Copyright

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First published by HarperElement 2014

FIRST EDITION

© Rosie Lewis 2014

Rosie Lewis asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

Cover photographs © Plainpicture/Souslesarbres (posed by model)

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available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007541782

Ebook Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9780007541799

Version 2016-11-11

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

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

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Epilogue

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Prologue

With small, stumbling fingers Phoebe set her torch on the bedside cabinet, then rolled around her bed until her whole body became swaddled by her sheet, all the way up to her ears. Her cheeks burned with heat but determinedly, she began the awkward process again, this time with her duvet. By the time she had finished breathing was difficult but she felt safe, cocooned from the world outside.

She held herself still for a long time, partly to listen out for danger but mainly because her mummified state wouldn’t allow for much movement. The whishing came soon afterwards. At first it was gentle, a bit like the sound she heard when Mummy held a seashell to her ear but then the rustling began, filling her head until she worried that there would be no room left for her brain. The air around her came alive with the patter, drowning everything else out: the loud tick of the big clock in the hall, the muted conversations drifting up through the floorboards, even the whistle of the wind.

Everything in her room remained in the same place; the three-storey doll’s house with lifting roof, her white dressing table with the heart-shaped mirror and all the tiny glass perfume bottles lined across the top, and yet in an instant all became unfamiliar. The weak shaft of light from her torch no longer chased shadows into the corners of the room.

She began making funny groans like some of the children at school. The louder she hummed, the more muffled the horrible noise became. And she found that if she spun her eyes around as fast as she could, the pictures in her head got fuzzy too. The hand now pressing on her mouth no longer pinched her cheeks as painfully and the strange words hanging in the air transformed into the fairies that cling to dandelion stems, so light that if she blew hard enough they might float away on the breeze.

As the man dragged her out of her cocoon in one swift movement, chuckling at her attempts to protect herself, she sank deeper into her brain and pictured her father. In her mind he was dressed in his smart suit for work, tall and strong. She longed to call out to him, imagining that he would rush in to pick her up and keep her safe, but sensing that to yell would be dangerous, she bit down hard on her lower lip instead. She told the man that he could chose something from her room, anything he wanted, if only he would go back downstairs and rejoin the party. Her pleading made him laugh again.

In the morning it hurt to walk to the bathroom. She moved slowly because her pyjamas were wet and clinging to her legs. As she peeled off her night-clothes she smelt urine and her face grew hot with shame. Mummy would be sure to remove a star from her chart.

The thought brought hot tears to her eyes.

Chapter 1

It was a dreary, overcast day in March 2009 when I first met Phoebe. As I sat in the local authority training centre, I shook my lifeless mobile phone several times, hoping that news of a fostering referral would drift across the airwaves. Between placements I was filled with a restless yearning; an itch I couldn’t scratch. How blissfully ignorant I was back then, unaware of the far-reaching impact she would have on our family.

‘It would be wise to keep a collection of pebbles in your kitchen drawer,’ our lively tutor was drilling us on the latest techniques for safeguarding drug-addicted teenagers. ‘That way you’ll remember to drop one in if they trust you enough to ask for a bag.’

Ellie was a recent recruit to the local authority team of trainers and a registered nurse by profession. The tall blonde was proving popular with foster carers, her courses particularly well attended by other halves – I had never seen as many men on a training day before. It seemed word of her sultry tones, shiny lip gloss and stiletto heels had worked its way quickly around the fostering network of the north of England.

A flurry of blank looks travelled around the semi-circle of foster carers in front of her.

‘We lost one of our teenagers earlier this year,’ Ellie went on to explain. ‘She passed out with a bag of solvent still fixed to her ears. With a heavy object inside, the plastic would have been far more likely to fall from her face as she collapsed. A little forethought from her carer might just have saved her life.’

‘I take it we’re expected to provide ’em with a WH Smith voucher as well,’ the black foster carer sitting opposite me offered in a Brummie accent, daring a touch of sarcasm, ‘to save ’em forkin’ out for t’own glue.’

Sniggers swept around the room.

Ellie held out one manicured hand, tucking a stray tendril of shiny blonde hair behind her ear with the other. ‘I take it that some of you feel uncomfortable with what I’ve just said?’

Glancing around, I noticed several of the women nodding their heads. Most of the men sat with their legs sprawled wide, one or two with dreamy expressions on their faces.

‘Surely it’s our job to discourage risky behaviour?’ I ventured. Social workers were keen to encourage foster carers to show Looked After Children the same quality of care as their own families. I was certain that I wouldn’t provide bags with rocks inside for my own children, Emily and Jamie, freeing them to get high in the knowledge that Health & Safety procedures had been adhered to by their attentive mother.

Ellie smiled, shaking her head. ‘I know it’s not easy to stomach but it’s our responsibility to safeguard these children. They’re damaged – most of them need something just to get through the day. Showing disapproval will simply drive their behaviour underground. Having to hide their addiction,’ she tilted her dainty hand in mid-air, rocking it slightly from side to side, ‘might just be enough to tip them over the edge.’

After a buffet lunch courtesy of the local authority, Ellie moved on to drug classifications and how to recognise paraphernalia among seemingly innocent everyday objects such as empty fizzy drink cans. It was fascinating but her comment about damaged children needing a prop to survive kept playing over in my mind. I felt a longing to soothe the turmoil a child must feel to treat their body with such disregard. The uncomfortable feeling reminded me of why I had decided to register as a foster carer. Like many of my fellow carers, I was drawn to it.

For the rest of the afternoon the class was held rapt, not only by Ellie’s dynamic teaching style but also the shocking nature of the facts she was imparting. Between the 20 or so carers present we had chalked up a collective experience of over 200 years of fostering, yet most of us were unaware that the latest trend for self-harmers was to insert diazepam capsules into the cuts in their skin for rapid absorption, or that wheelie bins often went missing because they offered an ideal confined space for solvent abuse.

Most of the training days I had attended in the past fortnight held my attention as efficiently as a pile of wet nappies and so it was refreshing to be presented with such thought-provoking information. It was only towards the end of the day that my concentration began to waver and I idly poked my mobile phone again, willing it to spring into action. My last placement had ended three weeks earlier – a sibling group of two who stayed with me for almost three years. The wounds of separation after they moved on to adoption were still raw, an unfortunate occupational hazard. I was eager to jump back into the saddle of caring again, knowing it was the best way to recover from my loss and so, after taking a break of two weeks, I agreed for my name to reappear on the vacancy register. Recovery time between placements is recommended to restore energy levels; fostering can be a physical and emotional drain. Carers often make use of the time by catching up on training; we are obliged to attend at least six training sessions each year, a tricky task with young ones in placement.

I kept busy during my first week off, getting the house straight, tidying up the garden and attending a round of courses – anything to distract my mind from worrying about how the siblings were coping in their new home. It was such an upheaval for them, leaving all that was familiar behind. When children move on to adoption, it is recommended that their foster carer takes on the role of ‘auntie’, so remaining part of their lives but in a more distant way. I couldn’t help worrying that they might feel abandoned by me and our reunion wasn’t to take place for another three weeks, to allow time for their bond with me to weaken. The idea that I would see them again, hopefully happy and settled with their ‘forever’ parents, gave me something positive to hold on to in the meantime.

For the past week I had been on the out-of-hours list, making myself available to the local authority at any time, day or night, to take on an emergency. So far all had been quiet but I kept my phone close by at all times, just in case.

The timing of the call about Phoebe, when it came, couldn’t have been more perfect. I had just completed my course evaluation sheet, giving Ellie top marks in all ten categories, and was wandering out of the training centre into the misty gloom when my mobile phone coughed itself awake.

‘Hi, Desmond.’ My heart was already beginning to race in anticipation as I climbed into my car with the handset clamped to my ear, wondering whether my supervising social worker had news of an emergency or was simply calling for a chat. We had built up a close friendship since I was first assigned to him when I registered with Bright Heights Fostering Agency seven years earlier and he often popped in to check how our family was, even though he was only strictly obliged to visit once every four weeks.

As I listened to his voice, intermittently thick with a Scottish accent despite having left the Highlands as a teenager, I found myself holding my breath and hoping for a newborn, recklessly forgetting my vow never to take on another baby after my most recent, difficult separation. Reaching to grab a notebook and pen from the dashboard, I jotted down notes as Desmond spoke.

‘She’s been taken straight from school into police protection. They should be with you in the next half an hour or so. Will you be home by then?’

Slipping the key into the ignition, I switched the Nokia to loudspeaker mode then dropped it into my lap. ‘Yes, should be. I’ll just have enough time to let Emily and Jamie know what’s going on.’

My own children were keen to welcome new little ones into our home but I preferred to seek their approval before someone new arrived on the doorstep, to make sure they felt consulted.

‘I won’t be able to make it, I’m afraid – sorry, Rosie, I’m up to my neck in it over here. I’ll come and see you some time in the next few days, though.’

Saying goodbye to Des, I stopped at the next set of traffic lights, holding my notebook up at eye level. The page was still blank but for my scribbled notes: girl, age eight; warm and friendly. Without noticing the lights as they turned to amber, I sat staring at the words on the page. Overstretched social workers were sometimes so keen to place a child that they stretched the facts, I mused, moulding them into a mishmash of half-truths and downright fabrications. Experience had taught me to treat the initial information they provided on a child with as much caution as estate agents’ patter. Just as a house located at the side of a busy motorway could be listed as ‘close to all transport links’, social workers might describe a difficult, confrontational teenager with a penchant for injecting heroin as ‘lively and inquisitive’.

A hoot from the driver behind caused me to start. Lifting my hand in apology, I nudged the accelerator and caught up with the rusting white van ahead, catching sight of myself in the rear-view mirror. Often I felt that my blonde, naturally curly hair offered a cheery distraction from the lines that were beginning to appear under my eyes, giving people the impression that I was bubbly even when I felt nothing of the sort. Today, though, the damp air had taken its toll, making it look like a pile of dried hay and dragging the rest of my face down with it. Grimacing, I tucked the frizz behind my ears, hoping to fit in a hair wash before Phoebe’s arrival.

Driving under an arched railway bridge and along a tree-lined, residential side road I noticed a few drops of rain appearing on the windscreen. A grimly portentous grey sky stretched into the distance and a bubble of apprehension rose in my stomach as I flicked the wipers on, knotting itself stubbornly in my throat. ‘Warm and friendly’ were hardly forbidding adjectives, so what was I reading between the lines?

