by Ann Cleeves
‘We weren’t bothered about that. Of course not. What do you think we are? Ogres? And at least it proved she was human.’
‘What do you mean?’ The social worker’s voice rose as if she was about to cry. Even at the age of five Grace realized that, in this situation, this wasn’t the right way for a responsible adult to behave.
‘Look.’ Dave leant forward. From her hiding place Grace could see the curve of his back. He was a very big man and from this angle he looked deformed like one of the illustrations in Jack and the Beanstalk, her latest reading book. Perhaps, as he had just said, he was an ogre. ‘Look, we don’t want to muck you about, but we’ve got to be straight, haven’t we? I mean, better now than when all the forms have been filled out. Save you some work, eh?’
He gave a quick barking laugh. Grace understood that this was supposed to be a joke but the social worker didn’t find it funny. Nor really did Dave because he continued seriously. ‘We can’t love her,’ he said. ‘We wish we could but we can’t. She’s so cold. She stares at us with those eyes. She won’t let us touch her. You’ve got to love your own kid, haven’t you?’ He paused. ‘Perhaps it’s where she comes from.’
‘What do you mean? Where she comes from?’ The social worker’s voice was shrill, almost hysterical.
‘Well, they’re different to us, those people, aren’t they?’
‘She’s a child,’ the social worker said. ‘She needs a family.’ She didn’t deny the difference. She turned towards Lesley. Dave moved and Grace saw that he wasn’t an ogre at all. He too looked close to tears.
‘Do you feel the same way?’ the social worker asked.
‘We’ve tried,’ Lesley said. ‘When you first told us about Grace we thought she’d be perfect for us, we really did. Despite the differences. And when you told us what she’d been through we expected her to be upset. We wouldn’t have minded. We could have coped with bad behaviour, nightmares, tears. We thought we’d be able to help. But we can’t get through to her. That’s what’s so dreadful. She doesn’t need us.’
‘You’re wrong,’ the woman cried. ‘Don’t you see she needs you just because she’s so withdrawn. So self-controlled.’ She paused then went on stiffly, ‘But I won’t try to persuade you. You must be fully committed if you want to be adoptive parents. I’m sure that was explained when you applied . . .’
The sentence was allowed to hang like a threat. Grace sensed the menace though she didn’t understand exactly what the words meant.
‘You’re saying if we turn Grace down we won’t get another one!’ Dave was about to jump to his feet when Lesley put her hand on his elbow to restrain him.
‘Of course not,’ the social worker said, but her voice was smug. She had got her point across. ‘Look,’ she continued, ‘don’t make any hasty decisions. Give it another month. See how you feel then.’
They gave it another month. During that time Grace tried very hard. She let Dave kiss her goodnight. She let Lesley cuddle her on the sofa when they were reading their bedtime story, although the feel of the woman’s soft body through her Pooh Bear nightdress almost made her gag. But all the time she was puzzling about what could make her different. She looked the same as the other children at school. Slightly skinnier, slightly browner, she supposed. Would that prevent Dave and Lesley from wanting her? In the end she came to no conclusions. And her efforts did no good. After a month she was moved to live with Aunty Carol and Uncle Jim. She didn’t call them mum and dad. She knew there was no point.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next vivid memory was of going for a walk with Nan. For a while through the upheaval of changing foster parents two people stayed with her. She didn’t see them often but they were a constant thread linking the various aunties and uncles. One was Miss Thorne, the social worker whom Grace had come to see now almost as a friend. Or if not a friend at least an ally. She did at least try to persuade Lesley and Dave to keep her. The other was an old woman called Nan. Grace assumed that the woman was her grandmother, though she couldn’t remember being told that explicitly. But then she was told very little explicitly. The scrapbook, which was supposed to help, only confused her.
