Terrified

by Angela Hart

  ‘OK,’ Vicky nodded. ‘I won’t wear the sweatshirt though. I don’t want anybody thinking I want to get out of here.’

  ‘So you’d like to stay here, with Angela and Jonathan?’

  ‘I’d be happy to stay, if I can’t go back to Lorraine’s. I love Angela and Jonathan.’

  ‘Now look how easy that was!’ Hayley beamed. ‘That’s really all you have to say next week. Think you can manage it?’

  Vicky smiled.

  ‘Yep.’

  Unfortunately, in the days leading up to the review Vicky became very anxious and moody. I’d bought her a few school shirts plus a new pencil case as she’d lost her old one on the last day of term, but Vicky was rude and ungrateful.

  ‘I don’t like that style,’ she said, turning her nose up at the shirts.

  ‘What do you mean? There’s no choice, they are the ones recommended by the school.’

  ‘Exactly! I won’t wear them. You might as well get your money back. I’ll choose my own.’

  ‘But where else will you get them? These are pale blue, Marks & Spencer. What can possibly be wrong with them?’

  ‘Everything! Look at the collars! They’re massive! My other ones aren’t like that!’

  This was true, but the shirts Vicky had arrived with last term were practically worn out and were a brand I didn’t recognise, with tiny collars you could barely fit the school tie underneath. My guess was they were originally sold on the market; they were poor quality and certainly didn’t match the regulation uniform.

  ‘I think you’ll find lots of girls have the same shirts as these this year, Vicky. They’re the latest stock and the cut is lovely. Look!’

  ‘Well the rest of them can wear them but I’m not!’ she moaned. ‘And I don’t want that pencil case either.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake! What’s wrong with that? It’s just a plain pencil case, and I’ve stocked it up.’

  ‘It’s disgusting!’

  ‘Disgusting? How can you describe a pencil case as disgusting?’

  ‘When it is disgusting! I don’t want it. You’ve wasted your money!’

  The next day she upset Michelle after she cooked everyone a cottage pie and Vicky said she’s didn’t fancy it and wasn’t hungry, as she’d just eaten some toast and jam.

  ‘Never mind, love,’ I said to Michelle, who looked crestfallen. ‘It smells delicious. Jonathan and I have been looking forward to it. All the more for us!’

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell Vicky off?’ Michelle asked.

  ‘I will have a word, but I think she’s out of sorts, as it’s her review tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh!’ Michelle said. ‘I had no idea. Wish her luck from me.’

  ‘I will, love. None of us are looking forward to it.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. You just never know what’s going to happen, do you? It’s like being in Coronation Street or East-Enders!’

  Michelle laughed as she said this but there was a bitter-sweet look on her face and I felt a pang of sadness. Her quip was a little too close for comfort. Rather like the characters in a soap whose destinies are decided by script writers, I really did have a sense that Vicky’s life was in the hands of others, who would determine which path her life would follow next. Myself and Jonathan were not central to the storyline, and as such we were extremely easy to write out. However much we cared about Vicky, and we really did care very much about her, we could be taken out of the picture at any time. That’s probably the most difficult part of being a foster carer, and I had a sleepless night before Vicky’s review, worrying about what was going to happen to her next.

  9

  ‘You’re the biggest mistake I ever made’

  ‘I feel sick,’ Vicky said solemnly when she came down to breakfast on the morning of the review. ‘I don’t think I can go.’

  ‘I don’t feel so good myself, Vicky. We have to go though, perhaps it won’t be as bad as you imagine.’

  ‘It will. You don’t know what she’s like, Angela. She hates me so much. Even when she just looks at me she makes me feel terrified. Just one look, the look she always gave me, I’m so frightened of her doing that.’

  Vicky was wrestling with a new packet of Rice Krispies and she suddenly pulled it so tight it burst open, sprinkling the cereal all over the kitchen floor.

