Little Prisoners (22 page)

But completely? Not even so much as a tangerine and a few nuts and chocolate coins in an old sock? I did mention it to Anna when she called, to see if she had any thoughts on it, because, much as I tried to understand it, their total lack of engagement with something as normal as getting and giving presents for loved ones at Christmas was completely outside my experience. Not that she could really shed any light on it. She just told me that as far as she knew they’d just never really ‘done’ Christmas. There was
no money, and with so many kids in the family it just hadn’t ever really happened.

So perhaps my initial feeling had been right. And if there was an illustration of how far things had come in our civilised society, that was it, I thought. That in the absence of money, Christmas couldn’t be ‘done’. As if Christmas was even about that! It was certainly a sobering thought. And one I should take on board too, I thought, rapidly re-adjusting my perspective. I’d worked in school with a child whose parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses. She hadn’t ‘done’ Christmas either. And what you’d never had you didn’t miss, did you? And perhaps that was no bad thing.

Even so, to quote Jo from
Little Women
on the subject, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without any presents, so, even with the true meaning of Christmas still very much in mind, I wanted to get some for my little charges. And, crucially, things they’d really like. And handily, with Lauren having now broken up from college, she and Kieron were happy to help out.

They were around for the afternoon and, at Kieron’s suggestion, suggested they while away an hour with the kids, going through a couple of copies of the Argos catalogue to get some ideas for what to ask Father Christmas for.

‘Here we go,’ said Kieron, patting the chair beside him. ‘Ash, come on. Come sit beside me – and we can have a go-through and check out all these brilliant boys’ toys, while Lauren and Olivia’ – and here he pulled a comedy face at Olivia – ‘look at all the silly soppy girly stuff.’

Lauren returned the compliment as I handed out pens and paper. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s make a nice long list for Santa of all the things you’d like him to bring on Christmas Day.’

‘Erm,’ I said, before leaving them. ‘Not
too
long a list! Santa’s only got so much space in his sleigh!’

Though actually I needn’t have worried. Even with Kieron and Lauren to guide them, the kids didn’t seem to have the first idea about coveting a really special toy. They ticked things off politely, but without any great enthusiasm. They just didn’t seem to want
anything
.

‘It’s funny,’ I said to Riley, who was over a few days later. ‘Such a shocking and tragic upbringing and almost every way, and yet, to some people, these kids would seem like a dream. How many kids in the western world these days are as genuinely non-materialistic as these two, do you think?

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I can’t get my head round it, really. You’d think, what with school, talking to their peers and all that stuff, that they’d have at least
some
idea of what they’ve missed out on. But they really don’t, do they?’

I shook my head. ‘I know. And it’s not that I want them to become materialistic, either. It just feels so sad. They must have grown up so isolated, mustn’t they?’

Riley shot me a knowing glance. ‘I don’t doubt it. If you want to abuse your kids on the sort of scale that family clearly have, I’d say it probably goes with the territory, doesn’t it? Anyway,’ she added, ‘since we’re speaking of Christmas, there’s something I meant to ask you. Well, tell you, more accurately.’

‘What?’ Riley was only eight or so weeks from her due date, and my thoughts, seeing as she looked so serious all of a sudden, went immediately to her unborn baby.

‘Don’t look so anxious!’ she laughed. ‘It’s nothing terrible. Though it will be a shock …’

‘
What
, for God’s sake?!’

‘I’m doing Christmas lunch, okay? Over at mine. You’ll have enough on your plate with those two to run around after, and you’ll be grateful to have someone else cook for you, trust me.’

‘Riley, you’re thirty-two weeks pregnant!’

‘Yes,
pregnant
. Not ill. And I’ve made up my mind.’

‘Absolutely not!’ I said firmly.

Naturally, my daughter being even feistier than I was, Christmas Day at hers was duly arranged. It felt weird, waking up and not having to think about the turkey, but she’d been right. Once I thought about it, it
was
the right thing. After all, little Levi was two now. Probably time they started making their own family Christmas memories for him. And Riley had been spot-on about my little foster duo, too. It would be good to spend some quality time with them without having an enormous roast dinner to prepare.

