Normally, by 7 p.m. we were starting the process of putting Seth to bed. Mike would play with the baby, while I went through the arduous routine of standing outside Seth’s bedroom, listening to him jump straight out of bed, leaving it for a minute, then going in and putting him back to bed again. This went on for at least half an hour, with various tactics used to keep him there, and often resulted in something being smashed or torn apart, but Seth would eventually get tired and go to sleep.
Tonight though, we couldn’t do that. Sam Burdett had phoned at 6 p.m. to apologise for the hold-up, but promised that they would be with us within the hour.
‘Jenna’s led us a bit of a merry dance,’ he explained, sounding tetchy, ‘but she’s in Gilly’s car now, and we’re on our way.’
By now I was super-stressed, and in no mood for pointless placations. ‘At half past four,’ I pointed out, ‘Gilly phoned to say you guys were on your way. Seth is difficult enough at the best of times, but when he’s overtired, it’s ten times worse. What’s the hold-up?’
Sam had the grace to sound a bit sheepish. ‘I’m sorry, Casey,’ he said, ‘but we had to take Jenna to her flat first, because she told us she had to pick up some things for the children. Anyway, turned out that was just a ruse and all the kids’ things were actually at her parents. She spent a bloody hour and a half at her own flat, putting together a collection of hair products, straighteners, earrings, make-up – you name it. So we’ve only just left her parents now – they live right on the other side of town. Plus, we caught the rush hour, of course. Like I said, I’m so sorry, but we genuinely are on our way now.’
I allowed myself a small smile at this piece of deception. Probably necessary, in Jenna’s mind – these things might not matter to a man, but to a young girl, especially one newly free from incarceration, they probably seemed of utmost importance. Still, it would probably have been better to come clean in the first place.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘well, we obviously can’t put Seth to bed then. He knows his mum is coming, so we’ll just have to try our best to keep him occupied – not to mention awake.’
After another hour of feeding and changing the baby while Mike literally ran around the house retrieving Seth from one room or another (Tyler having beat a hasty retreat to meet Naomi as soon as he’d wolfed down his tea), we heard the two cars finally pull up outside, and, having scooped Seth up onto my hip, now all shy excitement, went for the obligatory look out of the window. It was a dark, moonless night, so I couldn’t really see who was who, but the young girl’s silhouetted form was unmistakable. ‘Guess who’s here?’ I said to Seth. ‘Come on, let’s meet her at the door.’
It was a hearteningly textbook reunion. ‘Mummy!’ Seth cried out, as Jenna, flanked by both Sam and Gilly, walked towards us, long blonde hair being lifted in skeins by the chilly breeze. He wriggled down from my arms and ran to her, arms wide. ‘Mummy!’ he said, wrapping both arms around her thighs. ‘Can we go home?’ he asked, despite us telling him multiple times that this wasn’t what was going to be happening. ‘We can leave Baby here. It’s got its own room and its bum stinks. I don’t want it at ours.’
I watched with interest at this unlikely but, at a deeper level, perhaps only natural exchange. Hadn’t Riley said almost as much when I brought Kieron home from hospital? That he was boring, and cried all the time, and could we just send him back again?
More arresting, however, was the sight of the girl herself. She might be down on record as being nineteen, but could easily have passed for fourteen or fifteen. There was so little of her she looked as if a strong wind could blow not just her hair but the rest of her away. She also looked tired, undernourished, and way too small for the long teddy-bear coat she was swaddled in, her wrists sprung from the arms like two twigs.
Despite her apparent frailty, however, she had no trouble scooping up her son with her strong, young person’s arms. Holding him up and out so she could look him in the eyes, she planted a kiss on his forehead before speaking.
‘I’ve missed you, my beautiful boy,’ she whispered. ‘So, so much. And, oh, where’s all your beautiful hair?’
‘Nanna shaved it off with Gramp’s clippers,’ he told her. ‘She said I’d have nits again if she didn’t. Can we go now? We don’t need to take the baby. It’s fine for him to stay here.’
‘But he’s your brother! And don’t say nasty things about him, you little monkey. Anyway, did you miss me?’
Seth nodded an affirmative. ‘You smell nice,’ he said. ‘Can we go now? Can we please? The lady can drive us.’
This needed nipping in the bud. ‘Come on in,’ I said, smiling. ‘It’s freezing out there. Let’s get back in the warm. And I think little Tommy is still awake – I’m sure you’d love a cuddle all together. Seth, why don’t you take Mummy straight through to him in the kitchen? Seth’s been helping me look after him,’ I added. ‘He’s such a good big brother.’
Outrageous hype – indeed, probably actionable by the advertising standards authority, but it felt important to put Seth in a place where he felt important.
Jenna looked beyond me, then, to the door, where Mike was standing, filling the space. To a young traumatised teen, another hurdle to be jumped. A big male stranger, in whose house she was going to be residing. No wonder she was anxious.
She seemed to struggle to make eye contact, but eventually met my smiling gaze. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but do you mind if I use your loo first? I’ve been needing a pee since we set off.’
Seth wouldn’t be put down, so she carried him over the threshold and, since there was no danger of him letting go of her, took him into the downstairs loo with her, leaving Gilly and Sam to follow her into the house and shrug their coats off. I took them into the dining room, to get comfortable at the table, since they’d be here a little while to deal with all the paperwork.
‘Absolutely freezing out there,’ Sam said, rubbing his arms briskly, then cupping his hands and breathing into them.
‘Coffee?’ I suggested.
