Lost Child, page 14
I was slightly disconcerted by this very casual approach to my arrival, as if I were a regular visitor who knew what to do and where to go, but I carried on, finding the right room and knocking on the door. No one answered on the other side, so I gently turned the handle and opened it.
Jessie was sitting on her bed.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said with an air of ennui.
‘Yes, it’s me. Remember? I said I would come today. How are you?’
‘I’m poorly. I have a bad cough. See?’ she demonstrated dramatically. ‘And snot. Lots of snot. Aren’t you afraid you’ll catch it?’
‘I’ll take my chances. How are things otherwise?’ I asked.
‘Awful. I hate it here. When can I go back to Glan Morfa?’
‘You sound fed up,’ I replied.
‘I hate it here. I hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Tell them that. Tell Mrs Thomas that. Tell her it’s awful here and I want to get out.’
‘Poor you. I’m sorry to hear that it’s so awful. What don’t you like?’
‘Everything.’
‘For example . . . ?’
‘I don’t like that little boy with the glasses. He turns on the TV without asking. He acts like he lives here, and he doesn’t.’
‘That sounds annoying,’ I replied.
‘And I don’t like the way it smells here. Fiona is always cooking fish. It stinks of fish and I hate fish.’
‘You like fish and chips.’
‘That’s proper fish. She cooks kinds that got skin on them. She cooks red fish.’
‘Salmon?’
‘Yes, salmon. All the time. And I hate salmon. And she knows it, but she keeps cooking it.’
‘Poor you,’ I said as empathetically as I could.
She sighed. ‘I wish I had a bomb, and I could set it off right in this room. Boom!’ She threw her hands up.
‘I’m not sure that would be a helpful thing to do.’
‘It would. Because I’d be dead. And you’d be dead. And Fiona would be dead. And everybody else in this stupid place. I’d like that. I wish I could get a gun.’
This wasn’t a direction I wanted to take the conversation, so I reached down for my bag and pulled out a game of Yahtzee.
Jessie said matter-of-factly, ‘I think I’m going to kill that little boy. I don’t have a bomb or a gun, but I might kill him anyway. Because he’s so annoying.’
I looked over at her. I was about 90 per cent sure this was said to shock, that she was trying to keep control of our time together by engaging me in such a dramatic conversation. I did not want to reward her by getting upset, or into a power struggle over whether she should be bombing or shooting anyone. The other 10 per cent of me, however, was not so sure. Either way, it was not a comment I could ignore. So I said, ‘You sound very fed up with things here.’
‘I am.’
‘I don’t think killing people is the way to go. Perhaps we can think of some different things you could do when you are feeling as fed up as you are right now.’
‘I could kill myself. I could take my pillow and put it over my face until I was smothered.’
‘I don’t want you to kill yourself. I would feel so sad if that happened. I would cry and cry.’
She looked over at me for a long moment. ‘Would you?’
‘Of course I would. That would make me very unhappy. So please don’t consider it.’
‘No one else would.’
‘I’m really sorry you are feeling so down about things. I really am.’
‘My mum wouldn’t feel sad if I died,’ she said. ‘She’d be happy. She wouldn’t have to hate me any more. Then it would just be Gemma at home, and my mum would stop being depressed all the time.’
‘That’s a big thought to be carrying around in your head. No wonder you’re feeling discouraged.’
Sitting forward, Jessie sighed heavily, then she leaned against me. I had been careful up to this point not to have any physical contact; because these were our guidelines, but also for my own safety, given the situation with Joseph, because I was alone. Now, however, I put my arm around her shoulder.
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ I said. ‘Your mum has problems that make it hard for her to be a good parent, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you. It just means it’s hard for her to show it properly. And this is your mum’s problem because of things that have happened in her own life. It’s not your fault. That’s hard to understand when you are little, because that’s all the life you know, but it’s true.’
Jessie shook her head. ‘You don’t know. You think you do, but you don’t know.’
We sat together for several minutes in silence.
I still had the small box containing the Yahtzee game on my lap. Jessie reached down, took it and threw it towards my satchel. ‘I don’t want to play any of your stupid games. I hate games. Don’t you know that about me yet?’
‘I have a different idea,’ I said. ‘Let’s do a visualization together.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Remember that day when we imagined eating the fish and chips? That was a visualization. Let’s do another one.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘I said: I. Don’t. Want. To.’
‘And I said that’s okay. I meant that. You don’t have to do it, if you don’t want to. You can just sit here beside me. I’ll do it instead.’
