The Girl Who Wanted to Belong, Book 5 Page 18

  The placement meeting to discuss Lucy’s future was delayed twice, first due to staff sickness and then because of a diary clash. It felt like we’d been waiting for it forever.

  Lucy’s behaviour was very mixed in the aftermath of her conversation with Wendy. But she was often sweet and kind, offering to help with tasks I felt were above and beyond the call of duty. She wanted to do everything – rearrange the shed, repair punctures on the bikes, wash the car, you name it – and all of this was after she’d done a full day at school, been riding or mucking out the horses or enjoyed a day packed with activities at the weekend.

  We did make it to the new swimming pool and to the cinema with both girls. Lucy set herself the challenge of swimming twenty lengths and achieved it, albeit through gritted teeth for the last few lengths, as the pool was longer than any she was used to. I was impressed by how strong she was for her size. Lucy was still very slim and slight and her eating habits had not changed a great deal since she arrived. Junk food of any kind was still her snack or meal of choice, but I was satisfied she ate enough nutritious food too; I made sure of that by continuing to encourage her to cook and shop with me and also to choose healthy recipes and pick fresh fruit and vegetables from my mum’s garden.

  I was confident I’d stopped Lucy from helping herself to junk that would spoil her meals, and from eating secretly in her room. Something that worked really well was a tip I’d picked up from another foster carer at a training session. She advised us to put a tuck box in the kitchen filled with a few limited treats Lucy could help herself to during the week. The rule was that she could take from the tuck box provided she was also eating decent meals. When the snacks were gone they were not replaced until the following week.

  Lucy liked the idea of having a special box with her name on and it worked very well. Unfortunately, when Maria saw that Lucy had a tuck box she wanted one too, which wasn’t ideal. I say this because Maria had access to a seemingly never-ending supply of junk food, fizzy drinks and snacks whenever she visited her grandmother, which she did regularly. It would have been better for her to go without treats completely in our house, but I couldn’t deny her a tuck box if Lucy had one. I did my best to make Maria’s snacks and treats as sugar-free and low calorie as possible, and I think I got away with it!

  While we continued to wait to hear from Jess about when the meeting would take place we had good news about Lucy’s statement, which St Joseph’s had helped to arrange after Wendy contacted the solicitor. Lucy had finally been tested and the statement had come through at long last, which meant her school place was secure and she would have the help she needed in the classroom without any further fighting over funding, or the lack of it.

  It turned out Lucy suffered from dyslexia, as I suspected, and she also had below average maths skills for her age, although at the time that was all the information we had. The head advertised for a teaching assistant, they had a good response to the advert and eventually a teaching assistant was employed to work directly with Lucy.

  I was delighted Lucy was finally statemented although I also recognised that now her education was on track at our local primary school, this could potentially give Wendy more ammunition in her arguments against having Lucy home.

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if she said Lucy has to stay with us until she’s finished her primary education, now everything’s set up at St Joseph’s!’ I joked.

  ‘I doubt she’ll go that far,’ Jonathan said. ‘And in any case, you can’t worry about what-ifs.’

  ‘I know but, joking apart, after all that’s gone on I can’t help being wary when it comes to Wendy. I don’t think she ever puts Lucy first. I think she puts herself and Gemma first.’

  Jonathan nodded. ‘It certainly seems that way, but we can’t judge, can we? All we can do is carry on looking after Lucy as best we can, building her self-esteem and taking the lead from Social Services. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of this long-awaited meeting. You never know, maybe we’ll find that Wendy was having a bad day when she had her outburst, or maybe Dean will take charge and fight Lucy’s corner for once?’

  In the meantime Lucy attended another session at the Child and Family centre, on her own.

  ‘They should just call it the child centre,’ she said unhappily, looking at the sign.

  The logo of the organisation showed a family of stick people holding hands in a circle. Poor Lucy, I thought. She must feel so pushed out. It isn’t fair.

  The good news was that the psychologist thought she was making great progress and told me they had an excellent session that day. I wondered if the fact that Lucy had no expectations of seeing her family for the time being was actually helping her deal with the situation. I couldn’t discuss this with the psychologist as everything was confidential, but I put this theory to Jonathan.

  ‘You could be right,’ he said. ‘At least she can’t be disappointed or have any hopes dashed.’

  ‘Sad but true. Poor Lucy. It’s like she’s had all her hopes and dreams taken away.’

  The review meeting eventually happened in July, near the end of term, after being re-scheduled yet again due to building work at the Social Services office. Wendy had sent a message to confirm she and Dean were not attending, as they ‘didn’t see the point’. Bella would need to talk to Lucy after the meeting and so she had to come with us and wait outside with a support social worker, but we made absolutely sure she had no expectations of seeing her daddy that day. She seemed fine with this, perhaps because she’d taken Wendy’s word as gospel when she told Lucy they would next see her at the end of August.

  The meeting was brief and straight to the point. Jess confirmed that Wendy and Dean had refused to have Lucy back for the time being, or to take her on their family holiday. I was very glad Lucy was not present and was being looked after in a waiting room along the corridor.

