Where Has Mummy Gone?: Part 1 of 3: A young girl and a mother who no longer knows her. Cathy Glass

      ‘Will it be cold?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes, but she can warm it up at the Family Centre. There’s a kitchen there with a cooker and a microwave.’

      ‘I’ll take her some of that casserole too,’ Melody added.

      ‘I’m afraid that’s all gone. Next time I make it I’ll do extra so she can have some. But please don’t worry about your mum. I’m sure she’ll have something to eat.’

      Melody looked at me as if she was about to say something but changed her mind. Hopefully when she saw her mother she’d be reassured that she was managing without her.

      After dinner, which I thought had gone well, Adrian, Paula and Lucy helped me clear the table, then disappeared off to do their homework. I was assuming that once Melody started going to school regularly she too would have some homework, but there wasn’t even a school bag tonight. I suggested we play a game together and I opened the toy cupboard in the kitchen-diner, but she said she wanted to watch television like she did at home with her mother. In the living room I switched the television channel to one with an age-appropriate programme, told her I’d be in the kitchen if she needed me and, taking the remote with me (so she couldn’t change channels to something less appropriate), set about doing the washing up. If my children have homework then they are excused from washing the dinner things.

      First nights can be very difficult for a new child. Apart from suddenly finding themselves in a strange home and living with people they’ve only just met, the carer’s routine is likely to be very different from any the child has been used to. At 7.30, when the television programme Melody was watching had ended, I told her it was bedtime, which didn’t go down well. ‘What’s the time?’ she demanded, unable to read the time for herself.

      ‘Half past seven. Plenty late enough. You have school tomorrow.’ Indeed, it was only because she’d already had her bath and hair wash that she’d stayed up this late. Tomorrow she’d be going up around seven o’clock so that she was in bed and hopefully settled by eight o’clock. Children of her age need nine to eleven hours sleep a night.

      ‘At home I stay up with my mum. We go to sleep together. Sometimes she’s asleep before me.’

      ‘Is she?’ I asked lightly. ‘What do you do when she’s asleep?’ Clearly Melody wouldn’t be supervised if her mother was asleep.