that went on in her own home, I had a hunch she’d be sorely lacking in normal play dates.
‘In fact,’ I told her, ‘I thought I’d have Riley bring the children over today. So you can have someone to play with. Would you like that?’
She nodded, seeming ever so slightly cheered up by the news. A temporary respite from the fear and bewilderment, at least. Which would still be there – how could it not? – but at least she’d be distracted. ‘So,’ I said, ‘after breakfast, we’ll run a nice bath for you, shall we? With lots of bubbles and ducks and mermaids, and then we’ll get you dried and dressed. I’ve found some lovely outfits for you to choose from –’
‘But not high heels and lipstick,’ she said, pouting now a little.
‘No, sweetie, of course not. Not high heels and lipstick. Just nice little girls’ clothes. I think I have a princess jumper – would you like to wear that? It has Rapunzel on the front, and someone else on the back, and I’ve got some lovely pink leggings to go with it. They’ll just fit you.’
‘But not high heels and lipstick,’ she said again. It wasn’t a question. ‘I don’t want no high heels and lipstick today.’
Since Riley was climbing the metaphorical walls just as much as I was plumbing the metaphorical depths, she was only too happy to bring the kids over to play, seeing it as something of an unexpected bonus.
‘How’s she been anyway?’ she asked, when she arrived and had disgorged her small three-person wrecking crew into my festive front room.
‘Up and down,’ I said, ‘as you’d expect, but mostly up for the moment. Forgetting everything else – which I am trying extremely hard to do – I think she must have led a pretty lonely life. So this is a blessing for both of us, even if it does mean my to-do list will have to go hang.’
And, as I so often did, having adult sensibilities, I watched them all shouting and laughing and pulling out the dressing-up clothes, and found myself marvelling at just how quickly Darby was assimilated into the crew; not to mention happily taking Leo’s orders. ‘You’d never even know, would you?’ I mused to Riley, as Darby, in her turn, began organising Marley Mae’s toy buggy for her. And you really wouldn’t. She seemed a world away from the distress of having been dumped with strangers. Children, particularly young ones, really were astonishingly adaptable, their ability to shut off parts of their brain and compartmentalise never failing to impress me.
Perhaps the placement wouldn’t turn out to be as traumatic as I’d predicted. Perhaps Darby would be resigned, in the short term, distracted by the children, and we’d manage to do all we could under the circumstances – give her a peaceful and as-happy-as-it-could-be kind of Christmas, and see what was what in the New Year. We were due to return to full-time fostering then, after all.
Which just goes to show that, when the situation seems to need it, adults are good at compartmentalising as well.
Chapter 5
The next day, to my undying gratitude, Riley brought the grandchildren over again and babysat Darby for a couple of hours, so that Mike and I could dash into town and get the poor girl some presents.
Darby had come with nothing, of course, but that wasn’t to say that some familiar things couldn’t be collected for her. So I’d called Katy and double-checked, and she’d even managed to get a message through to Darby’s parents on remand. And it turned out that they’d not done their Christmas shopping yet (no surprise there), so, no, there were no presents to be collected. And no, we couldn’t have access to the house, because it was a crime scene – so that was pretty much that.
It felt weird, that; discussing such normal family matters with Katy, about a pair of parents who’d used their own child as a tiny porn star – the toast of the most depraved websites.
I pushed the thought away. My focus was on Darby and Christmas and the business of making sure she had a sackful of presents to open on Christmas morning – an emergency payment was now winging its way into my bank account, and I intended to use most of it on the purchase of things she could unwrap and play with and be distracted by.
This was no wanton extravagance on my part. The grandchildren invariably spent Christmas Day at ours, which was wonderful, and our tradition was for them to open most of their presents once the whole family were assembled. To bring Darby into that mix, with just a very modest number of presents, would only add to her sense of abandonment and distress.
We’d had the odd child, of course, for whom Christmas had to be a non-day, so raw were the memories and the pain, but in Darby we had a child who would appear to gain a great deal emotionally from being in the bosom of a family – of being wrapped in the security blanket of family rituals and love.
I therefore shopped speedily and well. And by the time Mike and I returned we were weighed down with riches; a baby doll, a little pram (she had been very covetous of Marley Mae’s buggy the previous day), a selection of doll’s clothes, a couple of new outfits for Darby herself, some books, a big jigsaw and, of course, the obligatory chocolate selection box. I was quite sure we’d spent a lot more than would be going into my account the following week, but it would be worth it, I knew, to see her face.
We opted to leave it all in the car, planning to bring it in and wrap it once she was in bed, and headed up the path, gasping for coffee.
‘That’s odd,’ Mike observed as he singled out his door key on the car fob. ‘Very quiet in there, don’t you think?’
I listened. It was. And the quiet was even more obvious when Mike slipped the key in the door and swung it open. ‘That’s some magic touch,’ he observed as he slung the keys down and shrugged his coat off.
‘Either that,’ I said, ‘or she’s got them playing sleeping logs.’
It was neither. They were quiet because they were stuffing their faces with popcorn, watching another Christmas movie (Elf this time – just a glance and I could identify them all).
Riley herself was sitting at the dining table flicking through a Christmas gift guide. She looked up then, and I noticed a strange expression on her face.
‘Everything okay?’ I asked her, as Mike and I went through the living room and into the dining room. ‘I see you’ve got them all settled down. And if that’s not a Christmas miracle, I don’t know what is!’
Taking off my cardigan, I then noticed Levi glancing strangely at his mother. Riley gestured to the folding doors that we hardly ever used, but which could divide the dining and living areas into two proper rooms.
‘Come in here,’ she said quietly. ‘And close the doors for a minute.’
I did so, a sinking feeling appearing from somewhere in the pit of my stomach. We both sat down. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, half not wanting to know.
Riley glanced at both of us in turn. ‘I don’t even know where to start,’ she said. ‘Honestly.’
‘What’s happened, love?’ Mike asked her. ‘Just spit it out. Bloody hell, we’ve only been gone an hour. How bad can it be?’
Nearer two, I thought distractedly. But that was of no consequence. Riley shook her head. ‘Bad, Dad, believe me.’
I’m not usually one for regrets in life generally, and, by and large,
