It had been such a delight to see Justin. He made the day in every sense, for all of us. He had us in stitches, telling us tales of his various exploits at school, and also surprised us by helping Riley cook Christmas dinner. Not that I should have been surprised, as he’d been quite the budding Jamie Oliver when he’d been with us, always wanting to help me in the kitchen, and his interest in food and cooking clearly hadn’t gone away. I really hoped that he was as happy as he seemed and that he’d remain settled in his permanent placement.
It was the thing I most wanted for Justin; that he’d be happy. It was the thing I most wanted for every child who came into our lives, and in the immediate aftermath of Christmas I felt particularly buoyed up; it might not seem much, all the little things we could do for these kids, but it felt more and more to me that it was the little things that mattered, things which weren’t always obvious while the child or children were with us. A word of encouragement, taking the time to sit and listen to them, a random cuddle, a special cake made, a fear soothed, an anxiety understood: these were the things kids who were loved and nurtured took for granted, and their importance should never be underestimated.
And they did make a difference; Justin was evidence of that. A timely reminder that progress with a child wasn’t always evident when being made – you were often too close to it – but down the line, even if Mike and I wouldn’t be there to see it, I felt a strong sense that the results of our efforts would at least be there for the kids’ permanent carers to witness.
Assuming they found any; progress on that front was painfully slow. But strangely, I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I started the year with a real zest to keep on doing what we were doing with our two. Just as well, for there was still a great deal to be done.
I was still anxious about how Ashton was coping with the loss of everything and, bar just one of his younger siblings, everyone he knew. Where Olivia, as the baby, seemed the least traumatised by their big life-change (despite her odd behaviours, and sadness about leaving Grandad, she was by nature a sunny little thing and, with love and support, I knew could be again), Ashton, being the oldest, was really feeling it. He clearly loved his mother dearly, and was always her staunch defender, determined not to break the thread of connection between them, knowing all too well he’d not see her again for a long time. He would not hear a word said against her by his sibling, even if it was something that was only implied.
And it could be triggered in unexpected ways.
‘School tomorrow,’ I was telling the children, a couple of days after New Year, while we were packing the last of the decorations into the loft boxes. ‘I’ll bet you can’t wait, can you? To get back and swap stories with all your friends.’
‘I like having friends,’ Olivia said, as she popped baubles into trays. ‘I like Emily. An’ Scarlett. Scarlett’s so funny!’
Ashton, sitting on his heels, was untangling a string of fairy lights. ‘I really like having friends,’ he said, thoughtfully.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Life’s not much fun without friends, is it? I mean, family’s great, but you need friends as well, don’t you?’
‘We never had friends before because we was stinky,’ observed Olivia. ‘Cos we were stinky and nitty noras because of all our lices.’
Ashton rounded on her immediately. ‘No!’ he barked. ‘That’s not true! We weren’t stinky and we never had nits neither, okay? Mum’d kill you – and Granddad – for saying bad things like that an’ telling tales!’
‘But we were,’ she persisted.
‘No we weren’t! You’re a liar!’ With which he threw down the string of lights and marched angrily from the room.
‘We were,’ Olivia whispered defiantly, once he was out of earshot. ‘He just doesn’t member it, Casey. Cos he’s a boy.’
But as the new year got under way, my anxiety about the children began to shift again, in intensity, towards Olivia. For all the comedy evident sometimes in her eccentric little ways, I knew I must never forget that they were, in part, manifestations of repeated sexual abuse. And she’d always been a particularly imaginative child, too, living a rich and varied life in her head.
I didn’t know if it was just another manifestation of her becoming more settled with Mike and me, or the fact that there was one soon to be born into our family, but her fondness of all things pregnancy and baby related was becoming so intense as to begin to feel like an obsession.
