Copyright

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

HarperElement

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperElement 2017

FIRST EDITION

© Casey Watson 2017

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Cover image © Tanya Gramatikova/Arcangel Images (posed by model)

Cover layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Casey Watson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008142643

Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008142650

Version: 2017-11-22

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Epilogue

Topics for Reading Group Discussion

Casey Watson

Moving Memoirs eNewsletter

About the Publisher

Dedication

To all the selfless people out there, in all walks of life. When you wonder whether or not your contribution makes a difference, please know that it does. Every act of kindness or compassion touches someone in some way, and down the line it will be remembered and reflected upon. As always, I’d like to give a special mention to those that work with children and spend every day trying to make a difference – I’m with you every step of the way.

Acknowledgements

Forever grateful to the team at HarperCollins for continuing to have faith in me and for helping me to get my stories out there. During hard times and good I have felt supported and inspired to carry on. Thanks also to my wonderful agent, Andrew Lownie, who never falters in his faith in me. I owe him everything! Finally, special thanks to my inspiration, mentor and good friend, Lynne, who keeps me plodding on regardless, and helps me to always see the sunny side.

Chapter 1

Christmas Eve. Early evening. Tools downed. To-do lists ticked. And to say I was excited is a bit of an understatement. I had begged. I had pleaded. I had wheedled and I had whined. And in the end, because there was clearly going to be no stopping me, Mike had caved in and let me open my main present early.

Just ten minutes ago, in fact, accompanied by heartfelt groans from Tyler, whose early mortification had just been endorsed by my first effort at channelling Beyoncé.

Yes, it had happened. I’d got my wish. My very own karaoke machine.

‘What?’ I asked Tyler, who was staring at me open-mouthed, and not, from the look of it, in a complimentary way. But why the face? He’d been our foster son for a good few years now. Our son now. He already knew about my singing abilities.

About which term we had to agree to disagree. I believed I had some, hence my list for Father Christmas, whereas Tyler believed that I must be tone deaf. ‘Mum!’ he cried, sounding mortified. ‘Have you listened to yourself? Ever? Seriously,’ he added, glancing at Mike, whereupon they shook heads in unison, ‘you need to.’

‘Well, exactly,’ I said, beaming, despite the assault on my singing confidence. ‘That’s precisely why I needed to open it tonight. Plenty of time to get some practice in before tomorrow’s singalong.’

Tyler picked up a cushion and covered his face with it, groaning, as any self-respecting fifteen-year-old boy would in such a circumstance. Though he still managed to guffaw from behind it when Mike added thoughtfully that it was less Beyoncé than a pastiche of early Shirley Bassey with a touch – a big touch – of Lee Marvin. I didn’t care. I had a karaoke machine and I wasn’t afraid to use it. I riffled through the choices and prepared to delight them with some Streisand. And got a belt with Tyler’s cushion by way of gratitude.

I didn’t care. I didn’t mind. Exchanges like these were some of the greatest joys of family life. Not just the big things – the big moments, the overt displays of affection – but also the little things. The everyday and the largely unremarkable. Such as the gentle banter that thrives in an atmosphere of love and harmony. The gentle ribbing. The wordplay. The giggles and all the nonsense. It was Christmas Eve and all was well in my world.

Not that I was consciously thinking about that. I was too busy responding via the medium of song. But was saved, then, from further familial abuse by the sound of my mobile phone ringing. ‘That’ll be Riley,’ I said, putting my microphone down and heading towards the dining room to take the call. She’d doubtless be calling with some last-minute directive or other, having summoned us to her house at silly o’clock the following morning.

Riley and her partner David had blessed us with three grandchildren by now – Levi and Jackson, who were ten and eight respectively, and the little mischief-making machine that was their youngest, Marley Mae, who was three going on the usual thirteen.

In previous years, we’d done things differently on Christmas morning. Now they were a bit older, they would generally open their presents at home (no sense getting the grandparents up at 4 a.m. when you have two parents already there for the purpose) and then coming over to ours mid-morning for another gift-opening session with Tyler and our other grandchild, Kieron and Lauren’s darling little Dee Dee.

This year, however, it was all change. David’s parents, who lived some way away now, were staying over with them, and it had been decided (unilaterally, because that’s my Riley, bless her) that we should join them at hers for a big Christmas breakfast, so we could chat about Riley and David’s upcoming wedding before they left for home.

The wedding was to be in February – scheduled for Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t have been more excited about that either. Oh, yes, all was very well with my world.

But it wasn’t Riley. It was a male voice. One I recognised immediately as that of my fostering link worker, John Fulshaw, even though a glance at the clock made his call something of a shock. He’d already delivered my Christmas poinsettia, after all, and, as far as I knew, all was quiet on the fostering front.

It clearly wasn’t. ‘I’m so sorry, Casey,’ he said. He sounded weary. ‘I know this is probably the very worst time I could ring you, but we really are stuck. I mean really stuck. We desperately need someone to take a child this evening. As soon as possible in fact.’

Mike, from the sofa, mouthed the words ‘What’s wrong?’ I mouthed back ‘Emergency’. Enough said. Tyler, all ears now, turned the television down.

‘Well, yes,’ I said, eyeing my abandoned microphone sadly. ‘But that’s okay. Go on, tell me then. What’s up?’

It was a short call, because this was clearly no time for rambling on. Suffice to say, I would now be working this Christmas. Mike and I both would. And all of us, because that’s the nature of the job, would in all likelihood have our Christmas plans changed. We would be looking after a twelve-year-old girl, who was apparently called Bella, and who’d already been in the care system for a week. The details were sketchy (the usual ‘I’ll fill you in once we’re sorted’) but the gravity of the situation was not. Bella was in care because her stepfather was in a coma on a ventilator in an intensive therapy unit, having been put there with a life-threatening head injury, which had apparently been inflicted by Bella’s mother. Attempted murder, by all accounts, which Bella had apparently witnessed, and while her stepdad fought for his life her mother was in prison.

People often ask me what kind of circumstances lead to a child being placed in care, and much of the time my responses are broadly similar. Abuse features regularly, as – equally depressingly – does neglect. The children of addicts, the children of virtual children themselves, the children who’ve been abandoned, those whose families have imploded or disappeared – the list of childhood miseries sometimes seems endless. But this was a new one. The grimmest kind of new one, to me anyway. Because the child who was coming to us had witnessed her mother attempting to kill her stepfather. Where did you start to imagine the myriad ways she must be in agony?

And on Christmas Eve, too. Yes, just another day, but a day that was marked in most calendars every year, which for a child was a treasure trove of happy memories. It didn’t matter in the scheme of things what the date was. Of course it didn’t. But if her stepdad died tonight, and her mother was convicted of murder, Christmas would be bound up with horrible memories for ever more.

‘Yes, of course,’ I told John, as soon as he’d finished filling me in. ‘If there’s no one else willing or able, of course we’ll take her.’

‘You don’t know how relieved I am to hear that,’ he told me. I knew he meant it, too. ‘I’ll pop an email to you now,’ he added. ‘You know, just outlining what I’ve told you, and with whatever else I can find out. Ten minutes, I promise. Pronto.’

‘No worries,’ I said. ‘We can chat when you get here.’

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘That’s the thing. I have to get home. I am so sorry, Casey, but between you and me I shouldn’t be here at all. I’m only in now because I forgot to switch my bloody mobile off. And here I am, passing the buck to you.’

I sympathised. I knew how guilty he must feel. I also knew just how many hours he clocked up in a week, many of them extremely unsociable ones, too – because fostering emergencies didn’t keep office hours and, because that’s the way life worked, often happened in the small hours, in the darkness before dawn, when the pubs turned out, the drug deals were completed, when reason went and tempers began fraying. And the wives and children of people with jobs like John’s mattered too. I knew full well how little they got to see of him.

‘No need to apologise,’ I reassured him. ‘Go on, get yourself home, okay?’

‘That’s the plan,’ he said. ‘Fingers crossed. Before I’m lynched! Bella’s social worker, who’s on her way to get her now, will bring her over to you, if that’s okay. Hour or so. Two at the most. I’ll double check and confirm in the email. Really, Casey, thanks so much for this. Terrible timing. And thanks to Mike, too.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ I reassured him, before putting the phone down.

‘No it’s not,’ Mike said immediately, as I walked back into the living room. My turn to face the music now, I realised. I knew I shouldn’t have said yes. Not without checking with Mike first. But I knew that if I did check he’d say yes too. So not doing so was a time-saving exercise, that was all. ‘It’s Christmas Eve, love,’ he said, not yet knowing the circumstances. ‘Wasn’t there anyone else John could ask?’

‘If there had been, he wouldn’t have called us, would he?’ I told him reasonably. Though Mike did have a point. She wouldn’t be the first child to have been deposited with us close to Christmas. But this close? John had said she was already in the system, hadn’t he? So what had happened? Had another foster family decided they couldn’t keep her? I decided not to tell Mike about that part. Just the facts. An episode of violence (I was necessarily editing as I went, for Tyler’s benefit). Dad in hospital. Mother in jail. And her a witness to it all, to her family falling apart. To her father’s last hours of life, even, potentially. The poor child, we agreed, must be in bits.

And it wasn’t like we had anyone in at the moment, was it? Bar Tyler, who no longer counted, of course, on account of being one of the family now. It had been a while, in fact, since we’d had anything approaching a long-term placement. Since Adrianna, a lovely Polish teenager, had left us at the end of spring, we’d only had children come to us on a short-term basis, keeping us free for the sort of child who needed specialist care long term.

