Copyright

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s experiences. In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed.

HarperElement

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperElement 2015

FIRST EDITION

© Casey Watson 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Cover photograph © Cultura Limited/SuperStock (posed by model)

Casey Watson asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at

www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

Source ISBN: 9780007595099

Ebook Edition © October 2015 ISBN: 9780007595105

Version: 2016-10-19

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

Topics for reading-group discussion

If you like this, you’ll love …

Casey Watson

Moving Memoirs eNewsletter

Write for Us

About the Publisher

Dedication

To me, all children are beautiful. I often liken us parents and carers to gardeners. We work with what we are blessed with, and so long as we nurture and tend to our seedlings, and as long as we sort out what lies beneath – the tangled roots and weeds that threaten to prevent growth – then we can produce strong, healthy plants; some beautiful flowers, others not so aesthetic, but each with a purpose, and set to flourish and go on to create other life. This is all we can do, and all we need to do.

Acknowledgements

As ever, I’d like to thank the team I’m so privileged to work with. Huge thanks to everyone at HarperCollins, my agent Andrew Lownie and, of course, my lovely friend Lynne.

Chapter 1

The long school summer holidays. Who’d have them? We were only three weeks into them, so not even quite at the halfway point, but already that thought was uppermost on my mind several times a day. It was certainly the number one thing on my mind as I attacked the washing up and surveyed the scene of devastation that was supposed to be my garden.

More to the point, why had I always been such a staunch advocate for them? Silly me, I thought ruefully – that one was pretty obvious. It was because I used to work in a school, and those six precious weeks were like a gift from the gods. A vital pause between stints under the tyranny of the school bell. Fickle, fickle, fickle, that was me.

I raised a soapy Marigold and rapped hard on the open kitchen window. ‘Tyler!’ I barked. ‘Denver! Please! Not so rough! And watch my flowers!’ I added hopefully, though without much optimism that either boy would. Though they smiled and waved back at me, they also completely ignored me, chasing each other round the garden with their water blasters just as manically as they had been for the past half hour. My poor windows were going to get it next. I just knew it.

Not that in normal circumstances I’d have much minded the devastation. Tyler had only been with us for a little over a year, but since we’d asked if we could keep him permanently – well, till he was ready to fly the nest – it almost felt like he’d been with us for half his life. And, in truth, I could never be cross with him for long. Well, except when I had to be, obviously. It had been a huge decision and we’d not yet had cause to regret it; now he was in a loving, happy home, he was blossoming.

Which was more than my flowers were being allowed to, however. This was probably par for the course when they were constantly being attacked by an almost 13-year-old boy and his boisterous sidekick. That’s not to say that my flesh and blood family weren’t partly to blame. Riley and Kieron, my own two, had both passed their quarter centuries, but Levi and Jackson – Riley’s boys – were already following enthusiastically in the footsteps of their uncle Kieron, in that, if they saw grass, they immediately thought ‘football’.

Now eight and six, perhaps it was a blessing that they weren’t around to play today, as they were equally skilled at kicking a ball into a rose bush and creating a mud slick out of a previously lush patch of grass. Still, at least Riley and David’s third child had been a daughter, and though my little grand-daughter Marley-Mae was only 16 months old I could already tell she was going to be a proper little lady.

But it was another little lady that was causing me to fuss and flap this morning. I’d had a phone call first thing from my fostering link worker, John Fulshaw, to inform me that he had something of an emergency on his hands – so could I possibly take on a young girl? In typical John style, he was fairly light on facts, operating according to his usual ‘I’ll tell you more when I get there’ routine. So all I knew currently was that she’d been taken into care following a house fire, and that her mother was still in hospital being treated. Oh, and that, like Riley’s Levi, she was just eight years old, and that though her name was Philippa she apparently only answered to ‘Flip’. Oh, and one more thing. That they (as in John, the little girl and the social worker allocated to her) would be arriving at my house in – hell’s bells – less than an hour.

As timings went, it couldn’t have been much worse. I’d already agreed that Tyler’s friend Denver could spend the day with us, which meant I’d had two boisterous almost-teens running wild both in and out of the house all morning, wearing nothing but swimming shorts, splashing around in Marley-Mae’s little paddling pool and generally running amok in that way adolescent boys do, while my house, already messy after a Sunday spent with the very same grandkids, looked like a bomb had hit it.

For a clean-freak like me, this was naturally torture. Or would be, if I’d allowed it to remain in that state, but such was my horror of admitting visitors if it was anything other than pristine, it would be a cold day in hell before I allowed that to happen.

Which meant I needed to crack on fast. I popped the last plate into the drainer and peeled off my washing-up gloves. I’d need my heavy guns to come out for the rest of the chores that I’d be doing, so I went across to my cleaning cupboard to get tooled up: vacuum, duster, disinfectant and mop were my weapons of choice, and every speck of dust, or splash of dirty water, my enemy. The Blitz had nothing on me when I declared war on dirt and mess, and I was just preparing for battle when Tyler splattered into the kitchen, barefoot and grinning, not to mention dripping twin streams of water from the legs of his board shorts to the floor.

‘Any chance of an ice lolly, Casey?’ he wanted to know, accessorising his request with a smile that I knew one day was going to break some hearts in the same way he’d comprehensively stolen mine. ‘Only with all that running about, we’re Hank Marvin!’

I had to smile at that. It had been a term coined by a previous boy we’d fostered, Jenson, who’d learned it, if memory served, from his mother’s latest boyfriend. It had since wormed its way into the family lexicon. It had probably been Kieron who’d passed it on to Tyler, who’d picked it up and run with it ever since.

He shook his dark hair like a shaggy dog would in order to shake off the water, further messing up my already messy floor. ‘For goodness’ sake, Tyler. Stop that!’ I ordered. ‘And an ice lolly is going to stop you feeling hungry, is it? No way, mister. It’s almost lunchtime and I’m going to make a picnic for the pair of you. I’m sure you won’t pass out from malnutrition before then. Now, hop it,’ I added, swivelling him by the shoulders and frog-marching him back outside again. ‘John and the others will be here soon, and I still have lots to do, so how about you and Denver start clearing a space to sit and eat your picnic on, while I do so.’

‘Not even an ice-pop?’ he tried hopefully.

I shook my head. ‘No. Oh, hang on, though,’ I added, reaching across and grabbing the sun spray from the kitchen windowsill. ‘Give each other another good going over with this before you do. You’ve probably washed off half the last lot with those flipping blasters of yours, and I don’t want the pair of you burning. Go on,’ I said, giving it to him. ‘Ice lollies after lunch, promise.’

‘Oh, Casey!’ Tyler grumbled as he took the bottle spray from me. ‘You’re such a fusspot. Look at the label. Look, here – where it says “once”, see? That means we only need it once. That’s why it says it! You’ve already covered us in it about a hundred times!’

‘Covered you with it twice, actually,’ I corrected. ‘And twice never hurt anyone. It says “once” on the paint tins as well, and we all know how well they work, don’t we? Go on, out with you! And put some more on!’ I added, to his departing back.

I was mad, I decided as I surveyed my sopping floor. I was actually mad. Tyler was such a live wire, and had a best friend who was also a live wire, and yet not two hours back I’d gone and agreed to another temporary placement not with trepidation, but with an enthusiastic grin on my face, despite knowing almost nothing about the girl. But then if I was mad, then so was my husband, Mike, because when I’d phoned him at work to double check he was fine about us doing it, he’d agreed to it as well – and in an instant.

‘Well, we said we would, didn’t we?’ he’d pointed out when I asked him if he meant it. These weren’t light decisions to make, after all. But he was right; that had always been the deal. When we’d asked if we could be allowed to keep Tyler, we’d assured John that we’d still be more than happy to foster other kids who might need us – kids who could benefit from going on the specialist behaviour-modification programme we’d been trained to deliver. And this was apparently once such – though for what reason I knew not. But it was a little girl, and she was only eight, so there’d be no extra testosterone wafting around. No, it would be fine. It would work okay with Tyler.

‘So I’ll tell him yes, then,’ I’d said. ‘You know, assuming all seems well once they get here?’

‘Course!’ Mike assured me. ‘You’ve had it easy for long enough, love. Time to get stuck back in.’

Cheeky sod, I thought now. I’d get him back for that later. Perhaps with a well-aimed water blast or two. Right now I had less than an hour – no, nearer 45 minutes – and, if not a mad woman, I was definitely a woman possessed. First impressions worked both ways, after all.

Chapter 2

Like mums everywhere, I always seemed to have several balls in the air at once, so even without the added health and safety risk of my sopping kitchen floor, it was odds on that I’d trip up and lose sight of one. And it seemed I had today. It was only because I was dusting the elderly house phone in the hall that I realised that, in my haste to get things ready for my unexpected visitors, I’d almost forgotten my poor son’s daily ‘un-alarm’ call.

I checked the time, took an executive decision and went to find my mobile. If I didn’t do it now, who knew when I’d next have the chance? And then there might be hell to pay. Keiron had – has – a mild form of what used to be known as Asperger’s syndrome and which is now more commonly referred to as an ASD, or autism spectrum disorder. In an ideal world, I hoped that word ‘disorder’ might soon be changed to ‘difference’, but in the meantime it did mean certain challenges for him, so I supposed it was partly correct. It was something we were all used to, however, and if you met him you’d probably barely even notice it, but the management of it had been a big part of his childhood and even now, though he lived a full and fulfilling life, it still impacted on him in myriad little ways.

He and his long-term girlfriend Lauren were on holiday in Cyprus, which was something of a milestone for them both. As anyone familiar with autism knows, even in its mildest forms it can cause major anxieties, and often these are centred around routine and change. That was Kieron to a T – loved routine, hated change. And with a passion. So going on a holiday, when he’d been growing up, was a very big deal, and something we only attempted rarely.

It wasn’t surprising, then, that when he’d popped round after work one day and announced they were going to Cyprus, just the two of them, I was shocked, as was Mike. This was a big step. It was the first time they’d been away on their own and they weren’t just going away – they were going abroad!

