Terrified

by Angela Hart

  Now I feared that Maureen was only taking Michelle back because she had the power to do so, and not necessarily because she had her daughter’s best interests at heart. How long it would suit her for I shuddered to think, and I was extremely concerned – worried sick, in fact – about the impact all this would have on Michelle. She clearly trusted her mum implicitly and would be shocked and traumatised if Maureen changed her mind and put her back in care, which from what I knew of Maureen’s past behaviour, seemed a distinct possibility.

  As for poor Vicky, whatever would happen next? However much she claimed to hate her mum, and despite the fact her mother terrified her, this sudden loss would obviously affect Vicky very deeply indeed. She hadn’t seen her mother since May, when she ran away to Lorraine’s. That was four whole months with no contact whatsoever, but how could Vicky have possibly known they would be the last four months of her mother’s life? And what about her father? What if he did turn out to be the nasty character he’d been described as? God love her, Vicky didn’t deserve all this, and of course she would also be upset about Michelle’s sudden departure. Everything was a mess, and a very complicated mess.

  I felt completely shattered as I pushed all these thoughts around my head, worrying about everybody. I wanted to make things better but I felt stymied by my status as a foster carer. I had absolutely no rights over Michelle now her mother had taken her back. That was the truth of the matter and it hurt, because I loved Michelle and wanted to remain a part of her life, to look out for her and make sure she was all right.

  Jonathan eventually returned from making his phone call to Social Services, and I reluctantly left Vicky once more and went outside the lounge to talk to him. Vicky remained in an almost trance-like state, and I explained I would return as quickly as possible, which she again acknowledged with a vague nod.

  ‘Hayley has spoken to Maureen,’ Jonathan whispered urgently. ‘Michelle is with her now, they both say they are happy with the arrangement and there is basically nothing we can do. That’s it, the end. We’ve been dropped; our services are no longer required. Even if Michelle ends up back in care it won’t be with us. Her placement here has “irretrievably broken down”, to use Hayley’s words.’

  ‘Jonathan! I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘Nor can I. Do you know what, if Vicky didn’t need us so much right now I would resign as a foster carer. I’m absolutely gutted. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach.’

  I’d never seen my husband looking and sounding so dejected and disillusioned in all the years I’d known him.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ I comforted. ‘It’s very hard, but we’re doing a good job. This isn’t a judgement on us.’

  ‘I know you’re right in theory, Angela, but I’m just so incredibly hurt. It’s too much to take, it really is.’

  With Vicky still in shock in the lounge, this clearly wasn’t the time to continue this discussion. I was also utterly devastated about Michelle, of course. She’s been like a daughter to me for more than two years now. We’d bonded and shared so many good times, and losing her like this was a terrible blow that affected me deeply. My heart was aching, but I didn’t for one moment feel defeated to the point where I was ready to give up fostering, as Jonathan seemed to be suggesting he might be. In fact, the situation made me want to carry on fostering more than ever. Even from this very dark place we found ourselves in, I felt this very strongly. I knew I could deal with this and eventually come to terms with it, and I felt duty bound to do so. This wasn’t about me; it was about the kids. It was about helping another Michelle one day, and getting Vicky through this very rough patch in her young life. Some children have such terribly complicated and difficult lives, and that is exactly why foster carers like us are needed. Like so many others, Michelle was a very vulnerable teenager. God only knows what would happen to her from here on in. What if her mother got fed up with her again, as I feared she would? What if she needed another foster home? I couldn’t give up this job, not in a million years; there were so many other Michelles and so many other Vickys out there, needing a decent home and some loving support. Fostering was so much harder than I’d ever expected it would be, but it was such a crucial and worthwhile job, and I knew I couldn’t stop now. I was in too deep and, more importantly, I didn’t want to get out.

  ‘Don’t make any rash decisions,’ was all I felt able to say to Jonathan as we huddled on the landing together, feeling devastated and anxious and actually quite used. ‘This is just a bad day, a very bad day, but they are not all like this, are they?’

