by Angela Hart
‘I don’t want to see him,’ she shouted. ‘Just Mum!’
It may seem harsh to talk to such a young child about Social Services and ‘checks’, but I knew from the social workers and from my past experience with Maria herself that she understood and was used to this language. I was trained to be honest and open about such things when the child was already aware what was happening.
I eventually managed to soothe her by talking to her calmly and changing the subject to books and stories she was interested in, although it took quite a while.
The next day she woke up in a good mood and seemed to be in really high spirits when she came home from school by taxi. This was now the arrangement, for the time being, as Maria’s school was some distance from our house, in a neighbouring county.
‘I got a star for my story,’ she said, showing me one of her English books. ‘Miss said I used good adjectives.’
I read the story and praised her, as it really was a very imaginative and well-written story about a missing puppy. After that she waited excitedly by the phone in the kitchen for a call from her mum, as arranged and agreed by the social workers. The fact her mum had still failed to bring Benji round had not been mentioned for a day or two, but I hoped that after this phone conversation Christine might finally sort this out. The fact Maria had written about a missing puppy hadn’t been lost on me, and I knew she was still pining for her soft toy. There had been no more mention of her nanny and why Maria had said she didn’t want to speak to her. I had not forgotten this and was hoping Maria might open up about it, when she felt comfortable.
I prepared dinner while Maria was on the phone, and after about ten minutes she put the receiver down triumphantly, looking like the cat who’d got the cream.
‘Guess what! Mum says she’s seeing her solicitor and that she’s going to get me back soon. I mustn’t tell my stepbrothers though, because they don’t know. It’s just our secret, Mum said.’
Jonathan and I swapped glances.
‘It’s a secret?’ I said.
‘What’s for dinner?’ she said.
‘Toad in the hole,’ I replied.
‘What?’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘It sounds disgusting! I’m not eating that! My mum wouldn’t make me eat that.’
‘Shall I tell you how I make it? I think you might be surprised, because the mixture has the same ingredients you put in to make pancakes . . .’
‘Yuck! Can’t we go to McDonald’s?
‘No, we can’t. I’ve made this and I think you’ll like it. Tom and Dillon say it’s one of their favourites.’
‘Where are they?’
‘They’ll both be home very soon; they’ve had clubs after school.’
‘I can hear them!’
With that Maria ran to the front door, flung it open and darted off down the side passage, heading in the direction of the playing fields at the back of the house.
Fortunately, Jonathan still had his shoes on after coming through from the shop and he gave chase as soon as he realised what she’d done. I watched from the kitchen window as Jonathan sprinted up to Maria and caught up with her as she approached one of the climbing frames. He was swift on his feet, thank goodness, and she had no chance of getting too far away before her reached her.
I could see Maria standing with her hands on her hips, evidently shouting at Jonathan, but at least she’d stopped running away when he reached her. This could have been a much more tricky situation, because as foster carers we try not to touch the children in any way at all, in case it stresses them out or is misconstrued in any way. I knew Jonathan would not be able to grab hold of Maria to stop her running off, as you might your own child, and that he would need to rely on talking her round. Happily, moments later I watched as the two of them walked back to the house, Maria stomping two paces in front of Jonathan, head bowed and her face set in an angry grimace.
Incidentally, I have recently been told by a new foster carer that a child she was looking after falsely accused her husband of hurting him. Her husband had taken the boy down off a wall he was climbing dangerously while trying to run away. Subsequently the boy was removed and the couple placed under investigation. After that they decided to give up fostering as they had not realised how it would affect the other jobs they did, which required them to have a clean police check. In the end, nothing was proven and her husband was cleared, and the carer was later informed that the boy had a history of making unsubstantiated accusations about carers, which was something they were not told before the child moved to live with them.
At least we were not in a situation like that with Maria, but I can’t pretend things weren’t difficult. Maria seemed to be a much angrier and more aggressive child than the seven-year-old girl we’d first met, and I woke up every morning wondering what the day would hold, and hoping she would not create trouble for herself, or for others.
10
‘Break things in the house’
At this point in time, Jonathan and I were preparing to take Tom and Dillon abroad on holiday in the near future. We had no idea if Maria would still be with us by the time the trip took place, but when we agreed to take Maria on again I’d mentioned this to Social Services, just to be on the safe side.
‘If it comes to it and you can amend the booking we will pay for you to take Maria too,’ a social worker called Claire told me after speaking to several bosses. Claire was Maria’s social worker now, and she was very young and inexperienced but very willing to please.
‘Gosh, that’s great news,’ I’d said at the time, as this was unheard of to my knowledge. I was grateful to have this peace of mind, as of course I wouldn’t have wanted to cancel our holiday, and nor would I have wanted to leave Maria out.
Now, however, I had an awful thought. What if we did take Maria on holiday and she ran off on us, like she did with Jonathan on the playing field? Imagine losing her in a foreign country. It didn’t bear thinking about, but it was something that started to prey on my mind. If she could escape from a locked car and dart out of the house – two places where I thought she was safe and secure – what might she do in a busy public place? Jonathan and I would need eyes in the back of our heads.