This wasn’t being billed as that, exactly, but, given the gravity of the circumstances, it might well turn out to be, mightn’t it? Specially given John’s email, which pinged into my inbox five minutes later, and, though brief, did make mention of Bella’s demeanour, her probable post-traumatic stress disorder and her refusal to say a single word about what she’d seen. Emotionally shut down. Eating poorly. Unreachable. Deeply distressed.

‘Well, that’s Riley’s breakfast off the agenda,’ Mike said when I’d finished, ever the practical one. ‘We’d better give her a ring and let her know.’

‘She might like it,’ Tyler suggested. ‘Take her mind off stuff and that.’

‘She might,’ Mike conceded. ‘Though by the sound of things Christmas will be the last thing on her mind. After all, she’s –’

‘Oh, lord,’ I said, a thought having just occurred to me. ‘Presents. She’ll need some presents. Mike, we have to get her some presents.’ I checked the time again. ‘The supermarket. The supermarkets will still be open, won’t they? For another hour, at least, anyway. Mike,’ I went on, seeing his pained expression, ‘I can’t have a child here with nothing to open on Christmas morning. I just can’t. Look, please, love. There’s still time. You go off and get some bits for her while I go and sort the room out –’

‘Me? Case, how am I supposed to know what to get a twelve-year-old girl?’

‘Use your imagination,’ I said, while grabbing his trainers so he could put them back on. ‘Use Tyler’s. Ty, you’ll go with Dad, won’t you? And I’ll make a list. Let me see … pyjamas. She’ll need some anyway, probably, as I don’t have anything the right size. A dressing gown. A fluffy one. Some CDs. Some smellies … Get some paper, Ty. Write it down. Go on, quickly, the pair of you. You know what’s current, Tyler … actually, on second thoughts, you can stay here with me. Help me clear all the rubbish in the bedroom …’

‘And clean it to within an inch of its life,’ he said, grinning. ‘I know the drill, sir.’ He clicked his heels.

‘Cheeky tyke,’ I said, aiming a gentle swipe at him. He was such a good boy. Such a lovely nature about him. Whatever else was true, Tyler’s presence was a bonus for any child who came to us.

I bundled Mike out into the fairy-light spangled night, which was cloudless and chilly, then ran around, first pulling out my wrapping box so I could wrap up all the spoils, then grabbing cleaning spray and dusters, and heading off up the stairs with Tyler to make the required assault on our unexpected charge’s place of safety.

‘Business as usual, then,’ Tyler said, grinning as he unwound the cord on the vacuum cleaner.

I couldn’t imagine anything about Bella’s circumstance that merited anything other than heartbreak, but this was not the time for that. Place of safety, place of calm. I smiled back at Tyler. ‘Yes, business as usual, love,’ I agreed.

Chapter 2

I stared at my laptop screen, engrossed. While Mike was still out, and Tyler was ensconced in front of the telly, a second, more informative email had come through from John. And with coffee made, and the practical side of things finished, I had sat down to read it, first taking in the fact that it was so much longer than the first, and then, line by line, as it began to sink in, the truly desperate nature of this child’s situation.

There was also a good reason for Bella’s emergency relocation, it turned out. After having been taken from the family home, and interviewed (fruitlessly), she’d initially been billeted with another foster family. They were a middle-aged couple who often took emergency placements, and the intention had been for her to stay with them at least till New Year, when the various agencies and departments who made decisions in such weighty matters were back open for business. At that point, the holidays over, the intention was to move her to a longer-term foster home while the police built their case against her mother. But nature had no concern for the smooth running of social services, and it so happened that the couple had a very pregnant daughter who lived some 150 miles away.

That shouldn’t have been a problem in itself. The baby wasn’t apparently due till late January, so there was no reason for the couple not to have Bella short term. However, a few hours back, the couple’s daughter had gone into early labour, and with complications that meant the couple had no choice (as if they’d want one) but to jump in the car and make the journey to be with her. Which left Bella out on a limb, since there was no guarantee they’d be back any time soon, which was where social services, and then John, and then Mike and I came in.

I sent up a silent prayer for happy news – perhaps a Christmas Day delivery? And for a baby who was delivered safe and well.

Then my thoughts naturally moved to the girl we were receiving. John had managed to speak at greater length with Bella’s social worker’s line manager, and was able to give me a fuller account of the events that had led to Bella being in care.

It seemed her mother, Laura Daniels, and her stepfather, Adam Cummings, had always had a volatile relationship. Together since Bella was three or four (with the stepdad acting very much as Bella’s father, apparently), they were already known to social services and had been for some years, following numerous complaints to police and social services, mostly with regard to their frequent noisy rows. Screaming episodes, fighting in the garden, bouts of drunken brawling; incidents like these had seen them visited by those in officialdom on numerous occasions. It had apparently been a regular occurrence.

Yet on every occasion, it seemed, there was little in the way of follow-up. Which was not to say anything should have been done (all too easy to think you know better with the benefit of hindsight) but there was obviously a pattern: the mother always trying to calm the situation down and the stepfather, once questioned, always taking full responsibility, saying he had a drink problem which he was anxious to address.

I had heard it all before. Who hadn’t? The cycle of drinking, drying out and then, down the line, the almost inevitable relapse was one that, sadly, was familiar to many. Yet it seemed there was a genuine desire to stop drinking in Adam Cummings, which was presumably why his luckless partner kept sticking by him. Which she clearly had, and, that being so, social services had taken a back seat, and their input had become minimal; at the time of this potentially lethal bout of violence they were down to twice-yearly visits. And all had been well. Well, up until a week ago, that was.

I wondered what had changed. What had finally broken her.

The one positive (in a situation where it looked like there was a distinct lack of positives) was that, by all accounts, Adam Cummings had never once laid a hand on Bella. That was also borne out by the observations of both the neighbours and successive social workers; Bella had always been found to be well looked after, well spoken, well turned out and clearly loved by both parents. Mum had always been apparently reasonably hands-on at Bella’s primary school, too. And from discussions with the wider family, which apparently included the maternal grandparents (no mention of any family on his side), it was evident that Adam only ever lashed out when under the influence, and as Bella had apparently confirmed herself, never towards her. There was also a footnote – at the time of writing, which had been in early autumn, Adam had apparently been going to AA meetings regularly.

Ah, but Christmas. Bringer of joy, but also bringer-on of family tensions. And now a man lay in ITU and a woman in a prison cell. And in the midst of it all was their child, now all alone.

I heard the door open and close then. Time to ponder some more later. In the meantime there were presents to wrap. Hopefully.

My husband had done pretty well. ‘Ah, brilliant,’ I said repeatedly, as he produced gifts one by one from the supermarket carrier bag, like a conjuror pulling a rabbit from a hat. ‘I’m sure she’ll love that. And that. Oh, and that one, for definite.’

‘And definitely these,’ Tyler contributed, having wrenched himself from the TV to lend his considered opinion of Mike’s choice of music CDs.

CDs were still something of a staple in our fostering lives, as we still had two elderly CD players; one in what was now Tyler’s room – he didn’t use it but wouldn’t part with it – and the other in the spare, fostering, bedroom. Yes, very old-school, and often the subject of amusement among the young (‘CD player? Isn’t that, like, an antique?’ or, in one memorable case, ‘What is that?’) but while music was universal, the modern kit on which to play it was often not – not for some of the kids who had passed through our doors down the years; some barely had shoes, let alone iPods and iPhones. We also – old school again – still had two DVD players.

‘Not sure about that, though,’ Tyler sniffed, catching the fluffy pink rabbit Mike now did, in fact, produce from the bag and throw at him.

‘It’s to put on her bed, stoopid,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to learn how girls operate, mate. Stuff on beds. That’s their thing. Totally pointless, but completely indispensable. Am I not right, oh noble Cushion Queen? Isn’t that exactly what girls do?’

I laughed. ‘It’s exactly what girls do,’ I said.

As well as the CDs and the fluffy bunny, and some appropriately pink festive toiletries, there was also a dressing gown – also pink and fluffy – a pair of butterfly-strewn pyjamas, a set of various hair bobbles and clips, and what I’d thought was the latest Harry Potter book – The Order of the Phoenix – which, according to a laughing Tyler, wasn’t very ‘latest’ these days, but was a bargain, apparently, and would definitely double up as a doorstop if she’d already read it.

I reached for the wrapping paper, and handed scissors and ribbon to Tyler. ‘I’ll wrap, you garnish,’ I said, which always made him giggle. ‘Remember the way I showed you how to curl the ribbon?’

‘Course,’ he said. (In fact he was something of a natural.) ‘But I swear to God, don’t ever tell any of my mates I do stuff like this. Especially Denver. I’d never live it down.’

Denver was Tyler’s best friend – had been for a few years now. He was a lovely boy and, from the start, he had been so good for Ty, particularly during the early days when he so missed his younger brother, who was still with his father and (to my mind) wicked stepmother. Ty and Denver had a bond now that I’d stake my life would prove unbreakable. And despite their endless quest to create some kind of hard-man image in public, they were both very similar in nature: kind-hearted and loving kids.

‘I swear on everything swearable on that your secret is safe with me,’ I told him. ‘Just like I’ve never told him you still have your bedtime milk in a plastic Spiderman cup.’

‘Mother!’ Tyler yelled, making me smile even more. The longer he was with us, the more he became just like us. A natural phenomenon, of course, but still thrilling even so. Not least because he sounded so like our Kieron at that age. Our Kieron who was now a fully grown, fully wise twenty-seven-year-old with a toddler. One of the joys of fostering, without a doubt, was the privilege (which was what it felt like to me) to live so many special parenting moments again.

But a great deal of what we did was about the bad times rather than the good times, and, the presents wrapped and the clock ticking – it was by now after 10 p.m. – it was at the front of my mind that our young visitor still hadn’t arrived yet.

