Mummy's Little Helper

by Casey Watson

  ‘I’ll square things with John,’ Bridget assured me.

  I went back to making the coffees, thinking I’d better go up and change out of my trackies, but when I turned around to tell Abby to get her backpack it was to see Bridget looking completely transfixed.

  Abby had obviously noticed a mark on one of my cupboards and was now furiously scrubbing it. She had the cleaning spray in one hand, cloth in the other, and was going at it at something of a lick, a look of intense anguish on her face.

  ‘That looks fine,’ I told Abby. ‘Love, leave it now and go and get your backpack from your bedroom.’

  Abby stopped abruptly, as if coming out of a trance, put the cleaning things away neatly and trotted off upstairs as instructed, though not without patting the door frame several times before she went.

  ‘Is that the sort of thing you were telling me about?’ Bridget asked.

  I nodded. This was our normal. It clearly wasn’t Bridget’s. ‘One manifestation of it, anyway,’ I explained. ‘There are lots of others. They’re all logged. They tend to change fairly frequently. You get one under control and another pops up. It’s a bit of a finger in the dyke situation.’

  Bridget sipped her coffee. ‘Poor little thing,’ she said thoughtfully.

  Good, I thought. Perhaps now we’d finally see some prioritising.

  Still keen to be left out of the equation today, I had hoped that Bridget would insist that I stay in the car. But, once again, Abby wasn’t having any of it. She refused to go inside unless I came too, and it became clearer than ever that she and Bridget hadn’t yet developed a bond of any kind. So although I was dreading it, I found myself trudging along the corridor of the HDU, looking for the room in which Sarah was recovering.

  I was shocked when I saw her. I think we all were. She looked really ill, and seemed to be covered in big, glassy-looking blisters. I’d never seen anything quite like it. And she seemed as emotionally distressed as she was physically compromised – and clearly put out that she had to face me in such circumstances. She couldn’t bring herself to look me in the eye, and I was relieved when Bridget suggested that we nip out for a coffee. ‘We’ll just be outside,’ she told Abby. ‘Give you some time to spend alone with your mum, okay?’

  I led the way to the refreshments area – now some way distant from where Sarah was recovering – and accepted the cup of reliably grey, vending coffee that Bridget bought for me.

  ‘Well, that was awkward,’ I said, sighing. I was simply saddened by the whole sorry mess.

  ‘I know,’ Bridget agreed. ‘And you know, I’m really sorry for dragging you here, too, this morning. I’m sure it’s the last thing you need right now.’

  I believed her. And she was right. And there was little else to say. The spectre of next week’s meeting still loomed large in my mind, but greater still was the spectre of poor Abby’s future. The day must surely come soon when it was properly spelled out to her that there would be no more going home, and no being back with Mummy. That she’d be moving permanently to a new home and to a vastly different life. What hope for her OCD then?

  I turned and gave Bridget a wry smile. ‘I was so hoping that something would come up, I really was. That Sarah would suddenly admit to a huge, loving family or something, and that Abby could go to one of them.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like there’s going to be a fairy-tale ending here, Casey. The poor kid.’

  ‘So the sister thing came to nothing?’

  She shook her head. ‘We can’t even go there. I have no idea about the whys and wherefores, but that’s her affair anyway …’

  She trailed off, Wednesday’s supervision meeting clearly looming for her too. Perhaps I’d misjudged her. This was no fun for any of us.

  We sat there in silence for what seemed like an age, and then Bridget stood up and smoothed her skirt down. ‘I’ll go in and get Abby now. Back soon.’

  I smiled gratefully and threw away the rest of my disgusting excuse for a drink while I waited for them to come back. I could see sunshine spilling onto the floor, creating big bright shadow rectangles. It was shaping up to be the first properly bright weekend we’d had all spring so far. But for all that I just wanted it to be Tuesday.

  Abby’s spirits were no better. She burst into tears as soon as she saw me, and threw herself into my arms, sobbing. ‘Did you see her, Casey?’ she said, as I stroked her hair and tried to soothe her. ‘It’s this hospital! It is! They don’t know what she needs. She needs to come home so I can look after her, or she’ll never get better.’