Unfortunately, over the course of the next couple of weeks Maria ran off at least half a dozen times. One morning when her taxi arrived for school, she got into the cab, slid across the back seat and then got straight out of the other side, exiting onto the busy high street. Jonathan had to abandon the shop to chase Maria all the way down the high street and bring her back to the taxi. She pulled a similar trick when we took her to church on Saturday, running off down a back passage that fortunately led to a dead end. And when I took her to buy new underwear and some school shirts one afternoon she gave me the slip and hid in a changing room when I wasn’t looking. Thankfully, a sharp-eyed store detective had seen what had happened and came to my aid as soon as he realised what Maria had done.
‘I wondered what her game was!’ he laughed. ‘You’re meant to be buying clothes in here, not playing hide and seek, young lady!’ he said kindly.
Maria rolled her eyes and I thanked the guard profusely. My pulse had risen when I turned and saw Maria had gone, and I still felt in shock for some time afterwards and was very grateful the situation had been defused so quickly.
‘Maria, you are too old for me to have to keep hold of you, so I need you to stay with me and stop this running away.’
‘I can’t help it.’
‘You can’t help it?’
‘No. I ran off all the time from Gerry. He thought it was funny. He made me do it.’
‘How could it be funny? It’s dangerous for you to run off, wherever you are. It really is not funny, Maria. Your safety is my priority and I want you to please stop running off. It is not a game.’
That evening after school, the boys were watching a film that was rated fifteen and over. Jonathan and I never falter when it comes to following the guidelines on films, computer games and even music CDs.
When you are dealing with children who have been through tough times and bad experiences, you have to be extremely careful not to trigger any memories that might cause them unnecessary upset. We trust the ratings given by experts and adhere to the guidelines very rigidly, as it is the best way of protecting the children in our care.
‘Can I watch the film?’ Maria asked.
I explained that she couldn’t, as it was a fifteen, to which she replied, ‘Gerry let me watch eighteens.’
‘Gerry let you watch eighteens?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t always want to. He likes horror movies and I don’t. He thinks it’s funny to be scared. He tried to make me really scared one night.’
‘He did?’
‘Mmm.’
Maria went very quiet and appeared to suddenly freeze. She looked deep in thought and then she began to recite a story, very quietly, as she stared into space, her eyes glazed and beady-looking.
‘Psycho. That was the name. I didn’t like it. I hid behind the sofa and Gerry said I was a wimp. I pretended to watch but I didn’t really. I put paper in my ears, so I couldn’t hear.’
‘Oh Maria, so you only pretended to watch, you didn’t really see it, or hear it?’
‘I tried, but it was hard not to. Then Gerry made me go in the bathroom.’
I’d seen Psycho once, many years earlier, and of course the famous shower scene immediately popped into my head. I think I almost knew what Maria was going to say before she said it, but I prayed I was wrong.
‘Gerry came into the bathroom. He knew how to open the lock from the other side. I was scared ’cos he crept in and I could hear Frank and Casey laughing. Then Gerry started hitting the shower curtain with something. I screamed and saw it was a knife.’
‘A knife?’
I felt sick and had a too-vivid image of this scene in my head.
‘A plastic knife. Frank had it for Halloween. It had blood painted on it. It still scared me.’
‘I’m sure it did.’
‘They all thought it was funny, and when I cried Frank called me a crybaby. I hate him!’
The phone rang in the kitchen, interrupting us. I’d lost track of time, but it was Christine on the line, ready for one of her scheduled talks with Maria. I recognised her number as it appeared on the digital display below the handset.
Maria picked up the phone robotically, and then she began reciting a detailed list of everything she had done over the past few days, giving minute details, such as, ‘The pen I used to write my story was one that belonged to the school. All the children use the same ones. Angela has lots of pens, but I don’t need to take them to school. I showed Angela my story and she said it was very good. I like writing stories. I like school. I like English. We went to a water park at the weekend. Angela’s mum played cards with me. We went shopping for new clothes. I got new socks.’
She sounded robotic again, and not at ease or even genuine. The truth was, even though Maria was still keen on reading and she did like to write, her schoolwork had gone rapidly downhill in the time she’d been living back home with her mum. She was frequently in detention or on report, and she had been in trouble for fighting with other children and swearing at a teacher.
During Maria’s phone conversation with her mum, Jonathan came in and began to quietly put away some shopping he’d picked up on the way back from making an evening delivery. As he did so, all of a sudden, I noticed that Maria went very quiet and had an anxious expression on her face. She listened intently to her mum for a few minutes, saying nothing. Then, as if repeating something she’d just been told, Maria said in an expressionless way, ‘Break things in the house.’
We were always careful not to ask Maria direct questions about anything that was said during the phone calls she had with her mother. Our role was to protect her and make sure she wasn’t upset during these calls, not pry into private conversations between mother and daughter. But when this particular call came to an end I did gently ask what she meant when she said ‘break things in the house’.
