Broken: A traumatised girl. Her troubled brother. Their shocking secret.

‘Nooooo!’ Bobbi yelled, her cheeks turning puce. ‘I want food!’

‘Tell you what. I’ll go to the bathroom and wait for you. If you come within ten seconds I’ll give you a sticker. Archie, you go downstairs whenever you’re ready. Emily found The Chamber of Secrets when she came in last night. She’s left it on the table for you.’

Archie tiptoed around the mess to the landing, still looking a bit taken aback. Clearly he was expecting a different reaction to the one I’d given.

Bobbi scooted after him but I caught her around the middle and lifted her up, careful not to touch her full nappy. ‘Gotcha,’ I said playfully, trying to avoid her kicks while not breathing too deeply; her nappy really did smell bad. She dropped the rabbit and lashed out, catching my cheek in the exact spot that had only just scabbed over. My skin prickled and stung. ‘Let’s try and stay calm,’ I said, my own adrenaline kicking in.

‘Nooooo!’ she screeched again, pummelling my face and neck with closed fists as I carried her to the bathroom and knelt in front of her. ‘Kind hands, Bobbi,’ I said, my voice sounding strained as I fended her hands away. She clawed at my arm by way of reply, her nails digging at the bare skin on my wrist until tiny spots of blood appeared.

‘Bobbi, you’re safe, sweetie. No one’s going to hurt you. Let’s just calm down and get you cleaned up.’

She was screaming so hysterically that I wasn’t even sure she heard me. Even if she had been able to process what I was saying, part of me knew that ‘calm down’ probably didn’t mean much to a child who had grown up amid chaos. ‘Be kind’ was a meaningless instruction to someone who had, in all likelihood, been mistreated since birth. I knew that. But with adrenaline surging through my veins, it was difficult to think of anything else to say but ‘calm down’.

I took a few deep breaths and realised that I was staring at her, probably with a horrified expression on my face. I forced myself to look away. ‘I’m going to cut you!’ she screamed, still trying to run at me. ‘I’m going to cut your cheeks and twist them off your ugly face.’

Another blast of adrenaline shot through my veins. I wondered what on earth she had experienced to come out with things like that. I fended her off, my mind flashing to the pictures in her room. I took a calming breath, grateful that at least Megan probably couldn’t hear any of what was going on.

‘Bobbi, I’m going to hold you close and help you to feel better.’ Being out of control was terrifying for a child. As I reached out I knew she would fight against me, but I also knew that she needed to understand that I was the one in charge. The sooner she realised that I would keep her safe, the calmer she would feel.

Enfolding her flailing arms with one of my own, I turned her around and pulled her onto my lap so that her back was pressed against my middle. Almost immediately I felt a warm trickle of liquid on my thigh as the contents of her nappy seeped through her nightdress and over my jeans. Simultaneously, the overwhelming stench of excrement hit my nostrils. I held my breath, trying not to gag.

She thrashed around on my lap, arching her back and trying to launch another assault. As gently as I could – I was anxious not to mark her skin – I held onto her wrists and cuddled her close. ‘There, it’s alright, I will keep you safe.’ I tried to force my mind away from the growing brown stain on my jeans. Eventually her screams turned to sobs and her struggles subsided, her body pliable enough for me to gently rock her to and fro.

When she fell silent I stayed where I was. If I moved too early she was likely to remember her anger and start all over again. Besides that, her stiffened features were softening and, with a sting of pity, I realised that she’d probably never been babied before.

In the early days of placement, when children are railing against the sudden changes that have been foisted upon them, it’s sometimes difficult to return their aggression with affection. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve been given is to ‘fake it until you make it’. It’s near impossible to love a stranger, especially an abusive one, but when you go through the motions of caring for someone, genuine affection usually grows. As the adult, it was up to me to forge a loving attachment with Bobbi.

After a few minutes I eased her gently to a standing position and rose to my feet. Wordlessly, I knelt on the side of the bath and sprayed down my jeans using the hand-held shower head, aware of her hiccoughing sobs behind me. I worked hard to extinguish the look of disgust from my face as I got a nappy bag out of the cupboard and lifted her into the bath. Despite the low soothing noises I was making, she reeled away when I reached for her nappy, her fingers clasping the waistband so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. I felt a slow rolling sensation in my stomach.

I thought back to one of the courses I’d recently attended, when our tutor told us to interpret any difficult behaviour as an expression of fear. I knew that bedwetting and soiling wasn’t unusual in victims of sexual abuse – the smell of urine and faeces an unconscious attempt to make themselves less appealing to their abuser – but the fact was, lots of children Bobbi’s age still wet the bed. Soiling was more unusual, but perhaps she had been frightened to venture out to an unfamiliar toilet on her own.

