I got up to find her in the hall, plonking down a load of straining carrier bags. ‘Only a quick one,’ she clarified. ‘I’ve just got half an hour. Carol’s in on her own, and I’ve dragged Chloe in to help, so I’d better be quick.’
Carol was the stalwart who’d worked for Donna almost since the outset, and Chloe was my 18-year-old niece. She was in the sixth form, and, in theory, was only supposed to work on Saturdays, but if it was a day when she didn’t have any lessons, and the café was busy, Donna would often let her come in and earn a bit of extra pocket money.
‘So. Where is she?’ Donna asked without preamble. My sister didn’t foster, but she always took an interest. So much so that I hadn’t ruled out the possibility that, if the café ever became too much or too samey, that at some point she too might take the plunge.
I indicated with my eyes as I poured us both a coffee. ‘Upstairs in bed. She’s not well. So there’s not much to report. She’s barely been downstairs since she came here.’
‘But she’s a teenager, isn’t she?’ Donna said. ‘So that’s just typical. Teenagers like hiding away in their bedrooms. I wouldn’t worry – you hardly ever see them at that age.’
‘I don’t think that’s it in this instance,’ I said. ‘She’s not right. She’s not right and she’s ill too.’
I told Donna about the doctor’s visit and Adrianna’s extreme, and unexpected, reaction to it. She laughed. She used the same surgery that we did. ‘Dr Joe? Well, he’d get quite the opposite reaction from me. Though, to be fair, she is 14. You know what girls are like at that age. Some strange man comes in, starts wanting to prod her around – and a foreigner, to boot … Seriously, what’s the story with her? I’m completely intrigued. I didn’t realise you could even foster foreign nationals. Stuff you hear about them being taken to detention centres and all that.’
I laughed. ‘Hardly – she’s from Poland. So she’s allowed to be here anyway. Well, would be, if she was here legally. Which we’re not sure she is. She says she doesn’t even have a passport. But, to be honest, we know almost nothing else about her. We’ve barely exchanged half a dozen sentences the entire time she’s been with us, and, as I say, her English is almost non-existent. And not likely to improve, either – she seems frightened of everybody and everything, wouldn’t answer any of the interpreter’s questions, wouldn’t let Tyler bring his Polish friend home for tea, and, well, as I say, just seems to want to stay in bed, pretty much. Right now I don’t know whether she’s properly sick, or homesick, or just plain exhausted. And there doesn’t seem a lot I can do about any of it at present either. Which is a pretty odd place for me to be.’ I glanced across at my fridge freezer. ‘Sounds mad, but I’m missing my chart!’
Donna grinned. Then said thoughtfully, ‘It’s probably a combination of all of those things, isn’t it? And it’s only been a few days, after all. You can’t expect to know everything about everything after such a short time. Even you.’
‘That’s what Mike thinks,’ I said. ‘But you know when you just have that inkling about someone? Well, I’ve got that. Increasingly, that’s what I’ve got.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as despite what she told John, I reckon there’s something bad, as in possibly actionable, that she’s run away from. And not back in Poland, either. I reckon there’s more. Something criminal. Something serious.’ I tapped the table top. ‘Something that’s happened here. Maybe she’s witnessed something. Some crime or something. You know?’
Donna drained her mug. ‘You watch too many bloody Scandinavian murder mysteries, you do. Anyway, speaking of criminal, can you whistle up one of those over-priced taxis for me? I’m assuming a lift home’s probably not on the cards.’
‘Poland’s not in Scandinavia,’ I pointed out. ‘And, no, sorry, sis – you know I would but I don’t like to leave her. I just have this suspicion –’
‘Go on, tell me. That there might be bogeymen lurking behind Lidl, and that things are not entirely az zey seeeem?’
At which I laughed, because I knew my imagination could get the better of me. But that, or a version of it – that Adrianna was running scared – was almost exactly what I did think.
Thankfully, over the weekend Adrianna’s temperature went down and by Sunday she had ventured downstairs to join the family, clad in a hoodie and old trackie bottoms of Riley’s. She’d also asked – with much gesturing and helpful bits of mime – if she could borrow some washing powder so she could launder her clothes.
‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘Let me have them and I’ll put them through the machine for you.’ But several visits to Google Translate and gentle argument later, I had to concede that she was not going to let me do that under any circumstances – that we had already done enough for her and she did not wish to be a burden. I didn’t push it. Perhaps, I decided, thinking back to when I was 14, I would have baulked at a complete stranger washing my clothes as well.
There was also the business of her being independent. Having travelled so far, and taken care of herself for so long, she probably had a great deal of adjusting to do before she could truly settle into family life. I’d seen similar scenarios in children as young as seven or eight, particularly if they’d spent time in the care system. To strip them of their independence and privacy was to disable them even further – at least in the short term, when everything in their lives felt so out of their control. These were things that at least they could control.
Softly, softly then. I relinquished the washing gel and fabric conditioner. She did her clothes washing on Sunday morning, in the bath.
Happily, Adrianna’s reticence didn’t seem to extend to food, extreme hunger being a very powerful human state. And, boy, once she felt better and had a bit of colour in her cheeks, did she have an appetite. She sat down to Sunday lunch with an expression for which ‘ravenous’ was the only description.
‘More potatoes?’ I asked, grinning, having watching her devour all of hers within seconds.
She nodded, smiling at Tyler, who seemed mesmerised by the transformation. ‘This good,’ she said, accepting another scoopful. ‘Your mammy make good food.’
Tyler blushed. And I knew it wasn’t just because he was at the sharp end of her smile. He’d started calling us mum and dad a long time ago now, but there were still these little moments, when someone else referred to us as ‘his mum and dad’ when I knew it still had the power to bring him up short. Hard to explain, but entirely in a good way. It was almost as if he’d have to check with us – he glanced at me now – to be sure we didn’t feel the need to explain that, actually, we weren’t his real mum and dad. It was almost, though I didn’t think it was even a conscious thing, as if he was testing us. That in all situations and with all people from here on in, mum and dad was what we were going to be. No qualifications. It truly mattered – it was a way of reconfirming his sense of security. It mattered to him – and in a whole host of different situations now – that we’d never felt the need to point it out. I could have hugged him.
‘Well, I’m glad someone appreciates my cooking,’ I said, laughing as I followed up with the dish of other vegetables. ‘Thank you, Adrianna, I’m happy you like it.’
‘I like it,’ Adrianna