The Silent Witness

I wondered if I should gently prise her away and let Bella have some down time on her own. But when I suggested Bella might like five minutes’ peace, it was Bella herself who responded. ‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, and I could tell she meant it. Upon which, they both trotted off up the stairs.

‘Don’t you sometimes wonder,’ Lauren reflected, as they disappeared out of sight across the landing, ‘how little ones have no idea how much of a part they play in all this? Just think of all the foster children Marley Mae has befriended since she was born. Do you sometimes wonder if they ever think about her? You know, have memories of her, still? It’s a nice thing to think that, don’t you think? How, in all those children, there’s a little permanent space in their brains where she lives? I love that as a concept, don’t you?’

It was something I’d never thought about before, and I said so. ‘Oh, but I love that,’ I said. Because I really did.

They were up there a good while, and I resisted the urge to check on them, as did Riley. Even though both of us were ever conscious that the children who came to us began as strangers, we were of a mind, as was Lauren, that Bella posed no threat to anyone. Except, perhaps, to herself. Besides, the door had been left ajar and both Tyler and Mike had been upstairs since they’d gone up – and both had reported hearing Marley Mae giggling.

Still, once bitten, ever vigilant – and we’d certainly had our scares down the years. None of us would ever forget the day when Flip, a young girl we’d had with foetal alcohol syndrome, had taken it upon herself to give us a post-lunch break and take Marley Mae off for a walk in the local woods. So when over an hour had passed and neither had reappeared, Riley and I exchanged a ‘Let’s one of us just go and check what they’re up to’ expression. I was just rising from my chair – being the closest to the door – when my granddaughter marched in and made a beeline for the tree, below which her own sack of presents still sat.

‘Oh, hello,’ I said, glancing behind her to see no sign of Bella. ‘So, what was the outcome? What did Bella get?’

I was rewarded by Marley Mae putting a finger to her lips and emitting the sort of self-defeating high-decibel ‘Shhhh!’ that was her trademark. ‘She’s going to sleep,’ she whispered, falling to her chubby little knees to dig around among her haul.

‘And she’s sad about her mummy,’ she added, turning around, having produced a cuddly toy; the cuddly snowman, from the film Frozen, that she’d been hoping for so much. ‘So I’m going to let her borrow Olaf.’

Riley and I rose as one to go up with her, both first agreeing to the ‘You must be quiet!’ order she issued before agreeing to lead the way.

We trooped up, a little battalion, led by our diminutive general, and followed Marely Mae into Bella’s bedroom through the now wide-open door.

And it was to find a room totally transformed. Everywhere – all over the carpet, the bed, and on any and every horizontal surface – was what looked like confetti, but made out of wrapping paper. Which I immediately recognised as the paper Bella’s presents had been wrapped in. Only it had now been transformed into a million tiny pieces.

Bella herself appeared to be asleep. She was curled in an S shape, a tiny form on the bed, with both the rabbit we’d bought for her and her Dobby close beside her, while further down the bed was the ‘iPodge’ Marley Mae had been alluding to, together with other presents: some sort of nature annual, what looked like a folded hoodie, a pair of jeans and a jewellery-making kit.

‘We torded it,’ Bella whispered proudly, before tip-toeing theatrically across the carpet and gently placing her precious Olaf close by Bella’s blonde curls. A holy trinity of stuffed animals to chase the nightmares away. ‘There,’ she mouthed silently, with admirable restraint, before turning back to us, placing a finger to her lips again and shooing us outside.

I pulled the door to, while Riley picked Marley Mae up, and as she now announced that she needed a wee we all trooped into the bathroom.

‘You made all that confetti yourselves, did you?’ I asked her, as Riley helped her with her pants.

‘It’s not confetti,’ she told us. ‘It’s snowflakes. Bella liked making snow and she let me help her. I was good at it.’ Then she frowned. ‘But then she was sad,’ she said. ‘She cry-ded a lot when we were doing it. I tolded her you wouldn’t be cross about the snow, Nanny, but she still cry-ded.’

‘But I bet it looked pretty when you threw it everywhere,’ Riley observed. ‘And, oh, the joy of Hoovers,’ she added to me drily.

I pictured the scene. Bella’s distress. The emotional meltdown of seeing it laid bare. Of seeing it laid bare with an over-excited Marley Mae, who’d known no such devastation in her happy young life. Seeing the presents from parents who weren’t with her – or each other – opened the gaping hole where the spirit of Christmas should be.

