by Angela Hart
This was the list I wrote out for Grace:
House Rules
1. No shoes indoors.
2. Ask permission before borrowing anything.
3. Check first before taking food or drinks from the kitchen.
4. No food or drink upstairs.
5. Put dirty washing in the laundry bin in your room.
6. Everyone helps with chores.
7. Keep your toothbrush, towel and wash bag in your bedroom.
8. Say please and thank you.
9. Have a shower/wash every day.
10. Be kind and treat others the way you want to be treated.
I signed my name at the bottom and asked Grace to sign hers. I didn’t normally do that, but she had sat beside me the whole time, asking if she could use my pen when I’d finished with it. I reckoned signing her name would appeal to her, and it seemed to work. Grace asked if she could stick the list on her bedroom wall, and she darted upstairs with a lump of Blu Tack in her hand before the ink was dry.
That evening, Grace again ate a good meal and she thanked me for a nice day. ‘I’m tired,’ she announced. ‘Can I go to bed straight after my shower?’ It was before her bedtime but of course I said yes, that was fine. It had been a busy day, and children are often exhausted when they first arrive. Grace went upstairs and reappeared about ten minutes later in her pyjamas.
‘What do I do next?’ she asked.
‘Have you cleaned your teeth?’
‘No. I’ll do that.’
She dashed off and then ran back a few minutes later. ‘Do I need to put my shoes outside?’
‘Your shoes? No, your trainers are fine in the hall cupboard. Oh, do you mean the ones still in your suitcase?’
‘Yes, all of them. It says “no shoes indoors”.’
‘Ah, the rules!’ I said, smiling. ‘I should have written “shoes off indoors”. That’s what I normally write. Sorry, Grace. That was confusing. The rule is that nobody walks around the house in shoes. It’s to help keep the house clean, for all of us. Your trainers and your other shoes are fine where they are, you don’t need to put them outside. Where are your slippers?’
‘In my case.’
I told her she should take them out and wear them around the house. ‘OK,’ she said, and ran off again.
When she reappeared she was still barefoot and was holding the mini packet of cereal I’d seen under her pillow and the crackers wrapped in kitchen roll. ‘Shall I put these back in the kitchen? I only put them in my room when, like, I didn’t know all the rules and stuff.’
‘Yes, sweetheart. That would be great. Is there any other food in your room that we need to take out?’
She thought long and hard. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
I thanked her again and told her I’d be up to say goodnight shortly. ‘Did you remember to do your teeth?’
‘No, I forgot.’
‘OK, then go and do your teeth and get into bed. I’ll be up in a few minutes.’
When I went in to say goodnight Grace was grappling with the zip on her large suitcase. Once again, it appeared she’d packed everything away.
‘There’s no need to do that,’ I said gently. ‘You can leave some of your things out. It’ll be easier for you.’
Reluctantly, she took out the clothes she’d worn that day and put them in the laundry bin and placed her toiletry bag on the carpet beside the case before rezipping it. I left it there, thinking, One step at a time.
‘I’m really, really tired,’ Grace said, climbing into bed.
‘I’m not surprised. I am too – we’ve had a busy day. Sleep tight. Do you want a hug?’
‘No thanks. You’re nice but no thanks. Night night.’
I wasn’t in the slightest bit offended. I always ask the kids before giving them a hug or a cuddle and they often decline, but that’s preferable to not asking, in case they need one.
‘You’re nice too, Grace. I’m very glad you’ve come to stay with us. Night night.’
6
‘Somebody call an ambulance!’
Grace was excited on the day of the barbecue. She was up very early, even though it was Sunday, and she was in a bright, chatty mood. Despite her initial shyness, it was already apparent that Grace was a naturally friendly little girl, and resilient with it. It takes most kids longer than a couple of nights to start finding their feet, or to even give the thinnest of smiles, but Grace seemed in remarkably good spirits. I wondered if that was because she was going to her mum’s the next day – I imagined it probably was.
‘Are the other two girls your kids?’ she asked chirpily.
I explained that no, they weren’t. ‘Both girls are living with us on foster placements, like you.’
I’d already told Grace that the two girls were visiting their relatives and would be returned to us at the barbecue later that day. When I’d explained this, I thought it was obvious we were fostering them too, but perhaps I hadn’t made it clear. I couldn’t remember the exact words I’d used, but it didn’t matter. I took the opportunity to tell Grace a little bit about the two girls, such as their ages, their hobbies and which clubs they attended. I told her they were both good-hearted girls, which they were. Grace seemed satisfied with my brief descriptions and said she was looking forward to meeting them.
Of course, I omitted to tell Grace about the various problems the girls had; they’d both come to us because we were specialist carers. Jonathan and I never discuss the reason a child is in care with anyone bar the professionals we deal with, and the other foster carers we talk to in confidence at our regular training or support groups. I would never even tell my mum about any of the kids’ backgrounds or issues, despite the fact she’d been passed by Social Services to babysit for us and had been for a number of years.
