The Girl and the Ghosts Read online

  ‘She can come back into school to sit her exams,’ he said. ‘Other than that, she’ll have to get notes from her friends doing the same subjects and revise at home.’

  ‘I couldn’t bear it if she let it all fall apart now,’ I told Jonathan as we were driving home after the meeting. ‘It’s so frustrating, knowing how well she could do if she put her mind to it.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And what a difference it would make, to her self-esteem and to her entire life, if she passed her exams and went to university.’

  ‘It’s your life, Maria,’ I told her when we got the chance to talk to her on her own later that evening. ‘You’re nearly eighteen now, and I can’t tell you what to do even if I wanted to. But you really can do this, you know? You’ve told me you want to be an English teacher and it’s a goal you’re perfectly capable of achieving. You do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. ‘It’s just that . . . Oh, I don’t know. Maybe other stuff just gets in the way.’

  Maria arranged with a couple of her friends to collect up the coursework copies and drop them off at the shop on their way home from school. Thankfully, this was a system that worked well, and there was only one occasion when they forgot to do it.

  ‘Why don’t you draw up a work schedule?’ Jonathan suggested one evening as we sat down to eat our meal. ‘It doesn’t have to be anything too demanding. There’s no point doing something you aren’t likely to stick to.’

  So, it was agreed that Maria would get up at 9 a.m. every weekday, work for at least five hours – with a break for lunch – and then do whatever she wanted to do for the rest of the day. And she did stick to it, most of the time.

  When she wasn’t catching up on her work or revising for her exams, she went to her grandparents’ house or out with her boyfriend, or stayed at home reading and listening to music in her room – which she now played a few notches below earsplitting level without having to be asked.

  In June, she went back to school to sit her exams, and then got a part-time job working in a local supermarket. She had broken up with her boyfriend by then, but it wasn’t until later that she told us why. ‘He was trying to persuade me to smoke cannabis,’ she said. ‘And he was cheating on me too, which I only found out about when one of my friends saw them together.’

  Jonathan and I had a two-week holiday in a log cabin that summer, taking with us another child who was with us for a short respite stay at the time. Maria had just turned eighteen and decided she was ‘too old to go on holiday with you’ and chose not to come with us. Fortunately, she was able to stay with her grandparents. So Jonathan and I had a nice break while Barbara and her friend ran the shop.

  By the time we got back from Devon, Maria was getting anxious about her exam results. She had revised for the exams, although maybe not as much as she could have done, but she was convinced that she had failed them all. The results were going to be available at school on a Thursday morning towards the end of August, and as soon as we sat down to eat our meal the night before, she told us, ‘I’m going in to collect my results as early as I can tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ I asked.

  ‘No! I’m a big girl now. I can go on my own. Well, actually, I’m not going on my own. I’m meeting Sammy and we’re going in together. Then we’re going out afterwards to celebrate or commiserate. Sammy will definitely be celebrating, and I’m just keeping my fingers crossed. I’ll call you when I get them, just to put you out of your misery wondering how “bad” I’ve done.’

  ‘There’s nothing like positive thinking, I always say.’ Jonathan smiled at Maria, then added, ‘I have full confidence in you, Maria. Good luck.’

  The next morning, Maria was up, washed and dressed by 8.30, in time to meet Sammy so they could walk to school together. On her way out, she helped us to display the flowers outside the shop – which was a first!

  ‘What do they call it?’ she asked, grinning, when we were clearly surprised by her offer of help. ‘Oh yes, displacement activity. Doing this takes my mind off the results. So maybe don’t hold your breath waiting for the next time.’

  Sammy arrived on the dot of nine o’clock, just as we were opening the shop, and the two girls left together, chatting nineteen to the dozen. After they’d gone, the morning seemed to drag by. We knew the results were being given out at 10.30 and Maria had promised she would phone us as soon as she’d opened the envelope. But 10.30 came and went, then 11.30. So in the end I texted her and when she didn’t reply, I phoned. My call went straight to voicemail and I was regaled by the sound of her singing:

  Twinkle, twinkle little star,

  Bet you’re wondering where I am.

  Well, put your mouth up to the phone,

  And leave me a message for when I get home.

  And if you can make your message rhyme,

  I’ll call you back in half the time.

  It was a craze that was going round at the time. All her friends were using these funny voicemail messages, some of which lasted far longer than the one Maria had chosen, so that by the time they finished and you heard the beep, there was no space left for you to say anything.

  After that, there was nothing else we could do but be patient and wait for Maria to call.

  I had gone into the house to prepare lunch and was peeling some carrots when my mobile phone finally rang. Dropping the peeler on to the work surface, I ran my hands under the tap and then dried them quickly before snatching up my phone and saying, ‘Hello, Maria?’

  ‘Has she rung you?’ It was Babs.

  ‘Oh, no. I’ve not heard a thing. Have you?’

  ‘Yes. She rang me just after 10.30. She’s passed, but . . .’

  My heart was thudding as I asked, ‘But what?’