The day which specially stuck in her memory was the one when Miss Thorne took her to see Nan for the first time. There was a drive in the car. The foster parents all lived in town and this trip into the country was an adventure for Grace. She sat in the passenger seat directly behind the driver and through her window she could occasionally glimpse the sea. The town where she lived was on the coast, but there the sea was hidden behind power-station chimneys and cranes.
They drove down a road like a tunnel, covered in trees with red and brown leaves, then they took a track into a field. In the field there were three burnt-out cars and a bony piebald pony. In one corner a rusty caravan was propped up on a pile of bricks. The caravan door was opened by a fat old lady.
‘I’m afraid she’s a bit eccentric’ The social worker whispered as if she were talking to an adult. Grace was only eight but she understood what the word meant More loudly Miss Thorne said, ‘Come on, Grace. This is Nan.’
Through the open door Grace, who hated mess at the best of times, saw black bin bags spilling over with clothes and newspapers. There was a cat standing on the cooker, the smell of cat piss and stale cat food.
‘Shall I stay for a bit?’ the social worker asked. Grace nodded, though she would have preferred that neither of them stayed at all.
By the time they started out on their walk the social worker had gone. It was autumn. Bundles of purple elderberries were hanging down over the river. They were so heavy that the branch was bending. She remembered plump hips, the colour of fresh blood and little haws which were a darker red, some of them shrivelled and almost black. There were blackberries. Nan ate them and offered a handful to Grace but she refused. Earlier she had seen a white maggot crawling from the overripe flesh of one. There was rose bay willow herb covered in wispy white hair, thistle heads and dead umbellifers. The umbellifers were rather taller than Grace. The stalks were brown and ribbed. She reached up and broke one. It was hollow and quite easy to break. At the top of the stalk were branches like umbrella spokes and when she snapped it the hard seeds scattered.
Then she saw a red squirrel at the top of the tree. Nan didn’t point it out to her, she saw it for herself. She knew it was a squirrel because she’d seen pictures in story books, but this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. She wasn’t thrilled by the animal because it was cute or furry, but because it was skilful, so competent. When she first saw it, it was eating a hazelnut, holding it with its front paws and nibbling. Then it jumped from one branch to another, a huge jump which took it across the river. It judged the gap perfectly. If you were a squirrel, it seemed, it was all right to do things well. For Grace, who had to pretend at failure to be accepted at all by the other kids at school, this was a revelation.
Years later Grace could remember the red squirrel with photographic detail. It had a huge eye, whiskers and its tail was nearly black. She could see it dropping a nut into the river and the spreading ripples. She knew too, with certainty, that they didn’t see otter that day, although the river was probably very good for otter.
Nan didn’t speak to Grace while they were walking, though she did seem to be talking to herself. At first Grace tried to be polite.
‘I’m sorry?’ she said when Nan muttered. Nan turned and glared at her but didn’t reply.
Grace was pleased with this response. She was fed up with people asking how she was feeling then staring at her waiting for an answer. She would prefer to watch the squirrel and the brown trout in the river.
‘Did you have a nice time?’ the social worker asked in the car on the way home.
‘Yes, thank you.’ She didn’t say this just to be polite. She enjoyed the walk. She decided as an afterthought, ‘I didn’t understand anything Nan said though.’
‘Oh,’ said the social worker. Grace realized she wasn’t
listening. Miss Thorne often asked questions and didn’t listen to the replies.
The other trips to visit Nan all followed the same pattern. The social worker would drop her off and come back later to collect her. Grace asked her once where she went on these occasions, there wasn’t time to drive back to town. She said she had another client to see.
‘A foster child?’ Grace asked wistfully. She would like to be placed out here in the country.
‘No. Someone who might like to foster one day.’
Grace would have liked to ask if that person might want to foster her but that would have been rude to the present aunt and uncle, who were trying their best.
No matter what the weather was like Grace went for a walk. She hated sitting all afternoon in the smelly caravan. Often she went by herself. Even if Nan was with her there was still little communication between the old woman and the child. Grace found that restful.
