HOME NUMBER 10

VIOLET

I moved in with Violet after my first set of adoptive parents dumped me. I was nearly seven. It was the first house I’d ever lived in without Hayley. I was furious about that. I screamed at my social worker, “You can’t split me and Hayley up! She’s my sister!”

My worker didn’t look that much older than some of the big kids in foster care. She had a pale blue cardigan, and brown hair that she kept tucking behind her ears. She looked terrified when I started screaming at her.

“Look,” she said, “Hayley’s got a mummy and daddy now—”

“They’re my mummy and daddy,” I howled. Hayley and me had been living with them for ages. I called them Mummy and Daddy. They told us they were going to be our parents for ever and ever.

“I know—” she said, and she stopped. “But they can’t – I mean, they want very much to stay in touch, but. . . Look, this is a nice family for Hayley. Surely you can be happy for her?”

“They’re not nice,” I said. “They’re horrible!” And I spat in her face, brown pity-chocolate spit that dripped down her nose and on to her little-kid cardigan.

It didn’t do any good, all my shouting. They still took me away. And then they put me with Violet.

 

Violet was the worst foster mother I ever lived with. I hated her. Hated her.

She had loads of kids: three teenage kids of her own and three foster kids. People were always saying how looking after all those kids must be a lot of work, but it wasn’t because we all had to do chores for her, plus whenever we were bad, we did housework as punishment. I was really little when I lived there, but I still had to do drying up and hoovering and tidying. I was the littlest kid there – the others were teenagers. They were scary. They would come into my bedroom when I was asleep, and hide bottles in my wardrobe or just mess with my head, sticking matches between my toes and then lighting them, seeing how long it took me to wake up. I used to stay awake for as long as I could, but I always had to fall asleep in the end. I shared my room with this other girl, but if she woke up when the other kids came in, she wouldn’t wake me. She’d just let them get on with it, and be pleased that they were picking on me instead of her.

Violet was no help. If you told on the other kids she’d say, “Nobody loves a tattle-tale!” And then she made you go and hoover the living room.

When I was bad at my mum’s house, she used to lock me in the cupboard. Violet used to lock us in the cellar. Once, when I’d just moved there and was screaming because I missed Hayley so much, she locked me in the cellar for hours and hours and hours. It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, much worse than anything my mum ever did. It was black, black, black, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I thought she’d forgotten about me and I was never going to get out and I was going to die in there. I screamed and screamed, and hammered on the door until my hands bled, but she didn’t let me out.

Sometimes, she used to make me stand in the shower while one of the others kept the water on freezing cold. Other times she used to make me stand on one leg in the corner. If I touched the walls, or put my foot down, I had to stay there for longer. She’d sit at the table, laughing away with one of her kids, and I’d just have to stand there.

Violet’s was the first foster home I ever lived in with lots of kids. I hated almost everything about it. I hated how the fridge and all the cupboards in the kitchen were kept locked, so you couldn’t steal food. I hated how if you needed something, there were always four or five other kids who wanted something first, and half the time what you needed got forgotten. I hated being the smallest, the one all the other kids picked on when they were bored. I was afraid all the time, living with Violet. I wanted to run away, but I was only little, and I knew that if I did they’d just find me and take me straight back. I tried everything I could to be good. I kept my mouth shut and never said anything except when someone asked me a question. I stopped throwing tantrums. Usually when I’m afraid it turns into angry, but in Violet’s house the scared was too big, and it just stayed scared. I never even cried, ’cause it used to annoy the girl I shared a room with, and she’d come and punch me in the stomach, hard, to shut me up.

Violet’s house was when I first started leaving my body. I’d be standing in the shower, cold water pouring off me, and I’d just go. Sometimes it would be like I was outside my body, watching myself. Sometimes everything would go black. Sometimes I’d still be there, but distant, as though the bad things were happening to someone else, and I’d feel nothing. At first I liked it, but then it got scary because it would happen at school, or when I was supposed to be hoovering or something, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.

I lived with Violet from the summer I was seven till the middle of the next spring. Eventually, one of the big kids got a phone with a video recorder on it, and recorded Violet locking this other kid in the cellar.

And only then did they take us away.