  ‘God! I’m so useless!’ she muttered.

  ‘Don’t say that, Vicky,’ I soothed. ‘It’s just an accident, and I know you’re stressed.’

  ‘D’you know what she used to tell me? She used to say I was the biggest mistake she ever made. Even when I did all the jobs she wanted and delivered all her notes and letters, she still said it: “You’re the biggest mistake I ever made’.”

  ‘Notes and letters?’ I repeated back.

  ‘Oh, God! I don’t want to even think about that now. I’m going to have to have a cigarette. Sorry, see you in a minute.’

  By the time she’d got herself ready and Jonathan and I had steered her into the car, Vicky was very quiet; too quiet. She sat rigid, strapped in the back seat and staring like a zombie at the headrest behind Jonathan throughout the journey to the office where the meeting was taking place. It was only a fifteen-minute car ride away but it felt like much longer, because the atmosphere in the car was so tense and heavy.

  ‘Take some deep breaths,’ I said to Vicky, twisting round in the passenger seat to look at her. ‘It might help you release a bit of tension.’

  Vicky totally ignored me, and I noticed she’d balled her hands into tight fists as she had done in the caravan that time, when she told me how her mother used to cut her fingers.

  ‘By the way, I’ve decided to un-ground you,’ I said. I’d discussed this with Jonathan and we decided we’d made a rod for our own backs in grounding Vicky for a month, and that she had already learned her lesson from the punishment. I hoped the good news might evoke a response, but there wasn’t a flicker.

  After a few minutes of silence I turned to Jonathan.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked him, more as a way of trying to break the ice in the car than because I wanted to know the answer; I could already see he was feeling under pressure too.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said loudly, so Vicky could hear. ‘At least after today we should have a plan, hey, Vicky? We’ll all know what’s happening next, and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

  Vicky said nothing at all, and when I glanced back at her I saw that she had a very noticeable twitch below her right eye, though the rest of her face and her body were completely frozen. It upset me a great deal to see her like that.

  ‘We’re here now!’ Jonathan said a few minutes later as he drove into the car park.

  ‘Marvellous!’ I said, though it clearly wasn’t and I wondered why on earth I said that; I was not myself at all.

  We’d never been to this Social Services building before, but apparently it was the only one available to accommodate the meeting on this particular day. The car park was extremely uninviting. The cracked tarmac was sprouting weeds and dandelions, the bins were overflowing with old lager cans and chip wrappers and the sign warning motorists that spaces were for ‘staff and visitors only’ had been sprayed with offensive white graffiti. To add to the gloomy atmosphere the weather was cold and dull, with splinters of rain falling from the grey sky.

  ‘Well then, ladies, let’s get going,’ Jonathan said breezily, stepping out of the car.

  Vicky didn’t move, and so Jonathan opened her door and did a little charade, pretending to be her chauffeur.

  ‘Miss Vicky, allow me to help you out of the car!’ he said, bowing towards her and proffering his hand.

  Still Vicky sat motionless, totally ignoring Jonathan. I was at his side now, and I leaned in the car, put my hand on Vicky’s shoulder and gave her a gentle squeeze.

  ‘Vicky, love, we’re here now. Shall we get inside? We don’t want to be late.’

  Vicky appeared to wake up when I said the word late, and then she stumbled out of the car apologisi
ng and looking nervously around her.

  ‘I wonder if everyone else is here,’ I said, looking around and inevitably thinking about her mother, though I had no idea what Brenda looked like.

  ‘I doubt she’s here yet. There’s no way she’ll be on time.’

  After giving our names at reception the three of us were shown to a small, hot waiting room adjacent to the car park. There was a low table underneath the window with a pile of old magazines on it, and in the corner behind the door there was a water fountain with a handwritten ‘out of order’ sign stuck to the side with yellow, crispy-edged sticking tape.

  Vicky sat down next to the table and I sat beside her, with Jonathan alongside me.