Chapter 2

My 11-year-old son Jamie arrived home a few minutes after me. On hearing the news he dashed into the kitchen, armed himself with some biscuits then took up a position leaning over the back of the sofa, staring out of the living-room window. With Jamie as self-appointed lookout I fussed around the spare room, trying to make it look as welcoming as possible for the new arrival. With the police involved, and Phoebe being taken without the consent of her parents, it was likely she would arrive in a highly distressed state.

Planned placements were much easier to prepare for than emergencies, with time to find out the child’s interests. With so little warning, it was difficult to tailor the bedroom to appeal especially to Phoebe. The airing cupboard was full of duvet covers and curtains I had collected over the years, with everything from Fireman Sam to Peppa Pig, but what would a warm and friendly eight-year-old like? I wondered, finally settling on a cover featuring Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

Tense with anticipation, I jumped at the sound of a key in the door.

‘Mum?’

It was my 14-year-old daughter Emily, just home from school.

‘Guess what, Em?’ I called out.

She darted up the stairs and arrived on the landing, rain-soaked blonde hair flattened against her flushed cheeks, rucksack still half-slung over her shoulder.

‘We got a call?’

I nodded, smiling. It was lovely to see her so excited. ‘She’s eight years old and friendly, that’s about all I know at the moment.’

‘Great!’ Throwing a soggy arm around my neck, she dropped her rucksack on the carpet, draped her damp blazer over the bannister and dashed past me into the spare room.

Flitting in and out of the space, she arranged soft toys on every available surface. Twisting a set of lights around the struts at the foot of the bed, she announced a sudden brainwave. ‘I still have my old stick-arounds, pink butterflies and stuff. We could decorate the walls to make it look more girlie in here.’

‘Lovely idea,’ I said as she rushed past me en route to her own bedroom. I was grateful that she and Jamie remained as committed to fostering as I was. In any fostering family, birth children sometimes get overlooked. Foster children can demand a high level of attention but Emily and Jamie never seemed to resent having to share my time – they just seemed to want to make life better for whoever stayed with us, particularly the most troubled youngsters. I regularly reminded them that by being friendly and welcoming, they helped to do just that.

‘Did they say how long she’d be staying?’ Emily asked, breathlessly separating sticky butterflies from the dusty packet she had retrieved from her room.

I pictured my scribbled notes and shook my head. Actually I knew very little about Phoebe and certainly had no idea how long the placement would last, but that was often the way. When children arrive as an emergency, the on-call foster carer is obliged to keep them for 72 hours, but as I had a vacancy it made sense for Phoebe to stay with us for as long as necessary.

As I was a short-term foster carer, the placement could last anything from one night to four or five years. The aim of short-term or ‘task-based’ fostering is to support the child through the uncertain stage when their birth family is being assessed by the local authority; if a Care Order is secured through the courts, the child needs to be primed for permanency with long-term carers.

With the room ready, Emily followed me downstairs and into the living room. I sank into the sofa and she flopped beside me. ‘I wish they’d hurry up,’ she said, laying her head on my shoulder.

My whirlwind son, Jamie, was far less effusive in his excitement. ‘Why couldn’t it have been a boy?’ he asked from his position on the two-seater sofa, though he still tapped out a rhythm on the window sill with restless fingers, eager to catch a first sight of his new housemate. ‘Girls are boring.’

I smiled to myself. While Emily was a sensitive soul, contemplative and always receptive to the feelings of others, my son says what he sees. ‘You know where you are with Jamie,’ was a comment made by several of his teachers. I presume it was a compliment.

‘Right, so we all remember the safe caring rules, don’t we?’

Jamie clapped a hand to his forehead. ‘Oh, heck, here we go,’ he groaned. ‘We’re not stupid, Mum!’

‘It’s important that we protect ourselves, Jamie, as well as Phoebe.’ I knew that they both tired of being reminded to stay out of all bedrooms except their own and to avoid physical ‘horseplay’ with the foster children but it was so easy to forget, especially once the children have settled and everyone adjusts to the new dynamics of having an extra person around.

An exhilarated excitement buzzed through my veins, as it did at the beginning of every placement. Everything to come would be new and mysterious, offering our family a whole new set of challenges. Before the year was out we would encounter an extreme range of disturbing behaviours and Phoebe would be one of the most extraordinary, heartbreaking placements we had ever taken on.

But in the companionable peace of our cosy living room, I had no sense of the enormity of what we were about to face.

Chapter 3

It was Jamie who first spotted something was amiss.

He was standing excitedly at the window to watch for her arrival, and I could tell by the quiver in his voice that the young girl walking up the path wasn’t at all what he was expecting.

‘Mum, she’s … er, Phoebe’s here.’

With the sound of my own heartbeat rushing in my ears I reached the door as the bell rang, giving me just enough time to smooth down my unruly, unwashed hair. ‘Hello, Phoebe,’ I said, the friendly smile on my face stiffening as I caught sight of the 120 centimetres of disgruntlement standing on the doorstep. One glance told me that the description ‘warm and friendly’ might have been a tad overgenerous.

‘Hello, Phoebe,’ she mimicked with a sneer before barging past me into the hall.

‘Goodness, well, come in,’ I said, with false brightness. All of the children I have looked after have exhibited some level of ‘challenging’ behaviour but on first arriving in a new placement, most were withdrawn; only once they felt safe enough to test the boundaries did the difficult behaviour begin to emerge, signalling the end of the honeymoon period.

It was the first sign that Phoebe would turn everything I thought I knew about childcare completely on its head.

Lenke, Phoebe’s social worker, hovered on the path. She was a rotund, bosomy woman, and I groaned inwardly as I stepped aside and welcomed her in. The previous year the Hungarian social worker had been responsible for a child I had accepted for a fortnight’s respite and though I’d got on fine with her, I formed the strong impression that her heart really wasn’t in the job. Besides a laissez-faire attitude, she didn’t seem to have a clue what she was doing.

Whatever I had asked for, whether it was GP details or a contact schedule, a blank expression would cross her face, followed by a futile search through the dog-eared contents of her overlarge leather bag. A sketchy command of the English language on top of her air of disinterest was one complication too many and in short, communication had been a trifle frustrating.

A loud chanting from the living room quickened my step along the hall.

‘Jamie, Jamie, Jamie! Wet willy, wet willy!’

‘Lovely it is to see you again, Rosie,’ Lenke said breezily to my back, as though the walls of the hallway were not vibrating with the sound of piercing screeches coming from the living room.

The first thing I noticed when I stood in the doorway was the horrified expression on my son’s face. He was arching over the back of the sofa, fending Phoebe off with his arms as she fought to stick her wet finger in his ear.

‘Stop that please, Phoebe,’ I said, my voice sharp. Clearly there was to be no honeymoon period in this placement and the sooner she learnt who was in charge, the better.

‘Stop that please, Phoebe,’ she mimicked again. Although she was using a high-pitched, scornful tone, I could tell immediately that she was well-spoken, each word precisely clipped. Thankfully my own tone had an effect. Although she fixed me with a brazen look she stopped what she was doing and began staring at me with a nasty, twisted smile on her face.

‘I’m going to my room,’ Jamie wheezed. He passed me with his head bent over so I couldn’t see his expression but the slope of his shoulders told me how he was feeling. Despite his protestations about wanting a boy, I knew he had been looking forward to meeting Phoebe.

‘OK, Jamie, that’s fine,’ I said, my voice tight as a sudden guilt clawed at my throat. What had I taken on here?

‘I’m going too.’ Phoebe flipped over the sofa and charged across the room but I stepped backwards to fill the doorway by stretching out my arms.

‘No.’ I summoned my most commanding tone. ‘We don’t go into each other’s rooms. Now go and sit down. I’ll show you around the house later, if you sit nicely while I talk to Lenke.’

‘Sit nicely while I talk to Lenke,’ she repeated, spinning around and returning to the sofa. Lenke walked past and I gestured for her to take a seat. The social worker headed for the opposite end of the sofa, hardly looking at Phoebe, who sat with her legs sprawled, glaring at me. Her hair was brown and frizzy-looking. The style was boyish, cut short to make the wiry texture more manageable, I imagined. Her eyes were appealing, light brown in colour, but seemed to swivel, giving her a slightly deranged look, and she was scarily thin, so much so that the skin across her cheekbones had a translucent quality.

‘How about we find some colouring for you to do, Phoebe?’ I said, crossing the room. ‘Emily, would you mind fetching the pens and some paper? Phoebe can sit at the table while Lenke and I chat through some of the boring details.’

Emily was watching Phoebe, intrigued. ‘Sure,’ she answered, giving me a sidelong glance. ‘Come on, Phoebe.’

‘Come on, Phoebe,’ she chorused. Emily giggled in response and out of nowhere I remembered reading A Series of Unfortunate Events to her when she was younger. One of the characters in the book, the headmaster, mocked everything the Baudelaire children said. His outlandishly rude character had captured Emily’s imagination at the time and she found it hilarious. I wondered if she was thinking the same as me.

‘Would you like tea, coffee?’

‘No, it is fine.’ Lenke waved her hand and pulled her substantial coat a little tighter around herself. She looked distinctly uncomfortable. The social worker wants this over with, I realised, as I sat next to her on the sofa.

‘So,’ I said in hushed tones once Phoebe was settled at the dining table. Our house is open-plan so even though I could still see her, she was out of earshot. ‘What’s the story with Phoebe?’

‘Oh,’ Lenke waved her hand dismissively. ‘Phoebe, she has a touch of, er, what you say?’

I shook my head.

‘Er,’ she hesitated then reached into her bag, pulling out her diary and flicking through it as if the word she was looking for would miraculously leap from the page. ‘I do not have the, what is it, the papers yet. It was all such an emergency. But it is, er, I think you say autism?’

‘Autism?’ I said, louder than intended. Phoebe inclined her head, staring at me with a strange grin on her face and then, without warning, she threw her head back and began barking. ‘That wasn’t mentioned by the agency,’ I said over the din. Of course, autism would explain her erratic behaviour. The mimicking, screeching and barking made much more sense now.

‘Well, it’s how you say, erm, mildly, not much autistic.’

‘Really?’ In the background I could see Phoebe flapping her arms in front of herself like a demented penguin. That could never be described as mild, I thought drily, not in any language. Emily was watching the antics of the new arrival, her eyes wide with fascination.

