Little Prisoners: A tragic story of siblings trapped in a world of abuse and suffering

I went over to him and rubbed his shoulder. ‘You okay, love?’

He straightened. ‘No, not really. God, love, it’s appalling. I have never seen anything like that in my life. Well, except perhaps on telly, but – sheesh! I just can’t believe the state of them! Can you?’ I shook my head. ‘I can’t believe,’ he went on, ‘that any mother or father – particularly a mother – could allow her own children to get into such a state.’

I sat down and lit my cigarette. ‘I know, but, love, it happens. And if she’s got learning difficulties, too … But I do know what you mean. It’s one thing to see it in the papers or on the news, but, this – having to clean up those kids – I agree. It is shocking. It really brings it home.’

In truth, it wasn’t perhaps quite as shocking for me as it was for Mike and Kieron. My years in school had given me plenty of insights into the state of kids from some impoverished families. But not like this; this was neglect on a completely different scale.

But at least we’d got them clean, I thought, which was a start. Now it was just a case of doing what we could for them, before passing them all on to their long-term carers. And we could do so much, I thought, putting out my cigarette, and going back inside. And the feeling was endorsed when I went back into the dining room to find them huddled up on either side of Kieron, who was playing a game with them, starting to draw cartoons and having them try to be the first one to guess which characters they were.

It was a fascinating tableau and I watched from the doorway for a while. Ashton – being the eldest – was trying to look cool and disinterested, whereas Olivia, in complete contrast, was rocking back and forth in her excitement, making squealing sounds and chewing on her hand. I watched Kieron gently remove her fist from her mouth and encourage her to try and have a guess.

‘It’s G … G …’ Olivia trilled excitedly. ‘Ash, it’s G … G …’ She reached across and grabbed Ashton’s damp hair and tugged on it. Now it was clean, I could see just how long it was. I made a mental note: cherubic though he looked with his now soft and curly locks, I must get it cut as a matter of priority. ‘Get off, Livs!’ Ashton snapped, clipping his little sister around the head. ‘I know who it is, okay? I’m not thick!’

‘Hey,’ Kieron chided. ‘Less of the hitting, okay? That’s naughty, Ashton. And well done Olivia! It is Garfield. You clever girl, you!’

I was amazed. I couldn’t believe my son had understood what on earth she was on about, because I certainly hadn’t. I was just about to go in and congratulate Olivia myself, when I heard a key in the lock and saw a shadow through the glass in the front door. It was Riley and Levi, bearing clothing.

Riley smiled at the children, who were studying her warily. ‘And who do we have here, then?’ she asked the two of them. ‘Hey, Levi,’ she added. ‘Some new friends for you!’

At the mention of the baby, the children’s wariness disappeared instantly, and they both got down from the table and clustered round the buggy. Levi, on form, did his new party trick. He was twenty months old now, a proper toddler, and his most fun thing to do was to flap his arms frantically and go ‘Hiyah! Hiyah! Hiyah!’

Olivia, particularly, was enchanted, and I was reminded that these kids were probably very used to babies, having lived cheek by jowl, probably, with three of them. ‘Hiyah,’ she mimicked at him. ‘Hiyah, liccle baby! Oh, you’re so sweet! Like my dolly! Who’s called Polly! Hang on, babes, I’ll jus’ go get her!’

Olivia sped off upstairs, and Riley laughed as she began pulling carrier bags off the handles of the buggy, so I could inspect the new things she’d got for them both. ‘Got some live wires, then, I see!’

And the upbeat tone continued for what remained of the afternoon, the children clearly responding well to both Kieron and Riley. If anything, they seemed more relaxed around our kids than they had been so far with the perhaps more authoritarian figures of me and Mike. Which was no bad thing, I mused, as I left them to it and went into the kitchen to clear the decks for tea, because it meant – if I was lucky – that both my kids would be happy to help out a bit with the pair of them. Which was no small thing. Sophia, who’d been twelve, had had multiple issues, and there had been multiple occasions when she’d clashed with one or more of us. We’d had as many traumatic, stressful times with her as good ones.

