The Girl Who Just Wanted to Be Loved

by Angela Hart

  ‘Keeley, I am not having this,’ I said. ‘You are behaving very badly indeed. I want you to stop shouting and creating a scene, and I want you to come and sit on that bench over there with me, right now.’

  ‘All right then,’ she snarled, looking at the bench I’d nodded towards, which was positioned just outside the golf course.

  What I really wanted to do was march her straight back to the caravan, but that would not have been sensible at all in the circumstances. Social Services always advise us that it is safe practice to avoid being alone with a child as much as possible when they are in this type of mood, as that way you are less likely to be accused of something you haven’t done. Even though Keeley had embarrassed me in front of lots of people here, it was the right thing for me to stay in full view, so that if it came to it I would have witnesses to prove I did nothing to harm Keeley.

  ‘Are they carrying on?’ Keeley said, pulling a face at Jonathan and the boys, and muttering ‘losers’ under her breath.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ignoring the insult. ‘There is no reason why the boys shouldn’t play on.’

  ‘Good.’

  Keeley tossed her hair back over her shoulders, threw the golf club to the ground and marched angrily beside me as I led her to the bench.

  ‘Why did you make it seem like I hurt you?’ I asked, when we were seated next to each other.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Well, can you have a think, please, Keeley? I know I couldn’t have hurt you, because I only placed my hand very lightly on your arm. I would never want to hurt you.’

  ‘It did hurt. I’ve got bruises on that arm.’

  I sighed. Keeley was very good at coming up with an answer to everything, and I realised I had to be very careful here. For once, I was very sure I knew the real story, but now she’d mentioned the bruises I was reminded that I had to always give the child the benefit of the doubt, however slight that may be.

  ‘Right, I didn’t know you had bruises on that arm at the moment, and I am sorry about that. It’s very important that you understand that I didn’t know about the bruises, and that I would never have touched your arm had I known it was going to hurt you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  ‘OK,’ Keeley muttered.

  I was glad Keeley had accepted my apology. If she hadn’t then I would have offered her the chance of calling her social worker, or talking to the duty social worker. They would probably have asked to speak to whoever was present when the incident took place, which was another good reason for me staying put. As it was, I could now simply write in my report exactly what had happened, and the fact it took place in a busy public place.

  Keeley then surprised me by taking the conversation in another direction.

  ‘My granddad used to hurt me,’ she suddenly blurted out. ‘I used to tell my mum, but she didn’t tell anybody.’

  ‘Your granddad Eric? He used to hurt you?’

  ‘Yes. When he was looking after me. He didn’t look after me, though, because he hurt me, in the box room, where my mum locked me up. I told you he was weird, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, I remember you told me he was weird, but you didn’t tell me he hurt you, in the box room.’

  Keeley nodded vacantly and began playing with her hair, wrapping her finger around one of the thick curls. Then she turned to look at me, her big brown eyes set intently on mine. I wondered what she was going to say next, and I think I even held my breath.

  ‘Angela, can we get a candyfloss when we go to the fairground?’

  ‘Yes, Keeley, we can, if they sell it,’ I said, exhaling and trying to smile. Keeley grinned with delight, showing all her lovely white teeth and looking like the innocent eight-yearold girl she should have been.

  Very sadly, it was clearer than ever that Eric had taken some of her childhood from her. How much, and in what way, I didn’t know. All I could do was hope Keeley would feel able to share some more of her story, but would she?

  12

  ‘Go on, stab him!’

  After enjoying a fish-and-chip supper the five of us set off to the fairground, which wasn’t far from our campsite. I hoped a fun evening out might be just the tonic Keeley needed. She had been a little bit quieter than usual after talking about her grandfather. I’d made a note of exactly what she had told me and would phone Social Services once we were back home, but for now I just wanted Keeley to enjoy the rest of our weekend break, and hopefully make some memories that she wouldn’t be afraid of revisiting in years to come.

