Another Forgotten Child (16 page)

‘Aimee, go with Cathy and have your dinner,’ Susan said quietly, all signs of anger gone.

I wondered if I’d heard right, and so too did the supervisor, who was staring at Susan, as well as looking somewhat relieved. ‘Come on, say goodbye, love,’ Susan said, taking a step towards her daughter to hug her.

I continued to look at Susan, amazed at the sudden change. There was no sign of her previous anger; as she concentrated on Aimee she just looked very tired and old. Then I noticed she was sweating; beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead and the skin on her cheeks and chin glistened, despite it being a cold winter’s day. The heating in the centre was on but it wasn’t especially hot – not enough to make you sweat. I also noticed that Susan was shaking, her hands trembled as she reached out to hug Aimee, and she kept licking her bottom lip and swallowing. Either Susan was ill or badly in need of her next fix. For it now occurred to me that Susan was showing classic signs of drug withdrawal.

‘Give me a kiss,’ Susan said to Aimee, agitated and clearly in a hurry. Her hand trembled on Aimee’s shoulder as she bent forward to hug her daughter. And just at that moment, as they hugged and kissed goodbye, I felt sorry for Susan. How and when had her life gone so badly wrong? She hadn’t started life intending to lose all her children into care, and I feared if she didn’t get off drugs soon she’d lose her life too.

‘Bye, speak on the phone tomorrow, and see you on Friday,’ Susan said, easing her daughter away from her and towards me. I saw the desperation in Susan’s eyes and I think she knew I’d seen it.

‘Bye, Susan,’ I said. ‘Take care, and we’ll phone tomorrow.’

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, as though she was ashamed.

Aimee came compliantly to my side and we left the building. She had gone quiet and didn’t say anything until we were in the car. Before I started the engine I turned in my seat to look at her. All anger towards me had gone and she just looked sad and also worried.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked gently.

She shrugged. ‘I wish Mum wouldn’t go to Craig’s. I don’t like him.’

I didn’t understand the connection but assumed Aimee just needed some more reassurance. ‘You’re safe with me now,’ I said. ‘Craig can’t hurt you.’

‘No. You don’t understand,’ Aimee said, peering out of her side window for any sign of her mother. ‘Mum
has to
see Craig or she gets ill.’

I turned in my seat to look at her, aware she hadn’t finished what she wanted to say. ‘Mum was starting to get ill in contact,’ Aimee continued. ‘She’ll be very sick soon if she doesn’t see Craig.’ It was then I realized that Aimee was probably referring to the effects of drug withdrawal and that she too had seen the signs in her mother, just as I had. Living with her mother Aimee would be more familiar with them than I was.

‘Why does she go to Craig?’ I asked, half guessing her reply.

‘He gives her Big H,’ Aimee said, using the street name for heroin. ‘Well, he doesn’t give it to her – she has to pay him. A lot. He takes all our money and he’s horrible to me and my mum.’

From which I deduced Craig was Susan’s main supplier. That Aimee knew all this was shocking. She was still staring out of her side window, watching for her mother to come out of the family centre. ‘I wish my life could have been different,’ she said wistfully. ‘I wish I was at home with my mum and dad, and my brothers and sisters. I wish my mum would stop doing drugs and being ill.’

‘Aimee, love,’ I said, watching her carefully, ‘I know how difficult it is and I wish things could have been different for you too. I know you worry about your mum, and maybe having you taken into care will give your mother the shock she needs to get her off drugs.’

‘Maybe,’ Aimee said, looking at me. ‘But I don’t think the judge will send me back home even if she does. Mum’s had all these years – since before I was born – to get clean, but she hasn’t done it. Even if she says she’s clean I don’t think the judge will believe her, do you?’

My heart ached for Aimee. She was so young and yet showed the wisdom of an adult. The poor child couldn’t read or write but intuitively knew the outcome of her court case. She was right: given her mother’s long history of drug addiction and failure to look after and protect her older children, of course a judge wouldn’t make an order to return her home. Susan had had twenty-seven years to turn her life around! In this respect it was too late and Aimee deserved an honest response.

‘I think you’re right, Aimee,’ I said gently. ‘I think the judge will want to make sure you’re safe and well looked after while you are a child. You are too precious to risk being hurt again.’