  Bridget and I exchanged our sighs over her head.

  I tried hard to keep a positive head on my shoulders as we returned to Bridget’s car and, once there, opted to sit in the back so I could keep cuddling Abby, who, after the shock of Sarah’s physical condition, seemed to be fixated now on the hospital and how much she needed to get her mother out of there. ‘I can fix her,’ she kept saying to me. ‘If they’ll just let her home. I can make her better. I know I can. Honestly, Casey. We just need to go back home and she’ll be fine again.’

  There were no words I could say to make any of this any better, so I opted not to. I just held her close to me, and let her cry it all out, and prayed that somehow, something good would happen for this kid.

  But if I thought the day couldn’t get any worse, I was mistaken. When we got back home I settled Abby down on the couch with her puppy game, and by the time I’d done that, and Bridget had said a quick farewell from the doorway, I returned to where Mike was, in the kitchen.

  ‘She’s left this,’ he said quietly, handing me a letter. There was nothing written on the envelope and the flap was unsealed. I pulled it out. Headed notepaper. All very official looking. The words jumped out of me, one by one, each more damning than the last. Official meeting. Acting against social services policy. Breach of confidentiality. Inappropriate conduct. Then they began to swim before me, blurring together as my eyes misted. I threw the damning letter across the table. Then, like Abby, I just sat down and howled.

  Chapter 20

  ‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’ Abby looked from one of us to the other. ‘Casey,’ she asked anxiously, ‘are you okay?’

  I leapt from the chair where I’d been sitting and lunged for the kitchen-roll holder. Mike had been trying to shush me, but I’d obviously been too upset. ‘Casey’s fine,’ he reassured Abby now, scooping her up into his arms to distract her. ‘Nothing for you to worry about, love. She’s just got this … um … headache, that’s all. She gets them sometimes. Don’t worry. It’s just tiredness, I expect.’

  He kissed her forehead and smoothed her hair, while I pulled myself together. ‘Is it a migraine?’ she wanted to know. She was still eyeing me suspiciously. ‘Mummy sometimes gets migraines. And they make her cry, as well.’

  I nodded. ‘Perhaps. I think I just need to take some aspirin.’ I blew my nose and wiped my eyes. ‘And once it does its magic, I’m sure I’ll be fine.’

  This seemed to strike a chord with Abby. She wriggled herself out of Mike’s grasp, then marched across to me and took my hand. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You need to come into the living room and lie down on the couch, so I can give you one of my magic Abby head massages. Then you’ll feel all right again. Honestly. Mummy says I have magic fingers. And she’s right. I’ll make you better. Come on.’ She jiggled her hand in mine.

  Despite myself, I couldn’t help but smile. I allowed myself to be led into the living room, and obediently lay down on the couch, as instructed, while she covered me up with a throw. And she did indeed seem to have magic fingers. It’s just a letter, I told myself. It’s not telling you anything you didn’t know. It’s just the official language. That’s all. Just the official language they use.

  I also reminded myself that, really, I had done very little wrong. That there was a reason why Sarah had it in for me. Well, if not ‘had it in for me’ (it felt wrong to think in those terms, especially with her lying there so poorly), at least to head
me off and try to get me off her case. And though I’d perhaps never know what it was, it didn’t matter. I had an answer for their allegations and I would defend myself robustly. And by the time Abby had finished deploying her indeed impressive brand of magic, she’d turned out to be right. I did feel much better.

  But for all the positivity Abby’s magic fingers managed to transmit to my head, the state was temporary. Wednesday loomed. How could it not? I couldn’t spend too much time feeling sorry for myself, though, not with Abby in the house. There was no getting away from it: her compulsions were getting worse, and I cursed myself that everyone had probably been diverted from the thing that was of most concern here – not whether Casey Watson had or hadn’t been gossiping with the nursing staff or using slave labour to maximise profits, but how this child’s mental health seemed to be deteriorating.