‘Music to my ears,’ he said. ‘If it’s not any trouble, that is. Or would you rather get on?’ he added, glancing at Gilly.
‘I’d love a coffee,’ Gilly added. ‘I’ve not had a drop of anything since I left the office for the prison. Just a quick one, if it isn’t too much trouble.’
‘On it,’ said Mike, heading off into the kitchen.
I was surprised, though. ‘You mean we don’t have to go through reams of paperwork and care plans and so on?’
Gilly shook her head. ‘There’s no care plan for Jenna, since you’re not technically fostering her. But we do need to quickly go through the agreement we’ve made up for her. Just a document laying out our expectations for the placement. For Jenna, but also for you and Mike. Just a couple of pages, which we’ve obviously already run through with her, so really it’s just for you guys to read through and agree to.’
It was very different from the last mother and baby placement I’d had. In that one, I’d been fostering both the baby and the fourteen-year-old mum, and when she disclosed that she was pregnant again, she was already in situ.
Sam was just opening the sheets out when Jenna came back, by way of the kitchen, apparently, because she now had the baby in the crook of her arm. She was still in her coat, though. Perhaps it felt like some kind of armour. Perhaps she too was toying with the possibility of going home. It must have been strange, after all, to have gone to her flat, knowing her own home was the one place she couldn’t go. Seth, gazing up at her, was holding on tightly to her other hand. It looked like a scene from a happy maternity poster, rather than one of a fractured family, potentially on the brink of complete breakdown.
Gilly looked up and smiled. ‘Come join us for a few minutes, Jenna,’ she said. ‘It’s okay, you can bring Tommy. I know you’ve missed him.’
Jenna looked a little uncertain, as she would do, but Mike pulled out a chair for her, and soon we were all clustered round as if to start a card game – an impression enhanced as Sam passed out paper-clipped copies of ‘the agreement’ to each of us.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘as Gilly mentioned, it’s pretty straightforward and, as you can see, Jenna has already agreed and signed each copy, so if you scan through it, Casey, and put your signature on there, that’s really all we have to do tonight. I’ll be leaving each of you a copy, so you can read through it again at your leisure.’
I started to read, first an overview, then the meat of what my job was going to be from now on, my heart starting to sink with each new edict I read, each politely set out for me with a neat bullet point.
Jenna must NOT be left in the home unsupervised.
Jenna must NOT leave the home with her children, unsupervised.
Jenna must NOT be left unsupervised with her children.
Jenna MUST smoke in the garden with all house doors closed, and then wash her hands on re-entry to the house.
Jenna must NOT contact any friends from her past.
Jenna must NOT drink any alcohol.
Jenna must NOT take Baby to any appointments without supervision.
Jenna CANNOT attend any contact visits set up for the children.
Well, that was just a snippet from the ‘straightforward’ two-page document. It made for dire reading and although I felt instantly sorry for Jenna as I watched her reddening face – it made her appear to be a monster who might hurt her babies – I also felt sick for myself. Yes, I’d known what we were getting into, and hadn’t underestimated how exacting the rules were likely to be, but seeing them set down like this – all those must-nots – brought it suddenly into much starker focus. I was already stuck at home to a far greater extent than I was used to, but the situation was compounded now by the enormity of the logistics.
When Mike and Tyler were at work I couldn’t leave the house without dragging all three of them with me, and at no point could Jenna have even the smallest bit of freedom with her own babies. She couldn’t so much as take them for a walk round the block, not without me in tow as well. For as long as this lasted we would be completely bound together, both inside the home and out of it. Her only freedom, in fact, was to go out without them. Which she obviously was free to do – I held no jurisdiction over her – and I wondered how long, given how on top of one another we’d be, it would be before she was tempted to do exactly that. Young children were stressful, even for the most committed mother. It was a big ask for such a young, troubled girl.
‘I’m sorry if I look a little shocked,’ I said, aware that everyone was staring at me, ‘it’s just I didn’t realise the placement would be so fully supervised.’ I removed my reading glasses and looked at Jenna in sympathy. ‘According to this, there’s very little Jenna can do with the children without me tagging along. Is that right?’
Sam and Gilly nodded in unison. ‘I’m sorry,’ Gilly said. ‘I thought your supervising social worker would have explained that. As Jenna knows, the original plan was for her to go home from prison and the two children into foster care, while she applied through the courts to get them back. The judge has only agreed to Jenna’s request to remain with them on the express condition that it’s in a closely supervised setting such as this one. I know it sounds onerous, but I think we all accept why it’s necessary, and if everyone plays their part …’ she looked again at Jenna, ‘… there is a good chance – a fighting chance – that this will work out.’
As long as I played my part, which I was suddenly thinking I perhaps shouldn’t have been quite so quick to audition for. Yet the young girl sitting across my dining table was looking at me too now. Blue eyes assessing me from under a lank fringe. Thinking what? I couldn’t tell. Did she think she could do this? I had to believe so – that failure wasn’t a foregone conclusion, even knowing what I knew about her background, and that of her eldest child. To think anything different would be just too depressing.
And why was I surprised? Didn’t I actually already know all this? Had I been so keen to take this family on that I’d allowed my brain to skip over the technicalities? Let heart rule head?
‘She did explain,’ I said, loyal to Christine, because I had known what I was doing. ‘Knowing me, perhaps I didn’t take it all in properly. Anyway, here we are,’ I added, picking up Sam’s proffered pen. I smiled at the girl. ‘You can do this, Jenna.’
Then I scribbled my illegible signature on all the copies, knowing that I really was signing away life as I knew it.