The Girl With No Bedroom Door: A true short story Read online

  Fortunately, all the children’s beds in our house had waterproof covers protecting the mattresses and pillows in case of accidents. I was able to remake Louise’s bed before school ended, as I didn’t want the boys to know what had happened, and later that night I sat her down for a chat.

  ‘I noticed your bed was wet this morning, sweetheart, when I went in to get your washing,’ I said gently.

  ‘Oh, yes. Sorry about that. Don’t know how that happened. I don’t normally wet the bed.’

  ‘OK love. It’s not a problem. I’ve washed everything and you’ve got a clean bed now. If it does happen again please don’t cover it up, there’s no need to do that. I’m here to help you.’

  I told her we had plenty of spare bedding and showed her where it was all kept, in the airing cupboard, so she could help herself to fresh sheets, pillow cases and duvet covers whenever she wanted to.

  ‘Thanks,’ she smiled.

  ‘You’re more than welcome. And I think that perhaps you need to take longer in the shower, to make sure you’re nice and clean every day.’

  ‘OK,’ she nodded. ‘I will.’

  ‘That’s good. Also, one last thing. When I got your socks out of your bag I couldn’t help noticing you don’t have many clothes. Have you got more things at your previous carer’s?’

  ‘No, this is everything. I left a few bits there, but it was stuff I didn’t want any more.’

  ‘OK. In that case, would you like to go shopping with me for some new things?’

  ‘I’d love to!’ she gasped. ‘When can we go?’

  ‘Saturday?’

  ‘Brilliant! Thank you.’

  4

  ‘I’ve never had new underwear before’

  I really thought I’d got through to Louise, but to my disappointment the next day we had a repeat of the bed-wetting and covering up, and an almost identical conversation after school.

  ‘Sorry!’ she said. ‘I don’t know why . . .’

  ‘You don’t need to apologise,’ I said. ‘I’m not telling you off for having an accident. But I don’t want you to cover it up. And I would like you to take longer in the shower as I think you need a really good wash after sleeping in a wet bed. Are you sure you’re washing properly?’

  ‘Of course! I’ll take longer though, I promise.’

  Very frustratingly, the same thing happened the next day, and the next, and the next. Despite daily reminders and promises, I don’t think Louise showered properly until the Saturday morning before our shopping trip, and that was only after I switched on the shower for her and told her quite firmly I couldn’t take her to try on new clothes if she wasn’t completely clean and fresh. She was positively stinking by this point, and I wondered how on earth she could stand it. Surprisingly, the two boys we had living with us never said a thing, though I figured they must simply have been polite, as Jonathan and I agreed there was no way you could fail to notice it.

  Thankfully, Louise did have a long, hot shower before our shopping trip. When she came downstairs it was a huge relief to find she finally smelt really fresh, and she looked so much better too. She was dressed in the newly washed shell suit and had her baseball cap on her head, but she looked completely different to the previous time she’d worn that outfit. For a start, her shoulders were back and her chin was up, and she didn’t have her arms folded protectively across her body, which I’d got used to her doing most of the time.

  ‘You look raring to go!’ I commented cheerfully.

  ‘I am,’ she replied. ‘Let’s shop!’

  ‘OK, Louise,’ I said, ‘let’s get going.’

  Then lowering my voice to a whisper, I quickly added, ‘before we leave, can I just check, does your bed need doing?’

  I didn’t want to spoil Louise’s mood, but neither did I want to pretend the problem didn’t exist. Louise didn’t seem to bat an eyelid at my question.

  ‘No, it’s fine today,’ she replied, ‘sorry about the other days.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, but you can check if you like.’

  ‘Do I need to?’

  ‘Er, maybe . . .’

  Sure enough, the bedding was soaked through again, and I had to hastily strip it and put the washing machine on before we left.

