A Baby's Cry (17 page)

O
nce the children were in bed I decided to tackle the forms Viera had given to me so that they wouldn’t get forgotten and I would have them ready to hand to Cheryl at the LAC review the following Wednesday. Using a black biro I filled in the first row of boxes, although I stumbled over ‘age’, uncertain if it meant Harrison’s age now or at the time of the adoption; I opted for now. The next questions were relatively straightforward too:
How long have you known the child? Are there any other siblings in the family? Is the child normally healthy? Does the child have a registered disability? If so, for what? Is the child registered blind? Is the child registered as deaf or hearing impaired?
These questions were largely single word
Yes/No
answers, and having completed them I turned to the next page. The first box was headed:
Describe the child’s daily routine
, which I did; it took me about fifteen minutes to choose the best words, for I knew the contents of this form would be sent to all the professionals connected with Harrison’s case and the prospective adoptive parents, so I wanted my description to be clear and well written.

The question in the next box asked:
Does the child have any special needs? If so, please describe what these are.
I wrote
None
. The box below asked:
Does the child have any behavioural difficulties? If so, describe what these are and the strategies you are using for dealing with them.
I smiled at the thought of little Harrison with behavioural difficulties and again wrote:
None.
Turning the page, the first question was:
Does the child have age-appropriate self-care skills – for example, can he wash and dress himself?
Viera had said the form was for children of all ages and she had asked that I put something in each box, but many of the questions weren’t relevant at all. I thought it would have made more sense to have had two forms – one for infants and one for school-aged children. I decided to write
N/A
in the box – short for Not Applicable.

The next box related to the one above and asked:
If the child does not have age-appropriate self-care skills, what are you doing to teach them?
The answer could have been
Nothing
, for even though Harrison was alert and intelligent I wouldn’t be teaching a baby how to wash and dress himself, so I wrote
N/A
again and then added:
The child is a baby
, to clarify. The questions continued with:
Are the child’s language skills appropriate for the child’s age?
I was tempted to write:
Yes
, because Harrison’s gurgles were age-appropriate, but I opted again for
N/A – The child is a baby
. The next question was:
What does the child like to eat and drink?
I wrote
Formula milk
. Then I laughed at the next two questions:
What does the child like to do in his or her leisure time?
And
Does the child belong to any after school activities?
I again entered
N/A – The child is a baby
in both the boxes and continued down the page.

It wasn’t until I reached the final box on the last page that I had the opportunity to give a realistic appraisal of Harrison:
Describe in your own words the child you are looking after.
This was a large box, nearly half the page, and I carefully filled it in. I said that I’d collected Harrison from hospital when he was one day old and he had quickly settled into a routine (which I’d described in a previous question). I said he was a contented baby, alert, responsive and interested in all that was going on around him. I gave his current weight, and I described his physical appearance and also his little mannerisms which were so endearing – like the way he wrinkled his nose. As I finished filling in the last box I realized I knew Harrison as well as I knew my own children. I felt a stab of sadness as I acknowledged that at some point, in the not-too-distant future, Harrison would be leaving us for his adoptive family and would no longer be one of my family.

I signed and dated the last page and then tucked the set of forms into my fostering folder, where I’d already put the photographs Viera had asked for. Viera would use the information I’d given on the forms together with the photographs when she compiled Harrison’s profile, which would be shown to the prospective adopters and members of the matching and adoption panels. I wondered what the prospective adoptive parents were like. The adoption team had certainly had a huge response and I knew it was because Harrison was a healthy baby. Had he been an older child or a child with special needs the response would have been very different; often such children are never adopted and stay in foster care until they are eighteen, when they come out of care and are essentially on their own, which is very sad.