The holiday had obviously taken a fair bit of arranging, and the strain of it soon began to tell. Though he was a grown man of 26, and was understandably keen to meet the challenge, he was terrifically anxious about how he might cope – or, rather, fail to cope – once he got there. Lauren, bless her, had taken on the mantle of chief organiser, planning it, organising their savings and making all the arrangements. But as the date had loomed we could all tell he was struggling with the thought of it, as he reacted just as he’d done since he was a little boy, by chewing off all the skin around his fingernails. That was always a bad sign. So much so that I’d begun to question the wisdom of going at all.

‘Look, Kieron,’ I said one afternoon, when he’d popped round for tea. ‘If you really don’t want to go to Cyprus, then you don’t have to, you know. A holiday is supposed to be something you do for pleasure, after all. Have you spoken to Lauren about how stressed you are? I know she’ll understand if you don’t feel you can face it.’

But he was having none of it, and my heart really went out to him. ‘I have, and that’s exactly what she says as well. But no, Mum,’ he said, ‘I really, really want to go. If I can crack this once, I’ll have it cracked for ever, then, won’t I? Well, sort of. I’m just – oh, you know what I’m like. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that might go wrong on the journey. What if I get stressed and need to talk to you?’

‘Then call me. Get that Euro-travelling package-thingy they do.’

‘And what if I don’t know where to go at the airport, or what queue to join, and Lauren doesn’t either? What if we accidentally get on the wrong plane?’

I was pretty sure Lauren would have had all of that under control, because she was a brilliant, capable girl, not to mention the fact that air travel was almost like bus travel these days. But I also knew my son and how his anxieties could overtake him; so much so that he’d stopped coming on family holidays at the age of 16, preferring to stay instead with my sister Donna.

No, Kieron just needed to know there was a safety net, that was all. ‘So, like I said,’ I repeated, ‘if Lauren can’t sort it, get your phone out and call me. And, I tell you what. How about I call you from time to time in any case. You know, just to see how you’re doing?’

‘Would you, Mum?’ he asked, and I knew right away that this was what he needed. Better for me to keep in touch with him than for him to de-stress himself by reaching for his mobile to call me every five minutes. Just knowing I’d be popping up on his screen at every stage would probably be enough to keep him on top of his anxiety, but without the added anxiety of feeling Lauren would think he was being silly, even though I knew she wouldn’t. Oh, it was a game, it really was, fathoming it all out.

‘Course I will,’ I said. ‘I’ll be like the BT woman, ringing up with alarm calls. Except they’ll be “un-alarm” calls, because there won’t be any alarms, I’m sure of it, as Lauren will have everything under control. And if anything unexpected does happen, you can call me, like I say. Except nothing will, I promise.’

He looked 100 per cent happier. ‘Thanks, Mum. Just till we’re there and settled and that, anyway.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘You’re just anxious about the travelling, love, which, trust me, is perfectly normal.’

And my ‘un-alarm’ calls had clearly done the trick. We’d spoken four times on the Saturday, three on the Sunday, and now, when I told him I’d got to go as John was due at any moment, he’d hung up before I’d barely taken the phone from my ear, leaving me secure in the knowledge that they were having a good time, and free to concentrate on my young visitor.

Who seemed to be arriving even as I put my mobile back on its charger. With all the windows open, in order to counteract the sweltering heat, I could hear a car pulling up outside the house even before I saw it. I felt the usual stirring of intrigue. It wasn’t quite excitement; that was the wrong word to use in such a circumstance – this was a child who’d been taken into care as an emergency, after all. But there was still a certain frisson; I’d opened several front doors by now, to several different children, and perhaps because ours was a kind of fostering that often took place at short notice I really had to be unshockable when I pulled it back to greet whoever was standing nervously on our front doorstep.

In this case, however, it was only John. And he didn’t look nervous in the least. Just very hot.

‘Oh,’ I said, looking beyond him towards the car. ‘Are you on your own, then?’

‘Only for a little bit,’ he said. ‘They’ve had to go back. For a forgotten Barbie doll. Shouldn’t be long.’

I ushered him inside. ‘Come on in, then. Do you want a cold glass of something? Or an ice pop?’ I said, grinning. ‘We’re very well stocked with those currently, as you can imagine.’

‘Just a large glass of water,’ he said, loosening his tie, and following me into the kitchen. ‘I’m parched. Like a flipping furnace, my car is, in weather like this.’ He grinned ruefully as he placed a manila folder on my kitchen table. ‘Actually – hmm – under the circumstances, perhaps I’d better rephrase that.’

It took me half a second to work out what he was on about. Of course. The fire. ‘Sorry,’ I said, placing a pint glass of water down beside the files. ‘Bit slow on the uptake there, wasn’t I? Sit down, I’ll’ – I stopped and went over to the window, which was being liberally sprayed with a blast from one of the water guns. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Tyler! Will you STOP that!’ I called out of the window. ‘Sorry, John. Think the heat’s getting to the boys, too. They’re both completely manic.’

John chuckled. ‘Enjoying the holidays, then? Sounds like young Ty is, anyway. Actually I could use that kind of dousing right now.’

‘Be my guest,’ I said, waving an arm towards the door out to the conservatory and garden, before pulling out a chair to sit on myself. ‘Though not till you’ve given me some detail on our new arrival. What’s the lowdown? How’s the mum? Badly burnt?’

John shook his head. ‘Apparently not. She’s still in hospital, but it’s mostly smoke inhalation they’re treating her for. A lucky escape.’

‘And the little girl’s okay?’

‘Yes, absolutely fine. Completely unharmed, which is something of a miracle, by all accounts. The blaze all but gutted the entire house, and the mother was lucky to get out alive. Philippa – Flip – was found quite a bit later, by all accounts, hiding in a wardrobe upstairs. Rescued by the lady next door, it seems, while the fire crew were attending to the mother. I just met her, as it happens – she’s become something of a local hero.’

‘I’m not surprised. How did it start? Do they know?’

‘I’m not sure they know for definite, but the assumption is that the mother fell asleep with a cigarette in her hand. Alcoholic,’ he added, opening his files.

I smiled. John had dropped the word into the conversation as if it was something bland and innocuous, like her hair colour or job description or star sign. As he would, because these were the conversations we tended to have. Ah, I thought. So we were getting to the nub of it now. There had to be something, after all. A child could and often would go into care as the result of a major house fire. If their home was gutted, the parent or parents hospitalised, and with no family or friends to take them, a child would invariably end up in temporary foster care. I imagined the little girl on her way to us was coming from temporary foster care herself; an emergency placement, while social services sorted out what needed to be done in the longer term, be it to keep the child there till the responsible adult was in a position to have them back again or, if they’d been orphaned, to find them adoptive parents.

But in this case they were moving her on to us, which meant it was slightly more complex than that. Mike and I, however, weren’t those regular kinds of foster parents. We were trained to foster children who were tending towards being ‘unfosterable’; our specialist programme was designed to modify the behaviour of the most challenging children in the care system, in order that they could be socialised sufficiently to have a hope of going into mainstream foster care and/or being put up for adoption.

Yes, from time to time we did respite care, to help the fostering agency out, just as Riley and David were doing at the moment, but, generally speaking, if a child needed to come to us there was usually an extra problem, and I already knew, from John’s initial call, that there was a reason why he wanted us to have Flip. And this was apparently it.

Well, half of it. The mother being an alcoholic wasn’t the whole story, I was sure. No, there would have to be some sort of challenge to address with the little girl as well.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And?’

‘And she’s a long-standing alcoholic. Well known to social services. As is the daughter, because she has foetal alcohol syndrome. Something you’ve probably –’

At which point he stopped, because there was a rap on the front door.

If I’d finished his sentence correctly, John was right. I had heard of foetal alcohol syndrome (commonly known as FAS), because we’d touched on it in training. ‘Touched’ being the operative word; we’d touched on lots of things in training, but with so many ways in which a child could be damaged by the things life had thrown at them, if we’d done more than touch on most of them we’d still be in training all these years later. So, as I walked to the front door, it was with the usual thing in mind – that what I didn’t know I would now simply learn, on the job, so to speak.

I opened the door, the sun streaming in almost bodily; certainly casting my guests into deep shadow, almost silhouetting them on the step. But not for long, because the little girl stepped straight over the threshold. ‘Hello,’ she said brightly. ‘Do you think I’m ugly, Mummy?’

As first lines went, it was an unusual one, to say the least, but as I smiled down at the dot of a girl who now stood before me, I was more struck by what I saw than what she’d said. She was dressed for the weather, in a flower-sprigged cotton sundress with a shirred bodice, the straps tied in neat bows on her skinny shoulders, but my eyes were immediately drawn upwards, to her face.

I’d clearly absorbed more about her syndrome in training than I’d realised. I took in the small head – which seemed too small, even on her tiny little body, even with her fullish head of wavy dark-blonde hair. I took in the far-apart eyes, the upturned nose and the thin upper lip. It was almost like ticking off boxes on a checklist, and I was surprised how immediately the details of FAS came back to me.

But ugly? No, call me soft, but she definitely wasn’t that. Arresting, unusual, but definitely not ugly. Bless her little heart.

‘No, of course you’re not, sweetheart!’ the young woman with her supplied before I could, as she steered Flip around me so she could step inside herself.

‘There,’ I added, smiling at her. ‘Took the words right out of my mouth. Come on in – Flip, isn’t it?’

The girl nodded. ‘And this is Ellie. She’s my social worker. She’s pretty, isn’t she, Mummy?’

‘She is indeed,’ I said, smiling at the social worker, then gesturing towards the doll in Flip’s hand. ‘And who’s this?’

‘It’s Pink Barbie. We nearly forgetted her.’ She raised her other hand, which was clutched around the handle of a small pink vanity case. Both looked new. And apparently were. ‘She goes with this,’ Flip explained. ‘It’s to keep all her clothes in. I gotted them from Mrs Hardy. As a present.’

‘And we nearly came without her, didn’t we?’ the social worker added. ‘As John no doubt told you. Still, we’re here now. All present and correct. Well, such as we can be.’ She too raised a hand holding a bag; in this case a ‘for life’ one, supplied by a well-known supermarket. ‘This is pretty much it.’

‘And I’m pretty, too,’ Flip reminded her. ‘Mummy said so.’

We went back in the kitchen to find that John had filled the kettle and put it on, and was busy pulling mugs from one of the cupboards.

‘You must have read my mind,’ I said, pulling out a third chair. ‘How about you, Ellie – coffee? And what about you, Flip?’ I added, as the social worker nodded an affirmative. ‘Would you like some juice?’

