Sophia"s second entrance was equally dramatic. She really did look beautiful in her costume. She was also in her element with all the compliments she was getting, and dutiful I noticed how she went round every guest individually, thanking them personally for coming and for all the gifts she was given. She was thrilled to bits with her new mobile, and once again threw her arms around me, and though she once again nearly decked me she was just so much taller than I was I was quietly thrilled myself to see how tactile she was becoming and, most of all, in a non-s.e.xual way. "Oh, I just love it," she said. "And I promise to save plenty of pocket money for credit. I"ll never ask you for credit for it, honest. Ooh, my friends are going to be soooo jealous. It"s wicked!" With which she skipped off to find them, bright eyed and beaming.
Jack Boyd had bought her a new leather handbag, which looked expensive, and perhaps a little over-extravagant, but it wasn"t for me to comment, and she did look so thrilled with it. He too was the recipient of a giant bear hug. He had the grace to blush and gently extracted himself, even if, on this occasion, it looked entirely innocent.
He had to be on his way then, so I did take the opportunity to see him out. I"d barely spoken to him since Sophia"s arrival and it would be good to have a word.
"Thanks for coming, Jack," I said. "It"s so obvious how much it means to her."
"I do try," he said. "I kind of feel I"m the closest link she has to her mother. I"m not really, of course, it"s just that I"ve been there since the beginning. I like to think she sees me of one of her few "constants"."
"I"m sure she does," I agreed. I paused. "Jack, can I ask you something about Sophia?"
"For sure."
"Well, it"s just that she acts out around Kieron and Mike in a really full-on way and it"s caused, well, a couple of dramas." Gold medal for understatement there, I thought ruefully. "And when she does it, it"s almost like she becomes someone else. It"s really marked, and, to be honest, a little scary a little spooky. Do you have any experience of that sort of thing yourself?"
To my surprise, Jack"s face coloured. You could see the blush so clearly. "I"m afraid I know just what you mean," he confessed. "To be honest, for a while I was quite concerned about it. So much so that I stopped taking her out in my car unless there was another adult in there with us. It was uncomfortable, to say the least. But it stopped. After a couple of months she just stopped doing it. I don"t know why perhaps she realised it wasn"t getting her anywhere ... But definitely unsettling. Especially for so young a girl. And of course I always had the business with the boyfriends on my mind. And then the family placement breaking down ... But you know the background ..."
"I do now," I said, nodding. "And it explains a great deal."
"Terrible tragedy. Still, you seem to be doing a marvellous job with her."
"We"re doing our best," I said. "It"s pretty challenging, but I"d like to think Jean will see a difference when we hand her back."
"Um, well, yes ... Anyway, better let you get back to your party. Thanks for inviting me. Say goodbye to Mike. Speak soon."
I went back inside. What did "Um, well, yes" mean? Well, no matter. I was just pleased to find Sophia still in such fine fettle. She was now entertaining her friends with some funny quotes from Wicked. My nieces and nephews were with her too, and they all seemed to be having fun. Time to slip out into the back garden for a sneaky f.a.g with Riley.
"Isn"t it great to see her like this, Mum?" she said, gesturing to the chair beside her. "It"s so sad that she can"t always be so happy."
"Riley, love, no teenager ever stays this happy."
"Oh, you know what I mean. I mean n.o.body would imagine, seeing her now, would they? No one would guess that she has so many problems so much sadness in her life."
I sighed. I knew exactly what she meant. It was tough, seeing the girl that she could be that she should be yet knowing the turmoil and distress of the girl inside. No family well, no family that wanted anything to do with her, and having to spend her birthday in the company of virtual strangers. No, I thought. Shake it off, Case. Just do the very best you can for her. Make sure the time she spends with you is at least as happy as it can be. She would be safe, she would be cared for, she would be given all the guidance I could muster. Anything to help her move on and live a happy, productive life.
As I closed the door on the last of my guests that afternoon, I did so with renewed pa.s.sion for my job. It was silly perhaps unrealistic for me to want to try and move mountains. But if I couldn"t make a huge impact on every child that came my way, I could at least try to and so often it was the little things that mattered. Helping them to trust again, to feel secure, to know they had a place of safety, would never be harmed here.