  We decided to go to the dodgems first, which delighted Phillip. Carl wasn’t really bothered about going on, but he reluctantly agreed to share Phillip’s car, which meant Jonathan would ride on his own and I would take Keeley in with me. The music was blaring and the lights flashing, and Keeley had a steely glint in her eyes when the cars powered into life.

  ‘Come on, Angela, let’s get the boys!’ she said, and I obliged by steering towards the rubber bumper of Phillip and Carl’s bright blue car.

  I clipped it just enough to give them a gentle jolt and Phillip roared with laughter while Carl turned round and said a slightly strained but playful, ‘Oi! Leave us alone!’

  ‘Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat,’ Keeley taunted, pointing her finger at Carl. I didn’t see his reaction because the boys whizzed off, chasing after Jonathan around the next corner. I did gently ask Keeley not to tease Carl, though, as I desperately didn’t want anything else to go wrong today.

  After another couple of laps I got us hemmed into a bit of a traffic jam and Phillip shouted, ‘We’ll get you out!’ before crashing square into the back of our silver car. I jolted my neck a bit and Keeley was flung as far forward as her seat belt would allow.

  ‘Wanker!’ she shouted angrily, putting her middle finger up at Phillip and holding it aloft for what felt like an age. Once again I could sense other people looking over disapprovingly, and to my deep embarrassment the tattooed young man who was running the ride shouted, ‘Oi! Less of that, young lady!’ and shot me a dirty look, as if to say: ‘Can’t you control your kid?’

  ‘Oh my God!’ I snapped, pulling Keeley’s hand back into the car. ‘Stop it, Keeley! Stop it this minute.’

  ‘Wankers, wankers, wankers,’ she went on, getting louder and louder.

  ‘Stop it, Keeley!’ Jonathan called as he cruised past, looking at us instead of where he was going. He was so distracted he then promptly crashed into a broken-down dodgem car, which made him spin around wildly on the spot.

  ‘For heaven’s sake . . .’ he shouted, as he tried to regain control, not to mention some semblance of decorum. ‘What on earth . . .’

  I looked up and saw the boys passing us once more. Phillip was now creased up laughing and even Carl was trying to keep his face straight. I was furious though, and when we finally got off the ride Jonathan looked mortified.

  ‘I could hear you all over the circuit,’ he said to Keeley. ‘You can’t use language like that. It’s completely unacceptable, do you understand? And as for the finger signal . . . I never want to see that again. Never!’

  She wrinkled her nose and jutted her chin towards Carl and Phillip.

  ‘It was their fault! They started it!’

  The boys just shrugged and sniggered, clearly thinking this was too ridiculous a scenario to bother arguing about, especially with a little girl.

  ‘Honestly, Keeley, the boys didn’t intend to jolt us so hard,’ I said, ‘and in any case that’s what happens sometimes on the dodgems. You need to apologise to all of us for creating another scene like this, and you need to do it properly.’

  Keeley thought about this for a moment, and then she stepped forward and stamped as hard as she could on Phillip’s foot before running off into the crowds. Phillip yelped and called her a ‘little cow’, and Jonathan shouted at me to stay put while he gave chase.

  I comforted Phillip and reassured him we would deal with this.

  ‘You’d better,’ he said. ‘She’s driving me mad.’

&nbs
p; ‘Me too,’ Carl muttered. ‘I’m sick of her.’

  As we waited for Jonathan to bring Keeley back, the two boys shared several complaints they’d clearly been stewing about for a while. It turned out Keeley had pinched Phillip hard on the hand when they were in the back of the car together the previous week, and she had continued to walk into both of their bedrooms unannounced, often when they were getting changed. On one occasion she had unlocked the bathroom door from the outside, using a coin, and barged in when Phillip was in the shower. He was particularly livid about this invasion of privacy, and who could blame him? Keeley had apparently pointed and sneered and made rude remarks about his body. He wasn’t the most physically confident boy, and in any case, no thirteenyear-old lad wants to be mocked while naked in the shower.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked.

  There was a silence and both boys looked sideways at each other.