Flip turned to her Barbie – clearly now a very precious possession, even though she had managed to forget her temporarily along the way. ‘Yes, please,’ she said, having put the doll to her ear. ‘And Pink Barbie says do you have any teeny-weeny cups, Mummy?’

‘I’m sure we can find something just right for her,’ I assured her. Mummy. And three or four times now, I mused, as I rummaged in my ‘teeny-weeny cups’ drawer for something Barbie-sized the doll could sip from. What an unusual prospect this sweet little girl looked like being.

Unusual, interesting and definitely bordering on the profoundly challenging. Or so I was about to find out. First, though, there was the usual raft of paperwork, and, of course, the formal introductions. Ellie turned out to be called Ellie Markham, and had only just been assigned to Flip, as a consequence of her having been transferred from out of our local authority area. Though, thankfully, they’d been prompt in transferring all her notes, I felt for Ellie; guessing at her age, my hunch was that she’d not long been qualified, so she was probably diving straight into the deep end while still a little wet behind the ears.

As she wasn’t in a position to give us much in the way of background, I suggested she and I take Flip outside to meet Tyler and Denver, and that perhaps Tyler could take them on a little tour of the house and garden. It was a job that usually fell to Mike while John and I and the attending social worker dealt with all the forms, but with it having been too short notice for Mike to get away from work, we were having to improvise on that front anyway.

Which was fine; I also thought it would be nice for Tyler to meet Flip with his role in the family clearly evident, i.e. that she could see he was very much one of the family, and would naturally assume a big-brother role while she was with us, for however long that looked like being. We’d already primed him a while back, and with the respite work we’d done since we’d had him I was confident he’d adjust to a new child pretty quickly, just as long as he didn’t feel insecure.

Indeed, he seemed puffed up with pride at being given the responsibility, and it was only Ellie’s insistence that she stay by Flip’s side that meant she wasn’t back with John and me herself. ‘Crossing the Ts and dotting the Is,’ John explained when I returned to the kitchen so we could make as short work as possible of the formalities. ‘She has a tendency to wander, I’m told. No sense of stranger danger either – one of the features of her FAS.’ He patted a pile of papers in a slip case. ‘There’s plenty for you to get your teeth into here.’

‘And this is it, is it?’ I asked him as I retook my place at the table. ‘She’s in the care system now? No likelihood of her being reunited with her mum?’

John shook his head. ‘That’s not the plan. She’s been on the “at risk” register for quite a while now, apparently; there have been repeated attempts to get Mum into alcohol abuse programmes, parenting classes and so on, so this fire’s really just been a line drawn in the sand. It was probably only a matter of time in any case. There’s no home for either of them to go back to now, anyway. They’ve apparently lost everything.’ He pointed to the bag Ellie had parked by the table. ‘That’s all she has; the bits and pieces the respite carers pulled together for her. So she’ll need kitting out …’

‘That’s no problem,’ I said. ‘Well, in terms of stuff to run around in, anyway. I have a boxful. Not that any of it’s pink. Poor mite. She must be reeling inside, even if she’s not showing it. Probably too dazed by it all … When did it happen?’

‘Friday evening,’ John said. And we were now into Wednesday.

‘She must be in shock still,’ I said, as I took the forms he was handing me. Copies of the care plan, the risk assessment, the moving forms and so on, all to be signed three times. Nothing in social services ever happened except in triplicate.

John shook his head. ‘Apparently not,’ he said. ‘Ellie tells me what you see is what you get. One of the main problems Flip has is a lack of empathy, which I’m told is quite common. I’m sure you’ll be Googling it all later, and, as I say, there’s more about her background in the file here, but she’s a tricky one; she’s already been dealing with the legacy of being born the way she is, and it’s been compounded by the rackety way she and her mother have been living. Oh, and she’s on Ritalin for her ADHD, so that needs managing too. And probably hasn’t been, not properly …’ He grimaced as he tailed off. ‘You know how it goes.’

‘Indeed I do,’ I said, mentally ticking off another checklist. Of all the things we’d need to get put in place as a priority; of all the things we’d need to establish in terms of ground rules and routines and behaviours. Of how many ways in which my first impression had already begun changing about this outwardly sweet, biddable, idiosyncratic little girl.

‘Oh and one other thing –’ John began, but once again we were interrupted. By Tyler, who blew into the kitchen like an EF5 tornado, with Denver close behind.

‘OMG, Casey!’ he panted. ‘OMG! Yeuch! You gotta come!’

‘Come where?’ I wanted to know. ‘And what are those faces for, the pair of you?’

‘Casey, it’s like, soooo gross,’ Denver supplied. ‘You won’t believe it, honest.’

‘Like, so gross,’ Tyler added, grabbing my hand and tugging on it. ‘And that social worker lady, she says can you bring, like, a plastic bag and stuff? That girl –’ he gestured behind him. ‘She’s only gone and done a poo on the grass!’

I looked at John. ‘That the one other thing, by any chance?’

He nodded. ‘Yup.’

Chapter 3

Mike and I have dealt with our fair share of ‘accidents’ with children over the years, so while Tyler and Denver continued to express their horror via the medium of extreme face-pulling, I simply reached for a pack of baby wipes, my disinfectant and my heavy-gauge rubber gloves, while John, following my instructions, pulled a plastic bag from the roll in the utensil drawer.

‘Boys, hush,’ I told them as we all trooped in a crocodile out to the garden. ‘It’s just a poo, not the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!’

Ellie and Flip were in the far corner by our trio of plucky rose bushes – which seemed appropriate; roses loved a mulch of manure, didn’t they? Ellie was squatting on her haunches, talking quietly to Flip, as she carefully helped her step out of the pants she’d had on and had presumably pulled down before squatting on the grass herself.

I strode across to them, aware of the boys keeping a wary distance, and of John sensibly electing to stay with them and chat.

‘Here we are, sweetie,’ Ellie said brightly as she took the baby wipes from me and proceeded to pluck one from the packet to clean Flip up. ‘Let’s get you sorted now, shall we? And what do we say to Casey?’

Flip was now standing wide-legged, as if recently alighted from a long journey on horseback, which point I noted, wondering as I did so what life with her alcoholic mother had been like. She was eight. Not 18 months. Yet she was obviously used to being cleaned up in such a fashion. So this – this tendency to go where she needed to as well as when she needed to – was probably a long-entrenched behaviour.

‘Sorry, Mummy,’ Flip said, looking genuinely, if only very slightly, contrite. ‘I didn’t know it wasn’t allowed.’

‘Now that’s not strictly true, lovely, is it?’ Ellie corrected gently. ‘We go to the toilet in the toilet. Nowhere else. Remember?’

‘But I was despret,’ Flip countered. ‘I couldn’t help it. It just comed out.’

Since I could see for myself that this clearly wasn’t a case of a tummy upset, I doubted that very much. But perhaps she had never learned to ‘feel’ the usual signals; or, perhaps more likely, not to worry about the necessity to act on them as a priority. I sensed John was right. This wasn’t a signifier of emotional stress. It was a lack of house-training.

‘Let’s not worry for now,’ I said, as I pulled the gloves on and dealt with the other half of the equation. ‘We can have a chat about all that later, can’t we? In the meantime, let me deal with this’ – I tied up my bag – ‘and then we’ll see about finding you a swimming costume so you can have a play in the paddling pool with the boys. How about that?’

‘And Pink Barbie?’ Flip asked, beaming now, while Ellie used another baby wipe on her hands. ‘She’s got a cossie, she has. A sparkly one. She’s a beach Barbie, too.’

‘Excellent,’ I said, as Ellie rose to her feet and we followed a now skipping Flip back across the grass. ‘How about you get Barbie changed, then, while I see what I can find for you?’

She was back through the conservatory doors and off into the kitchen like a rocket, and I realised what we were dealing with felt more like a four-year-old than an eight-year-old. And then realised something else. The effect the something I was carrying was now having.

‘Oh my God!’ Tyler shrieked theatrically, seeing the plastic bag swinging from my hand and immediately shrinking away from me. ‘That’s just too gross. You’re not going to let her live with us, are you?’

I surveyed the offending bag, recalled the lack of mortification in our young visitor, and wondered if I should start the toilet training sooner rather than later, by having Flip accompany me to the downstairs loo for a ceremonial flushing away before we did anything else.

There were a multitude of challenges that we’d be facing with this slip of a child. I knew that, because John had already told me. Issues of her ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder), of her lack of empathy, of her apparent tendency to wander, of how the huge change in her life might impact on her emotional health. All of this fazed me not a jot, and I knew it wouldn’t faze Mike either. Our programme was designed to take a pragmatic, systematic approach to those challenges and we’d done it enough now to feel confident we would deliver it well.

But I also thought back to previous placements, and one in particular; a pair of almost feral young siblings. And, by extension, to the uniquely soul-sapping business of having a child or children regularly soiling around the house. No, it wasn’t a deal-breaker – well, hopefully – but as Tyler stood waiting for my answer I wondered if his question might be echoed by Mike, just as soon as he got home.

The soiling, however, wasn’t Mike’s main concern that evening. Nor was it mine, because, though my hunch was that she wouldn’t need to go again (not in that way), I watched Flip like a hawk. As did Tyler and Denver, with a kind of appalled fascination, as, once John and Ellie had been dispatched (the latter promising to return on the Friday to catch up and see how things were going), she darted from kitchen to conservatory to garden to living room, all the time chatting thirteen to the dozen to Pink Barbie, and seemingly physically unable to stay in one place, or engaged in one activity for more than five minutes at a time.

I’d had several children in my care who suffered the symptoms of ADHD, so the mile-a-minute behaviour and tendency to be easily distracted weren’t unfamiliar territory. What did strike me, and struck Mike as soon as he’d spent half an hour in her company, was that, very much unlike the majority of children we’d fostered, little Flip seemed not the least concerned to find herself in the company of complete strangers.

‘It seems like almost the opposite,’ he remarked, once we were flaked out on the sofa, half-watching Tyler’s favourite soap. ‘I’ve never seen a new kid so pumped up with excitement about being here. Weird.’

It was probably adrenaline, I’d decided. And it had clearly worn her out. When Flip had crashed, she had crashed good and proper. Having wolfed down her plate of bangers and mash – of necessity, it had been a cobbled-together kind of tea – she announced that Pink Barbie was tired and needed to go to bed and she thought it would be a good idea if she went with her.

