by Angela Hart
The work Miss Powell set only took Danielle an hour or so, and she flatly refused to do anything over and above what her tutor asked her to do. I’d asked if it was possible for Miss Powell to give Danielle more homework but was told that, unfortunately, she didn’t have time to mark any extra work. All she could do was suggest what Danielle could do herself, but of course she didn’t want to do anything she didn’t have to, which was frustrating. Danielle’s academic age was well below her real age. I didn’t have any official confirmation of this, but I could see the work Danielle was doing was for primary children, probably around the Year Four and Year Five mark. I reckoned it was on a par with work an average-ability eight- or nine-year-old child might easily produce.
‘I really can’t wait to have a proper chat with Hatty,’ I said to Jonathan after they headed off. ‘She clearly knows Danielle very well indeed. It will be very interesting to hear what she has to say.’
‘Fascinating, I reckon,’ Jonathan said.
‘Yes. That’s probably a better word. Fascinating.’
8
‘I want to be the good Danielle but sometimes the bad Danielle won’t let me’
Danielle was buzzing when she got back from her trip with Hatty, and she told me all about the petting zone at the farm.
‘Can we get a guinea pig?’ she asked. ‘Please!’
I was taken aback by this question. We’d had rabbits and guinea pigs before and we hadn’t been planning on getting any more, at least not for the time being, but more to the point, we still had no idea how long Danielle was staying with us. It was unlikely but not impossible Social Services might find her a new school place any day. For all we knew she could be moving out within a week – or she might be with us for months. We really had no idea, and I didn’t want to buy pets purportedly for Danielle while we were so unsure of her plans.
‘Gosh, do you think Scooter would get jealous?’ I said in a light-hearted way, as I didn’t want to issue a flat refusal.
If Danielle didn’t have Scooter I might have been open to persuasion, even in such uncertain circumstances, as I do believe that having a pet is beneficial to a child in many ways. It teaches them to take responsibility for another living creature, and troubled children often talk to their pets, which is a healthy way for them to verbalise their emotions. Danielle did talk to Scooter and she was fairly good at cleaning out his cage and making sure he was fed and watered, which was always good to see.
Despite her problems, I had started to hope Danielle would be with us for a good while longer. I felt we were making progress – albeit sometimes erratic rather than steady progress – and that I was starting to understand her and learn how to handle her better. I wanted to help Danielle and I really cared about her. It was heartening that she had asked for another pet, because it showed that she was settling in and also that she was not averse to staying with us for a while longer yet.
‘Goodness me, I’d forgotten about your hamster,’ Hatty remarked. I’d invited her in for a cup of tea when she brought Danielle back from their trip. The two of us hadn’t had the opportunity to talk yet, and of course I was hoping Hatty might be able to give me some helpful background information on Danielle. Jonathan was in the shop, and I hoped I could talk to Hatty in private, without Danielle listening in.
‘Where is Scooter and how is he doing?’ Hatty asked.
‘In my bedroom! Do you want to see him?’
‘I’d love to, Danielle.’
I suggested to Danielle she could go upstairs and carefully bring Scooter’s cage down to the kitchen. She agreed and ran off, whistling to herself as she did so. When she was out of earshot Hatty quietly asked how things were going. I told her I felt that, on the whole, we were taking positive steps forward despite Danielle being a challenging girl to care for.
‘Yes, that’s what her first foster carers, the Smiths, always told me. I do hope this time the progress can continue. I can see she’s happy here, and she’s told me she likes you both.’
‘That’s very good to hear. Jonathan and I don’t really understand what went wrong with her second set of foster carers, by the way. Is there anything you can tell me? All we know is that the placement broke down after Danielle was excluded from school.’
We knew by now that Danielle had been expelled from her last school after damaging another pupil’s property and some school equipment. Nelson had told us this, but we had no further details, other than the fact she’d been on a final warning and so there was no other option but to remove her when she caused the damage.
‘We were told that once she was at home full-time, the carers who were going to be her “forever family” could no longer cope,’ I continued. ‘But she was happy there too. In fact she still calls her previous carers her “forever family”, and she says she’s been in contact with them since moving in with us, although I’m not sure if that is true or not.’
‘Ah,’ Hatty sighed, looking at me over the edge of her half-moon spectacles. ‘I’m afraid I don’t fully understand the situation with her previous carers myself – or should I say I don’t understand Mr and Mrs Davies – Glennis and Mike as Danielle calls them. They refused to let me see Danielle when she was living with them, and they stopped Danielle from seeing the Smiths, which I found baffling. I was infuriated, to be perfectly honest, as Danielle adored her first carers. She has known them since she was five, and she lived with them for five years.’
I was afraid Danielle was going to reappear at any second, but thankfully I heard the bathroom door closing upstairs and realised she must have gone to the toilet.