‘Why was she taken into police protection?’

Lenke watched my lips avidly. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I said …’ I raised my voice again to compete with the animal noises coming from across the room. Phoebe fixed me with another icy stare. ‘Why has she been removed?’

‘Er, she is, erm, telling one of her teachers today that her mum hurt her arm. She twist it behind her back, so she say.’

‘Is she known to social services already?’

‘Sorry? I don’t know this …’

‘Is she subject to a Child Protection Order?’

‘Oh no, no,’ Lenke shook her head. ‘This family is fine, no problems. Her father is very successful financier. Respectable. I think that this is possibly false alarm. It may be, erm, possibly part of the illness. We interview the parents this afternoon. They are mortified, really. Nice people, yes. She should be able to go home as …’

A scream from across the room stopped Lenke in mid-sentence. The noise was somewhere between a balloon squeak and a smoke alarm. ‘Please, Phoebe,’ I said evenly but kept my tone stern, ‘don’t scream, sweetie. It’s upsetting.’

‘Don’t scream, it’s upsetting,’ she repeated contemptuously, but picked up another pen and returned to her colouring.

Lenke smiled serenely, the picture of innocence. ‘I think it be good for her parents to have a break. When she back home we will look into the, how you say,’ she fluttered her hand through the air, as if trying to catch the right word, ‘you know, a rest?’

‘Respite?’ I offered.

Lenke nodded emphatically. In the background Phoebe began flapping again, this time accompanied by a loud ‘whoop-whoop’ noise. I could certainly understand how her parents may have reached the end of their tether, dealing with such severe problems on a daily basis. We’re going to have our work cut out here, even just to get through a few days, I thought rather guiltily. Still, Phoebe was just a little girl and we would have to make the best of it. I had dealt with difficult situations before, I reassured myself. There had been times in the past when I had been daunted by difficult behaviour but with patience and support from my family we had managed to overcome whatever problems we encountered.

Within half an hour I had signed several copies of the Placement Planning Agreement. Most of the form was blank since so little was known about Phoebe but the basic facts were there, along with her parents’ details. Their address caught my attention – Rosewood Drive, a rather prestigious road several miles from us, with manicured lawns and substantial houses. So, the family must be fairly well-to-do, I thought to myself, which tied in with her well-spoken accent. Most of the children I had cared for in the past were from impoverished backgrounds.

Every family has its problems, I mused. ‘Is she on any medication to control her …?’ But Lenke zipped up her bag, then stood, tying her belt around her coat. I guess that’s a no then, I thought. She began drifting from the room, her relief palpable.

‘Well, that is all I know for now. I’ll leave you to it, Rosie. Bye bye, Phoebe.’

Phoebe barked in response.

‘Good luck, Rosie,’ Lenke called out over her shoulder as I stood on the doorstep, waving her off. ‘Ah, I forgot to mention one more thing: the school says that Phoebe has the condition called pica so you need to be careful about leaving her unsupervised.’ I stared at her agog but she scuttled down the path without a backward glance. She may as well have shouted, ‘See you, wouldn’t want to be you!’ Not for the first time since I received the initial call about Phoebe, I was filled with a growing trepidation.

I remembered from our initial training that children with pica were inclined to eat inedible objects. I had no personal experience of the condition but guessed it meant that Phoebe would have to be treated like a toddler: any object could be a potential choking hazard. I was beginning to understand how difficult it must have been for her parents to cope with her.

It was as I closed the door that a strange groaning noise from the dining room drew me back. Emily called out, ‘Mum, I think maybe you should come here …’

Rushing back into the room I noticed the look of concern on Emily’s face as she watched Phoebe standing on the table with her legs spread wide, loudly remonstrating with thin air. Her arms flailed wildly as she spewed words out in no meaningful order – ‘You get that off, pens so useless, rip it out, bitch!’

‘Are you alright, Phoebe?’ Emily asked, moving forwards before I could form the words to stop her.

Phoebe screamed, kicking Emily’s outstretched arm, hard.

Chapter 4

‘We don’t kick in this house,’ Phoebe mimicked in response to my admonishment, her lip curled into an ugly sneer. She stared at me with defiance, her feet still firmly planted on the dining room table.

Following her brother’s recent footsteps, Emily had disappeared upstairs, shocked by the violence of Phoebe’s outburst. I forced myself to take a few deep breaths, my mind racing to come up with a strategy to deal with her behaviour. Making a mental note to research autism as soon as I had the time, I summoned a commanding tone. ‘Get down from the table, please, Phoebe. I’d like to show you around.’

As I spoke I ran through my discipline options if she refused to move. My mind drew a blank but fortunately she climbed down, giving me a flinty, hard stare. ‘Good girl,’ I said, forcing a bright tone. ‘Now, let’s show you where you’ll be sleeping.’

A shadow crossed her features, giving me a brief glimpse of a little girl lost, but a moment later it had gone, replaced by the same disturbing glare. ‘Woof, grrrr, woof.’ Phoebe followed, close at my heels. I sensed it would be futile to ask her to be quiet so I raised my voice above hers and launched into my standard welcoming speech, hoping she might be interested enough to stop.

‘This is Emily’s room,’ I said as we passed my daughter’s bedroom. I pictured Emily nursing her sore arm on the other side of the closed door and a wisp of anger rose to my throat. Seeing your own children physically hurt is a bitter pill to swallow, especially when they put up with so much anyway. Phoebe’s just a young girl with a complex medical disorder, I reminded myself, she probably doesn’t even register what she’s done.

‘We don’t go into each other’s rooms, ever. If I’m in my bedroom and you need me, you must knock on the door and wait, OK?’

Some of my fellow foster carers had been through the anguish of having allegations made against them and I wanted to protect my own family from a similar fate as vigorously as I possibly could. Of course, following the rules by keeping the children out of each other’s bedrooms could never provide full immunity from malicious allegations but by following the guidelines and keeping meticulous daily records, I was doing as much as I could to protect us all.

‘Knock on the door and wait, OK?’

‘And this is Jamie’s,’ I said.

‘This is Jamie’s.’

I stared at her, wondering whether she even understood me, although something in her eyes told me that she was taking in every word I said. I remembered reading somewhere that some autistic children could be very bright. It would be helpful to hear what her teachers had to say about her but as the Easter holidays were about to start that wouldn’t be possible. Going by what Lenke had said, Phoebe would be back with her family before the start of the summer term so I knew I might not get the chance at all.

Phoebe charged clumsily along the hallway but when we reached her room she hovered in the doorway, suddenly reserved.

‘It’s alright,’ I told her. ‘You can go in. Have a look around – this is where you’ll be sleeping. It’s a safe place. No one will come into your room except me, and only when you want me to. If you prefer me to wait at the door then I will.’

She turned slowly towards me, suddenly bereft. ‘I want to go home,’ she said, her bottom lip quivering.

‘I know, sweetie,’ I said, all irritation gone. For the first time since she’d arrived she looked like an ordinary, fragile girl. No eye swivelling, flapping of arms or yelping. I felt a flash of relief knowing there were times when she could be still, if only for a moment. Reaching out, I touched the back of her head, hoping the gesture would communicate my solidarity. She flinched, darting out of the way.

What did you do that for? I chastised myself. Knowing nothing of her history, I should have known better than to offer her physical comfort. Perhaps her parents were a bit heavy-handed with her, I thought, if the way she recoiled from me was anything to go by.

Lowering myself to my knees at the threshold of her room, I beckoned her over. She shook her head, backing away and barking loudly like a resentful Rottweiler guarding its territory. When she reached the wall she crouched, lowering herself to her haunches. Her barks subsided to little yaps.

‘Phoebe, can I come in and give you a hug?’

A look of puzzlement crossed her face and my heart went out to her. She seemed so lost. Tempted to sit beside her and take her onto my lap, I hesitated, waiting for her agreement. She stayed silent so I rocked back onto my outstretched feet instead; it would be wrong to assume she wanted comfort from someone she barely knew.

‘Phoebe, you’re safe here, honey. Do you understand?’

The tiniest nod told me that she’d heard so I reached around the corner and grabbed a notepad from the bookshelf beside her bed. ‘Good. Now, this notepad is especially for you. On one page I’d like you to write down all the foods you really don’t like and then I’ll make sure I don’t give them to you. On the other side you can make a list of your favourites. Is that OK?’

She shook her head and began barking again.

‘Does that mean no?’ I knew that food was one of the issues that children found most frightening when coming into care. The upheaval of leaving home, being separated from their parents and having to adjust to a whole new environment full of strangers was daunting enough. To then be confronted with strange, unfamiliar food seemed to be the tipping point for many children, often making their first mealtimes a traumatic experience, with lots of tears.

In the past I had found the tension at the dinner table could be avoided by finding out beforehand what the children liked to eat. Phoebe continued to shake her head and I wondered about the extent of her learning disabilities. Developmental delays weren’t unusual in children who were brought into care, although Phoebe, coming from a middle-class background, wasn’t a typical example of a Looked After Child. I knew the latest neuroscience research suggested that high levels of stress in infants could have a damaging impact on the brain, affecting future learning. Perhaps she was unable to write?

‘I only eat porridge.’

‘That’s fine,’ I said, in a reassuring tone. ‘Porridge makes a great breakfast – we often have porridge too. But what else do you like to eat? Pizza? Roast, maybe?’

Phoebe began to retch, her throat making sickening noises as she heaved. Her eyes bulged and she leaned over, projecting the contents of her stomach over the carpet. She flapped her arms as if in a spasm, spattering the vomit that clung to her fingers all around the room.

I couldn’t believe how quickly the vomiting came on. As I leapt towards her she howled, her eyes swivelling back to reveal the whites. I grabbed hold of her hands to stop her from dancing in the mess but she fought away.

‘No, please, leave me, no!’

‘It’s alright, sweetie. Come to the bathroom and I’ll clean you up.’

My hands were sticky with vomit and my own stomach lurched as a foul smell rose to my nostrils. Guiding her into the bathroom, I held my breath and began filling the bath. Squeezing a generous amount of bath gel into the water, I swirled it around, knowing she would probably feel more comfortable in the water if it was full of bubbles.

‘Right, get those clothes off, sweetie.’

Phoebe began to pant, backing herself into the corner of the room. She looked terrified.

