The Girl Who Wanted to Belong, Book 5 Read online

  When Lucy spoke to Wendy, before passing the phone to me, I’d been pottering around the kitchen and I heard her talking to every member of her family. Wendy was the last person she spoke to, and Lucy had done what she always did when she talked to her stepmother: she sounded uncomfortable and couldn’t wait to finish the conversation. This was nothing unusual, but now I knew what Wendy had been saying I wished I’d intervened and asked Lucy if everything was OK. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to spell things out for Lucy like this, and as Wendy carried on repeating to me what she’d told Lucy I felt my blood rising.

  ‘Yes, Angela, let me explain. By complications I mean that I know you and Jonathan will buy her some presents and if she were here on Christmas Day she’d have to bring them with her. Then the other kids would be asking me why Lucy had more than them. It would cause no end of trouble and Dean can do without the upset. I have to look after him.’

  I kept my voice even and told Wendy, tactfully, that Jonathan and I wouldn’t mind if Lucy opened our presents to her at our house afterwards, if that would mean she could spend Christmas with her family.

  ‘You’re very kind, but you know how Lucy is. She’d only be bragging to the others that she was going to have more when she got back to yours. I can just see it all. No, I’ve made my mind up. Dean has been so stressed and we can’t have Christmas ruined.’

  I didn’t argue; Wendy clearly wasn’t moving on this. I found the whole conversation particularly upsetting as Lucy had heard nothing back from her birth mother. Social Services had posted off Lucy’s note, in which she’d asked for the Ninja Turtles cuddly toy she longed for or a riding hat, but her mum hadn’t responded. We’d recently heard from Jess that Social Services had decided it wasn’t possible for Lucy to live with her mother again, on any basis. We weren’t given a reason, but Jess told us she was still looking into arranging some contact sessions for Lucy and her mum, though it was ‘proving difficult to tie Noreen down’. Lucy was shielded from all of this as she had been all along: she would quite rightly only be told if and when a meeting with her mother was definitely going ahead.

  As Christmas approached Lucy did ask what was happening about her present from her mummy, because she wanted to ask Father Christmas for a new riding hat and the cuddly toy if her mum wasn’t getting either gift for her. I told her to keep waiting, because sometimes Christmas presents arrived just in time and they might be on their way. Privately, I had my doubts after hearing what Jess had to say, and when time started to run out I decided Father Christmas needed tipping off after all, and I helped Lucy write a note to the North Pole.

  Lucy was excited when she broke up from school for the Christmas holidays and her overnight stay with the family went well. The extension was finally finished and she got to share a bedroom just with Milly, which she was pleased about. Her relationship with Gemma wasn’t brilliant. The girls seemed to tolerate each other nowadays, but I thought that was fair enough, and as much as we could hope for. It must have been so hard for Lucy to see Gemma fitting into the family while she was still on the outside. Also, I thought back to the best friends I’d had at primary school. At that young age they were never best friends for long and I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like if one of those girls subsequently moved in with my family. I’d have hated it.

  Wendy and Dean sent Lucy home with a big bag of presents and made a point of telling us that all the kids were getting the same.

  ‘She’s been a little angel,’ Dean told me. ‘What have you been feeding her?’

  I smiled politely, thinking rather smugly to myself, Healthy portions of respect and kindness, it seems to be working well. ‘She’s been behaving very well with us too. We’re really pleased with how she’s getting on.’

  Even Wendy had a kind word to say, praising Lucy for being helpful in the kitchen. ‘You’ve got her well trained, Angela,’ she said. I took it in good spirit, though in hindsight I wondered if she was having a little dig, criticising me for encouraging Lucy to pitch in with cooking and tidying up, as I always did.

  No parcel arrived from Noreen. On Christmas Day Lucy was bowled over when she opened her sack from Santa and found she had a brand-new riding hat and the exact Ninja Turtle cuddly toy she wanted.

  ‘Do you think he told Mummy he’d sort everything out for her, to save her the trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know how Father Christmas works his magic,’ I smiled.

