Little Prisoners (27 page)

‘I’m sorry, love,’ I sniffed, ‘I just can’t seem to help it. I just can’t stop thinking about poor Ashton. How will he cope?’

‘But you must,’ Mike answered, his voice still low but his tone firm. ‘If the kids hear you crying they’re going to get in a right state, which will just make the whole thing much worse. It’ll work out. You know it will. And you’ve got to toughen up. It’ll be weeks before Olivia goes, the pace these things move at, and if you’re all doom and gloom and crying it will mess with their heads.’

‘I know, I do know that. And I will do, I promise. I just needed a bit of a cry, that’s all.’

He held me tighter. ‘And you’ve certainly had it,’ he said. ‘Look! My bloody pillow’s completely soaked!’

The bout of sobbing obviously helped, because when I woke the next morning I felt one hundred per cent better. And with my default disposition of cheerful optimism restored, which was a blessing, I could begin to tot up all the positives in my head.

First stop was the appointment I’d arranged with Dr Shackleton, who ran through a whole range of psychological stuff with me, some of it just a little bit beyond my comprehension, but that didn’t matter. That was for whichever professional counsellors were put in place, once the kids were settled in their new lives.

From my point of view, however, the most important thing was that Olivia had been also diagnosed as dyspraxic. Dyspraxia, though related, was different from dyslexia, and right away, as Dr Shackleton ran through the range of symptoms, I could recognise so much in Olivia. It was almost, in fact, as if the list had been specially made to describe her.
At last
, I thought,
something we can put a name to.

‘Of course, this has implications for school,’ Dr Shackleton explained. ‘You’ll obviously have a home visit from the occupational therapist, and she’ll then liaise directly with Olivia’s current primary school; make sure they know what they’re dealing with and support her accordingly.’

Though she’d not be at her primary for much longer, it seemed. Not if everything went well with her potential new carers.

Not that my positive mood stopped me from eyeing them up like a sulky teenager when I watched the car that contained them, driven by Anna, pull up outside our house the following Monday.

But my fears were swept away in an instant.

Called Mick and Sandie, they were a sweet childless couple in their forties, who lived about thirty miles away.
They’d already been carers for fifteen years, and seemed to have a great deal to offer. They seemed relaxed, energetic and, best of all by far, lived on a farm, with horses and livestock. I could so easily visualise the sort of life Olivia could have with them, and an Enid Blyton picture fixed itself pleasingly in my mind. Lashing of lemonade, climbing trees, making daisy chains, learning to ride. All in all, it felt almost too good to be true.

Which meant it was hugely important that I spell everything out for them. Too many placements broke down, and I’d seen it, because carers plunge in without knowing the full facts. It was understandable; with so much pressure on social services to find homes for children, they couldn’t be blamed for painting a slightly rosy picture, could they? Even if unconsciously. But this was not going to be like that in this case. I was determined. They had to know exactly what sort of child they’d be taking on.

All this was going through my mind as I bustled around making coffee, aware of Anna chatting to them and them commenting on all Olivia’s pictures, which by now dominated not only the front of the fridge freezer, but much of the kitchen wall space, as well.

I brought the coffee to the table. She loves her colouring,’ I told them. ‘She quite artistic, as you can see. And such a lovely little girl. I’m really going to miss her.’

They nodded politely, accepting coffees. Mick, tall and ruddy, looked every inch the man who lived an outdoor life, and Sandie, reed thin, was very smiley, and capable-looking. I felt sure Olivia would be in good hands. Sandie was
blonde, too, with hair not dissimilar to Olivia’s. Of no consequence whatsoever – slightly bonkers, in fact – but the visual ‘fit’ in itself reassured me.

‘But,’ I said, after I’d run through my mentally prepared long list of positives, ‘there are challenges, which you need to be aware of.’ I spotted Anna stiffening as I said this, but ignored her. ‘She wets her bed regularly,’ I said. ‘Sometimes wets herself during the day, too.’

Sandie smiled at me. ‘Been there, done that!’ She said brightly. ‘Had one little one nearly finished off my washing machine for me. I was laundering sheets morning, noon and night!’

‘And she also soils,’ I said. ‘Not often now, thankfully, but it’s still a problem. Particularly if she’s badly stressed or upset.’ I took a breath. ‘And it’s not always just in her pants.’ I went on to explain that it was an emotional response, and, as such, could involve soiling in unlikely places. I mentioned the bin in her bedroom, and watched them blanch. But they rallied.

