Four Waifs on Our Doorstep (23 page)

‘OK,’ she nodded. ‘Can I be Carrie Stephanie?’

I hesitated only a split second, because she couldn’t pronounce her Ss, but she wouldn’t need to say it much. ‘Yes, that would be lovely.’

Finally I turned to Simon. ‘What about your name? Would you like a new name too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Any ideas?’

‘No.’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘Can you choose?’

‘What about Sam? That’s a good name.’

Simon nodded and said it to himself.

‘Now we have to decide on your last name. Do you want to join the two names and have Mackay-Merry?’

‘I don’t want Mackay,’ said Hamish.

‘No, no, no, not Mackay,’ agreed Anita.

‘Why can’t we just have Merry? I want to be Jamie Merry.’

‘Yes. Let’s all have Merry,’ they agreed.

So that was decided.

‘Can we start with our new names straight away?’ asked Anita.

‘No, we’ll have to wait till we sign the papers,’ I explained. ‘The schools are not supposed to change your names until then, so we’d better do the same.’

Hamish screwed up his face. ‘But I start my new school soon. Can’t I start with my new name? People always pick on me with my old name being so different.’

‘I’ll go along and see your new head teacher,’ I agreed. ‘I expect they will do it if they’re allowed to. Then they won’t have to change all their records
just a few weeks later.’

I spoke to our local Social Services and they agreed to sign a letter, giving permission for the secondary school to register Hamish in his new name, Jamie Merry. Next, I went
to see the headmistress at the secondary school.

‘We’re adopting all the children,’ I explained to her. ‘The eldest will be coming here this September and the adoption should be finalised only a month or two
later.’

‘Yes?’

‘And Social Services have signed this letter for you to register him with his new name, Jamie Merry.’ I handed her the short letter and she quickly read it through.

‘Right,’ she nodded. ‘That will be fine. I’ll pass this on to the office and they will make all the necessary arrangements.’

September came around and Hamish went into school on the first day with a cheery wave. But he came out close to tears.

‘All the boys made fun of me,’ he wailed. ‘They called me “Haggis” and “Hag-boy”, and made loony faces at me.’ He buried his head in his hands
while I drove away, furious that the school had been so insensitive as to ignore my request, despite the local authority’s official permission.

The next morning, I went into the school, all guns blazing. I didn’t ask anyone; I just marched straight into the headmistress’s office.

‘You said you would make sure that my boy’s records would be changed and you would use his new name. But you broke your word and let us down badly.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs . . . ?’

‘Merry.’

‘Oh well, you know, Mrs Merry, all our paperwork . . . the office, you know . . .’ I had caught her off-guard and she was flustered.

‘This boy was so excited about his first day at his new school, expecting to be Jamie Merry, only to find he is still Hamish Mackay. Some of the other children called him names and bullied
him. He had a terrible day, and it need not have happened.’ I was on a roll now. ‘Why didn’t you pass on that letter and amend your paperwork as you said you would?’

‘To “Jamie”?’

‘Well, yes!’

‘I . . . I’m not sure . . .’

‘It’s not for me to tell you your job, but I am very disappointed.’ I marched straight out again.

I carried on fuming to myself all the way home. Wasn’t it bad enough that the poor lad had wrinklies like us for his parents? We couldn’t change that, but I had done all I could to
ensure that we could avoid this situation, and the school could not do this one simple thing to help us protect a child from being bullied and upset! I felt like shouting out Anita’s
favourite phrase.

One day an official form came in the post, with a compliment slip from Social Services, asking me to sign it. I read it all through. It was asking me to keep the contact going
with their birth parents, but they had made it clear to me several times lately that they didn’t ever want to see their mum again and Hamish in particular was scared that she might come
looking for him. I didn’t feel it was right for me to sign away the children’s rights to decide. I didn’t want to sign it, so I called the number to tell them.

‘You must sign the letterbox contact form, Mrs Merry,’ said a snooty voice at the other end of the phone.

