Little Prisoners (24 page)

And the same theme emerged every time I tried to sit down and reassure them. This – the new baby – had made it so clear. They couldn’t be good enough, weren’t loved enough, weren’t nice enough children – why else were we sending them away?

It was so difficult to manage. And so upsetting. Up to now, and in my past job in the comprehensive school ‘unit’, I’d dealt with children old enough to understand the circumstances they’d been placed in. Even if they didn’t like it, they understood that my and Mike’s role was temporary; that we were a step on the road to a new life – not
the
life. But how could you tell these little ones that you loved them and cared for them, at the same time as telling them they had to go away? No matter how delicately social services dressed it up and had us deliver it, the message was one the kids simply couldn’t understand.

‘You know we gotta go somewhere else, Casey?’ Ashton said to me one day after school. ‘Well, how come they haven’t got anyone for us yet?’

‘I don’t know, love,’ I said, honestly. ‘It’s just that sometimes these things can take time.’

He looked right at me. ‘But Casey, we’ve already been here for ages. So why can’t we just stay with you?’

I wanted to hug him, but could sense that this wasn’t the moment. He wanted a straight answer, not a platitude. ‘Because me and Mike, love, well, we don’t do long-term care. Our job is to love you and care for you – and we do
love you both,
very
much – but only for a while, till they can find you a forever family.’

He frowned. ‘Not forever.’ I could have kicked myself. Wrong word. ‘I’m off back to me mum’s soon as I’m old enough. They can’t stop me.’

His face was a picture of grim determination. ‘Well, I guess that’s fine, too,’ I said. ‘When you’re old enough.’

Olivia, who’d been playing in the conservatory with Bob, now stood in the kitchen doorway. She’s obviously heard us talking.

‘Nobody likes us, do they, Casey?’ she said, her eyes filling with tears.

‘Oh, love,’ I said, scooping her up and settling her on my knee. ‘How could anyone not like you two?’ I said, cuddling her. ‘You’re both beautiful. And funny and sweet and, well – you know how special you are to me. Anyone would be
proud
to have you go and live with them.’

Separately, of course, which thought made my stomach do a flip. I hated that they didn’t know that was happening. But Anna had been firm that we mustn’t prepare them. And she was right. It wouldn’t help. Better to leave it till the last minute than have them distressed before they needed to be.

Olivia looked up at me, sniffing. ‘Casey, from now on pwomise, okay? I pwomise that’ll I’ll be the bestest girl ever, so’s the fost’ring people like me an’ want me.’

‘Me too,’ said Ashton firmly. It broke my heart.

I called Anna the following day to see what progress was being made. The children’s deterioration, since Jackson had come along, was a bit of a worry. I was keen to see them settled, however much I’d miss them, but the last thing I wanted was for some potential foster families to be found, only to refuse to take them because of this dip in their behaviours. But there was little to report anyway, which was what I’d half-expected. But at least they had pretty full profiles compiled for the children now, which were going to the social services panel on a fortnightly basis. It was the panel’s job – being a team of experienced professionals within social services – to try to best-match potential carers with children. Now they were formally ‘on the case’ (which had been a long time in happening), it really was only a matter of time.

None of this meant anything to the children, of course. And there was no point in bringing the subject up, either. They lived in the here and now, which was how it needed to be. The only thing was that the here and now was in a state of mild chaos, as a result of their unsettled state.

And it was beginning to spill out of the house now. It was the following Saturday, a day I’d earmarked for some serious Casey-style cleaning, when I heard the doorbell ring, not once, but three times. It was one of our neighbours – one we didn’t have much to do with – clutching the jumper of a fraught Olivia, who was wriggling frantically, trying to escape his grip.

‘Oh!’ I said, completely fazed by what was happening.

‘Oh, indeed! I’ve just caught this dirty little oik in my front garden!’

Whatever the misdemeanour, his tone was horrible. ‘Can you let her go, please?’ I asked him crossly. ‘You can see she’s frightened, can’t you? There’s no need to man-handle her, whatever it is she’s done!’

‘Oh, that’s right, is it?’ he responded, equally crossly. ‘You’d like me to squat down and take a shit on
your
front lawn, would you?’