Mike was at the door with me, my very own handsome prince, and I knew he knew exactly what I was thinking. Perhaps he was thinking it himself, even. He certainly didn"t seem to mind when I gave him a hug and a kiss and smeared green face paint all over him. I didn"t have to say anything. I knew he understood the emotions I was feeling. I felt energised, motivated. Like I was doing what I was born to.
Which, unbeknown to me, was just as well. I"d soon need every ounce of those resources that I could muster.
Chapter 15.
They say life is what happens when you"ve made other plans, don"t they? A great expression, and particularly apt in my line of work. Because one thing you can always expect is the unexpected. But, high on a successful party, and flushed after an hour"s cleaning, I think I took my eye off the ball.
The garden and conservatory clear now, I decided to pop up and have a quick shower before tackling the kitchen. We had plenty of green jelly, but inexplicably no milk, so while Kieron went to buy some, in order that we could all have a much-needed coffee, I thought I"d take the opportunity to scrub away my sticky green face. Not to mention the witch"s hair, liberally coated in grey spray paint by my darling daughter, which had horrified me every time I"d glanced in a mirror. If this was what I was going to look like in old age, I decided, you could forget about growing old gracefully. Thank heavens for the miracle of hair dye.
I felt much better once I"d managed to restore my raven tresses, and having tied them back and pulled on a pair of trackies and an old T-shirt, I went down to join Mike in the kitchen.
Sophia was apparently up in her room, sorting her presents, but Kieron was with him, having returned with the milk. And as my lovely hubby had already made a sizeable dent in the washing up, the three of us spent a pleasant twenty minutes at the table, just chilling out and chatting about the success of the day. I loved those family moments, just relaxing, after an industrious but productive bout of team work. Though, in this case, it was the calm before the storm.
"Casey?" Sophia"s voice. "Can I borrow your curling tongs, please?"
We all had our backs to her and all turned as one. And, to my dismay, she was standing there, made up to the nines and wearing nothing bar a black lacy bra and minuscule matching thong. And the smirk on her face was equally revealing.
Kieron spoke first, his eyes blazing. "Go and get some clothes on, you little idiot! What the h.e.l.l d"you think you"re doing?"
I stood up and pushed my chair back. "Sophia," I said calmly, anxious not to allow this to flare up. "Room, please. You know the rules in this house about appropriate dressing. Go and get dressed, please, and then you and I shall have a little talk, and then I shall dig out my tongs for you."
She took a step, but not out of the room closer to us. "What is wrong with you people?" she wanted to know. "It"s only underwear, for G.o.d"s sake!" She turned to Kieron. "And don"t you come over all horrified with me, Kieron. I"m sure you"ve seen Lauren dressed like this."
Mike, who had been silent up to now, was seething. I could see it. He practically launched his chair at the wall opposite as he stood up. He marched wordlessly past Sophia, out of the door and up the stairs.
Kieron, too, was pale faced with anger. "Don"t you dare," he said to Sophia. "Don"t you dare talk about my girlfriend like that! Mum, I"m sorry, but I"m off. I"ll be at Lauren"s if you need me." He too marched past Sophia, but as he did so he turned. "No one wants to look at you like that," he hissed at her, "with your tarty underwear and your cheap permatan. Not me. Not Dad. Not anyone. You just have to go too far, don"t you? Pathetic."
"Oh, p.i.s.s off, Kieron," she said. "You little wimp. You probably don"t even know what a woman looks like!" And with this, to my consternation and horror, she put her hands on her hips and began to gyrate them, thrusting her pelvis out provocatively. Kieron"s words all those weeks ago came back to me, then. It was like The Exorcist. It was like she was possessed. Where"d the sweet girl of just an hour ago disappeared to? It was horrible to watch. Just horrible.
"Sophia!" I yelled at her. "Stop that right now! Get up to your room, do you hear me? I mean it!"
Kieron had already marched off to the front door and I felt tears well in my eyes as he slammed it. What the h.e.l.l was going on? This was just awful.