‘I can’t sign it on behalf of the children, because this is not what they want.’

‘It’s just about keeping the contact channel open,’ she explained. ‘The parents have got feelings too, you know.’

I wasn’t making any progress there, so I rang our solicitor.

‘Just sign it,’ he advised. ‘Because it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.’

‘OK.’ So I signed it and sent it off.

Finally the date came through for us all to go to court and meet the judge who would hopefully confirm the decision made by the professionals.

It was time for one more round-the-table meeting with the kids to make sure they understood, as I explained what would happen on the day itself.

‘And then the judge will probably want to talk to each of you.’

‘What for?’ asked Hamish.

‘To ask you if you understand what adoption is and if you’re happy to be adopted.’

‘I can’t wait!’ exclaimed Anita.

‘What can’t you wait for, to change your name or to be our child?’

‘Both,’ she laughed.

‘Then, when the judge is sure you all understand what adoption is and are happy about it, he or she will ask me to sign the papers for each of you.’

‘What do the papers say?’ asked Hamish.

‘They put your old name and your new name. They say that you are now becoming the daughter or son of Mike and Trisha Merry. Do you think you will be happy for me to sign that for
you?’

‘Yes. I wish you could do it today,’ sang out Anita.

‘Well, it won’t be long to wait now. Then you will be part of our family for the rest of your lives, or at least until you are grown up. Will that be OK?’

‘Yes,’ they all said.

‘When you have signed the papers and adopted us,’ Anita said with a grin, ‘then we can be as naughty as we like.’

‘Er, no,’ I laughed. ‘That’s not the way it works. If you do something naughty, we will be just the same with you as we are now.’

‘But you can’t send us back if you adopt us.’

‘That’s true. But we will never want to send you back. We love you all too much to do that. That’s why we’re adopting you. And we will always be honest with you, no
matter what. Honesty is very important for you too. We all have to trust each other. If you can’t trust me, who can you trust? When we sit here together and talk about things, we must all be
honest and say what’s really happened, or how we really feel.’

‘I feel happy!’ Caroline smiled.

‘Good. How do the rest of you feel about the adoption? Hamish?’

‘Yes, I’m glad too. I want to belong, and I don’t ever want to be hungry again.’

‘I’m excited because I’m going to have a proper family,’ added Anita. ‘I love being adopted.’

‘What about you, Simon?’ I asked. ‘Do you understand what being adopted means?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how do you feel about it?’

‘Good.’

The adoption day went very well. I signed the documents and took our copies away, one for each child and one for us. It all happened so quickly that it was almost an
anticlimax, except that we were all so happy as we left the court building.

‘Let’s go and have lunch out,’ suggested Mike. ‘To celebrate being one family. Where do you want to go?’

‘The place with the Knickerbocker Glory,’ Stacey called out, and everyone agreed.

A few months after the adoption day, Social Services phoned me.

‘Mrs Mackay is having another baby by the paedophile.’

‘Right . . .’

‘And she wants to know how the children are getting on.’

‘Yes?’

‘She would like to see them again.’

‘I’m sorry, but a) the children don’t want that, and b) I don’t know whether I do.’ I was quite adamant in not letting this happen, so I changed the subject.
‘Why is she having another baby to be taken away?’

‘That’s nothing to do with you.’

‘Next you’ll be asking for them to see the paedophile too . . . and then Mrs Mackay’s first husband who they didn’t even know until the freeing-order meeting.’

‘There’s no need to take that tone, Mrs Merry.’

‘Well, I think there is. If the children don’t want to have any contact, it’s not going to happen.’

‘You signed the letterbox form.’

‘Well, take me to court!’

19

E
very school holiday, all four of the kids were off the walls with energy and mischief, not to mention the bickering and spitefulness that went on
every day, sometimes all day. Anyone with children will identify with this to an extent, but these four won the gold medal for family infighting. And it was even worse when we took them
anywhere.

