Casey Watson - Little Prisoners

As for the dining room, Mike was having to try extremely hard not to laugh his socks off. I’m a stickler for cleaning – borderline obsessive about it, actually – and I could see he was finding this chimps’ tea-party hilarious.

‘Oh dear,’ he laughed wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘You’re going to have such fun with this little lot!’

He was still giggling about it, hours later, in bed. He couldn’t stop. And though I kept trying to chastise him, it eventually became infectious. It was funny. There was me, Mrs Doubtfire – Mrs Hyperactive Houseproud – and I couldn’t have picked a more challenging pair of urchins if I tried. So I laughed along with him. This would be an adventure, I decided. And after the stress of our last foster child, a potentially much less harrowing ride. And they were both of them so sweet, that you couldn’t help but want to hug them.

‘Rather you than me, love,’ Mike qualified, grinning. ‘At least till I’m convinced it’s definitely hasta la vista for the bugs.’

I started itching at the thought, but I drifted off happy. This would be fine. Two sweet innocent children who we could really do some good for.

Little did I know that, so far, we’d seen nothing.

It felt like the middle of the night when I woke up. I didn’t know what it was that had woken me, either, only that something had startled me. I wasn’t sure what. Had I dreamt it? Imagined it? I reached across to press the light button on my alarm clock. 4 a.m. Maybe one of the kids had got up to use the toilet. I slipped out of bed quietly, so as not to wake Mike.

Once on the landing, tiptoeing quietly, I peeped in to check in Ashton’s room. I could hear him snoring gently, so it couldn’t have been him. But then I noticed that not only was Olivia’s door closed – I had left it open, as promised – but there was a strip of light visible at the bottom.

I pushed against the door softly, conscious that I didn’t want to frighten her, and as it began to open so did my mouth. I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

She was squatting on the bed, clutching what I realised was an open jar of jam, and met my gaze with huge terrified eyes.

‘Olivia?’ I said softly, though in incredulous tones. ‘What on earth is going on?’

She swiped her fringe from her eyes with a jam-covered hand. There was jam everywhere it seemed, on her face, in her hair, smeared down her front, on the bed. In fact, as I took in the scene I could believe it even less – the whole duvet was covered in food.

‘No, lady,’ she answered tremulously, scuttling towards the wall and clutching the jar even tighter to her chest. ‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anyfink!’

My principal reaction was one of sadness. In any other circumstance it would be one of anger, I knew, but looking at her, crouched in the midst of all this mess, the only thing I felt for her was pity. The bed was in chaos, playing host to an upturned bag of sugar, an open tub of butter and two empty boxes of cereal. There were also God only knew how many empty biscuit wrappers strewn around. She must have already had quite a feast. In fact, it looked, for all the world, like there had been a major eating binge, of the type you often hear about in magazines, illustrating the distressing practice of teenage bulimics. But this was a six-year-old – hardly more than a baby! What had prompted it, I wondered? This was surely not down to hunger. She’d eaten normally during the day and had done nothing to indicate she was starving, yet she’d amassed, and clearly munched her way through, one hell of a lot of food.

It was psychological, clearly. Something to do with her background. From what we knew, and from the scrawny state of them, it was highly likely food was scarce for these children. Perhaps this was a behaviour born out of fear about where the next meal might be coming from. Or perhaps sneaking down for food in the night was the only way she could be sure to get some. Poor little mite. I crossed the room and perched on the end of the bed.

‘Olivia, sweetheart,’ I said to her gently. ‘You mustn’t do things like this, love. It’s wrong. For one thing, you should be sleeping, and for another, it’s, well, it’s taking things that don’t belong to you, isn’t it? Stealing.’ She continued to stare at me, as if in a trance. ‘Love, were you hungry?’ I persisted. ‘Was that it?’

Now she shook her head. ‘Not hungry, miss. Sorry. I swear to God almighty, I won’t do it no more, miss. I promise!’

I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows at her strange choice of words, as I held my arms out to her, beckoning her towards me. ‘Come on love,’ I said softly, braced for the sticky paws that I knew would soon be wrapped around my neck. ‘Come here and let’s get you cleaned up, sweetheart. And get this bed straight so you can get back to sleep, eh?’

As I’d anticipated, Olivia let me scoop her into my arms, and after stripping her of her filthy nightwear and scrubbing her down with baby wipes – all of which she now seemed perfectly happy to submit to – I gathered the whole duvet and its contents into a ball, and replaced it with a spare from the airing cupboard. I could sort out the chaos in the morning.

Olivia then scooted meekly back under the clean covers. No point, I decided, in engaging her in further conversation. ‘There,’ I said simply, bending to plant a kiss on her forehead. ‘All tucked up, nice and clean. Now back to sleep, okay?’

She nodded and then obediently closed her eyes for me. But I was wide awake. I barely slept for the remainder of the night. These children were going to be some challenge.

‘So did you sleep at all, love?’ Mike asked, as I greeted the new day to see – and smell – a steaming mug of coffee being placed on my bedside table. I’d need it, I thought, as I pushed myself up to a sitting position and realised the lateness of the hour.

‘Not much.’

‘I thought not. So what happened, exactly? She wet the bed? I saw the bedding on the landing.’

I shook my head, and filled Mike in on what had actually happened. ‘Not unsurprising,’ was his considered opinion, once I’d finished. ‘They really do seem like something out of a Dickens novel, don’t they?’

I sipped my scalding but oh-so-much-needed coffee and frowned at him. ‘And it’s our job to haul them back to the 21st century.’

‘But not for long,’ Mike soothed. ‘Anyway, I’ll go down and sort the breakfast things, shall I?’

I grinned. ‘If you can find any cereal, that is!’

That was the good thing about mornings. A new day, and everything suddenly seemed more manageable. As I gathered both my wits and my dressing gown to face whatever this one held, I could hear the two of them chattering away happily in Olivia’s bedroom, and felt my normal positive, can-do mood returning. It was slightly dented, admittedly, when I went in there only to have my nose assaulted by the stench of urine, but common sense told me this was all par for the course. ‘Neglect’ was such a small word for such a big, wide-ranging, multi-faceted problem. These kids, it was clear, had never been potty trained. But that was something I could easily do for them, starting now.

The TV was blaring away to itself, and the two of them were sitting cross-legged on the floor, busy piecing together a jigsaw. ‘C’mon, kids,’ I said, stepping over them to go and open up a window. ‘Time to tidy that away now and come down for breakfast, okay?’

Olivia, seeing me, leapt up immediately, and tried to cling to me like a baby panda. It was good to see she was so affectionate, I thought, as I scooped her up onto my hip, but rather less good to see – or rather, for it to slowly, damply dawn on me – that she was also wringing wet. And so was I, now. Ashton too, I saw as he also stood up, had a suspicious wet patch all up the back of his night things.