The Girl with the Suitcase

by Angela Hart

  ‘You’re staying with us for at least six months, Grace. Remember, that’s what Barry explained?’

  ‘Yes. So?’

  ‘Hopefully it will be longer. We love having you here. We really want you to stay with us. It would be easier for you if you unpacked.’

  ‘Right, yeah, OK.’

  She pouted and tugged at her hair, as if she was deeply frustrated at something.

  ‘How are you feeling about being here, Grace?’

  ‘I like you and Jonathan. But . . .’

  She buttoned her lips.

  ‘But what? You can talk to me about anything you want, Grace. I’m here to help you.’

  ‘I’ll unpack,’ she said hastily. ‘There’s no need to keep going on! I’ll do it! It’s not a big deal, is it?’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said, not taking the bait. I reminded her she could keep her empty suitcase and bags in her bedroom. I’d already told her more than once that there was plenty of room in the wardrobe for them, as I didn’t want her to worry about any of her luggage being out of sight, just in case that was a factor. She could put her big suitcase on top of the wardrobe, as there was space up there for it.

  Unfortunately, nothing changed. Grace continued to repack her belongings every single day. Without fail, her cuddly swan, pyjamas and toiletry bag went back in her suitcase. She did put her dirty washing in the laundry bin, but every time I gave her back a pile of clean, ironed clothes, it went straight back in the case. I started to put everything I could on coat hangers to encourage her to put her clothes straight in the wardrobe, but she would take them off the hangers, fold them up and zip them back in her case.

  I asked Grace if she had any life story books, which are a kind of scrapbook for kids in care into which you place photographs and mementos of their time in the foster home, such as concert and cinema tickets. It can also contain details about their family, where they were born, their first school, information about their religion and so on. We always help and encourage the children to record their memories and, in an ideal world, the same book travels with the child if they move from one foster home to the next. Some kids end up with several different books, and I expected Grace might have a few, given her various moves. I thought that if she showed me her books this might spark some conversation about all the different moves she’d had and would perhaps get her talking about why she didn’t want to unpack. Also, I was interested to see if she had any pictures of her family. Obviously, I’d met her mother, but I couldn’t picture her sister or her stepbrothers at all, and as for her stepfather, I didn’t even know what he was called. I wanted to find out more, reckoning that the more information I had the better I would be able to understand Grace, and help her.

  ‘No,’ she frowned. ‘What even is a life story book?’

  I explained what it was and Grace shrugged and told me she’d never had one, not ever. I was very surprised at this, given that she’d been in eight other foster homes, but I didn’t question her. In hindsight, I wonder if Grace left her life story books behind on purpose. None of her previous placements had worked out, so maybe she didn’t want to remember them. She had said precious little about her former carers, and the only things she had gone into any detail about were negative, such as her criticism of the carer who wouldn’t let her eat crisps.

  I took Grace to the GP as planned, and was looking forward to picking the doctor’s brains about whether or not he could offer any help in terms of her hyperactive behaviour. I explained that she continued to run everywhere, couldn’t sit still, was accident-prone and could be clumsy and sometimes struggled to remember things or follow instructions. I could have said more but I was conscious that Grace was in the room and I didn’t want to upset her in any way, even though she didn’t appear to be listening. I also told the GP Grace would get very hot and red in the face and needed to drink a lot of fluids, which was something that had started concerning me.

  ‘I’ve actually wondered if she may be diabetic, as she gets extremely thirsty. And it would be very helpful to hear your opinion on everything else, and whether we need to think about having Grace tested, perhaps.’ I had gently explained to Grace, before the appointment, that I was going to mention all of these things and ask for advice so she might get some ‘extra help’ and she had shrugged and said she didn’t mind.

  ‘Diabetic and prone to hyperactivity, you say?’ our elderly GP replied, raising his white eyebrows. ‘I see.’

  First, he ran through the basic health checks he had to perform on Grace, such as measuring her height and weighing her. She was officially underweight for her age, though only slightly, but the GP didn’t seem too concerned about this and simply suggested that she put on a bit of weight. Then, reclining back in his chair, he told me that, all things considered, he felt that Grace was simply a very active, busy young girl. ‘She gets hot because she’s on the go all the time,’ he said, ‘and when you get hot you perspire more and need to drink more. It’s as simple as that, I think. But do bring her back in if you have any more concerns, or if she starts to drink more, particularly when the weather begins to cool down.’ He said this to me as if Grace wasn’t in the room with us, which made me feel uncomfortable. She had already told me she hated going to the doctors and was in a grumpy, impatient mood that day; I can’t imagine being talked about in this way helped her mood. Grace sat there fidgeting with her hair and looking distractedly out of the window. I had to remind her three times not to fiddle with the blood pressure monitor on the desk in front of her, and she only stopped when the GP himself asked her not to touch it again. That was the only time he addressed her directly, I noticed.

  Before he dismissed us I asked the doctor about E numbers and food and drinks Grace should avoid, to help curb the high energy spikes she often had, which I explained sometimes lasted for days on end. I also repeated that her concentration often waned and said I was worried this might affect her education, stating that any help and advice he could offer would be very much appreciated.

