‘You know, Sophia?’ said Mike pleasantly. ‘Just for future reference, it’s not really polite to ask an adult their age. But, since you ask, Casey’s younger than I am.’
‘Well then,’ said Linda, clearly keen to get away now. Sophia herself didn’t open her mouth. ‘If there’s nothing else, I think we can wrap this up now. I’m sure, Casey and Mike, you’ll have more questions to ask, so be assured that one of us will always be on hand to answer them. All our numbers will be on the paperwork that we’ll be bringing on Wednesday morning, and I’ll also leave you the address of Dr Wyatt, Sophia’s doctor. Your appointment with him is at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, by the way, so plenty of time to get to –’
‘That’s a point,’ said Mike. ‘Where is this doctor based anyway?’
Linda handed him the sheet with the address on. ‘He’s here. It’s –’
‘The Lake District!’ Mike gasped. ‘Cumbria? But that’s a couple of hundred miles away!’
‘You only have to attend once a month or so,’ Linda said quickly. ‘Unless there are complications …’
‘I should hope so!’ Mike snapped. ‘It’s a six-hour round trip! It would have been nice if someone had told us this before!’
Sophia, who had been about to leave the room, now turned around. ‘Aw, diddums,’ she said, and it was clear she was getting her own back. ‘Doesn’t Daddy like driving?’
Sam pushed Sophia’s coat into her arms. ‘Stop being silly,’ she snapped. It was the first time I’d heard anyone admonish her.
Mike was furious, I could see, so I grabbed his hand and squeezed it, hoping I could help him calm down. What hope had we if she could wind him up so comprehensively, and so quickly? Not a lot, I decided. Not a lot at all.
We saw them out – all bar John – with fixed smiles on our faces. What were we about to take on? See beyond, I kept telling myself. See beyond the bad behaviour to the hurting child beneath. So I looked, but, by God, it was hard.
‘Quite a team she has there, eh?’ John said, to break the silence that was threatening to swallow us all up, minutes later. We’d moved into the kitchen now, and Mike had set about washing up the cups, the crockery rattling furiously as he did so. The hall floor was suddenly the last thing on my mind.
‘She didn’t come across at all like that the last time I met her,’ John added limply. ‘Like a different girl completely …’ He tailed off.
‘Bloody hell, John!’ I said. ‘That was completely bizarre. It was like they were all absolutely terrified of upsetting her; pandering to everything, pussyfooting around her … Does she turn into a werewolf when crossed? Is that it?’
John pulled out a kitchen chair and sat on it, looking weary. ‘I’ve never witnessed anything like that before,’ he admitted. ‘All my dealings with that team have been on the phone up to now, and up to now they’ve all seemed really switched on. I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re right. It does all feel a bit of a challenge, doesn’t it? To be honest, I only agreed to taking the case because it was going to be so short term. And it won’t be for long, I’m sure, because, as you can see, Jean really wants to keep her, long term.’
‘Is she really strong enough?’ Mike said. ‘I can’t see it myself. But I hope she does.’ He frowned. ‘Because, much as I hate to say this, I smell trouble. I think there’s much more to this girl than meets the eye.’
John was, of course, relentlessly apologetic. He apologised for not being able to find out more about Sophia’s background or her illness. He apologised for not knowing the doctor was so far away. He apologised for not knowing about the apparently worrying prospect of what might happen if she got a little ‘stressed’. And he promised that he would do everything he could to find out more – because forewarned was forearmed.
We reassured him that we weren’t going to take it personally – because it wasn’t his fault, was it? It was just going to be a challenging sort of placement, we all agreed, and challenges, we also agreed, were what we were all about. Even so, as Mike and I waved John off from the doorstep, I couldn’t help feeling that there were challenges and there were challenges, and that this one might not be to our liking.
‘You know, love?’ I said to Mike, reaching out for a hug. ‘I was really looking forward to having a new child to foster, and now, you know what? I’m not sure I am any more.’
He pulled me in. ‘I know, love. It all looks a little daunting, doesn’t it? But I suppose that’s exactly what we get paid for. We’ll just have to do our best, eh? See how it goes. And remember just how much she’s had to cope with in her life. She’s probably feeling angry at the whole world.’
Mike was right, of course. We both knew we had to see past the behaviour and remember that she was a child who had not yet hit her teens, and was without a mum – without any family to speak of. Couple all that with what sounded like a very complicated and, possibly, life-threatening condition, and it was no wonder she was angry and demanding. I sighed as it hit me just how difficult this might be. And not just because Sophia would be a difficult child to manage. It was because I had a sixth sense – no, I knew – that all the efforts we made at establishing boundaries, which we badly needed to, had the potential for being undermined at every turn by the team of professionals who seemed intent to let her have her way all the time and, in doing so, turn her into a monster. Couldn’t they see they weren’t helping her development? They were just adding to her sense of entitlement, her bad manners and her unrealistic expectations; not a great recipe for a happy adult life.
I could only hope one thing, that we could make a difference. Even if it seemed, on the face of it, like a tall order.
‘The coast is clear!’ I told Riley, over the phone, twenty minutes later. ‘Can you come round with Levi and cheer me up?’
Bless her, my daughter is an absolute sweetheart, and I knew seeing her and my lovely grandson would make the prospect so much less bleak. I set about making lunch for the three of us – Riley, Mike and me – before Mike had to rush off back to work.
‘So was she awful?’ Riley asked, as soon as she arrived. ‘You sounded pretty down on the phone.’
I’d certainly felt it. As I’d said to Mike before she’d arrived, I now felt pretty silly, having gone so bloody overboard on the bedroom. And I had – well, me and Riley had – to a ridiculous degree. There were pink fluttery butterflies hanging in the window, two layers of contrasting pink curtains, with silver sequins dotted over them, matching bed linen and fluffy pink cushions. The bed had also been transformed by a glittery pink canopy, which hung from the ceiling and flowed over the pillows. The walls sported an array of butterflies and fairies, and the offending football-adorned bookcase was now gleaming white, and sat among mushrooms (Riley’s idea – garden ornaments), upon which sat more fairies … It really was a room fit for a princess. Trouble was, what we seemed to have was less a princess than a little madam.
But as Mike had pointed out, aiding that transition was our job. But he’d looked at me gloomily, as if reading my thoughts. ‘Screw the room, Casey,’ he’d said. ‘That’s the least of our worries.’
It was good to have Riley here to break the tension. ‘Tell you what,’ I said now, ‘I’ll go and dig some toys out for Levi. Mike, why don’t you tell Riley all about it, love?’
I went off to the blanket box under the stairs, knowing Mike would be able to stick to the facts and not get over-emotional, like I would. I didn’t want to seem overemotional about it, as I knew the kids would just fret even more about whether we’d done the right thing.
Funny, I thought, pulling out the box and lifting the lid, how you have expectations in life, without any evidence to back them up at all. I’d collected a lot of these toys when we’d first discussed fostering, mistakenly thinking we’d have lots of little children around. Naïve, really