We’d tried not to smile at Tyler’s fist pump (we knew how he felt) and, as Mike and he dealt with the dishes, I took her upstairs and found her some pyjamas from my stash, upon which she was in bed and fast asleep within a matter of minutes, Pink Barbie in her own pink pyjamas tucked in the crook of her arm.

‘She’s weird,’ Tyler observed now. ‘She’s like a loony, isn’t she, Casey?’ He glanced at Mike, then, presumably to check that the use of the word ‘loony’ was acceptable. Which it wasn’t, of course, but, as he already knew that, Mike didn’t press it. This was an adventure, and a challenge, that was going to involve him as well, after all.

‘She’s certainly one of a kind,’ Mike agreed, diplomatically. ‘And I’m sure she’s going to keep us all on our toes.’ He turned his gaze away from the television and leaned forward so he could look at Tyler properly. ‘But you and me are well up to that job, aren’t we, kiddo? Because I think Casey here’s going to have a lot on her hands, don’t you?’ He accompanied his words with a wink and raised a hand, with the palm towards Tyler. ‘Deal, kiddo?’

Tyler slapped the palm with his own and grinned. ‘Deal!’

I could have kissed Mike for that. There I’d been, getting increasingly stressed about whether Tyler potentially might find it all much too difficult to handle, and with a scant half dozen words Mike had him completely on side: we were Team Watson and we were in this together. I knew there would be flashpoints and disaffections – I’d be mad not to expect that – but I also felt confident we could rise to them; especially if Flip went to bed at a reasonable time every night, giving us all that precious space to recharge.

And we would need to recharge, if today had been indicative. Ellie had assured me Flip had been given her morning Ritalin by the respite carer, and I’d given her a dose at teatime, but if that was her dosed, I could only wonder incredulously what she might be like unmedicated. She was like a Duracell bunny as it was.

‘You’re telling me I’ll need back-up,’ I confirmed, nudging Tyler and grinning. ‘She’s only got one speed setting, hasn’t she, Ty? Billy Whizz.’

He looked confused. ‘Who’s Billy Whizz?’

‘He’s out of a comic,’ I explained. ‘One I used to read when I was Flip’s age. It’s called The Beano and Billy Whizz was a boy who went everywhere super-fast. You’ve heard of Dennis the Menace?’ Tyler nodded at this one. ‘Well, he’s a character from the same comic. I’ll have to pick you up a copy some time.’

Mike chuckled. ‘And with a bit of Minnie the Minx thrown in for good measure, by the sound of it.’

‘Or Flip the Fast and Furious,’ Tyler suggested, pretty sagely.

Later, once we were all in bed and Mike was snoring under the duvet beside me, I sat up and properly read the notes John had left for me, which fleshed out the picture he’d already sketched. It was the same depressing scenario as I’d come across many times before, both as a foster carer and, prior to that, running a behaviour unit in the local comprehensive school. Little Flip (little Philippa; how had the name Philippa come about, I wondered) had her potential in life stunted before she’d even been born, due to being born brain damaged as a result of her mother’s addiction.

I thought back to Tyler, whose early life had been so tragically blighted by his own mother’s addiction to heroin, and sent up a silent curse to the forces, and in Tyler’s case more specifically to the dealers, that saw young women trapped in that same desperate downward spiral that not only meant their own lives were blighted, often permanently, but that also led them to the reckless sexual behaviours that saw them bring children into the world.

It also struck me that, in one sense, Flip had had it tougher. Though Tyler’s mum’s poison had killed her when he was a toddler, it had left no long-standing physical mark on him. Yes, he’d suffered horribly, psychologically, in a zillion other ways, but he was young, fit and strong now. He could grow up and be and do anything he wanted.

There would be no heady potential for Flip, as far as I could tell, because – damningly and cruelly – alcohol had poisoned her too. And once I’d refreshed my knowledge of the damage FAS could wreak, I was reminded that there were things that could not be reversed; that the damage to her brain was going to be permanent.

I tried not to judge. To be a foster carer and be judgemental is a fool’s game, and often inappropriate, as well. Though revulsion at abusers is a normal human reaction, there are many cases where the parents who’ve had their children removed from them are very much victims themselves. But as I read, I still felt a stirring of something like anger. There were apparently grandparents. There was a brother. This was a child who did have family. Just a mother unwilling or unable to conquer her addiction and an extended family that didn’t seem to want to know her.

I read the previous social worker’s lengthy set of notes with care. John had been right when he said mother and daughter had been known to the authorities for some time; the notes went back to when Flip had been little more than a baby, one who hadn’t been reaching her developmental milestones.

There was no father’s name recorded on Flip’s birth certificate, but it seemed social services had had some contact a long time back with the maternal grandparents, who were both in their seventies, and apparently not in the best of health. Their daughter Megan was the younger of two children – there was also a brother, but he was a soldier who lived in Germany and was recently divorced. Hardly knowing his niece in any case, he apparently wanted no involvement.

Neither, it seemed, did those very same grandparents – well, at least according to the most recent note about it, which was a few years old now. This was another sad state of affairs. They had apparently tried hard to help out their daughter when Flip had been a baby, but when they practised tough love and stopped helping Megan financially her retaliation was swift and decisive. She refused to have anything more to do with them, in protest.

And it seemed that they’d long since given up on both daughter and grand-daughter – washed their hands of the pair of them, despite entreaties by Megan’s then social worker to try to build bridges. ‘It’s difficult,’ she’d noted in an email to her manager, ‘because Flip has so little in the way of attachments; with the best will in the world, it’s hard to appeal to their better natures when Flip herself seems to have not the slightest affection for them, while professing to love people she has only just met. One of the many frustrations of dealing with FAS! Will just have to keep trying …’

I recalled Flip’s last words to me when I’d kissed her goodnight; a hug and then a completely guileless and affectionate ‘I love you, Mummy.’ What a complicated business her disability was, I decided, making a mental note to find time for a session at the computer the following morning, just to gen up on things more comprehensively.

I closed the file, dropped it on the rug and switched the bedside light off. Still, I thought, as I wriggled down and put my head gratefully on the pillow, at least she was whacked out and sleeping soundly, and tomorrow was another day – one which I was actually rather looking forward to. Get a plan going, get a chart going, start getting to know our new charge a little better. First, however, sleep. A good solid eight hours till the alarm.

Though it turned out to be only two till her ear-splitting scream.

Chapter 4

‘What the hell?’ Mike said, shooting bolt upright in the bed just as I was leaping out of it.

I switched on the bedside light and checked the time. It was just after half past one in the morning. ‘I’ve no idea, love,’ I said. ‘But you try and get back to sleep. I think Flip must be having a nightmare or something.’

Mike sighed and snuggled back down under the duvet as I grabbed my dressing gown and left the room to investigate. The door to Flip’s bedroom was ajar and as I approached I could already see her, sitting crouched at the top of her bed with her back to me, holding on to the headboard, still screaming.

‘Shhhh,’ I soothed as I rushed to sit with her and stroked her back. ‘What is it, sweetie? You had a bad dream?’

Flip recoiled from my touch and shrieked even louder as she squashed herself further against the headboard. It seemed clear she didn’t know where she was or who I was.

‘It’s just me,’ I said softly. ‘Casey, you remember? Mummy.’ She twisted her head; her eyes were like saucers. I didn’t touch her this time. I just smiled and hoped that she’d recognise me enough to calm down. She really did look terrified and I imagined she’d had a nightmare. Perhaps reliving the terrifying events of the last few days. I’d also heard about night terrors in toddlers and very young children, and as she seemed unable to regain full consciousness and shake off whatever had terrified her, I decided to add some research on that to my ‘to do’ list.

In the meantime, however, she needed to wake up. It seemed nothing else was going to stop her screaming. I cast around, my eye fixing on Pink Barbie, still on her pillow. ‘Flip,’ I said in a voice that I hoped was akin to that of a diva like the eponymous Barbie, as I held the doll close to her face. ‘Flip,’ I said again, moving Barbie’s head to suggest she was the one talking. ‘New mummy is sad because you’re screaming, and you’re making me scared now as well.’

The effect was almost instantaneous. The screaming stopped as abruptly as it had apparently begun. And much as I was concerned about this vulnerable little thing apparently deciding I was her new mummy, my hunch at that moment was that it was the right word to choose. I continued in my Barbie voice. ‘Oh that’s much better, Flip,’ I trilled. ‘Now, why don’t we tell this new mummy what’s wrong?’

To my surprise, Flip immediately launched herself straight into my arms, and with such force that I nearly fell backwards on the bed. More bizarre was that she giggled then, all fear forgotten. ‘It’s you, Mummy!’ she said. ‘I forgotted what you looked like an’ I was frightened.’ She raised her eyes towards mine. ‘I am a silly sausage, aren’t I?’

I laughed, more out of sheer surprise than seeing any humour in the situation. ‘Yes, you are a bit of a silly sausage, sweetie,’ I agreed, stroking her hair. ‘Did you have a nasty dream?’

Flip lifted her head again, and shook it. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, seeming to be struggling to remember. ‘I know,’ she said brightly. ‘I need a picture by my bed, don’t I? Could I have a photo picture of you? In a frame? So I can put it by my bed? Then I’ll remember.’ She paused. ‘And a mirror? Can I have a mirror as well?’

‘What, now?’ I asked, bemused by this unexpected shopping list. ‘Tell you what,’ I said, gently disentangling her from me and passing her the doll. ‘If you and Pink Barbie get back into bed and go back to sleep, I promise I’ll get you those things tomorrow for you, okay?’

But she clearly wasn’t ready to hop back into bed yet. ‘Could you just take me to the toilet then?’ she asked. ‘Just to look in the mirror?’

What, now? I thought. This was something I’d never come across before, and I was intrigued. What on earth was wrong? I stood up, holding my arms out to her. ‘Come on then, miss,’ I said, ‘But quietly. And then straight back to bed, before Tyler wakes up.’

Indeed, it was a miracle he hadn’t already, I mused, as Flip threw herself at me, this time straight onto my hip, curling her legs around my waist like a little koala bear. She planted a kiss on my cheek. ‘Thanks, Mummy,’ she said.

