Another Forgotten Child (7 page)

‘You ain’t doing it again!’ Aimee scowled, snatching the towel from my hand and rubbing her hair.

‘Hair needs washing at least twice a week,’ I said, planting the idea so that she had time to come to terms with it.

‘No, it don’t!’ Aimee said.

I ignored this and told Aimee to go into her bedroom and I’d fetch the hairdryer and dry her hair. Throwing the towel on the bathroom floor she stomped off round the landing and into the bedroom, causing Lucy to call, ‘Be quiet, Aimee!’

‘No!’ Aimee shouted. ‘Shut up!’

I returned to Aimee’s bedroom with the hairdryer and before I switched it on I explained to Aimee that it would make a loud noise and blow hot air, for I doubted her mother owned a hairdryer. I was wrong.

‘I ain’t thick,’ Aimee said. ‘Me mum uses the hairdryer for killing me bugs.’

‘You mean she washed your hair and then dried it?’ I asked, slightly surprised, for certainly Aimee’s hair hadn’t looked as though it had been washed for weeks.

‘No,’ Aimee said. ‘Mum never washed me hair. She blew the bugs away with the dryer so they were dead.’ Which I could believe, although it was nonsense: you can’t blow away head lice, as they fasten themselves on to the hair and glue their eggs to the root shaft. But I let the point go.

Aimee moaned some more as I brushed and dried her hair, but when I’d finished, her hair shone and was quite a few shades lighter. ‘Fantastic!’ I said.

‘No it ain’t!’ Aimee said. ‘I’m telling me mum.’

‘I’m sure your mother will be very pleased,’ I said, turning her threat into a positive.

‘No she won’t,’ Aimee said. ‘She’ll report you.’ Which I ignored.

I now explained to Aimee that I wanted her to get dressed as quickly as she could and then come down for breakfast. ‘I need you downstairs by seven fifteen,’ I said, nodding at the clock on the wall. Aimee stared blankly at the clock. ‘When the big hand is here,’ I said, pointing to the three. ‘It’s five past seven now, so you have ten minutes to get dressed, which is plenty of time. What would you like for your breakfast?’

‘Biscuits.’

‘Biscuits are bad for your teeth. Toast or cereal?’

‘What’s cereal?’

‘We have cornflakes, wheat flakes, Rice Krispies or porridge.’

‘Toast.’

‘What would you like on your toast? Marmite, jam, honey or marmalade?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Sure?’

Aimee nodded.

Leaving Aimee to dress, I went downstairs and into the kitchen, where I made coffee for myself, and toast for Aimee and me. Paula and Lucy would make their own breakfasts when they came down. I lightly buttered the toast and added marmalade to mine; then I cut Aimee’s toast in half and half again so that it was easier for her to eat. Setting the plates on the table, I called upstairs to Aimee that breakfast was ready. To her credit a minute later she appeared, dressed in her old but now clean clothes. The joggers were far too small, as was her jumper, and her toes poked out of the holes in her socks, but all that would change once we’d bought her new clothes.

‘Well done,’ I said with a smile. ‘You dressed yourself very well.’ I showed Aimee to her place at the table, where her toast was waiting. ‘What would you like to drink?’ I asked. ‘Milk, juice or water?’

‘Water,’ Aimee said, sitting on the chair but too far from the table. I made a move to help her ease the chair under the table but she roughly pushed my hand away. ‘I can do it,’ she snapped.

‘All right, love, but don’t be rude. There are nice ways of saying things without being aggressive.’

‘I talk to me mum and dad like that,’ Aimee said, as though that justified her disrespect.

‘I don’t doubt it, love, but you shouldn’t. And you certainly won’t be talking to me like that.’ I said it kindly but firmly so that Aimee could see that I meant it. Teaching a child to show respect to others is crucial in putting them on the road to achieving socially acceptable and good behaviour. ‘Also, love, if you want to make friends you will need to speak to the children at school nicely too.’ Obvious to children who have been correctly brought up but not to a child from a dysfunctional background.

Aimee looked at me but didn’t say anything and I smiled again. Jumping her chair under the table until she was close enough, she took a bite of her toast and spat it out. ‘That’s disgusting,’ she cried.

‘It’s toast, as you asked,’ I said.

‘It’s got slimy stuff on it,’ Aimee said, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her clean jumper.

