The first thing I noticed about Adrianna was her hair. There was so much of it that it would have been impossible not to notice it: thick and wavy, it was the colour of a church pew or polished table and, though it was clearly in need of a good wash and brush, it was the sort of hair my mum would have called her ‘crowning glory’. And it was long, falling down to her waist.
She was tall too – as girls often are at that age. A lot taller than I was – which wasn’t hard, admittedly. She was also painfully skinny, but though she looked exhausted and in need of a good meal, there was no denying her natural beauty.
‘Come in, come in,’ I urged, gesturing with my hand that she should do so, trying to reassure her, despite knowing that there was little I could say – in any language – that would make her less terrified than she so obviously was. Not yet, anyway. I knew she was a child still but I doubted there was a person of any age who’d find anything about her current situation easy.
In common with so many of the children Mike and I took in, Adrianna had arrived with barely anything. She had a small and obviously very old leather handbag, the strap for which she held protectively, like a shield. Other than the bag – and it could have barely housed more than a purse and passport – she appeared only to have the clothes she stood up in. A pair of sturdy boots – again, elderly – and of a Doc Martens persuasion, a long corduroy skirt in a deep berry shade, a roll-neck black jumper and a leather biker jacket, which, once again, had clearly seen better days.
And all of it just that little bit too big for her. So, on the face of it she should have looked like the refugee she purported to be, but instead she had the bearing and grace of a model. It was only her eyes that betrayed her anxiety and desperation. I found myself wondering two things – first, when she might have last had a bath or a shower, and second, what kind of background she had come from. Bedraggled as she was, I knew that those boots and that jacket wouldn’t have been cheap.
‘So,’ said John, herding her in but never quite making contact – I sensed a strong reluctance on his part to try to baby her too much. ‘No luck with an interpreter, so we’re just going to have to make the best of it tonight, I’m afraid. I’ve left a message with head office and made it clear that it’s urgent, so hopefully we’ll have better luck getting hold of someone tomorrow morning. In the meantime –’
‘In the meantime, you look frozen,’ I said to Adrianna, grabbing her free hand impulsively and seeing the fear widen her eyes. I let her go again, smiling, trying to keep reassuring her. ‘Look at you,’ I said again, now rubbing my hands up and down my own arms. ‘A hot drink, I think. Coffee? Kawa? Tea?’
‘Kawa, dzieki. Dzieki,’ she answered.
‘Thank you,’ said Tyler, who was standing with Mike behind me. ‘Dzieki means thank you,’ he explained, smiling shyly. And he was rewarded by the ghost of a smile in return.
I took her hand again and this time I grasped it more firmly. ‘You’re welcome,’ I said, squeezing it to underline my words.
‘Dzieki,’ she said again, her eyes glinting with tears now. ‘Dzieki. Dzieki. Dzieki.’
In the event, there was no need for an extended session of complicated, halting, hand-gesture conversation because all Adrianna wanted to do was go to bed. Once she’d gulped down her coffee – and she really did gulp it – she almost bit my hand off when I gestured we might go upstairs.
And I understood that. I had no idea how far she’d travelled or what sort of trauma she’d run away from, but the need to shut the world out is a universal one.
‘So, this is the bathroom,’ I explained needlessly once we’d arrived on the landing, leaving Mike and John downstairs to deal with the paperwork. Tyler, too, seemed to understand he’d be better off leaving us to it. Having exhausted the little stock of useful Polish that he knew, he’d quickly announced he was off to spend some time on Google Translate and disappeared into his own bedroom.
‘Make yourself at home,’ I said to Adrianna, gesturing again, this time towards the bottles of shower gel and shampoo. ‘Have a bath, if you want. I’ve sorted out some clean nightclothes and put them on your bed …’
To which the same response came – dzieki, dzieki. She didn’t seem to want to attempt to say anything else.
‘So, anyway, your bedroom …’ I began, stepping back out, assuming she’d follow me, but no sooner had I left the bathroom than she had her hand on the door.
‘Prosze,’ she said. ‘Prosze?’ She frowned and bobbed slightly. A brief knock-kneed curtsey, accompanied by a grimace.
I grinned, the penny dropping. And then the thought of the word ‘penny’ made my grin turn to a chuckle. Some things were the same in any language.
Back downstairs I joined John and Mike at the dining table, the piece of furniture across which so many similar discussions had taken place over the years, and so many pieces of paper shunted back and forth for signing – the placement plans, the risk assessments, the parental consent forms, to name but a few. Though, on some occasions, this one included, the paperwork was secondary – the main aim was to find a home, and fast.
Because Adrianna had come to us as an emergency placement, there was no care plan yet in place for her, of course. Or, indeed, a social worker allocated to her. We were just, as John had already told us, a place of safety for her to be billeted at while investigations were made into her situation – for which we’d obviously need that interpreter – and the circumstances that had brought her to us. As a 14-year-old there was no question of her going to supported lodgings placement; she needed full-time carers, as well as an education. Not to mention health care, which would obviously include a doctor and a dentist, as well as access to an optician and a school nurse. These things were standard in the UK, of course, but I knew nothing of the system from which Adrianna had come.
All this, however, was to be arranged down the line. In the short term we urgently needed an interpreter, which, once the little paperwork we could deal with was quickly dispatched, John promised he would return with the following morning.
‘Well, in theory,’ he said, as he put his papers away and prepared to leave us. ‘It’s just occurred to me that our usual woman is away on holiday, so it might prove to be much easier said than actually done. If so, I guess it’s going to have to be Google Translate!’
In the end it wasn’t necessary for us to break out the laptop, because just as he’d hoped, John was back with an interpreter the following morning, just after Tyler – much disgruntled – had already left for school. He’d already, it seemed, taken quite a shine to our latest family member, and was disappointed that I hadn’t dragged her from her bed before he went.
And ‘dragged’ was the operative word. I showed the men into the usual seats around the dining table then hotfooted it upstairs to wake Adrianna before making coffee, thankful for the ten-minute warning John had texted (which had at least given me time to dress), having the previous evening told me they’d be coming around ten.
And, boy, she took some waking. With the curtains shut tight, and her burrowed completely under the duvet, it was like walking into a tomb. And when she did wake and I explained they’d come earlier than expected, she showed zero enthusiasm for getting up and meeting her new interrogator, even when I indicated that she could do so in her dressing gown, not least because 8.45 a.m. was a very teenager-unfriendly time of day at the best of times. And these were definitely not the best of times.
I couldn’t say I blamed her. Though I didn’t yet know how long she’d been sleeping rough (something, among many other things, that I now aimed to find out), there was still the small