The Foster Child

by Jenny Blackhurst

  Ellie wonders when it happened, when Imogen lost her baby. When was the chain of events set in motion? What is it that triggers these awful things? Maybe if she can pinpoint that, she will be able to control it, like Mary says.

  Was it her words? Was it when she actually said the words ‘You don’t deserve that thing that is growing inside you’? Or was it because of all the thoughts running through her mind at that very second, clashing against each other, clamouring for space in her brain. Angry, horrid thoughts that she should never have had. Maybe that’s when it was decided. Because certainly, by later on that evening, by the time she went to bed, she had calmed down quite considerably. Or maybe it was in her sleep, in her dreams like it was with Ms Gilbert. Ellie can’t remember dreaming the night of her argument with Imogen, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t. Dreams are spectral, elusive; once you wake up, there is almost no chance of remembering them if they don’t want to be remembered. So maybe that’s when it happened.

  ‘We could do an experiment,’ Mary suggests, breaking the silence and once again giving the impression that she has managed to read Ellie’s mind. Or maybe Ellie is just so transparent. ‘To see how you do it, I mean. To see how it works.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to . . . I think . . . I’m scared to,’ Ellie admits. Imagine if they prove that she has this power. What will that mean for her? She won’t be able to fool herself any more that the things that have been happening might be coincidence.

  ‘I know it must be scary for you, not knowing what you’re capable of, not being able to control the anger you have inside you, or what it does to people. That’s why I’m here. I’m here to help you. But I can’t help you control this thing unless we learn about it,’ Mary says gently, patting Ellie on the arm. ‘And anyway, we need proof.’

  Proof. Proof that Ellie stuck Billy’s lips together, proof that she made thousands of spiders appear in Ms Gilbert’s drawer just by hating her. Proof that she killed Ms Gilbert, and Imogen’s baby.

  ‘Why?’ she asks. ‘Why do we need proof?’

  Mary smiles, a smile Ellie has never seen her use before. It is the kind of smile Ellie imagine the demons to have in the books she has read, or the bad guys in the films they sometimes watch. The kind of smile that is a little bit twisted.

  ‘Of course we need proof, silly,’ Mary says, still smiling. ‘Without proof we will never get anyone to be afraid of you. Without proof, people will just keep treating you the way they have been all along. And you don’t want to be treated like that any more, do you, Ellie?’

  No, no, she doesn’t. ‘Okay,’ she says, giving one hard nod. ‘I’ll do it.’

  80

  Imogen

  ‘I’ll sleep in the spare room for now,’ Dan says, his voice quiet as he opens the car door for me. ‘Let you get some rest.’

  I don’t want rest, my mind is screaming, I want my husband back. But of course I don’t say that; he’s got every right to be mad at me. I just wish I knew the time limit on his anger – like if I knew it was going to be six days and three hours, it would be a lot easier to bear. Then there’s the part of me that wonders if he’s ever going to forgive me, or if this will be the wedge that drives us apart for good. I know what I did was wrong, but I had no idea it was going to end like this. I thought I had time to tell him when I was ready.

  He’s so cordial I could scream. I want him to scream. I want him to tell me I’m a fucking bitch and he hates me; I’d give anything for my husband of five years to lob something at my head, for Christ’s sake, anything but this cold indifference. I know that as soon as I am well he’s going to pack his bags and leave me. It’s only ever been a matter of time; there was only ever going to be so much a loving, caring, patient man like Dan could take from a monumental fuck-up like me. I feel a million times better after telling Pammy about Callum, after saying everything out loud – telling my side of the story, like I’ve ripped off a scab and let the blood flow. The papers hadn’t named me, the details of the case had been minimised by the practice, by the BPS, by the police even. I had already been asked to leave Morgan and Astley by that point, Callum’s history of self-harm had overshadowed the accusation and only the less reputable tabloids had even reported it. Still, it was there, in my mind, every time I thought about having children, every time I thought about taking on a new case at Place2Be. I’d been mostly honest with them when I’d gone for the job – I’d told them that I’d gone against my employer’s instructions in what I believed was the best interests of a patient. I’d never told them what had happened next and unless I have to I never will.