  Jonathan slumped against the landing wall and wiped tears from his eyes.

  ‘No,’ he spluttered. ‘But it’s just so hard to bear . . .’

  Vicky spent the rest of the evening looking practically comatose on the settee, staring into space and continually frozen in shock. Jonathan and I did everything in our power to stimulate a conversation, tempt her to eat or drink something or just get her to snap out of her trance, but nothing worked. Eventually, at 9.30 p.m., I fetched her a duvet and a pillow and managed to get her to lie down on the settee for a while.

  ‘Do you want to go up to bed?’ I asked eventually, but she didn’t reply.

  We’d had the television on for an hour or so, hoping that might stimulate Vicky, and when News at Ten came on she slowly sat herself up, inching her body up off the settee very cautiously, as if she were a china puppet that needed delicate handling. Then she gradually clicked her head around to me, in the mechanical fashion I’d witnessed before.

  ‘I’m going up,’ she said, in the faintest whisper.

  ‘All right, love. I hope you sleep well. I’ll walk up with you.’

  Vicky edged incredibly carefully out of the lounge and up the stairs to her bedroom. Her eyes seemed so lifeless it was as if she were sleepwalking and was not aware of her movements or what was going on around her.

  ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Night.’

  I left her to get herself ready for bed and popped back a few minutes later, tapping on the door gently. There was no response.

  ‘I’m just going to open the door, Vicky, to check you are OK,’ I said, as I didn’t want to invade her privacy.

  Again there was no reply, so I peeped round the door and saw that Vicky was already asleep, cuddling her duvet. Her head was at the wrong end of her bed and she was still wearing her school blouse and trousers, but I decided not to disturb her and quietly closed the door.

  As I tiptoed past Michelle’s bedroom on my way across the landing I couldn’t help having a look inside. I was expecting the bareness of the room to upset me. Jonathan had told me Michelle had all her bags packed, and I imagined she had stripped out everything she owned. However, the room scarcely looked as if Michelle had left it, which was an even worse sight to take in. Photographs we’d taken on various holidays together were still stuck on her wall, her bed was made with her favourite pink duvet set and pyjamas folded on the pillow, just as she normally left it each morning, and the Winnie the Pooh slippers I’d bought her last Christmas were on the floor, in front of her wardrobe. I picked the slippers up and opened the wardrobe door tentatively. I saw that Michelle had taken the vast majority of her clothes, and that’s when it hit me. She’d taken what she needed and what she wanted, and she clearly didn’t want reminders of our holidays together, or our gifts. I had no idea what thoughts Maureen had put in her daughter’s head; I could only hazard a guess. Somehow, I imagined, she had convinced Michelle that her life with us had not just run its course, but that it was somehow wrong, and something she should cast aside. I didn’t know this for a fact, but I supposed Maureen had painted us in a very bad light indeed, because I could think of no other reason Michelle would have treated us this way. I sat on Michelle’s bed and allowed myself a little cry, and at that moment Jonathan appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Are you all right, Angela?’ he asked.

  �
�Yes,’ I said. ‘But I think I have an idea how Vicky is feeling. This is like a bereavement, having Michelle disappear like this. What if we never see her again?’

  ‘I know, it’s just unbelievable,’ he replied. ‘I can’t get my head around it at all.’

  He sat down beside me for a while but it felt like we were torturing ourselves, as we couldn’t help looking at the happy pictures of the three of us at the beach, out for meals together and enjoying a birthday tea. We eventually took ourselves off to bed feeling completely exhausted, though neither of us could get to sleep.

  I don’t think I slept a wink all night in fact, and I eventually got out of bed at 6.30 a.m. on the Tuesday morning and went straight up to Vicky’s room. I didn’t think for one minute she would be going to school, but I wanted to check on her before I called the receptionist to explain her absence. My knock on Vicky’s bedroom door brought no response.