By ten o’clock I was getting more than a bit antsy. Bella still hadn’t arrived and though I knew everything would change as a consequence of her coming to us, we still had to eat, and we still had to celebrate Christmas, albeit in perhaps a less OTT, more thoughtful fashion. Which meant I still had lots of preparation to do for the next day’s big celebratory dinner. I had the turkey to sort out, the vegetables to peel and the stuffing to make. The more I thought about it, the more panicked I was getting, not least because we still hadn’t made a firm plan for the morning either. Yes, I’d texted Riley, but we’d settled on a ‘we’ll see’ scenario, which left an item not ticked off my mental to-do list – always a recipe for ants in the pants.

But such is human nature. Despite the momentous events that had happened in the life of the girl who was on her way to us, which, by any yardstick, made worries about having the stuffing ready ridiculous, it was human nature for me to focus on the practical. What was the saying? Not ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’ – I couldn’t help doing that. No, the one about not worrying about the things you couldn’t control, and sticking to the ones that you could.

So it was that I had both hands in a bowl of sausage meat and breadcrumbs when my mobile went again. It was getting on for eleven – and it was John, despite his assurance that he’d clocked off hours ago.

Mike was in the living room watching TV and Tyler was now in bed, so I picked it up gingerly with my greasy hands.

‘John, honestly,’ I berated him. ‘You are supposed to be off duty.’

‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘And the wife’s probably busy plotting ways to kill me. But I had to ring; didn’t think you’d be logging on to read your email.’

‘No, you’re right,’ I said. ‘I actually had my hands in the stuffing. Hang on for ten seconds, can you, while I scrape them clean?’

That job done, we returned to the matter in hand. And the news that Bella had been delayed by the need for a whopping diversion, to collect the presents that had apparently already been bought and wrapped for her and were stashed at the family home in her parents’ wardrobe.

‘Bit eleventh hour,’ I remarked. ‘How come that hadn’t happened in the first place?’

‘Message only just got through from Laura Daniels’s lawyer,’ John explained. ‘So the whole thing has turned into something of an epic journey. Latest ETA is still an hour or so from now. So Christmas Day, in fact. What a game this is, eh? Had to be done, though.’

‘Yes, had to be done,’ I agreed. And despite the late arrival, I was glad for her. She would at least have that connection to her parents to hang on to; however things panned out – and, knowing the odds when it came to head injuries bad enough to warrant a bed in ITU, it was probably all going to pan out pretty wretchedly – that connection to those closest to her was still important. And who knew how important it would be in the coming days and weeks? There was no guarantee her stepfather would even live, after all.

‘And something else,’ John said, pulling me back from my reverie. ‘The main reason I called, actually. Another snippet of information. I’ve been able to chat to Sophie’s line manager, Kathy –’

‘Sophie?’ I’d not come across a Sophie in the line of duty before.

‘Sophie is Bella’s social worker. Sorry – didn’t I say? You’ll like her. Anyway, it seems the first port of call when this whole thing blew up was the grandparents – Laura Daniels’s parents, that is – who were happy to take Bella in.’

‘But obviously didn’t.’

‘Exactly. Because Bella wouldn’t hear of it. I mean, seriously wouldn’t hear of it, by all accounts. To the point of becoming hysterical. Said she’d rather go to strangers than have to live with her granddad.’

My antennae started twitching immediately. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, too frightened of him. She was apparently quite open about it, too. No allegations of anything inappropriate – nothing like that’s been suggested, and he’s not known to social services or anything. But all’s clearly not well where the family is concerned. She’s close enough to the grandmother to spend time with her reasonably regularly, but neither Bella nor her mother see anything of the grandfather. Never go to the house. There’s obviously some kind of rift there. Course, it might not have any bearing on anything, but I thought it worth you knowing. It’s another piece of the jigsaw at least, isn’t it?’

I agreed that it was. And he was right. It was definitely worth us knowing. How it affected anything I didn’t know, but it all added to the picture. And one thing I’d learned a very long time ago was that there was rarely smoke without at least a small hint of a fire. Time would tell. I signed off with a ‘Don’t you dare ring me again till at least the 27th,’ then put my head round the kitchen door and summoned my husband. I needed a kitchen hand, a confidant and coffee.

Chapter 3

It was almost midnight when we heard the car pull up and both Mike and I hurried to peek out of the window.

Mike whistled, long and low. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Social workers must be on some good pay these days. I’d give anything for a car like that.’

He then fell silent – out of respect – as the black BMW convertible finished its manoeuvre into the just-big-enough space under the street lamp outside our frost-bitten front garden.

I tutted and pulled a face at him, as I often had to do, if only in support of our own elderly car, which was sitting hunched on the driveway, and no doubt feeling very inadequate in the face of so much beauty. ‘Nothing wrong with our old reliable,’ I reminded him. ‘It gets us from A to B, and it suits me just fine, thank you very much.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But a man can dream, can’t he?’

We had to dart backwards then, sharpish, as the driver door opened and a woman stepped out. ‘Honestly, Mike,’ I hissed. ‘Look at us! We’re like a pair of nosey old neighbours. Come on.’ I yanked on his arm, and we hurried out into the hall, putting our best welcoming smiles on to greet our visitors.

The social worker was young, and very pretty. Even more so in the glow of my twinkling archway of outside fairy lights, which I’d agonised about leaving on or switching off out of respect for the gravity of our house guest’s situation. It wasn’t like me to dither, but I couldn’t stop thinking that the poor girl’s stepfather might die at any moment. (Lights on, Mike had decreed. Let’s keep everything normal.)

‘Hi,’ I said, offering my hand to the social worker, who was carrying a supermarket ‘bag for life’ which presumably held Bella’s presents. I then moved my gaze to the girl at her side, who was wearing a heavy winter coat, with the hood up. She looked slight for her age, with what looked like long, dark blonde hair – difficult to say how long, given the hood. She too had a bag – a black backpack, which she held at her side. ‘And you must be Bella,’ I said brightly. ‘I’m Casey, and this is Mike. Come on in. You must be freezing, not to mention exhausted.’

I led them straight into the living room, a little concerned by the fact that Bella hadn’t even looked up at me when I’d spoken to her, let alone said hello or anything else. She hung on to her backpack, and made no move to take her coat off, and not even a glance towards the enormous, all-singing, all-dazzling tree that currently dominated the room. She was simply afraid, I supposed, on top of everything else. Just as she was settled in one place, here she was being moved again. Shut down. That was what John’s email had said, hadn’t it? Shut down and shut in. I didn’t press it.

Instead I pointed out the sofa to the social worker, who’d introduced herself as Sophie Taylor, and shrugged off her overcoat to give to Mike, who had already taken the bag. She sat down and Bella immediately sat down next to her, keeping close, head still tucked down like a turtle’s into the neck of her black winter coat. It had a thick collar of grey fur that provided the perfect hideaway for her little face.

‘So,’ I said to them both. ‘A hot drink? You’ve had a long journey, haven’t you?’

Bella’s only response was to glance nervously at Sophie, who then nodded. ‘Coffee would be manna from heaven, trust me. Thanks so much. And how about you, Bella? Cuppa tea?’ She then turned back to me. ‘Cup of tea, please. White, one sugar. Bella is a proper teapot.’

The girl didn’t so much as move, let alone smile at this. ‘Okay then,’ I said, rubbing my hands together and looking at Mike. ‘Shall you and I go and make some drinks, love, while Sophie and Bella warm up a little?’

Mike nodded eagerly, clearly feeling the tension too.

‘God, she’s young, isn’t she?’ he commented, as I rummaged in the cupboard for matching mugs.

‘Who, Bella?’

‘No, the social worker. Sophie.’ He didn’t need to add what I imagined he was thinking, which was how someone so young could be in possession of such a flashy car, while he was fifty-something and hadn’t progressed beyond a family hatchback.

‘She does look very young,’ I agreed. ‘Maybe she’s very new to the job. Or maybe we’re just losing track. Like policemen, aren’t they? Just keep getting younger and younger.’

He smiled. ‘Heaven forbid that it’s us getting older, eh?’

But Sophie Taylor’s youth – and likely lack of experience – didn’t seem to affect her confidence. ‘So,’ she said, when we returned, bearing the designated refreshments, ‘the famous Watsons! I’m so pleased to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.’ She looked towards Bella, and, smiling, continued, ‘Casey and Mike have been fostering for ever such a long time, Bella. You’re in very good hands, sweetheart. You’ll love it here.’

It didn’t quite seem the time to be singing our praises, nor being quite so gung-ho. Blasé, almost. After all, Bella was hardly going to ‘love it’. She’d endure it as best she could, possibly even adjust to it eventually. But ‘love it’? Under the circumstances, I didn’t think so.

But perhaps I was being picky. The poor girl was doing her best to jolly things along. And judging by what I’d so far seen and heard had been doing so since the outset, and today, with all the upheaval, perhaps doing so for a good part of the day and evening. So she’d be tired too.

‘You know what,’ I said, once Mike had given Sophie her coffee. ‘It’s beyond silly o’clock now, and I, for one, am bushed. Which means you, Bella, must be absolutely exhausted, and not in the least interested in having to sit here and listen to the adults all blabbering on.’ I stood up then, from where I’d perched on the edge of the adjacent armchair, took two steps and stuck a hand out in Bella’s direction.

It was one of my tried and tested openers and was surprisingly effective. Not every time, but more than you’d expect given the situation – given that me and whichever child I was offering a hand to were complete strangers. But maybe not so surprising, given children’s natural need for order and security. In some situations, and with some people – people in authority, like head teachers, nurses and foster carers – it was actually quite natural to take the adult’s hand.

