sick. ‘Those poor children,’ I said. ‘They’ve been ill for most of their lives and needn’t have been. I can’t believe this.’
‘I know. We’re struggling here too. Kit and Molly will be staying with you for now.’
‘You’ve decided that?’
‘Yes, I’ve spoken to my manager. In view of what’s come to light, the probability is that Aneta made up the allegations about you to deflect attention away from herself. The police are of the same opinion.’
‘That’s a relief. My family and I were very upset at the suggestion we could have intentionally harmed the children.’
‘Filip has apologized. He has asked that the children remain with you for now, as they are settled. I’ll notify Edith so she can inform the other carers.’
‘She’s due here soon,’ I said. ‘Shall I tell her?’
‘Yes, please. She can phone me if she has any questions. But I can only tell her what I’ve told you. I’ll know more once both parents have been interviewed by the police. Thank you, Cathy.’
‘For what?’
‘Keeping a very detailed food diary and making the connection.’
‘It was you who suggested the food diary,’ I pointed out. ‘I was logging everything, thinking I was going to be able to identify a food allergy. It would never have occurred to me it could be this.’
‘No. The doctors might have eventually made a connection, but by then it might have been too late. The social services became involved because of Kit’s broken arm and other suspected non-accidental injuries. None of us considered FDIA, although personally I thought there was more going on with Aneta than met the eye. But that was a hunch, no more. Thankfully, Filip brought in the bottle of linctus.’
‘How did he know what it was? Did he just find it?’
‘He told us that Aneta was always giving the children medicine, so he didn’t think anything of it. He worked long hours and left the childcare to Aneta. When he saw her adding the linctus to the juice to take to contact, he queried it. Aneta told him you weren’t giving the children their medicine and that was why they were sick, so she wanted to make sure they had it. Sometimes she gave them juice at contact – which I’m guessing is when they were sick soon after – and the rest was sent home to you. The contact supervisor didn’t notice the packets were already open. There was no reason for her to check. Filip has told us that Aneta kept the medicines in a locked cabinet in their bathroom and she had the key. He only became suspicious when you made the link between the children being sick and the food and drink they were having at contact. When we took the juice and biscuits from the Family Centre to be analysed, he confronted Aneta and demanded the key to the medicine cabinet, where he found the bottle of linctus. He said he was horrified when he read on the label that the medicine was used to induce vomiting.’
‘So you don’t think he was involved?’
‘It’s unlikely. He was very upset and remorseful when he came in, and is blaming himself for not spotting sooner that something was wrong. But that’s for the police investigation to determine. I’ll be in touch with a date to visit you and the children next week.’
‘All right. Thank you.’
Stunned from what I’d heard, I returned to the living room and, replacing the handset in its cradle, sat heavily on the sofa.
‘Look what we’ve made!’ Molly cried, proudly showing me a construction from building bricks.
‘Very nice.’
‘Kit helped.’
‘Good.’
Aneta had been intentionally making her children ill to gain attention and sympathy! It seemed incredible and beggared belief. I’d heard of the condition FDIA. Indeed, a few years back I’d read an article – a true-life story – that had featured a woman who as a child had been repeatedly made ill by her mother. It had gone undetected for eight years until she’d finally been able to tell a doctor what her mother was doing. The mother had received a prison sentence in a secure psychiatric hospital. I’d never personally come across a case of FDIA until now, and I hoped I never would again.
I remembered Tess telling me when she’d first placed Molly and Kit that Aneta had taken the children to the doctor and hospital dozens and dozens of times. It was horrendous to think what they had been through. All those unnecessary tests, some of which had been very uncomfortable, when the doctors had tried to establish the cause of their illness. It would be upsetting enough to have to put a child through all of that if it was necessary and they were genuinely ill, but it was monstrous if they were not and it was avoidable. Molly’s and Kit’s young lives had been blighted by sickness, and it was their mother’s fault!
As I watched the children playing, my heart sank at the thought that I had added to their suffering by giving them food and drink from contact, which contained the linctus to make them ill. I remembered Molly once saying that my juice was nicer than her mother’s. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now I wondered if the linctus had made the juice taste odd. Lucy hadn’t mentioned it when she’d had their juice and been sick, but I would ask her later when she came home. I had to admit it was clever of Aneta, adding the poison to the packets of juice and then sending them home. She would have known some of it was bound to be consumed on days when the children didn’t have contact, thus deflecting any suspicion away from her. Clever, crafty, cunning, devious and vicious, I thought. Had the children only ever been ill just after contact, I might have made the connection sooner. Although I might have put it down to the emotional upset of having to say goodbye to their parents, as I had done when Molly and Kit had first arrived. I remembered the night Molly had told me it was thinking of her mummy that had made her sick. I had assumed she meant she was upset and missed her, but now it had a different connotation – as if she’d associated being sick with her mother. The two had become synonymous.
All those times Aneta had protested her innocence and I’d almost believed her and wondered if the social services had got it wrong. Yet shouldn’t Filip have spotted something sooner, living in the same house? Maybe not, for, as Tess said, he worked long hours and left the childcare to Aneta.
I was suddenly jolted from my thoughts by a ring on the front doorbell. I glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was nearly eleven o’clock. ‘That’ll be Edith,’ I said, standing. I left the children playing as I went to answer the door.
‘Hello,’ Edith said, business-like and sombre. ‘I’ll have to take a statement from you, but I’m aware the children are here. Can they play in another room?’
‘Statement?’ I asked, confused.
‘Yes, in respect of the allegations.’
‘Oh. That’s all changed. Tess has just phoned. The children can stay with me for now.’ I then told her what Tess had said, staying in the hall so that Molly and Kit wouldn’t hear.
Edith’s face went through a spectrum of emotions: doubt, shock, horror and back to doubt. ‘I’ll need to speak to Tess to confirm all of this,’ she said, and took her mobile phone from her jacket pocket.
‘I’ll leave you to it then.’ I returned down the hall to the living room.
I supposed it