The following day, armed with the baby bag, buckets and spades, swimming costumes and towels, we went to the seaside for the day. The nearest coast was about seventy miles from my house, and in high summer it was a popular destination. The road to the coast was very busy and when we arrived it took me twenty minutes to find somewhere to park, by which time Harrison was protesting that he needed his bottle and Adrian and Paula were protesting about how long it was taking. But as soon as I’d parked and we were out of the car and on the beach, Harrison had his bottle, Adrian and Paula changed into their swimming costumes and everyone was happy. The sun shone in a clear blue sky and there was a gentle sea breeze causing little waves to ripple on to the shore. The air was alive with happy children playing and shouting and I was pleased I’d made the effort to come. Adrian and Paula paddled in the sea and jumped the waves and then made sandcastles on the beach. Harrison, bemused by all the new sights and sounds, lay either in my arms or on the blanket, gurgling and waving his hands in excitement. He seemed to be taking it all in and his face was a picture when Adrian filled up a bucket of wet sand and dipped his hand in.

At one o’clock everyone was hungry, so I bought fish and chips from the beach café, and we ate them straight from the paper on the beach; then later in the afternoon we had ice-cream, and later still Adrian and Paula had a burger each and then candy floss. It was after six o’clock – when other families were also leaving the beach – when I said we really needed to be going. I gave Harrison a bottle before we left; then, having gathered together our belongings and shaken the sand off the blanket, we returned to the car, pleasantly exhausted from a great day.

The following day we awoke to wind and rain, which continued for the next two days and largely confined us to the house, so I was pleased we’d gone to the seaside when we had.

The weekend arrived and the rain finally stopped, but on Saturday morning I told Adrian and Paula that before we did anything else we needed to do a big supermarket shop. The children had good appetites and it seemed I was continuously low on food and having to restock. Adrian and Paula weren’t over-enthusiastic supermarket shoppers and it took a lot of coercing from me and moaning from them before they finally stopped playing and came into the hall to put on their sandals as I’d asked them to do. Adrian was still wearing a rather sulky expression, so that when he opened the front door and then slammed it shut I thought he was messing around and making a statement about not wanting to go shopping.

‘Adrian,’ I said, not best pleased, ‘the sooner we go to the supermarket, the sooner you can come home and play.’

‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘There’s someone watching our house.’

‘What? A spy?’ Paula teased.

‘No,’ Adrian said. ‘It’s that woman. The one who was there before.’

It took me a moment to realize that Adrian wasn’t fooling around and was probably referring to the woman we’d seen before, waiting across the street. The door was closed and Adrian still had his hand on the doorknob.

‘Let me see,’ I said, setting down Harrison’s car seat in the hall.

‘I bet she’s gone now,’ Adrian said, pulling a face at Paula for doubting him.

I turned the doorknob and slowly opened the front door, expecting to see an empty street, because on the two previous occasions the woman had fled as soon as she’d seen us. Perhaps she hadn’t seen Adrian – he’d opened and closed the door very quickly – so perhaps that was the reason she hadn’t run away. For as I opened the door and looked across the road I saw the woman on the pavement opposite before she saw me; then she turned and fled. And whereas on the other occasions I’d had doubts as to whether she’d been looking at our house or the house next door, or was just waiting for a friend, now I had no doubts at all. She had definitely been watching our house and I had a feeling she’d been there for some time.

I went down the front garden path to the gate and watched the woman running up the road, quickly disappearing out of sight. I returned inside, where Adrian and Paula were looking at me anxiously.

‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ I reassured them. ‘Honestly. I’ll mention it to Jill, but she’ll say the same, and the woman’s gone now.’

‘Is it Harrison’s mother?’ Adrian suddenly asked.

‘What makes you say that?’ I asked surprised.

‘She looks like Harrison,’ Adrian said. ‘I saw her face when I first opened the door, when she didn’t know I was watching, and their faces are similar.’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, which was true. For while Adrian might have had a good look at her face to see a likeness, I hadn’t, and I wasn’t going to fuel Adrian’s imagination by making links where there might be none. Also, I wasn’t concerned for our safety at that time; the woman hadn’t shown us any aggression – indeed she’d always fled when she saw us. So I reassured the children that there was nothing to worry about and we continued into the car and to the supermarket.