"I"ll go to my room when I"m good and ready!" she shouted, spit flying from her mouth towards me. "And you can tell that pathetic son of yours that this is not a "permatan". It"s f.u.c.king melatonin, okay? And I can"t f.u.c.king help it!"
I gaped, unable to think of a single thing to say to her. But she hadn"t finished anyway. "And," she continued, "I am 13 years old and can wear what I f.u.c.king well like!"
"Not in this house, young lady!"
Mike. Back from upstairs. He threw a bathrobe towards her. "Put that on right this minute! And fasten it! How many times do we have to tell you, eh? Eh? If you"re only wearing underwear then the decent thing"s to cover yourself up!"
"p.i.s.s off!" she said again. "You can"t make me!" Sophia was looking scarily angry now, almost out of control, her stance rigid, her expression hard. She wasn"t so much speaking to as snarling at Mike. She"d ignored the bathrobe and it had fallen to the floor. He retrieved it, then slung it unceremoniously over her shoulders. "Room!" he then bellowed at her. "Now!"
"No!" she screamed at him. "You want me to move, then you"ll have to f.u.c.king move me!"
I couldn"t quite believe what happened next. To my horror, Mike simply picked her up from behind, and, holding her by the elbows, carried her out into the hall and up the stairs. I followed him out of the kitchen and gazed on in shock as she screamed at him, kicked him and head-b.u.t.ted him all the way. He"s a big man, my husband, but Sophia was a big girl, and, in her fury, fired up with so much adrenalin, she was fearfully strong, too. It must have hurt him.
"Put me down, you f.u.c.king animal! I f.u.c.king hate you! You old b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" She never stopped screaming abuse at him, not once, all the way to the unintended return journey to her room. I felt sick as I watched the scene unravel. How had our lovely day managed to turn into this?
I felt helpless as well. This didn"t feel right, was not right. He had no choice, he was angry, he was only human. Only human. But Mike had laid hands on her. He had physically removed her. This was not supposed to happen. All our training had taught us that. De-escalate a confrontation. Defuse anger. Deflect violence. Walk away. Walk away until everything calms down.
But I didn"t blame him. Training was fine, but all the training in the world couldn"t prepare you for the real thing, the here and now. Not for a situation such as this, where no matter how hard you try to keep things calm, you just know it"s still going to get worse. And I did know that. I"d known it the minute she"d arrived in the kitchen, near-naked, just as soon as I"d seen the expression on her face. Sophia was ready for a fight. Spoiling for one. And wasn"t going to stop until she got one.
I thought, desperately. Why? What was the b.l.o.o.d.y "trigger" here? Was it the contrast? As she sat in her room amid her presents, did the contrast between her day all the fun, all the gifts just prove too much, when set against her real life, to bear? I tried to put myself in her shoes, walk the proverbial mile in them. Was that it? She just had to let her anger out? Justin, her predecessor, would attack his own body, would sit with a knife and tear off his own toenails. Was this Sophia"s version of exactly the same process? Look I"m a monster! Look how easily I can make you hate me!
I heard a door slam upstairs, followed by more bangs and screams, then Mike appeared at the top of the staircase, looking ashen and dishevelled. He started down them. G.o.d, I thought, he looks ten years older! And bizarrely, a stray thought popped into my head, that perhaps I"d better dye his hair too.
He reached the bottom and tried to flatten it down. "She can stay up there for the rest of the night. I"ve had it," he said.
"Are you okay, love?"
"No, I"m raging." He shook his head and touched my shoulder. "I"m not hurt, love, if that"s what you mean. She"s b.l.o.o.d.y strong, though, I"ll give her that. Jesus. Don"t ever take her on at martial arts, love, I mean it. She"d be b.l.o.o.d.y lethal, I tell you!"
It sort of defused the tension, him saying that. But this was serious.
"I"m going to have to call EDT, aren"t I?" I said.
