The Girl With Two Lives

by Angela Hart

  She folded her arms tightly in front of her chest. ‘But can I trust you, Angela?’

  ‘You can trust me. Of course, if you tell me anything I think Social Services have to know, I would have to pass that on to your social worker, Susan. You like Susan though, don’t you? We’re all here to help you. That’s our job. Don’t let that put you off. When we share information it’s all for your benefit, because we all want the very best for you, and you can trust us all.’

  Danielle nodded. ‘I like Susan. She’s all right. OK. Thanks, Angela.’

  That was the end of the conversation. Even though, as ever, it was difficult to follow Danielle’s thought pattern and logic, I felt it had been a healthy chat and hoped it might pave the way for more disclosures.

  That night Danielle said something intriguing, just before she went to bed.

  ‘You didn’t ask me why I’d like to live in a castle, Angela.’

  ‘I didn’t, did I? Why would you like to live in a castle, Danielle?’

  ‘Because if a taxi came I could pull up the drawbridge!’

  ‘A taxi?’

  I searched Danielle’s face for an explanation but she buttoned her lips, threw her head back on the pillow and shut her eyes.

  ‘Night night, Angela.’

  ‘Night night, sweetheart.’

  7

  ‘Women are angels and men are horrible’

  Danielle was in a great mood when she went to the music festival, proudly clutching her well-earned pocket money in her purse. I’d taken her for a haircut that morning, which I’d had permission from Social Services to do, and she was looking the best I’d seen her. Her dark eyes were clear and shining and she was wearing a new belted dress I’d bought her in town. It made her look a much better shape than she normally did in the long, billowy skirts she often chose, and she put on a neat pair of flat shoes instead of her old trainers for a change. Before she went out I complimented Danielle on her appearance and laid the ground rules out clearly, setting a time for her to come home and agreeing that she would walk back with Shelby, whose big brother would collect her by car from our house afterwards.

  Everything went to plan and after the festival the two girls arrived home on time, looking relaxed and happy.

  ‘We’ve had a great time,’ Danielle giggled.

  The way she laughed aroused my suspicions, especially when she and Shelby gave each other a sideways glance and shared a secret smile.

  ‘What did you get up to?’ I asked. They looked a bit nonplussed and giggled rather sneakily, so I tried a more subtle approach. ‘What was the best bit, girls?’

  ‘Er, the music, of course!’ Danielle sniggered.

  The doorbell rang and it was Shelby’s brother. He only looked to be seventeen or eighteen and seemed very shy.

  ‘Thanks for picking Shelby up,’ I said.

  ‘No problem,’ he said, flicking his eyes nervously between his sister and the floor while fidgeting and rattling his car keys in his hands.

  Shelby bounded out, hurriedly shouting goodbye, and moments later she and her brother were gone in a cloud of rather toxic-looking exhaust fumes from his clapped-out Fiat Panda.

  Danielle and I went into the kitchen and I started making a cup of tea. She came right up close to me – too close, as she often did – and asked if she could have a snack.

  ‘Yes, Danielle. Did you have anything to eat at the festival?’

  ‘Yes, chips.’

  ‘Did you get your poster?’

  ‘No. It was £1 on the door. Had chips and lemonade. Bought candyfloss. Then I had no money left. Not a penny!’

  I playfully rolled my eyes. I was not going to say anything about all the junk she’d consumed, accepting that’s what kids do on occasions like this. Rather, it was Danielle’s long-term habits that needed to change, and every day I was making an effort to steer her towards making healthy food choices, at least at home. I didn’t keep fizzy drinks in the house and never have, because I’ve seen them turn some children hyperactive in a flash, or cause them to have sugar rushes and crashes. I limited the number of biscuits and sweet treats I offered to Danielle too, and whenever we had cakes and puddings I tried to stick to home-made recipes that didn’t contain large amounts of fats and sugars or hidden additives.

  ‘How about a yoghurt or a bowl of cereal? Maybe a banana?’

  Danielle was standing so close to me now that I could smell her breath, and I smelt cigarette smoke, not only on her breath but clinging to her clothes.

  ‘Have you been smoking?’ I asked, keeping my tone even.

