Mummy’s Little Helper: The heartrending true story of a young girl secretly caring for her severely disabled mother

Abby shook her head. ‘No, they didn’t,’ she said indignantly.

‘Compound fracture, unfortunately,’ Sarah said, now looking at me. ‘Hence all this. Never rains but it pours, eh?’

By now Abby had sped straight to the other side of the bed and placed a quick peck on her mother’s cheek. Now she grabbed her arm and began stroking it. It seemed an odd way to greet her – I’d have expected her to fling her arms around her. But then I realised that perhaps Sarah was in more pain than she was showing; the way Abby was so gentle and restrained in her movements made me wonder at a long-standing unspoken agreement that she had to be careful how she touched her, for fear of hurting her.

Abby seemed different – very matter-of-fact now she was with her mum, the two of them clearly slipping into long-established roles. While I exchanged pleasantries with Sarah – difficult to do in such circumstances but clearly something she was as keen to cling to as I was – Abby fussed around, plumping pillows and firing questions at her mother about when she’d been bed-bathed (she’d taken in what I’d said to her, clearly), what she’d eaten, whether she was all right for all her various medications, how she’d been sleeping and whether she had enough clothes. The notes she’d made in the car were ticked off as she did this, and I couldn’t help notice how clipped and precise her manner had become. It really was as if she’d morphed into a mini-professional carer. And, even more tellingly, how comfortable her mother seemed with this. I kept expecting Sarah to make her first enquiry about Abby’s day, but Abby had hardly paused to draw breath and, once again, Sarah seemed happy to let her continue.

‘Anyway,’ I finished, conscious that this was precious time for them to be together, ‘I’m going to go and grab myself a coffee and leave you two to it.’

This seemed to galvanise Sarah. ‘Poppet,’ she said to Abby, who was now busy rootling in the bedside cabinet for a comb. ‘Up at the end of the ward – ask the nurse; she’ll direct you – there’s a little library of books. Do you want to choose one for us to read?’

Abby popped her head up, and nodded. ‘What kind?’ she asked.

‘Oh, you choose,’ said Sarah. ‘You know what we like.’

Abby nodded again, and trotted back down the ward.

Sarah turned to me. She had clearly been anxious that we speak alone. ‘Look,’ she said, as Abby disappeared from the bay, ‘I know what you’re probably thinking.’

‘I’m not –’ I began helplessly.

‘How it looks,’ she went on, as if I should have known. ‘I know, because the social worker’s told me. But you must understand –’ She really emphasised the ‘must’. She looked at me earnestly. ‘That, well, it’s not what it must look like. She’s honestly fine. Really. I don’t think they quite get it …’ She paused, and formed her mouth into a thin smile. ‘There is no one. There is really no one. So I have had to be single minded. Do you understand?’ Her eyes seemed to be willing me to say yes. Even though I wasn’t sure quite what I was supposed to be understanding.

‘I like to think I do …’ I began again. ‘I obviously have no personal experience of your situation, but –’

‘It was always just so important that I made her independent.’

‘She’s certainly that,’ I agreed, wondering whether to say any more. ‘Though –’

Sarah’s eyes flashed and I sensed I was on tricky ground here. ‘She’s very capable,’ I went on. ‘I can see that. Though she does seem, well, a little over-anxious, understandably. Which is why they asked Mike and I …’

‘But that’s exactly what I mean,’ Sarah said. This conversation was becoming more confusing by the minute. If she had a point to make, it was a long time coming. ‘I’ve had to make her that way, for just this eventuality,’ she said. ‘I’ve relapsed before.’ She sighed heavily. ‘And once I’m over this, I don’t doubt, at some point, that I’ll relapse again. This is a bitch of a disease. You never know when it’s going to get you. And it’s always been my number one priority to be sure Abby can look after herself.’ She paused, and I could see she was becoming upset now. ‘The absolute last thing I ever wanted was to be a burden to Abby. It’s just us, you see …’ The wry smile flashed back. ‘Me and her against the world. What with her having no dad …’

‘He’s not contactable at all?’

