by Rosie Lewis
I rolled my eyes. ‘I think it’s fair to say we’re making minimal progress at the moment.’
She slipped her arm around my shoulder. ‘Oh dear. You okay?’
I forced a laugh. I was being ridiculous. ‘Yes, fine thanks, love. Did Meggie go in okay?’
Emily smiled. ‘Yep, she skipped in, telling anyone who’d listen that I was her big sister.’
I laughed, my pulse returning to normal. ‘Ahh, that’s sweet. Thanks, Ems.’
‘No problem. I’m going up to study now. See you lot later.’ At least four inches taller than me, she leaned over, kissed the top of my head and left.
I glanced at the clock. ‘Right, come on, guys, it’s five to nine now.’ I clapped my hands together and knelt back on the floor. ‘Tell you what, Bobbi. You can have five minutes television if you get ready nicely, and then we have to go, agreed?’ She nodded and plonked herself down on my lap. I fumbled with the remote, squinting and trying to find the right button.
Archie sighed. ‘I’ll do it, Rosie.’ I threw it over and, after catching it one-handed, he flicked a button on the remote and put CBeebies on. Mesmerised by the screen, Bobbi moved her arms and legs robotically, and within five minutes she was finally dressed. ‘Right, Bobbi, you have another two minutes of television and then we’re going, okay?
‘No, I’m watching this.’
‘We’ll record the rest and you can watch it later. Two minutes, then we’re leaving.’
She gave me a sidelong glance then scooted off my lap. With her eyes fixed on mine, she began unzipping her dress. ‘Oh no you don’t, young lady. You keep it on!’ I could hear the impatience in my tone. I knew it wasn’t going to help, but I was too irritated to even think about the impact it was likely to have. Bobbi stared at me with supreme indifference and whipped her cardigan off. ‘Bobbi, no! This is getting beyond a joke now. You must KEEP YOUR CLOTHES ON!’
Kaboom! The touch paper ignited. Throwing her head back, she let out a furious rip-roaring scream. On the sofa, Archie dropped his head back on a cushion and let out a deep groan. Along the hall, the Pink Panther theme tune was reaching its crescendo. In hideous synchrony, Bobbi threw herself onto the floor and smashed her forehead into the bare boards. When I went to her and pulled her to her feet, she whipped her glasses off, threw them across the room and then clawed at her own face, digging her nails in and screaming at the top of her voice.
‘Bobbi, Bobbi, no, you mustn’t hurt yourself. Come on now.’ She struggled when I picked her up but I held fast and staggered into the hall. ‘Archie, grab her cardy, please,’ I called out over her screams. ‘And her glasses.’
At that moment Emily came charging down the stairs. ‘For zarking sake, can’t you lot keep the noise down? I’m trying to study!’ Emily was the loveliest, most gentle person you could ever meet for three and a half weeks of the month. Catch her on the wrong day, though, and she was an absolute menace.
As she turned and stamped back up the stairs, Archie sloped back to the living room. ‘Get back here!’ I snapped. ‘We’re leaving right this minute! And where do you think you’re going, Jamie?’ I said, noticing that Jamie had ducked out the front door, no doubt hoping that I wouldn’t notice. I opened it a second after it had clicked to a close.
‘Dentist!’ he said, already halfway up the path.
‘Oh, come back, will you? Help me get them into the car and then I’ll give you a lift.’
‘It’s alright,’ he said at the gate. ‘I don’t mind walking.’
I stood on the step. ‘Jamie, please.’
He stopped, dropped his head back and closed his eyes. ‘Thanks, love.’ I slipped my feet into my shoes, draped Bobbi’s coat around her squirming body and stumbled out the door. Archie sloped sulkily behind, Bobbi’s glasses in one hand, her cardy in the other. Jamie walked back and closed the door behind us. ‘Bunny, I want Bunny!’ Bobbi wailed as I shut the car door.
I pulled the driver’s door open and leaned in, talking to her over the top of the headrest. ‘You’ll see Bunny later, honey.’
She burst into tears. ‘No! I want Bunny now!’
‘I’ll get it,’ Jamie offered. ‘Then I’m going to walk.’
