by Rosie Lewis
Fretting about the effect the encounter by the river would have on the progress Charlie has made with us, it takes a while for me to drop off to sleep.
I needn’t have worried.
The next morning Charlie runs to me with his arms outstretched. I reach out to him and clasp his hands in my own before bending my knees.
‘Come on, then,’ I say, with a playful sigh.
It’s a little routine we’ve got going and he gives a roar of delight, climbing onto my knees and then making the attempt to scale my thighs. I squat a bit lower to give him some purchase and he frowns, puffing his cheeks out with exertion. When his feet reach my tummy I straighten up and whizz him round in a circle. He giggles until the breath catches in his throat, then he hooks both legs around me and hangs back so that the top of his head brushes the floor.
‘Wosie, ’gain, ’gain!’
Two weeks later I pack the few clothes I’ve managed to buy for Charlie into a small suitcase, ready for him to move on. It’s a shame that he can’t stay with us; we’ve a vacancy but, following the recent introduction of a tiered allowances system, the local authority will save money if he’s moved to a less experienced carer.
Since only experienced Level 3 carers can be placed on call, any child brought into care as an emergency – the most traumatic way to enter the system – faces another move soon afterwards. I sometimes think that social workers become desensitised to moving children on, not fully acknowledging the devastating impact that frequent moves have on a child’s psyche.
Fortunately for Charlie, he’s moving on to a carer who lives locally and, knowing the family he’s going to, I’m confident that he’ll continue to thrive. As I help him into his new coat and shoes he leans into me, reluctant to leave. Phoebe hovers behind and my heart goes out to her. She looks bereft, perhaps reflecting on her own past loss and the ones that will inevitably follow.
Emily and Jamie watch with glum faces as Charlie rests his head on my shoulder and plays with my hair. Later, I’ll soothe them with the knowledge that, even if we never see Charlie again, he’s woven into the fabric of our family by an invisible thread of memories. A picture of Charlie will join the montage of faces smiling out at us from our fostering album, embroidered into the tapestry of our lives and reminding us of all the many things we take for granted in our settled existence.
Epilogue
One of the most frustrating things for a foster carer is to be left wondering how a child fares when they’ve left the foster home, so it was nice that Charlie went to a local family that I knew. I received regular updates on his progress and about a year after he moved on from us I heard that his birth father had been identified (after testing the DNA of a number of possibles suggested by his mother).
Charlie’s father had no idea of the little boy’s existence and was overwhelmed but delighted by the news. Following an assessment by social services, Charlie went to live with his father and grandmother. He is now thriving, as much a gift for them as they are for him.
Two More Sleeps
Sometimes there’s a fine line between fair and failing parents.
I don’t envy social workers the responsibility of deciding when that threshold has been breached, especially when the lines are blurred. Before I began fostering, my mind would airbrush over shades of grey, preferring the reassuring palette of black and white. I didn’t like to hear that Hitler was a disarming and humorous man of faith who nursed his mother when she was ill – the contradiction was discomforting, at odds with my blueprint of good and evil. When a documentary on the Discovery Channel claimed that the man responsible for the Holocaust was also wonderful with children, I switched the TV off in denial.
The watershed came when I met the birth mother of my second fostering placement, back in 2004. Knowing that Lauren had kept two-year-old Freddie locked in a damp room with no comfort and little to eat, my mind had conjured such a monstrous picture of her that when she turned up at my house for contact, I almost goggled in surprise. Frail and unkempt, she seemed almost as helpless as the little one she had brought into the world.
It was a defining moment, and years later, in December 2010, Lauren’s simultaneous capacity for callousness and vulnerability touched my thoughts as I hurried along the high street for the third time in as many hours. I was on my way to collect Angell, a young boy who had been taken into protective custody by police earlier that day. The four-year-old had been found by a dog walker, half dressed and huddled beneath a park bench in a children’s playground. With fierce blasts of air prickling my skin, it was difficult to comprehend a mother leaving her child alone and unprotected in sub-zero temperatures, but then memories of Lauren resonated in my mind. I reminded myself that, when it came to human nature, there were few certainties or absolutes.
