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

We lapsed into silence, none of us quite sure how to restart the conversation. And then Emily, who had been quiet until that point, said: ‘I hope Bethany discovers a cure for cancer or something when she’s older, don’t you, Mum?’

I was about to agree when Taylor scoffed. ‘It’d be just like her to do something lame.’

Jamie dropped his fork. It clattered on the tray and made Emily jump again. Her plate rolled against her tummy, tomato sauce creeping over her top. ‘How can finding a cure for cancer be lame?’ Jamie demanded, looking at me with wide eyes. Emily glanced between us, gave her top a little shake and then discreetly shuffled her bottom further along the sofa, away from Taylor. Her ability to accept the bad in people without too much effort always amazed me, whereas Jamie was the opposite. Even at the age of seven he couldn’t tolerate flippant, senseless remarks.

‘Because I say it is, numbskull.’ Taylor flicked her hair over her shoulder. ‘Basically I’m gonna be a top model or something when I’m fourteen. I could of been one already if it weren’t for school and everything.’

Jamie spluttered on his food, his eyes scrunched in disbelief. Sensing that he was about to make a comment that wouldn’t go down too well I jumped in quickly. ‘Some of the most famous people in the world were picked on at school, did you know that?’

‘Yeah, like who?’ Taylor asked, her lip curled into a grimace. I knew it didn’t matter what I said, but I pushed ahead anyway, if only to distract Jamie.

‘Er, well, off the top of my head, there’s Madonna. She had a hard time at school.’

Taylor rolled her eyes. ‘Lame,’ she decreed.

‘Lame? You’re calling Madonna lame?’

‘Yep,’ she said, rolling her lips and making a loud smacking sound. I ran through a host of other celebrities, reaching a point where I had no idea whether they were bullied or not. Taylor wrote them all off as boring losers, or useless twats. Riled, Jamie shouted ‘Richer than you’ll ever be’ after each of her insults.

It saddened me that a child of her age should be so disillusioned with the world that every word she uttered seemed to be either a put-down or a complaint. I knew that most children had a tendency to polarise, dividing experiences or people into the best or the worst ever, but Taylor categorised almost everything in existence as abominable. The only person she ever spoke well of was her mother, who was, in Taylor’s words, ‘beautiful and kind’.

It puzzled me, her adoration of her mother, considering that she seemed to be the prime aggressor towards the children.

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

Two days later, on the last day of term, the doorbell rang barely ten minutes after I’d arrived home from the school run. It had been a difficult forty-eight hours and so, even though there wasn’t a single line through any of the chores on my ‘to-do’ list and it was my last chance to get everything done without all the children at home, I could have hugged the weighty woman standing on the doorstep when I noticed the official-looking identity card hanging around her neck.

‘Karron, Bright Heights,’ she said in a heavy American accent. ‘You weren’t expecting me, right?’

Since Taylor and Reece’s arrival I hadn’t heard anything from social services and there were so many questions I wanted to ask, so much I felt I needed to get off my chest. As Karron was from my fostering agency she wouldn’t have direct information on the children; that would come from Maisie. Even so, it was a relief to see someone official.

‘Er, no I wasn’t but I – it’s very good to see you,’ I said, pulling off a pair of pink rubber gloves. ‘Please, come in.’ My usual supervising social worker from the fostering agency was on a sabbatical from social work and Bright Heights hadn’t told me who was filling in for him. A TV and film extra in his younger days, Des had left two months earlier for California, where he’d managed to secure a bit part in a hospital drama for a cable network. We had developed quite a close friendship since meeting two years earlier and besides being sorry to see him go, I was anxious about who might replace him. The backbone of fostering, early on in a placement, is often a daily grind of stress – an effective supervising social worker can transform the way a foster carer deals with those early problems, often just by offering unswerving support.

‘We’ll record this as one of your unannounced then,’ said Karron as she shrugged off her denim jacket and draped it over the side table in the hall. Social workers are required to make a minimum of two unannounced visits to the foster home each year to check that standards of care are being maintained and all is as it should be. So far I’d been lucky – they had failed to catch me in on those days when the house was covered in a fine layer of dust, Lego strewn across the floor.

‘This is my son, Jamie,’ I said as Karron followed me through the living room. Jamie was tucked up on the sofa, immersed in reading a book. ‘He’s feeling a bit poorly today.’

‘Well, hi there, Jamie,’ Karron chirped. ‘Nothing too bad I hope.’

Jamie had slept badly, his asthma, which was normally fairly well-controlled, flaring up at the onset of a cold. Now, though, he was looking perkier than he had for hours. I guessed that Karron’s accent – one he usually only heard on TV – had brought on the sudden improvement. ‘I’m a bit wheezy,’ he said, grinning from ear to ear.

‘Ah, poor guy. You rest up. I’ll talk to your mom in the kitchen.’

Jamie nodded, watching her with amused interest.

As I filled the kettle, Karron dropped her bag on the kitchen floor then leaned slantwise on the worktop, elbows down, chin resting on one fist. Her hair was wavy, brown and long, reaching halfway down her back. At a guess, I put her in her mid-40s, though the shiny lipstick and sparkling eye shadow she wore gave her a youthful air. With the top half of her chest strewn over the wooden chopping board and her legs stretched out behind her, she looked thoroughly at home. The sight immediately lowered my guard so that when we’d finished making small talk and she asked how things were going, I felt I could tell her anything.