‘Whose idea was it to make the snow?’ I asked Marley Mae. ‘Was it yours?’

She shook her head. ‘Bella liked it.’ She mimed a ripping motion. ‘She likes making snow. And then she throwed it, like this –’ She thrust her arms up and outwards. ‘But she’s sad now. She said. So I said I’d get Olaf for her to cuddle.’ All done, she held her arms up for Riley to scoop her up again. ‘You shouldn’t cry on Christmas Day, should you, Mummy?’

I glanced in, as we passed, to our poor, anguished visitor, lost in dreams – good ones hopefully, please let them not be nightmares – beneath her blanket of multicoloured snow.

No, I thought sadly, you shouldn’t.

Chapter 5 (#u89468748-1129-5c6f-abfc-ea9afb434db5)

It’s impossible to predict how a child will respond to extreme stress unless you know that child very well. And even then it’s an inexact science. Even with more than two decades of mothering my own two under my belt, I could still find myself surprised by how they reacted in adversity, sometimes astonishing me by their fortitude and stoicism under pressure and other times collapsing under the strain of something apparently minor. Every one of us really is unique.

Which is why, with Bella, as with any child, I assumed nothing. Yes, I’d make assumptions about what she might or might not be feeling, but how those feelings played out in terms of how she coped with her current lot was something no one could predict. She also came to us without much back-story, which would have enabled us to get a better feel for her, and which was in contrast with several of the children we’d previously fostered, such as Justin (he of the bulging, six-year, thirty-failed-placements file) and little Georgie, who was autistic and had been in care, and therefore monitored, for almost all of his life.

Three days in, therefore (we were by now in the lull before New Year, the bedroom ‘snow’ gone and forgotten), and I felt almost as clueless about Bella’s emotional make-up as I had when she’d arrived on Christmas Eve – the moving scene on Christmas night notwithstanding. She’d clearly got something out of her system, which was obviously going to be A Good Thing, but she’d spent almost all of Boxing Day – which was a quieter one, with the little ones gone, and the day lazier – withdrawn and uncommunicative. And though she’d come out with us on a trip to town, to have a nose around the German Christmas market, she’d simply done as asked, like a biddable elderly relation almost, putting her coat on, doing the buttons up, donning the gloves I’d found for her and then trailing along, hand in mine, but completely disengaged. The most animated she’d been was eating a doughnut. And she’d only managed to eat half of that.

Two days later, and she was still saying almost nothing to any of us bar Tyler, and what she did say – the odd ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘thank you’ – was always in response to something said to her. For much of the time, and I didn’t push it, she had her nose in the Harry Potter book we’d given her. Reading, it was becoming clear, was her main refuge.

So today’s masterplan (which wasn’t any sort of masterplan, really; I was leaving that for John to organise once everyone was back in their various offices) was for the pair of us to go wedding-dress shopping with Riley, while her David stayed at home to mind the kids.

I had promised my eager-beaver daughter that I’d fit some time in in the New Year to go dress hunting, but with Mike back in work – to cover sickness; there’d been some grim virus going round – and Tyler off to spend the day with Denver, I figured today was as good as any to make a start, not only as it would stop the four walls of the silent house closing in, but also, despite the inevitably fraught nature of competitive sale shopping, it did mean we had at least a fighting chance (fighting being the operative word) of bagging a bargain. And since Mike and I were footing the bill, that would be a major bonus.

It was now 10 a.m., however, and though I’d been happy generally to let Bella sleep for as long as she needed to, given that Riley would be over soon, keen to hit town and do battle, it was probably time I went to wake her up.

And when I went upstairs I was pleased to find her bedroom door open; she’d obviously already woken up and gone to wash, though, in contrast to the previous three mornings, she’d left her duvet flung back and pillows awry. Perhaps evidence that she was finally beginning to settle, rather than carrying on as if in an institution, like her mother?

‘Morning, love,’ I called, seeing the bathroom door was also open, before heading off into my own bedroom to change.

I hadn’t been expecting a response, but almost immediately I got one, though not in the form of words, more an anguished, groaning sob.

I backtracked to the bathroom and pushed the door properly open, to be confronted by an unexpected, shocking scene. Bella was sitting on the bathroom floor, her legs drawn up to her chest and her arms clenched around them, while, moaning softly, she rocked back and forth. And as she did so, because of where she was sitting, beside the toilet, the back of her head was drumming rhythmically against the sink.