Mostly, I wanted to reorientate Jessie’s thinking, because what was obvious to me was that she’d become trapped in a downward spiral of thoughts. No doubt being ill did not help, but my sense on both visits was that Jessie had become more negative since being in foster care, more inclined to reject efforts to engage her. I suspected she was feeling quite isolated. While Fiona was warm and inclusive, she was an absolute extrovert. Friendship and connection were such innate skills that they took no effort for her. My sense, however, was that Fiona didn’t always notice that others didn’t find this as easy. What had clued me in was my arrival, when I was greeted by a strange child and then expected to find my own way down to the kitchen and then to Jessie’s room. I knew from Fiona’s perspective this was a generous and friendly ‘my home is your home’ gesture demonstrating how welcome I was, and I knew that I could have asked for a cup of coffee or a biscuit, or possibly even helped myself to something, and she would have seen this as natural behaviour. From a less outgoing perspective, however, such treatment wasn’t welcoming. This was a strange house full of unfamiliar people, and it would be easy to feel nervous and uncertain about what to do. For someone like Jessie, who had come from a silent, rejecting household where she had been required to stay in her room for long stretches of time, I could imagine this expectation that people would naturally feel accepted and able to spontaneously join in was a big ask.
Jessie wouldn’t have much support outside the home either. Making friends had never been a strength for her, even in the group home, where children were constantly present, but she’d also had three changes of school in short succession. Now she was living in a small village where most of the children would have known each other all their lives.
The humour was gone from Jessie’s provocativeness. Everything about her now seemed grim. There was, sadly, not much I could do in such brief, erratic visits, but because she had responded so well to the visualization back at Glan Morfa, I hoped this might prove a skill I could teach her to use to soothe herself, or, at the very least, it would give her a brief bright spot in an otherwise dreary afternoon.
‘Okay, here’s how I’m going to start. First, I get comfy,’ I said, leaning back on the bed. ‘Remember, it’s okay if you don’t want to do this. I’m just saying these things for myself.’
She ignored me.
‘Next, let’s breathe in, way in. So our tummy goes in and our chest goes out. Then let it out slowly. All the way, so that when we get to the end of the breath, we go a “Haaah”.’ I demonstrated, taking in a deep breath and letting it noisily out of my mouth.
‘You’re not fooling me. I’m not stupid. I’m not going to do it, and you can’t make me.’
‘I’d never want to make you. I’m just talking out loud to myself because it makes this easier to do.’ I was slightly behind her, relaxed back against the wall.
Jessie sat primly on the edge. ‘I’ve got a cold. It wouldn’t be good for me to breathe that way anyway,’ she replied, not turning around to look at me. ‘It’d make me cough.’
‘That’s fine. It’s okay if you don’t do it. You can just listen.’
‘I don’t want to listen either. I don’t want to do it. I said that a million times now. And I’m not fooled by what you’re doing, because you’re trying to make me do it anyway.’
‘Okay, that’s fine. But I am doing this for me. It makes me feel good. First, I’ve taken nice, deep breaths and I’m sitting comfy, and now I’m going to close my eyes.’
Jessie put her fingers in her ears.
‘In my imagination, I’m standing outside a door. It’s an inside door and I’m looking at it. What does the door look like? Is it big? Is it little, littler than I am? What colour is it? Brown? Or white? Maybe green? Or red? Look very carefully at the door, at the details of the door . . .’
Jessie was being so obstinate about not participating that I was half expecting her to start singing la-la-la to block out my voice, but instead, she removed her fingers and laid her hands more gently over her ears. I carried on speaking in a soft voice.
‘This door is inside a house. On the other side of it, there is a room. This is a very, very special room, not like any room you’ve ever been in before. This is your dream room, a room you have created just for yourself. You have designed it to be exactly the way you want it, and when you open the door, you know you are going to see this lovely room that is all yours.’
There was no response from Jessie. She kept her back to me.
‘The door is big and sturdy, because it keeps the room safe. How do you open it? A round doorknob? A handle? What is it made of? Is there a lock that only you have the key to? Or is it a door your friends can go through too?’ I said all this very slowly in a lulling voice, giving plenty of time to imagine.
I could see Jessie’s fingers slipping down the sides of her head. She was still giving the impression of blocking her ears so that she could not hear me, but I could tell only the middle finger of each hand was touching her ears, and these were not pressing inward. She was listening.
‘Open the door now and step inside. Here is your special room. You have chosen the colours. The walls and the floor are exactly right. Everything is very, very safe in this room. Nothing can happen here that you don’t want. This is your safe place.
‘Start to walk around your room and look at the things that you have chosen to be there.’ I paused to give her time to imagine this. ‘What is under your feet? What colour is it? How are the walls decorated? Are there pictures? Is there a bed? What colour are the covers? Are there things on the bed to make it nice? Are there toys in the room? Or books? Or something else? How have you specially designed it to make it your perfect room?’
I continued on with the visualization, very slowly, suggesting things to look at, to feel, to smell, to listen to. I drew the visualization out over the remaining twenty minutes of the visit, gently shifting the focus from the imaginary room to noticing how relaxed her muscles felt. Finally I suggested we open our eyes and rest a few moments longer before it was time for me to go.
Jessie had remained on the edge of the bed, her back to me, the entire time. As I slid forward to stand up, I saw she had her eyes open, but tears were streaming down her cheeks.
‘This has made you cry?’
She nodded.
‘That’s okay. Can you tell me why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It gave you strong feelings?’
