The Girl and the Ghosts

by Angela Hart

  7

  ‘There are heads in the clouds’

  ‘Oh dear. Thank you for letting me know,’ Jess said when I broke the news about Gerry being at Christine’s house. ‘Unfortunately, this is something that happens all too often.’

  ‘I imagine it does,’ I replied, feeling glad Maria’s care plan had incorporated her days out with Jonathan and me, or this may not have come to light.

  Jess thanked me for telling her what I’d witnessed and told me she would report back as soon as she had any news.

  I heard nothing more for days and days. I was anxious the whole time about how Maria was getting on, and in the end I left a couple of messages for Jess asking for an update. When she eventually got back to me she apologised for not replying to my calls more quickly and said there was no news yet.

  ‘It’s busier than ever,’ she said, sounding flustered. ‘I do apologise. But I know Maria’s case is being dealt with. It’s a complicated one. You’ll have to bear with us.’

  Another week went by, and another, and by the time Jess contacted me again about Maria almost a month had passed.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ I asked, because Jess sounded hesitant on the phone, which wasn’t her usual style.

  ‘Well, the fact is, it has been decided that Maria is allowed to stay at home with her mother Christine. Gerry is not allowed to live with them, but he is allowed to visit.’

  ‘What? But that’s ridiculous! Surely he’s either safe around Maria or he isn’t?’

  I didn’t normally speak so frankly, but I was incensed. I struggled to understand how this decision had been made.

  ‘I’m sorry, Angela, but that is what Social Services has decided. It’s out of my hands now. Unfortunately, the powers that be have to focus on the facts, not gut reactions. He has clearly passed their investigations and Social Services do not think Maria is at risk from having him visit.’

  I knew that Social Services would have information we weren’t privy to, as this was nearly always the case with any child. As foster carers we were only given information Social Services deemed useful and relevant to our role. I understood this completely, because why should private details about families be shared unnecessarily? Jonathan and I really wanted to believe Social Services had made the right decision and we had to assume that Gerry had been thoroughly investigated and that he posed no threat. Once again, we had no choice but to trust the system, but nevertheless we worried non-stop for Maria.

  Christine became distant after this incident. She was hard to get hold of and only ever rang me when she was ‘absolutely desperate for a break’ and wanted me to take Maria out for the day. I obliged every time, even if Jonathan and I just took Maria for a walk into town or to the country park for a picnic. She was always well dressed and on good behaviour on these occasions, although she did act in a way that was a little unnerving sometimes.

  ‘Would you like an ice cream?’ I asked her one day.

  ‘Yes please! You’re kind, Angela!’ Maria said spontaneously, and then she quickly looked behind her, as if she was worried someone had overheard her saying the wrong thing.

  ‘Are you all right, Maria?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘Yes. My mum is kind too, and so is Gerry! So, so kind! And lovely!’

  Jonathan and I looked at each other, feeling bemused. It was as if Maria was saying something she felt she ought to say or had been taught to repeat, but as neither Christine nor Gerry were here we couldn’t understand why she felt compelled to say this now.

  On another occasion, Maria stood on top of a climbing frame, peering into the sky.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ I asked.

  Maria seemed very worried and was standing statue-still.

  ‘Nothing, just looking,’ she said very quietly.

  Jonathan tried to lighten the situation by saying, ‘Come down Maria, you’ve got your head in the clouds!’ to which she replied wistfully, ‘There are heads in the clouds.’

  ‘Heads in the clouds?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jonathan and I then started trying to look for shapes in the clouds, to try to make a game of it.

  ‘That cloud looks like an elephant with big ears!’ Jonathan said.

  ‘I can only see the eyes,’ Maria said, narrowing her own eyes.

  I continued to phone Babs from time to time and she called into the shop or came for a cup of tea occasionally, always unannounced, which I’d got used to.

  One day she told me very matter-of-factly that Christine and Maria had moved out of the area the previous week, to live with Gerry and his two sons, Frank and Casey. On top of this, Colin had decided to leave Babs and Stanley’s house and move in with the rest of the family too.

  ‘Who’d have thought it?’ Babs said. ‘One minute it’s just Christine and Maria and now there’s six of them all under one roof. I ask you. I hope my daughter knows what she’s doing.’

  Babs was putting on a brave face but she seemed quite put out, which was hardly surprising. She loved her grandchildren dearly and it must have been awful for not just Maria to move many miles away, but Colin too. And all so suddenly, it seemed.

  I was struggling to take all this information in, and I was especially concerned about the fact Maria was living in the same house as Gerry, which as far as I was aware was not permitted by Social Services.

  ‘Are you concerned about Maria?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I am! But what can you do? My Christine won’t be told anything, will she? It’ll probably all end in tears, but good luck to them.’

  ‘But how do you feel about Colin going? He’s lived with you all his life.’

  ‘To be honest, Angela, it was time he moved out. I miss him, of course, but he’s old enough to make his own mind up. It can’t have been much fun living with me and Stanley, if the truth be told. Poor Stan’s in a bad way at the minute . . .’