‘Would you prefer to clean yourself up?’ I tried to keep my voice even, soothing. I wasn’t surprised that she might feel too self-conscious to undress in front of a stranger, but why panic-stricken? She looked up at me with bulging eyes and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

‘OK, I’ll go and clean up your room. There’s soap and shampoo on the side. Call me if you need me, won’t you?’

I hesitated for a moment but she didn’t move so I walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar.

After conducting a hurried clean-up in her room I knocked on the bathroom door.

‘All OK in there, honey?’

There was no answer. I guessed that she had her ears under the water, rinsing off shampoo.

‘Phoebe?’ Ducking my head around the door, I gasped in shock. ‘Phoebe, no!’

Lunging towards the bath, I snatched the open bottle of bubble bath from her hands. Blood sprung from her lip and I realised that I must have caught her gum on the rim of the container as I yanked it away. Clamping her fingers over her mouth, she stared at me in horror.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, Phoebe, but you mustn’t drink that. It’ll make you ill.’

She lowered her hand, staring at the string of bloody saliva entwined around her fingers. I expected her to cry but she continued to gape as droplets of blood spilt from her mouth into the bath water. Her whole body was trembling.

‘Did you hear me, Phoebe?’ I said, the metallic taste of panic filling my voice with urgency. She didn’t answer but a strange gurgling sound came from her throat. I began to tremble myself, worried that the thick liquid might congeal in her airways and choke her.

‘Don’t move. I’ll be right back.’

I dashed out of the bathroom and downstairs, grabbing a carton of milk from the fridge. If there were harsh chemicals in the potion, I guessed that milk might be the gentlest way to dilute the effects. As I darted back up the stairs my mind came up with a dozen catastrophic scenarios. What if she’d decided to start on the shampoo while I was gone? What if she lay convulsing on the other side of the door? Charging back into the bathroom, I was relieved to find Phoebe wedged between the toilet bowl and the bath. She was still naked and trembling with cold, her thin legs hugged protectively to her chest. Draping a small hand towel around her shoulders wasn’t easy in the confined space but I did the best I could.

‘Here, drink this,’ I said in a shaky voice. ‘It’ll make your throat and tummy feel better after drinking that yucky stuff.’

She shook her head, recoiling from me. I forced a soothing tone.

‘Come on, sweetie, have some milk and then we’ll go and explore the garden.’

She looked at me, unmoving. At the best of times it can be frustrating when a child flatly refuses to do as they are told. When their safety is at risk it can be exasperating. My usual coercion strategy is to make sure I have a few treats planned so that I can use them as leverage but at that moment there wasn’t any time for mind games.

I was tempted to grab her by the shoulders and yell, ‘DRINK IT!’ but instead I took a few calming breaths and reached for the empty bottle, scanning the label for advice. Avoid contact with eyes. If product enters eyes, rinse immediately with warm, clean water was all it said, but nothing about what to do if a vulnerable child whose care had been entrusted to you takes it into her head to down the half-full bottle in one.

‘Phoebe, please,’ I said, not too proud to use a begging tone. ‘Drink some milk and then we’ll get you dry.’

‘Drink some milk and then we’ll get you dry,’ she gurgled back, her pupils wide and staring.

Irritation cleared my head and I held up a large bath towel.

‘Come on then, up you get.’

Her bony hand darted out and she grabbed the towel, wrapping it around herself in a half-crouched position. The ends of the towel draped into the bath and over the toilet seat. When she finally stood up the floor got a soaking but at that moment a slip hazard was the least of my problems. Not wanting to let her out of my sight, I darted into my bedroom to grab the cordless telephone and guided her back into her own room.

‘You get dried and dressed while I make a phone call. Don’t worry, I won’t look.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t look.’ Her voice rippled as though speaking underwater. Clasping the towel tightly around herself she went to her suitcase and rifled through the clothes. It struck me as peculiar that she showed no concern for her own welfare: when my own children were unwell, if they ever caught on that I was worried about them, they would ask endless questions, seeking reassurance. But it seemed as if Phoebe didn’t remotely care that she might be in danger. I wondered whether she lacked the mental capacity to understand the consequences of her actions.

A quick call to our local surgery reassured me that there was no need to dash to the hospital for an emergency stomach pumping. According to the doctor, children’s bubble bath was non-toxic and unlikely to cause any long-term damage but he did suggest that Phoebe drink plenty of milk or water and told me to keep an eye out for any further symptoms.

Before she went to bed that night I conducted a sweep of the room, removing anything I thought she might be tempted to nibble on and unwinding the decorative lights that Emily had twisted around the foot of the bed. I was still fretting about what might be going on in her stomach. She hadn’t eaten a morsel since arriving hours earlier, nothing edible at least. No wonder she was so thin, I thought. I had managed to persuade her to drink half a cup of milk, though only through a straw. She gagged whenever I tried to tempt her into eating anything else, heaving at the mere mention of food.

Consuming bubble bath was one thing but I worried that if she was really hungry she might decide to snack on something solid during the night. If an object slipped down her throat, how on earth would I know about it before the morning? The thought paralysed me and as I stood at the door and watched her climb into bed that night I almost sighed with relief at the temporary reprieve.

‘Goodnight, sweetie. Now, you mustn’t put anything in your mouth, OK? I’m just down the hall if you need me.’

As I went downstairs I felt as if I was lowering myself into a narrow box, the sides closing in around me and the lid nailed down by unseen hands. It may sound strange but at the beginning of every placement I’ve taken on, there has been a short period when I’ve felt trapped by my decision to foster. I guess it’s a natural reaction – it feels surreal to suddenly be responsible for another human being, especially when there is absolutely no connection between you.

Thankfully, I have managed to build a rapport with each of the children I’ve cared for in a short space of time, usually within a few days. As each relationship strengthened, I found that the claustrophobia ebbed away. The trouble was, with Phoebe, I just couldn’t see it happening. Down in the living room, I visualised the virtual calendar I had in my head; she would be gone before the end of the Easter holidays – one day down, 13 to go.

Chapter 5

The next morning I woke at just after 6am, feeling a bit more positive. Phoebe had slept right through the night, something I hadn’t expected at all. Most children struggled to settle for the first few nights in a strange bed and so I had been prepared for some degree of sleep deprivation.

Relishing the silence, I washed and dressed then pottered downstairs and made myself a coffee. Sitting at the kitchen table, I watched a pair of robins settling on the branch of our apple tree, their wings shining in the bright, early morning sunshine. The scent of winter jasmine floated through the open window, boosting my already lightened mood. As I sipped my warm drink, I dared to think that the placement might not be as difficult as I had first thought. With firm boundaries in place, Phoebe’s symptoms might not be so pronounced as they were on her arrival. I wasn’t that knowledgeable about autism but I had heard that routine went a long way in helping sufferers to cope with the everyday stresses that other children barely noticed.

And anyway, that was the nature of fostering; no one ever said it would be straightforward. Whatever the reason for their removal from home, fostered children arrive in placement at probably one of the lowest points in their lives. It’s not surprising that they may then ‘act out’ their unhappiness, perhaps by stealing food, money or items of sentimental value, destroying property, refusing to wash, being deliberately provocative, violent or aggressive, or more passively, wetting the bed or self-harming. But having a hand in helping a child to mend was hugely satisfying and certainly worth all the hardships along the way.

That’s not to say there is always a happy ending. It took me a while to accept that. Alfie, for instance, whose mother was imprisoned for a short period for his neglect, stayed with me about four years earlier, while a Care Order was secured through the courts. Members of his wider family were assessed and it was decided to award his grandmother special guardianship. I have since heard through the grapevine that Alfie’s mother left prison and went straight to live with her own mother in the flat where she cared for Alfie.

Within weeks a new young boyfriend had joined her there and recently grandmother (who hadn’t yet celebrated her fortieth birthday) fell for a roofer from Essex and spent long periods of time drinking with him in his bedsit in Hornchurch. I have known social services to spend two years and an inordinate amount of money securing a Care Order through the courts, only for the children to then return home via obliging friends or relatives. It’s not an ideal system.

It is sometimes said that foster carers are ‘in it for the money’. I find it difficult to believe that anyone could survive more than six months as a foster carer unless there was a powerful drive to ‘heal’ hurt children.

For one child, a foster carer’s ‘wage’ is around £200 per week, although this amount varies depending on the local authority. On top of that an allowance of between £60 and £100 is paid (depending on the age of the child), an amount that must be spent solely on the child and meticulously accounted for. Surviving on £800 a month can be a struggle, particularly in a one-parent household. With two children in placement, life is a bit more comfortable but certainly not luxurious.

I’ve never been driven by money; for me a happy home life and contented children holds far more value and so being able to just about manage was all I needed to be content. Fostering had given me many ‘I will never ever forget this’ moments, some of them for their awfulness, but others that were almost magical.

By 7.30am I was beginning to find the stillness unsettling. In my experience it was unusual for the under-10s to sleep in. Reluctant to disturb the blissful peace but unable to relax without checking on Phoebe, I crept up the stairs and along the hall. The smell hit me before I reached her closed door and I groaned, anticipating the scene before I had even laid my hand on the handle.

It was worse than I’d thought.

Retching as violently as Phoebe had done the evening before, I clamped my hand over my mouth and forced my feet to shuffle into the room, flicking the light switch on with my elbow. Phoebe lay serenely in bed, the duvet pulled up to her neck just as it was when I left her the night before. The room was considerably different, though: the magnolia walls were smeared with streaks of excrement, each lilac butterfly spattered with a generous coating of stomach-churning brown. Even the curtains hadn’t escaped Phoebe’s attention, with clumps of stinking excrement clinging to the fabric.

I couldn’t help myself: ‘My God, what have you done?’

‘My God, what have you done?’

That was it. I charged into the room and yanked the duvet away from her. Phoebe squealed, drawing her soiled hands up to her cheeks and rolling to one side. Curled up in a foetal position, she buried her face in her stained and smelly pillow. My fury ebbed away at the sight of her lying there, so thin and pitiful. Instantly I felt ashamed that I’d broken my promise by entering her room without being invited. Still panting in shock, I stared down at her, frowning. There was something different about her, though, and it wasn’t just the streaks of brown across her hands.

‘Phoebe, you need to get out of bed so I can clean you up,’ I said, my voice wobbling with the strain of keeping my feelings of revulsion under control. She pushed herself up to a sitting position, watching me warily. As she stood up I realised what had changed; she looked bulkier, as if she’d put on half a stone overnight.