But there was another big difference to that Christmas morning. When I woke – I’d set my alarm for 5 a.m. – the house was as silent as a grave. And as I crept downstairs in my dressing gown and lit the gas fire in the living room I thought back to all the years when my own children had been young, and a 5 a.m. alarm call would have been a
luxury. One year Kieron was by our bed trying to shake us awake only about an hour after we’d dropped off to sleep!

I put the television on, and found a channel playing Christmas songs, and flicked all the fairy lights on too. And as I placed the two bulging sacks at either end of the sofa, I decided that if there was one thing I could do for them it would be to give them a magical family Christmas to remember, because memories like those really mattered.

The scene set, and a surprised Bob put out into the garden to do his business bright and early, I padded back upstairs in the darkness and gently shook Olivia awake. ‘He’s been!’ I whispered to her, picking her up. ‘Santa’s been and left you presents!’

‘But I peed,’ she whispered sleepily. ‘Will Santa be cross with me?’

I stood her on the bed and peeled off her wet pyjamas. ‘No, of course not,’ I reassured her. ‘Santa’s never cross. He’s Santa! He knows accidents happen,’ I added, pulling a clean set of pyjamas from her drawer. ‘Quick, let’s pop these on. We can give you a bath later. Let’s go and wake Ashton now so we can all go downstairs.’

Once woken, Ashton stumbled blearily into his dressing gown, and as the two children followed me down the stairs, I could already tell that I was probably more excited than they were; in fact, they must have been wondering what on earth I was doing, dragging them out of bed at such a crazy hour.

In fact, they didn’t really ‘get’ anything about it. ‘Go on, get stuck in!’ I urged, as they knelt by their sacks and I
perched on the sofa with a steaming mug of coffee, and turning up the volume of the TV a notch or two, tried to inject a little extra festive atmosphere.

But it was pointless. They’d each open a present, as directed, inspect it, then look at me blankly. It was as if they were being asked to do a task in the classroom, with a beady-eyed teacher looking on. There was no frantic tearing off of wrapping paper, no excited oohs and ahhs, no shouts of glee as a much wanted toy was revealed. It was, in fact, one of the saddest things I’d witnessed, as I realised that this wasn’t any sort of thrill for them at all. They were just trying to do what I wanted, to make me happy. Ashton, in particular, upset me. He’d been so gruff and so grumpy and so closed in since Levi’s party, but I could tell he was aware how much Christmas seemed to mean to me, and his attempts to please me by thanking me so politely for each new gift actually made tears spring in my eyes.

It was with pretty dampened spirits, then, that we set off for Riley’s mid-morning. Mike had got up and joined us, and we’d tucked into breakfast, and I’d told him that the children had been ever so excited and thrilled with all the lovely things Santa had brought them, because there was no point in infecting him with my own gloomy mood. I’d cheer up, I knew, once I clapped eyes on Levi. And Olivia, at least, had become attached to one of her presents. A new dolly, which she dressed up and brought along with her and, entirely predictably, called ‘Polly’.

‘Another Polly?’ asked Mike as she pulled the doll’s hood up.

Olivia looked at him as if he’d recently beamed down from space. ‘
All
dollies are called Polly, Mike,’ she explained patiently. ‘Polly wolly doodle doll a day.’

Since this made no sort of sense to Mike (or, in fact, me) he simply nodded.

‘There,’ she said, tucking the doll beneath the blanket in her little buggy. ‘All done. Now she and Liccle Levi can play babies, all ready.’

‘All ready for what?’ Mike wanted to know, as we tramped down the front path, and along the frosty pavements so that Bob could inspect every lamppost. At least the weather had played ball and made everything sparkly.

Olivia tutted. ‘All ready for the
real
baby, silly! Don’t you
know
Wiley’s gonna have a babba, Mike?’

But if that put a smile on my face that Christmas morning, I would soon see it replaced by a bigger one. Riley’s front door was opened not by Riley, but by Santa. A six-foot four Santa, pink cheeked and jolly, yelling ‘ho ho ho!’ from behind a luxurious white beard. This, at least, did seem to galvanise the kids into excitement. Olivia, dolly now entirely forgotten, shrieked delightedly and wrapped herself straight around Santa’s leg.