Straight away I could see she wasn’t doing it deliberately. Head-banging is a particularly distressing form of violent self-soothing so I was relieved to be able to see it wasn’t that. She was simply oblivious, or, at least, not particularly concerned that the basin was in the way of her rocking. She certainly seemed out of it, like she’d gone into some kind of fugue.

And she clearly needed to be moved before she hurt herself. I bent down in front of her, which was when I noticed the vomit. There was sick all down her front, in her hair and on the carpet, as well as liberally decorating the bottom of the toilet seat and loo, the former presumably only having just been raised in time. How hadn’t I heard all this? But perhaps it had happened while I’d been down in the conservatory, sorting the washing. Which meant she’d been here for quite a while. I cursed myself for not having checked on her since I’d come down at seven.

‘Bella, love,’ I said, automatically reaching to feel her forehead for a high temperature. ‘What’s wrong, sweetie? Do you feel ill?’

I pushed my hands under her armpits as I spoke, in order to help her up, and she raised her eyes to look at me in a way that made me realise she was only just becoming aware of her surroundings.

‘Are you okay, lovey?’ I said. ‘You’ve been sick. Did you realise? Come on, let’s get you off the floor and cleaned up.’

Again, I felt that same gentle compliance as I lifted her; felt the load drop a little as her legs took some of the strain, so I was at least able to release one arm to flip the toilet seat back down, and via a natty swivel place Bella back down on it, where she remained while I ran the tap and filled the washbasin with warm water and shower gel.

‘I’m just going to wash your face, love, and wipe the sick up a bit,’ I said, and when she nodded I found myself feeling slightly exasperated at her continuing inability – or was it determination – to communicate properly with any of us. Had she called out earlier – just that, just my name, so I could help her – she wouldn’t be in this state now, would she? Not to mention my bathroom.

I quashed my resentful thoughts even as I had them. This was presumably why her previous carers had said they wouldn’t have her back. And as they now had a brand new granddaughter, and all the anxiety and excitement that went with it, I could hardly blame them. They simply wouldn’t have the emotional energy left to spare.

I had no such complications to excuse me. So, having elicited that she no longer felt ill, and that she didn’t have a temperature, I dipped a flannel in the fragrant water, wrung it out and washed her down, making eye contact and willing her to respond to it. Which she sort of did, by way of heavy tears that sped down her newly cleaned cheeks – a picture of intense and perfect misery; ethereal, as if a character from a Victorian novel.

That job done, her hands dunked and dried, and her pyjama top wiped down, I helped her up and led her back into her bedroom. She needed to get out of her soiled pyjamas, obviously, but at twelve I hardly imagined she’d want me to help her with that, so instead I instructed her to strip them off and get dressed while I went back and sorted out the bathroom.

‘If you want to have a shower and go back to bed, that’s fine too, of course …’ But I had barely said the words when she became suddenly galvanised, crossing the room and flinging the duvet back over the bed, before furiously straightening it all out. It was almost as if she was terrified she’d get a slap if she didn’t, and I filed the observation away for future reference.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said, going across to her chest of drawers, where I pulled out a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and her new Christmas hoodie, which she had told me – on being asked – had been from her mum. Not her mum and dad, I noted. Just her mum. ‘There you are, love,’ I said, tossing them onto the bed. ‘I’ll go and sort the bathroom out while you get these on. And pop your pyjamas onto the landing for me to pop in the wash, will you? Then we’ll try to find out what’s made you sick, eh?’

I left her gingerly undoing the buttons on her wet pyjama top.

Back in the bathroom, I found myself in the unlikely position of ruing the fact that a day at the Christmas sales was probably a non-starter. Though logic told me Bella’s sickness could have been down to a virus (in which case, the last thing I should do is allow it to be spread) instinct and experience told me otherwise. For one thing, though she had eaten extremely poorly since she’d been with us, she had eaten something the previous evening, and showed no signs of malaise afterwards, in the way viral tummy bugs tended to reveal themselves. We’d all eaten the same, too, and there’d been nothing in dinner that would make it likely that she’d succumbed to a bout of food poisoning.

No, instinct said she’d either been sick due to extreme distress and upset, or – a grimmer thought – that she had made herself so. Either way, given my responsibility to this distressed, highly anxious child, I needed both to log it and to consult our GP.

I was just wondering what sort of cover they’d have in the surgery, when I was stunned into stopping scrubbing by something entirely unexpected. A tiny but nevertheless clear voice.