‘Do you like bubbles, Bobbi?’ I asked gently, reaching for Megan’s pot of bubbles on the windowsill. I blew a few bubbles into the air above her head. The effect was instantaneous. Her face lit up and then she reached out and took the pot from me. Engrossed in her efforts to blow more bubbles, she was distracted enough for me to remove her nappy and shower her down.

Megan was waiting outside the door when I opened it. I felt a surge of guilt but she looked up at me with an expectant smile and I realised that she probably hadn’t heard a thing. Most of the time I felt sad about Megan’s hearing difficulties and would gladly have shared my own with her if I possibly could have, but, I have to admit, on that morning it was more of a blessing than a curse.

‘Here we are, guys,’ I said twenty minutes later, after washing and changing into a clean pair of jeans. I placed a sand timer on the table. ‘I have a challenge for you. We’re going to see if we can chew every mouthful of our cereal for thirty seconds. The time starts when I turn the timer over, okay?’

Archie, who had been reading, looked up from his book. ‘Yay!’ Megan exclaimed, grinning at the others. ‘I can. I can do it!’ I wasn’t sure whether Bobbi had even heard me. She started on her Weetabix without even looking at the timer, scooping another huge spoonful into her mouth a few seconds later. My heart sank. I had introduced the ‘game’ to all of them, but Bobbi was the one most in need of it.

From the wrappings over their bedroom floor, I suspected that both Archie and Bobbi had already eaten something. I hadn’t noticed anything missing from my own cupboards so assumed that they must still be working their way through food that had been hoarded at Joan’s. I planned to tackle them about it in a day or two – I didn’t want them to keep food in their rooms – but I wanted them to feel a bit more secure before I removed that particular safety blanket.

‘Bobbi,’ I said, ‘you can turn the timer over first.’ She stopped chewing and looked at me, her cheeks pouched with food. Archie dug into his cereal and held the spoon in front of his mouth, staring at the timer with focussed intensity.

‘What?’ Bobbi asked thickly, dropping her spoon into the bowl.

‘The sand timer. Turn it over and chew your next mouthful until the sand runs out.’ Her eyes flickered with interest as she reached out, turned the timer over and plonked it down again. All three of them scooped up their cereal and began chewing.

Bobbi’s mouth worked, her eyes flicking competitively between her brother and Megan. ‘Done it, Mummy!’ Megan shrieked, as the last grains of sand filtered through the timer. Archie grinned then flipped the timer over again. Watching the timer intently, they tucked in again.

I sat with them and joined in, trying and failing to make each mouthful of my porridge last the full thirty seconds.

‘That was a really nice breakfast, Rosie. You’re the best cook.’

I smiled. ‘Thank you, Archie.’

‘I want more!’ Bobbi shouted, adding ‘please’ when I gave her a look. Another helping and two glasses of milk later, she was still ‘starving’. I told her she’d had enough, repeating my mantra about there always being enough food for her at Rosie’s house. A flurry of protests followed but I shook my head, turned the television on and started clearing the table. Megan and Archie went and sat on the rug and watched cartoons, Mungo rolling around on his back between them. Ecstatic with all the attention, his tail thumped noisily on the floor as they tickled his middle.

Bobbi grabbed my wrist and shook it. ‘Rosie, I need more, I do, Rosie, I do!’

‘You can have some fruit soon, and they’ll be lots more food for lunch and dinner. They’ll be plenty of food today, tomorrow, the next day and every day that you’re here, I promise.’

Her mouth drooped at the edges as if she didn’t believe a word of it but she sloped off her chair and stamped across the room. Mungo sprang to his feet before she reached the rug and trotted off to hide under the coffee table.

After clearing away the breakfast things I decided to try and tackle Bobbi’s knotted hair. She hadn’t allowed me to wash it in the bath the previous night and it was matted at the ends where she’d slept on it slightly damp. Without saying a word, I planted two doll’s styling heads on the rug, one in front of each of the girls, along with a hairbrush for each of them and some styling accessories.

Bobbi swooped, scooping everything up for herself. ‘There are some for you and some for Megan,’ I said, returning half to Megan, who was watching Bobbi peevishly.

‘My dolly doesn’t want these anyway,’ Bobbi said sulkily, sweeping her half back to Megan. ‘She has a bad headache.’

‘Does she now?’ I went to the first-aid cupboard and pulled out some old, out-of-date bandages and plasters. ‘Perhaps she needs some of these.’