  ‘Do you think perhaps everyone else is here and we’ll just get called when they’re ready?’ Jonathan asked quietly after a few minutes had passed.

  ‘It’s possible I suppose,’ I said, glancing at the clock hanging above the door.

  ‘It’s gone ten to.’

  All the reviews we’d attended in the past with Michelle had been in our local Social Services office in town, which we were very familiar with. The routine was the same each time. After signing in at reception, Michelle would usually be taken to one side by her social worker for a brief chat, and then all three of us would be shown upstairs and asked to wait outside the glass-walled meeting room where the review would take place. You could see who had already arrived and was in the room, and therefore you knew who was missing and who to expect. We were very much in the dark sitting here though, and of course the thought on all our minds was that Vicky’s mother might walk in unannounced at any given moment.

  ‘Do you want to look at a magazine?’ I said to Vicky. ‘There’s plenty there.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  I stood up and shuffled through the magazines.

  ‘I don’t think you’re missing much!’ I commented, trying to raise a smile. ‘Auto Trader from 1987 doesn’t appeal to me much either!’

  Vicky looked at the floor and started biting her nails.

  ‘Who else is coming, did you say?’ she asked.

  ‘As far as I know it’s just Hayley, the new social worker you met, and Stuart Williams, who’s the head social worker, and Hayley’s manager.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  Jonathan and I swapped glances. Stuart was an extremely laidback character who in our experience rarely contributed anything to the meetings. He typically sat looking at his notes the whole time, giving very little eye contact and saying virtually nothing. Privately, Jonathan and I had nicknamed him Stuart ‘will that be all?’ Williams, as that was usually one of his few contributions to the proceedings.

  ‘He’s fine, you don’t need to worry about Mr Williams,’ Jonathan said, adding diplomatically, ‘He’s there to preside over the meeting more than anything. He’ll maybe take a few notes and he might ask you how you are, but I expect Hayley will do most of the talking.’

  At that moment Hayley entered the room. She was wearing a pretty white dress and orange cardigan and had a big smile on her face.

  ‘Vicky!’ she said. ‘Lovely to see you again. Hi Jonathan! Hi Angela! How is everybody doing this morning?’

  Vicky shrugged.

  ‘I’m a bit nervous,’ I said, glancing at Vicky. ‘We all are.’

  ‘Well don’t be. Vicky, is there anything you want me to say at the meeting that I don’t already know?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, I know you’d like to go back to Lorraine’s if that’s an option, and you also told me you’d be happy to stay with Jonathan and Angela if not.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m happy with either of those, but I don’t want to go back to my mother’s. There is no way I’m going back there.’

  ‘Right. I’ve got that. Mr Williams isn’t here yet. He’ll fetch you when he comes in and bring you to the meeting room, which is just at the end of this corridor. I’ll see you down there shortly.’

  ‘Is she here?’ Vicky asked pointedly, searching Hayley’s face for the answer before she had chance to reply.

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Typical,’ Vicky said, looking down. ‘Told you she’d be late.’

  It was very stuffy in the waiting room. I’d put on a smart skirt, blouse and jacket, plus tights and court shoes. I was used to being dressed in the loose-fitting trousers and cotton tops I wore for work, and as the minutes ticked past I felt increasingly hot and uncomfortable. Looking across at Jonathan I could see he was feeling the same; he was wearing suit trousers and a formal shirt, and I noticed small beads of sweat had formed on his forehead. Seeing him like that reminded me of the day a panel of officials decided whether to pass us as foster carers or not, more than two years earlier, and I found myself thinking back over the process we had been through.

  After I’d answered the advert in the local paper I attended a meeting at the local Social Services office in town, on my own, leaving Jonathan in the shop. I expected the meeting to focus on the qualities required to be a foster carer, but to my surprise and dismay the male social worker who greeted me proceeded to tell me a series of horror stories that seemed designed to completely put me off.