  ‘They would like more time to prepare for her return,’ is how the social worker diplomatically phrased it.

  Wendy and Dean hadn’t put a time frame on when they might be ready to start again with Child and Family meetings and resume work towards Lucy’s return home, but Jess suggested that it would be a good idea to hold another placement meeting in about six weeks, so we would all know what was happening in advance of the new school term in September. Jess also said that steps had been taken to contact Lucy’s birth mother, to let her know her daughter was in foster care. It’s possible Ivy had already told Noreen what was going on, but to my knowledge this was the first time Social Services had stepped in. As far as I was aware, because the aim of Lucy’s placement with us was to return her to her father and the rest of the family, involving her birth mother had not been part of the initial plan. Things were different now, however. With all this disruption and uncertainty, it seemed sensible to investigate other potential options for Lucy.

  ‘Are you happy to have Lucy stay with you over the summer?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’ve already looked into the possibility of taking her on holiday with us, though we haven’t mentioned it to her yet, of course.’

  I explained our plans and said that Maria would be coming too. Bella said she thought this was a good idea, and said she’d have a ‘wee word’ with Wendy and Dean. ‘I can’t see them objecting at all,’ she said. Nobody disagreed with Bella’s prediction, and everyone assembled gave a little murmur or nod of approval.

  Bella had spoken to Lucy that morning to ask if she would be happy staying with us for longer, and Lucy had said she would be, ‘but only because I know I can go home soon’. After the meeting Bella had another word with Lucy and explained the situation.

  ‘I don’t mind staying with Angela and Jonathan a bit longer but I don’t want to go on holiday with them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why would I want to? My own family is going on holiday.’

  ‘But you know you’re not going with them.’

  ‘They might change their mind. Grown-ups always change their min
ds. And if they don’t, I won’t have a holiday. I’d rather stay with my granny. I want to spend the school holiday with my granny. She said I can. Then I’ll go home. Daddy will be back from Spain then.’

  Bella relayed this conversation to me. ‘I think she’s a bit muddled up and is in denial, bless her.’

  ‘I know. Don’t worry, Jonathan and I will tread carefully and be sure not to make any promises that can’t be kept in terms of what will happen in the future.’

  After the review meeting Lucy’s behaviour was at best awkward, at worst belligerent and aggravating. We were called into school several more times in the last couple of weeks of school. She shouted at a teacher, spat at another little girl and threw mud at a classroom window. Her teaching assistant ended up in tears one day when Lucy refused to do as she was told, called her a rude name and ran out of a lesson howling and screaming ‘like a wounded animal’.

  Lucy pointedly refused to acknowledge the reality of what was happening with her placement. For example, when she spoke to her granny she always carried on as if everything was fine, talking about her daddy as if she’d seen him yesterday and they were not temporarily estranged at all. She invented stories about supposedly recent games she’d played with her siblings, and if anyone pulled her up on it she’d say, ‘Oh I got muddled up. I meant when I was playing with my friends at school’, or, ‘It happened last year, sorry, what did I say? I got confused.’

  One day Lucy talked about how the extension to the family home was being built specifically to create an extra bedroom for her when I knew this was not the case: it was to create more space for the family generally, and nothing had been promised in terms of a new bedroom for Lucy.

  I flagged all of this up to Social Services as I felt it was something Lucy’s psychologist needed to know, in case she wanted to discuss it at Lucy’s therapy sessions. Of course I never found out what was said, or indeed even whether Lucy kept up the pretence with her psychologist or shared her true feelings and understanding of her situation.

  Lucy’s one-to-one sessions at the Child and Family centre came to an end shortly after the schools broke up for summer. As she was staying with us for longer than anticipated and was now doing therapy without her family, it was decided she should be referred to a CAMHS centre in our area.

  Once the summer holidays got underway Lucy’s behaviour improved, probably because she was doing what she wanted to do instead of struggling with academic work. Even with the help of a teaching assistant she still found it difficult to concentrate and focus, and it was clear she found it a trial to be in the classroom. I hoped the break from school would be a real tonic for her; it had been a tough few months.

  The weather was fantastic and Lucy began spending more and more time with the horses. By now Diane had taken in another teenager who also started helping out in the florist’s. It was a good arrangement and everyone was happy, especially Lucy.

  ‘I’d rather be in the mud,’ she commented when Diane asked her how she’d enjoyed herself when she’d helped out in the shop, which she soon lost interest in. ‘I get bored stuck inside. I’d rather see flowers growing in the soil than dead in a pot.’ Diane and I laughed: we got the gist.

  As eight-year-olds go Lucy was very good at keeping herself busy. Jonathan’s shed had never been tidier, the bikes had never been polished so brightly and I’d never seen so many Lego models built, destroyed and re-designed over and over again. When I thought back to how she used to follow me around, invade my space and clip the back of my heels I realised we’d made some excellent progress. She still did those things sometimes, if ever she slowed down long enough to get bored, but mostly she was on the go, making something, getting her hands dirty, riding her bike or trying to be helpful and joining in activities with other kids.