Once in the bathroom, and with the door closed so the light wouldn’t spill out into Tyler’s adjacent room, I held Flip in front of the mirror above the sink. What struck me most forcibly was the intentness of her expression as she traced a finger around both her eyes, then down her nose and then around the curve of her narrow chin. I then had to struggle with my own troubled expression as a single tear fell from her left eye and slid noiselessly down her cheek. She turned away from the mirror then and buried her face into my neck. ‘I’m still ugly, Mummy, aren’t I?’ she said.

I continued to hold her where she was. ‘Flip, you’re not ugly, not at all, sweetie. You’re very, very pretty. Look. Look at your beautiful wavy hair. It’s just like Pink Barbie’s, isn’t it? And those lovely lips – just like a rosebud – they look just like Barbie’s too.’ I kissed her forehead, thinking wryly how this was so entirely off message. Girls, in the main, needed to know that beauty was only skin deep; that being beautiful on the inside was the only thing that really mattered. But not in this case. This was something different. This was a deep-rooted canker. I wondered where – or whom – she’d absorbed it from. ‘Now,’ I whispered, ‘one thing I do know for sure is that pretty girls need their beauty sleep. Have you heard about beauty sleep?’

Flip shook her head. ‘Is it a special sleep that makes you pretty?’

I nodded. ‘Even prettier. You are already very pretty. But a good night’s sleep makes you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and that is especially beautiful. Now, then. Are we ready to go back to bed?’

Flip’s mouth bloomed into a smile. ‘You mean like a squirrel? Now you’re the one being a silly sausage, Mummy, aren’t you?’

Quite possibly, I thought ruefully, as I slipped back under my own duvet some ten minutes later. Mike was fast asleep, and, having looked in on him en route, I could see why Tyler hadn’t woken up; he’d fallen asleep with his earphones in, listening to music, as per.

It took me a good while to get back to sleep myself, my head full, as it invariably was when we took on a new foster child; of all the questions that popped up about the multitude of whys and wherefores and how we’d go about unlocking the mystery behind whatever psychological muddles lay behind her challenge in living an easy life. And, in this case, physiological muddles also. That much about FAS I already knew. But what, if anything, could be done about it?

Over the next few days I began to at least gain more understanding about the problems our latest foster child was facing. Night terrors and what seemed to be unfathomable bouts of screaming seemed to be as much a part of Flip as was her ADHD; another common manifestation of her FAS.

All these letters, I thought, lined up like ducks in a row, but where the numbers were concerned things were rather less tidy; there seemed no clear consensus on either the quantity or timing of the medication she’d arrived with, and it seemed to me that nailing that was a priority.

‘Definitely,’ Ellie agreed when she made her visit the following Friday, by which time Flip had been with us for ten days. ‘You’re currently giving her two a day, right? First thing and teatime?’

I agreed that I was. ‘Not that it seems to have much of an observable impact on her mood or behaviour, I have to say,’ I added. ‘Or maybe the impact of her FAS overrides all that?’

Ellie frowned apologetically. She clearly knew as well as I did – or at least thought I did – that the pills should have some effect, and fairly quickly, too. Most people who spent time around kids with ADHD knew that. When they didn’t have their meds the term ‘all hell broke loose’ had serious resonance. ‘It’s still early days with the meds,’ she said. ‘Or so I’m told. And I’m really sorry it falls on you and Mike, Casey. But it’s really a case of trial and error till a routine is re-established. School will help with that, won’t it? And everything, you know, settles down after a bit …’

‘Settle’ and ‘down’ being the operative words. Because it seemed the night terrors weren’t confined to the night-time. Flip could ‘lose it’ – and properly lose it – seemingly without warning in the daytime too. Only the previous day she’d gone into some sort of major meltdown in the living room, leaving both Tyler and me dumbfounded.

‘They’d been sitting there watching TV, not six feet from me,’ I explained to Ellie. ‘Weren’t even talking to each other; just sitting there, opposite ends of the sofa – watching a nature programme, I think it was – when suddenly she was screaming at the top of her lungs.’

‘Something she saw on the screen?’ Ellie suggested. ‘A big spider, perhaps? Something like that?’

I shook my head. ‘Not a spider. It was a lion that set her off, apparently. A lioness, actually, carrying a cub in her mouth. Which completely freaked her out. And I mean freaked her out; it was almost as if she was having some sort of fit; she’d thrown herself on the floor, still clutching her doll, thrashing about, limbs flailing, the lot. And she was really thrashing about, too – took me a good while to get a proper hold of her, let alone calm her down. And even she couldn’t articulate quite why it had set her off the way it had. So it’s not like a phobia, nothing like that. It can come out of nowhere.’

And could do so at school, too, I reflected gloomily. Ellie shook her head and sighed sympathetically. ‘Well, there’s nothing in her notes, as you know,’ she said. ‘So perhaps this is a new thing. You know, with all the upheaval. And being separated from her mum, of course. Or perhaps it’s just a new manifestation of the ADHD. I guess all you can do is keep on recording everything; see if there’s any pattern to it, any obvious triggers.’

Along with the episodes of soiling, the night waking, the obsession with being so ‘ugly’, the myriad little ways the strangeness of our little house-guest was becoming ever more apparent. I was at least forming a picture of sorts, however dispiriting the colouring-in part. ‘Will do,’ I said. ‘Early days. I’m sure there’s a lot still to learn. We’ll get there – try our best to, at any rate.’

‘And you’re doing a great job,’ Ellie reassured me, smiling a bright, encouraging sort of smile, which couldn’t help but remind me of just how young and inexperienced she was, even as she affected the role of sage supporter. ‘Casey, I know you’ll do your best,’ she said. ‘You and Mike both.’ She grinned. ‘Trust me, you came highly recommended. So we have no concerns. None. And Flip seems to love it here. You all got a very big thumbs up, I can report. As did your cooking. And her room. So that’s positive, isn’t it?’ she finished brightly.

I couldn’t help but laugh. This, too, was a part of the process. The business of ‘bedding in’ – with both the child and the social worker that came with her. And one of the key things that happened during every home visit was that the social worker spent time alone with the child privately. This was a necessity, obviously, because it gave the child a voice; a chance to share their own thoughts about the place where they’d been billeted – to comment on how they felt about aspects of their care.

It was a dialogue that invariably had to be adapted to a child’s age and stage. An older child might well be able to articulate their feelings easily, but a little one might need a simpler schema to work with; a question-and-answer format that could elicit, say, a thumbs-up or thumbs-down response. And it wasn’t just valuable for the child. As a foster carer myself I knew what many of us were like. If given a thumbs-up, thumbs-down or halfway-between selection, we’d err towards the ‘up’ almost every time. That was the nature of the job – and perhaps the psychological make-up of the majority. You didn’t go into fostering if you were generally beset by negativity; that a person tended towards the positive was probably an essential to do the job. You definitely had to see hope where others didn’t.

Which made us unreliable witnesses. Given the opportunity to tell it like it was, I knew for a fact that the majority of us didn’t. We’d make light of problems if we could, wanting to try to deal with them ourselves, and only when things got really bad did we want to ask for help. Silly, really, and definitely not in anyone’s best interests, but definitely also par for the course.

Which meant that social workers, who didn’t always get a chance to see the extent of a child’s idiosyncrasies for themselves, sometimes failed to hear the full extent of them either. Today, however, Ellie was in luck because just as she was preparing to leave, having given me my pep talk, Tyler blew into the kitchen like the proverbial East Wind.

‘Casey, you best go outside,’ he said. ‘Go and see to her. I think she’s going Loony Tunes again.’

‘Tyler!’ I admonished, while Ellie slipped her files into her bag. ‘What have I told you about using expressions like that in this house? What do you mean, exactly? What’s Flip actually doing?’

‘Three guesses,’ he suggested as we both followed him out into the back garden. ‘Only much worse,’ he threw over his shoulder.

He wasn’t wrong. Flip, who as far as we’d known had been playing in the garden with Pink Barbie while we’d chatted, was squatting on the grass, holding the doll above her, swooping it back and forth like a boy would do with an aeroplane. She was also singing. Singing lustily, at the top of her voice. But it wasn’t the song – ‘Under the Sea’, from The Little Mermaid – that stopped me in my tracks. It was the fact that her hair and face, and that of the doll, were covered in what looked like something I hoped that it wasn’t but which I feared, from Tyler’s tip-off, that it more than likely was. ‘Flip!’ I shouted. ‘Is that poo that you’re covered in?’

Flip looked up as if surprised and then smiled and waved at me. She then put the Barbie – and I cringed – close to her ear. Then she spoke. ‘Yes, it’s Mummy, Barbie! Look! Wave to Mummy.’

Barbie waved. Tyler wrinkled his nose. Ellie tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Erm, Casey,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a meeting I really shouldn’t be late for. So unless you need me – and just say, because it’s absolutely no problem – I think I’d better get going and leave this to you.’

Would I do any different in her shoes? Probably not, I conceded. ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘you get off. We’ve got this one covered. No problem.’

‘No problem?’ squeaked Tyler, sharp enough not to have missed my royal ‘we’.

I turned back to Flip. ‘Come on, miss. Indoors, please. Time for a bath. Honestly, Flip, how many times?’ I added, as she ambled across the grass. ‘Why would you poo in the garden again? You know you must use the toilet. Come on. Inside.’

Tyler stood back, making a big show of retching as he did so. ‘Urgh! You’re disgusting, Flip! Urrrrgh!’

I shared his sentiments. Up close and personal the smell was indeed disgusting, encouraging Ellie all the quicker to say goodbye and head for the front door. I changed my mind then. Perhaps the bath indoors needed to be preceded by an al fresco soaking. It was another scorcher and we had the hose and paddling pool out, after all.

‘It wasn’t Flip, it was me, Mummy!’ she said in a squeaky voice, brandishing the doll. ‘It wasn’t Flip. Flip’s a good girl an’ she knows to go to the toilet. I’m sowwy, Mummy.’

Great, I thought, ruing the fact that the other night I’d unwittingly given this diminutive plastic goddess a voice. I could see Tyler opening his mouth to offer his own take on the subject too.

‘We can talk about all that in a bit,’ I said to both of them. ‘Now come on over here, miss,’ I said, directing Flip towards the coiled hose with a carefully placed finger. ‘I think you and Pink Barbie need a bit of jet wash.’