‘Come on, sweetie,’ I said, nudging the hand towards her, ‘before we get roped into a very long night, let’s me and you go up and see your room, shall we? And leave Mike and Sophie down here to chat.’ I glanced meaningfully at Sophie then, because usual protocol was for the social worker to go up and look at the room initially, and her answering nod indicated she was happy with my suggestion. ‘Then if you want to sneak into your bed,’ I went on, still hoping Bella would put her hand in mine, ‘that would be fine. Or just two minutes’ peace and come back down. Entirely up to you.’

The wait for a reaction from her felt like for ever, but slowly, under the onslaught of words, presumably, Bella raised her little face from the nest of fur, revealing a pair of beautiful, wide blue eyes. She glanced at my hand nervously, but then – yes! – she took it, and allowed me to guide her, holding her tea in my free hand, past Sophie, past Mike, into the hall. ‘Top of the stairs and turn left,’ I said as she started up the stairs before me. ‘I don’t know what you like, Bella, but I’m forewarning you, it’s very pink. You have any sunglasses?’

I was rewarded again then by a brief backwards glance, and though the fur was very thick and I didn’t know if I’d raised a smile, it was at least an acknowledgement that I’d spoken. Progress of some sort at least.

Bella waited at the top of the stairs, head tucked back into her nest of fake fur, so I reached past her and opened the bedroom door for her. ‘Go on in, love,’ I said. ‘All yours. I promise I won’t pester you.’ I then flicked on the light switch to illuminate where everything was and was pleased to watch Bella’s chin inching out of the collar, as she turned her head and began taking it all in.

‘So,’ I said, since she clearly wasn’t about to say anything. ‘I’ll leave you up here for a bit, shall I? The remote for the TV is on the dressing table, if you’d like to put it on. Though quietly’ – I gestured back out towards the landing – ‘because Tyler, our son, our foster son,’ I qualified, thinking it might help reassure her, ‘is in the room right over there. He’s fifteen,’ I added, realising she was finally looking at me. ‘And a bit of a light sleeper. He can’t wait to meet you.’ I smiled and pointed to the little backpack she’d been clutching. ‘Do you have your nightwear in that, or should I get something out for you? There are pyjamas in the chest of drawers over there.’

In answer, she shook her head and lifted the bag slightly. Which, again, was progress, even if not very much.

‘Well, you get sorted then,’ I said, stepping back out onto the landing. ‘Bathroom’s just over there, see? And it really is up to you. If you want to go to bed, then that’s fine, but if you want to come back down again that’s fine too. No sweat either way, sweetie. You do what you like tonight, all right?’ I nodded towards the bedside table. ‘And get that tea down you before it gets cold.’

A nod this time. I closed the door softly behind me.

I decided not to hang about, either. I suspected she’d need to hear I was actually back downstairs before she could properly relax, get undressed, use the bathroom or whatever, so I made a bit of a stomp about going back down so that she’d know she was safe to move around.

Back in the living room the mood, despite the light show, was darker.

‘She’s not spoken a word hardly,’ Mike told me as soon as I entered. ‘I was just asking Sophie about the post-traumatic stress thing, and apparently she’s barely spoken since they took her.’

‘I thought she might be, by now,’ Sophie said, ‘you know, since being with the other carers, but there’s no change, not while we were there, not while we were waiting, not in the car. Not a single word, nothing. It’s like she’s mute.’

I had some experience with mutism from back during my days as a school behaviour manager. Not this kind of mutism, as in an extreme response to a trauma – the girl in my care had longstanding selective mutism, which only manifested itself while in school. But this kind – the ‘response to severe stress’ kind of mutism was, I’d read, a great deal more common. And it wasn’t just that it had only been a matter of days, either – it was ongoing; she’d witnessed something no child should witness, and, to compound it, she was now being told what to do by complete strangers while her dad was in hospital and mum was in jail. It was a miracle she wasn’t hysterical. She may yet be. These things could be episodic, ebbing and flowing, triggered by all sorts of things.

‘It’s understandable,’ I said. ‘It’s a nightmare, all this, isn’t it? And now, to compound it, she’s been moved here, so it’s like she’s back to square one. And for who knows how long?’

‘Mike was just asking me about that,’ Sophie said. ‘And the honest truth is that we have no idea.’ She flicked her hair, which was long and dark, back across her shoulders. ‘It’s all so sad, isn’t it? And no guessing what the outcome’s going to be either. Still, soon as Christmas is over, we’re arranging for Bella to see a counsellor. Which might help. We hope. There’s no question of her being returned to her previous placement, by the way – John might have told you?’

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘What’s happened? Have there been complications with the baby?’

Sophie shook her head. ‘No, no – well, not as far as I know. No, they just don’t have any idea when they’ll return right now. And to be honest, even when they do they’ve already said they’d rather not have her back. They said they were struggling with her, to be honest – not sure they were the right couple for her. Just the three of them in the house, rattling around, Bella so silent. They feel she’d be better placed with a younger, busier family …’

‘We’ll we’re certainly busy,’ Mike said.

‘Excuse me? And young …’ I couldn’t help adding.

‘Exactly,’ Sophie said. ‘Which is why it’s so great that you’ve said you’ll have her. Big noisy family. Lots of distractions. Your other child – Tyler? It is Tyler, isn’t it?’ We both nodded. ‘Let’s hope they bond, eh? Oh, and that reminds me. I’ve already spoken to her about keeping off of social media. I don’t know how much she uses it, because it’s impossible to get anything out of her. But she’s got an account – I checked – though I have no idea how much she uses it. Parents do too. So I’ve explained how it’s important that she should avoid it – all the chitter-chatter and idle gossip and so on – and that if she wants to get in touch with friends, she needs to do it the old-fashioned way: putting pen to paper, through you. But you’ll know all that anyway, of course. Sorry.’ She gave an apologetic little grimace. I was really beginning to warm to her. ‘Anyway, we really are incredibly grateful,’ she finished. ‘And I’m here, of course – well, I say “here”, I need my bed now, as I’m sure you do. But you know, as a port of call – I’m on call right through Christmas. You know, if there are any problems that you need me for and so on … And I’m a constant,’ she said. ‘I’ve been assigned full time to Bella’s case, so at least there’s that.’

‘That’s good news,’ I said, because it really was. I knew all too well that, in their early days in care, children often went through many different social workers. It was no one’s fault. It was just that, often, there was simply no one free to take them on as a long-term commitment; caseloads were huge, always, and there was also the problem that a lot of the time no one knew how long a child was even going to be in the system. So it was often a case of filling in, helping out, the child being passed hither and thither, between social workers who already had way too much to do. And at Christmas, of course, all these problems were compounded. So, yes, it was indeed good that Bella already had that continuity in her social worker, even if Sophie might not be the most experienced one in the world.

But, arguably, she was at least the brightest.

‘I’ve got to say, Casey,’ she said, once she’d drained her mug and put her coat back on, ‘your Christmas tree is magical.’

Which made me smile. At least till we waved Sophie off, and the reality set in. That I didn’t have a magic wand to go with it.

Chapter 4

As far as I knew, Bella slept soundly through the night. Perhaps she was just as physically exhausted as she was emotionally, but on both occasions I checked on her – I couldn’t sleep a wink, of course – I was actually surprised to find her dead to the world, star-fished on her back, snoring, one arm cradling a large and surprisingly ugly-looking soft toy – not one of ours – that looked a bit like a gremlin. Each to their own, I thought.

And both times I tiptoed in there it occurred to me that for the majority of kids, and the majority of the Western world, this was supposed to be a night of an excess of excitement, and of waking disgruntled parents long before dawn. Not so Bella. Not for many other hidden-from-view, desperate children. No happy family Christmas for them come the morning. I wondered where her mother was. What she was feeling. What a mess.

It was a far from normal Christmas morning in our house as well. Despite the lack of sleep, I’d left my alarm set for six thirty, knowing the hours ahead were going to be fraught, unknown territory. I was therefore anxious to steal a march on the day. And when it roused me – from one of those deep sleeps the sleepless always seem to fall into just before waking-up time – it was down to a cold, silent kitchen that I tiptoed, so I could get ahead with all the tasks I invariably had to do, before anyone else was awake.

Not that I expected Tyler to be that far behind me. He might be fifteen now and in theory too old to get over-excited about such childish pleasures, but, of course, many of his Christmas childhoods had been exercises in pure misery, as his father capitulated and let his stepmother bully him, while lavishing love and gifts on his younger half-brother. No, I didn’t think he’d ever outgrow such a simple, precious pleasure. And, if I had any say in it, nor would he.

For now, though, I worked silently, with only the radio on low for company; doing all the jobs I’d generally be doing with the radio blaring (singing along, sometimes dancing, a small sherry at my elbow) knowing that across the hallway, in the living room, whatever collection of kids, foster kids and grandkids we had with us, there would be happy, wrapping-paper-strewn mayhem.

I could have almost become maudlin, thinking about the girl who had parachuted into our lives so unexpectedly, so it was a blessing that Mike and Tyler joined me a scant half hour later, both whispering about the new house guest and what might be going through her head, and wondering if she’d come down or if I should go and wake her.

Eventually – and after promising they’d help with any outstanding preparations – they bullied me into going up and bringing her downstairs. Which made sense. She was going to be a huge part of our lives over the coming days, and for who knew how much longer? So the sooner we settled her in with us, and she became familiar with all our little ways – and us hers – the better those few days would be for everyone.

Bella’s bedroom door was shut when I got up to the landing, so I assumed she must have woken and perhaps used the bathroom, but when I knocked there wasn’t any reply. I waited a moment or two, wondering if she might be in the middle of dressing, but when an ear to the door produced only silence, I knocked again, and this time I opened the door slightly as well.

‘You awake, sweetie?’ I asked her, popping my head around the jamb.