And it galvanised me too, because I could see it wasn’t David. And it wasn’t Kieron either, so who
was
it? The beard was whipped off then, and it was me who was screaming. It was Justin, our first ever foster child! I was so thrilled to see him that I practically leapt on him. But didn’t need to. He carefully extricated Olivia, then picked me up and spun me right around. ‘Steady on, Casey!’ he quipped,
putting me down again gently. ‘Size of you, you nearly knocked me clean over!’

I couldn’t have been happier if it had been Santa himself. Actually, that was wrong. I just couldn’t have been happier. And Justin, that poor, desperate boy who had become so dear to us, was the catalyst that turned the day around. Now 14, he immediately mesmerised the children, particularly Ashton, who seemed to hang on his every word. Not that there was much time for sitting down and chatting; right away he had the three of them – little Levi wasn’t missing out on
anything
– playing games and having fun, chasing them around the house as if he was still 10 years old himself.

And our own children, unbeknown to us, had arranged everything. They’d squared it with social services, spoken directly to Justin’s foster carers, and David and Kieron had gone and picked him up that morning.

The children couldn’t have got me a nicer present.

Chapter 18

It had been such a delight to see Justin. He made the day in every sense, for all of us. He had us in stitches, telling us tales of his various exploits at school, and also surprised us by helping Riley cook Christmas dinner. Not that I should have been surprised, as he’d been quite the budding Jamie Oliver when he’d been with us, always wanting to help me in the kitchen, and his interest in food and cooking clearly hadn’t gone away. I really hoped that he was as happy as he seemed and that he’d remain settled in his permanent placement.

It was the thing I most wanted for Justin; that he’d be happy. It was the thing I most wanted for every child who came into our lives, and in the immediate aftermath of Christmas I felt particularly buoyed up; it might not seem much, all the little things we could do for these kids, but it felt more and more to me that it was the little things that mattered, things which weren’t always obvious while the
child or children were with us. A word of encouragement, taking the time to sit and listen to them, a random cuddle, a special cake made, a fear soothed, an anxiety understood: these were the things kids who were loved and nurtured took for granted, and their importance should never be underestimated.

And they
did
make a difference; Justin was evidence of that. A timely reminder that progress with a child wasn’t always evident when being made – you were often too close to it – but down the line, even if Mike and I wouldn’t be there to see it, I felt a strong sense that the results of our efforts would at least be there for the kids’ permanent carers to witness.

Assuming they found any; progress on that front was painfully slow. But strangely, I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I started the year with a real zest to keep on doing what we were doing with our two. Just as well, for there was still a great deal to be done.

I was still anxious about how Ashton was coping with the loss of everything and, bar just one of his younger siblings, everyone he knew. Where Olivia, as the baby, seemed the least traumatised by their big life-change (despite her odd behaviours, and sadness about leaving Grandad, she was by nature a sunny little thing and, with love and support, I knew could be again), Ashton, being the oldest, was really feeling it. He clearly loved his mother dearly, and was always her staunch defender, determined not to break the thread of connection between them, knowing all too well he’d not see her again for a long time. He would not hear
a word said against her by his sibling, even if it was something that was only implied.

And it could be triggered in unexpected ways.

‘School tomorrow,’ I was telling the children, a couple of days after New Year, while we were packing the last of the decorations into the loft boxes. ‘I’ll bet you can’t wait, can you? To get back and swap stories with all your friends.’

‘I like having friends,’ Olivia said, as she popped baubles into trays. ‘I like Emily. An’ Scarlett. Scarlett’s so funny!’

Ashton, sitting on his heels, was untangling a string of fairy lights. ‘I
really
like having friends,’ he said, thoughtfully.

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Life’s not much fun without friends, is it? I mean, family’s great, but you need friends as well, don’t you?’

‘We never had friends before because we was stinky,’ observed Olivia. ‘Cos we were stinky and nitty noras because of all our lices.’

Ashton rounded on her immediately. ‘No!’ he barked. ‘That’s not true! We weren’t stinky and we never had nits neither,
okay
? Mum’d kill you –
and
Granddad – for saying bad things like that an’ telling tales!’