‘I put a little butter on it,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’

‘What’s butter?’ Aimee asked.

I now took the butter from the fridge and showed her. She shrugged, indicating she’d never seen butter before. ‘Perhaps you had spread at home?’ I suggested.

Returning the butter to the fridge, I took out the tub of butter substitute and showed her, but Aimee shook her head. ‘We didn’t have that. I want me toast like I make it at home.’

‘All right. Tell me how you made it and I’ll do the same.’

Aimee turned to look at me and then, using her hand to gesticulate, explained: ‘I get the bread from the packet and I scratch off the green bits. That’s mould. Then I put the bread in the toaster and later it goes pop! It’s ready then. It’s hot, but it don’t have slimy stuff on it. Our toaster don’t do that. The man next door gave us the toaster. So I take me toast to the living room and I switch on the telly, only I have to have the sound on low because Mum is asleep on the mattress, and she gets angry if I wake her. Then I sit on the floor and eat me toast. I get toast and biscuits whenever I want.’

What a morning routine, I thought! I could picture Aimee waking in the morning beside her mother on the filthy mattress on the floor, then slipping out so she didn’t wake her mother, and making toast from rotting bread, which she ate dry because there was nothing to put on it. Compare Aimee, I thought, with a child from a good home. A chasm of neglect lay between them.

I made Aimee another slice of toast and gave it to her dry with the glass of water she’d asked for, but I knew I should start introducing new foods into her diet as soon as possible. She was pale, her skin was dull and her movements were lethargic, which made me suspect she might be mineral and vitamin deficient. All children who come into foster care have a medical and I would raise my concerns with the paediatrician when we saw her, and while I couldn’t give Aimee a vitamin supplement without the doctor’s or her parents’ consent, I could improve her diet.

Paula and Lucy came down to breakfast as Aimee finished eating hers.

‘Feeling better?’ Lucy asked, taking a bowl for her cereal from the cupboard.

‘No,’ Aimee scowled.

‘What’s the matter?’ Paula asked, joining Aimee at the table.

Aimee looked at the girls for a moment, then at me, and her face crumpled. ‘I want me mum,’ she cried, and burst into tears.

‘Oh, love,’ I said, immediately going to her. ‘Please don’t upset yourself. You’ll see her soon.’ I went to put my arms around her, wanting to hold and comfort her, but she drew back, so I settled for laying my hand on her arm and standing close to her.

I saw Paula’s eyes mist as Aimee sat at the table with her head in her hands and cried. ‘I want me mum. Please take me to my mum.’ For like most children, no matter how bad it has been at home, Aimee missed her mother, with whom she’d been all her life.

‘You’ll see her tonight,’ I reassured her, ‘straight after school.’

‘Don’t cry,’ Paula said, her voice faltering. ‘We’ll look after you.’

‘Better than your mother did,’ Lucy added under her breath. I frowned at her, warning her not to say any more.

‘Why can’t I see me mum now?’ Aimee asked, raising her tear-stained face. She looked so sad.

‘Because your social worker has arranged for you to see your mum tonight,’ I said. ‘And we have to do what your social worker says.’

‘Me mum didn’t do what the social worker said,’ Aimee said, oblivious to the fact that had she it would have probably helped them both.

‘I know it’s difficult to begin with,’ Lucy said, going round to stand at the other side of Aimee. ‘But it will get easier, I promise you. And doesn’t your hair feel better already? No more itchy-coos.’ Lucy lightly tickled the back of Aimee’s neck, which made Aimee laugh.

‘Good girl, let’s wipe your eyes,’ I said. I fetched a tissue from the box and went to wipe Aimee’s eyes, but she snatched the tissue from my hand and wiped them herself. Children who have been badly neglected are often very self-sufficient; they’ve had to be in order to survive.

Chapter Seven

Should Have Done More

I called goodbye to Paula and Lucy, and Aimee and I left for school at 8.00 a.m. as planned. This would allow half an hour to drive through the traffic so that we arrived at school – on the opposite side of the town – well before the start of the school day at 8.50. This morning I wanted to go into school before the other children so that I could introduce myself at reception and, I hoped, meet Aimee’s teacher or the member of staff responsible for looked-after children. All schools in England now have a designated teacher (DT) who is responsible in school for any child in care. The child is taught as normal in class but the designated teacher keeps an eye on the child, attends meetings connected with the child, and is the first point of contact for the social services, foster carer, child’s natural parents and professionals connected with the case.