I watched as he groped for his keys. ‘We need to have a chat, Jamie.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about, Mum. I’ve made up my mind.’
‘But you’re not using your head, love. How many musicians end up making anywhere near a decent living? You need to get your studies in first. Then you can do whatever you like.’
He shook his head and pushed his key into the lock, letting himself into the house. He reappeared with a stony expression half a minute later, the soft toy dangling from his hand. It was a rabbit, but not Bobbi’s one. I stood aside and he leaned silently into the car, passing the toy to Bobbi. She took one look at it and let out a squeal. ‘That’s not real Bunny! I want my Bunny!’
Jamie groaned. ‘That one will do for now, Bobbi,’ I called out vaguely, my gaze still fixed on Jamie. ‘At least think about it, Jamie,’ I said, trying to block out the wailing behind me.
‘Mum!’ he moaned. ‘You’re just not listening!’
‘And you’re not listening to me.’ I paused, softening my tone. ‘I never imagined that you wouldn’t go to university.’
‘Well, sorry I didn’t turn out as advertised,’ he muttered under his breath.
I stared at him. ‘I can’t believe you’re just throwing the chance away, that’s all, without giving it proper thought. Crikey, what I wouldn’t have given for the opportunity to go.’ When I was at school, going to university had seemed like an impossible dream, something that only the well-off might consider.
‘It’s not throwing it away if I never wanted it in the first place, is it?’
I struggled to think of an answer to that. My mouth just flopped uselessly open. Eventually I found my voice. ‘Let’s just –’
‘I’m going,’ he cut in, breaking into a half jog down the path.
‘Jamie, come back!’ I called out, Bobbi screaming hysterically behind me. It was as I watched Jamie disappear from view over next door’s hedge that I noticed her; a smartly dressed woman with long blonde hair and colourful bangles on each wrist. Holding her key fob aloft, she locked her car and walked towards me. The colour drained from my cheeks.
‘Rosie Lewis?’ she called out, a slightly puzzled expression on her face.
‘Erm, yes, that’s me.’
‘Gabby Waldon,’ she announced, glancing from me to the hysterical child in the back of my car. ‘Social worker with the local authority. I’m here to carry out your unannounced inspection. Now isn’t a bad time, I hope?’
Chapter Eleven
‘It has to be up there with the worst ones yet,’ I told Des as he followed me into the living area that evening, Mungo sniffing at his feet. It was just after seven thirty and with the girls tucked up in bed, the house was quiet but for the low buzz of the washing machine on a spin cycle in the kitchen. Emily was out for a meal with her grandmother and I wasn’t expecting her back until late. Archie was in the shower and Jamie at band practice with his friends. Throughout the day my mind had returned to our row, my throat tightening with regret. Jamie was usually such a cheerful character. I hated falling out with him. We’d had a brief chat when he got back from school that afternoon, but things were still a bit cool between us.
Des was the perfect distraction. Loud and gregarious, he sat next to me on the sofa and chuckled as I relayed the entire mortifying fiasco. ‘Par for the course in the Lewis household, I would have thought,’ he joked, his loud voice booming despite his efforts not to disturb the children. Mungo sat at my feet, his feathery whiskers tickling my legs.
I groaned. ‘It was awful. Then she came in and saw the fall-out from the weekend. Toys everywhere, smalls that had spent the entire weekend draped over the radiators stiff with rigor mortis. Honestly, it was bad.’
Des boomed a laugh and threw a hand to my shoulder. ‘Ach, it canna
e have been that bad,’ he said in his soft Scottish lilt. It was a lyrical tone, one that never failed to cheer me. ‘I expect she’s seen worse. I once turned up to do an unannounced on a couple having the mother of all smash-ups. There were household objects flying across windows and everything. They didnae last long as foster carers after that.’
‘Oh, heavens! I don’t feel so bad now.’
‘I’m sure t’was fine. She didnae express any concerns, did she?’
‘She was very kind actually. She said she got the sense that ours is,’ I paused, hooking the air, ‘a “proper family home with plenty of evidence of children’s play”. Now there’s a creative way of describing it.’