‘Difficult,’ I said, reaching for two mugs from the top cupboard. I lowered them to the worktop and turned to face her. ‘Reece is settling well I think. He’s very jumpy, craves security, but he’s turning to me for comfort so I’m not too worried about him. He’s very sweet. I had a word with his teacher this morning about his reading books. He wanted to move on to something a bit more challenging and when she agreed he was over the moon, bless him. Taylor though –’ I paused, lifting two jars of coffee up for Karron to choose from. She gestured towards the smallest with a nod of her head. ‘Black and strong,’ she said, ‘and don’t hold back on the sugar.’

I grinned, already certain that Karron was going to be a rock.

‘What about Taylor?’ she asked, helping herself to one of the biscuits on a plate in front of her. ‘She’s ten, right?’

‘Yep, ten. Going on fifteen.’ I scooped two generous teaspoons of instant coffee into one of the mugs and a teabag into the other. ‘I think we may have got off on the wrong foot,’ I said, narrowing my eyes against the rising steam as I poured hot water from the kettle into the mugs. Karron took the proffered drink and listened without interrupting as I explained the mix-up over their sex. ‘As soon as I laid eyes on them I thought they wouldn’t be able to stay and so I’m afraid I didn’t give them the welcome they deserved.’

Karron sipped cautiously at her coffee, leaving a trace of coral lipstick on the rim. ‘But you sorted things, right?’

‘Well, yes, with moving the rooms around and everything,’ I called out as I pottered to the fridge, removing the milk. ‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s nothing to do with that, but Taylor seems so angry. With me mostly,’ I added, pouring some milk into my tea.

After returning the carton to the fridge I sat on a stool at the breakfast bar and waited for Karron to respond.

She tilted her head to one side, eyeing me with a bright, intuitive gaze. ‘She’s gonna be though, isn’t she? I mean, that’s a normal response, right?’

‘Absolutely, yes, of course it is. But –’ Suddenly lost for words, I glanced into the garden. The March sun hung low over our tumble-down fence, our border of daffodils iridescent under the cloudless sky. A single yellow petal, browning at the edges, was torn off by the breeze and danced a wild jig across the lawn. Behind me, the fridge hummed, loud and rattling, as if egging me on to say something. I sighed, wondering how to put my feelings of helplessness into words.

‘But?’ prompted Karron.

With a teaspoon still clasped in my fingers, I lifted my hands. ‘I know it sounds silly. Of course she’s going to be angry. And hurt and confused and lost – I know all of that and I understand. I do.’ I sighed, looking Karron in the eye. ‘I suppose the real problem is –’ I hesitated, took a breath. It was a tough one to articulate, because somehow I felt that as a foster carer, I should know better. ‘Well, I suppose the truth is that I really don’t know how to deal with her.’ I placed the teaspoon firmly on the side. ‘There, I’ve said it now.’

‘Feels good, huh?’ Karron was watching me with a slight, knowing smile on her face.

‘To let it out?’ I nodded. ‘Yes I suppose it does.’

She took another sip of her coffee, cradled the cup in her hands and then lifted her elbows towards me. ‘You know, you mustn’t beat up on yourself for having doubts; the best foster carers are the ones that question themselves. Those who think they’re perfect are the ones I worry about. So – go for it, girl. Gimme me all you got.’

‘OK, you asked for it,’ I said with a wry smile. ‘Well, for a start she sneers at everything I say. I mean literally, every time I open my mouth. If I ask her to stop doing something all she comes back with is: “Why should I?” Oh and she does this infuriating thing,’ I said, flicking my fingers close to my eyes. ‘It’s SO annoying! She falls short of making contact so when I ask her to stop she says: “God-er, I never even touched you! You’re sooooo moody.” She’s obsessed with the computer, some site called Myspace in particular, and she goes nuts when I tell her that she’s had enough screen time. There’s just –’

I stopped, noticing that Karron was staring at me with a dubious expression. ‘Myspace? I don’t think she should be on there. Myspace has an age rating, I believe.’

‘Taylor told me that it’s a kids’ site. She said all of her friends are on there.’

Karron stifled a snigger and I reddened, covering my face with my hands. What a fool I was, being so easily duped. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ the social worker said as I slowly lowered them. ‘They all try it on. Check it out but I’m pretty sure you have to be around thirteen or fourteen.’

I sighed. Disagreements over screen time were nothing new – even Emily and Jamie baulked sometimes when I asked them to turn their gadgets off, and they had grown up with the same, consistent rules. Children who had been given free rein online were bound to find the sudden imposition of restrictions frustrating, I knew that, and clashes over screen time were common in foster carers’ homes. ‘They’ll be no reasoning with her if she’s not allowed to use it. It’s like you can almost feel an undercurrent of aggression whenever she walks into the room, slamming the door behind her. I know it’s only been four days and I sound like such a lightweight but, really, the thought of having her around all day for the next two weeks –’ I tapped the worktop with my fingers, my mind so caught up in the events of the last few days that I was looking at Karron without really registering her. ‘It’s a bit daunting to be honest. She won’t even get ready for school in the morning. And then once she’s there, she won’t come home.’

Karron knitted her brow. ‘Huh?’

‘Sit-ins. She performs sit-ins, refusing to leave her classroom. It was 5 o’clock before she agreed to come home yesterday afternoon. Thankfully my ex-husband had collected Emily and Jamie or they’d have been waiting for me at the school gates. I’ve a nasty feeling she’s going to do it again this afternoon and what with Jamie feeling under the weather and all my back-up carers busy,’ I took a breath, ‘well, I’m out of ideas. I just don’t know what to do about it.’

‘What does the school say?’

‘Taylor’s teacher is as exasperated as I am,’ I said with a rueful smile. ‘She’s only young and it’s playing havoc with her social life.’

Karron broke into infectious laughter.

I grinned. ‘It sounds funny but at the time it’s so frustrating. And do you know the really odd thing?’

The social worker tilted her head.