There were four holiday play centres in town. I can’t remember what the first one was called, but they enjoyed their days there. The trouble was, all the other children suffered the
effects of their invasion. I don’t think any of the staff were used to handling children like ours, so they ran riot and took everything over, pushing all the other kids out of the way,
taking their toys, getting paint all over everyone, knocking kids over by coming down the slide with arms and legs outstretched, spitting at them, swearing, snatching their food, scribbling on
their colourings – everything you can think of . . . and more.

Every day the play-leader rang to complain about one or other of the children’s latest misdemeanours and I had to go up there and remove them for the rest of the day. After two weeks I had
their final call.

‘Your children really are very, very difficult, Mrs Merry.’

‘Really? I didn’t know that!’

‘Yes, I’m sorry, Mrs Merry. But we are just not able to cope with them any longer, so I’m afraid we will have to exclude them. We’ve tried to do our best with them, and
on occasions we have enjoyed their lively company, but we are now losing other children because of your four.’

I looked up the local listings and found another play centre. I think it was called ‘Bridge House’. I took them there for a while, but it was a similar story. So now they had all
been banned from two play centres.

Right, I thought. I’m going to try the church children’s club and play centre. Perhaps they’ll be more patient and forgiving there. So off we all went with high hopes . . . and
high spirits too, of course. This one was run by members of the congregation. Most of them, being more mature, were very kind and rather more tolerant than the youngsters that ran the first two
play centres, so I was optimistic that this would be different.

Well, it did seem to go better for the first few days. Nobody phoned me, but I did notice the increasingly frazzled expressions on the helpers’ faces each time I collected the kids. They
were more long-suffering than the previous two places, but in the end the phone call came.

‘So they’re all banned?’ I asked. ‘Permanently?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. But you could try St Mark’s sports centre,’ added the woman. ‘I believe they have spaces in their holiday scheme.’

So I booked them into St John’s and the first morning I took them everyone was very welcoming. It was a bright and airy place with lots of space and several sporting activities on offer,
as well as a large play area, with a number of smiling helpers, so I hoped it would work out this time.

‘Would you like to buy a raffle ticket?’ asked a sports coach, standing by a child’s bike on a stand – a beautiful, big, sporty, shiny yellow bike.

‘Can we have a ticket each?’ asked Jamie. They were all looking at it enviously, and eight-year-old Sam couldn’t take his eyes off it.

‘Why not?’ I said, smiling at the coach and giving him the £4.

Sadly, things went downhill from there. The looks from other parents when I dropped them off there in the mornings, the phone calls for me to collect them early, the stories of complaints . . .
I knew the day would come, and it did.

So now, all four of the children had been banned from every play centre in the city, and the eldest was still just twelve years old.

‘We were only naughty,’ said Sam on the way home.

Fortunately, it was near the end of the holidays, and the weather was good enough for them to run wild in the garden. Then they all went back to school and things moved on, so I was surprised
one day to receive a phone call from St Mark’s.

‘Is this Mrs Merry?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And you have a son called Sam Merry?’ I could tell from the way he spoke through gritted teeth that he wasn’t comfortable making this call.

‘That’s right. I’m really sorry that my children were so naughty you had to ban them,’ I said, assuming this was a belated call from him to explain what happened.

‘No, I’m not ringing about that, Mrs Merry.’ I could hear him take in a sharp breath. ‘Sam’s won the bike.’

Well, I’d forgotten all about that. But Sam hadn’t. He was thrilled when I told him later – the most enthusiastic I think I’ve ever seen him.

I could tell this was probably the last person they would have wanted to win their raffle, but at least they were honest enough not to draw it again.

I couldn’t face the embarrassment of collecting the bike myself, so I had to send Mike. The irony was that because Sam had been banned, he couldn’t go with Mike to collect his
prize.

Christmas always had a long lead-in at our house. It started at the beginning of September with making the mincemeat, then later in September we had fun making the Christmas
pudding. They all helped me weigh and measure the different ingredients, taking turns to stir the mixture and make a wish.