Aimee gave a small nod and then said: ‘It was bad at Mum’s, and Dad’s, and all the other houses we had to go to. It was dark, and strange and scary people came into the house at night. No one told me but I knew what they were doing.’

‘What?’

‘Buying and selling drugs, and not just Big H. There was other stuff.’

‘Where were these other houses you had to visit? Do you know?’

Aimee shook her head. ‘They were all over the place, some in our town and some in a different town. It was better when we stayed at Craig’s. There was a blanket on the floor and I hid under it while Mum went with Craig. Sometimes my mum had to go with Craig when she didn’t have the money for the drugs,’ Aimee explained. ‘And sometimes she had to go with other men. I didn’t know them. Then she got the drugs and we left.’

I knew prostitution was rife among addicts and that sex was a common form of currency for paying for drugs when the money had run out. I looked at Aimee and hesitated before asking, ‘Do you know what your mother was doing when she went with Craig or the other men?’

‘Having sex,’ Aimee said easily, pulling a face of disgust. ‘Sometimes they went to a different room to do it, but sometimes they didn’t. You let men do anything if you need drugs. You even let them hurt you.’

A cold chill ran down my spine. Whatever had this poor girl witnessed in these drug dens? ‘Was your mother hurt?’ I asked.

‘Can’t tell you,’ Aimee said, and she grimaced. And I knew the memories of her mother very likely being sexually abused in return for drugs were far too painful for Aimee to share with me now.

‘Did those men ever hurt you?’ I asked. I should find out what I could for the social worker.

‘They tried,’ Aimee said, ‘but Mum usually stopped them. She said I was too young.’

‘Usually?’ I asked.

Aimee didn’t reply.

‘All right. Tell me when you are ready,’ I said. ‘You’re safe now.’ If Aimee had witnessed sexual acts, as it now appeared, it could explain her sexual awareness, which was inappropriate for a child her age, but it was also possible she’d been sexually abused by the men who had abused her mother. I would pass this on to her social worker but for now Aimee just needed reassurance.

‘Thankfully you are safe now and will continue to be safe, and happy.’

‘But Mum still loves me,’ Aimee said. ‘I hope she always will, even if I don’t go home.’

I felt my eyes fill. It was at moments like this that I dearly wished I could change history and make everything OK, so that Aimee could return home to two loving parents and live happily ever after, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. ‘Your mum loves you,’ I said, ‘and I’m sure she always will.’ And while I believed this to be true, part of me said that Susan should have shown her love by getting off the drugs so she could parent her children.

‘And I will always love my mummy,’ Aimee added.

‘Good,’ I said, smiling. ‘But it’s OK to like me a little as well, you know?’

‘I wish my mum could be like you, and not do drugs,’ Aimee said as I turned to the front, ready to start the car engine. ‘You don’t do drugs, and you’re happy – well, most of the time, apart from when you tell me off.’

I smiled at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘I don’t tell you off that often,’ I said. ‘But I do care about you, and part of caring for a child is helping them do the right thing so that they grow into really nice people. Now let’s go home and get some dinner. I’m starving.’

‘Me too,’ Aimee said.

I smiled at her again and started the car’s engine, but before I pulled away the doors to the family centre flew open and Susan came out. Eyes down, she hurried along the path with little jerky steps, clearly agitated and, if Aimee and I were right, now desperate for her next fix.

‘Look! There’s Mum!’ Aimee cried, tapping on her window to try to attract her mother’s attention.

But Susan had only one thing on her mind: getting the drugs her body so badly craved. She continued past our car without even seeing Aimee, sweating and shaking, her need for drugs again overriding the needs of her daughter, just as it had always done.

‘I’m never doing drugs,’ Aimee said, as her mother turned the corner and was out of view. ‘Never. Ever.’

‘I know you won’t. You’ve seen the damage they can do. You’ll be happy without them.’

‘Like you.’

That evening at home Aimee was quieter and less confrontational than usual. She ate her dinner without making a scene over not having biscuits and barely complained when I said we should do fifteen minutes’ homework. At bedtime she didn’t protest at having to wash, and then let me brush her hair. I guessed that seeing her mother in the state she’d been in had reminded Aimee of just how bad things were at home, and that perhaps life with me wasn’t so bad after all. Lucy and Paula noticed the change in Aimee too.