  When a child comes to us and is already smoking Jonathan and I can’t stop them, but we always try to guide them in the right direction and encourage them to give up.

  ‘Yes, so what?’ She curled her lip and looked me square in the eye.

  ‘Danielle, you’re too young to smoke and it’s very bad for your health. How did you get the cigarettes?’

  ‘Friend of Shelby. She lives by the bus station. We saw her in town. I only smoked one though.’

  ‘Is this the first time you’ve smoked?’

  ‘No. I’ve already got fags and a lighter in my room, if you must know.’

  Now her hands were planted on her hips and she was jutting her chin out defiantly in my direction. I found myself feeling uneasy. It was impossible to predict what mood Danielle would be in, and sometimes I barely recognised her as the same girl from one day to the next, or even from one hour or minute to the next.

  ‘Danielle. I would prefer you not to smoke and I won’t allow it in or around the house. Your lighter needs to be down here in the kitchen. That’s a very strict rule in our home. Can you fetch it for me, please?’

  She tut-tutted but, to my surprise, she went straight upstairs and fetched a nearly empty pack of twenty Benson & Hedges and a cheap disposable lighter. Jonathan walked in the kitchen just as Danielle put her stash on the table.

  ‘Oooh,’ he said, coolly raising an eyebrow. ‘Bad habit. Me and Angela used to smoke, many moons ago.’ In a woeful voice, he continued, ‘Giving up was the best thing we ever did. Very hard though, wasn’t it, Angela? Terrible!’

  I immediately tuned in to what Jonathan was trying to do. He wasn’t going to reprimand Danielle. He was going to try to talk to her on a more subtle level, giving the impression he was talking to her adult to adult. I figured it was probably the best way forward. I sensed, as Jonathan did, that telling Danielle off about smoking was unlikely to work. Smoking at that age is typically all about wanting to be grown up, so Jonathan’s approach was quite clever. The last thing either of us wanted was to give Danielle any excuse or reason to smoke again, and if she thought it would really get to Jonathan and me then she might do it just to cause trouble or rebel or because she liked to do the opposite of what we wanted her to do.

  ‘Get lost! You two used to smoke? I don’t believe it!’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. Now it was my turn to adopt a sorrowful tone. ‘You see, when we were teenagers it was the sixties and seventies and everybody smoked. Nobody knew how bad it was for you. We all thought it was cool. Can you imagine! And by the time we found out it could give you lots of nasty diseases that could damage your health or even kill you, we were hooked.’

  Jonathan nodded sagely. ‘That’s right. Hooked, we were. Both of us. Such a struggle to stop. Hardest thing ever. Nightmare. If only we’d known at the time how bad it was. Your generation is very lucky, Danielle. You have all the information we never had. So the smart people don’t smoke. The clever people never even start, let alone get addicted, like we did.’

  She looked at the packet of cigarettes on the table. ‘I didn’t smoke all of them,’ she said. ‘They’re not even mine.’

  ‘Goodness me!’ Jonathan exclaimed. ‘I didn’t think you had. I can’t imagine you’d be so silly. Gosh, no. If they’re not yours, who do they belong to?’

  ‘Shelby’s friend. The one who, er, lives by the bus station.’

  ‘Right, do
you think we should return them to her? I could run you down there, if you like.’

  Danielle bit her lip.

  ‘We stole them,’ she said, her cheeks flushing red. ‘Sorry. We stole them last week from the same girl we took the fags off today.’

  She started to sob.

  ‘I’m not worth anything! I’m cheaper than a packet of fags!’

  Her sobs turned to a dramatic wail. I wasn’t sure if she was putting this on, as it was so over the top, but either way I wanted to make it stop and help Danielle deal with this.

  ‘Can I give you a hug?’ I asked.

  Danielle threw her arms around me and I felt her hot tears soak into my blouse. ‘Take your time, Danielle. Tell us what happened and we’ll try to help you put it right.’

  Danielle stopped crying as quickly as she’d started and then took on a deadpan expression. It was quite remarkable to see the transformation: I reckon a trained actress would have been hard pushed to have pulled it off so well, although I still wasn’t sure if the emotions she displayed were genuine or not.

