Terrified

by Angela Hart

  Steven’s stay passed really quickly and without incident. He was well behaved but very quiet when he was with me, and he asked about his mum constantly. By contrast, the pattern we’d established on the first morning continued, with Vicky entertaining him marvellously whenever she was with him. This was a great outcome, as not only did Steven stop asking about his mum when Vicky was around, but she was clearly enjoying her success with him.

  ‘Don’t worry, Steven, funny Vicky is here!’ she’d say, giving me a cheeky look when she found me struggling.

  ‘Is Angela being boring again? Boo for Angela!’

  ‘Boo!’ Steven would say, giggling.

  ‘Now that’s enough, you two!’ I’d caution, pretending to be cross.

  On his last morning Steven had PE, and I had instructions to send him in with his kit. The shorts, T-shirt and plimsolls were in the holdall he’d arrived with, but there was no kit bag and so I fetched a plastic bag to put them in.

  ‘What’s he doing with that?’ Vicky exclaimed when she came down the stairs and saw Steven standing in the hall holding the carrier bag, exactly as I’d asked him to.

  ‘His PE kit is in there, why?’

  ‘He can’t take a carrier bag like that!’

  ‘What’s wrong with that? He hasn’t got a kit bag . . .’

  ‘No, Angela! You can’t let him go out like that! He can’t turn up at school like that!’

  ‘All right,’ I said, realising from Vicky’s somewhat extreme reaction that this was not a point to argue.

  Steven was looking a bit bemused and I didn’t want him to get upset, but it was Vicky I was more concerned about. She had flushed pink and was really very agitated.

  ‘OK, Vicky, have you got a spare bag he could use? I don’t think I have anything suitable.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll get my old swimming bag, hang on.’

  Vicky bolted up and down the stairs at record speed and reappeared with a red and blue nylon bag with drawstrings.

  ‘Look, Steven, do you want to use my bag?’

  He nodded shyly.

  ‘Good, give me that carrier bag, come on, that’s it, put it all in here. There!’

  Vicky breathed a sigh of relief once the PE kit had been transferred to the swimming bag, and then she marched into the kitchen and very pointedly threw the plastic bag in the bin. ‘There!’ she said, sounding as if she had averted a catastrophe.

  If something like this had happened right at the start of my fostering career I might well have become irritated, or I may have stood my ground, thinking what a silly fuss this was over nothing. I had learned a lot, however, and clearly this scenario had touched a nerve.

  ‘So, er, what was all that about this morning?’ I asked Vicky when the two of us were putting the dishes away together that evening, and Jonathan was playing snap with Steven in the lounge.

  I’d wagered with myself that Vicky was going to say something about the fact she had first arrived at our house with a carrier bag containing her clothes, and that she didn’t want Steven to be reminded that he was in foster care, albeit for such a very short time.

  ‘My mother always sent me out with carrier bags like that,’ she said. ‘Not just for PE either.’

  ‘You didn’t have a school bag?’

  ‘No, never. But she also sent me out with carrier bags at night, with her letters and stuff in.’

  ‘Oh, you mean the letters you gave to people in exchange for the pills and medicines?’

  ‘Yes. It sounds weird, doesn’t it? Like I said, I’d have to knock on doors and hand over letters, and I’d have to collect bags of pills for her. I was always paranoid that people could see what I was carrying around because the carrier bags were always the thin white ones that came from the off-licence. They were practically see-though and I was scared my friends might see me and ask me what I was up to, because nobody but Izzy knew what my mum asked me to do.’

  ‘I see. Were they all for your mum? It sounds like a lot of pills.’

  ‘When I think about it now, it’s obvious the pills weren’t just for her, but I thought they were at the time, because why else would she go to all that trouble to get them? Sometimes I was out every night of the week, all over the estate, or over at Izzy’s estate. I’d have a huge bag full, sometimes two bags. They looked like the sort of pills you got from the chemist, in tubs and packets. Looking back I never saw my mum take that many pills. She can’t have been taking all that lot. She’d have been dead years earlier if she did.’