I didn’t consider this third sighting of the woman in our street to be an emergency or even urgent, so I didn’t phone the out-of-hours cover at the fostering agency over the weekend. I waited until Monday to phone the office and then I was surprised by Jill’s reaction.

‘Not again!’ she said. ‘I’ll phone Cheryl straightaway and find out what’s going on. We’ll also raise the matter at the LAC review. This is not acceptable.’

‘There wasn’t a problem,’ I said, a little bemused. ‘The woman ran off as soon as she saw me. I just thought you should know.’

‘You did right. It’s not fair on you or the kids. Who knows what frame of mind Rihanna is in? If Cheryl hasn’t had a reply from Rihanna’s solicitor about this then she needs to be chasing it up. I’ll phone Cheryl now and get back to you.’

‘All right. Thank you, Jill,’ I said, but I was now worried by the seriousness with which she was taking this sighting.

Jill phoned back later on Monday afternoon, having spoken twice to Cheryl. In between Cheryl had phoned Rihanna’s solicitor, who’d said Rihanna hadn’t been in touch with her for nearly three weeks. The solicitor said she had left two messages on Rihanna’s voicemail but as Rihanna hadn’t returned the calls she had assumed she must be away. The solicitor said she’d phone Cheryl as soon as she’d spoken to Rihanna and had ascertained if it was her client we had seen in the vicinity of my house.

‘Sorry,’ Jill said as she finished. ‘I’ve done what I can but it’s not satisfactory. Cheryl said she’d phone me as soon as she heard from the solicitor, and I said we’ll also raise it at the LAC review on Wednesday.’

‘Thanks, Jill,’ I said again. ‘See you Wednesday.’

We said goodbye and hung up, and I continued with Monday, still feeling that Jill might have over-reacted, but aware that as my support social worker she had my family and my best interests at heart. However, the following morning – Tuesday – something happened which forced me to acknowledge that Jill had been right to be concerned. At 7.45 a.m., before the children were up, I opened the front door to bring in the milk and had the shock of my life. As I glanced up I saw the woman on the pavement right outside my front gate. I started and she did, presumably not expecting the door to open so early; then she turned and fled up the road.

I ran the few steps up the garden path and on to the pavement, but the woman was already halfway up the street and disappearing fast. It crossed my mind to run after her, but I couldn’t leave the children alone in the house, and was it really the wise thing to do? Although I’d previously felt she meant me no harm, now I couldn’t be certain. She’d been close enough for me to see the likeness Adrian had seen, and I now knew for certain it was Harrison’s mother. And if she wasn’t away, as her solicitor had said, why wasn’t she returning her solicitor’s phone calls?

With my heart racing I returned inside the house and shut the front door. Adrian and Paula were still asleep, fortunately, and I wouldn’t be telling them I’d seen her. It would unnerve them, as it had me. I went through to the kitchen and continued as best I could with my normal early morning routine: I fed Toscha; I filled the kettle for coffee; I loaded the washing machine; and then when the children came downstairs I made them breakfast as usual.

As soon as Homefinders’ office opened, at nine o’clock, I left the children finishing their breakfasts and went into the sitting room and phoned. A colleague of Jill’s answered.

‘Could I speak to Jill, please?’ I said, keeping my voice even.

‘I’ll put you straight through.’

‘Is everything all right?’ Jill asked, as soon as she answered.

‘No. Not really.’ I paused and lowered my voice so that the children couldn’t hear me. ‘The woman was outside my house again – right outside, by the gate, at seven forty-five this morning. I’m sure it was Harrison’s mother.’

‘How can you be certain? I thought she was away.’

‘Harrison is the image of his mother. He has the same nose and eyes. I’m positive it was her.’

‘Did she approach you? Or say anything?’ Jill asked, concerned.

‘No. As soon as she saw me she ran off. She looked scared but not half as scared as I was. It gave me a dreadful shock.’