Jessie nodded. ‘I had an aquarium. It was over there in the corner,’ she said, as if she were indicating somewhere in her bedroom, but her gaze was inward. ‘There was a big, big window and the sun was coming in the window and shining on the aquarium. And I had Puppy sitting on my bed. I had a turquoise duvet cover with rainbows on it and a big floofy pillow, and the sun was shining everywhere. And in the corner, I had an aquarium with angel fish in it.’
‘What a wonderful room,’ I said.
‘It made me happy to be there. And that made me cry.’
Chapter Eighteen
School had always been Jessie’s strongest area. This seemed to be the one place she was able to focus her considerable energy and, more importantly, the one place she had connected good behaviour with positive consequences. She was a competent student who was often near the top of her class. She loved being praised for her work and was insanely keen to win stars and certificates. The frequent moves meant she hadn’t bonded closely with any particular teacher, but she had engaged well with the curriculum, which was the same all across the county, enabling her to fit in smoothly.
Jessie’s social skills with peers at school didn’t fare quite as well. She found it hard to share positive attention and harder yet to lose out to someone else, so there was a tendency to get theatrically upset if she didn’t achieve top scores. And, of course, she lied. At school, this mostly took the form of boasting about experiences or talents she did not have or lies to save face or avoid trouble. In other words, normal lies, albeit more frequent and flamboyant than other children told them. For the most part, however, Jessie functioned close to a normal level in this environment. Even during the changes over the last few months, Jessie had managed to hold things together at school. Her work remained in the upper quarter of the class, and her behaviour was acceptable, if a bit melodramatic.
Out-of-school life had always been more problematic for Jessie, whether in her own home, the group home or a foster home. In Meleri’s opinion, the placement with Fiona’s family was working better than the previous ones. While this was not a therapeutic foster home – the council was still waiting for an opening in one of those – Fiona and her husband were knowledgeable and admirably unflappable.
I did not have enough experience of visiting children in the foster setting to judge. Jessie was clearly not happy, but it was impossible to discern how much of this was due to the foster home, how much to the disruption and change, how much to the circumstances around the incident with Joseph and how much to Jessie’s ongoing issues. I would have preferred to work with her in a more traditional setting than her bedroom, but at least I could see her.
Then, yet again, everything came crashing down. A few days after I’d last seen Jessie, Fiona went into her two-year-old son’s room unannounced and found Angus had been stripped below the waist and Jessie was playing with his penis. Jessie was removed immediately.
Jessie returned to Glan Morfa. As Joseph was no longer there, it seemed the best solution after so many fraught attempts at fostering.
I sighed when Meleri told me. This was the hardest part of this new kind of work for me, this constant chopping and changing. In the old days, once the kids were in the classroom with me, I had them those six hours, five days a week, and I could pretty much count on our being together for the next nine months. I could get on with the task of creating the close-knit community that was as important to my success as I was. Most of the variables, and hence the behaviours, could be controlled by the natural consequences of the classroom structure. Consistency meant that routine did half my work.
The set-up I was now in was a completely different matter. There was no chance of sustained structure or consistency. I had limited authority and very little control. Indeed, in this case, I spent most of my time running to catch up, almost literally, because Jessie seemed to be in some different far-flung corner of the county practically every week. If this was hard on me, it must have been a hundred times harder on her.
The saddest part, however, was that it was no one’s fault. We all saw what was wrong with the system, but it couldn’t be helped. There were not the programmes locally. Jessie’s family did not have the resources to pay for one of the specialized programmes in far-off London, and even if they had I’m not sure they would have paid for it. My sense was that they were not bonded to Jessie at all and were happy to be free of her in whatever form that took. The local authority did not have the resources to pay for what Jessie needed either. There were hundreds of children in care who needed focused, specialized attention, but the money and the programmes just weren’t there. Meleri, the other social workers and the child psychologist were all doing the best they could with what they had; they genuinely were. As was I. It just wasn’t enough.
So, back to Glan Morfa we went.
More than six months had passed since Jessie had accused Joseph of molestation. We’d gone through the dark months of the year and now it was mid-March, still inclined to be snowy up on the moors where my farm was, grey and rainy down the coast with a strong, cold wind coming in off the sea. As I drove down the long single-track lane towards the group home, I noticed the road had never been resurfaced since that first visit nearly a year ago. The potholes were almost car-sized now. The small, scraggly trees, permanently braced against the sea wind, reached twigs out to skitter excitedly against my side windows as I passed.
Glan Morfa stretched out long and low in the overcast light. This was my first time back since I’d left for my trip to Italy. I noticed there was a car in Joseph’s parking space, so I assumed a new manager had been hired.
Helen was at the front desk. She waved excitedly with both hands and then made an upward gesture with one hand that I knew as the signal for ‘Want a cup of tea?’
‘Catch you later,’ I said, because I wanted to get organized in the room before Jessie got there. I had brought the puppets with me, as I thought Jessie might want to see them all again.