Tyler cottoned on then. ‘She’s not getting in the paddling pool!’ he shouted after us, his voice indignant. ‘I’m not fishing that stuff out as well as all the flies!’

I had a re-think. ‘No, of course I wasn’t going to put her in the paddling pool,’ I lied, the words ‘creek’ and ‘paddle’ springing instantly to mind as I herded her across the lawn and told her to stay put.

Tyler handed me the hose with an air of resignation. ‘I knew she’d be trouble,’ he sighed.

Chapter 5

To say I was relieved when the start of September came around was a bit of an understatement. It wasn’t the fact that I had two full-on children in the house particularly; I’d obviously dealt with that many times before. It was that having our very own Minnie the Minx around – as Tyler had taken to calling Flip – was physically and emotionally draining, and I was exhausted.

Flip simply didn’t seem to have an off switch. She chattered on ceaselessly, about anything and everything, from the minute she woke up to the minute she went to sleep. And if she had no actual human available to chat to, she chattered on to Pink Barbie instead.

‘Mummy, why is the sky blue? Mummy, what are leaves made of? Why do they taste nasty and peas don’t? Where do clouds live when they go home at night? Why has the daddy got silver bits in his hair?’ The stream of never-ending questions (not to mention the answering of them, which invariably threw up even more questions) was beginning to take its toll, even if it did at least point to a healthily enquiring mind, and even if the Mike-centred questions did make me giggle. Where we used to stay up until around 11 o’clock, we found ourselves clock watching from eight, when Flip went to bed, and would follow her and Tyler (who would be back to bed at nine on school days) as soon as we were confident they would be asleep – so keen were we to get our heads down ourselves. We knew we had to; the small-hours screaming sessions could start at any time, and seemed to be happening two nights out of three, and at least that way I was sure to get some sleep in before they started and I had to begin the laborious process of settling Flip back down again.

No, she needed to be back in school, badly. Though I’d had a fight on my hands to get her placed where I wanted her, because Ellie’s manager felt it best that she return to her old school, thereby making the transition into care less traumatic. I disagreed. ‘I just don’t see that,’ I’d argued, when Ellie had popped over at the end of August. ‘She’s already made that transition. And from what I can see in her notes, she was barely attending anyway; I certainly get no sense that she’s pining for a gang of girlfriends. She’s mentioned no one, and it seems clear to me that she’s not really formed any real attachments. To my mind, it makes more sense for her to have a fresh start at the local school.’

It was also a lot closer, which was a big consideration too. It made no sense to cart her several miles there and back every day – no sense for either of us. Plus if she did make some friends, they’d be local as well, which meant she’d at least have the option of seeing them out of school too.

Thankfully, Ellie agreed with me. ‘Leave it with me,’ she’d said firmly. And within a matter of no more than 48 hours she’d not only got her hands on Flip’s school files for me to look through, she’d also spoken to the school Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (Senco) there, a lady called Sonia, who’d said she’d be more than happy to chat to me and answer any questions she could. For a relative rookie, Ellie was proving to be a pretty good ally, clearly unafraid to state her case.

And Sonia was extremely helpful too.

‘Oh, I’m so pleased that someone has acted at last,’ she said after I introduced myself. ‘Well, perhaps not in the best of circumstances, but you know what I mean. That poor mite was such a worry for me. You know, it was almost as if she were bringing herself up,’ she explained. ‘Some days she’d turn up for school half starving. And I mean really hungry – give her a biscuit and she’d wolf it down like an animal; I often got the impression that she might not have had a single thing to eat since her school dinner the lunchtime before.’

‘She certainly seems to love her food,’ I said. ‘Though I’m not sure where she puts it.’ Despite her eating like the proverbial horse, Flip was no less scrawny than when she’d come to us – no doubt a result of using up so much nervous energy.

‘Oh bless her. Such a terrible business. And there would always be some excuse; Mummy was asleep, Mummy was ill, Mummy was out … And we reported everything, naturally, not least because she’d turn up at school at such odd times as well. Mid-morning, mid-afternoon – well, when she turned up at all, that was. You know, one day she fetched up at half past four in the afternoon, seemingly oblivious – and, of course, there were only a handful of us left. It was only luck that someone glanced out and saw her crossing the playground. By the time I got there, she’d hung up her bag and coat on her peg and was just sitting there in her seat, smiling. I honestly don’t think she had the slightest idea what time of day it was.’

Which all seemed to fit. Sonia paused. ‘Well, until I explained to her that school had finished and that everyone had gone home. Soon as I told her that she burst into tears and it took an age to calm her down. Said she’d come in specially because she wanted to do some drawing. I feel dreadful about sending her away that day, I really do.’

I didn’t doubt it. For all that Flip had come into our lives like a small fizzing tornado, the thing that screamed most loudly at me – louder than she did – was her extreme vulnerability. No, it was absolutely right that she come to our local school, where I’d only ever be ten minutes away.

Not only that, our local primary was the school that Levi attended, and that little Jackson was starting at this term as well. It really made no sense to send her anywhere else, so I was glad when John confirmed, after stating my case to social services as well, that they’d agreed she could be educated in our area, even if it was slightly reluctantly.

A trip into town to get a new uniform was therefore a priority, as Flip would need the whole kit and caboodle, including a pair of shoes. It would also give me an opportunity, thankfully aided and abetted by Riley, to make my first foray out into the wider world with our new charge, who thus far had only ventured as far as Kieron and Lauren’s, when I’d popped over with her to drop some milk and a loaf of bread round for the pair of them, as their flight back from holiday brought them back in the wee hours.

No, this trip would be something of a learning curve, I reckoned, giving me an opportunity to observe how she managed out in the wider world and whether the business of her wandering off was one I needed to be hyper-vigilant about. Not that we were short of pairs of watchful eyes. As well as Riley, who was driving (she being the one with the people-carrier), we also had Levi and Jackson with us, plus Tyler, who needed a new uniform as well. He was starting in year 8 – he’d be 13 in no time at all now – and, as boys often do, he seemed to have grown three or four inches in as many weeks. Well, if not quite that, certainly in less than as many months. Needless to say, with Marley-Mae in her buggy, we were all but mob-handed. And with the lads being lads, somewhat rowdy.

‘Ha-ha! Girls have to wear PE knickers,’ Levi pointed out to Flip as we browsed through the list in the school uniform section of the department store. ‘Big black ones. HUGE black ones,’ he added helpfully. ‘Really baggy.’

Although Levi and Flip were almost exactly the same age, the huge social and intellectual gap between them was often apparent. Flip immediately began to fret about this nugget of information. ‘But I don’t wanna do PE. Or wear them knickers. What if I need a poo?’

Levi grinned widely. ‘Ha-ha!’ he said, laughing. ‘Mum, she said poo! She said she might need a poo in PE!’ Then something else seemed to occur to him. ‘I hope you’re joking,’ he told her, ‘because you can’t say things like that at school. People will laugh at you,’ he added, looking suddenly anxious. ‘And at me,’ he said, as if becoming aware of a worrying possibility. ‘Mum, she’s not gonna be in my class, is she?’

Riley and I exchanged glances as Flip beamed at a now concerned-looking Levi, then threw her arms around his neck. ‘I think I will be in your class,’ she said, as he wriggled free from her clutches. ‘It’ll be good, won’t it? We’ll be just like a real brother and sister!’

She then turned and patted Jackson. ‘An you can be my brother too,’ she said, pinching his cheek, while Levi watched them, clearly appalled.

He wasn’t the only one. ‘God,’ Tyler said, with some feeling, looking at me. ‘I am so glad I don’t have to be a part of this. You’re all right, Flip,’ he said, as her attention turned towards him. ‘And if anyone asks, I’m the black sheep of the family, okay? No relation.’

Which set Marley-Mae off on an impromptu rendition of her current favourite song, so that anyone who hadn’t heard our arrival in the school uniform department could be assured of at least noticing our exit.

Having lunch in town with five children and a buggy is never easy; not if you want it with a modicum of decorum and your coffee served in mugs rather than cardboard. Fortunately, there was a big friendly café just off the high street, which just so happened to be run by my younger sister, Donna, and was invariably the obvious choice. So, with the kit part done (and just the shoes, and the caboodle part, presumably, left to deal with) we headed there to get everyone fed.

Less fortunately, it was busy and there was no large table left, so the logical thing seemed to be to spread across two adjacent ones. ‘There you are, boys,’ Riley told them, as she unbuttoned Jackson’s jacket. ‘You boys can have a boys’ table – you’re officially in charge, Tyler – and we girls can have a nice quiet one next door.’

‘Ye-ess!’ Levi said, doing the little fist-pump he’d learned from Tyler.

‘So, Flip,’ he finished, ‘would you like to help take off Marley-Mae’s coat?’

But it seemed Flip didn’t want to take off Marley-Mae’s coat. It seemed Flip didn’t want to do anything.

Except scream. Which she immediately did, at an ear-splitting volume. As ever, it seemed incredible that so many decibels could come out of such a tiny pair of lungs. I jumped from the seat I’d been just about to park my bottom on and knelt down in front of her in the aisle between the tables, conscious that every head in the place had turned towards us.

‘Flip! Stop that!’ I tried, speaking sternly in the hope that it might work. It didn’t. In fact, her face started to go an alarming shade of purple. She threw back her head then and screamed even louder. I knew my own face was probably well on the way to matching hers for colour; even though my focus was on her, I could hear Tyler groaning, and also the low but rising hum of incredulity from our fellow diners – well, former diners; I doubted anyone was enjoying a quiet lunch any more.

Riley squatted down beside me and placed her mouth close to my ear. ‘God, mother,’ she whispered. ‘I mean, I know you told me, but, oh my word … Look, can I try?’

I leaned to the side, only too happy to accept a third-party intervention, it coming to me immediately that a less familiar figure might bring her ‘back’ more readily than I seemed to be able to.

Riley placed her hands on Flip’s shoulders. ‘Flip,’ she said, giving her shoulders a gentle squeeze to get her attention. ‘Something has upset you, clearly, but we don’t know what, do we? And unless you stop this silly screaming, you won’t be able to tell us what it is, will you? We’ll just have to get the boys … are you listening to me, Flip? Get the boys and leave here. Are you listening? Are you hearing what I’m saying?’