EDT are the emergency duty team, a service you could access if you had a crisis at the weekend or out of hours. You told an unknown and therefore uninvolved social worker the problem and they logged all the details for you. They would then decide what to do according to the specific situation. For example, if you were reporting a child who had run away, they would take a description, log the details and then call the police. Going through the EDT was an important first step for a carer, as it not only supported you, but also created a formal record of events. And in this case it was important that we involved them right now, in case things got worse and the situation escalated, or Sophia put in a complaint with her own version of events. This did happen from time to time, so it was made clear to us in training that we must be very thorough about recording all incidents like this, particularly if actual physical contact had taken place. And, truth be known, I also wanted my thoughts on her mental instability to be recorded in as many places as possible. Her team might be keen to make light of her "behaviours", but no one who had witnessed what we had just witnessed could be in any doubt that this wasn"t just a particularly ranty teenage tantrum but clear evidence that her mind was all over the place. When would someone else accept that this child was ill?
I phoned EDT while Mike made more coffee. This was going to be a long night we both felt sure of that and we wanted to feel we were prepared. I spoke to a really nice, sympathetic social worker, who a.s.sured me I"d done the right thing. Her name was Christine and she promised me she"d get everything logged and be at the end of the line, any time, all night.
But as it turned out I didn"t need to call Christine again, as the rest of the evening was quiet. Sophia did as she was told and remained in her room, only coming down, at around ten, to get a drink. None of us spoke; she clearly felt as disinclined as us to engage. And after making a big huffy show of banging around the kitchen, she went back up to bed, and I, for one, was grateful. I did sleep eventually, Mike too we were both shattered. But I woke on Sunday morning with that horrible sinking feeling as the events of the previous day immediately clamoured for my attention. I gently shook Mike.
"Are you going to get up and come down with me, love?" I didn"t feel able to face the day and potentially Sophia on my own yet.
"Course, love," he said, stretching and then gathering me close for a cuddle. "But let"s give it ten minutes first, eh? I"ve been thinking about last night." He gave me a squeeze. "You and me both, eh? And it"s so obvious Sophia is a lot more disturbed than anyone thought. I mean, she was scary to watch. That wasn"t just a show of temper, was it? It was horrendous. And we"re just not equipped to deal with that sort of stuff. I think she"s mentally ill, and I think it needs dealing with. But not by us. By the right people."
I nodded. "I agree. I was thinking the same. When I speak to John tomorrow I"m going to ask him if we can enlist the help of CAMHS or something."
CAMHS was the child and adolescent mental health service. Social services used it as a first port of call when a child displayed the sort of disturbing behaviours Sophia had. The only snag was that I knew from my time in school that they always had a long waiting list. And they were very particular about who they"d work with, too. Their rules generally allowed for them to work only with children in long-term, settled placements. The reasoning was simple that their input would not then be interrupted by things like a move or a change to a new school.
But it had to be worth a shot. This needed addressing as a matter of urgency. I was more convinced than ever that this child needed help we couldn"t give her.
"Right, that"s settled, then," Mike said, swinging his legs out of bed. "Come on, shorty, let"s get going. But an easy day for you, today. Starting with food. No cooking dinner. We"re going out for Sunday lunch. And treating Riley and David as well, I think, yes? They deserve a treat after all the hard work they put in yesterday. And we need to get some normality back into our b.l.o.o.d.y lives." He frowned then. "But best leave Kieron and Lauren out of the mix, eh? I think he"ll need a couple of days away from it all, you know, to calm down."
I felt wretched all over again, thinking of my poor son. And also unsure about taking Sophia anywhere today.
"You think that"s wise?" I said, pulling on my dressing gown. "Us all going out? I"m not sure I have the energy to deal with her here, let alone take her out in public."
Mike sat down on the bed. "I think that"s exactly what we need to do, Case. Take control of the situation, not let it control us."
I smiled then. "That"s what you used to say when Riley was a baby and she was off on one d"you remember?"
"Oh, yes," he said. "And the same applies here." He nodded towards the direction of Sophia"s room. "I reckon she"s going to be in there dreading facing us today, don"t you? So the best we can do is to play everything down. We"ve got a plan on now, we"ve logged what happened, we"re dealing with it. No point in ranting. It"ll just fall on deaf ears. Today we just accept her apology and I"m sure there"ll be one and get on with the business of having a normal happy family Sunday. Agreed?"