The police station was a sturdy three-storey Victorian building, conspicuous among the shops for its lack of tinsel and festive frills, on the corner of the street. Its wide sash windows blinked beacons of cool white light into the frosty air, as if keeping watch over the town. Sidestepping an icy puddle, I climbed the stone steps towards the entrance and was almost knocked off my feet by a gangly, hooded youth who lumbered through the open door, elbows at bony right-angles, pale face puckered at the lips around a newly lit cigarette.
The grim-faced, suited man in his wake bestowed an apologetic nod in my direction, raising his eyebrows as if to say: I can think of nicer places to spend Christmas Eve. Narrowing my eyes against the smoke, I threw him a quick, sympathetic smile in return, absently wondering whether he was a beleaguered parent, an appropriate adult enlisted to ensure fair-play in interview or perhaps even a fellow foster carer.
The heated reception area offered a welcome sanctuary from the wind and once inside I let out a sigh of relief and stamped my frozen feet, setting my duffel bag on the floor. On the other side of a glass-fronted enquiry desk several telephones demanded attention in shrill tones and a printer suddenly spluttered, coughing itself awake.
With gloved, stiffly frozen fingers I pressed the buzzer for attention then sat down on a wooden bench and waited. Soon a police constable, perhaps somewhere in her mid-forties, weaved her way between the empty desks of the front office, the radio clipped to her chest accompanying each of her steps with loud, crackling hisses. ‘Sorry we messed you around earlier,’ she said through the grille after checking my Bright Heights Fostering Agency security pass. ‘I’m sure you could have done without all the to’ing and fro’ing, today of all days. I’m Jo, by the way.’
‘I didn’t mind, Jo,’ I replied honestly as she joined me in reception. ‘It was good to get out of the house, to tell you the truth.’
She laughed, gently nudging my upper arm with her epauletted shoulder. ‘It’d do my head in being cooped up with my lot for days on end. That’s why I always volunteer for the holiday shift.’
I gave her a complicit smile but, for me, it was more the distraction I was grateful for than an escape from the demands of close family. The initial call about Angell came through from my fostering agency just after lunchtime and since then I had made two aborted trips to collect him. There was lots to do at home but Sarah, a new-born baby I had looked after for six weeks, had moved into her forever home just seven days earlier and my arms were still feeling empty without her nestled there. The drama was just what I needed to stop me fretting about how well she was settling with her new parents.
Besides, I had made good use of the time. Children often come into care with only the clothes they were standing up in and so, in the last few available shopping hours, I had bought some essentials – a waterproof all-in-one coat, thick pyjamas, hat, gloves, tops and trousers – as well as some toys that I thought a four-year-old might like.
My own children, Emily and Jamie, were still busily wrapping the gifts when I left the house for the third time, their grandmother replacing the sparkly curtains in the spare room with a pair featuring Fireman Sam. ‘Red tape was it?’ I asked, reaching down for the duffe
l bag then following the officer through a security door and down a long, nondescript corridor.
‘Oh no, not this time, for a change,’ Jo said, throwing a wry smile over her shoulder. ‘I mean, they’re running a skeleton staff at social services today so it took a while to get hold of a social worker but the main issue was Mum.’ Jo half-turned towards me again when she reached another door. ‘She needs medical attention but she’s been refusing to go anywhere without the boy.’
Adeptly, the officer punched a four-digit code into an entry system and I followed her through to another corridor, loud shouts filtering through from the floor below. Heightened yells and a clunk followed, presumably the slamming of a viewing hatch or perhaps a lock being secured. ‘She’s refusing to talk to us unless we agree to keep them together. The only way we could calm her down was to promise she could meet you. I hope you don’t mind. She put up a real fight.’
