the one that I had no choice but to create: the speller out of ground rules on all fronts.
But perhaps that was going to happen anyway. Emma was just a child herself, after all. And though she wouldn’t have to sit down and work through the list of points and privileges that was the basis of our specialist fostering programme, she perhaps did need to have certain things made clear.
Roman had gone straight to sleep after his morning feed, so I suggested Emma do likewise, and while she got her head down I got on the phone to Maggie about Emma’s mobile.
‘Oh, it’s absolutely fine to let her have it,’ she reassured me. ‘Just as you would with any teen of her age. Unless you have good reason to think you shouldn’t, obviously. Why – do you?’
‘No, not really,’ I said, swallowing the slight guilt I felt. ‘We were just thinking of the circumstances and wanted to be sure, that’s all, because she’s a little older than the kids we normally have. What would constitute “good reason” in this case?’
‘Oh, the usual,’ Maggie said. ‘If she’s sitting chatting on it for long periods late at night, that sort of thing. In which case you’d obviously need her to leave it downstairs when she goes to bed.’
All of which constituted sound advice, I thought. And would be something with which I could reassure Mike when he got home. Though it wasn’t late-night phone calls that I needed to have stern words about – it was the thing I’d neglected to mention to Maggie, the middle of the night sessions on my laptop. So that was exactly what I did, just as soon as she was downstairs.
‘It won’t happen again, Casey,’ she promised plaintively. ‘Honest it won’t. I was just so lonely – it’s scary being up in the middle of the night all by yourself, when everyone else is sleeping and everything, and now I don’t have my iPod to listen to I just get so freaked out. An’ I get so tired, I can hardly keep awake without anything to listen to. And I just saw it there – and you did say I could borrow it – and I just wanted to catch up with my friends. I’ve hardly seen any of them since Roman was born …’ She sighed. ‘I just wanted to cheer myself up, that was all.’
Which left me with very little I could say, because, much as I knew it had been important to discipline her, at the same time my heart really went out to her. I remembered when Riley had been small and Mike had needed to be in the warehouse overnight for some reason and how frightened I’d been, left alone in the house with a tiny baby. And I’d been an adult, not a fourteen-year-old among strangers. I also remembered how when Kieron had been Emma’s age he could hardly bear us being out for an evening, he’d get so twitched on his own, let alone a night.
And Emma had another dependent human being to think about now, too. Didn’t matter that some might want to argue that it was self-inflicted. It would have been hard, and would still be hard for some time to come: hard to leave the usual childish things behind her, along with all her unencumbered friends. And such a shock to the system to one day be so carefree and the next have such an enormous responsibility.
No, I couldn’t come down too hard on her because I did understand. I said so. ‘But when I said you could borrow the laptop,’ I pointed out, ‘it was on the basis that you asked me first, wasn’t it?’
She nodded glumly. But then brightened. ‘But if I play my cards right I’ll have my own soon anyway, won’t I? So it won’t be an issue, will it? And in the meantime I promise I’ll only use yours if you say it’s okay.’
‘Which is never going to be in the middle of the night, I’m afraid,’ I pointed out. After my chat with Maggie, this seemed fairly essential. ‘But what about your iPod? What happened to it? Did it break?’
‘No, I … well, actually, yes, kind of. It needed fixing and I never got it back off them after.’
‘So should we follow that up?’
Emma shook her head. ‘No, you’re all right. No need. I don’t think it was fixable.’
‘Well,’ I said, hearing the tell-tale bleat of a waking baby, ‘I’m sure Riley or Kieron will be able to find you one – I think they both still have their old ones. No vouching for what’s on them, of course – though I suspect you and Kieron share a taste in music – but he’s a music whizz so I’m sure he can sort something out for you. That way, the nights won’t seem so scary, eh?’
Which seemed to make Emma brighten. And as she skipped off to get Roman from his cot, I felt the heaviness lift. It hadn’t been nearly as bad as I’d thought. Nor would it be, I decided, when I looked in on the pair of them an hour later. They were both curled on the sofa watching – of all things – a cartoon. And the thing that most struck me was that while Roman was sucking contentedly on his bottle, Emma, her hair once again scraped into a hurried and messy ponytail, was unthinkingly sucking her thumb. Who needed the most mothering in this scenario, I thought ruefully. The truth was that, actually, they both did.
Hannah was still going to be on her three-times-a-week phase for the first few weeks Emma was with us, and scheduled to come pretty much every other day. And by the time of the third visit, which was early the following week, I’d come to see a pattern had emerged. I wasn’t privy to what had happened before she’d come to us, obviously, but I could see Hannah’s visits really loomed in Emma’s mind.
I didn’t try to draw her out on the subject – I’d simply watch and see how things developed – but what was clear was that, like a nervous beginner anticipating their next driving lesson, Emma’s mood grew increasingly anxious and raddled as the time of the next visit came around.
That the visits were necessary was not in dispute. As Roman’s social worker, Hannah’s responsibility was towards him. Where it was Maggie’s job to oversee Emma’s personal welfare, Hannah had no such professional remit. It was her job to look out for the interests of Emma’s child, and if that meant parting him from his mother, then so be it. So I was well aware that a tough assessment was vital for the baby’s welfare – I just hated seeing how much that stressed and upset Emma, who, knowing she’d be on show and scrutinised, presumably, would become negative and fatalistic and all fingers and thumbs. It almost felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy – a bit like being so nervous about your driving test that you shake so much you can barely drive. Except the stakes were way higher than being stuck with getting the bus. It was a cycle I was determined to break.
‘Oh, Casey,’ Emma wailed as the appointed hour grew nearer, ‘can you help me find some clothes for him? I can’t find anything decent to put him in!’
‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘There’s plenty of clean babygros in the airing cupboard. Just put him in one of those. He’ll be fine.’
She wasn’t to be mollified. ‘Oh, I wish he’d been a girl. Girls are easy. You can put them in frilly stuff and make them look all pretty. Boys’ clothes are shit. He always looks a mess.’
If it weren’t for the need to give her a stern look about the swearing, I would have laughed out loud at this. It was just such a crazy thing to get in such a flap about. How things must have changed. But perhaps they hadn’t – perhaps teen mums just cared because they were teens. And given the time teenage girls often spent caring about clothes shopping, perhaps it was just an extension of that.
‘Emma, calm down,’ I said again. ‘Roman always looks beautiful. And you know, Hannah doesn’t care a bit what he’s dressed in. All that concerns her is that he’s clean and he’s healthy.’
I fished out a babygro and commanded her to put him in it. I