‘No! No, not at all. Never been there. Not since before I even had her.’

‘But maybe …’

‘Really, don’t even go there. I told you. There’s no one.’ She looked past me, and then changed her expression completely. ‘Ah, poppet!’ she said brightly. ‘What have you found? So.’ She turned to me again. ‘How long do we have, Casey?’

I turned around, to see Abby trotting up, clutching two big hardbacks. Chick-lit, by the looks of things. Obviously large print. Both pink. I checked the time on my mobile. ‘Say, forty-five minutes? Would that be okay?’

‘That’ll be perfect,’ Sarah gushed. ‘Abby is such a brilliant reader, aren’t you, poppet? Top of the class last term, weren’t you?’

Abby nodded happily, pulling the visitor chair round, ready to commence her reading. Happily, but with that same air of brittleness. As if inhabiting a role.

I left them to it and had the nurse direct me to the restaurant, a little puzzled by my short exchange with Sarah. She’d seemed so anxious to get through to me, but I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. One thing was clear, though. I felt she’d been misguided. From what little I’d seen so far – and, admittedly, it hadn’t been much – her determination not to be a burden on her daughter had been misplaced. In having Abby so independent that she could do everything for the pair of them hadn’t she actually created the situation she’d been so anxious to avoid? She had actually made herself a burden, both physically and emotionally. With Abby feeling it was her responsibility to be her mother’s sole carer, taking that responsibility away – as had now, in fact, happened – had left the poor child in a horrible, lonely limbo.

Surely the thing to have done was to get every scrap of care that was available so that Abby could at least have a shot at a normal childhood? A chance to do all the normal childhood things? As it was, she was now a fish out of water socially, with no support network of friends to help her through. Let alone loved ones.

What a grim thing, to have absolutely no family. And once again, I simply couldn’t quite imagine how that felt. But I berated myself as I queued for my coffee. It was none of my business. I was simply there to foster Abby, and do the best job I could in terms of minimising her emotional fall-out. Sorting everything else in their lives out was the remit of Sarah and Abby’s social workers, one of whom – from what Sarah had hinted anyway – had been busy trying to do just that. She clearly felt defensive about what had been said to her. But what was that? I felt an itch start – and itch that wanted scratching.

No, I told myself. Casey, just leave it.

Chapter 6 (#ufa41eb4c-5d98-5c52-909f-581fdc2a7e00)

Despite my resolution not to get involved in things that weren’t my business, Abby was my business and, if it concerned her, it concerned me. So I woke early on Friday morning in a determined mood and with a mental list of questions that needed answers. All of which meant that I couldn’t get back to sleep, so by the time the alarm was due to go off I was already down in the kitchen, pen in one hand, a mug of strong coffee clutched in the other. Since I’d given up smoking, it was my only remaining vice, and one I wouldn’t be giving up any time soon. I sipped the bitter nectar gratefully as I transferred the questions that had been teeming in my brain to a piece of paper. As soon as the taxi came and picked Abby up for school, I knew I had a couple of calls to make.

‘Is it Christmas again?’ asked Mike, trudging blearily into the kitchen and blinking in the brightness of the strip light. ‘Seeing you up at this hour is giving me the strangest feeling of déjà vu.’

It was still pitch-dark, not even seven, and I’d already been up half an hour. I grinned at him. ‘Love, if this were Christmas the turkey would already be in the oven, I’d have Slade blaring out, the Quality Street open, and by now I’d have pulled at least one cracker.’

I pushed my chair back and went across to make him a coffee too – a posh one, from the swish machine we’d treated ourselves to for Christmas. And speaking of Christmas, it was a fair observation. I was nuts about it, and would throw myself into it wholeheartedly, but for the rest of the year Mike was the early riser in the household, bringing the coffee up to me, not vice versa. ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ he said, stretching and yawning. ‘For a minute there I thought you’d be having me up in the loft looking for fairy lights.’