  She phoned home and had a brief chat with everyone and we enjoyed a fantastic dinner and played board games for hours with my mum and Maria. Lucy seemed very happy, and at bedtime she said she’d had the ‘best Christmas ever’.

  When Lucy’s birthday came round, in the new year, similar arrangements were made. The family had her over on the weekend before her birthday but it was left to us to organise a treat on the day itself. Once again Wendy created a drama about presents, telling me exactly what she was spending on Lucy and checking what we were buying. She also told me what Lucy was allowed to tell her siblings and Gemma about her birthday, to avoid any jealousy. Again it all seemed unnecessary to me but I let it go.

  The main thing was that another overnight visit home had gone well. We had no reports of lying, irritating behaviour or any disputes about what Lucy had and hadn’t said and done. Wendy was in a good mood when we arrived for the pick-up and Lucy said she enjoyed herself and loved being with everyone. She was particularly thrilled that her brothers and Milly had given up their clubs and sports on the Sunday so everyone could go out for a birthday lunch together.

  Lucy’s granny had given her a calendar for Christmas, showing pictures of different birds for each month and season. She loved it, putting it in pride of place next to her bed and carefully adding important dates, including that of the forthcoming wedding in April. When I was changing her bed one day I noticed some scribbles at the bottom of the chart: Lucy had worked out the number of days until the wedding and was keeping a tally. She was going to see her family on a couple of occasions before the wedding, to finalise her dress fitting and to attend a twenty-first party for one of her cousins. Those dates were marked clearly, and she wrote in all the relevant boxes: ‘Seeing Daddy!!!’

  Not long after her birthday Lucy told me, ‘There’s only eight weeks until I go home after the wedding! What is eight times . . . how many days in a week?’

  I asked her to count from Monday to Sunday and, using her fingers, she arrived at the number seven. Then I encouraged her to recite the seven times table but she got stuck after seven times five and asked me to carry on.

  ‘Seven sixes are forty-two, seven sevens are forty-nine and seven eights are fifty-six,’ I said, making a note to dig out some times table flash cards I had in one of the games cupboards.

  ‘So I’m going home in fifty-six days!’ she declared. ‘Why didn’t you just say that?’

  Cedella and I had both talked to Lucy about the fact we didn’t yet have an exact date for her return home. We told her there were still quite a few details to sort out and she mustn’t pin her hopes on any one particular date. I had to gently remind her of this, as I had done several times already, and she gave me the reply she always did. ‘I know, but I’m going home after the wedding, so it’s all fixed.’

  I’d heard from Social Services that Wendy had made it clear she wasn’t going to any meetings concerning Lucy until after her big day. I knew it could take weeks to gather all the relevant parties together and, even if Wendy and Dean were ready to have Lucy back, it wouldn’t happen overnight. There would be red tape to wade through and she would need to be enrolled back in a local school, for one thing. I explained to Lucy that there was going to be a big meeting after the wedding and only then would we know more.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘But I’m behaving myself, aren’t I?’

  ‘You’re been behaving very well, Lucy. I’m really pleased.’

  The final dress fitting and the family twenty-first soon came and went, and both events ran relatively smoothly. Lucy sai
d she hated the way Wendy wanted her to have her hair for the wedding because it was ‘too girly and flowery’ but she told us, ‘I was good and didn’t make a fuss. Daddy said I was a good girl. Daddy said it’s more trouble than it’s worth to argue with Wendy.’ Jonathan and I shared a look but tried not to let Lucy see how readily we could identify with Dean’s observation.

  I was very pleased that Lucy’s visits home were going well but the more time passed, the more it became apparent that simply avoiding arguments with Wendy wasn’t enough: the way I saw it, you had to dance to her tune, every time.

  ‘Basically,’ I said to Jonathan. ‘Everything has to be done Wendy’s way. Things are fine if she gets her way – like with Lucy’s hair for the wedding. But not disagreeing with Wendy isn’t enough. It’s her way or the highway. It’s not a healthy way for a family to operate, is it?’