  ‘Some of these children have been through a lot of trauma in their lives,’ he said. ‘And I mean serious trauma. You have to be prepared to deal with all kinds of issues.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re talking kids who smear excrement down the walls, kids who might attack you, kids with mental health and behavioural problems, kids who’ve been sexually abused who display sexualised behaviour . . . the list goes on.’

  I was incredibly naive, and I was shocked to hear this. In my youth the majority of kids who were in children’s homes or put up for adoption or fostering were given up by their mothers because they were born out of wedlock, or were sadly orphaned. The children were not mentally ill, out of control or survivors of abuse as this social worker was describing. The meeting had made me realise how much society had changed over the previous few decades. By the mid-eighties it was gradually becoming more socially acceptable for a woman to raise a child alone, and so unfortunately the kids who were ending up in care typically had problems a lot worse than being illegitimate or orphaned. They were much more likely to be the ones parents couldn’t cope with for one reason or another, whether it was because they had mental or physical problems, had come from broken, dysfunctional families or had been victims of abuse or neglect.

  ‘You need to think long and hard about this,’ the social worker had cautioned. ‘Are you sure you want to do this, Mrs Hart?’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to hear this at all, but you haven’t put me off,’ I replied straight away. ‘I’m shocked but, if anything, it makes me want to help kids more.’

  It was the social worker’s turn to look surprised, and I asked him to tell me more about the process, which I relayed to Jonathan when I got home, along with all the other information I had gathered.

  Then it was Jonathan’s turn to look shocked.

  ‘I honestly had no idea,’ he said, ‘I was exactly like you. I thought the only problem these kids had was that they didn’t have a mum or dad who could look after them.’

  ‘I know, it’s an eye-opener. I still want to do it though. What about you? Has it put you off?’

  ‘It’s certainly a bit frightening. I need time to think about it. What would happen next, if we wanted to go ahead?’

  ‘We’d have to do what’s called a “form F”,’ I said, as this is what I’d been told by the social worker. ‘It’s an incredibly long and detailed form, which the social workers fill in on our behalf. You basically have to go back to the year dot, providing them with every address you ever lived at, every job you’ve ever had, listing any health issues or convictions you’ve had and describing the support network you have.’

  ‘Support network?’

  ‘That means which relatives we have near us, and what our relationships are like with other family
members. You have to draw this sort of family map, putting yourself in the middle and all your relatives around the outside. The closer your relationship is with them, the nearer you place them to yourself, in the centre of the map.’

  ‘And so obviously if you’re not close you still include the relative but put them on the edges of the map?’

  ‘Exactly. And then you draw a line from yourself to each person. A solid line indicates a good relationship, a dotted line means you get on all right with that person, and a zigzag line means you have a love-hate or on-off relationship.’

  Jonathan laughed. ‘I can think of a few zigzags,’ he smiled, no doubt picturing a couple of his brothers who he didn’t always see eye to eye with. ‘Seriously, though, it sounds intense, Angela. I didn’t imagine it would be so detailed. How do you feel about doing all this?’

  ‘I definitely want to do it,’ I replied without hesitation. ‘I’m excited by it, actually. I know it’s going to be hard but I want to give it a go; I want to help some children. None of this has put me off at all. What do you think?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Look, Angela, if you feel this strongly I’ll support you; you know I will. I’d never hold you back from something you feel this passionately about’

  ‘Really?’ I grinned.

  ‘Yes, really. Come on, Angela. Don’t act surprised. When have you ever not got your own way?’

  I laughed and gave him a kiss.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we’ll regret it.’

  ‘Like I’ve said before, Angela, we won’t know until we try. What happens once the form has been completed?’

  ‘We would then be thoroughly interviewed, separately and together, answering questions about what kind of a childhood we had and what made you happy as a child. You’re right about it being intense, and it’s potentially very intrusive too, but I honestly think it’ll be worth it. I have a very good feeling about it.’