Maria looked startled when I spoke to her. I think she must have been so focused on what her mother was saying – and on relating her detailed list of events – that she had forgotten Jonathan and I could hear what she was saying. And, after staring at me for a moment with a look of shocked apprehension on her face, she suddenly bolted for the door and ran off at breakneck speed, again heading down the side passage that led to the field at the back of our house.
‘Not again!’ Jonathan said, abandoning the shopping he was still putting away, grabbing his shoes from the hall cupboard and chasing after Maria once more.
‘I’ll stay here,’ I said, partly because Jonathan was much faster on his feet than me, but also because Tom and Dillon were upstairs in the living room.
I fully expected Jonathan to return with Maria minutes later, as he had on the previous occasion when she shot over the field. I looked out of the window to see what was happening, but to my dismay there was no sign of Maria, and Jonathan was fast disappearing from view, right at the far end of the large playing fields, which were bordered by trees and bushes and had various paths and passageways leading in several different directions. I saw Jonathan stop and put his hand to his mouth, and realised he must be calling Maria’s name. Then he looked all around him, clearly not knowing which way to turn.
‘Boys!’ I called up the stairs. ‘Can you both come down please! I need your help.’
Tom and Dillon came down straight away and began putting their shoes on even before I’d finished telling them what had happened.
‘We’ll take one side each,’ Tom said, as they darted down the passageway.
‘I’ll stay here in case she comes back!’ I called. ‘Don’t go too far – come back soon if you can’t find her! First of all, go and tell Jonathan you’re helping!’
I stood at the window fretting as I watched the boys run up to Jonathan and then all three of them scatter in different directions. I wanted to chase with them but I dared not leave the house.
Fortunately, it was still light and I told myself Maria really could not have gone far and would soon be spotted and returned home safe and sound. A sudden memory of the time she nearly got run over in the McDonald’s car park flashed in my head and I tried to push it away. Surely she won’t run across a road? Please don’t come to any harm, Maria!
It was a full fifteen minutes before Tom finally reappeared, from behind a hedgerow at the edge of the play area. Maria was by his side. I honestly could have cried when I saw the two of them walking back, and I ran out in my slippers to greet them as they neared the passage leading to our house.
Maria looked at the ground as Tom explained that he had found her hiding in old Mrs Moore’s garden.
‘I just had this feeling that that was where she was,’ Tom said. ‘We were talking about Mrs Moore the other day.’
He gave Maria a kind smile and I was pleased to see that he had taken on something of a big brother role, which he’d slipped into almost without me noticing over the past few weeks. Mrs Moore had died recently and it seemed that a few of the local kids had been playing in her overgrown garden, where she had an old shed with lots of interesting tools and gadgets inside that fascinated the kids.
‘Good inside knowledge!’ I said to Tom, as we all looked up and saw Jonathan and Dillon running towards us. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s all get back inside. Thank you for your help, boys.’
Dillon wanted to know every detail of Maria’s ‘rescue’ while Jonathan kept quiet and just gave me the nod that meant, ‘Thank God. We’ll talk about this later.’
Back in the kitchen I asked Maria if she’d like a cuddle, then wrapped my arms around her and told her that I wasn’t angry with her and that she was safe with us.
Maria clearly had problems in her life and had issues with her mother and stepfather. Experience had taught me that I had not even heard the half of what went on in their family home. If Gerry thought it was funny to frighten a small gi
rl by making her watch an adult horror movie and then scaring her with a plastic knife, what else was he capable of? And if Christine was capable of urging Maria to break things in our house, as I suspected she had, then what sort of a woman was she? Maria needed love and understanding. It must have been so confusing for her to grow up with role models like Gerry and Christine, not to mention Frank and Casey, who seemed to be complicit in their dad’s mistreatment of Maria.
I made a note in my daily diary of what I’d heard Maria say on the phone to her mother, and I reported it later to our support social worker, as well as telling her about Maria running off again. When I was a younger and less experienced foster carer, I know I would have worried about admitting to Social Services that a child in my care had run away like that, in case I was judged unfairly or even investigated for failing in my duty. Now, though, I had the experience and self-belief to trust that the authorities would see that Jonathan and I had done nothing wrong. Thankfully they did. Both Jess and Claire offered nothing but support, and in fact Jess told me, ‘Angela, you are doing a sterling job. You can’t make your home a prison; please do not doubt yourself. We’re extremely grateful you are persevering with this placement.’
The investigation into Christine and Gerry was still no closer to reaching its conclusion, it seemed, and so Social Services were grateful for all the help they could get in keeping Maria in foster care.
Very shortly after this incident, Jonathan and I were asked to listen on speakerphone to all the phone calls Maria had with her mother, so that we could monitor what was being said on both sides. We never did hear any more about whether Christine was confronted about the ‘break things in the house’ comment.
‘Do you really think she was telling Maria to break things in our house?’ I asked Jonathan when we talked about it one evening. ‘To get back at us for some reason?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to make sense of it myself. Perhaps Christine thought that if Maria did break our things, we wouldn’t want to look after her any more and then she’d be sent back to live at home.’