  Jonathan said he could see my point but said we should probably make allowances for the time being, because of the wedding.

  ‘It’s Wendy’s big day, after all,’ he said. ‘Hopefully after the wedding things will calm down.’

  As usual he was trying to look for something positive to say. Wedding planning is fraught and frenetic at the best of times – I remember my own like it was yesterday, even though it was way back in the seventies. I said it was no wonder Dean had been suffering from stress and that I hoped Jonathan was right about things calming down. ‘Yes, fingers crossed that Wendy will settle down and be less overbearing once she and Dean have tied the knot,’ I commented.

  Jonathan gave me a cheeky look and burst out laughing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh nothing, it’s just that in my personal experience, I’m not sure women become less overbearing once they get married!’

  We laughed. In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have. We were asked to collect Lucy straight from the evening do after the wedding. She wasn’t staying the night at the family home because Wendy and Dean were going away on honeymoon for a few days and Wendy’s mother – a person we’d heard no mention of before – was looking after the children. When we arrived at the community centre where the party was being held Wendy swept over and greeted us like long-lost friends. It was clear she’d had a few drinks, which was no surprise on her wedding day, and she gushed about how brilliant a day she’d had, how pretty all the girls looked and how thankful she was to us for collecting Lucy. Dean hugged Lucy tight as he said goodbye and called her ‘my beautiful little princess’.

  ‘See you when we get back, all right?’

  ‘Yes! See you when you get back! Happy honeymoon! I love you Daddy!’

  ‘I love you too Lucy-lu! See you soon!’

  Lucy was full of pop and crisps and was bouncing about all over the place. On the way home she said, ‘See, what did I tell you? I’m going home. Daddy told me. Wendy told me. I’m going home!’

  ‘Wendy told you?’

  ‘Yes, well, I mean Wendy was there when Daddy said it and she let him say it. So that’s it. It’s HAPP-EN-ING!’

  Epilogue

  Lucy lived with us for a further seven years, until she was sixteen years old. Unfortunately, once Wendy was Dean’s wife, she didn’t calm down or soften one bit. In fact she seemed to use her new married status to wield even more power over the family, becoming increasingly bossy, controlling and manipulative. She took charge of all dealings with Social Services and refused to come to the review meeting that was arranged shortly after the wedding, stating bluntly, ‘My husband and I need time to adjust to the new family dynamic. It is far too soon to risk having Lucy back.’ Dean didn’t get involved at all, and as time went on he appeared to shrink further away. On one memorable occasion Wendy told him to be quiet on his own doorstep, when he hadn’t managed to spit a single word out and was actually just clearing his throat.

  We began to notice that whenever Lucy, Wendy and Dean were together, Wendy positioned herself in between Lucy and her dad, and she never once let Dean come to our house on his own: it was the whole family, or nobody at all.

  Lucy kept her hopes up, always. When she found out she wasn’t going home soon after the wedding she took it remarkably well. There was no howling or tantrums; in fact she promised me she would ‘try even harder to be good’. Then she bravely set her sights on the next month, then the next. The calendar, however, ended up in the bin long before the year was out.

  When Lucy was still living with us at Christmas, and on her next birthday, when she turned ten, she continued to talk positively about ‘when I go home’, saying, ‘I miss Daddy. I love Daddy! How long will it be now? It’s AGES! I want to go home.’

  Occasionally I’d overhear Lucy telling other people, like my mum or Barbara in the shop, that she’d be going home by a certain point in time. My chest would tighten every time; it was a heart-wrenching situation. Jonathan and I had to constantly walk a tightrope, trying to be honest with Lucy while at the same time protecting her feelings. We always tried to defect her questions and manage her expectations as best we could, but it wasn’t easy. We were constantly attempting to dress up the ongoing rejection as something the family was still working towards sorting out. The very last thing we wanted was for Lucy to be crushed by so much disappointment, but the fact was we had no idea if ‘promises’ Wendy and Dean made about what might happen in three months or six months or nine months would ever come to fruition. In some ways we were in the same boat as Lucy, always wondering if Social Services were going to call and tell us Lucy was moving out next week or staying for another year. We accepted this, however, telling our support social worker we would always have room for her in our house, however long she might stay.

