I Miss Mummy: The true story of a frightened young girl who is desperate to go home. Cathy Glass
peaceful and vulnerable in sleep, and so, so beautiful – she looked just like an angel. My heart went out to her in a rush of love and pity.
‘We’ll put her straight to bed,’ I said, coming to my senses. I closed the front door and led the way upstairs and into what was now Alice’s room. The duty social worker’s previous animosity towards me appeared to have gone now and he carried Alice into her room, where I helped ease her from his arms and on to the bed. She didn’t wake. ‘I’ll just remove her coat for tonight,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll leave her to sleep in her clothes – save disturbing her.’
‘She hasn’t come with a change of clothes,’ he said quietly.
‘It’s all right. I have spares.’
While the duty social worker supported Alice’s back, floppy in sleep, I carefully slipped her arms out of her coat. I noticed that although her coat had dried mud on it, it was of very good quality and also new, as was her little dress and cardigan. My first impression was that Alice wasn’t undernourished, and her face and hands were clean; her chin-length hair looked well groomed. In fact, apart from the mud on her coat, she appeared clean and well cared for.
Having taken off Alice’s coat, I gently eased her head on to the pillow. As I did, her long black eyelashes fluttered and her eyes opened. Huge brown eyes looked at me in surprise and fear. ‘It’s all right, love,’ I soothed, stroking her little forehead. ‘My name is Cathy. I’m going to look after you for a while. You are in bed in my house and you are safe. There is nothing to worry about.’ Her eyes remained wide, staring at me: she was so innocent, so overwhelmed and so worried, I could have wept. ‘It’s all right,’ I soothed again.
‘I’ll get the paperwork from my briefcase in the car,’ the duty social worker said, clearly pressed for time.
I nodded. ‘I’ll ask one of my children so stay with Alice and I’ll come down.’
He left the room and I sat on the edge of the bed, stroking Alice’s forehead. She looked at me with big wondering eyes. ‘It’s OK,’ I continued to reassure her. ‘My name is Cathy, I am a foster carer and I look after children. You are safe now.’
I half expected her to burst into tears and sob hysterically, but I think she was so tired and traumatized she didn’t have the energy. She lay on her back under the duvet with her pink blanket loosely draped on top, her huge eyes still staring at me. Then she licked her lips. ‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked softly, but she didn’t answer, her eyes not daring to move from my face. ‘Oh pet,’ I said. ‘Please don’t worry. Everything will be all right now.’
Lucy and Paula, in their pyjamas, appeared at the bedroom door and hesitated, uncertain if they should disturb us.
‘Come in and say hello to Alice,’ I said quietly.
They crept in, to the side of the bed, and gazed down at her. Their gasps said it all. ‘Oh! Oh, look at her. She’s so sweet.’
Alice’s big eyes moved from my face to theirs.
‘This is Lucy and Paula,’ I said. ‘They live here too.’
‘Hi, Alice,’ the girls whispered. They knelt beside her bed.
I heard the front door close as the duty social worker returned from his car. ‘Could you stay with Alice for a moment while I speak to the social worker?’ I asked the girls. ‘I shouldn’t be too long.’
It wasn’t a question that needed answering. Lucy and Paula immediately took over, Lucy soothing Alice’s forehead as I had been doing, while Paula took hold of her little hand, which still lay against her chin.
‘I’m just going downstairs to speak to the man who brought you here,’ I said to Alice. ‘Lucy and Paula will stay with you.’ While it might have been obvious to us and an older foster child what was happening, it wouldn’t necessarily have been obvious to a traumatized four-year-old, who might have thought I was disappearing for good and that Lucy and Paula would follow me, leaving her alone in a strange room.
Alice’s gaze briefly flickered to me as I stood, and then returned to Lucy and Paula.
Downstairs I found the duty social worker already in the sitting room, seated in the armchair and using his briefcase to rest on as he completed a form.
‘What’s your full name, and postcode?’ he asked as I entered, his terseness returning. I told him. ‘And I placed Alice at ten twenty-five p.m. on 25 March,’ he said, glancing at his watch.
I nodded and sat on the sofa.
‘Who else is in the house?’
‘Just my children and me,’ I said, surprised.
‘I need their names for this form.’
‘Adrian, Lucy and Paula. Lucy is my foster daughter.’
‘And their ages?’
‘Fourteen, twelve and ten.’
He wrote, and then asked: ‘No husband or partner?’
‘No.’ Had Alice been placed during the day, all this information should have been available, supplied by Jill or the social services, but without access to the file I assumed he was completing a placement form for his agency.
He wrote some more, I didn’t know what, and then put the form in his briefcase and snapped the lid shut. ‘Alice’s social worker will contact you on Monday,’ he said and stood, ready to go.
‘Do you not have any other information about Alice?’ I asked quickly.
‘No. Don’t you?’
‘All I have is the original referral, which doesn’t say much. Do you know if Alice has an allergies or special needs?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said with a shrug, ‘so we’ll have to assume she doesn’t, although I should go easy on the peanut butter.’ I didn’t appreciate his stab at humour. Even if a child arrives in the middle of the night as an emergency I’m usually told of anything that could affect the child’s health like allergies or asthma. And given that Alice’s move to me hadn’t been an emergency but had been planned (although it had gone badly wrong at the end, with Alice being snatched), I’d have thought Martha would have had time to print out the essential information and leave it with the duty social worker – or was that expecting too much?
‘I’ve got to go,’ the duty social worker said, heading towards the sitting room door. ‘A runaway teenager has been found on the other side of the county. I’m the only one on call to collect him.’
I nodded, but while I sympathized with his obviously very heavy workload, my concerns were with Alice, and I persisted in trying to find out more about her background that might help me to look after her. ‘Who took Alice to the police station?’ I asked, following him down the hall.
‘Mum’s boyfriend, I think,’ he returned over his shoulder; then, hand on the doorknob, he let himself out.
‘Goodnight,’ I called after him as he went down the front path, but he didn’t reply. He was already taking his mobile from his jacket pocket and answering the next call.
‘Yes, I’m on my way,’ he snapped. ‘But I can’t be in two places at the same time.’ I thought that if I ever won the jackpot on the lottery I’d use some of the money to fund more social workers so they could do their jobs properly and didn’t have to be in two places at the same time.
Upstairs again, I joined Lucy and Paula at Alice’s bedside. I stood for a few moments gazing down at Alice as Lucy stroked her forehead and Paula held her hand. Alice’s