‘Spot on, I’d say,’ he said, leaning forward and opening the bottle of wine on the coffee table. Left over from Christmas, I had retrieved it from the cupboard when Des had texted to let me know he was popping in. He poured me a glass and lifted his own. ‘Here’s to your proper family home, warts an’ all,’ he said, holding his glass up in front of me.
‘Cheers,’ I said with a smile. We clinked. I took a sip, shuddered and passed it back to him. I liked the idea of sharing a bottle of wine but had never found one I liked the taste of and rarely managed more than half a glass. Des, a true Scot, took a much larger swill of his own, gulped down the rest of mine and banged the glasses back on the table.
‘So how is everything? Any better?’ Des had been training in Edinburgh since the children had arrived almost two weeks earlier. We had spoken on the phone during that time, but only briefly. Absorbed with the needs of my own family, his manically busy lifestyle suited me.
I tucked my legs up next to my hips. ‘They’re gorgeous children. Absolutely lovely.’
Des shifted around until his back was pressed against the arm of the sofa, so that we were facing each other. ‘But –?’
‘But – I don’t know. Bobbi’s behaviour is familiar, although a little more extreme than I’ve experienced before. She’s aggressive, impulsive, difficult to manage generally, the little cherub. But I think she’s calming down. She’s not talking ten to the dozen anymore. I think she’ll settle with time. She has a hard time coping with school, but she’s showing some attachment to me; clinging in the mornings and reaching out when she’s upset.’ Miss Granville had written another note in SHOUTY capitals in the home school diary again, Bobbi having antagonised her classmates all morning. Totally overwhelmed, she had apparently spent most of the afternoon under one of the desks, refusing to come out even when the headmistress was called in.
‘And Archie?’
‘You’ll meet him in a minute. He’s a bit of an enigma. I don’t quite know what to make of him. One minute he’s civil and well mannered, effusive with compliments, the next brooding and sulky. He was very withdrawn after contact this afternoon.’ When I’d picked the children up from the family centre earlier, the contact supervisor told me that there had been a lot of whispering in corners between Tanya and Archie during their ninety-minute contact session. The supervisor had intervened several times, but Tanya had taken little notice. ‘He barely ate a thing when he got home. Well, nothing at the dinner table at least.’ I gave him a rueful look.
‘They’re still hoarding?’
I nodded grimly. ‘Rubbish mainly. Crisps, chocolate bars, cheese. I even found a fondue fork under a box of Junior Scrabble earlier.’
Des chuckled, though his expression quickly grew serious. ‘The body craves sweet, salty, fatty food when in an alarmed state. Perhaps they’re just taking what they need. You might havetae forget healthy eating for a wee while, or ride both horses for now.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘Sometimes, sweetheart, you have to swim with the tide.’
I felt a spark of heat in my face and quickly looked away. The fact that we were becoming more than just friends still took me by surprise. He reached out and touched my sleeve. Mungo eyed him from my feet.
‘It’s not only food though, Des. One of them took a bracelet from my room. I found it under their bed.’ Some foster carers were able to tolerate all sorts of abuse – kicking, spitting, biting and punching – but I knew quite a few who struggled to continue with a placement after a child had stolen from them.
‘Don’t take it personally,’ Des said mildly, slipping into supervising social worker mode. ‘They’re communicating with you. Telling you their deepest fear; that they’ll be left to die. Kids steal either to fill the unfillable hole inside them, or to hold onto something physical, because everything else around them is disintegrating. The fact that they chose something of yours says something – it tells me that they see you as their anchor at the minute, the person who’s going to keep them afloat.’
‘Oh, Des,’ I said, feeling quite emotional, ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’
‘You said that Bobbi’s scalp is flat at the back. We both know what that means. Who was it who said that children adopted today are the Baby Peters who dinnae die? Hoarding is the kids’ way of securing their survival.’
‘But they don’t need my bracelet to survive,’ I protested weakly, already entirely convinced by Des’s argument.
He dipped his head. ‘Aye, that I’ll grant you. But it’s likely they’re both functioning at least two, possibly three years younger than their actual age, in terms of emotional development, like most looked-after children. What age is Bobbi? Five? So adjusted, she’s two or three years old at most. And Archie, maybe six or seven?’ I nodded. ‘So if we’re thinking toddler in terms of Bobbi, suddenly taking a bracelet isnae stealing, but natural inquisitiveness.’