As I helped Aimee into the child seat in the rear of my car she asked why she had to sit in this seat and I explained it was so that the seatbelt could be fastened securely across her to keep her safe. She had no idea how to put on the seatbelt and I showed her what to do, how to fasten it, and then I checked it was secure. I closed the car door, which was child-locked and therefore couldn’t be opened from the inside, and climbed into the driver’s seat. I started the engine and reversed off the drive. As I drove, Aimee asked many questions about the car and how I drove it, as though being in a car was a new experience for her, so that eventually I asked: ‘Aimee, have you ever been in car before?’

‘Only with the social workers yesterday,’ she said. ‘But it was dark and I couldn’t see what was happening. Mum and Dad use buses.’ Which was another indication of just how disadvantaged Aimee’s background had been. For a child in a developed country to have reached the age of eight without regularly riding in a car was incredible; I’d never come across it before. Even if a child’s parents didn’t own a car (not uncommon for children in care) the child had usually been a passenger in the car of a relative or friend’s parents; usually someone the child knew owned a car. But I believed Aimee when she said her first experience of riding in a car had been the day before, for her curiosity and questions about my car and driving it seemed to confirm this and were unstoppable: ‘What’s that blue light for?’ ‘Why’s that number moving?’ ‘Why you holding that stick?’ ‘I can hear a clicking!’ ‘There’s an orange light flashing!’ And so on and so on.

Although I was happy to answer Aimee’s questions, I soon began finding her constant dialogue very distracting while I was trying to drive through the traffic. A few minutes later I asked her to sit quietly and save her questions for when I’d stopped, as I needed to concentrate on driving. She did briefly and then began a running commentary on what was happening outside her window: ‘There’s a man with a big dog.’ ‘That girl’s going to school.’ ‘I saw a bird, Cathy!’ ‘Look at that lady’s hair! Cathy! Look! Look!’

‘I can’t look, love,’ I said more firmly. ‘I’m driving. I have to concentrate on driving or we’ll have an accident. Let’s listen to some music.’ I switched on the CD player, which still contained a CD of popular children’s songs and nursery rhymes from the last child I’d looked after. Aimee listened and then I said, ‘I expect you know most of these nursery rhymes?’

‘No,’ Aimee replied.

So I guessed Aimee’s parents hadn’t recited, sung or read nursery rhymes to her as a child, although I thought she would have seen them in children’s programmes on television.

‘Your mum and dad had a television, didn’t they?’ I said, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

‘Yeah, a great big telly,’ Aimee said. ‘A lot bigger than yours.’

‘Didn’t you watch children’s programmes like
CBeebies
?’

‘Na, they’re silly,’ Aimee sneered.

‘What did you watch, then?’ I asked, half anticipating her reply would include a list of adult programmes.

‘Me and me mum watched
EastEnders
and horror films,’ Aimee said. ‘There was one about a woman who got chopped up with a big axe. First the man chopped off her arms and all blood spurted out of her shoulders, but she kept on walking ’cos she was a zombie. Then the man stabbed her in the face so her eyes came out, then he chopped off her head and it rolled on the floor and there was all blood spurting out of her neck and you could see her brain on the floor and –’

‘All right, Aimee, that’s enough, thank you. I understand,’ I said, my stomach churning. Many parents don’t realize the damage that can be done in allowing young impressionable minds to watch such horrific images.

‘
EastEnders
is on tonight,’ Aimee added, as I pulled up outside the school.

‘So I believe,’ I said. ‘But we won’t be watching it.’

‘I will!’ Aimee said.

‘Not while you’re living with me. That programme is for adults. You will be able to watch children’s programmes.’

Aimee pulled a face. ‘What about
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
or
Friday the 13th
? You got those DVDs?’ she asked.

‘No. But I have got
Mary Poppins, Toy Story, The Jungle Book, The Lion King
and many others that are nice.’

‘Never heard of them,’ Aimee scoffed.

‘You will, love, I promise.’

The path that led to the school’s main reception took us past the school playground.

Aimee pointed to children who’d arrived at school early and were playing. ‘What are those kids doing?’ she asked.

‘Playing,’ I said, feeling I was stating the obvious.

‘They should be in their classrooms,’ Aimee said.