  Babs then proceeded to tell me the ins and outs of Stanley’s various medical conditions, the schedule for his hospital appointments and a procedure he was having performed, and how their benefits were being increased because he was now not just ‘on the sick’ but registered disabled.

  I listened politely and nodded in all the right places, but really all I could think about was Maria. She was now living with her big brother and two grown-up stepbrothers, plus Gerry and her mum. Would she be all right? How would she adjust to this new set-up? And what about school? The area they had moved to was miles away – too far for Maria to attend the same school, where as far as I knew she was doing well. What an upheaval for her, I thought.

  I made a call to Social Services after seeing Babs, as I had no idea if they were aware of Maria’s new circumstances. A duty social worker said she’d pass this information on to the correct people but gave no indication of whether Maria’s social worker already knew all about these changes.

  ‘I’d like to say something positive to put your mind at rest,’ Jonathan said when I voiced all my concerns that evening. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t think of anything. I can’t imagine why Colin would want to move in with Gerry and his boys after living his whole life with his grandparents. And I can’t imagine how Gerry will cope, having two children who aren’t his own living in his house. It’s all very worrying. It’s almost as though Christine is quite deliberately stacking the odds against her being able to manage.’

  Being a foster carer is hugely rewarding in many ways, but there are negatives and frustrations too. One issue we’ve faced many times over the years is the fact that, however long a child might have lived with you – and, admittedly, Maria had only been with us for a matter of weeks – you have no right to interfere in their life. All you can do when you see something going wrong or have concerns is alert Social Services. Then you have to take a step back and let the local authority and legal system deal with things in whatever way they consider to be best.

  As I’ve said before, you have to trust that the system works. Inevitably, however, because social workers a
re only human, and because they almost invariably have workloads that no one could possibly hope to get on top of, they sometimes get things wrong. Therefore, I can never relax and think the problem is over when I’ve put a call in to Social Services, because unfortunately this isn’t always the case.

  With Maria I was very concerned that Christine and Gerry were somehow getting away with playing the system to their own advantage. Of course, I had no evidence that would make Social Services act differently, so all Jonathan and I could do was hope for the best and try to maintain contact. Christine still had our phone number, but now that she had a few extra pairs of hands at home, and lived quite a distance away from us, I didn’t expect to hear from her. And I didn’t.

  ‘I don’t need help from anyone,’ she told Social Services eventually, and the stipulation in Maria’s care plan that I would be on hand to support Christine became redundant.

  I kept up the contact with Babs, however, and was grateful that she seemed to want to stay in touch. She was very good at keeping me posted with developments, thanks to her naturally gossipy nature and the fact she liked to be the one who passed on news first.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you!’ Babs announced loudly and importantly one day, blustering into the shop as Jonathan was serving a mother and daughter and several other customers were browsing.

  ‘Come into the back, Babs,’ I said swiftly, giving Jonathan a nod.

  Babs installed herself at the kitchen table and said, ‘Have you got sweeteners?’ as I put the kettle on. ‘Only I’m trying to lose weight.’

  ‘Yes, I’m the same. Never have sugar. Now what is it, Babs?’

  She announced flatly that Colin and a bin liner full of his belongings had arrived back on her doorstep.

  ‘How come?’ I asked, startled. ‘He hasn’t been gone very long. What has gone wrong?’

  ‘Money. Gerry said Colin wasn’t paying enough towards his keep, but how can he pay more when he’s on a low wage at the warehouse?’

  ‘I see. When did this happen?’

  ‘Yesterday. Colin’s glad to be back. He’s been telling me some terrible things about that man Gerry. He’s very spiteful to Maria, apparently. And my Christine’s not much better, by the sound of it. I can’t believe it, but I trust Colin’s word. He’s a truthful boy.’

  I felt sick to my stomach.

  ‘I know you’ll probably report all this to Social Services, Angela, but I don’t care. I’ve told them things myself, actually. I have the social worker’s number. Christine would hit the roof if she knew, but I want Maria to be safe.’

  ‘What exactly has Colin said about Gerry and his mum?’

  ‘Basically, everything has to be done according to Gerry’s rules, most of which sound as though they’re petty to the point of obsessive – folding your clothes in a certain way, for example, and putting your toothbrush in exactly the right place, at exactly the right angle, in the bathroom cabinet.’

  Babs paused for a moment to blow her nose. He cheeks were flushed and even though she sounded indignant and was trying to be strong, I could tell she was very upset.

  ‘And when Maria gets something wrong or doesn’t do something she’s supposed to do, Colin says that man goes berserk. Apparently, a couple of days ago, he hit her so hard he sent her flying down the hallway, just because she didn’t fold her towel the right way.’

  A sob caught in her throat, but Babs continued, ‘When Colin said something about it, and tried to stand up for her, Gerry scooped up all his stuff, put it in a bin liner and brought him back here. At first Colin only told me about the row over his keep. He said he never wanted to leave his granddad and me in the first place, but Christine and Gerry put pressure on him to move in with them. They wanted the extra keep, you see. They told Colin that quite openly, it seems. Gerry threatened to beat him up if he told anyone else, so Colin was too frightened to say anything, until now.’