I gave him a sceptical look. ‘So I should have just ignored it?’
‘I’m not saying that. I just mean do what you’d do with a toddler. Explain that they mustnae take things that don’t belong to them and then forget it. The last thing you want to do is shame them.’ I knew Des was talking sense. Shame was often the fuel that ignited difficult behaviour in fostered children. Responding with anger, though a natural response, was a sure fire way of fanning the flames and getting everyone caught up in a downward spiral. ‘Anyways, at least –’
He stopped as Mungo jumped to his feet and gave a low yap. The sound of a key in the front door followed. ‘Jamie,’ I said, standing up and brushing myself down. Mungo belted into the hall.
‘Hey!’ Des said as Jamie walked in, Mungo weaving excitedly around his legs. ‘It’s the main man. How you been, fella?’ He jumped up and pumped Jamie’s hand heartily.
‘Hiya, Des,’ Jamie said with a grin, flicking a glance in my direction.
‘Hungry? I can warm some lasagne up for you.’
He nodded and thanked me quietly, his reserve eliciting a look of puzzlement from Des. He glanced between us fleetingly then clapped a hand on Jamie’s back. ‘Course he’s hungry. He’s a growing lad, look at the size of him!’ A natural with kids of all ages, Jamie and Emily had always liked Des and he doted on Megan. When he sat back on the sofa, Jamie took the opposite end and launched into an update on some booking or other he had arranged for the band. I could hear their easy conversation as I heated Jamie’s dinner in the microwave, the odd raucous laugh.
Des had been lead guitarist in a rock band in his youth and often regaled Jamie with tales of touring and after-gig parties. Their shared passion for music meant they were never short of something to say to each other. I pulled some wet clothes from the machine and hung them on an airer then went back into the living room, listening in bemused silence as they argued the merits of Gibson Les Paul guitars against Fender Stratocasters, Jamie tucking into his dinner on a tray on his lap.
‘You shouldn’t encourage him,’ I said later, when Jamie was in the shower.
‘Huh?’
I dipped my head towards the door. ‘You know. All that talk about the band. I’d rather he concentrated on his exams at the moment.’
Des scratched his wavy hair. ‘I thought he was doing okay at school.’
‘At the moment he is. B
ut he won’t if he spends all his time trying to revive The Bad Natives.’
He fixed me with an appraising, half-amused look. ‘There are worse ways to make a living, you know. The Natives never went hungry. And we were never short of groupies either.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Hmmph!’
‘Oh, come on, sweetheart,’ he said, laughing. ‘You can’t let go of your sense of humour or you’ll never stay the course.’
I pulled a face. He was right, again, but I wasn’t quite ready to admit it yet. He reached for my hand and laced his fingers through mine. I gave him a reluctant smile.
At that moment Mungo’s ears flapped back. When the door opened, expecting to see Jamie, I snatched my hand away. Jamie and Emily’s amused glances whenever I mentioned Des weren’t lost on me. However much they liked him, I was quite certain that the merest whiff of any canoodling between us would have been a bit disturbing for them. Instead of Jamie though, Archie stood in the doorway, his expression grim. ‘What is it, Archie?’ I said, springing to my feet. I was surprised to find that my pulse was racing, though I wasn’t sure why.
Archie glared at Des, his jaw tightened as if his teeth were grinding together. His arms hung poker straight at his sides, his thin hands clenched into tight fists. I cleared my throat. ‘Archie, this is Des.’ I paused. ‘A friend of mine.’
‘Hi, mate,’ Des said softly, a cheery though slightly puzzled smile on his face. Archie blinked and stared. There was a look of fear in his eyes, as if Des’s presence was somehow a threat.
I cleared my throat. ‘Archie’s a whizz at Rummy, Des. Do you fancy joining us for a game?’
‘Fantastic,’ Des said with a smile. Archie continued to stare at him wordlessly, his eyes finally straying to the bottle of wine and glasses on the coffee table. Something about the angle of his shoulders made the hairs on the back of my forearms stand on end. Mungo began to bark.