Flip’s mouth clamped shut. It was almost an instantaneous action. From one state to a different state in the blink of an eye. She then glared at Riley. ‘Thems are my boys!’ she shouted at Riley. ‘Thems my brothers and I wanna sit with them!’ Then – ping! Blink of an eye again – the screaming started up again.

My mind was whirling with thoughts as I took in the components of this short exchange. Was this simply a manipulation tool? Was this just a classic toddler tantrum? No, it wasn’t that, clearly. No toddler could switch emotions on and off in that way. When a toddler had a tantrum there was a long tail at the end of it; the child in question was invariably an emotional wreck immediately afterwards – a limp rag, hot-cheeked, shuddering with the last remnants of tears. No, this was different. This was knowingly manipulative behaviour, and the name Violet Elizabeth popped unbidden into my brain. Violet Elizabeth from the Just William books I’d read to my own children. Violet Elizabeth, who when crossed always said ‘I’ll scream and I’ll scream and I’ll scream!’

Despite the spectacle we were making of ourselves, it even made me smile. Though somewhat grimly, and I could see Riley was thinking the same. This was no spoilt brat – not in a million years – but this was possibly a learned behaviour; a blunt instrument of a communication tool, in order to get her way. And it was one that we didn’t do her any favours by giving in to for the sake of peace. To give in to it would simply be to reinforce it.

I could read Riley’s thoughts as she took Flip’s hand, and, smiling at the boys (the younger two of whom looked like they might start crying), stood up again. ‘Right, boys, everything is fine,’ she reassured them. ‘Levi, could you help take off your sister’s coat while your nan orders some drinks, sweetheart? Me and Flip here just need to go outside for a minute or two.’ And with that she tugged on a now stunned Flip’s arm, and pulled her, thankfully mute again, out of the café door.

The low hum around us mushroomed into a more familiar burble; cutlery clinked, chairs scraped and normal service seemed to be resumed. ‘Help Levi with Marley-Mae, will you, Tyler?’ I asked him, before heading up to the counter and prefixing my drinks order with a profuse apology to the new woman manning the till, Donna having nipped home for her break. I wasn’t sure how much luck Riley would have with Flip out there, but if it looked like we’d have to cut and run rather than actually eating – or, indeed, without finishing our shopping – I at least wanted a decent slurp of coffee before we did so.

Riley and Flip still hadn’t reappeared when I brought the tray back to the table but, as far as I could see (not to mention hear) through all the menus and various ‘dish of the day’ stickers, Flip had at least not resumed screaming. I duly sat down and sipped my scalding drink. Fingers crossed then.

‘I don’t like her when she does that, Nanny,’ Jackson said quietly. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

Before I could think of an answer, Tyler provided one for him. ‘She’s not right in the head, kiddo,’ he said conversationally. ‘We get it all the time at home, don’t we, Casey?’

I shook my head. ‘Tyler!’ I admonished, albeit equally quietly. ‘How many times have I told you? “Not right in the head” is not a nice thing to say! She has some problems, sweetheart, that’s all,’ I corrected for the benefit of Levi and Jackson. ‘But we’re working to help her – all of us; Tyler’s doing his bit, too – and hopefully you boys can just be a little bit patient while we try to work out how best we can do that right now. Is that okay?’

Jackson nodded and then pointed at the door. ‘It’s all right, Nan, she’s all better now. Look, they’re coming back in again.’

She did indeed seem largely ‘all better’. Riley winked at me as she sat opposite and pulled Flip into the chair next to hers. ‘All sorted, Mum,’ she said, turning to smile at Flip, who seemed to be looking up at her adoringly. ‘Flip just wanted to sit somewhere different, didn’t you, sweetie? But she now sees why we ladies should all sit together, and I’ve explained that screaming is most definitely not a good way to get people to listen to her. In fact it’s more likely to get people to close their ears and not listen. Isn’t that right, Flip?’

Flip nodded and picked up the orange juice I placed in front of her. ‘I was just scared, Mummy,’ she told me.

‘Scared?’ I asked her. ‘Scared of what?’

She glanced past me to where the boys were. ‘Scared I wasn’t allowed to sit with my brothers because they didn’t like me –’

‘I never said that!’ Levi interrupted indignantly. ‘I never!’

Oh, God, I thought. Here we go again. But Tyler was already shushing him.

‘Because I’m so ugly,’ Flip finished, with a new sob in her voice, and clearly so taken up with her own train of thought that she wasn’t even listening to him.

‘Well, what a silly sausage thing to think!’ I said, reaching across to pat her hand reassuringly. ‘As if those boys would even think that! Nobody could possibly think that, sweetie. I keep telling you how pretty you are.’

‘I did too,’ Riley said, looking at me. ‘In fact, we’ve even had a chat, Flip and I. And the next time you bring her round to our house she’s going to play Princess Dress Up with me and Marley-Mae, and we’re doing hair, make-up, the whole girly lot, aren’t we, love? I might even get Lauren over too, now she’s back from holidays. Now, who’s for food? Are you all Hank Marvin over there, Ty? I know I could eat a whole woolly mammoth.’

With woolly mammoth not on the menu, it was chicken nuggets and French fries for the kids, and while Riley and I shared a plate of spaghetti and meatballs we tried to ignore the glances of the customers who had witnessed the performance and seemed so keen to express their feelings – via the medium of dark looks and meaningful stares as they exited.

Which was fine. I’d been in similar scenarios more times than I cared to remember, and it was odds on I’d be in similar scenarios many times again. Indeed, likely as not before the week was out, with our little pocket rocket. Which reminded me that I should perhaps be a little more proactive; rather than wait to be told, I should get down to the GP’s and get Flip registered and re-assessed, because it seemed clear things were not working out with her medication.

Seemed crystal clear, in fact. Because lunch finished, and while Riley was off in the ladies with Flip and Marley-Mae, a kindly-looking older lady stopped on her way out of the café. ‘Bless you, you have got your hands full,’ she remarked.

‘We have indeed,’ I agreed ruefully, while I helped Jackson with his coat.

‘Not meaning to interfere,’ she added, obviously keen to tell me something. ‘But she reminds me of my grand-daughter, that little ’un with the lungs on her. I was saying to my friend. She might have that ADH thingy.’ She lowered her voice a touch. ‘You can get pills for it. Like a miracle, they are. Like a different girl, she is now. Anyway, dear, just thought I’d mention.’

‘Erm …’ I began. But where to start? In fact, why start at all? After all, she’d just proved my point.

Chapter 6

The morning I waved Tyler off to school for the start of a new term didn’t turn out to be the day that Flip joined her class. Despite getting the go-ahead from the local authority – and I had carefully guarded the confirmation letter as evidence, should it be needed – the school had already been informed about her history and her lack of attendance at her previous school, so, before deciding which class to put her into, they wanted to meet Flip and me for a chat.

Given the time we’d had with her so far, this did make sense, even if it meant that in the end they didn’t take her. Should that be the case, then perhaps a more specialist school was going to be the way forward in any case, though the big stress was the time it would take to get her a place at such an institution – I knew things like that could take weeks, and Flip needed to be back in the routine of education, for everyone’s sakes.

I’d also made an appointment with our GP’s surgery, with a view to discussing where she was with her medication, and coming up with a slightly more scientific answer than ‘Aargh!’

As for giving her a morning dose of Ritalin, I was very much in two minds, but reasoning that, for the most part, it was a drug that calmed children down rather than making them go off pop, I opted to give it to her and hope for the best; odds on, it would surely only help our case once we got to school.

‘Here you go, sweetie,’ I said, passing Flip a glass of water and her pill. ‘Take this and then we’ll have a nice walk down to see the doctor.’

Flip pulled a face at me, wrinkling her nose. ‘Thems horrible, Casey. They make me feel funny.’

It was the first time she’d made reference to how the drugs made her feel so I pressed her for more, thinking it may help the doctor. ‘How do they make you feel, love? Funny how?’

She swallowed the pill and put the glass down, then shrugged. ‘Just funny. And I don’t like it. Sort of wonky.’

I suppressed a smile as I took the glass. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard a child try to explain how Ritalin affected them, but it was the first time I’d heard the word ‘wonky’. But perhaps she had hit the nail on the head. I couldn’t imagine having to take a pill that made me feel out of control, and from what I knew of this particular medication, that’s kind of what it did. Other children had described it as making them feel that they were stuck in a dream, and ‘not quite there’. Wonky. I got that. And I mentally filed it. Whatever it did, I didn’t suppose it was very nice.

In most cases there was no doubt Ritalin had the ‘desired’ effect – it subdued the need to be constantly on the go, increased the ability to concentrate for more than five minutes and, I guess more importantly, it allowed parents who were at their wits’ end to cope and teachers to allocate their time to all of their class, rather than having to be constantly tied up with a child who had ADHD. Which was obviously important in a world full of 30-strong classes, a curriculum to be delivered to a timetable and, of course, those frazzled parents.

Which was why I was slightly open mouthed at Dr Shakelton’s suggestion when we were sitting in his consulting room half an hour later.

‘What I’d like to do, Casey, if you’re okay with it,’ he said, after we’d discussed what we both knew of Flip, and he’d chatted to her himself, ‘is to have a bit of a trial run without the Ritalin.’

I looked at Flip, who was now disengaged from us, sliding her new school socks up and down her legs. Then I turned back to the doctor. ‘Without the Ritalin? I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘She’s been assessed as having ADHD – well, as far as I believe, and she’s very hyper even though she’s taking the tablets.’ I frowned, choosing my words carefully as she was in the room with us. ‘I don’t know what it would be like without them.’

‘And that’s precisely my point,’ the doctor said. ‘Despite popular opinion, Ritalin can actually have an adverse effect on some children. From what you’ve told me – and her records seem to suggest the same – the medication isn’t doing much to control the hyperactivity at all.’ He smiled at Flip, who smiled back at him as if he was Santa in a suit. ‘Young Philippa here says she doesn’t like the tablets, so we ought really to have some time off from them, shouldn’t we? Just to see what happens.’

Flip’s smile became a pout. ‘S’not Philippa!’ she said crossly. ‘It’s Flip. With a “F”! Mummy, can we go now?’ she whined, turning to me. ‘I’m bored an’ I wanna go to school.’

Dr Shakelton smiled again. ‘I do beg your pardon, Flip with a “F”. So, Casey? What do you think? You up for a bit of a medical trial?’