  I didn’t discuss this with Louise until later, when we’d nearly finished our shopping trip. She was in the best mood I’d seen her in all week. I’d bought her three sets of matching underwear, six pairs of socks and two new pairs of pyjamas, and she was grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘I’ve never had new underwear before,’ she marvelled, ‘or nice new pyjamas like these. Thank you!’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I said. ‘It makes a difference to how you feel, to be well turned out, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I guess,’ she said. ‘I’ve never had new stuff though. I’ve got used to wearing old things, and dirty clothes.’

  I nodded, waiting for her to carry on.

  ‘My mum couldn’t manage with all the kids and I had to look after my brothers and sisters, you see. We all had to make do. Mum was always more interested in her boyfriends than us.’

  ‘That’s a shame, Louise. Your mum was more interested in her boyfriends, was she?’

  ‘Yes, and there have been a lot since my dad left her! You know I said I was glad to have a bed and a door?’

  ‘Yes, I remember you said that.’

  ‘Well, her last boyfriend said that us kids didn’t deserve beds or even a bedroom door. We slept on mattresses, and he threw the door on the fire. What a nutter! Mum didn’t like it when he did that, but she didn’t like to argue with him. She just let him do it.’

  ‘I see,’ I nodded, leaving a pause for her to carry on talking if she wanted to, but she didn’t.

  ‘Look, Louise, I don’t want to pry, but I’d like to help you move forward. To do that I think we need to start with the problem you have at night. It must be awful to wake up wet every morning. Have you ever had any help?’

  She shook her head and looked at the floor. ‘No, I thought it would stop when I got out of that house with him, but it didn’t.’

  ‘I’d like to help it stop,’ I said. ‘Are you happy to talk to someone who can try to sort this out for you? I know there are experts out there who can show us what to do.’

  Louise nodded, and the following week I took her to the GP. From there she was referred to a bladder nurse, who provided her with pull-ups, which were like a kind of adult nappy. Inside the padded pants there was a sensor that set off an alarm if she began to wet herself in the night.

  ‘I thought the help would have been more like counselling, to find out why this is happening in the first place,’ Jonathan commented when I told him about the appointment.

  ‘Bed-wetting isn’t necessarily caused by stress or psychological issues,’ I explained. ‘That’s a bit of a myth, apparently. It can simply be a bad habit and the body and mind needs retraining. I’m told the alarm system has a good success rate, and we are here for the emotional support, so let’s hope the combination works.’

  I had high hopes for Louise, but unfortunately she didn’t use the alarm system as she was instructed to do. Every morning she woke up in a wet bed, tried to pretend that nothing was wrong and then, when I talked to her about it, she complained that the sensor she had to wear inside the pants was impossible to sleep with, or that it went off when she sweated in the night so she had to take it off.

  As well as having a plastic sheet covering the mattress I gave Louise an absorbent square mattress protector to help keep her and the bedding as dry as possible, but it usually ended up scrunched at the end of the bed and was no use at all.

  ‘Look at it like this, Louise,’ I said after more than a week of excuses. ‘It’s like many things in life – be it chopping an onion, cooking a meal or anything else. You need to have some patience, learn how to do it and persevere if you don’t get it right first time.’

  ‘But I can’t do it!’ she said.
r />   ‘I’ve heard you say that before, and it wasn’t true. You need to keep trying, and you need to believe you can do it.’

  ‘OK,’ she huffed. ‘I’ll try harder.’

  5

  ‘She’s really winding me up’

  Despite her promise to persevere with the alarm system, Louise continued to wet the bed every night.

  Thankfully, we were making progress in other areas, as after the shopping spree Louise did begin to take more pride in her appearance. She showered every day, washed her hair regularly and stopped wearing dirty clothes. She even asked me if she could have some flowers from the shop for her bedroom, and every night I’d replenish her vase with the best of our leftover stock, which she loved.

  Unfortunately, once she’d found her feet in our home and felt more comfortable around us, she also started to display some very irritating traits. Pestering me and Jonathan was her most annoying habit.