Perhaps surprisingly, it’s rare for children to ask each other personal questions about why they are in care, or to put us on the spot by quizzing us about other foster children in our home. Occasionally a child might ask us what is ‘wrong’ with another child, or why they are ‘naughty’ or ‘bad’, for example. My response generally goes something like this: ‘There is nothing wrong with them and they are not bad. Sometimes people behave badly, but that doesn’t make them a bad person.’ This is something I believe in very strongly. Children are not born bad. Unfortunately, bad things happen to them as they grow up, and this impacts on their behaviour. It’s a lesson I learned very early on in fostering, and it’s helped me deal with so many situations, Grace’s included. Even before I met her I wanted to know what had caused the aggravating and disruptive behaviour she had apparently displayed for so many years. Whatever she did – and I was expecting to see some of this behaviour at any moment – I was never going to blame her. She was a vulnerable little girl who appeared to want to please. Clearly, something had derailed her best efforts, and I saw it as my job to help find out what that something was.
‘So where are your children?’ Grace asked me, after we’d briefly discussed the other girls. ‘Are they all grown up?’
I guessed it was a reasonable question. Jonathan and I had recently entered our forties and Grace probably viewed us as being plenty old enough to have had children who’d flown the nest. In fact, we’d never had our own children. It was something that simply never happened for us and we accepted that was the way it was, just as many other couples did before IVF was available as it is today.
‘No, sweetheart,’ I said to Grace. ‘We haven’t got any children of our own.’
‘Oh. Is that why you are a foster mum?’
Nowadays we’re trained to avoid using the words ‘foster mum’ or ‘foster dad’ and to stick to ‘foster carer’ instead, given that the vast majority of children in care already have a mum or dad, or both. Jonathan and I have always been sensitive to the fact that we don’t want to step on the toes of any parent whose child is living with us, and we’ve always suggested to kids it’s best to call us their foster carers, particularly in front of their mum
, dad and other close family relatives. I’d mention this to Grace at the right time, but for now I was happy to explain to her that we didn’t become foster carers because we didn’t have children ourselves. It’s a common assumption that many people have made over the years.
‘We decided to become foster carers long before we even thought about having a family of our own,’ I told her. ‘It was something I wanted to do from when I was a very young girl.’
‘Why?’ Grace looked confused. ‘Kids are nothing but hard work.’ She began to look blankly into the distance and once again I had a feeling she was repeating something she had heard from an adult. I waited a moment in case she wanted to say any more, but she simply asked ‘why?’ again, this time with more purpose.
‘There was a family in my neighbourhood who fostered children. I loved going to their house when it was full of kids to play with. I thought it was great that they fostered and I nagged my mum to do the same, but she said she was too busy and didn’t have the patience. I’ve always thought she was wrong about that, but she was adamant.’
‘Haven’t you got any brothers or sisters?’
‘I only had one brother and he was much older than me, so he was already an adult when I was still a little girl. It was like I grew up as an only child, really.’
‘I wish I was an only child.’
‘Do you, Grace? You wish you were an only child?’
‘Yes. It’s not fair. Mum can only keep one of us, and my sister is mean and she tells lies! It’s not fair she gets to live with my mum.’
‘Your mum can only keep one of you?’
‘Yes. She would have me back home forever if she could but, like, she can’t yet because of Lily, that’s all. But soon I think I will go back, she’s told me I will. Can I play out now? Can I go to the field? Can I, Angela?’
Grace was now gazing out of the kitchen window, and she was fidgeting with her hair. Absentmindedly, she was pulling her ringlets down to full stretch and letting them ping back up to their usual length, bobbing just below her jawline. I gently reminded her that she would be seeing her mum very soon, as her social worker Barry was collecting her at ten o’clock the next morning to take her back to her home town.
‘I know,’ she said vacantly. ‘Maybe she will let me stay but I don’t know. Where am I staying after that?’
A look of worry crossed her little face and she began to chew the end of a stray ringlet that was now dangling over one cheek. Again, I was aware we’d had a version of this conversation already. If everybody else was in agreement, it would ultimately be Grace’s decision as to whether she wanted to move away from her home county to live with us. I knew I’d explained this to her already, but I understood that Grace might need several attempts to process it. I wished I could tell her she was coming back to us after she’d stayed with her mum for a week, but I couldn’t. Nothing was confirmed and I didn’t want Grace to suffer any unnecessary uncertainty and upheaval. She’d had far too much of that in her short lifetime already.
I smiled at her and told her we’d both find out soon enough. As I spoke, out of the corner of my eye I saw the Murphy’s Law fridge magnet. ‘Nothing is as easy as it looks. Everything takes longer than you expect. And if anything can go wrong it will, at the worst possible moment.’ I’m not a superstitious person at all and we’d enjoyed the joke while it lasted, but in that moment something told me to get rid of this magnet. Discreetly, I took it off the fridge and shoved it in a drawer. Hopefully Grace would never notice, as the fridge was covered in dozens of other magnets, collected on our travels and given as small gifts from friends and children we fostered who knew we collected them.