‘What have you got on under those pyjamas?’ I demanded, wondering what other horrors might yet be uncovered.

‘What have you …?’

‘That’s enough,’ I shouted, my finger raised and pointing at her. ‘I don’t want you to copy me, do you hear? Now go to the bathroom, right now!’

Without warning she ducked and ran past me, out of the room. I tried to grab her but she was too quick, darting out of reach.

‘Phoebe, come back,’ I called, trying to sound firm but unthreatening. Holding my breath, I followed the brown prints her soiled feet had made on the cream carpet. The air smelt vile.

‘What’s all the noise, Mum?’ Jamie’s timing couldn’t have been more devastating. Bleary-eyed, he sauntered out of his room as Phoebe tore along the hall, holding out his hands in a defensive action as she flapped her arms through the air. His look of horror told me that he realised exactly what she was covered in.

‘Sorry, Jamie,’ I muttered, charging past him and, with damage limitation at the forefront of my mind, followed Phoebe down the stairs.

‘Urgh, she is sooooo disgusting!’ Jamie, usually so mild-mannered, wailed angrily from upstairs. ‘Come and have a look at her room, Mum.’

Ignoring him, I followed Phoebe into the living room, desperate to catch her in case she nursed an intention of sprawling herself out on one of the sofas in all her self-decorated glory. There was no sign of her there so I quickly scanned the dining area, half-aware of Jamie’s bewildered shouts of disbelief floating down from upstairs. ‘Mum, really, you’ve got to come and see this. You won’t believe what she’s done in here.’

‘Eww-urgh!’ Another horrified shriek announced Emily’s emergence from her room. ‘Mum, what’s happened to my butterflies?’

Phoebe was crouched in the corner of the kitchen, her face full of fear. She held her dirty hands protectively in front of her.

Ten minutes later Phoebe sat in the bath with the door open while I gathered together every cleaning product in the house to spray, squirt and obliterate the smell permeating each room. Jamie hunkered down in his room with Emily. I was pleased that they had chosen to recover from their shock together. The pair had always shared a good relationship and it seemed that bad experiences brought them even closer. I could hear their urgent chatter drifting beneath the closed door, low tones interspersed with manic giggles.

As I scrubbed Phoebe’s soiled room, I was gripped by regular heaving fits: it wasn’t only the acrid smell – every time I set about cleaning a new area, the mess spread. What it really needed was a power hose.

Every few minutes I stopped what I was doing and peered around the bathroom door to make sure Phoebe wasn’t feasting on anything she shouldn’t. After the ‘Bubble Gate’ affair I had cleared the bathroom of anything that wasn’t nailed down but there was a chance I might have overlooked something. For all I knew, even the bath plug might be adequate fodder in her eyes.

The hollow gaps above her clavicles were so deep with undernourishment that the bath water pooled there as she sat up. Resolving to try and tempt her into eating with double chocolate pancakes for breakfast, I leaned into the bathroom and, with reluctant, pincered fingers, picked up her discarded pyjamas from the floor. Her soiled knickers were knotted up with the legs so I tried to separate the items, realising there was far more than one pair of pyjamas in the tangled heap. Unravelling the clothes, I pulled out four pairs of knickers and three sets of bottoms.

A dismal, draining feeling crept across my skin as the memory of another little girl I had cared for broke the surface of my thoughts. Four-year-old Freya came to stay soon after I first registered as a foster carer seven years earlier, along with her younger sister and baby brother. She had a habit of wearing all of her clothes in bed, one layer on top of another. It was her way of trying to keep herself safe, should anyone pay an unwelcome nightly visit to her room, as her father had done.

Feeling nauseous, I stared at Phoebe’s fragile back, trying not to let past experience colour my perception. Foster carers, like social workers, can be prone to jumping to conclusions and piling on layers of clothing was not necessarily an indication of abuse; it could simply be yet another manifestation of her condition. ‘Phoebe,’ I said gently, holding up the smelly clothing. ‘Why did you wear so many pairs of pyjamas to bed?’

She stared at me blankly, so I decided not to make an issue of it. Stuffing the clothes into a carrier bag, I dropped it onto the floor. ‘Do you mind if I give your hair a wash, Phoebe? I won’t do anything else, just your hair. Is that OK?’

‘NOOO!’ she howled. ‘I hate having my hair washed.’

‘Yes, I can see that. But you need to have it done.’

My tone made it clear that refusing was not an option. Surprisingly, she sat motionless as I lifted the shower head and dampened her hair down, running my fingers over the stubby ends. It really was frizzy, almost Afro-style in texture. I reached up and unlocked a cabinet fixed up high on the wall and retrieved the shampoo, squeezing a generous blob into my palms. After rinsing the suds away I smoothed in some conditioner, trying to massage it all the way through to her scalp. The tightness of her hair seemed to loosen so I lavished another handful through, rubbing it in with my fingertips.

Phoebe wriggled away, whimpering.

‘Keep still or you’ll get conditioner in your eyes,’ I said. As I massaged and rubbed her scalp, the texture softened beneath my fingers. Strangely, the tendrils seemed to be extending, like the hair of one of those dolls that Emily had years ago, where the style could be altered by winding a ponytail in and out of the head. It was then I realised her hair wasn’t as roughly chopped as I had first thought; it was actually matted.

‘Owwww!’ Phoebe began to howl.

‘It’s alright, you’re done now,’ I soothed. I wasn’t surprised she’d been moaning – it must have been very uncomfortable. There were still balls of matted hair clumped to her scalp and I was itching to sort them out but I decided to rinse her off and tackle it again next time. Leaving Phoebe to dry herself, I grabbed the bag of soiled clothes and went downstairs to prepare breakfast, wondering why on earth any mother would leave her daughter’s hair to get into such a bad state.

Phoebe managed to eat a few mouthfuls of porridge before clanking her spoon onto the table. Leaning forward to rest her elbows, she cupped her chin in her hands and watched the rest of us tuck into our chocolate pancakes with a look of sickly distaste on her face. She really seemed to derive no pleasure from eating, or anything else, come to think of it. Despite her middle-class background she looked malnourished, her cheeks the colour of frozen pastry and her eyes dull and lifeless. She had that look that children seem to get the day before a cold comes out, where their eyes just don’t seem right.

After clearing away the breakfast things I packed up my manicure set and hairdressing scissors and told Phoebe we were going to visit a friend of mine who needed some help. The friend was actually an ex-neighbour who was elderly and unable to get out and about as she once did. Apart from one son there was no one else to help her so I paid her a call once a week to give her hair a wash and tidy the house. Once or twice over the last couple of years I had made the suggestion that her son might consider running some of the errands himself but each time I broached the subject he shuddered, declaring old age made him nauseous.

Today Mary had requested a haircut and foot manicure, something I wasn’t looking forward to with any relish, but it was a relief to escape the gloomy confines of the house. Before we left I suggested that Phoebe choose a book to take with her and I was surprised to find what an interest she showed in selecting one. While she scanned our bookshelves there were no strange whirly arm movements or whooping noises; she just ran her fingers across the spines, pulling one out every now and again to examine the cover. I was also a bit taken aback by the one she finally settled on: Roald Dahl’s The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me. I wasn’t sure she’d be able to manage it and was wondering whether she chose it for Quentin Blake’s colourful illustrations alone, when she read the blurb out loud, inflecting parts and showing real expression. Amazed, I chastised myself for jumping to conclusions and underestimating her.

With an interest in reading, I hoped that Phoebe would behave and let me get on with sorting Mary out. And I was grateful to find that she did. Apart from exclaiming when we first arrived that the house ‘stinks’ and that Mary’s toenails looked like ‘dirty old twigs’ she simply sat reading her book and looking up occasionally, watching us with interest. It was a joy to witness her animated face as she read. There were lots of smiles interspersed with gasps and sudden bouts of giggles. I made a mental note to take her to the library so that she could choose from a wider range of books.

Soon after we arrived back home I suggested a walk to the local shop. ‘You could have a look around and see if anything takes your fancy for lunch,’ I said, hopeful that if I gave Phoebe a small trolley she might gain a bit more enthusiasm for food, the way children often do when they feel involved.

‘Hwah.’ Phoebe instantly gagged at the thought.

‘Alright, not to worry,’ I soothed, assuming all the emotion had upset her system. ‘I’ve got to get some milk anyway.’

Jamie looked revolted by the sounds Phoebe was making, watching her with his lip curled in disgust.

It was a lovely spring day with few clouds in the sky. I closed my eyes briefly as Phoebe skipped ahead, tilting my face to the warm sun. The tenseness I was carrying in my shoulders eased slightly as I enjoyed the fresh breeze rippling over my skin. It was such a relief to be out of the house; it had been only half an hour or so, but I felt as if I’d been cooped up for days.

Lowering my face again I saw that Phoebe was spinning her hands either side of her hips and walking with a strange gait, something she hadn’t been doing indoors. She began muttering and every so often broke into a snarl, shaking her fist at passing traffic like a confused old drunkard. It really looked most odd and I noticed a few drivers slow down, frowning. One, a young lad driving a white van, did a double take, no doubt surprised to be on the receiving end of aggressive jeers simply for driving inoffensively down the road.

Phoebe reached the mini-store first. To her credit, she obediently waited outside the entrance for me to catch up. Facing the glass doors, she stood with her legs a foot apart, gesticulating wildly at her reflection. Several customers gave her a wide berth as they left the shop, trying to avoid her flaying arms.

As I caught up they stared at me in disapproving puzzlement, as if I’d allowed my eight-year-old daughter access to magic mushrooms or some other hallucinogenic that might explain her strange conduct.

‘Come on,’ I said, cupping her elbow and guiding her into the shop.

‘Ow! Ouch!’ she yelled, struggling as if I’d wrestled her into an arm lock. Embarrassed by stares from several other customers, I released my hold, hoping she wouldn’t run off. Fortunately her path was blocked by a young woman who rounded the corner from the next aisle, pushing a pram in front of her.

‘Ah, a baby!’ Phoebe sounded delighted. ‘Can I say hello, please?’ She leaned into me, her manner suddenly coquettish.

‘Yes, nicely then, if that’s OK?’

The baby’s mother nodded and smiled. ‘Of course,’ she said, although her expression said otherwise.

‘What is its name?’ Phoebe asked sweetly, inching a step or two forwards. Without warning she reached into the pram, stroking the newborn’s tiny hand.

