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  After a moment Sharon, who had fallen silent while this was explained, cleared her throat and purposefully leant forward on to the table as she spoke.

  ‘What about me?’ she said. We all looked at her. ‘If Chris goes to prison, and Mr and Mrs Jones are too old, I could adopt Alice. I can’t have children and I’d make a good mother. Alice loves me and I’ll look after her.’ For a minute I felt very sorry for Sharon: she appeared so vulnerable and desperate in her bid to have Alice, and not being able to have children in itself was very sad; but my sympathy vanished with her next comment: ‘I’ll be a better mother than your Leah,’ she said, looking at Mr and Mrs Jones. ‘She’s a waste of space and the sooner Alice forgets her the better.’

  ‘No! She must never have Alice,’ Mr Jones cried. ‘Never! It’s not right.’

  ‘You will need to discuss any application you are thinking of making with Kitty,’ Ray said diplomatically to Sharon. Then, turning to Mr and Mrs Jones: ‘It’s highly unlikely this would be considered the best option for Alice,’ he reassured them.

  ‘I’ll see you about my application after the meeting,’ unperturbed Sharon said to Kitty. ‘I’ve been thinking that I might leave Chris if he goes to prison, but that won’t matter. Alice never knew him, so it will just be me and her.’

  I looked at Jill, and then at Ray and Kitty, as we all recognized the significance of Sharon’s almost throwaway comment. Unwittingly her remark about leaving Chris and him not knowing Alice had just undermined everything on which her and Chris’s application to have Alice had been based. Perhaps Sharon realized this too, for she quickly added: ‘Or we can stay together if you like.’

  There was little more to be discussed at the review. Ray confirmed that Alice would be staying with me until a decision was made at the final court hearing; then he set a date for the next review in six months’ time. ‘Another review might not be necessary if Alice is no longer in foster care,’ he explained to Mr and Mrs Jones, ‘but it is usual to set a date for the next review.’

  Mr and Mrs Jones nodded, silent and clearly in despair, yet despite their own desolation as Ray wound up the meeting Mr Jones said: ‘On behalf of my wife and myself I would just like to say how much we appreciate all Cathy is doing for Alice. We are very grateful to her for looking after our granddaughter so well. She treats Alice like one of her own children. From our hearts we thank you, love.’

  I swallowed hard. ‘Alice is a pleasure to look after,’ I said, humbled by their courage and dignity. ‘I pray things work out for the best. I find this all so very sad.’ Jill and Kitty nodded. Then Ray closed the meeting.

  Sharon remained seated as the rest of us stood, presumably holding back to speak to Kitty about her application to adopt Alice. Mr and Mrs Jones said goodbye and left first, followed by Ray. I was on my way out with Jill when Kitty came over, and said quietly, ‘The family-finding meeting is scheduled for 10 October. Can you make it, Cathy? It’s important you’re there, as you know Alice better than anyone.’

  ‘I’ll make sure I’m there,’ I said.

  ‘Alice will be easy to place for adoption, if that is the decision,’ Jill said, glancing across at Sharon, who was busy on her mobile phone.

  I nodded. ‘But losing Alice will finish her grandparents. They won’t cope.’

  ‘I know,’ Kitty said. ‘But adoption might be our only option. Leah can’t parent Alice, and age may well count against Mr and Mrs Jones in the end.’ She sighed. ‘In all my years of social work this is probably one of the saddest cases I’ve ever come across. Drugs have a lot to answer for. If this hardworking and decent family can be torn apart, so can any family.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Don’t You Want Me?

  The following day was Tuesday and Alice was due to see her father and Sharon. I obviously hadn’t said anything to Alice about her father being prosecuted, and I hoped Chris and Sharon would have enough good sense not to say anything either. Unusually, they were late arriving at the family centre, so Alice and I waited in reception. When they arrived, fifteen minutes after the scheduled time, they looked sombre and, as they signed the register, they just about managed a nod in our direction. Chris had never been one for open displays of affection and had always left greeting Alice to Sharon, but now Sharon showed no more enthusiasm than Chris as they came over and we waited for the contact supervisor to appear.

