The Foster Child

by Jenny Blackhurst

  First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –

  Because I was not a Socialist.

  Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –

  Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

  Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –

  Because I was not a Jew.

  Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

  The poem is a warning, tacked on the wall for everyone to see, and yet no one heeds its words. It is like Ellie herself: seen and instantly discarded; not worth the time or attention.

  She is almost at the door to her history class when her desire to be noticed is realised. Be careful what you wish for, Ellie Atkinson.

  Naomi Harper is in front of her, blocking her path before Ellie even sees her approach. She appears so suddenly that Ellie stumbles, her foot jamming down on Naomi’s toe.

  ‘Ow!’ Naomi shrieks as though Ellie has set her hair on fire. ‘You did that on purpose!’

  ‘I didn’t, I’m sorry.’ Ellie hates herself for her urgent, pleading tone, hates the way she sounds like a victim. She’s desperate to tell Naomi to fuck off and ram the sharp end of her compass into the little bitch’s arm. But she has promised Sarah that she will try and stay out of trouble. If she’s going to stay here, she needs to keep her nose clean.

  Naomi mimics her, sniffing and whimpering, ‘I’m sorry,’ in a humiliatingly good impression of her voice. Then, without warning and as quickly as she swiped the plimsolls off the stand that day in the school-uniform shop, she grabs Ellie’s arm and yanks her into the shadows beneath the art-room stairs. Ellie’s history room is only yards away – if she screams, her teacher will surely hear her. The door opens and the other children file in, but they don’t even look in her direction. Ellie thrashes and wriggles, but Naomi has a firm hold on her arm.

  Naomi is not the only person under the stairs. She shoves Ellie roughly into the waiting arms of an older girl – one of those who was outside her bedroom taunting and chanting. The girl grabs both her arms and hisses into her ear, her breath warm on Ellie’s cheek, ‘Hello, Ellie, remember us?’ She nods towards the other girl waiting under the stairwell – the girl who was watching Ellie as she sat in her English class just a few minutes before. She must have been the lookout. ‘If you scream, I’ll break your pretty nose.’

  The corridor is empty now – Ellie is late for class and she desperately wills her teacher to come out and look for her, but the door remains treacherously closed.

  ‘Fucking hell, Ellie,’ Naomi sneers, and Ellie is sure the other girl can see her trembling, can hear the thudding of her heart through her chest and smell the sweat that is beginning to trickle down her back. ‘You look as though you’re about to piss yourself.’ The three girls cackle as though this is an in-joke, a joke with her as the punchline. Naomi looks at the third girl.

  ‘What are you waiting for? Do it,’ she snaps, and the girl holding her arms pulls her closer, holds her tighter, as though she knows that whatever is happening will make Ellie struggle. And struggle she does. She bucks and writhes wildly, but the older girl is too strong.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Teaching you a lesson. Do you know what my mum did to me for lying about your little mind-fuck stunt in town? She grounded me for two weeks. I have to miss Tanya’s sleepover this weekend. Do it!’ she snaps again, and this time the other girl doesn’t hesitate. Ellie feels rough hands yank at the waistband of her trousers, the elastic of her knickers pulled roughly aside, and she lets out a squeal as cold liquid splashes against her buttocks, soaks into the crotch of her knickers and spreads down her thighs. The sharp smell of urine fills the corridor, and her eyes burn with tears. The girl releases her and Ellie sinks to the floor, hugging her wet knees with her arms.

  Naomi’s face is bright with triumph. The other girl deposits the canister that held the urine into a plastic shopping bag and stows it in her school bag.

  ‘Get up,’ Naomi commands, and with rising panic Ellie realises that her punishment is not yet complete. Naomi is not going to let her slink off home in shame.

  ‘Please,’ she whimpers. Naomi aims a kick at one of her legs and she winces in pain.

  ‘Get up,’ Naomi commands again. When Ellie still doesn’t move, the older girl grabs her by both arms, lifts her to her feet and shoves her towards Naomi.

