feel left out. I often found people went out of their way to be accommodating for fostered children.
My spirits lifted as Bobbi ducked her head and allowed me to slip her jumper on. I could hardly believe she might finally relent. ‘Woo-hoo!’ I said, clapping and making a big fuss of her as she slipped her arms into the sleeves. ‘Well done, Bobbi!’ She beamed.
Megan joined in with the applause. ‘Well done, Bobs!’ she cheered. ‘Yippee!’ From beneath the coffee table, Mungo gave a soft bark.
‘She’ll take it off again in a minute,’ Archie predicted morosely from the sofa. He peered over the top of his book and then quickly returned his attention to the page, his eyes eagerly running left to right. Within half a second Bobbi’s arms were out of the sleeves, the rest of the jumper hanging like a thick woollen chain from her neck.
I gave Archie a dark look. Ever since his arrival he had been nothing less than accommodating and helpful. This morning, though, he seemed determined to derail my efforts to prepare him for school. He had faked surprise when I told him that Danny had confirmed that he went to Millfield Primary, and since then had dragged his feet at every turn. ‘Bobbi,’ I said in a low tone. ‘Put it back on, please.’ She looked at me, her head in a defiant tilt, and then she whipped the jumper right off.
‘Back on now or you won’t go swimming,’ I said warningly. Megan stood close by, her eyes flitting between us. I feigned an interest in the TV magazine on the coffee table, half-aware of Bobbi picking up her leggings as I flicked through the pages.
‘Yay!’ Megan shouted. ‘You can come swimming with me now, Bobs!’
‘Ow-a!’ Bobbi growled. ‘I can’t do them.’
‘Come here. I’ll help.’ She crawled over and gave them to me. I lifted her to her feet and told her to hold on to my shoulder. ‘That’s it, now lift your leg.’ She didn’t move. ‘Come on, honey, lift your leg.’
Half a second later Megan cried out and clamped a hand over her eyes – while I’d been leaning over, Bobbi had slapped her face.
‘Right, that’s it. No swimming for Bobbi.’ I had tried to keep my voice even but it hadn’t worked. My patience was drained and it showed. Megan wasn’t crying – I think she was more shocked than anything else – but I drew her onto my lap and kissed the top of her head. She leaned into me and rested her head on my chest.
A sickening thud reached my ears a second or two later. I swung around just in time to see Bobbi’s head slamming into the floor for a second time, the crack of skull meeting floorboard making my stomach flip. Megan got off my lap and stared at Bobbi in horror. ‘It’s alright, Meggie,’ I said, steering her towards the door. ‘You go upstairs and see if you can find a towel and your goggles. I’ll take care of Bobbi.’
Megan backed slowly out of the room, her eyes fixed on Bobbi, who was now on her feet and biting her own forearm. It must have been painful, but with the red mist working its numbing magic, she continued to gnaw at her skin. I crouched in front of her, aware that Megan was still staring at us from the doorway. ‘Go, Megan, please,’ I said, without taking my eyes off Bobbi. I heard her scurry away and my chest tightened with guilt.
‘Bobbi, I’m not going to let you hurt yourself,’ I said, taking a firm hold of her arm and pulling it free of her jaws. ‘I can see that you’re feeling cross,’ I continued, in a lame attempt at naming her feelings, but she’d already reached a point from which it was going to be difficult to return. She just needed to be held.
‘GET OFF ME!’ she screamed as I reached out to her, battering me with her fists and then clawing her hands down her own face. I pulled her onto my lap and pinned her arms down with my own to protect us both. She struggled and screamed, her feet slamming repeatedly into the floor. Once again, though, it was Archie’s reaction that unnerved me most. He was watching me from the sofa, an expression of suppressed fury on his face.
‘What’s wrong, Arch?’
‘You shouldn’t have kept asking her to lift her leg,’ he snapped, chucking his book aside. ‘You scared her.’
I looked at him. ‘How come?’ I leaned over Bobbi, who had stiffened on my lap. ‘Why were you scared to lift your leg, sweetheart?’
‘Jason makes her stand on one leg when she’s naughty, that’s why,’ Archie spat out.
My throat tightened. ‘Oh, Bobbi, that’s very wrong of him. I’m sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t know.’ She allowed me to cuddle her to my chest. I gave Archie a regretful look over the top of her head. He glared at me, his cheeks flushed red.
Swirling grey clouds hung low in the sky as we drove towards Millfield Primary the next morning. As luck would have it, Megan’s nursery opened fifteen minutes earlier than Archie and Bobbi’s school, so I had been able to drop her off with confidence that I’d make it to Millfield on time.
It was Tuesday 6 January, Bobbi and Archie’s first day back at school after the holidays, and I had woken everyone earlier than usual in anticipation of a major fall-out in getting Bobbi dressed. With careful avoidance of any ‘lifting leg’ instructions, it wasn’t the battle I’d anticipated, as it turned out, and by 8 a.m. everyone had been tucking into their breakfast.
The Jason comment aside, I still knew little about Bobbi’s past – my gentle attempt to encourage her to talk about her fears of punishment batted away last night by a loud screechy song – but there was every reason to suppose that she had been neglected from birth. There were all sorts of likely triggers to her panicked behaviour, some I would only ever be able to guess at.
The smell of sour milk, for example, might set off a hysterical reaction in a child who had lain untended in their cot for hours at a time. I knew that some children in foster care flew off the handle whenever they were cold, the sensation reminding them of the terror they felt as babies, when they had been left to go to sleep without clothes or blankets. For others, loud music caused fear, or shouting, or being smiled at in a certain way; a once-used code from Daddy signalling that it was time to join him upstairs. Trauma triggered behaviour was unpredictable by its very nature; I knew it would take some time to decode.
At a red light I glanced at Bobbi in the rear-view mirror as she made an infernal noise. She looked smart in her uniform and older somehow. I had bought two new sets of uniform for each of the children when I finally made it to the shops yesterday, my mother stepping into the breach so I didn’t have to drag Bobbi around town in her PJs. ‘They’ve been as good as gold,’ Mum announced on my return, a twinkle in her eye. It was often the way with the children I looked after. They seemed to sense the genuine warmth beneath Mum’s firm exterior and responded well to her gentle attentiveness. As an unwanted replacement of their birth mother, it often took longer for me to gain a child’s trust.
‘Maybe you could try being a bit firmer,’ Mum had whispered to me on her way out. My mother holds firmly to the view that punishment and retribution are the most effective means of keeping children on the straight and narrow. Though rarely openly critical, I often got the feeling that she believed my own system of using positive praise, consistency and continuity alongside a careful balance of love and discipline was ridiculously soft.
I rolled my eyes at my brother, Chris, who had popped by to pick Mum up and drop her and Megan to the