  Dan is upstairs now, and I can hear him opening the door to my old bedroom – the one place I have yet to go. I didn’t know what would be worse – if I went in there and it had been redecorated, like the rest of the house, or if I went in and she’d left it exactly the same. Now, though, it doesn’t seem to matter; it feels like all my feelings, about my life here with mum, even about Callum, have been trapped under a glass dome: I can see them, I can remember them but I can’t access them. I make us both a cup of tea – decaf doesn’t seem like such a chore now, and I choose it automatically – and take them up.

  ‘I brought you this.’ I hold out the tea as though it’s a white flag.

  ‘Thanks.’ Dan gestures around the room. ‘It’s been cleared out in here.’

  I take a tentative step through the door and look around. ‘No it hasn’t.’

  The room looks exactly the same as the day I left. The walls are a muted peach; bits of Blu Tack from where I took my posters down have hardened over the intervening years and look like miniature pebbles stuck to the paint. A rickety desk sits in the corner next to a canvas-covered wardrobe. I cross the room and run a finger through the thick layer of dust and cobwebs on the desk.

  ‘I’d say she never came in here once I left.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’ Dan looks around. His eyes meet mine and I can see him searching for signs of pain. Sorry, Dan, all dried up over here. ‘Did you live like this, Imogen?’

  ‘Well it’s not the Ritz, I can see that.’

  ‘It’s not funny. Is this why you never spoke to her? There was no falling-out, was there? You left because you had no home to begin with.’

  ‘I had a roof over my head.’ I don’t know why I’m defending her now, after all these years of hating her and her frozen heart. ‘Which is more than some kids get.’

  ‘Come on, Imogen, even I know this isn’t right, and my mum used to knit all my friends cock-blankets as gifts.’

  I think of Dan’s prim-and-proper mum, sitting in her knitting group producing her flaccid peach pen holders, oblivious to the fact that they are basically obscene, and I can’t help it, it’s an automatic reaction, I smile. Not the weak offering I’ve been using to reassure people the last few days that I’m not having a breakdown, but a real grin. Dan catches my eye and smiles back, and for a moment everything is all right. He looks around and I can see him thinking about his own room back at his parents’, kept like a shrine to the boy he was: shelves and shelves of paperbacks I’m certain his mother read to him every night before bed, trophies celebrating various sporting achievements and other memorabilia of a happy childhood.

  ‘Well, it is what it is.’

  His expression transforms into one of absolute pity. ‘Is this why . . .? I wish you’d talk to me about things, Im. If I knew, if I understood . . .’

  He places a hand on my arm, and for once I don’t shrug it off or move away. I just let his touch comfort me as I begin to cry.

  81

  Imogen

  I have been staring at these four walls so long that I swear I can feel them drawing closer, just an inch at a time, pushing quietly inwards. Dan has been the perfect nurse, bringing food and drink and pills, placing them on the bedside table, asking if there’s anything else I need. There has been the slightest change between us in the two days since I sobbed into his arms in my old bedroom; it’s less like he can’t forgive me for
what I did and more like he’s giving me time and space to come to terms with everything. I’m relieved that he’s thawing, obviously, but I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the unfairness of it all. What did I do to deserve this? All I ever did was try my best for Ellie. If anything, all I’m guilty of is trying too hard, getting too close to the wrong person. Again.

  I’ve tried to rest – doctor’s orders, after all – but every time I close my eyes and begin to drift downwards towards sleep, my mind is filled with images of Hannah Gilbert, her face blood-encrusted, filthy fingers covered in mud reaching towards me, whispering, ‘Didn’t I warn you?’ and children, scores of children in black hooded robes, all carrying dead babies, throwing them one by one into a pit. Ellie Atkinson stands at the front, holding my baby. She lifts it high over her head, looking straight at me with eyes that burn red like the fires of hell themselves, and casts my unmoving child into the pit below, calmly telling me, ‘You don’t deserve to be a mother.’ I scream, but I am frozen in place, a spectator unable to stop this murderous coven. Then the picture changes and I am back at the canal, my head submerged under the filthy cold water, only this time I can feel tiny hands in my hair holding me down until I am sure I will die.