Hatty explained that the Smiths were an older couple and that, unfortunately, one of them became ill and they had to stop fostering. ‘Danielle called them Granny and Pops. They were marvellous with her and it was such a shame when they had to stop fostering. They had no choice, and it was such a pity for Danielle. I don’t understand why she was prevented from staying in touch with them. Such a lovely couple, such a strange thing to have happened. I haven’t got to the bottom of it yet, but I’m determined I will.’
Hatty also told me that by the time Danielle left the Smiths’ care, they were struggling with her behaviour and constantly asking for support.
Just then we heard Danielle coming down the stairs and crossing the hallway, and Hatty wrapped up the conversation.
‘I’m on holiday for a couple of weeks from this weekend but I’ll be in touch when I get back, Angela, and we can have another talk. It would be lovely to see Danielle again too. I’ll have a think about what we can do next time.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Danielle asked, appearing at the door with Scooter.
‘Do you know,’ I said, not untruthfully, ‘I was just trying to work out exactly how long you and Hatty have known each other.’
‘All my life,’ Danielle said.
‘Well, not quite!’ Hatty chuckled. ‘You were four years old when I first met you, Danielle, when you started in the reception class at Hillbank, remember?’
‘That’s what I mean,’ she said.
Danielle had got Scooter out of his cage and was holding him in front of her face, as I’d seen her do on other occasions.
‘That’s all my life,’ she told him, looking in his dark, beady eyes and talking ever so slowly. ‘I can’t remember anything before.’
Danielle turned her head to look at Hatty. ‘Do you want to hold him?’
‘Oh yes, I’d love a quick cuddle before I go. Now you take care of Scooter, won’t you?’
Danielle nodded and Hatty cradled the pet in her hands, letting him sniff the cuffs of her blouse. She was wearing a sweet-smelling perfume and Scooter didn’t seem too impressed: his whiskers were twitching ten to the dozen and he was wriggling around and trying to break free.
‘Don’t tell Scooter how good you were with the rabbits and guinea pigs at the farm,’ Hatty whispered to Danielle, pretending to cover Scooter’s ears. ‘I think Angela’s right, he might get jealous!’
When the day came for me to take Danielle to the GP to discuss her wetting problem she was in a foul mood, but I cut her some slack. I appreciated it must have been embarrassing to have to discuss her bladder issues with someone she’d never met before. The sympathetic doctor I normally took the children to see was on holiday, which was a pity. I had got to know Dr Bates well. Social Services require us to take every child for routine check-ups early on in their placement, to record their weight, size and general health. Dr Bates always had a joke or a kind word to lighten the mood, as he understood that the children we looked after had inevitably gone through a period of change and were still getting used to being in care or living with a new carer.
Unfortunately, the locum on duty on this occasion wasn’t cut from the same cloth at all, and he appeared impatient and irritable. He did some routine checks with the air of a man who was bored to tears by his job, and he sighed and spooled through notes on his computer screen as he asked Danielle and me to describe how frequently she wet the bed, and how many times she lost control of her bladder during the daytime.
‘It’s not every night,’ Danielle interrupted defensively, curling her lip. ‘And I only wet in the day when I don’t have time to go to the toilet or when someone holds me up by talking to me or distracting me. It’s so annoying! It’s not my fault.’
‘It’s not every night, but it’s most nights,’ I clarified, as tactfully as I could. ‘And the daytime wetting is not every day. But when it happens, it is quite a lot. What I mean is, Danielle seems to empty her whole bladder. We’re not talking about a leak or a small accident that you might not notice.’
‘Whatever,’ she said impatiently, rolling her eyes. She said this several times, cutting across me as I was trying to talk to the doctor.
The GP sighed again, this time more loudly than before.
‘This is a chronic problem and I need to refer you to the incontinence nurse,’ he said.
‘It’s not that terrible!’ Danielle snapped, crossing her arms and scowling.
‘Chronic means long-lasting, prolonged,’ the doctor intoned. ‘It doesn’t mean terrible. It’s a common misconception. I have to explain that to patients all the time.’
I wondered why he didn’t change his language if it caused so many misunderstandings, but of course I kept this thought to myself.
The nurse would be able to give ‘appropriate counsel’ to Danielle, the GP said, rather snootily.
‘Appropriate counsel?’ Danielle repeated rather too loudly as we made our way out of the surgery. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘It means the nurse will sort you out. She’ll know what’s best and she’ll help you deal with this.’
‘Well, why didn’t he just say that instead of trying to be such a clever clogs?’
I suppressed a laugh, as I was thinking exactly the same thing myself. Thankfully, the good news was that the incontinence nurse had a cancellation at the end of the week, so we wouldn’t have to wait long for her ‘appropriate counsel’.
When we got home Jonathan immediately left Barbara in the shop and came striding into the kitchen to greet us.
‘Everything all right?’ I asked. I’d expected him to stay in the shop until lunchtime, as we had a lot of orders to take care of and he’d told me he’d be flat out all morning.
‘Not really.’
Jonathan walked over to the kitchen worktop and picked up the telephone handset.
‘Look at this. What’s gone on here?’
The black plastic casing looked like it had been melted. Jonathan clearly didn’t know how it had got in that state and I didn’t have a clue. We both looked at Danielle.