  ‘She hasn’t got the grades she needed to go to the university that was her first choice. She’s at the school now. They’re helping students with their university applications. She said she’d be home at about 3.30.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know. Did Maria ask you to call us?’

  ‘No. I just thought I would because she was in a bit of a tizzy and I thought she might forget.’

  As soon as Babs had rung off, I went back into the shop to tell Jonathan what had happened, and for the rest of the afternoon we tried to keep our minds occupied by thinking about other things.

  It turned out that although Maria was a bit disappointed not to have got the grades she’d hoped for, she was offered a place at the university that had been her second choice.

  ‘If you haven’t made any other plans, let’s have a celebration meal on Saturday evening,’ Jonathan suggested, when she finally got home and told us the good news.

  So that’s what we did. We invited Maria’s grandparents, her brother Colin and my mum, and as soon as we’d all sat down at the dining table, Maria’s grandfather Stanley raised his glass of Coca-Cola – which Babs had brought with her – and said, ‘I propose a toast to Maria. Congratulations!’

  ‘To Jonathan and Angela,’ Maria answered, smiling as she lifted her own glass and clinked it against his. ‘For making me believe it was possible.’ Then she laughed and added, ‘And for not giving up on me – however horrible I was and however much they might have wanted to!’

  ‘You weren’t ever horrible, Maria,’ I said. ‘Although you did test us to the limit when you kept trying to run off when you were younger! Do you remember that?’

  ‘Yes I do!’ she laughed. ‘And all I can say is, thank God you caught me!’ Then she gave us a big, meaningful smile.

  The university Maria went to was an hour away by train. Although she could have travelled there every day, she chose to go into the halls of residence, which was something she later regretted because she didn’t like the way everything in the first year seemed to revolve around alcohol. It was an irony that she was the first to recognise, having been expelled from school for drinking.

&
nbsp; Fortunately, she was also given supportive lodgings near our home, as Tom and Dillon had when they went to college. This meant she was able to come back every Thursday evening and work in a local shop over the weekend, to help offset what would otherwise be a very large debt by the time she left university.

  Maria gradually got used to university life and really enjoyed being the first person in her family ever to embark on a university degree. We saw her most weekends when she came home, and it was a joy to see her growing into a thoughtful and kind young woman.

  One weekend, Maria invited Jonathan and I to visit her at university, as she knew we were heading in her direction for a weekend away. We’d dropped her off when she first moved in, but it would be nice to see her room and meet some of her friends and neighbours now she’d settled in.

  When we arrived on the campus, Maria was there to greet us, smiling and waving and eagerly waiting to show us around. She gave us a great tour and took us to the student cafe, where she insisted on buying a big pot of tea for us to share.

  ‘Here’s to you two,’ she said, raising her cup. ‘The best foster carers in the world!’

  It was a lovely gesture and such a wonderful thing for her to say, and I will never forget how touched I felt in that moment. Jonathan was the same, and we gave each other a knowing look, each of us thinking how worthwhile our efforts were with Maria and all the other children we fostered.

  I was very pleased to see Maria had lost weight and she told us she was doing some exercise classes once or twice a week to slim down further. Her bedroom was neat and tidy and Jonathan made a joke about this, asking how it was possible, as Maria had never been very tidy when she lived with us.

  ‘You already know the answer to that,’ she said with an enigmatic smile on her face.

  We both looked quizzical and waited for her to continue.

  ‘Anything is possible, when you put your mind to it,’ she said proudly. ‘You taught me that. And I’ve never forgotten something else you used to say to me, when I was younger.’

  Again Jonathan and I stayed quiet and waited for Maria to carry on.

  ‘It’s worth putting the hard work in. You’ll see, when you get the rewards.’

  Epilogue

  Maria is in her early thirties now, works as a teacher and is a very proud mum to two young boys. She keeps in touch with Jonathan and me regularly, never forgetting our birthdays and always making the effort to come to the reunions we hold from time to time, to which we invite all the foster children we have stayed in touch with over the years. At a recent reunion – a garden party at our home – it was wonderful to see Maria interacting with her children, especially when the youngest had a tantrum because he kept losing in a game of hoopla.

  ‘You can do it,’ Maria encouraged. ‘Don’t give up. Keep trying, and the more you practise the better you’ll get.’

  ‘Can’t!’ he snapped. ‘I’m rubbish. Everyone’s better than me!’

  ‘That is not true at all,’ Maria said firmly but kindly. ‘You are a very clever little boy and you can do it! Come on, I’ll help you.’

  I can’t tell you how rewarding it was to witness that scene, and I was taken back to that day on Maria’s university campus, when she reminded Jonathan and me that we used to tell her, ‘It’s worth putting the hard work in. You’ll see, when you get the rewards.’