Evidently. Because she wasn’t even in bed. In fact, it had already been neatly made, the weird soft toy I’d seen the night before sitting propped in front of the pillows.

‘So who’s this?’ I went on brightly, the answer to my first question now being evident. ‘Should we be formally introduced?’

Bella’s only response was to give me a tight, if polite, smile. She was sitting at the dressing table, in the pink pyjamas and dressing gown she had presumably taken from her backpack, brushing her hair with a pink polka-dotted hairbrush (tick to me, regarding the pink, then). The hair itself was thick and blonde. And much longer than I’d realised. The sort of hair that in the future would be the envy of her friends. Friends. I made a mental note to ask Bella about them. Friends who could provide support and continuity. Some much-needed sense of normality. But perhaps not just yet. Though it occurred to me to find her some paper and pens, just in case. She might like to write to friends, at least. Not to mention her parents – and grandparents? I made a mental note to ask John about that.

‘Anyway!’ I said. ‘Merry Christmas. Shall we go down so you can open your presents? Tyler’s already down there,’ I added, smiling relentlessly in the face of her scared, wary expression. ‘Come on, poppet. Let’s head downstairs, shall we? He’s dying to meet you.’

Bella reddened slightly, whether in response to the mention of Tyler or just because she felt scrutinised I didn’t know. She hadn’t responded, much less moved – well, apart from the repetitive hair-brushing – so I went into the bedroom properly, then squatted down on my haunches beside the dressing table so I was on her level. Even below it, slightly – I’m not the tallest of people, and I was now almost looking up at her. And was also close enough to see the grey smudges of tiredness bruising the skin beneath her pale, frightened eyes.

‘I know this is all very strange for you,’ I said gently. ‘And you must be feeling wretched, sweetheart. And scared, too. How could you be feeling anything else? But one thing I can tell you is that you have nothing to be frightened of here, okay? No one will make you do anything you don’t want to, I promise. So, then. How about it? Shall we head down? Go downstairs and just see how it goes for a bit?’ Silence. Just her face looking ahead, fixed firmly on her reflection, accompanied by the rhythmic strokes of the hairbrush. ‘And, if it’s all too much,’ I went on, ‘you can come back up for a bit, I promise.’ I stood up again, and held my hand out, as I’d done the night before. ‘What do you reckon, Bella? Is that a plan?’

Again that endless wait, but again, finally, it worked. She stood up, went across to the bed and grabbed the gremlin, then slipped, to my delight, her small, hot hand into mine. I squeezed it reassuringly, then led her straight down into the living room, and immediately across to the twinkling tree, where the presents we’d got her were all wrapped and had her name on – though, given how on edge (not to mention the edge) she probably was currently, I felt it probably prudent to let her make the running where it came to the gifts retrieved from her own home, and which were still in the corner, in the carrier bag they’d arrived in. I suspected that she might well prefer to open those ones in the privacy of her bedroom. Or, indeed, not open them at all.

‘Go on,’ I urged, as she once again gazed as if transfixed by the sight of the enormous twinkling tree, and the mound of gifts beneath it. ‘Why don’t you sit down on the rug and have a rootle round for the presents we’ve got for you while I go and get you some toast and hot chocolate. You like hot chocolate?’ I added. And was rewarded by a minor miracle. She actually nodded. Yes.

I was just turning round to leave when Mike and Tyler appeared in the doorway. I saw Bella stiffen at the sight of them – or, perhaps, instinct told me, it was just Mike that made her stiffen, given his size, his maleness and the violence she’d so recently witnessed, so I signalled for him to do an about-turn and return to help me in the kitchen. ‘Ah, here you are, Ty,’ I said. ‘This is Bella. Just about to start attacking her presents. You want to get stuck in with her as well? Go on, dig in. Make as much mess as you like.’

I had to smile then, as Tyler sank down onto his knees on the rug and grinned at her. ‘Lols,’ he said, smiling back at me, knowing full well I’d hear him. ‘Hi, Bella. Now let’s make Mum – make Casey – wish she’d never said that. First thing you need to know here. She absolutely hates mess.’

I grinned at him as I left them to it, but Tyler was wrong about that. At least on this particular occasion. On any other day of the year, yes, I’d be the first to admit that mess-management was a major factor in my life. Not an issue, exactly; we hosted all manner of mess-making activities, just like anyone else. It was just that I was a tiny bit obsessive about cleaning before anyone arrived and equally obsessive about tidying up after them once they’d gone, even if the ‘going’ bit took place at three in the morning. No biggie. That was just my little foible.

But Christmas was different. To my mind there were few things more sad and poignant than the sight of a Christmas living room devoid of kids unwrapping presents and throwing paper and packaging all around the place. Call me sentimental but it always seemed to me, at least for the precious couple of hours before they came up for air again, that while they were swimming joyfully in a sea of discarded wrappings I was bobbing on a little sea of happiness.

And Tyler made a good fist of making that happen. By the time Mike and I returned with drinks and toast to keep us going till the inevitably late Christmas dinner we were going to be having, given Riley’s breakfast club, he’d wellied into most of the presents we’d allowed him to open without us with great excitement and gay abandon – we’d been able to hear his whoops of joy from the kitchen.

But that was all we heard. Though she was sitting passively and politely on the rug, having by now systematically piled her presents at her side, Bella seemed wedded to the idea of children being seen and not heard; at best she nodded in response to Tyler, offering no more communication than the odd ghost of a smile.

Tyler, for his part, carried gamely on. He seemed to have decided that he’d just fill the conversational gaps with yet more words and, in the absence of any other strategy, we took his lead, treating Bella almost – though without any lack of respect – like an amiable family dog, from whom we didn’t actually expect any response.

We decided the best thing would be if I, and I alone, popped round to Riley’s for an hour, on the basis that it was David’s mum and I who’d be the most closely involved in the wedding preparations, discussion of which was the main reason for going round. It would also give me a chance to prepare the ground before they all descended on us – and Bella – at dinner-time, so that they understood that it would, of necessity, be a different kind of Christmas Day. It would also give me a chance to fill in Kieron and Lauren – also scheduled to come to us for Christmas dinner later.

I’d wavered a bit – another reason for my largely sleepless night – reasoning that one alternative would be to cancel the day altogether, for fear it might make Bella’s emotional state even worse. It wasn’t the first time we’d had a child in over Christmas and I doubted it would be the last, because Christmases are times of great stress and a key time for family breakdowns, but every situation was different, as was every child. Had things been less on a knife-edge – you didn’t get more knife-edge than Dad in ITU and Mum in jail for trying to kill him, I reckoned – it would have been less difficult a decision, and had Bella been younger (say five or six) it would have been a completely different story; younger children, in my experience, were better able to distract themselves from the enormity of the life-change they were experiencing, as they were more able to ‘park’ it and make believe they were just off on some sort of holiday.

But would cancelling Christmas really help Bella anyway? Yes, she was clearly old enough to feel terrified about how her future was unravelling, but perhaps that meant she needed distraction even more.

There was also my own family to consider. And to cancel things would be to create a logistical nightmare, not least because I was the one with the turkey and all the trimmings, and to try and rejig and/or relocate the whole shebang would cause even more upheaval, not least because of the many comings and goings that it would require.

No, on balance, we agreed, we should probably press on with the day – envelope our frightened visitor in festive love and laughter, but with the safe haven of her bedroom, should she need it. She didn’t strike me as a child who wanted to be the centre of attention, which the alternative scenario meant she would be.

And it was Bella herself who finally ticked the mental box. In the fact that, the presents opened (bar her own from her family, as yet) and the toast and hot chocolate dispatched, she seemed happy enough to curl up at one end of the sofa and settle down to watch a Harry Potter film with Tyler – and with her cherished soft toy – not a gremlin, but a ‘Dobby the house-elf’, according to Tyler – and the rabbit we’d got for her, which pleased me greatly. Indeed, I had much to thank J. K. Rowling for that morning, because it was a shared devotion to the young wizard that forged their first, tentative bond, and, in response to his ‘Wicked! The Deathly Hallows is on. You want to watch it?’ elicited her first proper words since she’d come to us, which were ‘Yes, please.’

But which also caused me to wonder, as I drove the short distance to Riley’s house, what kind of mutism we were actually dealing with here. My experience wasn’t extensive – I’d only worked closely with one child who displayed similar systems, truth be told – but in doing so, I’d read up on different forms of mutism, and instinct told me this was more a conscious choice on Bella’s part than anything else. This certainly didn’t seem to fit the profile of other forms I’d come across, where the child struggled to overcome what was often a physiological as well as a psychological barrier, often unconscious. No, it was more that Bella had made a very conscious decision not to engage.

All very intriguing, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that it was almost certainly because Bella had witnessed that attempted murder by her mother and was shutting down to avoid incriminating her further, during the endless questions she’d have doubtless already been asked in its aftermath.

Even so, there was a difference between refusing to discuss that, and making a blanket decision not to speak to anyone at all.

Riley, now a respite foster carer herself, agreed. ‘Though let me be the first to suggest one minor change in tonight’s entertainment,’ she commanded. ‘That the karaoke machine remains unplugged.’ Which suggestion was naturally passed unanimously.

‘Seriously,’ she added, ‘I think you’re right to stick with the plan, Mum, and I’m not just saying that because I don’t want to give up my Christmas dinner.’ (‘Oh, yes, you are,’ came the rousing chorus from around the table.) ‘I reckon she can distract herself better in a big crowd of kids than if she’s got everyone’s attention on her in a silent empty house. Didn’t you just say that was why things weren’t working out in the last foster place she was at? I know that’s how I’d feel, anyway. Specially given that every adult she’s had anything to do with up till now has probably been trying to get her to talk about what happened. I wonder what did happen …’ she mused. ‘Do you reckon her mother was trying to kill him?’