Mick said, ‘But it sounds as if you’ve made lots of progress with her, though. From what Anna was telling me in the car – and from the profile we’ve read – she was almost feral when you got her, wasn’t she?’

I nodded. ‘There’s been an amazing amount of progress, Anna confirmed, ‘with both the children. Such a turnaround …’

‘Though there’s still a way to go,’ I said firmly. ‘As you’ll know from the files, it’s probable that Olivia has been groomed – sexually abused – perhaps from babyhood. So
there is still a strong tendency for her to lapse into deviant behaviours, less so now, as Anna says, but as I’m sure you both know, these sorts of things can’t just be magicked away.’

‘Though CAMHS will obviously be involved in that side of things,’ Anna added. ‘She’ll be having regular counselling put in place right away.’

I continued: ‘She also has obsessions. They come and go, but they also reflect her traumatic early life. Death and disaster. Fire. Things like that.’

‘Well,’ said Mick, ‘there’s certainly a lot to think about, isn’t there?’ He looked at his wife, who nodded agreement, but there was something in her expression which reassured me that she
was
thinking; and not just, ‘Oh my God – nightmare!’

And so they went away and thought. And the wait to hear from them, as the week crawled by, was beginning to seem interminable. Though Anna hadn’t said as much, I knew she was thinking I had only myself to blame if they called and said they’d changed their minds. I so wanted them to meet Olivia. That couldn’t happen till they were fairly sure, of course – too disrupting and potentially upsetting for her – but still I stood by my reasoning that it
had
to be this way. Much as I couldn’t bear the thought of saying goodbye to her, it would be so much more painful to send her off on her new journey, only to have it all fall apart.

And I would
so
miss her. Impressively, the new learning support had already been put in place at school, and
she was as bouncy and excited about it all as I’d ever seen her.

‘God, Livs, do you ever shut up?’ grumbled Ashton as we ambled back from school the following Tuesday.

‘Shut up yourself, Ash,’ she rebuked him, barely pausing for breath as she continued regaling me with all the things she’d done in school today. It took me right back – to the differences between boys and girls, in terms of how much they had to say. It had been exactly the same with my two. Monosyllabic grunts from Kieron – ‘Do I
have
to tell you what I did, Mum?’ – and a non-stop stream of gossip from my daughter. Nothing had changed.

‘And I got moved for maffs!’ Olivia chirruped. ‘And I get special treatment an’ everyfing! I got tooked out! By a special teacher. And she sat and helped me learn it. An’ it was good. She said it would stop me getting in such a kerfluffle.’

‘Kerfuffle,’ I corrected, laughing.

‘Ker –
fuff
– le!’ Ashton echoed.

‘No, she definitely said kerfluffle. What is a kerfluffle anyway? Well, whatever it is, I was definitely doin’ it.’ She grinned up at me. ‘An’ now I’m not!’

I pulled both the kids in for an impromptu bear hug. I could have eaten them up right there on the spot.

Chapter 23

The call came from Anna just over a week later.

‘Right, we’re on,’ she said. ‘Well, to the next stage, at least.’

‘Oh, that’s brilliant,’ I said, feeling a profound sense of relief. Though I was dreading the day we said goodbye and I lost Olivia, I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if my enthusiasm to paint an uncompromisingly realistic picture had sent Mick and Sandie running scared and pulling out.

‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘Fabulous news, isn’t it? And they’re keen to crack on, so how are you fixed for this coming Saturday?’
Strike while the iron’s hot
, I thought. ‘You free?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘I’ll just have to see if Riley can have Ashton.’

‘No, bring him along. They’re fine with that. I explained the circumstances to them, and I think it would arouse less suspicion if you did it that way.’

‘And who knows?’ I said, a flicker of hope igniting inside me. ‘Perhaps they’ll take to him so much that they’ll want him as well!’

Anna was quiet for a moment, and rightly so. I knew the facts, didn’t I? The kids were being separated primarily for their own good. Stupid woman, I berated myself. What was I
saying
?

‘Ignore me,’ I said, before she had a chance to remind me. ‘Wishful thinking, that’s all. On which note, any developments in that direction yet?’

I heard a sigh. ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said.