This, on the other hand, seemed far less complicated a business. We’d enjoy our short time with these little ones, all of us, as a family. And as Riley had plans to become a foster carer herself, once hers were older, I knew she saw the hands-on experience as useful training.

In the meantime, I needed to feed my new charges, and managed to establish, once I’d worked out that offering them choices was an alien concept, that sausages and beans would be a sensible thing to cook.

‘But we can’t use these,’ Olivia told me, as I handed out their cutlery, just before I dished up. ‘We’re too liccle for them things. We need spoons.’

And some basic training, I thought silently, as I swapped knives and forks for dessert spoons for today. As of tomorrow, I’d start teaching them some everyday skills. And, boy, was I glad I’d opted not to dress them in their shorts and T-shirts, because even with the cutlery they professed to be used to, I’d never seen children – not those over six months of age, anyway – make such a comprehensive amount of mess in such a short space of time. By the time they had finished eating, half their tea was splattered over them – both their freshly washed hair and their newly scrubbed faces and their T-shirts one horrible sticky mess. The only plus side was that they still needed to have the nit lotion rinsed off, so at least they’d be in the bath again anyway.

As for the dining room, Mike was having to try extremely hard not to laugh his socks off. I’m a stickler for cleaning – borderline obsessive about it, actually – and I could see he was finding this chimps’ tea-party hilarious.

‘Oh dear,’ he laughed wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘You’re going to have such fun with this little lot!’

He was still giggling about it, hours later, in bed. He couldn’t stop. And though I kept trying to chastise him, it eventually became infectious. It was funny. There was me, Mrs Doubtfire – Mrs Hyperactive Houseproud – and I couldn’t have picked a more challenging pair of urchins if I tried. So I laughed along with him. This would be an adventure, I decided. And after the stress of our last foster child, a potentially much less harrowing ride. And they were both of them so sweet, that you couldn’t help but want to hug them.

‘Rather you than me, love,’ Mike qualified, grinning. ‘At least till I’m convinced it’s definitely hasta la vista for the bugs.’

I started itching at the thought, but I drifted off happy. This would be fine. Two sweet innocent children who we could really do some good for.

Little did I know that, so far, we’d seen nothing.

Chapter 4

It felt like the middle of the night when I woke up. I didn’t know what it was that had woken me, either, only that something had startled me. I wasn’t sure what. Had I dreamt it? Imagined it? I reached across to press the light button on my alarm clock. 4 a.m. Maybe one of the kids had got up to use the toilet. I slipped out of bed quietly, so as not to wake Mike.

Once on the landing, tiptoeing quietly, I peeped in to check in Ashton’s room. I could hear him snoring gently, so it couldn’t have been him. But then I noticed that not only was Olivia’s door closed – I had left it open, as promised – but there was a strip of light visible at the bottom.

I pushed against the door softly, conscious that I didn’t want to frighten her, and as it began to open so did my mouth. I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

She was squatting on the bed, clutching what I realised was an open jar of jam, and met my gaze with huge terrified eyes.

‘Olivia?’ I said softly, though in incredulous tones. ‘What on earth is going on?’

She swiped her fringe from her eyes with a jam-covered hand. There was jam everywhere it seemed, on her face, in her hair, smeared down her front, on the bed. In fact, as I took in the scene I could believe it even less – the whole duvet was covered in food.

‘No, lady,’ she answered tremulously, scuttling towards the wall and clutching the jar even tighter to her chest. ‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anyfink!’

My principal reaction was one of sadness. In any other circumstance it would be one of anger, I knew, but looking at her, crouched in the midst of all this mess, the only thing I felt for her was pity. The bed was in chaos, playing host to an upturned bag of sugar, an open tub of butter and two empty boxes of cereal. There were also God only knew how many empty biscuit wrappers strewn around. She must have already had quite a feast. In fact, it looked, for all the world, like there had been a major eating binge, of the type you often hear about in magazines, illustrating the distressing practice of teenage bulimics. But this was a six-year-old – hardly more than a baby! What had prompted it, I wondered? This was surely not down to hunger. She’d eaten normally during the day and had done nothing to indicate she was starving, yet she’d amassed, and clearly munched her way through, one hell of a lot of food.