  There seemed little point running around looking for a mainstream foster home for Abby while she was clearly reacting so badly to the circumstances she was already in. It would be something I’d certainly bring up at the meeting, which was to be on Wednesday. To that end, I stepped up on logging everything very carefully. And I needed to – in what was probably a reaction to the events of the weekend, Abby was giving me plenty to log.

  The tapping, particularly, was getting markedly worse. ‘Casey, we have to step in here,’ Mike said, after work on the Monday, having just witnessed some while getting changed. ‘Confront all this. Isn’t that what Dr Shackleton said? She’s even doing it outside now. I’ve been up in the bedroom watching her from out of the window. She’s been round every tree, every bush – at one point I thought she was going to do every fence panel. And I don’t think she even knows she’s doing it –’

  ‘I’m sure she does. I mean, I know it sort of looks like she doesn’t, but if you do mention it she seems well aware she has. And you’re right …’ I sighed. ‘This could be just the tip of the iceberg, too. She might have a whole load more stress around the corner, mightn’t she? Because by Wednesday they might have even found her new temporary carers …’

  ‘Don’t be daft, love. They wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘They might! You never know, they might have even decided I’m no longer fit to foster anyway.’

  ‘Casey, that’s just daft, love. Don’t make this bigger than it is.’

  ‘That’s so easy for you to say …’ I countered bitterly. Then immediately regretted it. And ticked myself off. One stressed-out person was enough for any household. I needed to concentrate my thoughts on Abby.

  So I decided I would, and even though I’d argued the point with Mike, I decided I would change my tack, if only slightly. I wouldn’t stress her further by confronting her; I’d just do that interrupting thing Dr Shackleton had suggested, stepping up those occasions where I stopped her carrying out her rituals.

  At Monday teatime, after school, she was particularly stressy – seeming unable to settle in the living room. I watched her tap first the door frame, then the coffee table, then the side table, then the windowsill, while the television played to itself. I pretended to be oblivious, sitting flicking through a magazine while she did this, but as soon as I saw her heading for the door – I knew she’d next want to pop out and ‘use the toilet’ – I jumped up and opened the door, positioning myself between it and the frame.

  ‘You first, love,’ I said, gesturing that she should walk past me into the hallway. ‘I’m only going up to get my slippers. After you.’

  Abby looked as if she might cry, and then stepped back into the living room. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, wringing her hands together distractedly. ‘I’ve just realised I don’t need to go yet.’

  We both knew it wasn’t her bladder but her need for hand washing that needed seeing to, but I stood my ground. She kept glancing past me to the frame. I knew that if I went upstairs she’d carry out the process. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

  She nodded, and took a second step back. Now I knelt down, to be closer to her level. ‘Sweetie,’ I said softly. ‘Is it the wood? Do you need to touch it first?’

  She looked frustrated now, struggling to find an acceptable answer. I could almost see her mind torn about being honest or denying what was happening. ‘No,’ she said, eventually, clearly trying for the former. ‘Not exactly. It’s just the number seven. It’s just lucky for me, that’s all.’

  A lucky number, then. ‘So you have to tap everything seven times. Is that it?’

  I could see her chin wobbling. She nodded miserably, still glancing longingly at the door frame. ‘If I don’t touch it seven times,’ she blurted out, ‘something bad will happen to Mummy! So I have to. And if I don’t, then she’ll stop getting better. That’s why she was so ill. Because of the party – because I forgot!’

  I held my arms out to her, and she ran into them, crying hard against my shoulder. I tried to get my head around the tapping schedule she had imposed upon herself. Was she her own worst enemy, in that regard? She’d clearly been battling with two sets of anxieties at the party – worrying about the little ones, worrying about needing to do her tapping … The poor mite. She’d probably been putting two and two together to make disaster ever since.