  ‘What’s in that pot? I don’t like it! Can I have something else?’ she’d say when I was in the middle of cooking dinner.

  ‘Why are you doing it like that? That’s not right. You’re making a mistake there,’ she’d say to Jonathan when he was trying to set the video recorder or polish his shoes.

  Telling us we didn’t look very well, following us around, standing too close and saying: ‘Oi! I was talking to you!’ when we tried to sidestep her to avoid being badgered were also regular occurrences.

  ‘She’s really winding me up,’ I snapped one day after I’d become so cross I had to take myself to the bedroom to calm down. ‘She’s trying to deliberately provoke me!’

  As I said the words Jonathan and I shared a knowing look. We’d seen this problem in a troubled teenager before, and we both remembered that pressing buttons like this is extremely common in children with low self-esteem. They do it because they are feeling bad about themselves, and they subconsciously want to create that feeling in other people. I’d had this explained to me on a training course the previous year.

  ‘It’s a way of drawing you into their problem and effectively saying “this is how I feel and it isn’t nice. If you feel it too maybe you can see my problem and help me deal with it”,’ the trainer had told me.

  ‘I should have spotted this sooner!’ I said, remembering the words of the expert. ‘It’s so obvious isn’t it? This is all wrapped up in Louise’s low self-esteem.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Jonathan said, ‘but you mustn’t be hard on yourself. Don’t forget, you identified Louise’s low self-esteem right at the start.’

  ‘Yes, so I should have known better than to let her pestering get to me like this. I should be tackling her problem, not complaining she is winding me up!’

  ‘You are helping her!’ Jonathan reassured. ‘Look at the positives. Louise has started taking more care of herself since she realised she felt better after having a shower and wearing clean clothes, and you’ve done nothing but encourage her in that respect. You just need to carry on the good work.’

  Jonathan has a knack of saying the right thing at the right moment, and I felt very fortunate to have his wise guidance and support. I still worried I wasn’t doing enough for Louise, though, and I told him how frustrated I had become by failing to resolve the bed-wetting.

  Louise had been with us for more than a month now and I’d hoped she would have stopped by this time, or at least reduced the episodes to occasional accidents.

  ‘It was never going to be an overnight fix, was it?’ Jonathan said. ‘It’ll take time. We’ll all have to be patient, but she’ll get there.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s all about continuing to support her, isn’t it? The more we help her, the more confident she will feel, and the less she will want to push our buttons and create trouble.’

  My mind went into overdrive, thinking of more ways I could help build Louise’s self-esteem.

  ‘I’ll have a think too,’ Jonathan said, instinctively knowing I’d be on the case, searching for answers.

  I made myself a mug of coffee and sat quietly in the lounge, mulling over the dilemma. The first thing I thought of was that Louise had mentioned she couldn’t do French or biology at school, claiming she was ‘thick’. Of course I’d told her that she wasn’t. In fact, from her schoolbooks and the way she spoke very articulately when she wanted to, she was clearly an intelligent girl. But she refused to believe me.

  In addition, Louise had recently expressed an interest in a trampolining class one of her friends went to, and I also knew that she desperately wanted to sort out her damaged hair. She had been bleaching it for years and it was dull and brittle and badly in need of a good cut and some conditioning treatment.

  ‘I have some ideas for Louise,’ I said to Jonathan later that evening.

  ‘I thought you might,’ he replied, smiling. ‘What are they?’

  ‘Extra help with school work, trampolining classes and a good haircut,’ I said.

  My plan was to sort all three things out as a matter of urgency, and I sincerely hoped that Louise would be willing to let me.

  6

  ‘I feel like a different person!’

  ‘I can’t sleep,’ I said to Jonathan. ‘This is horrendous.’

  ‘I know it’s tough, but she’s done it before and the police found her last time, didn’t they? I’m sure she’ll be back very soon.’

