked her outright how she was, and told her I had found some blood in her room when I went in to fetch the washing. I didn’t want her to think I’d been snooping, but I did want her to know I’d found evidence.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I check your arms, then, because I’d like to be sure.’

  Maria froze, and then looked at the floor. ‘I’ll be all right,’ she muttered. ‘Leave me alone, OK?’

  Then she ran to her room.

  It was a very difficult situation.

  ‘Maybe Maria can be moved up the CAMHS waiting list?’ I asked Suzy at the first opportunity.

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ she told me. ‘But they really are incredibly overstretched, and I think everyone else on the waiting list has a problem at least as urgent as Maria’s.’

  It was obvious there was no point in Jonathan and me trying to talk to Maria about what she was doing, as it only made her retreat to her room. She was clearly in denial about it, and she became very defensive and took great care to keep her arms well covered. I did some research and read that self-harming is a way of releasing overwhelming emotion and can be linked to depression, and that if the problem isn’t addressed very promptly, as soon as it becomes apparent, it can become a compulsion.

  I knew Suzy would let us know as soon as Maria reached the top of the CAMHS waiting list, but I still couldn’t stop myself asking her every time we spoke if she had heard anything. The answer was always the same, and I think Maria might have waited a very long time to see a psychologist if she hadn’t done something that brought everything very abruptly to crisis point.

  As well as self-harming, Maria was incredibly moody and lost her temper more often and more easily than she had done for some time. It’s difficult enough for any child having to deal with everything involved in becoming a teenager and Maria seemed to be struggling, particularly, to cope with the changes in her body. She was having yet more problems with her mum too. Christine was having trouble in her new relationship, and whenever she phoned up, Maria shouted on the phone and got upset.

  ‘Do you want to talk to me about what the problem is?’ I asked one time.

  ‘No. Mum makes me think about when I was little, and Gerry. That’s all. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to even think about it.’

  However, one day Maria did open up to me, about an issue I least expected her to talk about – her anxiety that she might be gay.

  ‘This girl at school keeps laughing at me and telling everyone “Maria loves girls”,’ she told me. ‘I get really angry and tell them that I don’t. But the trouble is, I think it might be true. There’s this girl in the class above me that I really like. I think about her a lot and try to think up ways of getting her to notice
me. So maybe I am gay.’

  ‘We’ve talked before about why some people say unpleasant things about other people,’ I said. ‘About it often being because they’ve got problems of their own. But, actually, it doesn’t matter if it is true. Being a lesbian isn’t the end of the world, you know?’

  ‘I know that,’ she said, miserably. ‘At least, I know it in my head. But being gay is like anything else that makes you different: it just makes everything even more complicated than it already is.’

  ‘It might just be a crush,’ I told her. ‘Lots of girls your age develop crushes on older girls. But as there’s nothing you can do about it if you are gay – and nothing you need to do – why not just wait and see? And try not to worry. It will be OK, either way. But I’m sorry if you’re being a given a hard time at school by someone who doesn’t know any better. Perhaps if you ignore her, she’ll get bored and turn her attention to doing something more useful.’

  Then we talked a bit about coping strategies, and although there didn’t seem to be anything I could say to persuade Maria to believe that she wasn’t the inadequate person she thought she was, at least she seemed to become a bit less anxious about her sexuality.

  A few days later, after spending Saturday night with her grandparents – something she had been allowed to do for a while now – Maria had come back in time to have Sunday lunch with my mum, which she always really enjoyed. In fact, she was in such a good mood after we’d all eaten that she helped clear the table and stack the dishwasher without having to be asked, pointing out cheerfully as she did so, ‘Many hands make light work.’

  Then, as Jonathan, Mum and I were all settling down in the living room with a cup of tea, Maria put her head round the door and said, ‘I’m going round to Meg’s house this afternoon. We’re going to play a new computer game she’s bought. It’s a really good one.’

  ‘Just for a couple of hours, then,’ I told her. ‘Didn’t you say you’ve still got some homework to do? What do you think? Back by four?’

  You never knew how Maria would react when you said something like that to her. Sometimes, she’d sulk and mutter about it not being fair, how all her friends were allowed to do fun things at the weekends, so why wasn’t she? It was a rhetorical question, of course, and it was pointless telling her, ‘Because you’ve been “chilling out” since Friday evening and now you need to do some homework.’ She didn’t get into a mood on this occasion though; she just said sarcastically, ‘Thanks for reminding me, Angela,’ and then, in a more conciliatory tone, ‘OK, I’ll be back by four.’

  It had been one of those weeks when, for one reason or another, Jonathan and I seemed to have spent every day cooped up either in the shop or the house, and as it was a lovely sunny afternoon we decided to walk Mum back to her house. We had two other children staying with us at the time and they were both out visiting their families, so it was a good opportunity for Jonathan and I to spend time with Mum on our own.

  We had a look around Mum’s garden and she picked some of her fresh vegetables for us – I love the smell of fresh, garden-grown tomatoes. Then we had another cup of tea and Jonathan and I got home just before four, followed within minutes by Maria, who kept the hood of her sweater pulled up so we couldn’t see her. Then she went straight upstairs without speaking to us.

  A little while later, after the other children had also returned and were in their bedrooms, we could hear banging and crashing around in the bathroom. We both knew it had to be Maria, as the other children were quietly trying to do some schoolwork.

  ‘It sounds like our peaceful weekend has come to an end,’ Jonathan said, raising his eyebrows and sighing with mock despair.

  ‘It’s such a shame, isn’t it?’ I sighed. ‘Maybe she and Meg had an argument. If only she could learn to deal with frustration in some other way. I know she has every reason to feel angry at life, and I’m worried that one day she might let her temper get the better of her and do something she regrets.’