  Once the supervisor had arrived, Alice exchanged my hand for hers and kissed me goodbye. As usual I watched them go; Alice and the supervisor went first with the supervisor asking Alice about her day at school, while Chris and Sharon followed in silence. I guessed Sharon, usually the one to do all the talking, was preoccupied with Chris’s prosecution; or maybe Kitty had told Sharon that an application by her to adopt Alice was unlikely to succeed; or possibly it had become obvious to Sharon that while she and Chris were still being considered to have Alice long term, their position had become seriously compromised by the criminal proceedings against Chris. I wondered if Sharon ever doubted Chris’s integrity now there was enough evidence for a police prosecution. She didn’t appear to.

  At the end of contact Alice told me that Sharon hadn’t wanted to play with her, and her father had had a headache, so they had watched television. At the end of the next contact, on Thursday, as I was driving us home Alice told me that Sharon had said she thought two hours after school was too tiring for Alice and she would speak to the social worker about reducing contact. Sure enough, the following afternoon Kitty phoned to say that Sharon and Chris had agreed to reduce their contact to one hour, in line with the grandparents’, as they recognized Alice was exhausted after a full day at school. While I was relieved and pleased that Sharon had been able to do the correct thing, I wondered if she was losing interest in Alice as she had before. Chris had never shown that much interest in Alice and appeared to do as Sharon told him. But whatever the reason, the upshot was that by reducing their contact to one hour, Alice wasn’t too tired to eat her dinner and had time to play before going to bed, which was much better for her.

  Two weeks later, on 10 October, Alice went into school blissfully unaware of the family-finding meeting I was about to attend, which was the first step to Alice being adopted. Alice no longer asked where she would live permanently, not because she didn’t have the maturity or intelligence to contemplate her future – she did – but because she had convinced herself that when her mother was well enough she would return to live with her. ‘Happily ever after, like in the books,’ she said.

  When Alice said this or made similar comments about her future I tried to steer her to the idea there were other possible outcomes, so it wouldn’t come as such a shock when the judge made his decision. I had accepted it was impossible for Alice to return to her mother and that the social services wouldn’t leave Alice in care indefinitely on the off chance her mother might one day recover. Trying to prepare Alice, I showed her photographs of, and talked about, some of the other children I’d fostered who had gone to ‘live happily ever after’ with new forever families – i.e. had been adopted. But while Alice nodded politely and liked looking at the photographs, I knew that what I was saying fell on deaf ears. ‘I’m pleased I won’t need a new family,’ she said. ‘I’ve got my own family,’ meaning her mother and grandparents.

  Part of my role as a foster carer is to prepare children for the future and I was concerned that if Alice didn’t adjust, and was adopted, she would have problems bonding with her new family because of the strong bond she still had with her natural family. It was all so dreadfully sad, and not for the first time since I’d begun fostering I wished I had a big magic wand to turn back the clock and make everything OK.

  At the family-finding meeting I raised these concerns, and Kitty, Jill and Faith (from the family-finding team) appreciated what I was saying.

  ‘I’ll have to do some work with Alice to prepare her for moving on,’ Kitty said. ‘Once we know the outcome of the criminal proceedings, and are advertising for an ad
optive family, I’ll speak to Alice. And perhaps you could try talking to her again,’ Kitty said to me. ‘She trusts you and I like the way you used the examples of the other children you’ve fostered who were adopted. That sounds very positive.’

  Faith nodded.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said. ‘But Alice firmly believes she will be returning to live with her mother at some point, so strong is their bond.’

  ‘Which is surprising when you think how frightened Alice must have been when her mother snatched her and took her up to the quarry that night,’ Jill said. ‘You’d have thought Alice would have lost faith in her mother’s ability to keep her safe. Alice must be angry with her.’