‘Aimee was quiet,’ Paula said later, when I was in the sitting room writing up my log notes.

‘Long may it continue,’ Lucy added.

I explained to the girls how Susan had been at contact and that Aimee had talked about the drug dens and what had gone on there.

‘Poor kid,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ll forgive her for waking me up this morning.’

‘I’m glad you stopped smoking, Mum,’ Paula said. ‘Smoking is a drug and I used to worry about you smoking.’

‘I’m sorry, love,’ I said, feeling about two inches tall. I’d stopped smoking many years before and this was a harsh reminder of what children remember and worry about. ‘I won’t start again,’ I confirmed. ‘It was silly to ever begin. And I know you two won’t ever smoke,’ I added for good measure.

The following morning Aimee was still a little subdued but I thought that might be no bad thing. She was being interviewed by DC Nicki Davies, the child protection police officer, that day at school, and if Aimee was still reflecting on her life before coming into care, then I hoped she would be in a good position to answer DC Nicki Davies’s questions and detail the abuse she’d suffered, which should lead to prosecutions.

I didn’t tell Aimee that she was gong to be interviewed, as Kristen had instructed me not to, so I took Aimee to school as usual, waited in the playground until the bell rang, and then said goodbye (Aimee still didn’t want a hug or kiss goodbye) and I went home.

Half an hour later, with a mug of coffee within reach and my fostering folder containing my log notes open on my lap, I telephoned Jill. I related what Aimee had said after contact the evening before – about visiting the drug dens, Susan’s anger towards me, and that both Aimee and I had thought we’d seen signs of drug withdrawal in her mother. Jill thanked me for being so vigilant, said she felt very sorry for Aimee – having been forced into that life, and confirmed she would pass the information to Kristen. I also told Jill that I was getting fed up with Susan’s anger and complaints and perhaps Kristen could ask Susan to try to control herself.

‘I’ll certainly ask.’ Jill said lightly. ‘Although I doubt it will do any good.’ Her dismissiveness niggled me slightly, as I didn’t think Jill fully appreciated the effect Susan’s anger and aggression was having on me.

‘I don’t expect Susan to be grateful,’ I said. ‘But if she could stop shouting complaints at me in front of Aimee, it would help.’

‘All right, I’ll see what I can do.’

I didn’t hear anything further from Jill (or Kristen) that day and when I collected Aimee at the end of school she told me she’d had to leave one of her lessons to see Kristen and a strange lady, whom she remembered seeing once before. I guessed the ‘strange lady’ was DC Nicki Davies. Aimee said the lady had asked her questions but she didn’t know many of the answers, which didn’t sound very positive. Aimee was vague about the whole meeting and didn’t want to talk about it, so I didn’t press her. She was in a bad mood all evening, made worse by her mother not answering when we rang for phone contact. I tried four times, over an hour, and even let Aimee key in the numbers to make sure they were right, but each time we listened to the automated message –
It has not been possible to connect this call
. After the fourth attempt I gave up and didn’t try again. Aimee stamped her feet, cursed her mother, cursed me and generally made herself very disagreeable, so that I was glad when it was time for her to go to bed. On the way to bed she objected to and complained about everything; she refused to wash, brush her teeth and hair, change into her pyjamas and go to her bedroom, until I said she’d lose television time the following evening if she didn’t do as I’d asked. Aimee’s confrontational attitude and anger was just like her mother’s and this was another reason Susan needed to control her anger – Aimee copied her.

Finally Aimee was in bed and I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Goodnight,’ I said, leaving the room and starting to close her bedroom door.

‘Hey! Haven’t you forgotten something?’ she demanded rudely.

I eased open the door. ‘What, Aimee?’

‘You always ask me if I want a hug and kiss goodnight. But you didn’t tonight.’

‘No, because you never want to. Why? Do you want a hug and kiss tonight?’ I asked, amazed. Aimee had been so angry with me all evening I’d have thought it was the last thing she would have wanted.

‘No, I don’t,’ Aimee said bluntly. ‘But I want you to keep asking me. It’s a sign of caring to keep asking.’

Despite myself, I laughed. Aimee had such a streetwise charm, and stated things simply as she saw them. All my annoyance caused by the hard time she’d given me that evening vanished, and I would have loved to wrap her in my arms and hug her.