the piece of furniture across which so many similar discussions had taken place over the years, and so many pieces of paper shunted back and forth for signing – the placement plans, the risk assessments, the parental consent forms, to name but a few. Though, on some occasions, this one included, the paperwork was secondary – the main aim was to find a home, and fast.
Because Adrianna had come to us as an emergency placement, there was no care plan yet in place for her, of course. Or, indeed, a social worker allocated to her. We were just, as John had already told us, a place of safety for her to be billeted at while investigations were made into her situation – for which we’d obviously need that interpreter – and the circumstances that had brought her to us. As a 14-year-old there was no question of her going to supported lodgings placement; she needed full-time carers, as well as an education. Not to mention health care, which would obviously include a doctor and a dentist, as well as access to an optician and a school nurse. These things were standard in the UK, of course, but I knew nothing of the system from which Adrianna had come.
All this, however, was to be arranged down the line. In the short term we urgently needed an interpreter, which, once the little paperwork we could deal with was quickly dispatched, John promised he would return with the following morning.
‘Well, in theory,’ he said, as he put his papers away and prepared to leave us. ‘It’s just occurred to me that our usual woman is away on holiday, so it might prove to be much easier said than actually done. If so, I guess it’s going to have to be Google Translate!’
In the end it wasn’t necessary for us to break out the laptop, because just as he’d hoped, John was back with an interpreter the following morning, just after Tyler – much disgruntled – had already left for school. He’d already, it seemed, taken quite a shine to our latest family member, and was disappointed that I hadn’t dragged her from her bed before he went.
And ‘dragged’ was the operative word. I showed the men into the usual seats around the dining table then hotfooted it upstairs to wake Adrianna before making coffee, thankful for the ten-minute warning John had texted (which had at least given me time to dress), having the previous evening told me they’d be coming around ten.
And, boy, she took some waking. With the curtains shut tight, and her burrowed completely under the duvet, it was like walking into a tomb. And when she did wake and I explained they’d come earlier than expected, she showed zero enthusiasm for getting up and meeting her new interrogator, even when I indicated that she could do so in her dressing gown, not least because 8.45 a.m. was a very teenager-unfriendly time of day at the best of times. And these were definitely not the best of times.
I couldn’t say I blamed her. Though I didn’t yet know how long she’d been sleeping rough (something, among many other things, that I now aimed to find out), there was still the small matter that she’d travelled several hundred miles the previous day, was unwell, among strangers, and with her future uncertain. I think I’d have preferred to stay in bed as well.
‘I’m sorry,’ John said, as I returned to the dining room and promised that Adrianna would be down shortly. ‘It’s just that Mr Kanski here is on a tight schedule today and it was a question of making hay while the sun shone.’
‘That’s fine,’ I reassured him. ‘What would you both like to drink?’
‘Er, nothing,’ John answered, glancing at the other man before speaking. ‘Tight for time, as I say …’
‘Up to you,’ I said. ‘But I’m having one. It won’t take long, and –’ I indicated upstairs with a nod.
But the man shook his head. ‘No, thanks all the same,’ he answered stiffly.
I went out into the kitchen, catching John’s eye as I left. Looking at Mr Kanski, I’d had that thing happen. That thing – thankfully it only happens to me rarely – where a person does something – some small thing; it’s often not a big thing – to make you form an unfavourable first impression. There was nothing about Mr Kanski that I could really put my finger on. He was the sort of unremarkable, soberly dressed man I’d half-expected. Late thirties, perhaps, or early forties. The sort of person who wouldn’t really make any sort of impression if they were sitting beside you on a bus. But there was something that set my teeth on edge about him nevertheless. He wasn’t exactly impolite but then he wasn’t exactly on the same page as me either. I got no sense that Adrianna’s desperate circumstances particularly moved him, even though I felt absolutely sure John would have conveyed the distressing nature of them to him on the way here. Plus there was this sense I had – strongly – that some words had been exchanged between them. That ‘fitting us in’ was some major inconvenience.
As well it might be, I thought, as I popped my head out of the kitchen door and hollered ‘Adrianna, how are you doing?’ up the stairs. I did it as much for the man’s benefit as anything. It might well be that he had much bigger translation fish to fry and that coming to chat to our 14-year-old runaway was indeed a bit of a pain.
Even so it rankled and, as I came out of the kitchen to see Adrianna starting down the stairs, I nodded towards the living-room door and pulled a conspirator’s face – just a very slight one – to let her know he seemed a grumpy old sod.
Of course, what Adrianna made of all my gurning could only be guessed at, but it was an irrelevance in any case, because as soon as we all gathered at the table I could see, just by her body language, that she felt the same about him as I did.
And she dealt with it in the traditional teenagerly way, by switching off. You could almost hear the click. And what she started with her expression, she finished with her body language; she didn’t so much sit, as slither down into the dining chair, sitting back, looking across the table with tired, wary eyes. Quite apart from anything else, she looked ill. Definitely as if she was still running a temperature, and I had to fight an impulse to reach across and place the flat of my hand against her head. Perhaps having the man round for an interrogation so soon wasn’t a very good idea. It wasn’t as if there was some huge rush to all this, after all. It wasn’t like anybody was going anywhere.
John cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. ‘Adrianna, this is Mr Kanski,’ he explained, a little over-brightly. ‘He’s come to help with the translation of our conversation.’ And as if via autocue, because I didn’t see any sort of sign pass between them, Mr Kanski duly translated what he said. I had to admit, he seemed good at it.
‘So,’ John continued, ‘we need to find out a little more about you, Adrianna. Then we will know how best to help you. Is that okay?’
The man began translating this as well, and, seeing Adrianna’s glazed expression, I decided to help things along a bit by getting her some pills.
‘Sorry,’ I said, as he glanced irritably at me, ‘I just want to pop into the kitchen and grab Adrianna some water and paracetamol. She’s not very well,’ I added, looking at Mr Kanski. He nodded. ‘But please feel free to carry on without me,’ I added. ‘I’m aware that time’s an issue.’
Smiling politely, I then got up and left the room.
I was gone no time at all – couldn’t have been much more than a couple of minutes – but by the time I returned John had already scribbled a fair bit on his pad. I couldn’t see what, but as I put the tablets and water in front of Adrianna I could sense a definite tension in the room.
The translator was speaking again, obviously reiterating some lengthy question John had put to her while I was in the kitchen, and as he spoke I could see Adrianna already forming a head shake. And then another. Then a shoulder shrug and spread of her palms.