It was psychological, clearly. Something to do with her background. From what we knew, and from the scrawny state of them, it was highly likely food was scarce for these children. Perhaps this was a behaviour born out of fear about where the next meal might be coming from. Or perhaps sneaking down for food in the night was the only way she could be sure to get some. Poor little mite. I crossed the room and perched on the end of the bed.

‘Olivia, sweetheart,’ I said to her gently. ‘You mustn’t do things like this, love. It’s wrong. For one thing, you should be sleeping, and for another, it’s, well, it’s taking things that don’t belong to you, isn’t it? Stealing.’ She continued to stare at me, as if in a trance. ‘Love, were you hungry?’ I persisted. ‘Was that it?’

Now she shook her head. ‘Not hungry, miss. Sorry. I swear to God almighty, I won’t do it no more, miss. I promise!’

I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows at her strange choice of words, as I held my arms out to her, beckoning her towards me. ‘Come on love,’ I said softly, braced for the sticky paws that I knew would soon be wrapped around my neck. ‘Come here and let’s get you cleaned up, sweetheart. And get this bed straight so you can get back to sleep, eh?’

As I’d anticipated, Olivia let me scoop her into my arms, and after stripping her of her filthy nightwear and scrubbing her down with baby wipes – all of which she now seemed perfectly happy to submit to – I gathered the whole duvet and its contents into a ball, and replaced it with a spare from the airing cupboard. I could sort out the chaos in the morning.

Olivia then scooted meekly back under the clean covers. No point, I decided, in engaging her in further conversation. ‘There,’ I said simply, bending to plant a kiss on her forehead. ‘All tucked up, nice and clean. Now back to sleep, okay?’

She nodded and then obediently closed her eyes for me. But I was wide awake. I barely slept for the remainder of the night. These children were going to be some challenge.

‘So did you sleep at all, love?’ Mike asked, as I greeted the new day to see – and smell – a steaming mug of coffee being placed on my bedside table. I’d need it, I thought, as I pushed myself up to a sitting position and realised the lateness of the hour.

‘Not much.’

‘I thought not. So what happened, exactly? She wet the bed? I saw the bedding on the landing.’

I shook my head, and filled Mike in on what had actually happened. ‘Not unsurprising,’ was his considered opinion, once I’d finished. ‘They really do seem like something out of a Dickens novel, don’t they?’

I sipped my scalding but oh-so-much-needed coffee and frowned at him. ‘And it’s our job to haul them back to the 21st century.’

‘But not for long,’ Mike soothed. ‘Anyway, I’ll go down and sort the breakfast things, shall I?’

I grinned. ‘If you can find any cereal, that is!’

That was the good thing about mornings. A new day, and everything suddenly seemed more manageable. As I gathered both my wits and my dressing gown to face whatever this one held, I could hear the two of them chattering away happily in Olivia’s bedroom, and felt my normal positive, can-do mood returning. It was slightly dented, admittedly, when I went in there only to have my nose assaulted by the stench of urine, but common sense told me this was all par for the course. ‘Neglect’ was such a small word for such a big, wide-ranging, multi-faceted problem. These kids, it was clear, had never been potty trained. But that was something I could easily do for them, starting now.

The TV was blaring away to itself, and the two of them were sitting cross-legged on the floor, busy piecing together a jigsaw. ‘C’mon, kids,’ I said, stepping over them to go and open up a window. ‘Time to tidy that away now and come down for breakfast, okay?’

Olivia, seeing me, leapt up immediately, and tried to cling to me like a baby panda. It was good to see she was so affectionate, I thought, as I scooped her up onto my hip, but rather less good to see – or rather, for it to slowly, damply dawn on me – that she was also wringing wet. And so was I, now. Ashton too, I saw as he also stood up, had a suspicious wet patch all up the back of his night things.