I told Grace I’d happily take her over to the field to play. I also told her she could talk to me some more about her family, or about anything else if she wanted to, but she shrugged and said it was all right. I felt sorry for her, as she looked very small and defeated and sad for a few moments. However, as soon as we put our shoes on to go out, she appeared recharged. Her hunched shoulders sprang up and she was suddenly raring to go once more. I had a job keeping up with her as she zoomed across our back garden and over to the playing field, where she launched herself onto the monkey bars and chatted easily to the other kids she encountered in the play area.
‘Isn’t she a gorgeous little thing?’ one of my neighbours commented.
‘She is,’ I said, feeling proud of her.
When I had a few minutes to myself, I made a note of what Grace had said about her mother apparently stating she would have her ‘back home forever if she could’. Clearly, that was at odds with the version of events presented by the family and relayed to me by Social Services. I went over what we knew. We had been told that Grace’s older sister Lily had gone to live with their mother, Colette, around a year after both girls were taken into care. Grace’s mum had ‘consistently refused to take Grace back’ because of her ‘aggravating and disruptive behaviour’ and the fact she ‘never listens’, ‘deliberately winds everyone up’ and was ‘impossible to live with’. There was no mistake about that; Barry had read the notes straight from Grace’s Social Services file, in my kitchen. Grace’s story about her mum only being able to keep one child didn’t fit either, as Colette was raising two older stepsons as well as thirteen-year-old Lily. Why would a mother only be able to keep one daughter, but raise two teenage stepsons? Was this an excuse Colette had given to Grace for not having her back home, or had Grace invented this, to help her deal with the painful reality? Sadly, it seemed to me that pretending her mum had promised to have her back was exactly what a rejected young girl might do, to try to make an unbearable situation a little easier to cope with. My heart bled for Grace, it really did.
The sun was beating down as we got ready for the barbecue later that day. Grace’s skin was milky white and I was pleased when she allowed me to put sunblock on her without the fuss a lot of children make. ‘I’ve got some of my own but I don’t know where it is,’ she told me. I hadn’t checked her bedroom that day but I had a feeling that all of Grace’s belongings would be packed up again, just like the day before.
‘No problem, I’ve got plenty. And it’s a high factor, just right for your fair skin.’
‘Good. I don’t like getting sunburned. Blisters hurt, don’t they?’
‘Blisters?’ I said, unable to hide my concern.
‘Isn’t that what they’re called? The big, like, bubbly things?’
‘Yes, sweetheart, that’s blisters.’
‘So that’s, like, what I had. Lots and lots of blisters. All over. Yuk!’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Grace. You got sunburned and had lots of blisters? I got sunburned as a child too.’
I wanted to hear more. During my childhood it was commonplace for kids to get badly burned in the sun, because far less was known about the harmful effects of sun damage. In this era, however, cases of severe sunburn were much rarer; in fact, it was virtually unheard of for young kids to get so badly burned they were blistered all over. It could have been accidental in Grace’s case, of course, especially given how fair she was, or it could have been the result of negligence. If she were older, I might have been more persuaded that it was accidental, because I’d already learned that you can’t rely on a teenager to put sunblock on. Once, we left two teenage girls on the beach on holiday. They both promised us faithfully they would apply their cream but neither did, and both got burned and blistered. They had difficulty sleeping that night, and never forgot their experience. However, I would never leave a child of Grace’s age or younger on a beach, of course, and I wouldn’t expect a ten-year-old to be responsible for applying her sun cream properly, on her own.
Not wanting to put words in Grace’s mouth, I repeated back what she had said, with a quizzical tone in my voice.
‘Lots and lots of blisters, all over?’
As was often the case, just when I wanted to hear more, she quickly moved on to another topic. I made a mental note to write this down later, to pa
ss on to Social Services.
‘Angela, did you say you had a brother?’
‘Yes.’ This question took me by surprise. My brother Andrew had died of cancer several years earlier. His death had been completely unexpected and came as a terrible shock, and I think I was still coming to terms with it.
‘What’s his name?’
‘His name was Andrew. I’m afraid he passed away.’
‘Died, you mean?’
‘Yes, sweetheart. He was poorly and he died. It was a very sad time for all of us.’
‘Was he nice?’
‘Yes, he was a lovely person.’
Unexpectedly, Grace took hold of my hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘Never mind, these things happen,’ she said very seriously. ‘We all have our crosses to bear.’ That struck me as yet another turn of phrase she’d picked up from an adult in her life. She then commented that I was lucky I’d had a ‘nice’ brother.
‘I know. I miss Andrew. It was very sad when he died.’
‘I miss my dad.’
‘You miss your dad?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘I remember you told me he called you Goldilocks.’
For a moment I thought I’d misremembered, because Grace looked completely taken aback and frowned at me, but then she said, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s right. It was a long, long time ago. When I was a little girl. When he was my daddy.’