  Maria never talks to us about her past, although over the years I have found out some more details about her childhood. Babs, inevitably, was the person who filled in some of the blanks. She is no longer with us, but before Babs passed away I spent many hours chatting to her, usually around my kitchen table, as she continued to visit for many years after Maria went to university. Some of the information Babs shared came from Colin, who occasionally witnessed Maria’s mistreatment first-hand, and other details came from things Maria told her grandparents. Apparently, she used to talk to Stanley quite a lot, which surprised me at first, until Babs quipped one day, ‘I think Maria liked talking to Stanley because he didn’t answer back and kept looking at the telly!’ I imagine Stanley’s indifference made him the ideal person for Maria to unload on.

  Gerry was a worse bully that I feared. At mealtimes, he sometimes decided Maria was not allowed to use a knife and fork like everybody else, and she had to eat with her hands or sometimes lick food off the plate. Then Gerry told her she was ‘disgusting’ and he made her move around the house on all fours, ‘like a dog’. Apparently, her mother decided to change the rule, so that Maria could walk but was not allowed on the carpet.

  As for the physical abuse, it seems it was a miracle Maria did not suffer more broken bones or injuries to her body. She was thrown down the stairs on many occasions, made to balance on one leg on top of the garden shed and was hit with Gerry’s snooker cue and Christine’s heated curling tongs. On top of this there was a sustained campaign to ‘spook’ Maria by playing mind games and creepy tricks on her, such as playing the soundtrack of horror movies from a hidden tape recorder. When she was really small, the boys and Gerry also managed to convince Maria that ‘ghosts’ her mother had connected to on the ‘other side’ were living under the floorboards. For years she believed that not only could Gerry see her every move, even when he was miles away, but that her mum’s ‘ghosts’ might be watching her too, and that they would talk to her mum about what she was doing and saying.

  Christine still lives abroad, and to my knowledge Maria never spoke to her from the day she vowed not to, after the angry phone call at our house. Stanley passed away a few years before Babs and, other than Maria, Colin was the only member of the family I recognised who went to Babs’s funeral. We never did find out what the historic issue was that prevented Maria from living with her grandparents, although on one occasion Colin made a reference to the fact Stanley had once ‘served time’, when he was a young man. We can only assume his criminal record meant it was impossible for Social Services to allow Maria to stay with her grandparents, although from everything Jonathan and I saw over the years, it appeared to us that Maria would have been better off there than with her mother.

  I’m happy to say that Colin seems to have settled into a good life, and is also the father of two young children who get on well with Maria’s boys.

  Tom and Dillon, incidentally, are also doing well. It was Tom, not Dillon, who turned out to be the entrepreneur, and he runs his own online business. Dillon, meanwhile, put his artistic skills to good use and works for a graphic design company. Neither have married but both have steady girlfriends and have bought their own homes. They both came to one of the reunions, and I have a very precious photograph of them from that day. They are standing either side of Maria, all three of them smiling broadly.

  Other stories from foster mum Angela Hart . . .

  The Girl Who Just Wanted to be Loved

  A damaged little girl and a foster carer who wouldn’t give up

  The first time we ever saw Keeley was in a Pizza Hut. She was having lunch with her social worker.

  ‘Unfortunately Keeley’s current placement is breaking down,’ our support social worker, Sandy, had explained. ‘We’d like to move her as soon as possible.’

  Sandy began by explaining that Keeley was eight years old and had stayed with four sets of carers and been in full-time care with two different families.

  ‘Why have the placements not worked out?’ I asked.

  ‘Both foster carers tell similar stories. Keeley’s bad behaviour got worse instead of better as time went on. That’s why we’re keen for you to take her on, Angela. I’m sure you’ll do a brilliant job.’

  Eight-year-old Keeley looks like the sweetest little girl you could wish to meet, but demons from the past make her behaviour far from angelic. She takes foster carer Angela on a rocky and very demanding emotional ride as she fights daily battles against her deep-rooted psychological problems. Can the love and specialist care Angela and husband Jonathan provide help Keeley triumph against the odds?

  Available now
in paperback and ebook.

  Terrified

  The heartbreaking true story of a girl nobody loved and the woman who saved her

  Vicky stared through the windscreen, her eyeballs glazed like marbles. She was sitting completely rigid in her seat, frozen with fear.

  I took a deep breath and then asked Vicky, as gently as possible, if she was all right. ‘I’m here, right beside you, Vicky. Can you hear me? I’m here and I can help you. Take a deep breath, love. That’s what I’ve just done. Just breathe and try to calm yourself down. You’re with me, Angela, and you’re safe.’

  Vicky seemed all self-assurance and swagger when she came to live with Angela and Jonathan as a temporary foster placement. As Vicky’s mask of bravado began to slip, she was overtaken with episodes of complete terror. Will the trust and love Angela and her husband Jonathan provide enable Vicky to finally overcome her shocking past?

  Available now in paperback and ebook.

  The Girl with No Bedroom Door

  A true short story

  Available now in ebook

  Fourteen-year-old Louise has been sleeping rough after running away from her previous foster home. Unloved and unwashed, she arrives at foster carer Angela Hart’s door stripped of all self-esteem. Can Angela’s love and care help Louise blossom into a confident and happy young woman?

  First published 2017 by Bluebird

  This electronic edition published 2017 by Bluebird

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

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