Torn: A terrified girl. A shocking secret. A terrible choice.

I sighed, disappointed in myself because deep down I knew that part of the problem was my own lack of experience. My reaction had nothing to do with Taylor’s comment about my cooking; I wasn’t that precious. But what had really got my goat, if I’m honest, apart from being irritated by Taylor’s assumption that my private life was up for discussion, was that she seemed to have effortlessly located my Achilles heel. Sometimes worried about the effect our divorce might have on Emily and Jamie, I was still sensitive about it. The trouble was that by reacting badly I had given Taylor carte blanche to wind me up, whenever she felt she needed to let off steam.

Sullen, provocative and cunningly astute, the ten-year-old certainly seemed nothing like her brother. And yet as I had shown her into her new bedroom and said goodnight, I sensed hesitancy there – a brief moment of candour in her body language that showed me she was close to reaching out, if not for comfort then at least reassurance. Of course, as soon as I took a step towards her she shrank away, as I’d suspected she would.

With a soft groan I forced myself to my feet, telling myself that things would quickly improve. Taylor was probably overwrought with all the emotion of the day and it was inevitable that I, as the nearest adult, would bear the brunt of it. Somehow though, I couldn’t quite convince myself that everything would work out fine.

There was often a mixture of emotions at the beginning of a new placement; anxiety of course and trepidation, usually overridden by plenty of excitement. But as I heaved the dining table onto its side and began unscrewing the legs, I was tingling with the feeling, a presentiment almost, that things were going to get a whole lot worse.

What I didn’t realise, at the time, was that by accepting the placement I was putting my own family directly in harm’s way.

Chapter Four (#u52406829-edbd-548c-b3fb-bca8b82c2d57)

‘Taylor,’ I called up the stairs, making an effort to sound as pacific as possible. It was already 8.15 a.m. and with two school runs awaiting execution, I was eager to herd everyone out of the house. Chilled about most things but irrationally petrified of being late, Jamie stood with his hand on the catch of the front door, ready to sprint for the car as soon as Taylor decided to grace us with an appearance. ‘We really need to go now, Taylor, or you’ll all be late.’

Jamie, bobbing around on the balls of his feet, gave a little squeak of terror.

‘Why you indicating?’ Taylor demanded from the back of the car, twenty minutes later. ‘Our school’s straight on.’

‘Yes I know, but Devonshire Primary is around here,’ I said, throwing her a quick glance over my shoulder as I took a left at the traffic lights.

‘Na, you can drop us off first,’ she said, flicking her right hand at the wrist to gesture a U-turn.

‘We discussed this earlier, do you remember?’ I asked calmly. While Taylor had been straightening her hair (a task that had taken almost an hour to complete) I told her that we pass Emily and Jamie’s school on the way to hers. ‘I said that Emily and Jamie will be going in first but in the afternoon we’ll do it the other way around, so you’ll get first choice of where to sit later on.’

Taylor growled, gesticulating so furiously that Emily, who was sitting next to her, had to shrink away to avoid being slapped. ‘Oh-wah! But I need to hand my project in before the bell-errr.’ I had noticed that whenever she was annoyed, she prolonged certain words so they ended with an ‘er’ sound.

‘Let’s get a wriggle on then,’ I said, brightly, checking my teeth in the rear-view mirror to demonstrate that I wasn’t the least bit affected by her negative mood. Ignore difficult behaviour and it fades away. Isn’t that what the social worker on my last training course had assured us?

‘Ow, that’s so unfair,’ she lamented, an aggressive growl taking the whine out of her voice. She leaned forward in her seat and flicked her forefinger close to the back of my head, almost making contact (another one of her habits whenever she grew tense). ‘Today is literally the worst day of my life!’

Beside her, Reece began whining, his arms folded around his middle. ‘Urgh, Rosie, I feel sick. I don’t think I can go to school.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Taylor bellowed before I could respond. ‘Take no notice of ’im. He says it all the time so he can skive off school.’

‘No I don’t, you liar.’

‘D’you want me to smash your head through that window?’

‘Taylor,’ I snapped, as a large 4 x 4 pulled out in front of me without indicating. I swung my Ford quickly to the left, taking the place it had vacated, and accidentally clipping the kerb with my offside wheel. The jolt nipped at the muscle I had torn in my shoulder when moving the beds around and I winced.

Taylor gasped and clutched her hands to her chest. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, now I got whiplash!’ She fluttered her hands around in front of her in a parody of shock. ‘I can’t believe you did that, Ro-sie-er!’ she ejaculated, spitting my name out with such venom that it sounded like a swear word.

‘Oh, Taylor, you’d make an excellent actress,’ I said, trying to sound more amused than I felt. With only three days left of school before the Easter holidays, I knew I was going to have to find a way to establish a relationship with Taylor before they broke up. The withering glance she threw my way told me that I was going to have to be particularly inventive if I was to have any chance of achieving that.

