Her expression changed to one of what I could only describe as condescension. ‘Derr,’ she said in an exasperated voice. ‘You don’t have to look at me like that, you know. I’m not dying!’
‘I know,’ I said nicely, through my slightly gritted teeth. ‘I didn’t think so for a moment. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. After all the upheaval of moving, that was all.’
Her face back-tracked slightly, even if her voice didn’t. ‘Hmmph,’ she muttered. ‘Yes, well, I’m fine.’
And with that she turned and sauntered off back to the living room, leaving me once again staring after her, agape. Right, I thought, making my mind up at that moment. No more Mrs Nice Guy from me. I needed to let this child know who called the shots around here and put an end to all this pussyfooting around. It would do her no favours – had been doing her no favours. It made her unpleasant to be around, and that wasn’t going to help her. It wouldn’t help me to help her either. I finished making the drinks and took the tray into the living room, where the three adults were sitting, Sophia back among them, trying to make small talk among themselves.
‘Right,’ I said cheerfully to one and all. ‘Here you go. Help yourselves to biscuits, by the way.’
Sophia’s glance towards Sam was as pointed as she could make it. ‘Sophia doesn’t like to be around biscuits,’ Sam explained nervously. ‘It’s her Addison’s. She has to be really disciplined about sugar, because the steroids she takes give her a really huge appetite, and if she indulges …’ She looked back towards Sophia as if for help. Then I noticed her and Linda exchange glances. ‘Well, it’s obviously not terribly good for her to get fat.’
I picked up the plate of biscuits and offered it only to the adults, equally pointedly. She clearly needed to learn discipline, period. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I clearly have a lot to learn, don’t I?’
‘Yes, you do,’ Sophia answered, folding her arms across her chest.
‘Now, Sophia –’ began Sam, sounding nervous about even speaking. Jesus, what was the matter with these people?
‘Come on, sweetie,’ she added, leaping up and putting her arm around her, as if she wasn’t standing there smiling but in huge floods of tears. ‘D’you want to show me your room? I could help you make a start, carry some things up. Leave the others to sort out the boring paperwork, eh?’
I could have happily slapped Sophia’s social worker then. Not only was she undermining me – bad enough in itself – but she was also disregarding the girl’s rude behaviour. Which wasn’t very professional of her at all.
As soon as they’d left the room, I rounded on Linda, the supervising social worker, who, right now, seemed to be supervising nothing. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘pandering to her every whim isn’t going to help her. She needs boundaries, a bit of discipline …’
‘I agree,’ John chipped in. He could see how cross I was and seemed keen to support me. It wasn’t too late, I thought, for us to change our minds, and he knew it. But that wasn’t his motivation, I decided. He was genuinely trying to second a valid point. ‘She does seem to wrap everyone around her little finger,’ he continued.
Linda, unsurprisingly, jumped straight to her defence. ‘I know it seems that way,’ she said. ‘But try to look beyond her behaviour, please. Underneath the front, she’s feeling lost and abandoned and alone. She’ll settle down, I promise. Give it a couple of days. Things will be fine. Honestly they will.’
But her tone belied her words. She knew no such thing. This wouldn’t be a team I’d be getting much support from, I decided. Once again, as had been the case with our last child, bar John, we’d probably be on our own. Was that how it worked with our kind of specialist ‘extreme’ fostering? That Mike and I were considered so able they could throw anything at us, secure in the blind faith that we’d cope?
But before I had a chance to say something regrettable, Mike himself walked in, having come back from work. ‘Morning all!’ he said cheerily. ‘Everything okay here?’ The three of us seemed of like mind. End of conversation. We all got our heads down and ran through all the paperwork.
It was only once John and Linda were finishing up and I cleared the mugs that I could have a word with Mike on our own.
‘What’s up, love?’ he asked, once we were both in the kitchen. ‘You could cut the atmosphere in there with a knife!’
‘Oh, just more of the same. Our little madam’s been busy being one again. And it seems no one in her “team” has got the confidence to take her on. I just had a bit of a moment, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. She’ll find things rather different now, starting today. And none too soon, because that lot seem to be creating a monster.’
But once back in the living room I had cause to eat my words. Sophia and Sam had come down from upstairs now, and Sophia was visibly and genuinely distressed as she hugged both the women and said her goodbyes. I felt a pang of guilt. This was a desperate 12-year-old girl, trying to make sense of an appalling situation. Perhaps Linda had been right, and I’d been wrong. I must learn, I decided, that my usual acuity re character wasn’t quite as infallible as I thought. I also knew nothing about the emotional toll of being the victim of an incurable disease. Sophia had perhaps been right in that, too. I did have a lot to learn this afternoon. Speaking of which … ‘Look at the time,’ I said. ‘We really need to get off.’
‘Right,’ said Sam, disentangling herself from Sophia. ‘And we’d better leave you all to it. I’ll phone you in a day or so, Sophia, okay? And come to see how you’re doing in a week or so.’
I moved closer to Sophia as everyone trooped back out of the door, automatically putting an arm around her waist. She needed affection, I thought. Physical contact. Even though her manner so often seemed to suggest otherwise, the child inside needed love more than anything.
We waved them off, Sophia rubbing at her tear-stained cheeks with her other hand. Then she turned to me. ‘Where’s your son? Didn’t you say you had a teenage son?’
Her voice was completely different now. As light and sunny, suddenly, as the day was dark and cold.
‘Kieron?’ I said, shocked. ‘Yes. He’s at college today. You’ll meet him tonight. When we get back from your doctor’s –’
‘Okay!’ she said brightly. ‘Coats on then, is it? As you say, it’s a long way. Time to go!’
It was a very, very long three hours, that journey to hospital, as all three occupants of the car – Mike, myself and Sophia – retreated into their own minds and thoughts. I tried several times to start conversations with Sophia initially, all of which were mildly, but decisively, rebuffed by her lack of interest in giving me more than one-word responses. I then tuned the radio station to one I thought she might like, but this, too, was pointedly rejected. She simply pulled an MP3 player from her pocket and plugged herself into that. ‘I think that’s you told,’ whispered Mike.
She’s 12, I kept telling myself, locked alone with my anxieties. (I couldn’t talk to Mike, of course, because she wasn’t six inches from us.) She’s 12. Think back, Casey. That’s what 12-year-olds are like, even 12-year-olds with the most benign of families and backgrounds. She’s on the cusp of adolescence, too; no, that was wrong. Physically at least, she was well into it. So perhaps I was reading too much into things. She’d also been overindulged and was clearly using her disorder to manipulate the adults around her. She just needed guidance, support and that healthy dose of discipline. That, I decided, would help her immeasurably. And as a virtual orphan in the world, boy, did she need help.
But I couldn’t help but wonder at these extreme swings in behaviour: one minute full of herself, the next happy-clappy, and then, out of the blue, appearing really upset. What mood would be on offer when we arrived at the hospital, I wondered? I was beginning to realise