  All things considered, Lucy’s self-esteem was good. She was doing well with her various sports and rubbed along OK with Maria most of the time, although they were never close. She had plenty of friends in the neighbourhood and at school and was often invited to their houses or out for trips. Lucy still loved spending time with her granny whenever she could too, and she enjoyed staying with her during the school holidays as she had done before.

  Visits home became fewer and further between. Lucy had learned the hard way that she had to be on nothing but her very best behaviour or else, and she was always very careful to try to please Wendy and avoid any trouble. Wendy rarely had a complaint but she never had a good word to say about Lucy either – or anything at all, for that matter. At best, it was as if she begrudgingly tolerated Lucy; at worst, I got the impression she tried to ignore her. Jonathan and I would often hear about the dancing medals Milly won, the footballing triumphs of the twins or a success Gemma had at school, but whenever I asked Lucy if she’d told the family about her latest swimming gala or football trophy she’d always say no. ‘Nobody asked me and I don’t want to be accused of bragging,’ she said more than once. The peace was kept, but at what price? It seemed that Lucy was expected to edit her life when she was with her family, for fear of rocking the boat. Wendy had won, I guess. Everything was on her terms, and she was so dominant and controlling that she didn’t even have to say anything: just the threat of upsetting Wendy was enough to keep Lucy in line.

  Lucy’s behaviour took a turn for the worse when she was at secondary school. She hated it and was in the bottom set for everything. Puberty was a battle. She was very moody, ate a lot of junk food, was covered in spots and her weight yo-yoed, which made her miserable. When exam classes were decided she was told she wouldn’t be doing any GCSEs and was offered some other less challenging courses she wasn’t interested in. She gave up swimming and football and stopped horse riding for a while, though she later picked it up again, and when she turned fourteen she began helping Diane teach younger children, which she thoroughly enjoyed and was very good at. She also took on several other jobs. Ever the willing worker, Lucy did odd jobs for local farmers and builders, or painters and decorators who Jonathan and I knew. She was in her element when she was outdoors, getting her hands dirty, although she developed a habit of not coming home on time,
forgetting to let us know where she was and telling lies to both her employers and teachers about why she was late, or tired. It was always the fault of the third party, or she’d claim her watch wasn’t working, her bike had a flat tyre or I hadn’t told her I was cooking her dinner that night – though I had a hot meal on the table every night without fail. Lucy also went through a phase of refusing to get changed and would walk around in dirty clothes, scattering mud or bits of paint or plaster everywhere. When I complained, her stock reply was to shrug and challenge, ‘What are you going to do – call the cops?’

  At fifteen Lucy was caught stealing money from other pupils. She went through their bags and blazers during PE and at break times, and she got away with it for a long time. Before she was found out we had letters from the school about the thefts, warning all parents and carers of the problem, advising us to limit cash brought into school and asking us to talk to our children and encourage anyone with information to come forward. Lucy could have won a BAFTA for her performance: we never suspected the culprit was right under our nose. She hadn’t attended therapy for years; the one-to-one sessions she had at CAMHS petered out, I think when it became apparent the original aim of them – to help prepare Lucy to live in harmony with her family again – had gradually slipped off the agenda. She had another short course of sessions after the stealing episode and had to apologise to a lot of other children and save up her pocket money and wages to pay back what she’d taken. The value of what she took wasn’t high; Lucy said she did it ‘just because I could’ and not because she coveted money, and she spent it all on chips, sweets and fizzy drinks. The school handled the situation well, but afterwards Lucy hated being there even more. She couldn’t wait to leave and made no effort with her final exams.

  Wendy and Dean never wanted anything to do with Lucy’s problems. They knew what went on through Social Services but made it clear they were ‘happy for Angela and Jonathan to deal with it as they see fit’. Lucy still loved going home for visits and she still talked on the phone with every member of the family most weeks, but conversations were always limited to what was happening to everybody else.