‘It’s a very sensible list,’ I huffed as I walked to the window to look out for them. ‘Oh shit!’ I added, seeing a car pull up. ‘They’re here!’
I had a room spray in my hand, so I chucked it now at Riley. ‘Have a quick spray around with that, will you, while I let them in?’
She didn’t grace my order with a reply. Instead she just calmly put the aerosol in the dining-room cupboard. ‘Mum, you know something?’ she said finally. ‘You are just a teensy bit cuckoo. Go on, let them in. I’ll go and pop the kettle on.’
I took a deep breath, as I always did, before opening the front door, ready to see what sort of child might be on the other side. My first impression – my gut instinct – was something I had learned to trust over the years. You could tell so much about a child from that first sweep of information gathering; from the basics of what their clothes and accent said about the sort of world they’d come from, to the less obvious pointers, such as how they responded to you, and what that said about their personality and confidence. Were they frightened? Full of attitude? Traumatised? It wasn’t quite Sherlock Holmes territory, but it was an inner voice that had rarely been wrong.
‘Well, hello!’ I said, beaming at the little congregation on the doorstep.
I didn’t immediately take stock of Emma, however, because my eye was drawn to the car seat that was hanging from Maggie’s elbow, and the well-wrapped and fast-asleep bundle it contained. I dragged my gaze away, however, to greet the person I knew must be my main focus – his mother.
‘You must be Emma,’ I said, taking in how slight she was, how young-looking, how not at all her fourteen years. She was tiny, with blonde hair tied back into a side ponytail and enormous blue eyes. Ironic, but she looked the picture of chaste innocence. ‘Oh,’ I gushed, ‘and your baby is just gorgeous. Come on. Come on in. Follow me.’
Now, I’ve met some reluctant-looking kids in my time, obviously, but it had been a long time since I’d seen an expression quite as defiant and disdainful as the one etched on this particular teenager’s face. As I ushered the three of them in, I made my smile all the wider to compensate. Hmm, I thought. Whatever happened to the ‘oh, she’s so excited’ line from Maggie?
Still, this was probably par for the course, I decided, as I showed them into the dining area. It was the kind of attitude that was commonly seen in lots of teenagers, that whole scowly, cocky attitude thing she had going on. Standard teenager-ese, as portrayed in many a TV programme, and which reminded me that being a mother doesn’t stop a girl being a typical fourteen-year-old; it might eventually, and probably would, by sheer force of circumstance, but right now this was a teenager who just happened to have had a baby. Which didn’t stop her looking and acting like a teenager.
Riley, who was finishing off preparing refreshments, stood in the kitchen archway and beamed too. ‘Hi everyone!’ she said. ‘Drinks orders, please!’
I was pleased to note a slight but perceptible softening of Emma’s features on seeing my daughter. She’d obviously been told about Riley and now I could see her wondering how this young, cool and clearly more on-her-wavelength kind of person might fit into her life while she was with us.
‘That’s my daughter,’ I said to her as we all sat down at the table. ‘She doesn’t live here but she visits all the time. She has boys too – two of them. Levi and Jackson. I expect Maggie’s told you about them, hasn’t she? You’ll get to meet them in the next few days.’
This seemed to spark a return to the previous scowl. ‘If I’m here in a few days,’ she was quick to point out. ‘I told her,’ she said, glancing across at Maggie pointedly, ‘that I’m going to have to see how it goes first.’
Okaaayyy, I thought. I’m getting the real picture now, which is fine. I was just about to answer – with something agreeing that that was a perfectly reasonable point – when Maggie, looking apologetic, spoke first. ‘Sorry, Casey,’ she said, looking equally pointedly at her young charge. ‘But Emma’s having something of a stroppy day today, aren’t you? Didn’t much like getting up at six to get here, did you?’
Had I paid more attention to that I might have had more of a clue about the shape of things to come, but of course I didn’t. I just brushed over it and tried to jolly things along. ‘Six in the morning?’ I exclaimed. ‘That would be enough to give anyone a bad case of the grumps. But at least you’re here now, and I’m sure you’ll get a chance to catch up on a bit of sleep later.’
And I did feel for her. A new baby was exhausting. And though I’d forgotten quite how exhausted I’d been with my own two newborns, I’d certainly been reminded when Riley had had hers. That old ‘sleep when the baby sleeps’ mantra was all very well in theory. But in practice there always seemed to be a million things that needed doing in those precious few pockets of time.
Riley brought the drinks in then and said her goodbyes for the moment, and as she left it occurred to me that Roman, in his car seat, was still on the floor at Maggie’s side, rather than with Emma. I also realised, as Maggie started chatting about the placement, that Emma didn’t as much as glance in his direction. Which perhaps should have rung alarm bells as well but didn’t, not really – she was so young and so shell shocked, after all.
And that state of affairs continued all through Maggie’s initial briefing; while she explained that Hannah – Roman’s social worker – would be joining us shortly, just giving us time to get the handover documents sorted. This was usual. There were all sorts of different forms that needed going through, including risk assessments, medical consent forms and so on.
‘Tell you what,’ Maggie said to Emma as she began sorting bits of paper. ‘While we get on with the boring stuff why don’t you get Roman’s hat and coat and things off? He’ll be due a feed by the time Hannah gets here, won’t he?’
As if to prompt Emma, she pushed the car seat over to where Emma was sitting and I watched as Emma pulled it close enough to start unbuckling the seat straps. She turned to look at me. ‘Hannah’s just a nosy cow,’ she said to me, entirely without prompting. ‘She just wants to catch me out doing something wrong.’ I was slightly shocked; it seemed quite a forward thing for her to say. And she wasn’t finished. ‘Make sure you take notes, by the way. Because that’s what you’re supposed to be doing as well.’
I didn’t rise to it. Instead I put my pen down and smiled at her. ‘I’m sure Hannah’s just doing her job, Emma,’ I said levelly. ‘But I can assure you – cross my heart – that I’m not here to try and catch you out. I’m sure you’re going to do just great, I really am. And I’m here to help. Help when you ask me to, okay?’
Emma snorted then. ‘Yeah, right!’ she said, her voice full of venom. ‘That’s exactly what Hannah said to me when she first came. Trust me, lady,’ she went on, ‘she’s just looking for the first excuse she finds to take my kid!’
I was saddened, rather than shocked, by the tone of Emma’s voice. Just a few weeks into motherhood, which was destabilising enough already, and she was living in such an uncertain world. And a scary one, too. For all that it was not the desired outcome, there was a kernel of truth there – if she ‘failed’, social services would indeed take her kid. And she was just a little girl herself. A frightened little girl with no one to turn to. And fear can make anyone lash out.
By now Emma had unbuckled the seat and pulled the baby onto her lap, and right away I felt my own fears subside a little. In contrast to her demeanour earlier, now she actually had her baby in her arms she had eyes for no one but him. She also seemed confident, if understandably careful, supporting his head the way she needed to and gently rocking him back and forth. It was only when Hannah herself arrived that her expression was once again