I nodded. He was right. "Agreed."
"Though if I"m wrong, and she comes out all guns blazing, like Paul Newman and Robert Redford at the end of Butch Ca.s.sidy ..."
"Then what?"
He winked. "Then I"m packing a bag and leaving home."
But as it turned out he didn"t need to. No sooner had we got downstairs and brewed the coffee than Sophia arrived in the kitchen. She was belted up tight in her PJs and dressing gown, her eyes looking like she"d gone ten rounds with a cage fighter. She must have been crying for hours.
"Oh, Mike," she said in such a tiny voice. "Oh, Casey."
And then she sat down and promptly burst into tears.
Chapter 16.
I"d purposely not told Riley about the night before when I called her, but between then and now she"d obviously spoken to Kieron. And he"d obviously filled her in on all the details.
"Well, if it isn"t little Miss Wonderbra," was how she greeted my young charge when we arrived at the pub. I winced as I watched Sophia"s face redden.
"I"m sorry, Riley," she said. "I didn"t mean any harm, honest. I just kind of had a funny turn, I think." She lowered her gaze and began fiddling with her cutlery. I interjected.
"Yes, she certainly did have a funny turn, love, that"s for sure. But as your gran used to say, least said soonest mended. Come on, let"s have that baby off you. Come and sit down. So. Which is it to be, everyone? Beef or pork?"
Mike had been right. It had been a good idea to get out. The house felt closed in after so much shouting and upset, and luckily our favourite pub, in the next village to our one, had a big enough table free to accommodate us all.
Following the drama of Sat.u.r.day night, Sunday morning had been a surprisingly calm aftermath. We"d just sat down with Sophia, and while I hugged her and tried to comfort her Mike had calmly told her that we were a little worried about these "funny turns" of hers, and that we were going to see if we could get some proper help for her. She was meek and acquiescent clearly as shattered as she looked and agreed that she didn"t understand why these rages overtook her. Or this urge to be so provocative all the time.
And then we told her that was the end of it, and that we were going out for a big roast lunch, and she immediately brightened, before us mentioning that Riley and David would be there too.
"You won"t tell them?"
"No," I said. "As Mike says, it"s all done with. Now why don"t you take your medicine, have a quick bite to eat, then perhaps go back to bed for a couple of hours?"
It was a shame, then, that Riley had felt the need to have a dig, but I completely understood sibling loyalty ran deep with my children. And because of his Asperger"s, Riley felt particularly protective towards her little brother, so I knew how enraged she"d probably have been.
But lunch was fine; perfectly pleasant, not least because Levi stole the show, taking pride of place in his high chair, which I"d parked next to Sophia, keeping everyone"s minds otherwise occupied. And, once we were done with the main course, and Sophia asked if she could take him out into the pub garden for a push around in his buggy, I was only too happy to say yes. Riley and I could join her, in fact, and cram in a sneaky cigarette while she did so.
We waited till Sophia was out of earshot, at the play area, before discussing what was uppermost in both of our minds. "But, Mum," said Riley, once I"d explained how we wanted to play it, "surely you turning a blind eye isn"t going to help her. If you do that, how"s she going to know the things she does are wrong?"
In many other circ.u.mstances Riley would have been right. But not this one. "That"s just it, love. She already knows it"s wrong. I know she does. The problem is that she doesn"t seem to be able to control herself. She"s like a completely different person when she acts out in that way."
"So just ignore it, then? Is that what you"re saying?"
"Well, no. We still have to acknowledge what she does. But it"s becoming increasingly obvious that telling her off gets us nowhere. No, this is the long game, I think, love. We have to cry for help ourselves this time, and loudly. And not stop until we actually get some."
I could see Mike gesturing from inside the pub, poking his finger towards his open mouth. "C"mon, love," I said, putting out my cigarette. "I think Dad wants to order desserts." I waved to Sophia and beckoned her back as well. "And, look, thanks, love. It"s a trial, I know, but I really think she"s ill."
Riley frowned. "Just as long as she doesn"t make you ill, that"s all. Or Dad."