  ‘It’s quite a mystery, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mmm. Sometimes she had men coming over, and they would bring stuff in bags too.’

  ‘More pills, you mean?’

  ‘I think it was booze mostly. She always called the men her “gentlemen callers”. I hated it when they were there, because she’d be more drunk than usual. I used to go to the library to get out of the way, and I’d read for as long as I possibly could, until the library shut. I’m not surprised my dad didn’t stick around very long, the state she was.’

  ‘Well, just be careful. We don’t know anything about what your mum was like when she was with your father, do we? I guess we mustn’t jump to conclusions.’

  ‘I think you’re too nice, Angela! She was always drunk and horrible for as far back as I can remember. I’ve got loads of questions for my dad, absolutely loads. What happened to Steven’s dad, by the way?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ I said, though I wouldn’t have shared this information with Vicky even if I did.

  ‘Vicky!’ Jonathan suddenly called from the top of the stairs. ‘Have you finished down there?’

  ‘Nearly! On the last few glasses!’

  ‘Good!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a certain young man who doesn’t want to play snap with me any more. He wants to play with you.’

  Vicky rolled her eyes dramatically.

  ‘All right, I’ll come up in a minute!’ she said, pulling a face as if she were a harassed housewife juggling a dozen chores and kids.

  ‘And I suppose I’ll have to pretend he beats me too!’ she said to me affably.

  ‘You’ve got it!’ I said, giving her an encouraging smile.

  ‘Thanks for listening to me, Angela,’ Vicky replied. ‘It means a lot. I’ve never said most of those things about my mum to anybody.’

  ‘Well I think that’s quite normal, love. It can take years and years to talk about the past when it has been so upsetting, and some people bottle things up forever. I’m glad you feel you can talk to me.’

  ‘At least somebody wants to talk to you, Angela!’ she said, raising her eyebrows and giving me a knowing look.

  It took me a moment to realise this was a cheeky dig at the fact I’d struggled to establish much of a rapport with Steven.

  ‘Now, now, there’s no need for that!’ I said as she scampered up the stairs.

  That was classic Vicky, I thought, as I stood in the kitchen alone. There she was, reliving the haunting troubles of her past one moment, then catapulting herself back into the present with a mischievous joke the next.

  I heard Steven squeal with delight as Vicky entered the lounge upstairs and I felt a surge of optimism about what lay ahead. She was a wonderful, spirited girl, and she was certainly due some good fortune.

  ‘Come on, Vincent,’ I found myself thinking. ‘Please don’t let her down.’

  16

  ‘It was our mum who did this’

  The day had finally come when Vicky was going to meet her father.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ she declared, as she picked at her breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and beans. Her suitcase was packed in the hallway, filled with clothes to last the week in case she wanted to stay for half-term. We were due to pick Lorraine up in half an hour and Jonathan had planned our route and was making a last-minute check of the traffic news on Ceefax.

  ‘I’m sure you’re just feeling nervous, sweetheart,’ I said, locking the kitchen window and bu
sying myself at the sink with a few bits of washing up.

  ‘It’s not that,’ Vicky replied. ‘I mean, it’s not about today, about meeting him. It’s about everything else.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I’m happy here with you and Jonathan. I’m worried about messing things up.’

  ‘Vicky, love, it’s understandable you’ve got all these thoughts in your head. What you must remember, though, is what I’ve already said: nobody is going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. If we simply have lunch and you come away and don’t see your dad again for a while, that’s fine. If you decide to stay for the week, that’s fine too. We’ll just have to take one step at a time.’

  She pushed her barely touched breakfast away.

  ‘That’s just it! I don’t know what’s going to happen and I just want to KNOW! NOW!’

  ‘Well, there really is only one way to find out,’ I said, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible. ‘Come on, go up and brush your teeth and we’ll get going.’

  ‘Urgh! It’s so annoying! I bet you’re just hoping I get on with him and go and live there, so you can get rid of me!’