The answer was, of course, yes. Had to be, really. Dr Shakelton had been our family GP for many years. He didn’t just know the job I did, and the kinds of kids I tended to look after – he’d been pretty active in supporting us in doing so. If he was suggesting something, I trusted him enough to know that he was acting in Flip’s best interest. ‘I guess we can do that,’ I said, mentally crossing my fingers that the ‘trial’ went the way we both hoped. ‘How long before we see any results, do you think?’

‘We might not see any results,’ he said, ‘but then again, if she was misdiagnosed by any chance – and it can happen – we just might. Either way, I’d say to give it at least a month, and if things worsen in that time we can always try putting her back on it again.’

Flip was already up on her feet, clutching my hand and hopping from one to the other impatiently. I stood up as well. ‘Right then, kiddo, let’s go see what school has to say, then, shall we?’

Flip grinned and pulled at me. ‘Yes, come on! I promised the brothers we wouldn’t be late!’ She then seemed to remember something. ‘Mummy, could you ask the doctor man if I can have a poo in his toilet first? I don’t wanna have no accidents, do I?’

This was fast becoming something of a thing with Flip. We’d all banged on so much about the importance of recognising you needed the toilet in good time to actually get to a toilet that we’d arrived at a place where Flip wanted the opportunity to use any toilet, anywhere, whether she needed to or not. There were points involved for using a toilet, after all. It had almost become something of a game to her.

‘Do you really need to go?’ I asked her, just as Dr Shakelton was raising a finger to point us in the direction of his. ‘Could you wait five minutes till we get home, do you think? You’ll still get a star on your chart.’ It really was like dealing with a pre-schooler.

Happy now, she assured me she could wait and we hurried home – her chattering away in her usual manner about the first thing that caught her attention, and with me wondering what line the school might take when I told them she wouldn’t be getting any medication for the foreseeable future. Which I absolutely had to do, even if it was tempting not to.

And Flip clearly did need to use the toilet. She was halfway up the stairs before I’d even closed the front door.

‘Hang on, why don’t you use the downst—’ I began.

‘Can’t!’ she said. ‘It’s already coming out!’ Then she disappeared round the corner of the landing.

I shook my head as I went to find my car keys, ready to drive to school. That made no sense either, but the main thing was that I would need to have a word with her about her tendency towards the descriptive when it came to bodily functions; a social nicety that would be second nature to an average eight-year-old and the sort of lapse that would mark her out as odd. And I had no doubt she’d probably been a much-bullied child. I found the keys, then went to grab a couple of shopping bags to take with me, so I could pop to the supermarket as soon as we’d finished up in school – well, assuming they allowed her to stay. I had also promised Kieron that I’d drop in on Lauren – she’d been feeling under the weather since getting back from holiday and was taking a few days off work. I decided I’d get a few extra bits and drop them off for her. I’d just stuffed the bags into my handbag when Flip appeared again on the landing – this time with Pink Barbie in her hand. So that was why she was keen to use the upstairs bathroom.

‘Uh-oh,’ she said, her face taking on the expression of an exasperated mother as she came back down the stairs. ‘Looks like this little princess doesn’t know her manners. She was meant to wipe my bum for me, and she managed to leave the poo on my new knickers.’ She frowned at the doll and then at me. ‘She left skidders, Mummy!’

‘Oh, Flip!’ I said, dropping the car keys and my bag onto the hall table. ‘Are you serious? Truth, now. Did you poo in the toilet or in your pants?’ I turned her around and started walking her back up the stairs. ‘Come on, back to the bathroom. Let’s get you sorted out.’

‘I told you! It was this little madam!’ she cried indignantly. ‘I wouldn’t mess in my new school knickers! Not never!’

Though of course she had. And it wasn’t just the underwear. It was down the back of her legs, the lovely white school socks, and also smeared down the back of her cute pinafore dress. I could have cried. She’d looked so pretty a couple of hours ago, when I’d taken the obligatory first-day-at-school photo that I’d done with my own children, and every foster child since.

I’d been reading up on soiling and, with such a plethora of information on the subject (good old Google …), I felt no better informed about what might be at the root of Flip’s behaviour than I had when I’d started. There just seemed to be so many factors that might be involved. It was clearly something that needed more professional intervention, and as a priority, because I couldn’t really see much progress being made on the ‘socialising’ front till it was dealt with.

But it wasn’t her fault, and I knew I had to keep that uppermost in mind while, nose wrinkling, I stripped her down and cleaned her up, ready to change into another set of clothes. I thanked the lord that I’d had the foresight to buy four of everything. If things went on like this, I’d struggle to keep up.

Fifteen minutes later – and ten minutes late for our appointment – we were sitting in the headmaster’s office. Mr Stancliffe, the headteacher, had already introduced himself and was now introducing the friendly-looking woman who had also joined us.

‘Selina Carter,’ he said as I leaned over to shake hands with her. ‘Selina runs our nurture group.’

I’d not heard of them having a nurture group, and it must have shown on my face, because Miss Carter was quick to explain. It was a new class, apparently, born out of the previous learning support group, and simply renamed to differentiate it. She smiled at Flip, who reciprocated. I had a hunch she was going to like Miss Carter. ‘We decided that, while Flip gets used to her new surroundings, and we work out which groups she needs to be in,’ she went on, ‘she’ll spend her first couple of weeks here in my class. It’s just a small group – six other children or so, generally no more than that – and she’ll be doing the curriculum, just the same as everyone else. Just in a less stressful environment, you know –’ she smiled at Flip again – ‘to help get her settled in.’

Flip didn’t return the second smile. In fact, she immediately gripped my hand and wriggled herself closer to me. ‘What about the brothers?’ she whispered, as if discussing some obscure religious sect. ‘Ask her, Mummy. Are the brothers going to be in my class?’ She squeezed my hand tighter, her voice tight, and I feared the imminent arrival of tears followed by a meltdown.

‘Sweetie,’ I said, leaning towards her, hoping I could prevent it. ‘No they won’t, but that’s because this is a special, special class, for very special little girls. It’s because you’re such a special little girl that you’ve been picked – you have been hand-picked – to go in with Miss Carter, just for a little bit. Because you’re special. And I’m sure it’s going to be lots and lots of fun.’ I glanced meaningfully at the two teachers who were watching our exchange, and thankfully Mr Stancliffe seemed to know what to do.

‘Mrs Watson … um … your mummy … is absolutely right,’ he said. ‘In fact, Miss Carter’s class is the most fun in the whole school, Flip, and you’ll still get to play with … um … the brothers?’ He glanced at me, confused.

‘My grandsons,’ I quickly supplied. ‘Levi and Jackson. They’re both here, and that’s how Flip refers to them.’

‘Because they are my brothers,’ she added, her anxiety seemingly now forgotten.

‘Ah,’ Mr Stancliffe said, ‘yes, yes, of course. Well, you’ll get to play with them at playtime – and lunchtime, of course – and I’m sure you’ll get to wait for them at home time.’ He leaned towards her. ‘I promise you, you will love it in Miss Carter’s group.’

It was a lot to live up to, but Miss Carter looked equal to the task. She stood up and held out a hand towards Flip. ‘Why don’t you and I go and have a sneaky peek at your new classroom, eh, Flip? You can meet the other children, and do you know what? I bet you anything you make a best friend forever this very morning. Don’t worry,’ she added, seeing Flip’s worried look. ‘Your mum can come and see you before she leaves.’

I encouraged Flip to go by producing Pink Barbie, who, unbeknown to Flip, I had slipped into my handbag before we left. ‘I’m sure Barbie will be allowed just for today,’ I said, glancing at Miss Carter hopefully. ‘Just to see your new school.’

I then had to force a smile as I watched Flip leave the office, glancing back at me anxiously as she left. Bless her heart. She looked absolutely terrified.

I ended up spending the best part of an hour with the headteacher, trying to give him a bit of insight as to what he might expect from Flip; what sort of background was involved, how she’d been since she’d come to us, the problems of lack of attachments, her meltdowns and her tendency to wander, plus the fact – and to his credit, he didn’t look too traumatised – that as of tomorrow she was off her Ritalin for a month. I hurried on, then, to what long-term plans had been tentatively put in place.

‘Essentially to get her placed with a long-term foster family,’ I told him. ‘Or, ideally, an adoptive one, obviously.’ I smiled. ‘Well, once we’ve managed to socialise her a bit, at any rate.’ I paused then. Better I do it now than have it – literally – come out once I’d gone. ‘There is one other issue I should make you aware of, Mr Stancliffe.’

He raised his eyebrows quizzically. ‘Which is?’

‘That it seems she’s never been properly potty-trained.’

I could see his brain whirring, wondering perhaps if I’d delivered her in a nappy. ‘Which means?’

‘Which means we’re working on it, but she does need reminding to go to the toilet and, to some extent, if it’s feasible, er … accompanying. Which is why I’m so pleased that you’ve decided to start her off in your nurture group,’ I rattled on. ‘Because it’ll make the process altogether easier, won’t it?’

I mentally apologised to poor Miss Carter as I said that, but, again, Mr Stancliffe seemed to take it all in his stride.

‘Right,’ he said, scribbling down something on the pad in front of him. ‘Right.’

He put his pen down.

‘So she’s effectively an unknown quantity as of tomorrow,’ he said finally.

I nodded. ‘Well, I suppose, yes. We’re doing this blind. All I know is that her medication doesn’t seem to have any impact on her. She’s just the same with it as when it wears off. My GP is hoping that it’s the meds that are making her so erratic, and that after some time off from them she might settle down a bit. That’s the plan, anyway. We’ll just have to see. You never know – it might even help with the soiling.’

I saw his nose wrinkle, almost imperceptibly, but definitely. ‘Ri-ight,’ he said again, then cleared his throat decisively. ‘As you probably already know, Mrs Watson, we did tell the local authority that we were at full capacity here.’ I nodded. ‘And that, like yours with her medication, this is going to be something of a trial. If we can’t fully meet her needs, we’d be doing her a disservice if we held on to her. I’m sure you’d agree.’

I did. On both counts. The word ‘trial’ had more than one meaning, after all. So after I’d gone and blown a kiss goodbye to Flip, who I could see through the classroom window now seemed be enjoying herself enormously with Miss Carter, I crossed both pairs of fingers on both of my hands. And then crossed my thumbs for good measure.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.