It was obviously impossible to answer that question till one of two things happened – either Bella’s father recovered sufficiently to recount the facts as he remembered (as best he could, given that one fact we did know was that he was extremely drunk when admitted to A&E), or Bella herself decided to. As things stood, her mum was pleading hitting him in self-defence, and until her partner’s situation resolved itself – either he recovered or he died – there was nothing to be done. I wondered if Bella herself was almost in a state of mental breath-holding. I wondered how she felt about her dad’s possible death. How she felt about her dad.

I didn’t stay long at Riley’s – really only long enough to talk wedding to-do lists with David’s mum. And, once I was back home, knowing the entire family were going to be with us in a scant three or four hours – not to mention our first foster child, Justin, now a strapping adult, with an appetite to match – I took advantage of Bella’s apparent desire to stay on the sofa in her pyjamas to properly attack all the food preparation. Every time I checked on her, she was either watching TV with Tyler, or had her nose in a Harry Potter book; it seemed he’d brought down the entire collection from his bedroom, and that though she’d told him she’d read them all – some of them twice (positively chatty now, at least with Ty!) – she’d be more than happy to read them all again.

But if that had been Bella’s escape plan (and a book was always an excellent escape plan) the combined onslaught of attention from my quartet of noisy grandchildren proved too powerful a force to avoid. Very soon, though still largely silent and wary around the adults, she was immersed in their world of make-believe and dolls and Lego, and though she still didn’t speak much she was at least fully engaged – well, again, as far as I could tell.

I sat her next to Levi for our Christmas dinner, since, my eldest grandchild being ten now, they were closest in age, but it was soon clear that the closest bond she was likely to forge was with Marley Mae. From the outset, Bella had been my granddaughter’s main topic of interest, and was fast becoming her little shadow.

‘I think it’s because she can’t ask her anything she doesn’t want to answer,’ I told Lauren, my Kieron’s other half, while we stacked and put away the dishes the men had washed up. ‘That’s my take on it, anyway.’ Lauren and Kieron’s Dee Dee was also monopolising this young stranger, though she was currently spark out, having her nap on Kieron’s chest. At only two, she still needed to take such power naps when in the company of her boisterous older cousins. ‘Makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, I know the older children don’t know what’s happened, but they’ll be curious, won’t they? And, in Levi’s case, particularly, doing the whole twenty questions thing. Give him a fair wind, and he’d have everything out of her, from what her favourite colour is to which character she’d be in Minecraft.’

Lauren nodded. ‘I think you’re right. Whereas Marley Mae is more like an adoring puppy. Correction – more accurately, adoring limpet mine.’

And it wasn’t just that, truth be known. With her admirable sleuthing skills, Marley Mae had sniffed out the bag of unopened presents in the corner almost as soon as she’d finished opening hers. And, working on the basis that an unopened present on Christmas night was a crime against all humanity, had badgered and badgered till Tyler had told her they were Bella’s and none of her business.

Which, of course, meant it became Marley Mae’s urgent business to harangue Bella mercilessly till she could prise out a promise that when she did open them Marley Mae could help her.

And it seemed that time was now. When Lauren and I returned to the living room, now inhabited mostly by quietly playing kids and noisier slumbering men (Mike’s snores alone could wake the dead), it was to meet Bella and Marley Mae coming out.

‘We’re going upstairs to open the presents,’ Marley Mae informed us both before I even had a chance to ask. She was looking very pleased with herself.

‘Oh, I see,’ I said, clocking the way she had Bella’s hand clamped in her own as if she were a prisoner who might abscond if left untethered. I looked at Bella. ‘You doing okay, love?’ I asked her.

She nodded, albeit wanly.

‘She might have an iPodge!’ Marley Mae added breathlessly, with the sort of awe a child of her age could feel for such wonders. ‘Or even a tablet!’ She was clearly very excited.

I wondered if I should gently prise her away and let Bella have some down time on her own. But when I suggested Bella might like five minutes’ peace, it was Bella herself who responded. ‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, and I could tell she meant it. Upon which, they both trotted off up the stairs.

‘Don’t you sometimes wonder,’ Lauren reflected, as they disappeared out of sight across the landing, ‘how little ones have no idea how much of a part they play in all this? Just think of all the foster children Marley Mae has befriended since she was born. Do you sometimes wonder if they ever think about her? You know, have memories of her, still? It’s a nice thing to think that, don’t you think? How, in all those children, there’s a little permanent space in their brains where she lives? I love that as a concept, don’t you?’

It was something I’d never thought about before, and I said so. ‘Oh, but I love that,’ I said. Because I really did.

They were up there a good while, and I resisted the urge to check on them, as did Riley. Even though both of us were ever conscious that the children who came to us began as strangers, we were of a mind, as was Lauren, that Bella posed no threat to anyone. Except, perhaps, to herself. Besides, the door had been left ajar and both Tyler and Mike had been upstairs since they’d gone up – and both had reported hearing Marley Mae giggling.

Still, once bitten, ever vigilant – and we’d certainly had our scares down the years. None of us would ever forget the day when Flip, a young girl we’d had with foetal alcohol syndrome, had taken it upon herself to give us a post-lunch break and take Marley Mae off for a walk in the local woods. So when over an hour had passed and neither had reappeared, Riley and I exchanged a ‘Let’s one of us just go and check what they’re up to’ expression. I was just rising from my chair – being the closest to the door – when my granddaughter marched in and made a beeline for the tree, below which her own sack of presents still sat.

‘Oh, hello,’ I said, glancing behind her to see no sign of Bella. ‘So, what was the outcome? What did Bella get?’

I was rewarded by Marley Mae putting a finger to her lips and emitting the sort of self-defeating high-decibel ‘Shhhh!’ that was her trademark. ‘She’s going to sleep,’ she whispered, falling to her chubby little knees to dig around among her haul.

‘And she’s sad about her mummy,’ she added, turning around, having produced a cuddly toy; the cuddly snowman, from the film Frozen, that she’d been hoping for so much. ‘So I’m going to let her borrow Olaf.’

Riley and I rose as one to go up with her, both first agreeing to the ‘You must be quiet!’ order she issued before agreeing to lead the way.

We trooped up, a little battalion, led by our diminutive general, and followed Marely Mae into Bella’s bedroom through the now wide-open door.

And it was to find a room totally transformed. Everywhere – all over the carpet, the bed, and on any and every horizontal surface – was what looked like confetti, but made out of wrapping paper. Which I immediately recognised as the paper Bella’s presents had been wrapped in. Only it had now been transformed into a million tiny pieces.

Bella herself appeared to be asleep. She was curled in an S shape, a tiny form on the bed, with both the rabbit we’d bought for her and her Dobby close beside her, while further down the bed was the ‘iPodge’ Marley Mae had been alluding to, together with other presents: some sort of nature annual, what looked like a folded hoodie, a pair of jeans and a jewellery-making kit.

‘We torded it,’ Bella whispered proudly, before tip-toeing theatrically across the carpet and gently placing her precious Olaf close by Bella’s blonde curls. A holy trinity of stuffed animals to chase the nightmares away. ‘There,’ she mouthed silently, with admirable restraint, before turning back to us, placing a finger to her lips again and shooing us outside.

I pulled the door to, while Riley picked Marley Mae up, and as she now announced that she needed a wee we all trooped into the bathroom.

‘You made all that confetti yourselves, did you?’ I asked her, as Riley helped her with her pants.

‘It’s not confetti,’ she told us. ‘It’s snowflakes. Bella liked making snow and she let me help her. I was good at it.’ Then she frowned. ‘But then she was sad,’ she said. ‘She cry-ded a lot when we were doing it. I tolded her you wouldn’t be cross about the snow, Nanny, but she still cry-ded.’

‘But I bet it looked pretty when you threw it everywhere,’ Riley observed. ‘And, oh, the joy of Hoovers,’ she added to me drily.

I pictured the scene. Bella’s distress. The emotional meltdown of seeing it laid bare. Of seeing it laid bare with an over-excited Marley Mae, who’d known no such devastation in her happy young life. Seeing the presents from parents who weren’t with her – or each other – opened the gaping hole where the spirit of Christmas should be.

‘Whose idea was it to make the snow?’ I asked Marley Mae. ‘Was it yours?’

She shook her head. ‘Bella liked it.’ She mimed a ripping motion. ‘She likes making snow. And then she throwed it, like this –’ She thrust her arms up and outwards. ‘But she’s sad now. She said. So I said I’d get Olaf for her to cuddle.’ All done, she held her arms up for Riley to scoop her up again. ‘You shouldn’t cry on Christmas Day, should you, Mummy?’

I glanced in, as we passed, to our poor, anguished visitor, lost in dreams – good ones hopefully, please let them not be nightmares – beneath her blanket of multicoloured snow.

No, I thought sadly, you shouldn’t.

Chapter 5

It’s impossible to predict how a child will respond to extreme stress unless you know that child very well. And even then it’s an inexact science. Even with more than two decades of mothering my own two under my belt, I could still find myself surprised by how they reacted in adversity, sometimes astonishing me by their fortitude and stoicism under pressure and other times collapsing under the strain of something apparently minor. Every one of us really is unique.

Which is why, with Bella, as with any child, I assumed nothing. Yes, I’d make assumptions about what she might or might not be feeling, but how those feelings played out in terms of how she coped with her current lot was something no one could predict. She also came to us without much back-story, which would have enabled us to get a better feel for her, and which was in contrast with several of the children we’d previously fostered, such as Justin (he of the bulging, six-year, thirty-failed-placements file) and little Georgie, who was autistic and had been in care, and therefore monitored, for almost all of his life.