As soon as I secured the handbrake Jamie dived forwards, kissed my cheek and leaped from the car. Thankfully, Emily offered to walk him to his classroom and as I watched them pass beneath the wrought-iron archway and into the playground, a pang of guilt rose in my chest because I wasn’t there beside them. I had registered as a foster carer soon after separating from Gary, although I had been drawn to the idea ever since I discovered, at the age of thirteen, that my father had grown up in a children’s home. A friend of mine, one of those scary people with a psychology degree, insisted that my attraction to fostering was born of a subconscious desire to heal my father and take away the pain he had felt as a child.

I wasn’t sure about that, but on a practical level registering made sense – I needed to work but wanted to be available for Emily and Jamie whenever they needed me. Reality, as it often does, took me by surprise. In my head I had imagined that our future foster children would slot neatly into family life. Inevitably there would be problems, I knew that, but behavioural difficulties notwithstanding, we’d carry on pretty much as before. What I hadn’t bargained on were the daily diaries, monthly reports, PEPs (personal education plans) meetings, LAC (looked-after child) reviews, health-care assessments, monthly visits from supervising and children’s social workers, unannounced checks and, to top it all, providing transport to and from contact sessions with parents.

Not that I was complaining – my need to work with troubled children, like most foster carers, came deep from the heart and the children we had shared our home with over the last two years had done as much to help our family as we had ever done for them.

As I pulled away from the kerb, Taylor wincing exaggeratedly, I reminded myself that birth children learn lots of important life lessons from fostering, one being that simple, everyday comforts should never be taken for granted.

Without Jamie to chat to (the pair of them had barely stopped since they woke early that morning) Reece went into overdrive as we drove towards Downsedge Primary. My son, though lively, seemed to have a calming effect on Reece, but now he bounced up and down on his seat, talking so rapidly that I could barely keep up. ‘How old do you think that BMW is then, Rosie?’

We had been playing the same game for ten minutes and I was getting a little jaded, but at least it seemed to be distracting him from his nervy, cramping stomach.

‘Hmm, that’s a tricky one because there aren’t the usual letters and numbers on its registration plate,’ I said, surveying his sister in the rear-view mirror as I spoke. She sat in stony silence, every so often releasing a faint scent of coconut as she tossed her blonde locks over her shoulder. Her hair really was a beautiful colour – burnished gold with flashes of red – and shiny from all the attention she seemed to lavish on it. I was surprised that she was wearing it loose to school but she had insisted that she was allowed to, although I was frankly disbelieving that the heavy liner she wore was permitted as well.

‘Yes, but what do you think?’

‘Well, the paintwork’s shiny so I’d say two years old. Three at a push?’

Reece clapped a hand to his forehead as if something calamitous would happen as a direct result of my vagueness. ‘Which one though? Two or three?’

My thoughts drifted back to the previous day when Reece had appeared anguished to be presented with a choice of beds. It seemed that he was a boy who preferred absolutes. ‘Three, I’d say.’

He groaned, blinking rapidly to stop his eyes from twitching. As if contagious, one shoulder joined in, jerking up and down in synchrony with his eyelids. ‘But how sure are you?’

‘Quite, quite sure.’

Satisfied, his shoulders dropped in relief and I found myself letting out a breath as well. It was difficult not to get caught up in his panic.

‘What about that van then? The Ford. How old do you think that is?’

Suppressing a sigh – he had chosen another vehicle with a personalised number plate – I hazarded a guess at five years. Reece chewed the ends of his nails as he considered my answer, his fingers visibly trembling. My heart went out to him; he seemed unable to cope with the tiniest amount of stress. Being so overwrought, it wasn’t really any wonder that he suffered from so many tummy aches.

Suddenly his brow furrowed. ‘What, so you’re saying that van is more olderer than the BMW?’ His alarmed tone suggested that my answer was outlandish and possibly downright dangerous.

‘Well, it’s just a guess, Reece, that’s all. Why don’t you tell me what you think? How old would you say it is?’

He seemed to know a lot about cars, surprising considering his age. With barely a glance he was able to identify the make and sometimes even the model of passing cars. I guessed that it must be a passion of his father’s. It was a bad idea to throw the weight of responsibility back at him though, however knowledgeable he seemed. Clamping a hand either side of his head, he clawed at his nearly bare scalp with his fingers, an expression of pure panic skittering across his face.

‘Owww, I don’t know what to think. I really don’t know.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, shut it will yer, Reece? You’re getting on my pissing nerves.’

I winced.

‘You shut it,’ Reece howled, his eyes pooling with tears. ‘I’m trying to think. Ow, what shall I guess? I really don’t know, Rosie.’

‘It don’t bloody matter how old it is-er,’ Taylor snapped.

Not entirely unsympathetic with the sentiment, I said: ‘Please don’t say “shut it”, both of you. Say “be quiet” instead. And mind your language, Taylor.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, bloody be quiet then, Reece, or I’ll knock your teeth to the back of your throat.’

‘Erm, how about we count how many vans we see from here until we reach school?’ I ventured, knowing that Jamie adored nothing more than being presented with a challenge. He really wasn’t that much older than Reece. Besides, distraction was top of the list of social workers’ tips for dealing with difficult behaviour.

‘OK! You do it as well, Rosie, yeah?’