  ‘Ew!’ Naomi shrieks and giggles. ‘Don’t get your pissy knickers on me!’ She grabs Ellie’s arm and steers her towards the history room. The older girls hold their hands up in farewell as Naomi shoves open the door, linking arms with Ellie and pulling her alongside her into class.

  ‘Sorry we’re late, sir,’ she says politely as all eyes in the class turn to them. ‘We were going to go to the toilet but Ellie didn’t want to be even later so she said she could hold it. Oh.’ Naomi’s eyes widen as she pretends to notice the stain on Ellie’s trousers for the first time. ‘I guess she couldn’t.’

  Ellie closes her eyes as the entire class erupts in peals of laughter and excited chatter.

  ‘She’s pissed herself!’ she hears one of them shriek, and a chorus of ‘Ew!’, ‘Gross!’ and ‘Oh my God!’ echoes around the classroom.

  ‘Oh goodness . . .’ When she opens her eyes, Mr Harris is at her side looking flustered. ‘Ellie, go and sort yourself out. That’s enough!’ he hollers at the hysterical class. Naomi has joined her peers and is holding her nose, laughing.

  Ellie doesn’t stop to be told twice, and turning her back on them all, she runs from the classroom, her heart beating a furious tattoo inside her chest.

  20

  Imogen

  The office is getting dark. As the only one there, it’s down to me to move often enough to alert the light sensors to my presence, so the sole light on is the one directly above my desk. I’ve spent hours poring over the case notes on the tracking system; some of the stories have sucked time from me like a sponge. So many damaged children – probably more that we don’t even know about. In my old job I was a child psychologist, dealing with privileged children; my office was a revolving door of posh pampered princesses and overprivileged mummy’s boys, followed faithfully by mothers who looked as though they had been ripped from the pages of a Boden catalogue, with their carefully coiffured hair, nautical stripes, gilets and brown leather calf-length boots. I knew what to expect every time I saw the name Portia or Sebastian on the referral form. Until the last time. We’d taken on a certain amount of pro bono work, and the last case was a referral much like the ones I’m looking at now. My one and only chance to really help a child who needed it, and it all went horrifically wrong. Not this time, though.

  I glance again at the email containing the list of cases Edward has assigned to me. One of them in particular stands out this time, just as it did the first. The name, the age, they both fit with the little girl who allegedly pushed her school friend into the road on our first day in Gaunt.

  Ellie Atkinson. Eleven years old, currently in foster care following the death of her family in a tragic house fire. I remember the look on her foster mother’s face. Frightened and unsure. The other mothers I’ve dealt with in the past have all been defensive of their children, ready to pounce at anyone who dared suggest that precious Tyler or Isabelle might be a precocious little shit. This woman was different, unwilling or unable to pin her colours to the mast.

  I open up the case file Emily started months back. The school has done well, calling Place2Be as soon as they knew Ellie would be joining them after the summer. Emily took the girl on three visits to Gaunt High School that seemed to go well, and she met with the family on a couple of occasions, noting that Ellie had settled in to the Jeffersons’ as well as could be expected, that Sarah and Mark Jefferson had noted some concerns about how withdrawn and quiet Ellie was and that there had been a couple of angry outbursts following arguments with the other children in their care. Emily put a note on the file to ask Ellie about her
relationship with a boy called Billy, although she never noted the outcome.

  So how has Ellie Atkinson gone from slightly quiet and withdrawn to being accused of attempted murder in the street? I already know this is the case I will be taking on first. It’s as good a case as any to come out of the gate with, right? Nothing to do with what that weird old woman in the chip shop said, or the haunted look on the girl’s face, obviously. Could this be the child I make a difference for? Is Ellie Atkinson my redemption?

  I click on the interested-parties tab and note down the number of the headmistress, Florence Maxwell. Wow. Twenty years ago, Florence Maxwell was a fresh-faced twenty-something PE teacher, always beaming, as though trying to get thirty sullen teenagers to enjoy rounders was the highlight of her day. Now she is running the school, and I wonder as I pick up the phone to call her if she is still smiling.