  ‘I don’t think she is,’ I said. ‘Alice never appears to be angry or feels let down by her mother. Clearly she didn’t see the danger in being at the quarry at night. I think she views her mother taking her as a sign of her love and loyalty, which in a way it was.’

  Jill nodded.

  ‘I’ll talk more to Alice about all of this when I begin preparing her for moving on,’ Kitty said. ‘If necessary I’ll make a referral to a therapist. We don’t want a failed adoption on our hands.’ I inwardly cringed at the very thought – Alice going to an adoptive home and then having to leave if it didn’t work out. This does happen to some children, and it’s a rejection from which they take a long time to recover.

  Faith then asked me to describe Alice’s character, her routine, likes and dislikes, in fact anything that should be taken into account when matching her to a suitable adoptive family. A lump immediately rose in my throat as I began describing Alice, the little angel who’d come to us in the dead of night and had become so much a part of our lives.

  ‘She’s a beautiful child,’ I said. ‘Small for her age, petite, but very intelligent. She has a naturally happy disposition and brightens up any room – you can’t stay sad around Alice very long. She sleeps from seven p.m. until seven a.m. and eats well: she enjoys a wide range of food and is willing to try anything new. She loves all types of games, especially role playing – shops, schools, etc., and she likes dressing up as a nurse. She says she wants to be a doctor when she grows up so she can make her mummy, and all the mummies like her, well again.’ I stopped and felt tears well in my eyes. ‘Can you add anything?’ I asked Jill, my voice unsteady.

  Jill, who knew Alice from all her visits, added to my description, as did Kitty, while Faith took notes. Faith hadn’t met Alice but would do so in the months to come, as she was responsible for drawing up a profile of Alice and the type of adoptive family she would be looking for – i.e. one that would best match Alice. It was decided that in order to meet Alice’s cultural needs, the family should be white, British and preferably Christian, as Alice and her mother had been christened and Alice’s grandparents went to church. Given that Alice had enjoyed having older siblings in the family in the form of Adrian, Lucy and Paula, it was felt that her adoptive family could have older siblings but not a baby or toddler, as Alice was going to need time and attention in order to settle in.

  ‘I can see Alice going to a childless couple in their early thirties,’ Faith said thoughtfully, looking up from her notes. ‘I have a number of childless professional couples on my books who have already been approved to adopt. Some of them have been waiting for years for a young child. There is a shortage of healthy white children who need adoptive homes. Alice would be ideal.’

  While it sounded as though Alice was a commodity that could be packaged and shipped to new owners, I recognized that if she was going to be adopted then a good match was imperative. A childless couple in their thirties, desperately wanting but unable to have children of their own, seemed ideal, and they would appreciate what a special gift Alice was. Doubtless they would love and cherish Alice as her mother and grandparents did. Whether or not Alice could ever return that love only time would tell.

  Once Faith had clarified the legal position with Kitty and also the time frame, she drew the meeting to a close. Faith said another family-finding meeting would be arranged once the criminal proceedings were out of the way. In the meantime she would type up her notes – the profile of Alice and the type of family she would be looking for. Faith asked me if I could find some recent photographs of Alice and bring them to the next meeting so that she had them on file to show would-be adopters.

  On the drive home I tried to picture the – as yet unidentified – childless couple waiting to start a family, who would be lucky enough to have Alice if she went on to be adopted, which was looking increasingly likely. I knew their gain would be our loss, but the loss my family and I would feel when Alice eventually left us would be nothing compared to the loss Alice’s mother and grandparents would suffer if Alice was adopted. As a foster carer I have to prepare myself for children leaving, painful though it is, but not so with Alice’s mother and grandparents, who had naturally assumed Alice would be with them forever.

  That afternoon when I took Alice to the family centre for contact with her grandparents I felt underhand and deceitful for having attended the family-finding meeting where, unbeknown to Mr and Mrs Jones, I had been ‘plotting’ with Kitty, Jill and Faith to take away their granddaughter. I couldn’t look Mrs Jones in the eye for the guilt I felt, and to make matters worse she gave me another pot of her home-made chutney. ‘I know you like it as much as Alice,’ she said, smiling. ‘So I’ve stepped up production.’