  ‘I know,’ Jonathan said, with a worried expression on his face. ‘I’ll be glad when CAMHS finally come up with an appointment for her. Their psychologists and psychotherapists must have a lot of experience, so maybe they’ll be able to help her develop some strategies for dealing with her anger.’

  ‘It sounds as though she might be dealing with it by breaking things now,’ I said, looking up at the ceiling when there was another loud thud.

  ‘I’ll go.’ Jonathan put his hand on my arm as I was pushing myself up out of my chair.

  He was just reaching for the handle when the door opened and Maria stumbled into the living room. I leapt to my feet as soon as I saw her, but Jonathan had already caught her and was helping her into the chair he’d just vacated. She looked terrible. There were dark marks under her eyes that looked like bruises. For a moment I thought she’d been beaten up. Then she rested her head against the back of the chair and whispered, ‘I’ve been really sick,’ and I realised that the dark marks weren’t bruises after all; they were a sign that she was very ill.

  ‘Have you got a pain anywhere?’ I asked her, crouching down beside the chair.

  ‘Everywhere.’

  She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them again, she was the little girl she had been when she came to stay with us briefly at the age of seven. ‘I took some tablets,’ she said. Then she started to cry.

  36

  ‘Two packets . . . and some more’

  I glanced at Jonathan and knew his heart must be beating as fast as mine, as I put my hand on Maria’s shoulder and asked, ‘What tablets did you take, Maria? Do you mean that you took some tablets because you’ve got a pain?’

  Although I kept my voice calm and even, I was very worried by the peculiar, creamy-grey colour of her skin and by the fact that she now seemed to be on the verge of losing consciousness. ‘Can you hear me, Maria? Can you tell me what tablets you’ve taken?’

  ‘Paracetamol.’ Her voice sounded weak.

  ‘How many?’

  I could feel the panic expanding inside me.

  By the time she answered, ‘Two packets and . . . and some more,’ Jonathan was already dialling 999.

  I stayed with Maria while Jonathan went out on to the road to flag down the ambulance when it arrived. It felt like hours before I finally heard the sound of a siren – in the distance at first, then gradually getting louder as it got closer – but it was probably only about ten minutes since Jonathan had made the phone call.

  Although Maria was still conscious when the paramedics arrived, she didn’t seem to understand anything that was said to her. They spoke to her quietly, explaining what they were doing as they lifted her out of the chair in our living room and placed her in the one they would use to carry her down the stairs. I walked beside her, holding her hand, as they wheeled her out of the house.

  ‘I’ll go with her in the ambulance,’ I told Jonathan.

  ‘OK. I’ll follow in the car,’ he said, thinking out loud about calling my mum to come and babysit the other foster children we had staying with us. ‘Yes, I’ll ring your mum, sort things out here, and then I’ll come in the car as fast as I can.’

  His eyes were searching mine as if he were trying to gauge whether I knew the answer to the questions neither of us wanted to say out loud: How serious was this? Had Maria tried to kill herself? Most importantly, was she actually going to survive this?

  ‘Maybe being sick helped,’ I muttered desperately. It was what Maria would have called ‘gasping at a straw’, which was a thought that brought tears to my eyes as I climbed into the back of the ambulance and sat down on the narrow seat beside her.

  Maria was lying very still now, and while the paramedic attached monitors to measure her blood pressure and heart rate, I tried to work out how many tablets she could have taken. ‘Two packets and some more,’ she’d said, which I reckoned meant more than thirty-two tablets. Even if I hadn’t seen the concern in the paramedic’s eyes when I told him what Maria had said, I knew en
ough from training and first-aid courses to understand that this quantity could kill. I also thought about a very nice woman who used to come into the shop. She took twenty-seven tablets, and she had died before the ambulance arrived at her house.

  It was horrible, just sitting there, watching helplessly as we sped through the town, siren blaring. Maria slipped in and out of consciousness, and I stroked her hair and told her I was beside her, and we were getting help. As soon as we arrived at the hospital Maria was whisked away, so I went back outside and phoned her grandparents.

  When Babs answered the phone, I explained, as gently as possible, what had happened, telling Babs softly but plainly that Maria had taken a dangerously large overdose of paracetamol.

  ‘Oh dear. Paracetamol?’ Incredibly, Babs didn’t sound distressed or even upset. In fact, she sounded as if she didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation at all. ‘Well, give her our love, won’t you, and tell her I hope she feels better soon.’

  I was shocked and bemused by Babs’s reaction, especially as I’d explained that the quantity Maria had taken was very dangerous, and potentially life threatening. Now I was torn between wanting to make sure Babs understood what I’d told her, and not wanting to upset or alarm her unnecessarily. Maybe her response was some form of self-protection, so that she didn’t have to face the very real possibility that Maria might die?

  Babs abruptly ended the call with an almost breezy, ‘Keep me posted, Angela!’ I stood there staring at my mobile phone for a few seconds outside the hospital, wondering whether to phone Babs back and tell her that if she didn’t come right away, it might be too late. In the end, I decided not to. I’d told her as plainly as I could what the situation was, so what more could I say? Besides, I wanted to get back inside the hospital, so I dashed back inside to find out what was happening to Maria.

  By the time Maria had been treated in A & E and then taken to a ward, Jonathan had arrived at the hospital, so we went in to see her together. As we walked up to her bed, the first thing that struck me was how small she looked, like a little girl, lying there dressed in a hospital gown and with a drip attached to her arm. Her normally rounded cheeks looked hollow, as if they had sunk into her face, and her skin was so pale I reached out my hand instinctively to feel for the pulse in her wrist, just to make sure that she was still alive.