And it wasn’t Riley’s impending baby, either. Out of the blue, Olivia started carrying on as if she truly believed she was pregnant too. She took to walking round the house with a football up her jumper, arching her back and moaning about her various aches and pains. It was amusing at first, particularly for Kieron – it was his football – when he was roundly told off for ‘being cheeky, young man!’ when he asked her if he could have his ball back. He was also in stitches, he told me, when he overheard her telling her assembled dolls that ‘Mummy will feel like playing again, once this bloomin’ baby is borned. Just a few more weeks, sweetheart.’ She would also rush to the toilet, making vomiting noises and complaining about her ‘bloomin’ morning sickness’.
But it was her need for ‘some exercise’ that capped everything. She’d asked me if she could ‘go out the front’ one afternoon, after school, because she needed ‘exercise, so I don’t get too many stretch marks’. I agreed to this, on condition that, though she could certainly take the football, she wasn’t allowed to wear it under her clothing.
She’d been out there half an hour or so – lots of the kids played out the front before tea – when I was alarmed to respond to a ring on the doorbell and find a police constable standing on the front step. Casting anxiously around for Olivia, and wondering what on earth had happened, I was relieved to see her sitting on next door’s wall, clutching the football and looking bored. ‘I just thought you should know,’ the young policeman said, once we’d established I was her guardian, ‘that I brought her home because she’s behaving, well, let’s say, a little bit oddly, and I just wanted to be sure she was all right.’
He went on to explain that he’d come across her around the corner, not joining in with the other children’s games, but squatting on all fours on the pavement, wailing and groaning theatrically.
When he’d ask if she was okay she had apparently replied, ‘No, I’m six months gone and my bloody waters have broke!’ He’d naturally responded that that was a silly thing to say, and her response to that was to bark back, ‘Oh, silly, is it? I’m bloody knackered! I’ve been up all night breastfeeding the twins!’
Trying hard to suppress the smile that kept threatening to overwhelm me, I assured him she was fine and that I’d bring her inside and have a word with her – though what he expected me to do (tick her off for frightening young constables?) I really didn’t know. And I did call her in, and while I explained to her, for the umpteenth time, that grown-ups became concerned when she did her ‘having a baby’ acting, it occurred to me that my life had become quite surreal.
Not that it stopped her, in any case, because it was only a day later when she came down to breakfast sporting two big wet patches on her pyjama top. When Mike asked her what had happened she told him she’d been ‘leakin’ from me breasts’, rubbing her ‘sore titties’ and groaning for good measure.
‘It’s not nice this, you know!’ she said, seeing me staring. ‘Can’t you jus’ gimme a tablet or somefink, Casey? Gawd, I’ll be glad when this one’s on the bottle an’ can leave my poor titties alone!’
But for all my relief that her pregnancy obsession ended almost as abruptly as it started, it was replaced by one that felt much more sinister. Where we’d been amused by her antics as ‘Mummy Olivia’ her new obsession was no laughing matter. She developed a distinctly unsettling thing about fire.
Looking back, it had always been there in a mild form. She’d always been fascinated by the gas flames on my hob when I was cooking, seemingly mesmerised, talking about how beautiful they were, and how they almost looked like they were dancing. I’d always thought it strange, but, bar a sensible observance of safety, I had never let it bother me. I was also aware of what the kids had told me about the family car being torched. But out of the blue, or so it seemed, this had gone a stage further; watching one of the soaps one night, following a scene where a building had caught fire, she was rapt, watching the family trapped in an upstairs bedroom. ‘Rewind it, Mike! Please! Can you play it again?’ she pleaded. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the screen.
‘Rewind what?’ Mike asked, not having really taken in what she was on about.
‘The fire,’ she explained. ‘The bit where they all burn to death!’
‘No-one’s burned to death,’ he said mildly, ‘they’re just trapped.’ He grinned. ‘We won’t know if they burn to death till tomorrow now.’
‘They will, though,’ she said seriously. ‘Oh, please. Go on, rewind it. There might be a clue we all missed. They’ll all be dead, though, I think,’ she added, matter of factly.
‘Well, as I said,’ Mike answered, looking at me now, his expression puzzled, ‘we’ll find out tomorrow, okay?’