  I wake gasping for breath, certain that I can taste the muddy water retreating down my throat. The murderous image hovers on the edge of my conscious. Will Ellie be content with killing my child, or is she coming for me next, grasping for me through my dreams? How will they explain it when they find me drowned in my own bed? Of course it will be too late; there will be no one left to connect it to Ellie. Perhaps Sarah Jefferson will know, but she will be too scared to try and tell anyone the truth, too scared that no one will listen. Too scared of the monster living under her roof. If only I’d listened to Hannah Gilbert, if I hadn’t been so closed-minded, so bloody convinced of my own absolute rightness. If I’d bothered to give her the time of day, maybe I would be lying here with my husband next to me, his palm resting gently on my stomach as we talk about names and colours for the nursery.

  Except you didn’t want the baby, did you? asks the voice in my head. Not until you knew it was gone.

  I wasn’t given that choice, I reply silently. She took it away from me. And I don’t know how she did it, but I’m going to find out.

  I pull myself up out of bed, wincing at the objection from my legs. I don’t care what the doctors or Dan say, I’m fed up of resting. What I need is to put right what I got so very wrong and make sure this never happens to anyone else.

  I dig my iPad out of the drawer and take it to the comfy armchair in the corner of our room. Opening Google, I type in the word ‘telekinesis’ and wait for the pages to load.

  Even typing it into a search engine feels ridiculous. Telekinesis. Yet it’s all I’ve been thinking ever since I woke up without my baby inside me. The night I miscarried is a black hole in my memory. I went from being a married mother-to-be running myself a bath to a soon-to-be divorcee whose baby will never breathe its first breath, and yet all I can remember of the moment things changed is Ellie’s voice loud and clear in my mind. You don’t deserve to be a mother, you don’t deserve that thing that is growing inside you. It would be better off dead. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Not another one. Not after Tom Harris and Naomi Harper. Not after Hannah Gilbert. If I’d listened to her, would she still be alive?

  My stomach cramps violently, and I close my eyes and tip my head back, trying to breathe through the pain. Tears form at the corners of my eyes and I ball up my fists, shove them in my eye sockets until pinpricks of light dance in my vision. When I open my eyes again, the web page has loaded.

  Psychokinesis (from the Greek , ‘mind’, and , ‘movement’), or telekinesis (from , ‘far off’, and , ‘movement’), is an alleged psychic ability allowing a person to influence a physical system without physical interaction.

  There it is. It’s followed by pages and pages of ‘evidence’ and anecdotes from people who believe they have witnessed this phenomenon first hand. I click on one after the other, my eyes scanning accounts of children with the ability to move objects, to control electricity and to influence things with their minds. Dan’s jokey words about Carrie White float back to me.

  It was easy to laugh it off back then, the idea that this innocent-looking eleven-year-old girl was exacting her revenge on people around her using her mind alone. But that was before; before I experienced first-hand the anger, the cruelty. All the things she said to me about wanting to punish the people who had treated her badly. I think back to the night Hannah Gilbert was killed, the night I received the phone call from Ellie sounding scared and talking about screaming. Had she heard Hannah Gilbert screaming? Had she known what had happened to her because she was there, perhaps not in body, but in mind?

  I press the home button on my iPad and throw it onto the bed in disgust. This is ridiculous, I think. I’m acting like a fucking idiot – one of those crazy tinfoil-hat types you see on late-night television – rather than an intelligent thirty-six-year-old woman.

  But when I open the iPad an hour later, the webpage is still there, and I find myself scrolling through story after story. As I read one particular account from 1978, my heart pounds a rhythm in my chest.