Bobbi looked thrilled. While Megan covered her doll’s head in hair clips and lipstick, Bobbi covered hers from top to bottom in bandages.

Absorbed by the cartoons and the doll, she didn’t protest when I got to work on her hair. She kept shuffling forward on her bottom though, only stopping when she was about a foot from the television. I hauled her back each time, wondering whether her eyesight was all that it should be. I made a mental note to book an appointment for her at the opticians.

I used a wide-toothed comb on her hair, trying my best not to pull on the tangled ends. It was as I worked my way back towards the nape of her neck that I noticed something unusual – the back of her head was almost entirely flat. My heart lurched. I knew that since the ‘back to sleep’ campaign had been launched to reduce the number of sudden infant deaths, more babies had developed flattened spots on their skull as a result of laying in the same position in their cots or car seats, but Bobbi’s was an extreme example, her scalp devoid of even the merest hint of a curve. I felt a swell of sympathy for the baby she had been, probably left alone for hours, perhaps even days at a time.

When I’d finished I sat at the table on the opposite side of the room and added a note in my daily diary about Bobbi’s flattened scalp to the growing list of worries accumulating beneath her name. The opposite page, the one for her brother, was blank. I wrote ‘Archie’ at the top and drew a line underneath it. There hadn’t been a single incident of difficult or even mildly challenging behaviour from him since he’d arrived.

Even so, I was hoping to speak to Danny Brookes, the children’s social worker soon. I had missed a call from him earlier that day. He’d left a message on my mobile to give his name as my point of contact, but when I’d called back, his own answerphone had kicked in. I fired off a quick email to the fostering team listing my concerns and asked them to forward it onto Danny. What I wanted to say about Archie, I couldn’t exactly put my finger on. My eyes drifted across the room and settled on the children, all sitting cross-legged on the rug. Beneath his thick crop of hair it was difficult to tell whether Archie’s scalp was flat like his sister’s. In fact, beneath his smooth facade it was tricky to work out anything about him. I picked up my notebook and pen again and, beneath Archie’s name, I filled the space with a large question mark.

Chapter Six (#ulink_7edd3fb4-accc-5626-96b4-90d38c16e42a)

I finally spoke to the children’s social worker at 9 a.m. three days later, on Monday 5 January. Most of the children in the borough, including Jamie, had returned to school after the Christmas holidays, but Megan’s nursery was closed for an INSET day and wasn’t due to reopen until tomorrow. Emily was studying at the library, and I still wasn’t sure where to send Archie and Bobbi. I had called Joan to ask if she knew whether the children were home educated, but she had no idea either.

As I listened to Danny introducing himself over the telephone I heard footsteps on the stairs. I turned to see Megan padding down awkwardly in a pair of pink crocs. She had dressed herself again. The thick woolly jumper she had chosen was on inside out, almost covering the pink stripy shorts she was wearing. She jumped down the last two steps and skipped over to me, flinging her arms around one of my legs.

I pulled a funny face as I listened to Danny outlining social services’ legal position. Megan giggled and tugged at my hand, insisting loudly that I should come and play. I shook my head and put a finger to my lips, gesticulating for her to go and find the others. She danced around my legs then planted a kiss on my hip and skipped down the hall. Seconds later I heard her chatter cutting through Bobbi’s monologue.

From what Danny was saying it seemed that the Bradys’ neighbours had tolerated months of anti-social behaviour in the lead-up to the children being removed. On the night the children were removed, they had heard a series of disturbing thuds and lots of shouting, followed by crying that went on for hours. Being the early hours of the morning, it hadn’t been possible for the local authority to seek an Emergency Protection Order, so the children had been taken into police protective custody. ‘So you’re in court today?’

‘Yep,’ Danny said over a rustle of papers. His voice was deep and warm, his accent bordering on cockney. ‘They came in early on the 29th. Strictly speaking the police protection only allows us to keep them for seventy-two hours, so we’re out of time on that. I’m meeting Tanya Brady, that’s Mum, later today but I’ve spoken to her over the phone a couple of times. She sounded half-cut the first time, but when we spoke again she told me she’s engaged a solicitor. She’ll be contesting, but I’m certain we’ll get our ICO.’

An ICO or Interim Care Order is a temporary order made by the court when there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a child has suffered or may be at risk of suffering significant harm. An ICO means that the birth parents must share parental responsibility with the local authority until a final decision is made by the courts.

Parents who have had their children removed from their care automatically qualify for legal aid no matter what their financial circumstances, so it’s rare for a care order to go unchallenged.

‘So how they been then?’