  She stomped out of the kitchen. I knew Vicky well enough not to rise to this unreasonable accusation. She was just letting off steam, and I knew she didn’t believe this for one second.

  Lorraine was also in a jittery state when we collected her, and the two sisters sat in the back of the car looking out of sorts and awkward in each other’s company.

  ‘How’s James?’ Vicky asked.

  ‘Fine. Carl’s really good with him. They’re going to the park.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll miss him today! I’ve never left him for this long. So how long did you say the journey is, Jonathan?’

  ‘I reckon five hours, Lorraine, if we don’t hit any traffic problems.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  Vicky tut-tutted loudly.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Lorraine said. ‘You should be grateful Angela and Jonathan are going to all this trouble. It’s very good of them to drive us all this way.’

  ‘It’s not the journey I’m moaning about. The longer the better as far as I’m concerned! It’s that you’re complaining about leaving James for one day. Vincent left me for fourteen years. Why am I even bothering with this? Mum was right. He’s a loser.’

  Jonathan and I swapped a glance and waited to hear what Lorraine would say.

  ‘Maybe he is,’ she said. ‘But maybe he isn’t. At least you can find out for yourself, once and for all.’

  ‘Yes, it might be just the once,’ Vicky huffed. ‘You’re not wrong there.’

  The sisters then sat in silence for quite some time, and Jonathan put Radio 2 on to help improve the atmosphere, which it did, fractionally. Vicky had brought a book along and she eventually read a few chapters while Lorraine leafed through some women’s magazines she had in her handbag.

  We eventually stopped to stretch our legs and use the facilities at the motorway services when we were about an hour-and-a-half away from Vincent’s home. The break seemed to do everybody good.

  ‘Do you know what his house is like?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘No idea,’ Vicky replied.

  ‘What if he lives in a big mansion?’

  ‘Ha ha, what are the chances of that, Loz? It would be funny though, wouldn’t it? What if he’s rich? What if he’s a millionaire?!’

  The mood had certainly lightened, and once we were on the final stretch of the journey an air of excitement and anticipation began to creep into the car. I felt charged with a mixture of emotions. My nerves were on edge and I had so many doubts and concerns about what might happen, but I was also eager to discover what the rest of the day would bring. They say that blood is thicker than water, but would the old adage prove to be true in Vincent and Vicky’s case, or had too much water passed under the bridge for father and daughter to re-connect?

  ‘I think we’re very nearly there!’ Jonathan declared as he indicated left into a large housing estate situated close to a busy dual carriageway. ‘Can you read out the last few directions, Angela?’

  I felt my pulse quicken, and when I flicked my head to the back of the car Vicky and Lorraine had both sat upright and were peering out of the windows attentively. The housing estate we entered was incredibly run down. The pebble-dashed houses were all very small and many looked neglected. Unfortunately the weather seemed to suit the scene perfectly; it was dull and overcast and there was a cold nip in the air.

  ‘Next right,’ I said to Jonathan.

  ‘Right!’ he said cheerfully.

  His demeanour reminded me of the day we’d pulled up at the tatty council offices for Vicky’s initial review meeting, when she was terrified her mother might turn up, and Jonathan was doing his best to gee her up. We were heading deeper into the estate now and, disappointingly, the further we ventured the worse state the houses and gardens seemed to be in, and the more depressing the landscape appeared. One house had a rusting fridge outside the front door and bulging bin bags strewn on the front garden. A child in a jumper and a nappy played with an upturned shopping trolley beside the concrete porch of another home, and there was a group of grey-faced youths standing under a vandalised lamppost, all of them smoking rolled up cigarettes and dressed in scruffy shell suits.

  ‘Next left,’ I said. ‘Then it should be at the end of the cul-de-sac.’

  My eyes were on stalks as we headed down Vincent’s road. I was praying his house would look more inviting than the majority of the others we had seen, and thankfully it did.