Three days in, therefore (we were by now in the lull before New Year, the bedroom ‘snow’ gone and forgotten), and I felt almost as clueless about Bella’s emotional make-up as I had when she’d arrived on Christmas Eve – the moving scene on Christmas night notwithstanding. She’d clearly got something out of her system, which was obviously going to be A Good Thing, but she’d spent almost all of Boxing Day – which was a quieter one, with the little ones gone, and the day lazier – withdrawn and uncommunicative. And though she’d come out with us on a trip to town, to have a nose around the German Christmas market, she’d simply done as asked, like a biddable elderly relation almost, putting her coat on, doing the buttons up, donning the gloves I’d found for her and then trailing along, hand in mine, but completely disengaged. The most animated she’d been was eating a doughnut. And she’d only managed to eat half of that.

Two days later, and she was still saying almost nothing to any of us bar Tyler, and what she did say – the odd ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘thank you’ – was always in response to something said to her. For much of the time, and I didn’t push it, she had her nose in the Harry Potter book we’d given her. Reading, it was becoming clear, was her main refuge.

So today’s masterplan (which wasn’t any sort of masterplan, really; I was leaving that for John to organise once everyone was back in their various offices) was for the pair of us to go wedding-dress shopping with Riley, while her David stayed at home to mind the kids.

I had promised my eager-beaver daughter that I’d fit some time in in the New Year to go dress hunting, but with Mike back in work – to cover sickness; there’d been some grim virus going round – and Tyler off to spend the day with Denver, I figured today was as good as any to make a start, not only as it would stop the four walls of the silent house closing in, but also, despite the inevitably fraught nature of competitive sale shopping, it did mean we had at least a fighting chance (fighting being the operative word) of bagging a bargain. And since Mike and I were footing the bill, that would be a major bonus.

It was now 10 a.m., however, and though I’d been happy generally to let Bella sleep for as long as she needed to, given that Riley would be over soon, keen to hit town and do battle, it was probably time I went to wake her up.

And when I went upstairs I was pleased to find her bedroom door open; she’d obviously already woken up and gone to wash, though, in contrast to the previous three mornings, she’d left her duvet flung back and pillows awry. Perhaps evidence that she was finally beginning to settle, rather than carrying on as if in an institution, like her mother?

‘Morning, love,’ I called, seeing the bathroom door was also open, before heading off into my own bedroom to change.

I hadn’t been expecting a response, but almost immediately I got one, though not in the form of words, more an anguished, groaning sob.

I backtracked to the bathroom and pushed the door properly open, to be confronted by an unexpected, shocking scene. Bella was sitting on the bathroom floor, her legs drawn up to her chest and her arms clenched around them, while, moaning softly, she rocked back and forth. And as she did so, because of where she was sitting, beside the toilet, the back of her head was drumming rhythmically against the sink.

Straight away I could see she wasn’t doing it deliberately. Head-banging is a particularly distressing form of violent self-soothing so I was relieved to be able to see it wasn’t that. She was simply oblivious, or, at least, not particularly concerned that the basin was in the way of her rocking. She certainly seemed out of it, like she’d gone into some kind of fugue.

And she clearly needed to be moved before she hurt herself. I bent down in front of her, which was when I noticed the vomit. There was sick all down her front, in her hair and on the carpet, as well as liberally decorating the bottom of the toilet seat and loo, the former presumably only having just been raised in time. How hadn’t I heard all this? But perhaps it had happened while I’d been down in the conservatory, sorting the washing. Which meant she’d been here for quite a while. I cursed myself for not having checked on her since I’d come down at seven.

‘Bella, love,’ I said, automatically reaching to feel her forehead for a high temperature. ‘What’s wrong, sweetie? Do you feel ill?’

I pushed my hands under her armpits as I spoke, in order to help her up, and she raised her eyes to look at me in a way that made me realise she was only just becoming aware of her surroundings.

‘Are you okay, lovey?’ I said. ‘You’ve been sick. Did you realise? Come on, let’s get you off the floor and cleaned up.’

Again, I felt that same gentle compliance as I lifted her; felt the load drop a little as her legs took some of the strain, so I was at least able to release one arm to flip the toilet seat back down, and via a natty swivel place Bella back down on it, where she remained while I ran the tap and filled the washbasin with warm water and shower gel.

‘I’m just going to wash your face, love, and wipe the sick up a bit,’ I said, and when she nodded I found myself feeling slightly exasperated at her continuing inability – or was it determination – to communicate properly with any of us. Had she called out earlier – just that, just my name, so I could help her – she wouldn’t be in this state now, would she? Not to mention my bathroom.

I quashed my resentful thoughts even as I had them. This was presumably why her previous carers had said they wouldn’t have her back. And as they now had a brand new granddaughter, and all the anxiety and excitement that went with it, I could hardly blame them. They simply wouldn’t have the emotional energy left to spare.

I had no such complications to excuse me. So, having elicited that she no longer felt ill, and that she didn’t have a temperature, I dipped a flannel in the fragrant water, wrung it out and washed her down, making eye contact and willing her to respond to it. Which she sort of did, by way of heavy tears that sped down her newly cleaned cheeks – a picture of intense and perfect misery; ethereal, as if a character from a Victorian novel.

That job done, her hands dunked and dried, and her pyjama top wiped down, I helped her up and led her back into her bedroom. She needed to get out of her soiled pyjamas, obviously, but at twelve I hardly imagined she’d want me to help her with that, so instead I instructed her to strip them off and get dressed while I went back and sorted out the bathroom.

‘If you want to have a shower and go back to bed, that’s fine too, of course …’ But I had barely said the words when she became suddenly galvanised, crossing the room and flinging the duvet back over the bed, before furiously straightening it all out. It was almost as if she was terrified she’d get a slap if she didn’t, and I filed the observation away for future reference.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said, going across to her chest of drawers, where I pulled out a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and her new Christmas hoodie, which she had told me – on being asked – had been from her mum. Not her mum and dad, I noted. Just her mum. ‘There you are, love,’ I said, tossing them onto the bed. ‘I’ll go and sort the bathroom out while you get these on. And pop your pyjamas onto the landing for me to pop in the wash, will you? Then we’ll try to find out what’s made you sick, eh?’

I left her gingerly undoing the buttons on her wet pyjama top.

Back in the bathroom, I found myself in the unlikely position of ruing the fact that a day at the Christmas sales was probably a non-starter. Though logic told me Bella’s sickness could have been down to a virus (in which case, the last thing I should do is allow it to be spread) instinct and experience told me otherwise. For one thing, though she had eaten extremely poorly since she’d been with us, she had eaten something the previous evening, and showed no signs of malaise afterwards, in the way viral tummy bugs tended to reveal themselves. We’d all eaten the same, too, and there’d been nothing in dinner that would make it likely that she’d succumbed to a bout of food poisoning.

No, instinct said she’d either been sick due to extreme distress and upset, or – a grimmer thought – that she had made herself so. Either way, given my responsibility to this distressed, highly anxious child, I needed both to log it and to consult our GP.

I was just wondering what sort of cover they’d have in the surgery, when I was stunned into stopping scrubbing by something entirely unexpected. A tiny but nevertheless clear voice.

‘I’m so sorry, Casey.’

I swivelled around, on my knees, to find Bella standing in the doorway. She was dressed in the clothes I’d laid out on the bed for her, and in her arms was a bundle comprising not only her pyjamas, but also her duvet cover and sheet.

I stared long enough that Bella, tears once again streaming down her cheeks, came into the bathroom and stuffed the lot in the laundry basket.

‘I wet the bed,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, Casey. I’ll try not to do it again.’ Her cheeks were crimson. She turned around and walked back out.

I sat back onto my heels for a moment and stared after her. It was really strange hearing her speak to me normally. Speaking clearly, her head up, making eye contact, as opposed to her previous head-down, eyes-down, mumbling norm. And for some silly reason I fixated on the timbre of it – that it wasn’t the high-pitched, tinkling little-girl voice I’d ascribed to her, given her muteness and her cherubic, baby-doll looks.

I got to my feet. She had communicated properly with me, finally. Not the biggest breakthrough ever – particularly given the icky circumstances – but a breakthrough nonetheless. Wetting the bed had driven her to speak to me properly at long last – which hadn’t been that long, a matter of days, but, when a distressed child closes down, a matter of days feels a long time indeed. I clicked into gear, quickly wrung the cloth out and emptied the basin. The bathroom could wait. She was twelve years old, and she had wet the bed. And in a stranger’s house. She must be feeling mortified.

I’d already heard her feet heading down the stairs, so I rattled down after her, finding her in the living room, curled up in her usual place on the sofa, and screwing the second bud of her new iPod into her ears, her eyes still damp but her tears having stopped now.

Oh no, missy, I thought, determined that we were not going to leave it there. I signalled for her to take the earbuds out again.

I sat down beside her. ‘Bella, love, listen, please don’t worry about the bed, okay? These things can happen, specially when you have been under a great deal of stress, and it’s no bother at all to sort out. But listen, Bella, more important is that you’ve spoken properly to me finally. And now you need to do so again. Sweetheart, do you have any idea why you might have been sick? I really need to call the doctor, you see …’

‘No!’ She shook her head emphatically, making me worry once again that she might have made herself sick. ‘Please no. I don’t want to go to the doctor’s. I’m fine. I don’t feel sick any more, honestly.’

I shook my own head. ‘Bella, you’re not fine. How can you be? How could anyone in your circumstances?’ I placed my palm against her forehead again, and she didn’t pull away. She felt warm, but not hot. Stress and anxiety, I felt sure of it. ‘Sweetheart, I have to register you with the doctor anyway, so he knows you’re staying with us for a bit – that’s the law. And I will just ask him if there are any nasty sickness bugs going around, okay? And I think we’ll shelve the shopping plans today, give you a chance to rest and get your strength back.’