  ‘Ah, that’s quite common in lively young girls,’ he said kindly. ‘Interested in everything; can’t concentrate on anything!’

  I had to prompt him for dietary advice, pointing out that I’d read something about the link between certain foods and kids’ behaviour but, unfortunately, he wasn’t very helpful on that score either. ‘I can’t tell you what to avoid as every individual is different, but if you have your suspicions that certain foods have a negative effect on Grace’s behaviour, then I would cut them out and see if it makes a difference. If you think she may be allergic to certain foods, there are some tests we can do. Keeping a food diary may be useful.’ In fact, I had just started to do this as I’d read a magazine article about food diaries, but it hadn’t enlightened me so far and I had no idea which specific foods may have been having an impact on Grace, if any. In hindsight, I realise the GP himself wasn’t very enlightened either, which was understandable, I suppose. The influx of artificial colourings, sweeteners, flavourings and preservatives in our foods was a relatively new phenomenon in the nineties, and something dieticians and nutrition experts were learning more about every day. Our GP was very close to retirement age and I guess this wasn’t something he’d have learned about at medical school, when ready meals were unheard of and rationing would have still been in place!

  A few weeks later, Grace had still not unpacked. This bothered me, as I wanted her to feel as settled and comfortable as possible in our home; it was her home now too. I gave her a little desktop calendar and put it on her dressing table, hoping it might help her understand that she was here to stay.

  ‘This is for you,’ I said. ‘School starts soon. Here’s the date – do you want to mark it on?’

  Happily, Grace’s place at the popular local primary school we’d been hoping for was confirmed, and Jess had made all the arrangements. I knew the school well and was very pleased Grace had got a place there. She hadn’t seemed very interested when I first gave her the news, but that di
dn’t really surprise me. There were still a couple of weeks of the summer holiday left and, from a child’s point of view, that might as well be a lifetime!

  I was pleased when Grace patiently wrote ‘start new school’ on the calendar. By now I had started a life story book for her and I encouraged her to write some basic details in it, including the name of her new school. She concentrated very hard whenever she wrote. Her writing was neat and I’d noticed her spelling was generally good too.

  ‘Well done, Grace. Lovely writing. By the way, I’ll take you uniform shopping at the weekend.’

  She seemed pleased about this and asked lots of questions about the colour of the uniform, when we would find out about the clubs they did, whether her new friend Briony would be at the same school and so on. I didn’t know which school Briony was attending, but I hoped it was the same one. At least Grace would see one familiar face on her first day.

  ‘You’ll be able to write other dates on here too,’ I said to her. ‘The calendar will be useful for helping you remember things. I’m always checking dates on my calendar, and I like to know what’s coming up.’

  ‘Like, when I go home?’

  ‘Like when you go home for a visit with your family? Yes.’

  ‘When is that? Did Mum tell you? She didn’t tell me. I asked her but she said she didn’t know yet. Do you know, Angela? Do you?’

  I had to tell her I didn’t know either. The family had been back from their summer holiday for a while. By now I knew for sure that their departure date had not clashed with the placement meeting, as Colette had made us believe. They left on the Tuesday, as both Lee and Lily had told Grace. Since then, Colette had been keeping a very low profile. Grace had spoken to her mum briefly on the phone on a couple of occasions, but the calls sounded rushed. I’d spoken to Colette too. I had wanted to touch base and let her know how Grace was getting on, and I also wanted to find out when Grace was going on a weekend visit, but Colette had been elusive and fobbed me off, really quite rudely on one occasion.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you, I’ll call you,’ she’d said, somewhat indignantly. ‘There’s a lot of stuff going on at the moment, things you wouldn’t believe! Nuts, it is. I’ll be in touch, don’t you worry. Gotta dash now.’

  In my continuing efforts to try to help Grace settle in and unpack her bags, I also talked to her about the fact she would still be living with us at Christmas, and for her birthday in January, when she would turn eleven.

  ‘Do I have to stay with you on Christmas Day? And on my birthday?’

  Again, I had to tread carefully. I told her that even though the plan was that she would be living with us over Christmas and when it was her birthday, I wasn’t sure if she’d be with her family or with us on those particular days.

  ‘What if . . .?’

  She stopped herself, as I’d seen her do before, and when I prompted her she still didn’t finish her sentence.

  ‘Grace, I want you to know that Jonathan and I love having you here,’ I repeated. ‘We hope you will stay for a long time.’

  Grace started counting on her fingers, working out how many months it was until her birthday. She had first come to us in July and it was August now. The six months would have started around the middle of July.

  ‘So, August, September, October, what’s the next one?’

  ‘It begins with N. Can you remember?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nov . . .’

  ‘What?’ she looked thoroughly confused.

  ‘Remember, remember the fifth of . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘November!’

  ‘Oh. What’s on the fifth?’

  I explained about it being the date of Bonfire Night but Grace looked nonplussed and started counting the months again, going back to the beginning and stopping when she’d reached January again.

  ‘Five months from now, until my birthday.’