  ‘Vicky, love, can I just come in and check on you?’

  I slowly pushed the door open, peeping through the two inch gap I’d created. I could see Vicky was still fast asleep, nestled into her duvet, and so I shut the door quietly and went downstairs. When I phoned the school about an hour or so later I chose my words carefully. I felt very sleep deprived and I certainly didn’t want to say the wrong thing or be drawn into any discussion about the death of Vicky’s mother.

  ‘There’s been a bereavement in the family,’ was all I said. ‘Vicky won’t be coming in today.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Mrs Hart. Thank you for letting us know.’

  I was just about to hang up when the receptionist unexpectedly asked, ‘Does this mean Michelle won’t be in either?’

  ‘Oh!, I said, flummoxed. ‘I’m sorry, I expect so but, no, I’m afraid I don’t know.’

  ‘Right,’ the receptionist replied, sounding a little confused. ‘So is she staying at home too, or shall we expect her in school?’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I honestly don’t know,’ I sighed. ‘The thing is, I’m no longer Michelle’s foster carer.’

  ‘Oh I do apologise. I didn’t realise.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. It’s very recent. Thanks for your help.’

  I couldn’t get off the phone quick enough. Saying those words, ‘I am no longer Michelle’s foster carer’, really hurt, and I was also strangely embarrassed to say them. I felt like I’d been sacked and people might be talking about me behind my back, wondering what I’d done wrong to have lost such a lovely, sweet girl as Michelle.

  Jonathan and I took turns in the shop all morning, and I checked on Vicky every hour, until she eventually got out of bed just before noon. She nodded when I asked if she was all right, and she used the bathroom and changed her clothes, but after that she just sat on her bed in her tracksuit and stared at the wall.

  ‘Vicky, love, you should eat something,’ I said. ‘Shall I do you some cereal? Or some soup?’

  She shook her head and looked away from me, and she stayed in the same state for the rest of the day. I tried to phone Hayley in the afternoon but she wasn’t in her office and didn’t call me back, and Jonathan and I decided that if Vicky was no better the next day we’d phone the doctor, which we eventually did. Thankfully, we managed to get an appointment for a home visit, as the prospect of manoeuvring Vicky in and out of the surgery in her zoned-out condition did not appeal at all.

  When the GP arrived on the Wednesday afternoon, Vicky was sitting on the settee in the lounge, still wearing her tracksuit, and gazing out of the window at the clouds in the sky. She jumped a little and looked over anxiously when I walked in the room and introduced the doctor, then she looked away from us, avoiding eye contact and shrinking her shoulders back, like she wanted to make herself small and invisible. After exchanging some pleasantries and offering his condolences to Vicky, the GP explained he needed to check her over.

  ‘Vicky, can I look in your eyes?’ he asked, taking out a torch-like pen from his medical bag.

  ‘OK,’ Vicky said slowly, as if she’d just been woken up from a very deep sleep.

  She winced and recoiled when the GP shone the light in her eyes, but she did allow him to continue his examination. He went on to check her throat and ears, took her pulse and blood pressure, asked her to stick her tongue out and tapped her forehead with his fingers, explaining he was checking there was no nerve problem around her head or face.

  ‘I think,’ he declared, ‘you are simply suffering from severe shock, which is not pleasant, of course, but not unexpected, in the circumstances. There is nothing I can prescribe, but I’d say you’re in excellent hands here.’

  Turning to me, the doctor explained that I should continue to keep a close eye on Vicky, offer small, digestible portions of food and make sure she drank sufficient water or sweet tea.

  ‘Time is really the only cure for shock like this,’ he said. ‘It’s quite unusual for shock to continue in this fashion for this length of time. As you probably know, most people have a “fight or flight” response to a shocking situation, but not everybody is built the same way and Vicky’s response is not unheard of. She will come round when she is ready, and in the meantime you just need to keep doing what you’re doing.’