As time passed Grace became convinced that Nan was her father’s mother. She could remember nothing of her father. In the scrapbook put together by the social worker there was a picture labelled ‘Dad’ but it meant nothing to her. There were no photographs of her mother and father together, or of them all as a family. The photograph of her father showed a tall thin man standing outside a brick house with a steeply pitched slate roof. There was a storm porch which had plants growing in the window. This certainly wasn’t the house where she had lived with her mother, where her mother had died. She had a perfect recollection of that house, which was flat-faced and new like many of the foster parents’ homes.
It never occurred to Grace to ask her social worker about the photograph or about her father, to ask even if he was still alive. She knew that she wouldn’t get a straight answer. Miss Thorne had always seemed frightened by information. She was prepared to talk about feelings, to go on about them at length, but facts disturbed her. Perhaps that was why Grace enjoyed them so much.
She came to the conclusion that the man in the photograph was related to Nan because the garden beside the brick semi-detached house in the picture was such a tip. The weeds were waist high and piles of rubbish in black plastic bags were piled in front of the garden wall. It was the black plastic which first linked Nan with her father in Grace’s mind. That, and the way the man was standing, glaring out at the camera.
Nan glared at everyone, even if she wasn’t particularly cross.
One day they were sitting in the sun on the caravan steps waiting for the social worker to come in the car to take her home. Grace had had a good day. She’d seen a kingfisher for the first time, and she’d tracked down its nest to a hole in the river bank. There were bluebells in the woods. She was older, in her last year at primary school. Suddenly she asked, ‘Where’s my dad?’
She hadn’t planned the question, but she was feeling comfortable sitting there in the sunshine, relaxed after the walk, so when it came into her head she spoke it, without her usual calculation. But then she realized its significance. She watched Nan carefully. Usually Nan muttered because she had no teeth, but with some effort Grace had learnt to make sense of what she said. Today, however, Nan didn’t attempt to speak.
‘You do know, don’t you?’ It wasn’t like Grace to be so persistent. She waited. A tear rolled from Nan’s eye down the groove which separated her cheek from her nose and onto a stubbly upper lip, but Grace refused to be put off.
‘Well?’ she demanded.
Then they heard the social worker’s car jolting up the track. The sun was so low that it shone straight into Grace’s eyes and she couldn’t see the car, except as a blurred shape, until it stopped outside the caravan. Nan wiped her eye with the hem of her apron.
On their way home the social worker asked, ‘What was wrong with Nan?’
‘I don’t know,’ Grace said truthfully.
At the time the social worker seemed to accept the reply but Grace was never taken to visit the old lady again. No explanation was given.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The following September Grace moved from primary school to the high school. This was a large establishment with more than a thousand pupils. There were three square buildings like factories, with rows of windows separated by sheets of blue and yellow plastic. In places the plastic was split, many of the windows could not be shut. Grace’s first impression of the school was of a constant battle with the buildings: the heating failed, the roof leaked, cracks had been found in the gymnasium floor so there was no PE.
The lack of PE didn’t bother Grace. There had been plenty of that in primary school and she was looking forward to learning new subjects. She’d been visiting the public library secretly to get an idea of what would be expected. She was especially excited by the idea of biology, physics and chemistry. When her form tutor, a harassed middle-aged man, handed her a printed timetable on the first day she ringed these subjects in red. She was in the top set in all lessons. For the last two years of junior school she had been marking time, taking care not to show off.
By that time she was living with Frank and Maureen. Before moving in with them she had a short period in an assessment centre, which for some reason was almost empty. In the centre she was subject to interviews and questions. Here, perhaps, she could have brought up the topic of her father, but she never did. She felt she wanted to discover him for herself.