  She confessed that the ‘friend’ of Shelby was in fact a young woman with special needs. From the description of the girl and where she lived, I realised I knew who this person was. She was called Pippa and she had cerebral palsy, which impaired her mobility and speech. Pippa had been into our shop on many occasions over the years and it was well known she was a target of bullies in the neighbourhood. I was very shocked to discover that Danielle and her friends were now three of her bullies.

  Slowly and reluctantly, she explained that the girls had talked about clubbing together to buy some cigarettes on the way to the music festival. Apparently, there were always some teenage boys hanging around near the convenience store, and in return for a fag or two they would go into the shop and buy cigarettes for anyone underage who was prepared to cut them a deal. However, at the last minute the girls decided they wanted to keep all of their money for the festival, and so they came up with a plan to call on Pippa and steal cigarettes from her instead of buying them. The three friends knocked on her door, invited themselves into Pippa’s house and said they weren’t going away until she gave them all the cigarettes she had in her house. This, Danielle admitted, was also how they had got the packet of Benson & Hedges that was now sitting on our table. Pippa had given them three cigarettes this evening, and Danielle, Mina and Shelby had had one each, smoking them at the music festival.

  ‘Thank you for being truthful,’ I said, catching Jonathan’s eye. ‘Our number-one concern is for your health and safety, and you also have to understand it’s very wrong to steal, Danielle. It’s our job, as your carers, to look after you and keep you out of danger, whatever danger that might be – whether it’s smoking or going into a stranger’s house like this. That is not OK, under any circumstances. Do you understand?’

  Danielle sniffed and nodded her head.

  ‘Now, have a snack and get yourself up to bed. We’ll talk about this again tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Danielle whispered.

  She wolfed down a yoghurt and then stood up and turned to walk upstairs. As she reached the kitchen doorway my heart sank, because I noticed a large wet patch on the back of her beige-coloured cotton dress. Then she said something that made me catch my breath.

  ‘The thing is, women are angels and men are horrible, aren’t they, Angela? Isn’t that how it is? I wasn’t in danger. Don’t worry about that. It’s OK to go in a stranger’s house if it’s a woman.’

  She darted up the stairs, leaving Jonathan and me looking at each other in dismay and calling after her that we would definitely have a talk tomorrow.

  ‘What did that mean?’ Jonathan puzzled.

  ‘And how could she have wet herself like that and carry on as if nothing had happened?’ I said. ‘Oh my God, she’s such a complicated girl. I think we’d need a PhD in psychology to work her out!’

  ‘I know. Sit down,’ Jonathan said, scratching his head. ‘I’ll make us a fresh cuppa.’

  He pulled out the chair Danielle had just vacated and gestured towards it, as he wanted me to take the weight off my feet.

  ‘Oh no! What now!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look.’

  The upholstered chair was completely soaked through, and this was clearly not the result of Danielle just sitting on the chair in a wet dress. She must have sat down and wet herself while we were there, talking to her as she ate her yoghurt.

  Thankfully, we had our appointment with the doctor in two days’ time, to discuss a strategy to help Danielle with her incontinence.

  ‘It can’t come soon enough,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘Quite. I’ve never known anyone of her age to have a problem like this. It’s such a shame.’

  Hatty was popping round the next day to meet Jonathan and me, and to take Danielle out to a local farm they had visited together on many occasions over the years. I was very much looking forward to meeting Hatty. I’d found out that as well as being a former headmistress and working as a CAMHS volunteer, Hatty was a local magistrate. I thought what an amazing woman she must be, not only to have kept in touch with Danielle for so many years, but to make time for these day trips.

  In the morning, Danielle acted as if nothing had happened the night before, with the smoking and the wetting of the chair. It was like she was in denial, because it must have been obvious we’d discover the soaked-through chair, and that I’d see her wet dress and underwear when I next went to do the washing. However, Danielle seemed in a relaxed and cheerful mood, acting as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She told me she was looking forward to seeing Hatty, and I could see she was feeling excited about her day ahead.

