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 was reasonable that Edith would want to check what I’d told her, although the social services had been quick enough to believe Aneta when she’d made the allegations against me.
Molly and Kit were still playing nicely. ‘Edith is in the hall using her phone,’ I said. ‘You two stay here and I’ll make you a drink and a snack.’ They usually had one about now.
From the kitchen I could hear Edith on her phone. She’d got through to Tess and was mainly listening, interjecting with the occasional ‘Oh’, ‘I see’ and ‘Really?’
I cut up some cheese into little squares, halved some grapes, sliced a banana and arranged it in bowls for the children’s snack. I poured their drinks – Kit’s into his trainer cup and Molly’s into a plastic beaker – and then set them ready on the table. I called Kit and Molly in and made myself a cup of coffee.
Edith finished on the phone. ‘We’re in here!’ I called.
‘You were right,’ she said, coming into our kitchen-diner.
I looked pointedly in the direction of the children, reminding her not to let anything slip in front of them. ‘Do you want a coffee?’ I offered.
‘Yes, please.’
I made her a coffee and then, leaving Kit and Molly at the table eating their snacks, Edith and I went into the hall, where I could keep an eye on the children but they couldn’t easily hear us.
‘Tess confirmed that the allegations against you were unfounded,’ Edith said. ‘I don’t think I need to take a statement from you, but I’ll check with my manager when I get back to the office.’
I nodded. Whether Edith had to take a statement or not was the last thing on my mind. ‘Have you ever come across FDIA before?’ I asked, still reeling from the shock of it.
‘Yes. When I worked in child protection – before I became a supervising social worker – we had something similar. A mother made her child ill by crushing up her antidepressant tablets and putting them into the child’s food. The child nearly died.’
‘That’s awful,’ I said, horrified.
‘I believe there are about two hundred cases of FDIA or Munchausen syndrome by proxy a year in this country alone, as well as more cases of just Munchausen’s syndrome, when the person pretends they are ill or makes themselves ill. And that’s only the ones that are detected. You remember the case of Nurse Beverley Allitt? She was convicted of murdering infants in the hospital where she worked as a trainee nurse.’
‘Yes, it was horrendous,’ I said. Most people would remember the case. It had been widely reported in the news and had shocked the whole country.
‘She was diagnosed with suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy – or FDIA as it’s now called,’ Edith said.
I shuddered. Dear little Molly and Kit could have easily died.
‘Tess has suspended contact,’ I said. ‘She’s asked me to tell the children, but not the reason. She is going to see them next week. It’s difficult to know what to say to them, they’re so young.’
‘Do you want to do it while I’m here?’
‘Yes, we may as well.’
We returned to the kitchen-diner where Molly and Kit were finishing their snacks and drinks. ‘You are doing well,’ I said, sitting at the table and setting down my mug of coffee. Edith sat next to me, opposite the children. There was no easy way to tell them that they wouldn’t be seeing