‘It is a her,’ I said, smiling reassuringly at the new mum, who hovered close by, ready to pounce if necessary.

‘Best not to touch the baby,’ I warned gently. I was reluctant to set off a tantrum in the busy shop but the look on Phoebe’s face prompted me to apply the brakes. Her eyes were swivelling with excitement, but there was also a manic element to her look that frightened me. Despite her slightness, there seemed to be a barely contained violence simmering beneath the surface, an unexploded rage. Besides, I wanted to secure an escape route for the young baby’s mother. She looked distinctly uncomfortable and who could blame her?

‘It’s Ella,’ the new mum responded politely, edging herself between Phoebe and the pram.

‘Can I kill it?’

The woman looked at me in horror, her eyes widened in alarm. Jerking the pram backwards, she swung it into the next aisle and stalked away, turning to bestow one final look of disgust my way.

‘Fucking baby! I’m going to eat it, I am,’ Phoebe called out gruffly after her.

‘Be quiet,’ I growled under my breath, grabbing her elbow again and marching her to the cold aisle so that I could grab some milk. ‘You mustn’t say horrible things like that.’

‘You mustn’t say horrible things like that.’

I stared at her, considering my best move. ‘Right, choose something for lunch and then we’ll go,’ I suggested mildly, though my teeth were gritted.

‘Blwah, ew!’ The retching started.

‘Right, let’s go, right now.’

Several heads turned as I slipped my arm around Phoebe’s waist, propelling her towards the checkouts. Shoppers from all angles eyed the pair of us as if we carried some contagious disease. An elderly gentleman stood at the end of our aisle, two bags of shopping planted either side of his feet. He stared openly as we approached. Phoebe squirmed and fought me off, still gagging grotesquely. It was an awful, stomach-churning noise and I felt myself reddening with all the attention being focussed on us.

‘Goodness, your daughter’s clearly out to lunch, my dear,’ the old gentleman whispered loudly in the way old people seem to do, his eyes twinkling with sympathy. ‘It must be very difficult for you.’

Until fostering I had never realised how rude some people could be. I glanced at Phoebe, wondering the effect such thoughtless words would have on her. Fortunately she seemed to be switching her attention elsewhere. Nodding grimly to the elderly customer, I was about to pay for the milk and guide Phoebe out of the shop when I realised that she had spotted the confectionery shelves.

‘Please may I have some chocolate?’ she asked, her eloquence incongruous with her unrefined appearance.

Were it not for the fact that she looked as if she might be in danger of snapping in half right there in the middle of the shop, I would have marched her home empty-handed. As it was, I felt desperate to get some calories inside her, in whatever form I could.

‘Yes, choose something quickly then,’ I told her.

Outside the shop, Phoebe removed the wrapper from her Twix bar, discarding it casually over her shoulder. She was about to tuck into the chocolate when I caught hold of her wrist.

‘Wait a minute, honey. Go and pick up your litter and put it in the bin first.’

‘You do it.’

‘No,’ I said calmly. ‘It’s your wrapper, not mine. You need to pick it up now, before it blows away.’

‘No, leave it there. The bin men will get it when they come.’ Her tone was dismissive. All at once she shoved a third of the bar in her mouth, her cheeks bulging.

Grabbing the rest of the chocolate from her hand, I held it behind my back. Never one to court attention, I felt conspicuous, uncomfortably aware of the glances we were attracting from passers-by. I forced my shoulders back and tried to compose myself.

‘You are not going to eat the chocolate until you deal with the wrapping. By the time I count to five I want you to pick it up and put it where it belongs – in the bin. If you don’t do as I ask, I will throw the chocolate away. Do you understand?’

Dropping her hands to her hips, she splayed her legs to stand her ground, glaring at me. ‘I’m not picking it up and you can’t make me! Give me my chocolate back.’

‘One, t-w-o …’ I counted as slowly as I could, willing her to turn and do as I’d asked. A small crowd had gathered outside the shop, watching the showdown with amused interest.

‘GIVE ME MY FUCKING CHOCOLATE BACK!’ she screamed, her face puce with anger.

As a foster carer, it can sometimes be a challenge to see beyond difficult behaviour and not take it personally, particularly if your own children suffer as a result. Mercifully, with regular mealtimes, a calm environment and a reliable routine in place, most children quickly respond and start to seek out the trusted adult’s approval.

When looking after a ‘challenging’ child, I sometimes find myself recalling previous placements – two-year-old Billy, for example, with his pudgy knees, brown eyes full of mischief and the foulest language I’ve ever heard. After a few weeks in a house where he wasn’t regularly set upon by his sadistic stepfather, the toddler was a delight to be around and began to use words that began with letters other than ‘f’.

‘Three, f-o-u-r …’ Mortified though I was, I couldn’t give in to Phoebe’s demands any more than I could allow her to drink liquid soap. No child could possibly feel secure if they were allowed to wield power over the adults around them. I felt she needed someone to take control and show her that there were limits, lines that I simply wouldn’t allow her to cross. Until she learnt to impose those limits herself, something most children grasped as toddlers, I would have to do it for her. I had to accept that there might be nothing I could do to alleviate the problems associated with autism, but I was determined to help her gain some self-control so that she would feel safe in her own skin.

‘Five,’ I said quietly, dropping the half-mauled bar into the bin and then bending to pick up the wrapper.

Phoebe balled her fists and threw her head back, wailing a tortured roar of fury.

‘Well done, my dear. Good on you!’ The old man who had watched us inside the shop shuffled over and patted my arm. ‘Old-fashioned discipline, that’s what she needs. Shame you didn’t do it when she was a toddler but at least you’re on the right track now. Let’s hope it’s not too late.’

Shamed, I gave him a crooked smile and turned towards home, praying the outraged Phoebe would follow me without further protest.

She repeated everything I said for the rest of the day – apart from the time she spent screaming for no discernible reason. By midday Emily and Jamie had lost all trace of humour and decided to seek refuge in the garden. Shutting themselves away in the summerhouse, essentially a shed with curtains, they played cards and board games for the entire afternoon. How I longed to follow them and draw up the barricades behind me. I felt guilty that the placement was spoiling the start of their school holiday but at least they were together and it was probably best they gave Phoebe a wide berth for a few days, in case she took it into her head to lash out at one of them again.

My attempts to engage Phoebe in some sort of constructive play failed. She seemed to lack any imagination, preferring to walk around in circles like a caged animal, talking incessantly. Every now and again she would enter a period of calm, when she would sit and chat like any other eight-year-old girl. Once or twice I broached the subject of the mother and baby in the shop, explaining that if she couldn’t say anything nice, it would be best not to say anything at all. She responded with a blank expression, as if the incident had been a figment of my imagination. Sometimes it was as if Phoebe had just emerged from a coma and had no access to old knowledge, even if it was from only a few hours earlier.

At least with her hair now clean and less matted, she looked a bit more ‘normal’, bordering on pretty actually, when she wasn’t flapping her arms in a crazy way. I wondered how she behaved at school and whether she had any friends she could play with. She couldn’t seem to sit still, even for a minute. It was as if she had restless leg syndrome that had spread to her whole body (my mum would have called it ‘Syvitis Dance’). Whatever the cause, her strange actions were exhausting to watch and my appetite was shot to pieces by the time we sat down for our meal that evening.

Phoebe’s eyes bulged when I put her dinner on the table, staring at her plate with such horror that anyone would have thought I’d just unveiled a lamb’s head instead of pizza Margherita.

‘What’s wrong, Phoebe? Don’t you like pizza?’

I had tried to find out what she might like to eat during the day, but each time I mentioned food she had gagged. Breakfast had been a small bowl of porridge, Phoebe’s untouched pancake polished off by Emily, who hated to see good chocolate going to waste. She had refused lunch so I was keen for her to eat something that evening. I thought I couldn’t go wrong with a trusty Italian meal. Every child I had fostered so far had had food issues, but usually it was a case of trying to stop them from gorging themselves until they were sick.

Phoebe pushed her plate away, retching. ‘I want porridge,’ she choked, her eyes irresistibly glued to the source of her revulsion.

Emily lowered her own pizza slowly to her plate and Jamie screwed up his face, staring at Phoebe in disgust. ‘Can you stop her making that noise, Mum?’ he asked, his chin tucked close to his chest as if close to throwing up himself.

I whipped Phoebe’s plate away, slipping it onto the bookshelf behind me. Her shoulders sagged in relief but she continued to make gagging noises.

‘Alright, that’s enough, Phoebe. Take some deep breaths – it’s gone now. But you must tell me what sort of thing you eat at home, so I can get something you like.’

‘I only eat porridge,’ she said, her breath coming in short gasps. She was almost in tears. Her eyes were still bulging as if food were somehow a threat to her safety.

‘Yes, I know you prefer porridge for breakfast, but what do you like for lunch and dinner?’

‘What do you like for lunch and dinner?’ she mocked, then clamped her hand over her mouth. My concern was suspended by a moment’s jubilation. She realises, I thought, she actually knows what she’s doing. I wasn’t quite sure what the implications were but for some reason I was filled with a sense of optimism.

‘I only eat porridge, nothing else. Oh, except chocolate. Anything else makes me …’ she retched again, exaggeratedly. ‘Blwha, sick.’

Emily and Jamie exchanged disgusted glances.

‘Can we leave the table, Mum?’ they chorused.

‘Yes, OK. You can watch TV while you eat your pizza, if you want,’ I said, breaking one of our chief house rules. Usually I was quite strict about eating our meals at the table. It was just about the only time in the day when we had a proper, uninterrupted conversation but if our chat was to be interspersed with Phoebe’s throat spasms, I supposed it was worth skipping.

Phoebe sat pinching her bare arm, her eyes staring glassily ahead, while I picked at the rest of my meal. Seemingly oblivious to the red marks forming on her skin, she increased the pressure, twisting and digging away with short, bitten nails. Just what is going on inside your head? I wondered, sensing a dark undercurrent.

That night I lay in bed, filled with a sense of impending doom. Phoebe had eaten very little that day, despite all my coaxing. Before she went to bed I had made her another bowl of porridge with a heavy grating of chocolate on top and she had nibbled at it but without any gusto. Could it be possible that porridge was literally all she ever ate?