‘Of course I don’t mind,’ I said, shaking my head. Maternal aggression has always fascinated me: mothers turning fearless and laying down their lives if their offspring are threatened. In the words of Stephen King, ‘There’s no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.’ Jo sounded personally affronted by what she dismissed as ‘a lot of silly fuss’ but I was happy to talk to Angell’s mother and try to put her mind at rest. Not many parents would be comfortable with sending their child off with a total stranger.
‘This whole building has been sold off. We’re moving into the civic centre in the New Year and the interview rooms are loaded with confidential files so we’ve had to accommodate mother and child in the custody suite. Not ideal,’ she said, glancing back, ‘but with Mum getting a bit feisty it probably wasn’t a bad idea to keep them somewhere secure.’
I was about to answer when the sound of a voice, shrill and unhinged, reached me. Jo charged ahead down a flight of metal stairs and an image popped into my head of an anguished woman, hair wild, face streaked with tears. I wondered whether the screams were coming from Angell’s mother – it sounded as if she wasn’t going to relinquish her child without a fight. My stomach lurched, worried about what sort of state Angell might be in. It was such a stressful situation to be plunged into. I had seen it a few times now – mothers so desperate to keep their babies that they attempted to snatch them during contact, particularly when their final, goodbye forever session loomed.
The act seemed to infuriate some of the contact supervisors. They regarded absconding as an act of selfishness but I knew that if I had found myself in that situation when Emily and Jamie were small, the lioness in me would have stirred. Most attempts fail but there have been cases where young children and even babies have gone missing from care, some never to be found again. It took me a while to realise that even neglectful or abusive mothers have a primordial instinct to hold on to their offspring.
Jo interrupted my thoughts, coming to a halt outside another heavy-looking door, this one armoured like a fortress. She turned to face me, slipping her thumbs into the top of her utility belt. A pair of handcuffs glinted silver in the artificial light. ‘How much have you been told?’
‘Well, not a lot really. I know he’s four. I know Mum was arrested this morning for assaulting a police officer. That’s about it.’
She gave a curt nod. ‘Poor little bugger was scared silly. Nicki, that’s Mum, turned up at the playground twenty minutes after he’d been found, claiming that he’d wandered off.’ Jo signalled her scepticism by making quote marks with her fingers. ‘When we told her we’d be contacting social services she kicked off big style, right in front of him. He’s very timid. Been stuck here all day and we haven’t heard a peep out of him yet, except for all the sobbing.’
My heart squeezed a little but Jo carried on, briskly and unmoved.
‘Anyway, what can you do with them?’ She asked the question with a shrug and then turned her attention back to the security pad. It struck me as a little unfair to pigeonhole Angell’s mother with all the criminals Jo had dealt with over the years, as if they were all equally culpable with no varying degrees or mitigating circumstances.
Jo swiped a security card under a flashing red laser fixed to the wall and after a series of small clicks the light turned green. Inside the custody suite there was a high counter stretching across the length of the space, punctuated at even intervals with computer terminals. Thick plastic shields were fixed to the back of each PC, presumably to protect the technology from rowdy prisoners. A heavy-set officer glanced up from behind one of the desks as I followed Jo towards a row of doors, his look of boredom giving way to one of slight surprise as I passed by.
‘In here,’ Jo said quietly and I took a breath as she opened one of the doors, daunted and faintly embarrassed by the unenviable task ahead. We walked into a small, nondescript room with nothing in it but a desk and two metal chairs. Surprised, I was about to turn and ask Jo where the family were when I noticed a cloudy glass partition in the wall. On the other side of the glass was a room mirroring our own, except there, sprawled on one of the chairs with her legs open, was a young woman. It was a relief to see that she was sitting placidly, her arms around the small boy on her lap. Framing her face in a drab black curtain was her hair, long, tangled and unwashed. Her eyes were heavily shadowed with dark rings, one of them swollen and red, as if she’d been punched. She seemed dazed but calm, her lips moving as if singing. Close to sleep, her son was leaning into her with his mouth slightly open, eyes flickering.
