Rosie Lewis - Torn - A terrified girl. A shocking secret. A terrible choice.

‘It weren’t me,’ Taylor said, touching her hand to her chest. Straight away my eyes were drawn to her fingernails, painted a dazzling strawberry red. Sitting on the single bed nearest the door, she flicked her waist-length, burnished blonde hair over one shoulder and blinked belligerently. Five-year-old Reece, whey-faced and hesitant, hovered in the middle of the room chewing his bottom lip. ‘W-w-what’s going on? Where we sleeping?’ he asked, his face a picture of uncertainty. He dragged a knuckle across one eye, dislodging the black-rimmed spectacles he wore so that they fell across his cheek. ‘W-w-where’s Mummy?’

‘Well, that’s what Maisie and I have been discussing,’ I said, the disembodied screams already drifting to the back of my mind. The social worker entered the room at that moment, stopping just inside the door. She rested her back against the wall with a sigh, as if the task of climbing the stairs had drained the last dregs of her energy. ‘We’ve decided that, Reece, you can have this room and, Taylor,’ I turned to the ten-year-old, ‘you’ll be in a room just down the hall. I expect Maisie will fill you in on when you can see your mum. Isn’t that right, Maisie?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, sure. That’s something I need to discuss with Mummy first though.’

‘But there are t-t-wo beds in here,’ Reece said, screwing his eyes up and then blinking rapidly in what appeared to be a nervous twitch. ‘What one’s mine?’

‘Either one,’ I told him, smiling reassuringly. ‘We’ll decide later shall we?’

He looked horrified at that, his mouth falling open in shock. Despite possessing the appearance of a miniature bouncer, with his closely cropped mouse-brown hair, broad forehead and stocky chest, I got the sense that Reece would need lots of reassurance to cope with being thrust into such an unfamiliar situation. ‘Tell you what,’ I said gently, walking over to the bed beneath the window and perching on the edge. ‘This bed is comfy. Would you like to sleep here?’

For a split-second his features relaxed but then his thick eyebrows contracted, his amber-brown eyes pooling with tears. The fine lower lashes glistened, darkening his eye sockets so heavily that they appeared bruised. ‘I want Mummy,’ he cried, toddler-like. He clutched his midriff. ‘Ow, I got a tummy ache now.’

‘Aw, I know, honey. It’s all a bit overwhelming isn’t it?’ I held out my hand and he shuffled a few tentative steps towards me, lower lip trembling.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Taylor mumbled, running her fingers through her hair and clamping it in a fist at the top of her head. The V of a sharply defined widow’s peak stood on show momentarily, until her hand dropped to her lap, her cheeks ballooning with a loud, huffing breath. Humiliated, Reece froze, mid-step. After a swift glance at his sister, he bent one knee and stretched his arms up over his head, as if he’d been planning to warm up his muscles. Taylor rolled her eyes and lifted her trainer-clad feet onto the bed. I felt a tightening in my stomach – a longing to slip an arm around Reece’s shoulder and reassure him that he was safe.

I smiled at him instead and then turned to his sister. ‘Not on the sheets please, Taylor.’ Still in the infancy of my fostering career, I felt awkward imposing discipline on a child I had only just met, but caring for Alfie, a little boy with a penchant for biting, had honed my conviction that early firmness paid off. When the three-year-old had first arrived at our house, skinny and bruised, I felt such sympathy for him that I had allowed him to rampage through the house unbridled. It took five weeks to regain control, during which time we were all thoroughly miserable. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.

Taylor tutted and heaved a heavy sigh but, I was relieved to see, kicked her trainers off using the edge of each foot. Sockless, her toenails were painted a deep maroon, the colour complementing her painted fingernails. I lifted my hands up and clapped them softly together. ‘Great, thank you. We’ll move the bed you’re sitting on after we’ve had dinner and then you can see your room. Is that OK?’

She lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug and I took a long assessing look at her, trying to work out whether I was sensing an attitude or poorly disguised shyness. Something in her stance emitted an air of reckless disregard and my thoughts were suddenly touched by Riley, a fourteen-year-old lad who came to us as an emergency placement the previous year. Tossed aside by his alcoholic mother and excluded from school, his life before coming into care was disorganised and traumatic, stripped of all that was gentle. New to fostering at the time, it took me a few days to realise that living dangerously close to the edge was Riley’s own dysfunctional way of coping with the implacable truth that no one cared. Heartbreak, I came to realise, was most often the cause of bad behaviour.

Riley was only with us for three weeks and moved on to a married couple in their early sixties. I was recently startled to hear them proudly announcing that Riley was studying hard for his GCSEs with the ambition of becoming a police officer as soon as he was old enough. Bearing in mind that Riley used to remove the shells from snails and then set light to them, the transformation was remarkable.

Of slighter build than her brother, Taylor put me in mind of a young Hayley Mills. There was definitely more than a passing resemblance there, in her rosy pout, fair skin sprinkled with freckles and deep-blue eyes. Her clothes were anything but 1950s though – she was wearing a navy velour tracksuit top and tight cropped jeans. Even from across the room I could see that they were expensive.

Physically speaking, it was easy to see that the siblings were related, but the similarities seemed to end there. Where Reece seemed highly strung and agitated, Taylor came across as confident, cocky even. But it was early days and children rarely presented their true selves when surrounded by unfamiliar people. According to Maisie, the siblings had been expecting a late-afternoon shopping trip with their mum. It must have been an unpleasant shock to find an unfamiliar social worker waiting for them in the headmistress’s office at the end of the school day. To make matters worse, I had been so surprised to find a boy and girl on my doorstep that my intended warm welcome evaporated as soon as I laid eyes on them. Quickly recovering, I had hoisted a smile back on my face, but, as I was to appreciate in the coming weeks, first impressions stick.

‘OK, good.’ I turned to Maisie and raised my eyebrows, waiting for some input. Eyes watering, she blinked several times, then looked at me expectantly. I got to my feet. Clearly I was going to have to take the lead. ‘Right, shall we go downstairs, then?’

The doorbell rang before I’d reached the bottom stair. Taylor, who had been whispering insistently in her brother’s ear since leaving the bedroom, suddenly clamped a protective hand on his shoulder, holding him back. ‘Who’s that?’ she demanded, sounding thoroughly displeased with the unexpected development.

‘Emily and Jamie I expect,’ I said, glancing back at Taylor. The ghost of a fearful expression lingered on her face. Swiftly, she replaced it with one of disgruntlement but not before I’d noticed. I paused on the stair for a split-second, registering a swell of compassion for her. Beneath her surly exterior was deep unhappiness – I could sense it – no matter how much hubris she managed to project. Reaching it wasn’t going to be easy, I was almost certain of that and as I opened the door another thought fleetingly occurred to me – just what had she been drilling her brother about in such an urgent tone? ‘Ah, yes, here they are!’