  ‘With me it hasn’t really been a big deal,’ Carl said eventually, ‘and I thought she’d get bored, but she hasn’t. She’s much worse with Phillip, though.’

  Phillip was looking at the ground, and I could see that he was flushed in the face and feeling embarrassed.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything, Phillip?’

  ‘I suppose, like Carl, I thought I could deal with it myself. She’s only eight, isn’t she? I thought I could handle it, but she’s just so annoying. She’s a nightmare. I’ve never met anyone so irritating before, Angela, and she knows exactly which buttons to press and how to lie her way out of trouble.’

  Carl nodded. ‘That just about sums it up,’ he concurred. ‘We’re no match for her, which is a bit embarrassing. She’s an expert in bad behaviour, and how to get away with it.’

  Moments later Jonathan reappeared, looking extremely harassed.

  ‘Where’s Keeley?’ I said.

  ‘She ran into the ladies’ loos,’ he panted. ‘You’ll have to go in, Angela.’

  The boys rolled their eyes. They were clearly not impressed, or surprised, at being in the middle of another one of Keeley’s dramas.

  I dashed through the crowds to the far side of the funfair, where the ladies’ toilet block was, and found Keeley sitting inside, on the corner of a counter next to a washbasin. She was angrily kicking the hand dryer on the wall. Several women and young girls were looking at her nervously, and she was staring back at them defiantly.

  ‘Keeley, there you are! Please stop kicking, you might break the dryer.’

  All the women turned to look at me and one tut-tutted loudly, showing her disapproval.

  I wanted to shout, Don’t treat me like that! I’m a foster carer and, believe me, I’m doing my level best with this child. It’s not her fault she’s like this, and it’s not mine either!

  I didn’t, of course. Instead, I focused completely on Keeley. She had now begun kicking even harder. All my instincts told me to get hold of her, lift her off the counter and remove her from the toilets, but I didn’t want to touch her in case she accused me of hurting her again.

  ‘Keeley!’ I implored. ‘Please! You will be in serious trouble if that gets broken.’

  ‘So will you!’ she replied.

  ‘Me? It’s not me doing the damage, Keeley. It is you who is behaving badly. Now stop it at once.’

  She gave the dryer one last kick and then stopped and looked me straight in the eye.

  ‘Are you angry with me, Angela?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Good!’ she said gleefully, and then she jumped off the counter and walked out the door.

  We struggled through the rest of the weekend with Keeley’s unpredictable behaviour dictating the mood of the group. She was narky, sulky and ungrateful, whatever we said or did to try to gee her along and rescue the trip. I took her to visit the castle we’d talked about and, as it was just the two of us while the boys went fishing, I thought this might have been a success. Sadly it wasn’t. She was just as difficult to be with and I had to face the fact that it was nigh on impossible to predict anything at all to do with Keeley’s behaviour.

  At one point the two of us watched a re-enactment of a battle and Keeley completely threw herself into the drama of it all. For a few minutes I was delighted, thinking I’d found something that had captured her imagination and would let her lose herself in fantasy for a while.

  ‘Kill him!’ she suddenly screamed when one soldier got the better of his opponent and charged forward with his sword.

  There was a menacing tone in her voice that alarmed me, and when I looked at her face she was practically snarling.

  ‘Go on, stab him!’ she shrieked, jumping up and down and waving her fists in the air. ‘KILL, KILL, KILL!’ she chanted.

  At one point an elderly gentleman turned around and looked at Keeley in mock horror.

  ‘It’s not real, my dear!’ he guffawed, but she seemed oblivious to everyone around her and continued to bay for blood.

  ‘Keeley, calm down,’ I had to say in the end.

  ‘Shut up, Angela,’ she retorted. ‘You’re so boring, did you know that?’

  I had a long chat with Sandy over the phone as soon as I could on the Monday morning following our trip. I felt we needed some support, and there was a lot to discuss. Luckily we were due one of our regular placement meetings shortly too, which were held every six weeks and also attended by Keeley’s social worker, Joan, plus Sheila Briggs. The aim of these meetings is to monitor the progress of the placement, make sure everybody is happy with the arrangements – Keeley included – and to ensure that everyone concerned is up to date with any relevant news or change in circumstances.

