hadn’t been injured today, it was totally real to her. It sounded like she was remembering being hurt in the past, and was transposing the memory on to the present. We stood in the bathroom for a while, until she’d calmed down, then we went back to the lounge to rejoin the others.
At eight o’clock we stood on the doorstep and waved as my parents and my brother’s family drove off home. I closed the front door. I was relieved that Christmas was over, even though it had gone as well as I could have hoped. Jodie had been somewhat overawed by the occasion and the large gathering, but she had behaved reasonably, and I hoped that some of the warmth of the season had got through to her. While it hadn’t proved a breakthrough, and hadn’t touched Jodie emotionally in the way that Callum had been touched, I hoped that Christmas would now mean something good to Jodie, and that she’d had a small taste of what other children enjoyed every year.
As the New Year approached, my spirits rose. A new year offers a new start, and anything seems possible on the first of January. Giving up smoking, however, was not on my list of resolutions, and I was now sneaking outside upwards of seven times a day, deluding myself that I would quit again when things were calmer. But when on earth would that be?
Despite my hopes, Jodie showed no improvement as the New Year passed. Her behaviour continued to be difficult and hostile, and her nights were increasingly disturbed by nightmares and hallucinations. She was having more incidences of remembered pain now, and these became linked to disclosures; Jodie would complain that her arm hurt, and this would lead to the memory of her mother hitting her with an ashtray, or her father scalding her with hot water. In all of these cases Jodie’s pain seemed to be completely genuine, despite my attempts to explain to her that the injuries she was describing had happened months, sometimes years, ago.
Although I didn’t think she was fabricating the remembered pain, I was becoming increasingly aware that she was lying in other situations. Often, she was so convincing that I found myself questioning what I’d seen, and doubting the evidence of my own eyes. If I caught her red-handed in the middle of some misdemeanour, she would so emphatically deny that it was happening that I had to stop and reassess what I was looking at. She had sometimes told lies when she first arrived, but I had assumed that she had been reverting to past experience, telling lies to avoid punishment, so it had been somewhat understandable. Now, however, she must have known that she didn’t have to worry, that there was never any risk of her being physically or emotionally punished. Why, then, did she feel it necessary to deny her actions so vehemently?
She also started making false accusations, making up stories about the other children, even when I was in the room and had obviously seen that nothing had happened. She would claim Lucy or Paula had kicked, pinched or bitten her, which was clearly ludicrous. If anything, they were scared of her, quite understandably. When I pointed out to her that I had been in the room the whole time, and had seen that no one had gone near her, she flared up.
‘She did. She did! Why don’t you ever believe me?’
She was so passionate and convincing, I was often tempted to reconsider, and had to remind myself of what I’d seen.
At other times I caught her deliberately hurting herself. It wasn’t like the time she had cut herself so chillingly. Now it seemed more as though it was done in anger, in a fit of fury or passion, when she would thump herself, pinch herself, thud her head against something or pull her hair. Then she blamed it on one of her imaginary friends. Some friend, I thought. I would have to patiently tell her that actually she was the one who was doing it, as no one else had touched her. This self-harming was one of the most disturbing aspects of Jodie’s behaviour, and the pinches, scratches and thumps she inflicted sometimes produced marks, which she then used to convince herself even further that someone had been attacking her.
Even more worryingly, a week into the New Year the different voices she sometimes used began to suddenly take on identities of their own. Adrian’s mobile phone went missing, and after a lengthy search I eventually found it in Jodie’s toy box, which was on a shelf in the conservatory. Jodie hadn’t stolen anything before, but she did have problems respecting other people’s property, and I had been trying to teach her that we couldn’t just help ourselves to what we wanted, that we had to ask the owner first.
‘It wasn’t me, honestly,’ she repeated, looking me straight in the eyes and speaking in a babyish voice. ‘It really wasn’t. I’m not big enough to reach.’
Adrian and I both looked at the shelf, on which Jodie had just placed the toy box with ease.
‘Of course you are,’ said Adrian. ‘It’s just above your waist.’
‘No,’ she insisted, heightening her baby voice. ‘It was her.’ She pointed to the space beside her. ‘It was Jodie.’
‘You’re Jodie,’ I said wearily.
‘No. I’m Amy. I’m only two, and I can’t reach.’ She rubbed her eyes, and pouted like a toddler. I told her again that she mustn’t take Adrian’s mobile, and left it at that.
A day later, the separation of her personality took on another, more sinister form. She was up at 5.30 in the morning, so I went in to settle her. She was sitting on the bed playing with her music box, and clapping loudly.
‘Quietly, Jodie,’ I said. ‘Find something to do that’s quiet if you’ve had enough sleep.’
She spun round to face me. Her features were hard and distorted. ‘No,’ she shouted, in a gruff masculine voice. ‘Get out or I’ll rip you to pieces. Get out! Bitch!’
I instinctively took a step back. ‘Jodie! Don’t use that word. Now calm down. Find something to do quietly. I mean it. Now.’
She stood and brought herself to her full height. She advanced towards me, with her hands clawed, baring her teeth. ‘I’m not Jodie,’ she growled. ‘I’m Reg. Get out or I’ll fucking kill you.’
I wasn’t going to tackle her in that mood. I closed the door and waited on the landing. My heart was racing. I heard her pacing the floor, cursing my name, along with the rest of the family’s. ‘Wankers. Evil wankers. I’ll rip their heads off.’ She growled again, and then it went quiet. I opened the door and looked in. Jodie was in bed looking calmly at a book. Apparently, the old Jodie had returned.
As a foster carer, I’d seen some pretty extreme behaviour in children and to a certain extent I was used to it – but not this extreme. This was new. Jodie’s imaginary friends seemed to be taking her over.
‘Who’s Reg?’ I asked later that morning, as we emptied the dishwasher together. Jodie looked up at me uncomprehendingly. ‘Do you know someone called Reg? I thought you mentioned his name when I came into your room first thing this morning?’
She shook her head, and carried on sorting the cutlery. ‘There’s someone on Mum’s telly called Reg, but he’s horrible. I don’t talk to him.’
‘And there’s no one else you know called Reg?’
‘No.’
And I believed her. Reg, like Amy, seemed to have taken on a life of his own, without Jodie’s knowledge or consent.
When I told Jill about this, she was very surprised. ‘This is highly unusual. If I’m right, then it sounds like D.I.D. – Dissociative Identity Disorder.’