  21

  Ellie

  Ellie did not go back into school the day of the incident with Naomi. Instead she ran straight back to the Jeffersons’ house, waited until she could see that Sarah was preoccupied in the study – probably ordering more baby junk – and let herself in as silently as possible through the back door. She changed into a fresh pair of trousers, shoving the old ones in a Morrisons bag down the back of her bed. Then, giving herself a quick spray of deodorant, she went back downstairs and let herself in again, noisily this time. When Sarah came to see why she was home so early, Ellie burst into tears – that hadn’t been part of the plan; she just couldn’t help it. The image of her entire class pointing and laughing was burned into the inside of her eyelids – she saw it every time she closed her eyes.

  Mary had heard, of course – although she didn’t know what had really happened. As far as everyone at school was concerned, Mary included, Ellie Atkinson was a pants pisser.

  ‘Oh Ellie,’ she said when she arrived back home, gathering her into such a warm, motherly hug that Ellie began to cry again. ‘It’ll all be forgotten in a few days.’ But they both knew that wasn’t true. Things like this were like crack cocaine to bullies; even the nice kids found pant-wetting hilarious.

  Ellie insisted she could never go back there – that she was going to tell Sarah what had happened and she would have to find her a new school, or else she would ask to be moved to new foster carers.

  Mary gave her arm a little squeeze. ‘Oh El, do you really think social services have nothing better to do than move you around the country until you find a school where you’re Little Miss Popular? I’m not trying to be mean,’ she said quickly when Ellie’s eyes hardened. ‘But what if this happens again somewhere else? You’ll be in exactly the same position as you are now, only you won’t have me. No, what you need to do is go in there, head held high. If anyone says something, you just ignore them – do you hear me? No getting upset, or running away. Say something smart if you can think of it – it’s always harder to be smart when you’re on the spot – but either way you need to fight back somehow, even if that just means ignoring them and getting through the rest of the term. Kids hate it when they don’t get a response; it annoys the hell out of them and they get bored and give up. You have to show them you don’t care, Ellie. You have to fight back.’

  It is these words – you have to fight back – that follow her into school today. It’s project day in PHSE, and although Ellie doesn’t even know what PHSE stands for – and doesn’t care enough to find out – she’s made a real effort on her ‘Pets At Home’ project. An effort that Past Ellie would be positively proud of. When she carries her A2 cardboard sheet up to the front, she smiles as widely as she can manage, doing exactly what Mary has instructed and ignoring the giggles and smirks from her classmates. She’s found she can tune out quite effectively the whispered taunts – she has been tuning out real life for some time now.

  ‘I’ve done . . .’ Her voice, although loud and clear in her head, comes out of her mouth as a croak. A few of the other students giggle. Ellie clears her throat, not because there is anything clogging, it but because she’s seen adults do it when they are about to give an important speech. ‘I’ve done my project on spiders,’ she announces. ‘Spiders are not, as many believe, insects; they are arachnids. There are about thirty-eight thousand species of spider; however, scientists believe . . .’

  Her teacher, Ms Gilbert, smiles at her, but it’s a tight, thin smile, the kind adults think looks patient but actually looks a bit constipated. Ms Gilbert hates Ellie. Ellie doesn’t feel this in the way many children fresh from the mothering environment of junior school feel; she knows it to be true. And she hates the teacher in return. Hannah Gilbert is a cheat and a liar.

  ‘That’s very interesting, Ellie,’ Ms Gilbert says, as though her spider facts are the least interesting thing in the world. ‘But spiders aren’t really a pet, are they?’

  ‘Yes they are. Lots of people have spiders as pets. A girl at my old school had—’

  ‘But they aren’t household pets, are they? Not common household pets?’

  A boy at the back, a boy whose name Ellie can’t remember, speaks. ‘They are, miss. My brother’s got a spider as a pet. It’s wicked cool.’