  She gazed at the calendar. It had a section at the back where you could jot down upcoming dates for the following year, but she didn’t mark her birthday, or the fact that’s when she would have been with us for six months. I was pleased about this; I certainly didn’t want her to start counting the days with us, and I definitely didn’t want her to think that her life would be routinely turned upside down again in January. That was not how things worked. Generally speaking, when Social Services placed a child with us for an initial six months, the expectation was that the child would stay for longer, and possibly even right up until they were ready to move out and live independently. There would always be a review meeting, run by an IRO (independent reviewing officer) after the first six months, but so long as everything was running smoothly and there was no change in the birth family’s circumstances, the placements typically just carried on indefinitely. I wouldn’t spell this out, as it could be alarming for a child to think too far into the future, but I was desperate to somehow get Grace to acknowledge that she lived with us now, and she was not just a temporary visitor.

  ‘Your birthday is a long way off,’ I said. ‘I want you to see our house as your home. It is your home. Is there anything you’d like to do to make your bedroom feel more like your room? Posters, maybe?’

  There was a pause. Grace exhaled and began to speak in a meek, quiet voice.

  ‘Mum said we are going to talk about me moving home next time I go on a contact visit.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, Grace. Thanks for telling me that.’

  I stood up and pointed to a space on one wall. ‘So, what about posters? This is a good place to put them?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘And, let’s see. Are you going to make use of this lovely big wardrobe and chest of drawers?’ I opened the doors of the wardrobe.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, why don’t you unpack your things, Grace? It’ll be easier for you than living out of suitcases. You have all this space here.’

  ‘OK. I will. I’ll do it.’

  ‘Do you want me to help?’

  ‘I can do it by myself.’

  Still nothing changed.

  Grace was very excited when we went shopping for her school uniform. She was ready and waiting to go for about an hour before the time I’d said we’d leave, and when we started walking into town she was like a coiled spring, darting here and there and almost bouncing down the street.

  ‘Stay with me,’ I had to call a few times, as she sprang ahead of me. ‘But not that close!’ I had to add, because when she doubled back she walked too close to me, so much so that I caught her with my handbag several times, and she stepped so hard on the side of my shoe it came off at the pedestrian crossing.

  Once in town, we saw several people we knew. Grace had helped me out in the shop once or twice. She loved watering the flowers and she was a very willing helper when it came to carrying the displays in from the street at the end of the day. She was also very chatty with any of the customers who talked to her.

  ‘Aren’t you a good helper,’ they’d typically say. Or, ‘I hope Angela and Jonathan are paying you!’ We did give her some extra pocket money, as that was always the rule when any of the kids ‘worked’ in the shop, even when they were young like Grace and were really only pottering about and lending a hand because they wanted to.

  Grace would tell the customers all about her pocket money, describing the magazine she was saving up for, or the new pens or hair accessories. A lot of the kids we cared for just smiled sweetly – or shied away in embarrassment – when customers spoke to them like that, but not Grace. She seemed intent on doing her best to please everyone who spoke to her, to the point where the customers often had to be the ones to excuse themselves from the conversation as Grace just wouldn’t stop talking!

  ‘Hello!’ one of our older customers, Dot, exclaimed as we stepped off the zebra crossing in town. ‘How are you?’

  I’d known Dot for years and I assumed she was addressing me. I was looking down at my f
eet at the time, trying to put my shoe back on as Grace had stepped on my foot again. When I looked up I saw that Dot, who must have been well over eighty, was talking directly to Grace. Dot looked absolutely thrilled to bump into Grace, and I saw that her whole face lit up.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Grace responded merrily. ‘I’m going to get my new school uniform!’ She told Dot which school she was going to.

  ‘Are you really? Well isn’t that quite something? A brand-new uniform? And new shoes too, I shouldn’t wonder?’

  ‘Am I, Angela, am I having new shoes?’

  ‘Yes, Grace.’

  I looked at Dot and wanted to say something about the shoe shop we were going to, as I knew she used to work there when I was around the same age as Grace was now. I remembered her fitting my school shoes. However, I didn’t get a look in. Dot was listening carefully to whatever it was Grace had to say next. Dot then burst out laughing, told Grace how lovely it was to see her and went on her way. Almost as an afterthought she said, ‘Oh! Goodbye, Angela.’

  I smiled to myself. Grace had a gift, that’s for sure. I’d seen it with the kids in the play area as well as the customers who came into the shop. You couldn’t teach a child to be like that, I thought. Grace was naturally gregarious and curious and she could be very friendly when she wanted to be. Generally speaking, I’d noticed she made even more of an effort with new people she met than with anyone else. I wondered why this was. Once, I suggested to Jonathan she might be protecting herself, in that she could afford to be friendly with strangers because they couldn’t let her down like the people closer to her might.

  ‘Be careful of amateur psychology!’ he smiled.

  Jonathan had a point; I found myself trying to psychoanalyse situations all the time and it was something I needed to treat with caution. But each new child always raised so many questions in my mind, and more often than not Jonathan and I were kept in the dark about so many elements of their life.