  One day Lucy helped Diane’s husband replace the netting on their garden pond. Jonathan collected her and she came in covered in mud and slime, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, when she saw my jaw drop. ‘I’m not coming in. I’m going to play football on the field.’

  One of the neighbours had organised a five-a-side game on the rec behind our house.

  ‘Don’t you want to get changed?’

  ‘No point. I’ll only get muddy again.’

  Lucy glugged a glass of water and ran off down the side passage, leaving a trail of mud behind her.

  ‘At least by the time she gets on the field her trainers will be less muddy,’ I remarked.

  ‘Yes, there’s a first!’ Jonathan laughed.

  At that moment my mum arrived, as she was having dinner with us that night. She’d brought her knitting and some crocheting and she said, ‘If Lucy’s at a loose end I can start to teach her, if she still wants to learn.’ She put a large bag of wool and needles on the kitchen table and I smiled.

  ‘Thanks, that’s kind. I’m sure she’ll want to learn at some point but Lucy’s out playing football now. I don’t think she’s been at a loose end for a single minute of the summer holiday!’

  ‘As it should be,’ Mum commented. ‘I wish you’d been more like that when you were little, Angela. You were such a clingy child, always following me around. People said you were like my shadow. And you needed a rocket behind you sometimes.’

  ‘Mum!’ I said, wincing.

  Jonathan stifled a laugh and I thought about how I used to nag my mum to be a foster carer when I was a child, as I had a friend whose mum took in foster children in the holidays. With my brother – my only sibling – being much older than me I felt like an only child growing up, and I liked the idea of being surrounded by other kids my age. Mum always said she didn’t have the patience, which I disputed. She was a very patient woman indeed, but now I thought perhaps I knew the real problem: she wouldn’t have had the tact!

  18

  ‘What’s happened to her?’

  The next morning, after Lucy had gone out for the day with Diane, I took a phone call from Lucy’s social worker.

  ‘Hi Angela,’ Bella said in an uncharacteristically stern voice.

  ‘Good morning, how are you?’ I replied breezily, thinking she was probably stressed about her workload or had too many plates to spin that day.

  Bella seemed to hesitate before she began to reply, and an uneasy feeling began to creep over me.

  ‘Angela, I’m afraid I’m going to have to come straight to the point, there is no other way of me saying this . . . I’ve been racking my brain to see if there is, but there isn’t. It’s the first time I’ve been put in this situation. It’s new to me, I hope I never have to do it again, it’s a horrible feeling.’

  ‘OK’ I said, wishing she would get to the point. I was now feeling extremely uneasy and worried. ‘Has something happened? Is it one of the girls?’

  Lucy had been invited to watch Diane’s daughter Clare compete in a gymkhana and they would still be on the motorway at this time, while Maria was over at a friend’s house and was going swimming that morning before spending the afternoon with her grandmother.

  ‘I’ve had a phone call this morning about . . .’ Bella hesitated and I could hear her swallowing hard. ‘It’s about Lucy.’

  My stomach turned over. ‘What’s happened to her?’

  It seemed an age until she replied to me. My heart was thumping and I began to get a pain in my stomach, something that always happens when I’m feeling very worried about something.

  ‘A complaint has been made about Lucy’s care.’

  I was taken aback and extremely concerned. There was a momentary silence before I could think what to say.

  ‘What is the complaint, exactly?’

  ‘Alleged mistreatment.’

  ‘Alleged mistreatment,’ I repeated, shocked by the words. ‘Who . . . who has mistreated her?’

  My mind raced. Had something happened to Lucy when she was last with her family? Had something happened to her at the stables or at school, or at a gymkhana?

  ‘The complaint is again
st you, Angela.’

  Bella’s words cut me to the quick. I was astonished, and I felt frozen with shock. I’d never understood that expression until that day. My mouth went numb and I had pins and needles tingling around my lips.

  ‘You can’t be serious?’

  I’d done nothing wrong and I was in no doubt about that, but still the whole idea of a complaint of this nature filled me with fear. I’d heard too many stories over the years, of foster carers whose lives had been turned upside down by false or malicious allegations. If you have children of your own, they can be removed if the complaint is serious enough. That’s how the investigation system works: safeguard the children, then ask the questions. I knew all too well that even when those accused are fully vindicated the damage is often irreparable. The process is usually long-winded and while an investigation is carried out you’re not allowed to talk to anyone in Social Services, not even your support social worker. You can talk to the Fostering Network, that’s all. Many foster carers have buckled under the stress and given up fostering altogether because of the immense strain on their family life and health.

  ‘Is Lucy there?’ Bella asked.

  I gulped, and felt my throat tighten. I explained about the gymkhana and said Lucy would be out all day. Bella then asked about Maria, and I told her she was due home after tea at her grandmother’s.

  ‘Do you have to remove the girls?’

  ‘An emergency meeting has been called for this afternoon. I’m afraid I don’t know if we’ll have to remove them, the decision will be made then. I’m going to have to come out and see you all after the meeting. I’ll know more by then.’