I’m not sure I heard right. Or made sense of it, anyway. ‘I beg your pardon,’ said. ‘What the hell are you on about?’

‘This one!’ he barked. ‘Just pulled her fucking pants down and had a crap on my front lawn!’

If he’d been a touch less aggressive I might have apologised a touch more fulsomely. No, it wasn’t a very nice thing to happen to anyone, but this was a small frightened child and my hackles had risen. ‘Well, I’m very sorry,’ I said, ‘and I shall come and deal with that for you, but right now, I’ll take things from here, thanks.’ I shut the door.

Once it was closed I turned around. ‘What on earth were you
thinking
of?’ I asked Olivia. ‘You
know
not to do that! You know you
mustn’t do that
!’

She had no answer, of course. Just stood trembling there in front of me, twin streams of tears flowing down her pale cheeks. ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Up to your room. Scoot. Go up there and think about what I’ve told you about pooing. In the toilet. Nowhere else. In the
toilet
!’

There was no point in saying anything else to her right now. Later, perhaps. But not now. God, I thought,
contemplating the grim task that awaited me in next door’s front garden. Just how much worse were things going to get?

‘Ask a silly question …’ was the answer I got, an hour later. In the meantime I told myself to calm down. And give Olivia time to calm down a bit too, come to that, so I could sit down with her and try to have a rational conversation about why she’d felt the need to do what she’d done. Even with their lapses indoors, this was beyond my comprehension. I didn’t think for a moment that she’d needed the toilet so badly that she couldn’t make it home. Were that the case, she would surely just have soiled her pants. This was a deliberate act – God, when were these poor kids going to get some bloody counselling? – and that being so, just how much distress was she trying to convey, and how could we get her to find another way?

Mike had taken Ashton to watch a vintage-car rally that morning, and would be back within the hour, and I wanted this dealt with before they got home. I’d have a coffee, I decided – give it another fifteen minutes – then I’d go up and see how Olivia was doing and try to get her to open up to me about it. I was just pouring it when I became aware of some noise from upstairs; intermittent banging and scraping sounds and then, suddenly, an ear-splitting scream.

Banging the mug down, I raced up the stairs two at a time, but was then stopped in my tracks on the landing. It was the smell that hit me first, the whole upstairs smelled of faeces, so strongly that I even started gagging.

Placing my hand over my nose and mouth, I then entered her bedroom, taking in the scene found there as if watching some insane movie. The first thing I saw was the wall above Olivia’s bed, on which was written in huge uneven letters, in red felt pen: ‘AM EVUL. EVERY WON HAYTS ME.’ Olivia, all the while, was screaming, trying to pull out her own hair. She looked like some cartoon version of a mad professor, plaits yanked out, hair sticking up everywhere. She had her favourite doll in one hand and was bouncing on the bed, screaming ceaselessly and rhythmically whacking her doll’s head against the wall. And with some force, as well. I flew towards her.

She went stiff as I grabbed her and, ignoring the stench, wrapped my arms around her as tight as dared to. Then I rocked her, very gently, till little by little, her body loosened and her screams turned first to howls and then to whimpers, before finally subsiding to sobs.

And as I sat there on the bed with her, I took in the devastation. She’d ripped up books and strewn them everywhere, she’d torn down her curtains, and I could see what looked like a puddle of urine on the carpet; it was already seeping into the bottom of my sock. Leaning slightly forward I could also see into the waste-paper basket, where she’d obviously just done another poo. It was smeared all over it, I could see now, both inside and out, and I realised that, in the absence of any paper, she’d used her hands to do it, as well. Further investigation confirmed it. She was covered in smears of faeces. So, I slowly realised, was I.

It must have been a mark of how strangely the human mind works under stress, because my first thought – my only thought – as I sat there and held her was,
Great! Why hadn’t she finished it in the bloody neighbour’s garden!

My gentle probing, after the event, long after I’d cleaned her and cuddled her and reassured her she wasn’t evil, gleaned nothing. Nothing at all. So all I could do was what I had been doing from Day One. Log it in my journal, for the record.