The plan was that Mike and I would explain away the visit to Mick and Sandie’s as being just one of those things foster carers did. We’d be going to visit them to find out more about them, discuss foster-caring-type issues and (since the visit was as much about getting Olivia familiar with the surroundings) have a good look around their house. It was generally done this way – or a version of it, anyway – because there was no guarantee, even with all the information in the world, that a carer or carers would ‘click’ with a child, and for that child to go through the process of being ‘sized up’ a number of times would be potentially very damaging psychologically.

And, incredible though it seemed, they swallowed what we told them, perhaps because they had so little normal life-experience anyway that they took pretty much everything they were told at face value.

And without any agenda, or reason to feel anxious, the
two of them, as we set off, on a cloudless summer morning, behaved very much as normal from the off.

‘So do you fink you might live on a farm next?’ asked Olivia, as we left the city behind and headed off into the green of the countryside.

‘Well, you never know,’ answered Mike. ‘It’s nice in the countryside. Lots of space and fresh air for children to run around in, and –’

‘Lots of smells!’ remarked Ashton, who had opened his window and taken in a lungful of the classic rural odour of silage, or muck-spreading, or both. ‘Euww!’ he said, grimacing across at Mike. ‘That’s gross!’

As Ashton had always suffered a little bit with car sickness, I’d allowed him to ride in the front seat for the trip, while I sat in the back, with Olivia. ‘An’ animals!’ she was saying now, excitedly. ‘I
love
animals. When I’m growed up, I’m gonna have a pony.’

‘Mick and Sandie, who we’re visiting,’ I told her, ‘have ponies. And horses. And cows, too, and sheep.’

‘They got sheeps, Pol! Baaa!’ Olivia told her dolly, holding her up so she could look out of the car window better at the backdrop of fields and trees and hedgerows speeding by. I glanced across at her, hair freshly washed, pretty dress on, full of smiles. How could they not love her? I discreetly crossed my fingers, even so.

But I was glad, all the same, that I’d prepared the ground so carefully, because within minutes of our arrival, in what seemed almost like a test, Olivia, over-excited on seeing a
real-life pony in Mick and Sandie’s farmyard, wet herself. And right away I got a good feeling about the prospect of this placement happening, because Sandie’s response was as warm as it was instant.

‘Oh, don’t you worry, sweetheart,’ she told Olivia, who was standing in the puddle she’d created, going beetroot. ‘Toffee here has little accidents all the time, don’t you, Toffee?’ She stroked the pony’s nose, then leaned down to whisper to Olivia. ‘And when a pony has a pee, you know all about it. Soaked my jeans right through last week, he did!’

I’d bought a change of clothing, of course. I tended to do it automatically. And when I took Olivia inside to help her change, my gut feeling was further strengthened. The place was full of photographs of children; many, many different children, too. There were also pictures that had obviously been lovingly painted by children, and a mish-mash of objects on various horizontal surfaces that had clearly been made by children, too. Here a handmade Easter card, there a horse fashioned out of modelling clay; the whole farmhouse was a treasure trove of artefacts and memories, and even though my first thought was, predictably, about the dusting, my second was that the whole place just felt right.

Not that Ashton, unlike his sister, agreed with me.

‘That man smells of poo,’ he whispered to me, wrinkling his nose up, as Mick showed us around the farm. I didn’t have much experience of farms and all things rural, but it seemed to me that Mick and Sandie’s was a nice one. As
well as the stables, where they gave riding lessons to local children, they had a field full of sheep and another one, of cattle, and all sorts of fowl – I spotted hens immediately, and different kinds of geese, all of which were running free around the farmyard. To my untutored eye, bathed in sunshine, it looked idyllic.

‘It’s not him,’ I whispered back. ‘It’s just his boots, I expect.’

‘Well, whatever it is, it stinks,’ he said, singularly unimpressed.

But if I was secretly rather pleased to discover Ashton’s newly acquired sensibilities regarding matters of hygiene, it was clear he had no interest in the visit. I wondered to myself, ‘Does he know something? Has he twigged something’s happening? Has he noticed Mick and Sandie’s engagement with Olivia?’ Not that there was any point where this had been overt. They had tried to include him too, as we sat and chatted about their lives there, but he seemed intent on disengaging and spent the remainder of the visit sitting on a window seat, staring out of the window.