  Abigail Sampson, ten years and four months old, had suffered a deep trauma, a car crash that killed both her parents, leaving her an orphan. She had been taken in by her maternal grandmother, who had alerted social services saying that she couldn’t keep the child because she was strange and dangerous. Nothing was thought of the woman’s words; she was regarded as old and senile, incapable of looking after a ten-year-old child. Abigail was taken to live with foster parents, who for several weeks reported that she was a happy, well-adjusted child. Then, after they had taken on a second foster child, a five-year-old girl, they began to note that Abigail’s demeanour and behaviour had changed. She became quiet and withdrawn, prone to angry outbursts. On these occasions, certain electrical abnormalities were noted within the household. Lights would flicker, TVs would turn on and then off and then on again. One particular time, after a nasty argument with her foster mother, the household microwave burst into flames.

  I rest my hand on my chest, remembering the time I turned up at the Jeffersons’ house to find Sarah cleaning up after an incident with the electric blender. I can still smell the burning wires. Had she argued with Ellie that day? Had she angered the child in some way? And what would I have said there and then if Sarah had told me that Ellie had caused the blender to explode through the power of her mind? I know what I’d have said: I’d have laughed, perhaps made a recommendation that Sarah Jefferson wasn’t mentally fit to be a foster carer. And am I mentally fit now? Would anyone believe me if I told them what I’ve been thinking, or would they just see me as a damaged woman struggling to come to terms with a tragedy?

  The members of the household began to notice other strange phenomena occurring when Abigail was around. They centred on her foster sister in particular, the five-year-old girl who had triggered this behaviour. One time she took a tumble down the stairs while Abigail was in the kitchen with her foster mother. Clutched in her hands was one of Abigail’s toys that she had been sneaking out of her room. When Abigail’s foster mother screamed on finding the little girl at the bottom of the stairs, Abigail simply said, ‘She really shouldn’t have been stealing my things.’

  Afraid that no one would believe them, Abigail’s foster family gave up fostering, sending both girls back into the care of social services. It wasn’t until years later that they spoke about their time with Abigail, after other carers had come forward with similar accounts of her behaviour. ‘We kept trying to come up with rational explanations for what was happening,’ said her foster mother, ‘but there were just too many instances, too many coincidences. No one wanted to say the words, no one wanted to say “evil”, or “witch”, but that’s what we were all thinking.’ It wasn’t until one of Abigail’s foster homes nearly burnt to the ground, with her foster
parents still in it, that the truth about her alleged psychic abilities came to light.

  Fire. I picture flames engulfing the Atkinson household. Did Ellie start the fire that killed her parents?

  So many questions to answer. I skim-read a few more articles, the same sorts of things cropping up over and over. Trouble with electrics, mysterious unexplained happenings, people worried they won’t be believed. And then, on one of the pages, I find the telephone number of a doctor in Brighton who claims to have seen psychic phenomena at first hand, saying that he has real evidence and asking anyone else with proof to get in touch.

  The article is three years old; it’s unlikely that the number even works. So when I find myself closing the bedroom door tightly so Dan can’t hear and dialling the number on the website, I’m surprised when it is answered on the fourth ring.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Dr Benson?’ I close my eyes, not quite believing I’m actually making this call.

  ‘Who’s calling, please?’ The voice is clipped and unwelcoming.

  ‘My name is Imogen Reid. I’m calling because I need your help . . .’

  82

  Imogen

  I arrive at Greenacres early the next morning. The air is cold and crisp, and when I get out of my car, I can see my breath in front of me. I researched the unit on the Internet after my conversation with Dr George Benson, and so the huge sprawling stately home with its emerald-green gardens comes as no surprise to me. It looks more like a hotel than a psychiatric hospital; it’s no more than six years old, pale-bricked and vast, with pillars announcing the front door. The trees surrounding the house are bare, but I know from the pictures I have seen online that they are usually strikingly different shades of green.

  There are no other cars on the drive; staff parking is signalled to be on the left-hand side, visitor parking to the right. I look around – no sign of Dr Benson yet – so I pull out my phone and flick to the Facebook page I found the day before.