  Ms Gilbert’s cheeks colour.

  ‘Well that might be so, Harry, but the spiders in this project,’ she points to Ellie’s picture board, ‘are the common household type, and you wouldn’t keep those as pets, would you? They would just run out of the cage.’

  There are a few giggles. Ellie’s face flushes red, her neck burning hot. ‘Well I’ve got other pictures . . .’

  ‘Very good, Ellie. Let’s move onto the next one. Oh thank goodness, Emma, parrots, a proper pet. I was beginning to think nobody in the class understood simple instructions.’

  Ellie sits down, her heart deflated like a withered balloon. She did her very best on this project. And still it isn’t good enough.

  She hears Mary speak as clearly as though she is sitting beside her. You have to fight back. She remembers that day in town – the day she forced Naomi Harper into the road just by willing her to go away – and she knows that her sister is right. She has to fight back.

  22

  Imogen

  I suck in a breath when I spot Pammy’s house – a gorgeous barn conversion so close to the far edge of Gaunt that it barely qualifies as being part of the town. Is this her version of escaping? Or am I the only one who sees Gaunt the way I do?

  When the door opens, Pammy stands behind it holding a tea towel and wearing leggings and a baggy T-shirt, still looking glamorous. Her shiny blonde hair looks freshly highlighted and I self-consciously finger my own neglected mousy brown mop, feeling a stab of shame at just how far I have let myself go.

  ‘Immy!’ Pammy practically throws herself through the front door and wraps her arms around me in a tight bear hug. ‘I wondered when you were finally going to get round to coming to see me. Look at you, you look amazing!’

  I step back, overwhelmed by her response. We only saw one another a few months ago, just after my mother passed away. Pammy had travelled to London to sit with me. As the only person who knew the complex relationship I’d had with Mum, her presence meant more than she’d ever know. Of course she thought Mum’s death was the reason I looked such a state – she had no idea about my breakdown. Compared to the Imogen she was with then, I suppose this me is a vast improvement.

  ‘No I don’t,’ I laugh as she steps back to allow me through the door. ‘You don’t have to pretend to me. That’s why I haven’t put a photograph on Facebook for years.’

  ‘Well I think you look great, all things considered. How are you?’

  ‘Great, thanks. Look at this place, Pam.’ I sidestep the question, knowing she’s expecting to talk about Mum, and look around. ‘It’s lovely. Bet you never thought you’d end up here.’

  ‘Ha! Never thought I’d end up married to Richard Lewis either.’ She grins. ‘Do you remember how much I used to hate him?’

  ‘No-dick Dick, wasn’t it?’ I can’t help grinning back. Things wi
th Pammy have always been so easy – what’s that they say about a friend? Someone who knows everything about you and still likes you. Although Pammy doesn’t know everything about me – not any more. One day I’ll tell her what happened in London; it’ll be good to have someone other than Dan to talk about it with, and I know I’ll be relived to get it off my chest. But that’s not what today is about. Today I have something else on my mind and I need to tell someone before I lose the plot altogether.

  ‘Come on, I’ll get you a glass of vino,’ Pammy says, leading me through to a huge, completely white lounge.

  Now. Tell her now.

  ‘How’s Dan?’

  Dan and Pammy have only met a couple of times, and I was relieved that they seemed to get along. I hope that now we can properly rekindle our friendship, a real friendship rather than the long-distance kind where you only seem to talk when one of you is in mortal peril. I don’t really know Richard the adult – I must remember not to call him No-dick to his face – but if he can put up with Pammy, he’s certain to be able to get along with Dan and me.

  ‘He’s good, like a kid on some kind of adventure. He’s such a city person that moving here is like every Enid Blyton book he swears he’s never read.’

  Pammy swings open the door of a huge silver fridge. It reminds me of our Smeg back in London, ice-maker in the door, and I feel a pang of longing for our stylish money pit. ‘I don’t think it’s hit him yet that we actually live here for good now. I keep catching him trying to set the central heating with his phone.’