  I did indeed call Social Services and it later emerged that teachers at Maria’s new school, as well as at least one of her new neighbours, had already raised concerns with their local Social Services. The teachers had reported seeing bruising on Maria’s body, and the neighbour had reported hearing violent rows and what sounded like a person falling down the stairs. Very frustratingly, Maria’s files from our local Social Services had not followed her to her new home, so there had been no monitoring of the family at all, despite Christine’s previous conviction. It was just good fortune that Maria’s teachers and the neighbour were vigilant, because their concerns meant a new investigation had already started before I phoned up and passed on what Babs had reported to me.

  Some time afterwards I was told by Social Services that Christine had been given a choice. The first option was that she could agree to a voluntary care order, which would mean putting Maria into care voluntarily. In this case, Christine would still have to be consulted before any decisions could be made about Maria’s care, and Christine would effectively maintain her parental rights. Alternatively, if Christine did not agree to a voluntary care order, Social Services would go to court and obtain an order to remove Maria from the family home.

  In the end, Christine agreed to a voluntary care order, which was the most sensible decision in the circumstances, as Maria was going to have to leave the family home one way or another. The question was, where would Maria live?

  Jonathan and I were asked if we were potentially willing to take her in again, just for a short time while a permanent mainstream foster carer was found. Of course we agreed, as at this time we still only had Tom and Dillon living with us permanently. However, as Maria was living in a different area now, this was not a simple fix. Each authority has its own budget and its own set of foster carers, so there was a lot of red tape to deal with.

  ‘I hope she comes back to us,’ I said to Jonathan.

  ‘Me too,’ he replied. ‘I think it would be the right thing, even for a short time. Let’s hope it works out.’

  ‘Yes, let’s hope. I don’t expect things will happen quickly though. These things never do, not when there are two local authorities involved.’

  8

  ‘They’re making it all up’

  Eventually it was decided that Maria was coming back to stay with us. As I predicted, there had been lengthy delays because the two separate local authorities were involved, but ultimately it was decided that Maria would be better off with us, at least in the short term, as we knew her and we lived close to her nanny.

  Social Services ultimately wanted to match Maria to a carer or carers she could potentially stay with long term. With Jonathan and I continuing to be specialist carers for teenagers, we understood we would only be used to help out with Maria in the short term. However, we also knew that a so-called ‘short term’ placement for a child of Maria’s age could easily be extended. Technically, ‘short term’ can mean anything up to two years, but we’d had experience of this being extended further still, so in reality Jonathan and I had no idea how long Maria might stay with us this second time.

  I didn’t mind the uncertainty one bit. Jonathan and I were delighted Maria was coming back. Tom and Dillon agreed that it would be nice to see her again too. Before her return I was informed by Social Services that since the last time we’d seen Maria she had started attending church. Gerry had converted to a particular faith, and he insisted Maria did the same and practised the religion regularly. This entailed weekly visits to a specific church, plus Bible classes and some home study. The social worker who gave me this information didn’t hold back in sharing her forthright views about Gerry’s demands.

  ‘To be absolutely honest, Angela, I think the stepfather’s insistence that Maria sticks to these rules is more a case of him exerting control than anything. I am reliably informed that he does not practise the religion regularly himself, and nor do his two sons, even though he insists Maria does. However, we have to comply with the family’s wishes.’

  I understood completely. Social Services have to be s
crupulous about ensuring that the religious wishes of a family are met, and Gerry’s choices had to be respected, even if he was motivated by his desire to control Maria, which I had to admit did seem likely given what I knew of him.

  Before she moved back in I made sure I did some research into the religion Maria followed. It was not what I considered a ‘mainstream’ religion and I knew next to nothing about it, except for the fact that Christmas is not celebrated in that particular church at all. I remembered this from a boy I had gone to school with, decades earlier. He had always attracted curiosity and pity from the other children when he said he wasn’t getting any presents from Father Christmas, and I had felt sorry for him.

  I got a couple of books from the library and learned that followers of the religion observe the Sabbath on a Saturday. They also have a strict code of ethics, which includes not drinking alcohol or smoking, plus they have a preference for a vegetarian diet, although they can eat meat that is ‘biblically clean’. McDonald’s sprang to mind, as I remembered how much of a treat it was for Maria to have a burger, fries and a Coke on special occasions. I had no idea if their meat was ‘biblically clean’, and I bristled as I imagined myself asking this question of one of the staff at the McDonald’s in town. The thought made me hope Maria had given up meat completely, as at least this could be easier to stick to correctly.

  Once I felt a little better informed I went to a Saturday service at the nearest church, where I sat at the back of the small, sparsely decorated building and just listened to what was going on. Everyone seemed pleasant and friendly, and after the service I made arrangements for Maria to attend the church after she moved back to live with us. I found everybody extremely helpful and understanding when I explained the situation. I wouldn’t normally tell strangers that I’m a foster carer, as often the children prefer to keep this information private and I don’t think it is anybody else’s business. However, on this occasion it seemed sensible, as otherwise I imagined questions would be asked about why I didn’t follow the same religion as Maria, or why she had no family members going to church with her.