  It was midnight when we had that conversation. Louise had gone out with friends and was meant to be home by 10 p.m., and now I was extremely worried. I had a good idea what the issue was. A group of Louise’s friends were having a sleepover at one of the girls’ houses, but Louise was not allowed to go, which had put her in a bad mood before she went out.

  Louise was on a voluntary care order, which meant that her mother had agreed to put her daughter in foster care. As a result, Louise’s mum retained parental responsibility and so it was up to her to give permission for Louise to stay out overnight, but she had refused.

  ‘I don’t want her going missing again,’ Louise’s mum had said to the social worker who put in the sleepover request. ‘I’m not giving my permission for her to sleep anywhere but in her foster home, and that’s final.’

  I guess it was a reasonable response, given the fact Louise had been found sleeping rough twice, although I didn’t really expect this to happen again. I knew how much Louise wanted to go to the sleepover and I couldn’t imagine she’d mess things up for herself if she were allowed to go. To be honest, my only fear about letting her sleep with a group of other girls in her friend’s house was that she might wet the bed, but in the event this wasn’t a problem we had to confront.

  Louise had been with us for three months by now. We’d just had her second placement review, and I’d been proud to report that she was coming on in leaps and bounds. When I offered to get her some private tuition to help with her French and biology she was delighted and very grateful. She worked extremely hard in the sessions, and the more she achieved the more she wanted to learn.

  ‘I thought I couldn’t do it,’ she said several times. ‘Now I know I just hadn’t given myself a chance. I’d missed lessons, so how could I know what to do?’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘It’s all about being shown how, and putting that knowledge into practice.’

  I told Louise that as a reward for achieving well in her end of term tests I would pay for her to have a really good haircut and conditioning treatment at a top salon in town.

  ‘I feel like a different person!’ she giggled afterwards.

  As there was an offer on at the salon, she’d also had a manicure. We then went for a coffee together, and Louise chatted away brightly, flicking her hair off her shoulders from time to time and proudly holding her coffee cup aloft to show off her neat, peach-coloured nails.

  Trampolining also proved a hit. Louise needed no persuasion at all to join the club her friend went to, and she soon began working towards her first certificate.

  ‘Do you know, I’ve always wanted to do this,
’ she said. ‘But I just thought I never would.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because . . . just because of what I’m like.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I cause trouble, don’t I? I don’t deserve it, really.’

  ‘I can see how you might think you don’t deserve good things to happen to you,’ I said. ‘I know you had a lot to cope with at home. Things can’t have been easy, and when life’s a struggle at home, sometimes it’s hard to stay out of trouble, or even keep yourself motivated. You deserve to be happy and fulfilled though, Louise. Everybody does.’

  When we got home Louise handed me a note.

  ‘I want you to read this,’ she said. ‘It might explain some things.’

  ‘You’ve written me a note?’

  ‘Yes. I want you to know I don’t actually want to be a nuisance or cause trouble. I’m sorry about all the washing, I wanted to explain about the problem I have at night . . .’

  ‘Washing? Oh, I’m used to it,’ I said, slightly taken aback. ‘It’s one of my jobs. You’re getting there, anyhow. You’re doing really well.’

  Louise’s bed-wetting had reduced considerably by now. We abandoned the alarm system after a second visit to the bladder nurse, when Louise promised faithfully to use it properly then immediately went against her word. I’d been at my wit’s end, finding the sensor on the floor and wet sheets on the bed every morning, but I bit my tongue and continued to offer her emotional and practical support every day.

  ‘You’re doing well, Louise,’ I’d say. ‘You’ll get there soon, I’m sure. Look at the progress you’ve already made!’

  I’d put a laundry bin with a tight-fitting lid in her room so she could place the wet sheets in there for me to fetch in the morning, to help reduce the smell in her room, and because I didn’t want the boys to see the wet bedding when I carried it downstairs.

  ‘Remember what I’ve told you. If you have an accident, just put your wet things in the laundry bin, seal the lid on and then help yourself to fresh bedding from the airing cupboard. There is always plenty in there. There is no need to cover it up.’