‘We use this room for observing interviews,’ Jo said with a tilt of her head. ‘It’s a one-way mirror so Mum can’t see us. She’s what we call a “reluctant detainee” so I just wanted to give you the heads-up on how we’re going to play it if she kicks off again. You wait by the door. I’ll introduce you and Mum can have a few words. Then I’ll take him,’ she said this with a resolute nod. ‘I’ll need you to leave straight away, no half measures. Any hesitation will only make things worse.’
I nodded but I was only half-listening to Jo, my chest beginning to tighten with anxiety.
‘Right then,’ she said and I followed her out of the room. Jo hesitated outside the next door for a fraction of a second. Rolling her shoulders back, she closed her eyes and took a little breath before bowling ahead, a telling indication of her true feelings. I felt a flash of admiration for her then: she really was quite petite, her stature incongruous with the heavy stab vest and telescopic baton dangling from her waist.
As we entered the room Angell’s eyes wandered over us with detached curiosity but Nicki sat forward in her seat, shoulders stiffening. She was wearing shiny black leggings, a flimsy red top (in spite of the cold) and the highest heels I had ever seen. There were several large bruises on her upper arms and long scratches down her neck, one of them glistening with spots of red. Her cheeks were sunken and there was a slightly wild glint in her eyes as they travelled over me, scrutinising. A few bubbles of adrenaline announced their arrival in my stomach, which performed a small flip in greeting. ‘Hello, Nicki,’ I said, arranging my mouth into a smile. Staying close to the door as instructed, I leaned forwards into a half-crouch and softened my voice. ‘And hello there, Angell. I’m Rosie.’
Angell stared at me blankly but Nicki took a sharp breath in response and continued the unabashed inspection. Her mouth twisted as her eyes ran over me, the silver ring through her bottom lip temporarily disappearing from view. ‘I still don’t understand why you can’t sort somewhere for both of us,’ Nicki barked, eyeing Jo resentfully. Her voice was deep and croaky, as if she’d just woken up.
Jo inhaled and then took a full ten seconds to blow the breath out. I wondered whether she was silently counting to herself, one of my trusty old tricks when patience was running thin. ‘We’ve been through this, Nicki. You need to be seen by a doctor and the on-duty social worker wants to do an assessment before you’re allowed to take Angell home.’
Nicki scowled and muttered something under her breath. She scraped at her teeth with an extraordinarily long fin
gernail, examined the haul and then snapped her eyes back to me. ‘You got other kids?’ she asked sharply, running a hand roughly across her forehead. It lingered there for a moment before trailing down her face and pulling on her jaw.
Mesmerised by the jazzy decorations stuck to her fingernails, I hesitated for a moment then countered her stare with a steady gaze of my own. ‘Yes, I have a daughter who’s 16,’ I said brightly, hoping to lighten the tension. ‘And then there’s Jamie, he’s 12. They both love younger children so they’ll be thrilled to meet Angell.’
Her demeanour altered slightly, the stubborn slant of her chin softening just a fraction. I put her somewhere in her early twenties, at most, though her wolfish scowl reminded me of a much younger, defensive teenager.
‘Angell don’t like nuffink hot for dinner,’ she warned, ‘nor the dark neither.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ I said softly.
A moment later Angell yawned and then gave a little moan, wriggling on his mother’s lap in search of a snug position to sleep. With his roughly chopped but wavy dark hair and big eyes, he was a beautifully delicate-looking child. His Ben 10 tracksuit was rolled back several times at the cuffs and on his feet he wore a pair of black, frayed trainers that looked far too clumpy for him. Beyond tired, his head flopped wearily against his mother’s chest and another small cry escaped his lips. The sight set off an itch in me: a strong desire to give him a hug and make him comfortable.
‘Right,’ Jo said briskly. ‘We need to get this little chap sorted. He’s exhausted. Is there anything else you’d like to ask the foster carer before she leaves?’