Still, I thought, trying to focus on the positives, at least Emily and Jamie seemed to be coping well with Phoebe’s arrival. There were times when their own lives hadn’t been easy; their father and I had separated eight years earlier when they were much younger. I registered as a foster carer soon after my divorce and in a way I think fostering helped ease the transition from a nuclear to a single-parent family. Our house seemed much livelier with lots of children around, even those troubled and withdrawn. Though their dad, who lives less than a mile away from us, was and still is a big part of their lives, Emily and Jamie always missed the chaos that comes with being part of a full family, whenever it was just the three of us at home.

It was the sound of their laughter earlier that had helped me through the gruesomeness of our first full day with Phoebe. I felt so proud of them: not only were they kind and loving, they possessed a wonderful ability to laugh at the downright awful, a gift inherited from their father. Somehow, remembering their capacity for humour helped me in marshalling my own and my low mood slowly lifted.

But it wasn’t just fretting over Phoebe’s starvation diet that was keeping me awake: knots in my stomach reminded me that I had to supervise a contact session between Phoebe and her parents in the morning. When children are removed without parental consent, contact usually takes place under the supervision of contact workers employed by the local authority, but since Phoebe was in voluntary care, the arrangement was to be more flexible.

Curious as I was to find out what her parents were like, contact was one of the tasks of fostering that I dreaded. Looking after the children was often the easy bit; Looked After Children (LAC) reviews, Child Protection Conferences and contact sessions, in fact anything involving other adults was the unappealing side of the job as far as I was concerned. Being a natural introvert, I tended to shy away from meetings, particularly when there was the possibility of confrontation.

Turning to my side, I tuned in to the low hum of traffic drifting through my open bedroom window, trying to dismiss thoughts of Phoebe from my mind.

Chapter 6

The smart-looking couple stood a few feet inside the entrance of La Trattoria, their shoulders turned fractionally away from each other, expressions downturned. When he spotted us, the man, in his early 40s and tall, stepped forward with a confident air. Phoebe bounded ahead of us and ran to his outstretched arms, throwing her thin arms around his neck.

‘How have you been, my little sweetheart?’ Robin Steadman asked, smiling warmly as he lifted his daughter from the ground and tickled her side. She squealed with excitement. Slim but broad-shouldered, he looked immaculate in his double-breasted suit and tie, every inch the man about town. Salt and pepper, wavy hair was swept back from his tanned face; it was easy to imagine him sitting behind a shiny desk in a suave London bond broker’s office.

Phillipa, Phoebe’s mother, lingered behind: although clearly younger than her husband, she looked tired, concern etched onto her features. While Robin gave the impression he had just returned from some exotic holiday in Dubai, his wife looked as if this was her first venture into the sunshine for several months. Her skin appeared washed out and she gave off an anguished air. It seemed that Robin was coping with the sudden separation from his daughter with more ease than Phillipa.

‘Hello, darling,’ she said in lady-like, reedy tones, once Phoebe had released her grip on her father. I wasn’t sure if it was just her middle-class accent but her voice sounded brittle to me, lacking in any warmth.

‘Hello, darling,’ Phoebe repeated, rebuffing her mother’s attempt to cuddle up to her. Phillipa’s lips drew into a tight line. So, you find her parrot behaviour infuriating too, I thought, noticing the flash of irritation in her expertly kohl-lined eyes.

As Robin shook my hand the cuff of his shirt shifted, revealing an expensive watch on his wrist. ‘Shall we?’ he asked in an impressive, well-educated accent, gesturing to a nearby table. He smiled charmingly as he pulled out a chair for me to sit down. Waving Emily and Jamie along to the opposite end of the table, I seated myself between my children and the temporarily reunited family. It was close enough to monitor their conversation but far enough away to allow them a little privacy too.

Glancing around, I was grateful to see that the place was near-empty, in case the smell of pizza should set off Phoebe’s gagging again. Jamie scanned the drinks menu. Emily feigned an interest but every so often she took a surreptitious peep sideways, eyeing Phoebe’s parents. At 14, Emily was old enough to stay at home but had asked to come along. I think she was as curious to meet them as I was.

Once we were settled in our seats, Robin lifted his hand and seconds later a waiter appeared. Phoebe cuddled up to her father, bouncing up and down so that her head kept bumping into his chin. ‘Careful, darling.’ She ignored him, continuing to bob furiously and squealing loudly. Patiently, he craned his neck, ordering drinks over the top of her head.

Phillipa, by contrast, was perched nervously on the edge of the seat opposite Phoebe, her hands twisting a napkin. Expensively coiffured, with high cheekbones and thickly lashed blue eyes, she made me feel a bit scruffy in her presence and I began flattening down my disobedient hair. She should have been beautiful and yet an air of coldness shaded any radiance from shining through. She glanced towards me then quickly looked away, smiling towards her daughter. ‘So, what have you been up to, darling? Have you been keeping busy at Rosie’s?’ I got the feeling she made the enquiry because it was expected of her, rather than out of genuine interest. There was definitely a distance there.

‘Been keeping busy at Rosie’s?’

An uncomfortable silence followed Phoebe’s mocking of her mother, eventually broken by a self-assured Robin. ‘I bet you’ve been – the most …’ I couldn’t make out the entire sentence because the pair were snuggled so closely together, him whispering affectionately into her ear. Every now and again her bony hand rose up, touching her father’s cheek. It was as if Phillipa’s presence was superfluous to both father and daughter. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one to notice.

Phillipa lowered her gaze, looking ill at ease. I felt instant pity for her. Leaning across the table, I decided to try and engage her in conversation, an effort to ease her discomfort.

‘Do you mind if I ask you a few things, Phillipa?’

She shook her head. ‘Not at all.’

‘What does Phoebe like to eat? The only thing I can tempt her with is porridge.’

Phillipa reddened. ‘She’s fixated on cereal at the moment, I’m afraid. Becoming fanatical about certain things can be one of the effects of autism.’ She seemed to shudder when she mentioned her daughter’s condition. It was strange, really – she was so articulate that I should have been the one who felt intimidated and yet it was she who appeared flustered.

Embarrassed to delve into issues of hygiene with someone so refined but feeling obliged to investigate, I asked her why Phoebe’s hair was matted.

She didn’t directly look at me as she answered. ‘She hates water so we try and get bathtime over with as quickly as possible. I’m afraid she’s been even more obsessive about it lately – she just won’t allow me anywhere near her hair.’

At that moment Phoebe lunged across the table, catching her mother’s face with her fingernails. ‘Shut up,’ she screeched, ‘stop talking about me!’

Phillipa flinched, glancing around the restaurant with embarrassment. How difficult it must be, I thought, to have every outing ruled by someone so unpredictable. It would hardly be surprising if their marriage were under strain. Even so, they did seem to indulge rather than control Phoebe’s spoilt behaviour. Were they really that frightened of their own daughter’s tantrums that they couldn’t even persuade her to wash her hair? Robin lowered flattened hands through the air in front of his daughter, trying to placate her. ‘It’s alright, Phoebe. Mummy’s not going to talk about you any more.’ He had a rich, deep voice that would have been perfect for radio. ‘Ah, here we are, sweetheart,’ he said, as a hesitant-looking waiter lowered a tray of drinks on the table.

Phoebe peppered the next hour with outlandish actions and loud screeches. Phillipa sat meekly, watching as her unruffled husband tried to cajole his out-of-control daughter into calming down. Robin remained remarkably cool throughout, making no attempt to restrain her, even when she lashed out at her mother again. I found myself getting more and more wound up as I watched them let their child walk all over them.

Apart from a few monosyllabic replies from Emily and Jamie in response to my attempts at conversation, they spent most of the time in silence, avidly watching the interaction between Phoebe and her parents. As 11 o’clock approached, Phillipa made a show of checking her watch as if trying to remind me to call time on their session. I wondered how she managed to get through whole days in the company of Phoebe, if she found just an hour so torturous.

When Robin signalled that we were ready to leave the waiter quickly returned with two separate bills, no doubt relieved that our noisy party would be gone before the lunchtime trade arrived.

Robin swept the receipts across the table with his well-groomed, long fingers. ‘They’re for you, I believe.’

‘Oh, thanks.’ I took the bill for Emily and Jamie’s drinks, handing the other back to him. ‘If you go to the civic centre, you can claim it all back there.’ I knew from experience that social services covered the cost of contact in the community, with no apparent limit. If Phoebe’s parents had chosen to take her to the cinema or the theatre, the money would be diverted from already overstretched budgets to pay for the trip. In the past I had found the idea galling, particularly when the children had been removed as a result of severe abuse. I couldn’t help but feel that feckless parents were being rewarded for their appalling behaviour. Surely you can afford to pay for your daughter’s own milkshake? I thought acerbically.

‘No.’ His mouth twisted in annoyance. Phoebe stiffened. His wife eyed him warily as he tapped the bill with his forefinger. ‘My daughter has been removed for no good reason. I have to be supervised by strangers if I want to spend an hour with her.’ An edge crept into his smooth voice. ‘Do you really think I’m going to cover the cost of that sort of humiliation?’

From nowhere, an image of Phoebe’s tangled pyjama bottoms flashed into my thoughts. The memory gave me a disquieting feeling. Could it be that she had suffered abuse at the hands of this man? I banished the thought, telling myself it was natural for him to feel resentful, when his only daughter, and perhaps most treasured possession, had been snatched away from him.

My own children dropped their straws, watching us keenly. Jamie looked about ready to pounce. My son was a simple soul, without an aggressive bone in his body, but he was always particularly protective of me. I smiled at both of them to convey the message that all was well. Then all at once something in Robin’s eyes flickered and there was another change in pitch. I think he must have realised the effect his tone was having on me because his frown softened. ‘I would prefer you dealt with it now,’ he smiled amiably, ‘if you wouldn’t mind.’

Conciliatory, I shook my head. ‘Not a problem,’ I said, springing to my feet in my customary wish to oblige. Grabbing the tab, I slung my bag over my shoulder and went to the till. As I entered my pin number into the credit card reader I glanced across at Phillipa. She hovered behind her husband as he held Phoebe’s hands, supporting her while she jumped up and down on his highly polished, shiny black shoes.

As we said our goodbyes there was no trace of bad feeling between us. Robin shook my hand again and thanked me warmly. There was no real reason, then, for the surge of angst rising in my chest. Except that beneath his charming exterior I was beginning to suspect Phoebe’s father might be concealing something all the more disturbing.