  I rocked her for some time in the doorway, cursing not being able to just march her down to Dr Shackleton. Perhaps I’d do that anyway and, well, sod them all. But right now I had to think carefully about what I should say next. I eventually loosened my grasp and pulled my head back so I could face her. ‘Abby, sweetheart,’ I started. ‘These are just bad thoughts – no more than that. Bad things happen – we all know that – but they’re not to do with you. It’s not the things that you do, or don’t do, that make bad things happen. When Mummy got sick over the weekend – well, that was just because of the medicine she was given. Her body didn’t like it, so –’

  ‘That’s not true. It’s because I didn’t do enough sevens! And it’s so hard, Casey, specially when I’m at school. I can do them on my desk, but they don’t let us go outside enough to do it, so I can’t do it on the trees, and …’

  She broke up again, crying. ‘Abby,’ I said, ‘I want you to listen to me. I have an idea, okay? When you need to do your sevens, you need to stop and think, “Right – I’m going to talk to Casey.” Try to think that, and then I can tell you again – these are just thoughts in your head. If you don’t tap, nothing bad will happen to Mummy –’

  She pulled her own head back now, and looked at me seriously. ‘Casey, it’s not just Mummy. It’s everywhere and everyone. There’s bad stuff on the news all the time. And guess what time the news comes on. Go on – just guess!’

  I sighed, knowing what was coming. ‘Seven o’clock,’ I conceded. ‘But, love, that’s just the news we watch, in our house. On other channels it’s on at other times, and, besides, that’s what the news is there for – to tell us what’s going on, which of course includes some bad stuff, but also other stuff …’

  ‘But it’s mostly bad. And it’s on at seven here, so that’s a sign. You see? So if I don’t do my sevens anything could happen. To Mummy, or Riley’s babies, or you or Mike … I’m just bad luck, I know I am!’

  She was crying again, freely. There was so much muddled thinking, yet I couldn’t begin to rationalise. This was beyond being rationalised, and it scared me. I resolved that I would give them till Wednesday – till the meeting. And if there’d been no progress getting her to a psychologist, I would definitely get her down to Dr Shackleton.

  ‘You are not bad luck, sweetie,’ I said firmly. ‘You’ve been the opposite. You’ve been like a lucky charm for us. It’s been ages since we’ve had such a beautiful little girl living with us, and you’ve made all of us – all of us – very happy. And speaking of all of us –’ I stood up now, hugged her tightly, then released her – ‘Kieron and Lauren are coming for tea tonight so we’ve tea to get prepared. You going to help me?’

  Abby sniffed. I could see Kieron’s name had cheered her. ‘Okay,’ she said nodding as she wiped her face with her
sleeve. ‘And do you think he’d like it if I made him my special cauliflower cheese? I saw you had a cauliflower and I thought it then, too. Does he like cauliflower cheese? We could have chicken and chips too. He likes chicken and chips, doesn’t he? But cauliflower cheese as well?’

  Drama receded, then. Moment of anguish passed. ‘Yes,’ I said, grinning. ‘What an interesting combination!’

  Abby hadn’t been wrong about the cauliflower cheese. It was delicious, and it went down a storm. And I was pleased to see that by the time tea was over she seemed much happier. There was something about being with Kieron which really worked for her, and I reflected that some psychological assessment was so important, as there were clearly triggers, and also ways of lessening her compulsions, if only someone would sit down and work them out.

  And it was going to happen sooner rather than later, it turned out. With my resolution so firm about getting back in touch with Dr Shackleton after Wednesday, when the phone rang and the caller identified herself as being ‘the children’s mental health specialist’ my brain had me thinking that perhaps I’d already rung him by the power of telepathy alone. But no, it seemed she was getting in touch after speaking to Bridget. So some wheels had finally turned, after all.

  Her name was Elise, and she wanted to know all about Abby, so, given the timing of her call – around seven in the evening – it was just as well Kieron and Lauren were there to entertain her. And now I had her on the phone I was determined to cover everything, so I went through both everything I’d observed and what I knew about her which, once disgorged, seemed, in fact, to be quite a lot.

  I also told her how I’d been managing the situation up to now, while freely admitting that ‘manage’ was entirely the wrong word. I knew so little about OCD that, really, I was just scrabbling around.