But it wasn’t just Olivia who was giving me cause to worry increasingly about the kids’ fragility. Ashton too was regressing very badly. Only a few days later, while Mike and I were dishing up tea, we heard a huge commotion in the back garden. Both kids – I could clearly hear Ashton yelling – and Bob, too, it seemed. He just wouldn’t stop barking.

We both flew outside to find the children in a tangle on the muddy grass, while Bob stood nearby, a spectator. They were going at it, fighting like a pair of caged animals, kicking each other, punching each other, pulling out tufts of hair. It took Mike, big as he was, to fully separate them.

I was shocked. I’d never seen them fight like this before. Bicker, yes, throw the odd punch, the odd slap, but not this. ‘She’s a fucking skirt!’ Ashton was yelling, half deranged with anger, his face scarlet. ‘She’s nothing but a filthy fucking skirt!’

‘He called me a frigid bitch!’ Olivia screamed back. ‘And a hate him! An’ a skirt! You heard him, Mike! He said a skirt!’

It was a full fifteen minutes before we had them both calm enough to be sat down at the table to wait for their tea, but, once again, there was nothing to be learned from them by asking. Every question about what they were fighting about so violently was met by a brace of rueful shrugs.

It was only later, when I was tucking Olivia into bed, that I thought I might try one more time.

‘What’s a skirt, love?’ I asked her mildly. ‘It really seemed to upset you, Ashton calling you that. What’s it mean?’

She pulled a face that confirmed what I’d already suspected. ‘He’s
horrible
. It means I’m one of Gwandad’s whores. So I shud’n be frigid.
Hate
Ash. He’s
mean
.’

Aged just seven, I thought. Childhood? What childhood?

Chapter 20

I grew more convinced, with every passing day, that these children had not been regularly abused by only a family member. I felt sure it went deeper, and wider than that. Every time either of them mentioned a relative – particularly ‘Gwandad’ – I got this uncomfortable knotted feeling in the pit of my stomach. Gut instinct, I guess was what you’d call it.

By the time John arrived for our next meeting with Anna, at the end of February, I was surer than ever that what we were dealing with was a much bigger thing than perhaps had been thought. So I’d prepared. I’d updated all the recent logs for the children, and also refreshed my memory of the disclosures they already made.

‘Morning!’ he said cheerfully, as he followed me into the dining room. ‘Do I smell coffee?’

‘What do you think?’ I said. ‘Help yourself.’

He did so. ‘But, seriously,’ he went on, as he sipped it, ‘I hear you’ve been having a bit of a difficult time of it just lately.’

‘You could say that,’ I answered wryly. ‘But what else would I expect?’ I reminded him of how he’d reassured me, back when we were looking after Justin, that with the end on the horizon, kids routinely played up and regressed. ‘Except when these two regress it’s a lot more than just swearing and shouting, believe me. It’s bodily functions. And in all their grisly glory, as well.’

John winced. ‘I understand,’ he said.

I wanted to say ‘Do you?’, but I didn’t. How could he know what it was like to live with? So I shouldn’t berate him. He was a friend, being supportive, and there was nothing wrong with that.

The doorbell rang anyway, heralding Anna’s arrival. Which meant the meeting could get properly under way.

‘Come in and join the party!’ I said, taking her coat from her and leading her into the dining room. I also noticed, right away, that she didn’t smile at my quip. Indeed, she looked just about as serious as I’d seen her at any point since we’d met her. ‘Oh, dear,’ I said. ‘You look very much like a bearer of bad tidings.’

‘That’s because I am,’ she said simply. ‘Truth be told.’

I panicked then, slightly. Exactly how bad were these tidings. Had something changed? Had they given up on finding permanent foster carers? I thought about the alternative: leaving us for separate children’s homes, and
despaired inwardly. But Anna must have noticed my expression.

‘Oh, it’s not about the little ones,’ she reassured me. ‘Well, in so far as it doesn’t affect them. Not now at least, for which we should all send up a prayer. No, it’s the family, and what’s been uncovered about them. It doesn’t make for edifying reading.’

I poured her a coffee while she emptied her big bag of its contents. There seemed an awful lot of paperwork all of a sudden. ‘Honestly, she said, ‘it makes me so angry, it really does. There’s so much more in the archives that I didn’t know about when we started. But, no, it’s just drip, drip … Should have known about all of this before.’