  ‘I’m relieved to hear that,’ I replied. ‘I was beginning to worry there was something else going on. Vicky has reacted like this before, though never for this long, I have to say.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘As I say, she’ll come round, Mrs Hart, and I can see she is in good hands. Any other problems, don’t hesitate to call the surgery again.’

  In recent years, stress experts have given the ‘fight or flight’ response a new name, and it is now known as the ‘fight, flight or freeze response’. When I first heard about this a few years ago I was reminded of the doctor’s visit that day. As he pointed out, Vicky didn’t display the more typical fight or flight response; for her it was clearly the freeze reaction, but it just hadn’t been given a label yet. I’ve also since learned that the freeze response is activated when a person feels there is no hope. If we fight or flee, we believe we can outrun or overpower out attackers, but if we freeze we don’t have that belief; we have effectively submitted to the fear and the threat. It follows that Vicky must have felt completely powerless in the face of such shocking news about her mother, and so she retreated into herself, surrendering herself to a state of paralysis.

  As for the other occasions when Vicky had frozen, with the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge I’ve gained since those early days, I believe Vicky had felt so terrified and hopeless when she lived with her mother that freezing had become her automatic default position in times of severe stress. She couldn’t fight her mother and she was too young to flee her for many years, so she froze instead. She was literally scared stiff, and now the poor girl was utterly terrified of her mother’s death. It was such a sad and pitiful situation for Vicky to be in, and my heart bled for her.

  12

  ‘You don’t know how much she terrified me’

  It took Vicky a couple more days to return to anything like normal. As the week went on she managed to eat a few bowls of Rice Krispies and she started to respond a little more every day.

  ‘How did she die?’ she eventually asked me on the Friday morning, when we were both sitting at the kitchen table.

  ‘I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t think anybody knows yet.’

  ‘It must have been the alcohol, or the pills.’

  ‘Pills?’

  ‘Yes, her “medicine”, as she called it. She took all kinds of pills, all the time. Sometimes I had to fetch them for her. She gave me notes, and I had to knock on people’s doors and get them.’

  I hadn’t forgotten Vicky’s previous mention of the ‘notes’ and ‘letters’ she delivered for her mother, and I’d been hoping she might give more details about this.

  ‘What sort of pills were they?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. She usually just called it her medicine.’

  ‘I
see. And who exactly did she get the medicine from?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was always a different house. Sometimes I had to phone a number to get the address. Sometimes I had to wait in the phone box for a call, so I could get the address. Remember I said about knowing all the phone boxes on Izzy’s estate? That’s because my mother sent me over there to do the same thing sometimes, when she couldn’t get what she wanted on our estate. I don’t know who the people were. I just did as she told me because . . .’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because I had to. You don’t know how much she terrified me, Angela. I had to do exactly what she told me, or, or . . . it really wasn’t worth arguing, trust me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. What, erm . . .’ I wanted to ask what happened if Vicky didn’t do as she was told, but I stopped myself, because I was worried about traumatising her.

  It was too late, however. The conversation had already triggered bad memories for Vicky. She froze, dropping the spoon she was holding, which bounced off the table and onto the tiled kitchen floor. It made quite a deafening clatter, but Vicky didn’t appear to notice, and gazed into space.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said, trying to stay calm. ‘Are you all right, Vicky, love, can you hear me?’

  She didn’t respond at all, and so I put my arm around her and told her to take her time.

  ‘You don’t need to be afraid,’ I said. ‘You’re here in the kitchen with me. Can you hear me, Vicky?’

  A few moments later she shivered and blinked and slowly clicked her head around, until she was looking me in the eye.

  ‘She still makes me frightened,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go to the funeral. I don’t want to be anywhere near her. I don’t have to go, do I, Angela?’

  ‘Nobody can force you to go, Vicky, but I know that sometimes it is helpful to the people left behind, to go to a funeral, I mean. It helps with the grieving process.’