  After we spoke on the phone Sandy and Joan then came to the house and had a word with us all. Joan spoke to Keeley in private, which is standard practice prior to a placement meeting. Sandy asked me how it was going with the star charts, and using time out, which were the two strategies that had been suggested at the core meeting to help improve Keeley’s behaviour.

  ‘To be honest, Sandy, I decided pretty quickly that neither were going to work very well with Keeley. She craves attention, so time out aggravates her even more. I have persevered with the star chart, but I don’t think it’s helping. Once she’s had the reward she goes straight back to behaving badly. It’s not teaching her anything, I don’t think.’

  Keeley had actually achieved ten stars and had been thrilled to pick out a new outfit for one of her dolls. Now she was working towards the next ten, and she had already decided which felt-tip pen set she wanted. I couldn’t take the stars away when she behaved badly, though, as that would not have been fair at all, and I’d actually been working quite hard to spot good behaviour and reward Keeley. I think if the truth were told her behaviour hadn’t changed at all as a result of the star chart, and the weekend in Wales proved the point.

  ‘The only thing that really works with Keeley is giving her attention,’ I said. ‘Ideally one to one, and preferably from me rather than Jonathan. She’s never happier than when the two of us are making something together.’

  Sandy listened carefully as I detailed the events of the strained weekend, and especially when we discussed Keeley’s allegations that I had hurt her. As our support social worker, nipping this situation in the bud was clearly Sandy’s most pressing concern. It would cause difficulties for everybody, including Keeley herself, if Jonathan and I had to be formally investigated. Just like with Keeley’s previous foster carer, we could be suspended from caring for children while the investigation was carried out. This would mean Carl and Phillip might have to move to other placements, which would be extremely disruptive, and clearly this situation had to be avoided at all costs.

  ‘I’ll ask Joan to also arrange a visit,’ Sandy said decisively. ‘As Keeley’s social worker, I think she should be the one to spell out the potential consequences of her accusations and general bad behaviour. How does that sound?’

  I agreed to this plan. It was clear Sandy trusted me, and as usual she had recognised the priority and honed
in on it. I felt better after speaking to her, and I looked forward to Joan’s visit. The weekend in Wales had left me feeling quite unsettled. Normally with kids, once I feel I’ve identified their issues and worked out some strategies to help them move forward I feel I’m making progress. It isn’t always fast, but I nearly always have a sense that the child is at least heading in the right general direction. With Keeley it was different. It was as if we were constantly taking one step forward and two steps back, and so any support Joan could provide would be very welcome indeed.

  13

  ‘You all hate me!’

  Joan had arranged to visit one afternoon after school, and I’d explained to Keeley in advance what was happening.

  ‘Joan is due to arrive soon, and she would like to ask you how you’re getting on,’ I reminded Keeley on the day in question. ‘I’ve told her about the trouble we had in Wales and she is going to discuss it with you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we all want to help you improve your behaviour.’

  ‘But I’m fine now. Why is everyone still going on about it?’

  ‘Are you really fine?’ I asked, raising my eyebrows. ‘I hope so, Keeley, but I want to make sure.’

  She seemed to accept this and went up to her room to do her homework before Joan arrived, but it wasn’t long before I heard Phillip shouting at her to ‘Get lost!’ and I went charging up the stairs.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Phillip shouted. ‘She’s coming in my room again, Angela. She won’t stop! Will she ever stop? I wish she’d just get lost.’

  ‘He hurt me!’ Keeley retaliated, placing her hands on her hips.

  ‘What?’ Phillip said, looking shocked.

  ‘You heard. Look at my face!’

  It turned out that Keeley had been running in and out of Phillip’s room, poking him in the ribs, flicking things over on his desk and generally making a terrible nuisance of herself. In an effort to stop her he had piled up some bags and books behind his door, and the next time Keeley tried to barge in, the door clattered, and she hit her face on it.