‘What are you looking at me for? Why are you blaming me? I don’t even have my cigarette lighter any more. You made me hand it over. REMEMBER?’
‘Who said anything about a cigarette lighter?’ I said, raising my eyebrows.
‘Look,’ Jonathan said. ‘Please just tell the truth, Danielle. We can talk about it. We won’t shout at you and nothing dreadful is going to happen. But we do need to know what has happened. The phone was fine when I last saw it yesterday and nobody else has been in the house since then, other than Angela and me. This can’t have happened by magic.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, looking genuinely mortified.
I was astonished Danielle had changed her tune so quickly.
‘Sorry but . . . I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t my fault. Someone told me to do it. That’s what happened at school, when I burnt that girl’s PE kit. It was just the same.’
Jonathan and I looked at each other, and I imagined there was a cartoon-style thought bubble between our heads that said: So you burnt a girl’s PE kit? That’s interesting news to us.
‘Who told you to do it, Danielle?’ Jonathan asked, staying calm.
‘I don’t know her name, I forget now.’
‘Is it someone you know?’
‘Not really. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have listened. Why did I listen?’
Danielle suddenly stared at me with a look of total confusion on her face. I felt tears prick my eyes. She looked so young and vulnerable, and my heart ached for her.
‘I’m really, really sorry. Are you going to throw me out?’
‘No, Danielle,’ I said. ‘We’re not going to throw you out. We care for you very much and we want to help you. Please go and get me the cigarette lighter or whatever you used to do this.’
She did as I asked, and she also handed over a few cigarettes she told me she had hidden in her bedroom.
‘I want to be the good Danielle but sometimes the bad Danielle won’t let me. Can I go and have a shower?’
‘Didn’t you have one earlier?’
‘Yes, but I want another one.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘You can have a shower in a minute, but first we need to talk about this. The number-one issue here is safety, Danielle. It’s very dangerous to play with fire. I don’t want you or anyone else to get hurt.’
Danielle suddenly talked across me and started asking nonsense questions, as if trying to deliberately annoy me or shut me up, as she had done in the past. This had become a very familiar tactic and, as usual, the questions she asked either made no sense or were misplaced and could easily have waited until later.
‘Would you rather eat fire or have knives thrown at you?’
‘Danielle, this is important, you need to listen to me . . .’
‘I mean, if you worked in a circus, Angela? And what are we eating next Sunday? Is there a roast dinner or can I see my friends?’
‘Danielle!’ Jonathan said. ‘Please listen to Angela. As she says, this is very important.’
She sighed and rolled her eyes but thankfully did stop talking long enough to allow me to continue.
‘As I was saying, it’s very dangerous to play with fire and I don’t want you or anyone else to get hurt. The handset could have burst into flames. Some materials are more flammable than others – and by that I mean can catch alight easier. The phone could have caught fire instead of melting. You could have burnt yourself, and . . .’
‘You didn’t answer my question! What would you do, Jonathan, and what . . .’
‘Danielle! You could have burnt yourself, and the last thing we want is for you to get hurt. Do you understand?’
‘Oh. Sorry. How could anyone eat fire?’
She started scratching her head and seemed to have lost all focus on the important conversation we were trying to have.
Jonathan took over, supporting what I was saying and giving Danielle a talk about the importance of safety in the home. He wanted to make absolutely sure our message had got through. For a minute or so Danielle seemed to listen and take in everything he said, but then once again she embarked on a nonsensical conversation. This time she stepped right up to Jonathan, forcing him to take a step backwards as she invaded his personal space.
‘What would you do if you had no phone, no phone at all?’ she asked, staring at Jon
athan as if willing him to give the wrong answer.
‘I’d talk very loudly!’ he said, deciding to go along with Danielle now, and hoping that a bit of humour might help get her on side.
‘That’s stupid. What if you had to phone someone in Australia or New Zealand?’
‘I’d send an email instead. Or a carrier pigeon!’
‘That’s cheating. I don’t trust you.’
She narrowed her eyes and poked Jonathan in the arm. She did this so hard that he was left with no choice but to tell her it was rude to jab like that.
She looked at him blankly.
‘What would you do if you had no phone, Danielle?’ he asked.
‘I’d make YOU buy me a new one.’
‘Would you, indeed!’
‘Yes, I would.’
She jabbed him again but Jonathan ignored it and instead took another step backwards, asking Danielle to give him some room.
‘OK!’ she said, backing away. ‘But now can we please stop talking about phones? Just because some stupid girl made me do that thing, there’s no need to keep going on about it, Jonathan!’
He was quite lost for words.
My mum had offered to take Danielle to a production at the small theatre in town one day and I wrapped up this conversation by warning Danielle she would not be allowed to go on the trip if she didn’t follow the rules of our house, behave herself and act in a safe and sensible way. This was the last thing I wanted to cancel, as I was looking forward to having some ‘us’ time with Jonathan, and I really hoped Danielle would pull her socks up.