Chapter 7

The journey back was stressful, with Phoebe parroting everything Jamie said.

‘Mum, please stop her,’ he groaned, drawing his hands roughly down his face and twisting his lip with agitation.

Phoebe was delighted by his distress.

‘Mum, please stop her.’

‘That’s enough, Phoebe. You’ll go to your room when we get home if you don’t stop,’ I said firmly, regretting the words as soon as I’d said them. Having recently attended a Behaviour Management course, I was aware that threatening to send a child to their room was frowned upon. Apparently it gave the impression that bedtime was a punishment. Any child who had been sexually abused would already harbour negative feelings around night-time and foster carers were supposed to overlook bad behaviour where possible, rewarding good behaviour instead.

Positive praise was all very well in theory, I had found, but in the first few weeks of placement often there was precious little that could be applauded. Of course, most children responded well to praise, but being unable to impose some form of penalty made fostering that much harder. Ignoring bad behaviour didn’t always help it to go away.

As we neared home I decided to pop in to see my mother. She’d only met Phoebe briefly when she came to pick Emily and Jamie up a few days previously, and she was eager to get to know her. During our daily telephone conversations I had regaled her with our struggles so far but I think she thought I had embellished the tales for her entertainment.

When Mum opened the door she greeted us with her usual warm embrace, though rather than wrapping her arms around Phoebe she patted her on the arm, giving it a friendly squeeze.

‘Oh goodness, you’re all skin and bone, girl!’

Phoebe stiffened, staring at her arm as if Mum had rubbed her over with hot coals. If Mum noticed her reaction (which I’m sure she had, as nothing much got past her), she ignored it. I was touched by her ability to welcome the tribes of children I thrust upon her. Over the years she had treated them with as much generosity as she had shown her own grandchildren, something she didn’t have to do.

‘Lovely to see you all – enjoying being off school, are you?’ Cheerfully ushering us all into her cosy living room, Mum launched into her standard routine of listing all the sweet and savoury items available in the kitchen.

Emily and Jamie dived in, grabbed some goodies and then planted themselves firmly on her sofa. They were so comfortable at their grandmother’s house that it was like a second home to them. Phoebe hovered behind me; I could see she felt a bit uncomfortable.

‘Come on, love, don’t be shy. Have a chocolate cookie or something. I made ’em fresh this morning.’

Oh dear, I thought, I should have mentioned to Mum about Phoebe’s food issues. Talk of freshly baked biscuits and the like was bound to set off her retching. But I was wrong. Amazingly, Phoebe smiled shyly as she took Mum’s hand, allowing herself to be guided to an armchair, where she reached out and accepted one of the warm offerings. Although Mum could sometimes be a force to be reckoned with she was naturally kind, a throwback to a gentler age. It was something I think Phoebe could sense.

With the children within earshot our conversation revolved mainly around the latest family gossip, the comings and goings of Mum’s new neighbours and the latest developments on Emmerdale.

‘Oh, and I forgot to tell you what your brother got up to last week.’

‘Oh, and I forgot to tell you what your brother got up to last week.’

I smiled wryly to myself: Phoebe was definitely feeling at home. Mum stared at her with one of her frighteningly stern looks, the type, I’m ashamed to say, which still had a shrinking effect on me. Phoebe looked away.

After a moment, Mum continued: ‘Where was I? Oh yes, Chris. He’s only gone and …’

‘He’s only gone and …’

‘Don’t interrupt adults,’ Mum snapped. ‘It’s rude.’

‘Fuck off, whore!’

Mum’s jaw dropped about two inches. Emily and Jamie spun around, astonished anyone would dare speak to their grandmother in that way. If Mum hadn’t recovered quickly and said, ‘Wash your mouth out with soap,’ I would have laughed at their reaction.

I cringed. ‘It’s alright, Phoebe, she doesn’t mean it.’ And to Mum I growled through gritted teeth, ‘You mustn’t say things like that – you’ll get me struck off.’ What did she think she was doing?

‘Send them social workers around here and I’ll give them short shrift.’ Mum waggled her finger at Phoebe. ‘She’s the one coming into my house with the filthy mouth.’

Despite our close relationship there were days when my mother was capable of driving me nuts. Did she not realise the trouble she could get me in for saying such a thing? I remembered another foster carer telling me that she had a baby removed from her care because during a visit from her supervising social worker, her own mother, who had offered to change the baby’s nappy, exclaimed, ‘Ooh, look at that lovely bottom! Don’t you just want to eat it?’

Horrified, the social worker had stared at the foster carer as if she’d been raised by cannibals. She was reinstated soon after the investigation was completed but the baby had gone through an unnecessary move and the foster carer had almost given up her vocation through the stress of it all.

I suppose I should have been grateful that Mum hadn’t threatened to ‘cut her tongue out’ as she often did when my brothers were young and repeated something they’d heard in the playground.

Mum was still staring at me belligerently. No surprise there, but what did amaze me was Phoebe’s reaction to the whole exchange. Her eyes were filled with amusement as she stared at both of us and then, to my surprise, she began laughing.

We stayed another hour before travelling the short journey home. As I drove, I churned Phoebe’s reaction over in my mind. I had thought that autism affected a person’s ability to appreciate humour since sufferers generally took everything anyone said in the literal sense, but if that were the case, Phoebe would surely have been horrified by Mum’s ‘threat’ to wash her mouth out with soap?

It was yet another anomaly to puzzle over.

When we got home Emily invited Phoebe to sit at the table and do some colouring, freeing me to prepare lunch. I was amazed by my daughter’s fortitude – Phoebe had aggravated both of my children since first light so it was a credit to Emily’s levels of tolerance that she was even prepared to share the same floor space – but I asked Phoebe to go and sit at the top of the stairs for five minutes instead, as penance for winding Jamie up in the car by repeating everything he had said.

As we sat down to eat he was subdued. I couldn’t help but smile to myself as he slipped past a sullen Phoebe, taking a seat at the opposite end of the table. He glanced sideways to make sure she was at a safe distance, wary of getting a wet finger rammed into his ear again.

‘I hate the way you make porridge,’ Phoebe said as she swept her bowl away, arching back in her chair. Her ribs were visible through her T-shirt. ‘I’m not going to eat it.’

Extremely jittery, I got the feeling it was an effort for her to sit at the table, like she wanted to spring up and spin around the house.

‘That’s a shame,’ I said, non-committal, determined not to be drawn into a battle.

‘That’s a shame.’

There was a pause. Nonchalantly, I took a bite of my sandwich.

‘I mean it. I’m not even going to taste it.’

‘Yes, I heard you, Phoebe. Now, let’s decide what to do tomorrow. We could go ice-skating or maybe hire some bikes and go for a ride.’

‘I’ve got to revise, Mum.’ Emily was studying for her GCSEs and so it would be good for her to have the house to herself for a whole day.

Jamie shrugged his shoulders, eyeing Phoebe. A keen sportsman, he usually jumped at the opportunity of an action-packed day out. I guessed that his reticence was probably fuelled by the idea of another disastrous car ride with our new interloper.

Furious that I was showing no interest in her hunger strike, Phoebe glared at me, drumming her fingers on the table. Writhing in her seat, she stirred her porridge round and round, then spun both hands around, hurling porridge through the air. It was then that I decided to stop pandering to her autism and treat her just as I would any other child.

‘Stop that right now,’ I insisted, wondering whether she was so manic because seeing her parents had made her feel extra homesick. Whatever the reason, I knew that being lenient wasn’t going to help.

‘Stop that right now.’ A glimmer in her eyes told me she understood exactly how infuriating her parroting behaviour was. I knew she couldn’t help it – her autism controlled her, not the other way around – but I couldn’t help but feel she was enjoying the effects of it too. Observing contact between Phoebe and her parents had been a telling experience. It was clear that she was allowed to rule the roost at home, with few boundaries in place. Watching her spinning her arms around, I realised that she was also dominating all of us too. I made a mental note to record the interactions with her parents in my daily diary. Regular records might help to paint an overall picture of their relationship.

‘Phoebe, if you don’t stop what you’re doing, I will have to make you stop.’

All at once Phoebe picked up her porridge, throwing it across the table with a screech of delight. The edge of the bowl caught Jamie on the chest, the contents spattering all over the table and into his lap. With a loud crash, the china met the floor, cracking into several jagged pieces. Jamie clapped his hands to his chest, his face reddening with alarm.

‘Can I eat in my room, Mum?’

My heart went out to him but I didn’t want him to sit in his room when he had done nothing wrong. ‘No, Jamie, you stay where you are.’ Grabbing a tea towel, I mopped up around him, determined not to let Phoebe sabotage our time together as a family. Tempted to yell at her, I held my breath, counting backwards from 10 to one. The urge subdued, I spoke with calm firmness, ‘Phoebe, I have asked you not to throw things. It’s dangerous and could hurt someone very badly. I’d like you to leave the table, please.’

With a look of delight, Phoebe scooted off to the sofa, where she sat with her legs clasped to her chest, rocking manically back and forth. Jamie’s shoulders visibly dropped and he picked up his fork, tucking into his lunch with relief. Annoyed that Phoebe had achieved what she’d wanted but determined not to spoil the rest of our meal, I chattered about where we should visit over the next few days, the weather – anything to try and lift the gloom Phoebe had left in her wake.

‘So,’ I said cheerfully, ‘what’s on the menu for this evening, Ems?’ Once a week Emily cooked an evening meal for the family and really went to town, setting the table with candles, embroidered placemats and napkins.

Emily opened her mouth to speak but Jamie butted in. ‘I wouldn’t mind having dinner on my lap again,’ he said drily, raising his eyebrows and staring down at his porridge-splattered trousers.

Emily roared with laughter. I chuckled, burying my head in my hands. It was the first spontaneous laugh the three of us had shared since her arrival. The morose atmosphere lightened in an instant. Thank goodness for a sense of humour, I thought.

Emily offered to wash up while I cleared the table. I was about to make a pile of the plates when I heard Emily gasp. Expecting to find Phoebe nibbling the remote, I spun around, shocked to see her half-inclined on the sofa, legs spread wide, with her jeans hanging at her ankles. With a look of frenzy on her face, she was panting and holding her knickers aside, trying to manoeuvre a pen inside the elastic. She looked like a young actress in a horror movie, the whites of her eyes on full display again. Emily was rooted to the spot, staring at the scene with her mouth gaping.

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