I stood up. I could see she was becoming anxious to retreat again, holding the earbuds in each hand, ready for reinsertion. ‘And, you know, Bella, if you want to talk … you must be keeping so much locked inside of you … it might help. It probably would help – a problem shared and all that, you know? Anyway, I’m here, okay? Ready to listen.’

She didn’t respond to that, so I thought I’d stick my neck out. What the hell. ‘You must be missing your mum so much, Bella,’ I continued. ‘Not to mention worrying about your dad …’

‘Stepdad,’ she immediately corrected.

‘Sorry, sweetheart. Stepdad,’ I said. ‘Either way, you must be at sixes and sevens worrying about everything … so, I’m here, okay? Any time you need to get stuff off your chest.’

Again she shook her head. Again the action was emphatic. But then she surprised me by putting down both the earbuds and the iPod, uncrossing her legs and standing up as well.

‘I should wash the bedding myself,’ she said. ‘Do you have a washing machine? I know how to work them.’

‘Love, there’s no need –’ I began.

‘I really want to,’ she insisted, tears gathering in her eyes again. ‘I’ve caused you so much trouble.’

I told her she’d done no such thing, but that it was fine if she wanted to, to go and fetch the washing, that I’d show her what to do. Genuine guilt, I wondered, or just a clever ruse to halt the whole ‘talking’ thing in its tracks?

As I watched her hurry back upstairs, I suspected both held equal sway. The time for talking was clearly not yet.

Chapter 6

I always feel a bit ‘in limbo’ between Christmas and New Year. I’m sure most people do to a certain extent. If you’re in work, it often feels as if you’re working in a ghost town, and if you’re not, they are strange days, those short, end-of-the-year ones – all the Christmas bit – the whole gathering-of-the-clans bit – and then a lull before the next bit when the gathering happens again, which, like most people, I filled with shopping and re-stocking, scurrying round the house, catching up with missed chores and getting ready for the next round of visitors.

Bella threw herself into it too. While Tyler grabbed any opportunity to slip away and ‘hang’ with Denver, Bella, with nowhere to go and no one she could visit, seemed to have decided to keep herself occupied by doing housework as a competitive sport.

I wondered again about her home life and its apparently chaotic nature. About the alcoholic father and the impact it would have had on her. About how natural it was (and was so often witnessed) for a child who grew up with unpredictability the only constant to want to impose order and structure wherever they could. I wondered, given what I’d already heard about her parents, if she was something of a Snow White or Cinderella figure at home.

Not that her sudden interest in dusting meant a great deal more progress. Yes, she spoke a little more now, but only superficially about practical matters: ‘Shall I put these in the airing cupboard?’ ‘Shall I do the drying up?’ But never entering into territory that would involve talking about her. If I asked her anything personal she would immediately clam up. So I soon learned the best thing was not to try.

It was all a bit frustrating, this increasing attachment to the ‘Christmas shutdown’. I felt reasonably happy that if there was any change in Bella’s stepdad’s condition – good or bad – I’d have been told. But I was anxious to get Bella help too. But though I’d been promised they’d seek a counsellor for Bella as a matter of urgency, I heard nothing till after New Year.

A quiet New Year, as it turned out, because though Bella hadn’t succumbed to any further sickness Mike went down with whatever it was that had been rife at the warehouse – not badly, just a twenty-four-hour bout of gastric gymnastics – but enough to scupper our planned family party.

I was philosophical. It was almost as if it was meant to be. And though I dropped Tyler round to Riley’s, where they were holding it instead now, I was actually perfectly happy in front of the telly, rather than doing my usual half hour with the Radio Times and the record button. I’d never admit it, but it was a novelty, and it actually made a pleasant change.

But when further news finally came, on 2 January, it was from John Fulshaw rather than Sophie.

It was dark, cold and miserable, as such days so often are, particularly so in this case, since I’d risen from my bed before seven, in order to do some online research on wedding flowers while Mike showered and got ready for work. Where my daughter was so chilled about everything that she was almost horizontal, I was fast approaching that mental place where ‘There’s still so much to do!’ was my first and last thought every day. It comprised a good deal of the thoughts in between too.

The email from John had arrived in my inbox only minutes earlier and I half-decided to phone him and say, ‘You too?’ But then I decided if he was working that early the last thing he needed was me twittering on at him, so I settled down with my coffee and simply read it.

And it made for very interesting reading.

John obviously didn’t have access to sensitive information regarding the case against Bella’s mother, but he had been given access to the information about the family that the police had shared with social services.

Which was good news, and where multi-agency working really came into its own. Prior to the joys of the internet age, foster carers like Mike and me, not to mention a child’s new school, and even their new doctor, in some cases, were kept largely out of the loop about their background. And even if this was mostly a sin of omission (though not in all cases; people could be very protective of the fruit of their own labours) it was almost always to the detriment of the child concerned.

Where, famously, an inability to cross-check and share information led to the infamous Yorkshire Ripper being arrested and let go an embarrassing number of times in the 1970s, there were countless far less high-profile cases, involving children in the care system, where information left unshared let them badly down.

So thank heavens for common sense and IT progress. It obviously made much more sense for everyone working towards the same end game to pool information and share what they knew – that way, all parties could work as a single team.

In this case, the report John had sent through about the family focused on one neighbour in particular. A widow in her late fifties, she was called Ellen Murphy, and had told police that she feared for Bella on many occasions, due to the volatile nature of her parents. They would regularly get into drunken brawls on a weekend, she’d said, and had, in fact, called and reported them more than once to the police, when she’d heard Bella screaming, thinking she might be under attack. She said that on every occasion (how many had there been, I wondered?) she had later been assured that Bella herself hadn’t been in any danger – she’d merely been yelling at her parents to stop.

This had not, she said, lessened her fears. However much she’d been assured Bella wasn’t in danger, she had personally witnessed the child lying out in the back garden, in the dark, often, and the cold, even the rain, drumming her feet on the ground, and covering her ears with her hands. ‘I spent most weekends,’ she’d added, ‘with my finger poised over the dial button when it kicks off, just in case.’

Well, who wouldn’t?

I was just thinking about the fine line between being a nosey neighbour and potentially protecting a vulnerable child (one I increasingly championed crossing), when the vulnerable child in question tapped me on the shoulder.

Thankfully, given the angle, I doubted she’d have seen anything I’d rather she didn’t, but I quickly put the screen to sleep anyway.

‘You’re up early,’ I said, then, following her gaze to the kitchen clock, corrected myself. Somehow, it was approaching 9 a.m. – something that seemed impossible till I remembered that at some point in my reading Mike had bent down, said ‘Bye, love,’ and kissed me on the cheek. I’d probably answered as well.

‘Could I have a turn on the computer when you’re finished?’ she asked shyly, and I realised she held a pencil case and exercise book in her hand. ‘It’s just that if I’m not going back to school yet, I thought I could log into my homework page and do a bit of something to stop me being bored.’

Bella ‘not going back to school yet’ had been agreed before she’d even been delivered to us. With the likelihood of interviews, assessments, counselling sessions and the possibility of her even being moved out of county, it had been agreed that they should at least wait till the score was more properly known – a delicate way of describing the uncertainty about whether her mum would be charged with attempted murder or – please, no – just plain old murder.

And as nothing had happened to change that particular non-status quo (not to mention Bella having expressed no interest in going anyway) it seemed she’d be off for as long as it took.

‘That’s a good idea,’ I said, popping the screen back to life briefly before quickly closing all the tabs I’d opened. And it was; the poor girl had only been in secondary school for a term when her world had collapsed, and a very short, no doubt fraught, term as well. I couldn’t imagine how she must feel about that one constant in her life having been dramatically ripped away from her.

I hadn’t made a start on Riley’s flowers yet, but this was much more important. With Tyler on a last-night-of-freedom sleep-over at Denver’s, I figured I could easily do that later. ‘Here you go,’ I said, pushing my chair back and inviting her to sit down. ‘You get started while I go and make you some breakfast. Oh, and we have just the one rule about anyone who comes to us re the laptop, and it’s that it has to be done here, I’m afraid. It’s just one of those rules that we all have to follow. That okay?’

The ‘here’ in this case was, these days, a bureau-type unit that was part of our bigger ‘entertainment’ area. (Which now also housed the redundant karaoke machine, of course.) It was a bit cramped, but it was at least in a high-traffic area, which made it nigh-on impossible for anyone (should they want to – I hoped they didn’t) to nose around in anything unsavoury. Needs must, in the fostering game.

‘Oh, of course,’ Bella said, as if it had never occurred to her that it might be otherwise. Which was refreshing; more and more it seemed teenagers treated laptops as extensions of themselves, to be operated from laps – ideally hidden from view, in their bedrooms. But this didn’t seem to be the case with Bella, who, as far as I knew, had never owned a laptop – or else surely she’d have brought one along with her.

I left her to it and went to the kitchen to make some porridge with syrup – something (in fact the only thing) Bella had so far expressed a liking for. And while I stirred, I thought about the email I’d been reading and the picture I was building up of her family life before the ‘crisis’ – for want of a better word. I still felt unable to find the right one, since it was still unconfirmed – would it all too soon become Bella’s stepfather’s killing?

Whatever the future held, the past had clearly been a very unhappy place, and though she hadn’t apparently been on the receiving end of physical violence, emotionally it must have scarred her quite profoundly. To witness violence and aggression on such a regular basis can’t have made for a very happy life at all. And judging from the comments by the neighbour, Mrs Murphy, it was a crisis that was always going to happen.

The porridge made, I went back into the living room, to find the screen filled not with homework, but with flowers. Or homework on flowers, which was possible. And then I realised.

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