I passed him his coffee. ‘Just couldn’t sleep, that’s all,’ I told him. ‘You know what it’s like when you wake up and straight away your brain reminds you about all the things you need to do? So I thought I’d take a leaf out of Abby’s book and make a list.’

Mike frowned as he sipped his drink. ‘You’re not stressed, are you love?’ he asked, nodding towards the ceiling. ‘About Abby? I mean, compared to Spencer … in fact, compared to all the other kids we’ve had …’

‘No, not at all,’ I reassured him, shaking my head. ‘I’m just on a mission to find out what’s going on there. You know, the more I know about this the harder it is for me to understand how the two of them could have become so isolated. You’d have thought someone would have known what was happening at home, wouldn’t you? What about the GP? I mean, he or she must be prescribing drugs for her, mustn’t they? Or the neighbours? Or, come to that, Abby’s school. Surely they’d have noticed something? It almost beggars belief.’

Mike rolled his eyes. ‘Love, you’re asking me that? You’re asking yourself that? Look at Ashton and Olivia. There’s your answer, right there. Just remember the sort of things that went on in that household. Compared to that, let’s be honest, this is nothing.’

Mike was right, of course. The siblings he’d mentioned – both now thriving in new permanent foster-families, thankfully – had come to us looking like a pair of Dickensian urchins: underweight, covered in scabs, eye-poppingly filthy and feral, yet still living with their parents in the sort of conditions that would have the RSPCA throwing their hands up in horror, let alone the NSPCC. And that was before you took the sexual abuse into account … No, in comparison, this wasn’t a big social scandal. Just a woman who, for whatever reason – blind optimism, maybe? – had seemed to have turned ‘muddling through without troubling the outside world’ into something of an art form.

This was confirmed when I rang Abby’s school, after she’d left for it in the taxi, in the hopes that I’d be able to have a few words with her teacher. Knowing how school timetables tended to work was always a bonus, and I was spot on in being able to grab five minutes with the man, who was a youngish-sounding teacher called Mr Elliot.

‘I’m completely gobsmacked,’ he admitted, when I introduced myself to him. He had no idea that Abby had even been taken into care.

‘I mean, I knew her mum had had to go into hospital,’ he said. ‘But nothing about her going to stay with a foster family or anything. I just assumed she was with other family members. Is this long term?’

I told him I didn’t know. ‘So no one’s been in touch?’ I asked, confused myself now about how this fairly important information had failed to get to him. Not that it didn’t happen from time to time. It had only been a few days, after all, and perhaps Bridget hadn’t yet got around to it.

‘Not to my knowledge,’ he said. ‘Though that doesn’t mean they haven’t. The head teacher was away on a course all day yesterday, so it’s possible that the news just hasn’t trickled through yet … This is a big school, and I wasn’t in myself on Tuesday. These things happen, I suppose … Anyway, thanks for letting me know now.’

‘I’m sure social services will be in touch with you as well,’ I reassured him. ‘Oh, and just so you know, she’ll be coming by taxi each day for the time being, and picked up by taxi as well. I was just phoning myself so we could have a chat about Abby. Under the circumstances, she has a number of issues, as you can imagine …’

‘Circumstances? Forgive me, but as I say, I’m not up to speed.’

‘As a result of her mother’s MS,’ I began.

‘Really? She’s been diagnosed with MS? The poor woman.’

‘Yes, but not recently,’ I explained, once again shocked. He didn’t know this? ‘She’s been suffering with it for years,’ I went on. ‘Abby’s been her carer since she was little, apparently.’

Mr Elliot was even more stunned by this information and maintained he had absolutely no idea. So I spent a few minutes describing the situation, and filling him in on what had been going on at home – as described to me by John and Bridget – after which Mr Elliot seemed flabbergasted.

Not to mention embarrassed. ‘I don’t think anyone here knew anything about this,’ he confirmed. And I believed him. He didn’t sound like he was just covering his back. ‘And you know, Mrs Watson, it explains a great deal. The lateness, the tiredness, the days she’s come in missing kit or uniform …’