  ‘That’s it!’ I said, pointing to one of two semi-detached bungalows standing at the end of the cul-de-sac.

  Jonathan pulled up and we all took a moment to gather ourselves together.

  ‘It’s bigger than my place, anyhow!’ Lorraine said.

  ‘Should have realised he’d have a bungalow,’ Vicky commented.

  ‘Oh yes, the wheelchair,’ I replied. ‘Of course. Come on then! We’ve made good time. Thanks for driving, Jonathan.’

  Vicky climbed out of the car looking extremely wary, and I longed to throw my arms around her. The rundown estate appeared to have sapped away some of the hope and eager expectation she seemed to have felt earlier, and her shoulders were now drooped and her chin was on her chest.

  ‘Come on then,’ Jonathan said brightly. ‘Let’s go!’

  We all shuffled up the ramp leading to the front door, and it opened before we had chance to knock.

  ‘Hello! I’m Carol!’ the lady standing before us exclaimed. ‘Come on in! It’s freezing out there!’

  ‘Thanks!’ I said, as she stepped back into her wide hallway and repeated, ‘Come on in!’

  ‘I’m Angela,’ I said, going first. ‘And this is Vicky, Lorraine and my husband, Jonathan.’

  ‘Hello!’ everybody responded.

  Carol was slightly built and had thin, fair hair styled in a short bob. She was wearing a cream blouse with a crocheted pink cardigan over the top, some navy blue slacks and a pair of mules.

  We all shuffled slowly forward. ‘Shall we take our shoes off?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no need!’ she said. ‘Just come in.’

  We followed her through a door on the left of the hallway that led into the lounge, and there was Vincent, sitting to the right of us in his wheelchair, smiling broadly.

  ‘Hello!’ he said in a strong Scottish accent, scanning our faces before zoning in on Vicky. ‘So you must be Vicky! Well, well, well. Come and say hello to your old man!’

  Vicky stepped towards him tentatively.

  ‘Hi!’ she said quietly, raising her hand as if to give a little wave.

  ‘No need to be shy! Come and give me a hug! Say hello properly!’

  Vicky reluctantly obliged, giving Vincent the quickest, lightest hug she could get away with before retreating back into our little group.

  ‘Sit down, everybody!’ Carol said kindly, gesturing to
wards a burgundy velour settee that stretched along the length of the wall on the left hand side. From her accent she appeared to be from the local area. Vincent’s thick Scottish brogue had come as something of a surprise; I’d wrongly assumed he was from our region, where Vicky was born.

  There was an elaborate brass fireplace facing us and the entire wall around it was covered with slate tiles, some jutting out to make shelves that contained brass ornaments of horses and dogs. In pride of place, in the centre of the mantelpiece, stood a gleaming medal in a large velvet-lined display box, which I imagined must be Vincent’s Army commendation.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Carol said. ‘Who would like tea, or coffee?’

  Jonathan and I said we’d love a cup of tea, Lorraine asked for a glass of water and Vicky said she didn’t want anything.

  ‘Are you all right, love?’ I said.

  Vicky had sat herself next to me on the settee and was looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights, staring across the room at Vincent.

  He was wearing a rugby shirt that was stretched around his wide stomach plus red tracksuit bottoms, with one leg folded beneath him, just like in the photo he had sent. Somehow, he looked different to the picture though, and at first I couldn’t put my finger on why. He had the same blond hair, grey-blue eyes and slender nose of course, but now he looked absolutely nothing like Vicky, as I had first thought he did. Had that been wishful thinking on my part, I wondered? Had I been searching for something that wasn’t there, trying too hard to make a connection?

  ‘So then, Vicky, tell me about yourself!’ Vincent said. ‘It’s so great to meet you after all this time!’

  Vicky continued to stare at him, but she didn’t reply and to my dismay I realised she had gone into one of her frightened, semi-frozen trances.

  ‘I’m sorry, Vincent,’ I spluttered. ‘This happens sometimes. It’s when Vicky is a bit, er, uptight.’