‘Which you are, of course.’
She laughed, gesturing me through to a small side room off a corridor decorated with children’s paintings. ‘So, how’s she been?’ she asked once the door closed behind us. Her face was full of concern. ‘We were all so shocked about what happened. We had to report what she’d told us, of course, but we never expected her to be taken so suddenly.’
‘Erm, well, she’s coping OK,’ I said slowly, ‘though we’ve had a few challenges so far.’
Miss Angel nodded. ‘Phoebe does have complex needs. We’ve had a few frights along the way but her parents cope marvellously with her. They must be devastated. Such a lovely couple, they’ve done such a lot for Englebrook. Been very generous. It was Mr Steadman who donated the sundial in the main playground, you know.’
‘How does she cope at school from day to day? Does she have any friends?’
‘She’s not terribly popular with her classmates, I’m afraid. She tends to hit out quite a lot and they’ve learnt to avoid her.’ She grimaced. ‘I’m afraid the staff have had their fair share of problems with her too.’
‘Do you ever get the impression that she’s …?’ I hesitated, licking my lips. What I was about to say seemed disingenuous to imply, but if my suspicions were correct, something needed to be done to help her. ‘Do you ever get the impression that she’s putting her symptoms on?’
Miss Angel looked taken aback. ‘No, of course not – why would she?’
Yes, why would she? I thought, as I made my way back to the car park. It was something I was to spend many hours puzzling over. Poor Phoebe, she didn’t seem to have anyone who really understood her. Nowhere she truly belonged.
From the midst of my dreams that night, I became aware of a continuous, unsettling sound. Suspended in the free-falling world of half-sleep, I turned and bent the pillow over my ear in an effort to cling on to my relaxed state. All at once the muted, ghostly wails became increasingly shrill. Gasping, I propped myself up on one elbow, trying to gauge the time from the dim rays of moonlight dancing through a gap in the curtains. Frowning, I stayed motionless for a moment, listening to the innocuous tinkle of water running through the central heating system.
Moments after I had sunk my head back onto the pillow I heard a scream so piercing that I shot out from underneath the duvet, grasping for my dressing gown. Catching the rim of a glass of water on the bedside table, I knocked it over and it soaked the floor.
Disorientated, I stubbed my toes on the skirting board as I dashed along the hall, just as Emily and Jamie were emerging from their rooms in bleary-eyed confusion.
‘It’s alright, it’s just Phoebe,’ I reassured them.
Jamie rolled his eyes and groaned.
‘You two go back to bed,’ I said, a ripple in my stomach telling me that I was moments away from something incendiary. Sure enough, when I switched on Phoebe’s light there it was: the explosive, grisly scene hitting my senses with full force.
Blood stains covered every visible surface of the room. The cuddly toys, so attentively arranged by Emily earlier in the week, lay scattered across the floor. With limbs and heads missing and blood-spattered stuffing strewn across the carpet, the room resembled the set of some macabre fairy tale.
My ears closed up and my vision tunnelled when I noticed that Phoebe’s bed was empty. Fearing the worst, I was almost too terrified to search for her. Part of me was tempted to run back to my bedroom and crawl under the duvet. Feeling giddy, I swerved through the carnage then pulled up short.
My heart reared up with shock, slamming against my ribcage with such force that my vision wavered for a moment. Blinking, I saw Phoebe slumped lifelessly in the corner of the room; her face was white as fresh paper.
Phoebe was withdrawn when I drove her home from hospital later that day. She sat listlessly in the back of the car, her head resting against the interior of the door. Her face was still pale, although now I realised this was probably more down to shock than anaemia. The emergency paediatrician had kindly reassured me that blood loss from the deep cut she had scored into her arm was unlikely to have been more than a few dessertspoons, despite the scene of massacre in her bedroom. She’d been lucky, though: if she’d hit on an artery it could have been a different story. I shuddered at the thought.
‘You must be exhausted, honey,’ I said, glancing at her reflection in the rear-view mirror. It was the first time I had actually willed her to mimic me. She didn’t, hardly reacting at all. Her blue eyes stared glassily ahead. I wasn’t even going to attempt to discuss what she’d done to herself, not yet. She needed time to recover physically before I drained her further, I felt. But how long to leave it? I wondered. And would she even remember doing it by the time we spoke?
I winced as I cast my mind back to the early morning, ambulance men negotiating their way through the decapitated teddies to reach the injured patient. Phoebe lay in a hysterical heap on the floor, spurred into life by the sight of strangers in her room. I watched as the paramedics knelt beside her, trying to examine her wounds, her fending them off with wild kicks and ferocious screeches. All I felt then was relief; at least she was conscious.
The police had interviewed me while Phoebe’s injury was glued together by a doctor. It was only a formality and yet I couldn’t help but feel responsible for the whole episode. Upon interrogation from nursing staff, Phoebe had admitted to stealing a pair of scissors from the kitchen while I was washing up. Children in foster care often become experts in subterfuge and although I never suspected that she was likely to self-harm at such a tender age, I felt I should have been more alert to the possibility.
Sneaking the scissors up to her room, she had stowed them under her pillow and slept with them there all night. That revelation in itself was shocking enough but the realisation that an eight-year-old girl was disturbed enough to gouge a hole in her arm on waking rocked me to the core.
I realised it would be difficult ever to relax with Phoebe in the house; I would have to stay continually on guard. Once indoors I planted Phoebe in front of the television. Absorbed deep in a world of her own, she sank into a beanbag and stared blankly at the screen.
I was about to call my mother and arrange to collect Emily and Jamie from her house when the handset vibrated in my hand: it was Lenke. I walked into the garden where we could talk in private, watching a listless Phoebe through the glass of the patio doors.
‘How is she doing now?’
Hearing the social worker’s reproving tone, I instantly bristled. ‘She’s a bit withdrawn but physically there’s no long-term damage, thank goodness.’
‘Hmmm. Have you reviewed your safeguarding procedures? Her parents are furious that this happened in the foster home, as you can imagine. They’ll try and use this to discredit the local authority, of course.’
‘It was an ordinary pair of household scissors, Lenke. If I’d had any idea at all that Phoebe was vulnerable to self-harm I would never have allowed her access to them. As it is I’ve had to hide the washing up liquid and soaps, all the toiletries, even toothpaste – she devours it all.’
There was a moment’s hesitation. A cough. It was then that the realisation dawned on me.
‘You knew,’ I said slowly, feeling a prickle of heat. ‘She’s done this sort of thing before, hasn’t she?’
‘Well,’ another pause, then, ‘the school mentioned some risky behaviour in the reports but we’ve only just had time to read through them.’ She offered this information in a casual tone, as if it were an amusing anecdote that might set me off chuckling. I wondered why the school hadn’t