‘Enough telly anyway,’ I said, anxious to get her off such a morbid subject.
‘Okay,’ she said brightly, jumping down off the sofa. ‘Can I go on the computer instead?’
Ashton was playing in his bedroom at the time so, unusually, a laptop was free. I’d let Kieron borrow the other one to use at Lauren’s. ‘Course you can,’ I said. ‘Come on. Into the kitchen with me, then.’
She trotted happily behind me and I set up the laptop on the kitchen table, and she settled down happily, humming to herself, while I made a start on washing up the tea things. ‘What’re you playing?’ I asked, as I glanced across the kitchen a minute later. Her little face was screwed up in concentration.
‘Oh, just some-fing,’ she said. ‘Casey, d’you have earphones I could borrow?’
‘I’m not sure where they are,’ I said, drying my hands and going over. ‘But you can just use the volume control anyway. Here, I’ll show you …’
I stopped as I realised what she was watching. Not porn. This time. No chance. Our security settings saw to that. No, it was an episode of something like The Bill in which, once again, there was a building burning down. The was a body bag on a stretcher being carried out by two firemen. What a strange thing for a little girl to want to watch. Particularly since she’d been so traumatised by fireworks. But then, I reasoned, that might have been more about the noise. This seemed to be more about the visual.
‘You shouldn’t be watching things like this, love,’ I told her, reaching out to the track pad. ‘It’ll give you nightmares.’
‘But it’s my favourite bit!’ she said. ‘Oh, Casey, please don’t turn it off!’
‘It’s not suitable,’ I persisted.
‘Can I watch Casualty instead, then?’
Another programme full of pain and death. Lovely. ‘What’s this fascination you’ve got with fires, love?’ I asked her.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just like ’em. You know, fires and stuff and all that.’ She looked at me with one of her old-fashioned expressions. ‘People got to die, Casey, y’know. It’s just one o’ them things.’
So not just the sight of the pretty flames, then. She seemed fixated on the idea of violent death. I was beginning to be so troubled by all this that I phoned John Fulshaw the next morning and asked him what he thought. He’d dealt with scores of troubled kids over the years but was as clueless as I was. He did, however, try to reassure me. ‘Probably just a phase,’ he said. ‘Working through her demons, I expect. I don’t think you should draw too much attention to it; just monitor. Just encourage discussion generally. See if you can draw her out. It might disappear of its own accord. Probably will. As I said, just observe. Try not to worry.’
But I couldn’t help but worry. It was as strange as it was gruesome, and as the days went by, showed no sign of letting up.
A few days later, in fact, it even seemed to be getting worse, when I made a pretty unsettling discovery in her bedroom, which seemed to confirm what I’d already thought. I’d gone up to strip and change the bed, and as I pulled the old bottom sheet out, I found a small pile of newspaper and magazine cuttings under the mattress. I could hardly credit it, but this seven-year-old who could barely concentrate for even a minute on her school reading book had secretly amassed a little cache of news items, every one of them about death and dying. One was about the soap we’d watched – from one of my magazines, no doubt – another was about a local businessman who’d dropped dead from a heart attack and another about a house fire that had claimed a whole family.
On this occasion I felt I must tackle her about it. Not confrontationally; just couched in the terms of a pleasant chat, about why she had created her small collection.
‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘I just like cutting stuff out, and that.’ And that was the only explanation I got out of her.
Further light was, however, shed just a day or so later, when I heard her asking Ashton how to spell ‘disaster’. She was on the laptop at the time, painstakingly typing it into the search box as he called out the letters. ‘Olivia!’ I couldn’t help saying. ‘You have to stop this! It’s unhealthy. Why on earth are you searching the word ‘disaster’?’
She turned to me. ‘Casey,’ she said solemnly, ‘you just never know. You never know when him upstairs is about to release his wrath. But he does, see, just you mark my words.’
Where the hell – no, I thought, not where, more like who? – had this little girl learned all this from?