  I thanked her and silently prayed that the strength and courage that had seen them through so much would stay with them and see them through what was to come.

  Regardless of my own feelings I still had to do my job as a foster carer, so the following weekend I took the opportunity to talk to Alice about the future as I’d tried to in the past, and as Kitty had asked me to continue to do. Alice was looking at one of the many framed photographs I had on the walls in the sitting room, and I told her the boy in the picture was called Oliver, and he had stayed with me for a year. When she asked where he was now I said he’d been found a new mummy and daddy – a forever family who loved him very much and with whom he was very happy. Alice seemed quite interested and began asking questions: Where does he live? Does he have any brothers or sisters, or pets? Does he go on holiday with his family? And so on. I told Alice what I knew of Oliver’s family and then added: ‘It’s possible that one day you might be found a new mummy and daddy who will love you as Oliver’s do, and you will be very happy.’

  Alice turned from the photograph and looked at me as though I had just spoken the unspeakable. ‘You mustn’t say that,’ she said, her little face creasing. ‘I don’t want a new mummy. I want my old mummy. She’s the best mummy in the world.’

  ‘But Alice, pet,’ I said gently. ‘Your mummy can’t look after you as mummies are supposed to. You don’t want to stay in foster care forever, and keep having to go to the family centre for contact, do you? You want a normal family life with parents who can look after you and play with you, and will love you more than anyone else in the world.’

  Alice continued to stare at me. ‘I want to stay with you, until my mummy is better. Then I can go home. Don’t you want me to stay with you, Cathy? I thought you liked me.’

  ‘Oh, of course I like you, pet,’ I said, putting my arms around her and drawing her to me. ‘I like you very, very much, and you will stay with me until everything is sorted out. But you have to understand that where you live permanently isn’t my decision. The judge will decide what is best for you. And I think he will want you to have a proper mummy and daddy who will love you forever and be your very own family.’

  Alice continued to stare at me; then her eyes slowly filled and her little face looked sadder than I had ever seen it before. A large tear escaped and ran down her cheek; then another and another. I drew her to the sofa and on to my lap, where I cuddled her closely as she sobbed openly. Alice had been so brave for seven months, holding it all together in the unshakable belief that her mummy would recover and she could eventually return to live wit
h her. Now she was finally starting to listen to what I was saying, and having to accept there might be a different outcome and she wouldn’t be returning to her mother, and it hurt. It hurt Alice, and it hurt me, for there was nothing I could do but reassure her, and hope that eventually, given time, she would come to terms with it.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Love from Mummy

  Despite everything that was going on, the week leading up to 2 November was a light-hearted and joyous one. Not only was Christmas on the horizon – the shops were already displaying Christmas cards and novelties – but 2 November would be Alice’s fifth birthday, and she was getting very excited.

  ‘I’m going to be a big, big girl,’ she said, strutting around the house with her back straight and head held high, making herself as tall as possible. ‘Soon I’ll be as big as you,’ she said, measuring herself up to Adrian who, 80 centimetres taller, looked like a giant beside her. ‘I’ve got long legs,’ she said, ‘and on my birthday I’m going to be bigger than all the other four-year-olds in the whole wide world.’ Quite clearly this wasn’t so – Alice was very petite and one of the smallest in her class – but we didn’t disillusion her.

  ‘Five is a very big girl,’ I said, and Adrian, Lucy and Paula agreed.

  ‘My friend Tammy doesn’t have to go to bed until nine o’clock now she is five,’ Alice said, testing the water for an extension on her bedtime.

  ‘Really?’ I said, unconvinced. ‘I bet she’s tired the next day at school.’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ Alice said quickly. ‘And Shaun is allowed to stay up till midnight watching television with his dad now he’s five.’