With Frank and Maureen she was happier than she’d been with any of the other foster parents. Frank had been a self-employed lorry driver until back trouble had forced him to give it up. Maureen still worked as a cook in a hospital. They saw fostering as a job, a business, and this took the pressure off Grace. She didn’t have to pretend to love them. They mostly took teenagers, the sort of kid no one else wanted. Now there were four, and Grace was the youngest. They lived in a four-bedroomed 1930s semi on the edge of a once respectable, but now rather neglected council estate. Grace was the only girl so she had the smallest bedroom to herself. The boys were rowdy and troublesome, all had been known to the police. Grace didn’t care. She took no notice of them and shut herself in her room with her books.
The other reason for Grace’s contentment at this time was a dog called Charlie. Frank and Maureen were the first of her foster parents to own a pet. Charlie was a frenetic mongrel, with wild eyes, a stray. Frank took him in with the same tolerant good nature which prompted him to open his door to delinquent boys, but amid the chaos of the house he was often neglected. Since her arrival Grace took responsibility for Charlie, who repaid her with lavish and exuberant devotion.
The first day she saw her father it was sunny. She had Biology last period and they studied the structure of the flower. She drew a diagram, neatly coloured, of petals, stamen and stigma. The biology lab was at the top of the building, a real suntrap. The others had taken off their jumpers and cardigans but Grace kept hers on. Maureen was too busy with her work in the hospital and a particularly disruptive glue sniffer to iron shirts. So Grace felt pink and a little sweaty as she humped her large bag out of school and towards the bus stop.
The man was standing on the other side of the road to the school entrance. He was dressed, inconspicuously, in jeans and a plain heavy sweatshirt. He pretended to read a newspaper and that was what made Grace notice him first. He was reading the Guardian. Carol and Jim, two sets of foster parents ago, read the Guardian. Jim taught Art and Carol was a librarian. But Frank and Maureen, and the other adults into whose homes she was occasionally invited, read the Mirror or the Sun or occasionally the Express. So as she waited for her bus she watched him with interest. She watched which child he was looking out for. It occurred to her that if the father read the Guardian the child might feel odd and isolated too. They might be friends.
But the man didn’t seem to know exactly who he was waiting for. He looked over the edge of his newspaper with increasing desperation at the stream of children who flowed past. Occasionally he seemed about to ask one of them for guidance but at the last minute he lost his nerve. When her bus arrived he was still stan
ding there. She climbed onto the bus and showed her pass, letting a crowd of pupils push past her to go upstairs. She found a seat by a window. The bus started noisily and drove straight past the man. Perhaps the diesel engine disturbed his concentration because he stared angrily after it. Then she realized that he was waiting for her. This man was older but he was the same one as had glared out at her from the photograph in the scrapbook for as long as she could remember.
She stared back, and banged on the window, hoping that he would notice her and that would provide a spark of recognition, but he had already given up. He turned away and she watched him walk down the street. That’s it, she thought. I’ll never see him again. She leapt to her feet and rang the bell in an attempt to stop the bus but the driver was so accustomed to naughty children playing tricks that he just turned round and swore at her.
‘Please!’ she cried. It was like a nightmare, watching her father disappear into the distance. But still the driver wouldn’t stop.
He wasn’t there the next day. She came out of school looking for him. She was certain by now that the man was her father and not just a figment of her imagination. The night before she’d taken out the scrapbook and studied the photograph. The likeness was so good that she was surprised she didn’t recognize -him immediately. She let the first bus go without her, hoping that he might turn up but he didn’t show.
Exactly a week after the first appearance, again after double Biology, he was there again. By now she had given him up. She had planned strategies for dealing with an appearance, but that was last week, and now she wasn’t sure what to do.
She stood for a moment. The bag on her shoulder was very heavy and she stood at a list, her head tilted, so she saw him at an odd angle. Today he had no newspaper and seemed more restless, more determined. He paced up and down the pavement, occasionally approaching groups of children. Grace, who was more streetwise than many children her age, thought he’d have to watch it or he’d get himself arrested.