  I didn’t want to upset Danielle’s mood, but I had to say something about what had happened with Pippa, at least: I’d told her we’d talk about it this morning and I needed to be true to my word. I kept the discussion to a minimum, reiterating that Jonathan and I wanted to keep Danielle away from any danger and trouble – whether that be damaging her health with cigarettes, getting into trouble with the law for obtaining cigarettes the way she had done or entering a stranger’s house.

  ‘I want you to be safe and happy,’ I said, ‘but what you did yesterday is dangerous in lots of ways. Aside from it being against the law to enter a person’s home and force them to hand over something of theirs, it’s also morally wrong.’

  Danielle interrupted me at this point and looked a bit blank.

  ‘What’s morally, exactly?’

  ‘If you behave morally, you behave decently. You are doing the honourable thing, behaving properly. If something is morally wrong, it is dishonest. It goes against decent, honest, reliable and truthful behaviour.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I felt I had made my point and I didn’t want to go overboard and set Danielle against me. It was becoming clear that a large part of the problem here was that Danielle was still learning the difference between right and wrong, and what was acceptable behaviour and what wasn’t. As with the bed-wetting and her personal hygiene problem, I had to try to educate and help her. As we’d already worked out, giving Danielle incentives to improve her behaviour was clearly going to work better than imposing any kind of penalty or sanction, and I had a strong gut instinct that Jonathan and I had to persist with this strategy, however much Danielle was testing our patience.

  ‘You can carry on going out into town with your friends as long as you don’t go to that young lady’s house ever again. Is that agreed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jonathan and I have lived in this town for many years and the customers who come in the shop are very good at letting us know what’s happening. Please don’t try to get away with anything behind our backs. We will find out, Danielle. Please follow the rules. They are for your benefit.’

  Finally, I explained that I would have to speak to Danielle’s social worker about this, to pass on what had happened and to ask Susan’s advice about how to deal with it
, particularly in terms of making amends with Pippa and recompensing her for what had been taken from her.

  ‘There will be consequences,’ I said. ‘You do understand that, Danielle, don’t you?’

  She seemed accepting enough of this and didn’t give me any backchat.

  ‘You’re a bit like Hatty,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I used to try to get her to tell me off but she’s like you. She doesn’t tell me off.’

  I took that as a compliment, and I was now looking forward to meeting Hatty even more, as she clearly knew Danielle extremely well.

  When Hatty arrived to collect Danielle I smiled to myself, because she was exactly how I imagined she would be. Dressed immaculately, she was very polite, charming and well spoken.

  ‘Isn’t your hanging basket beautiful!’ she remarked as she stood on the doorstep, admiring the display of Creeping Jenny geraniums that Jonathan had worked hard to cultivate.

  He grinned like the Cheshire Cat. ‘Thank you. I’m very pleased with how the basket has turned out this year.’

  Hatty came inside and Danielle appeared genuinely happy to see her. She didn’t run up and hug Hatty, but she was smiling with her eyes as well as her lips and I could see she was on her best behaviour, trying to please.

  ‘Where are we going? It’s the farm, isn’t it? I love the farm! Remember when we had those iced lollies and the horse tried to steal mine?’

  ‘I do! How funny! And do you remember that time you tried to feed a Shetland pony a mint and he whipped the whole packet out of your hand?’

  Danielle burst out laughing.

  ‘Oh my God, I’d forgotten about that! He ate the paper and everything. It was scary!’

  ‘Well, not scary enough to put you off the farm,’ Hatty smiled. ‘I like it there too. I’m looking forward to going back. I heard they have a new petting area. They have lots of rabbits and guinea pigs and you can go into their enclosures and cuddle them.’

  ‘Awesome! Is that true?’

  ‘Totally true. Shall we get going?’

  I can’t lie, Jonathan and I were looking forward to having a bit of a break from Danielle, and when Hatty said she expected they would be out for around three or four hours we were relieved the trip would not be any shorter. It was hard work looking after Danielle full-time. We’d never cared for a child of her age who wasn’t attending school before and always seemed to be under your feet, and we weren’t used to it. School holidays are different. Children need the rest, their friends are off too and Jonathan and I always plan holidays and trips out. It’s a totally different vibe to having a child out of school in term time.