Cathy Glass - I Miss Mummy - The true story of a frightened young girl who is desperate to go home

‘Alice will be very distressed,’ Martha warned.

‘I know. Don’t worry. I’m an experienced foster carer. I’ll settle her and make sure she’s all right.’ Sometimes the social workers need as much reassuring as the children.

‘Thanks, Cathy.’

‘Have they found her?’ Paula asked as I returned to the dinner table. Adrian and Lucy looked at me, puzzled, unaware there was a problem.

‘Alice, the little girl who was supposed to be coming this afternoon, is missing with her mother,’ I explained.

‘Oh,’ Adrian said. ‘I thought she’d just got delayed.’

Lucy nodded, clearly having thought the same as Adrian. In the past children had been delayed, for all sorts of reasons, arriving a lot later than expected – even the following day.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Unfortunately not, but I’m sure Alice will be found soon. If you hear the phone or front door bell go in the night, try to go back to sleep. Alice could arrive at any time, and you’ve all got school tomorrow. You’ll be able to meet her first thing in the morning.’

They nodded, accepting my assurance and believing, as I did, that at some point during the evening or night Alice would be found safe and well, and be brought to us, when I would tuck her into bed and sit with her and comfort her until she finally dropped off to sleep.

If only that had happened!

At 10.00 p.m. we were all in bed, Lucy and Paula asleep, Adrian reading for half an hour, while I had the radio on, although I wasn’t listening to it. My thoughts were with Alice and her mother, and I was very worried. I hadn’t heard anything further during the evening, so I had to assume they were still missing. It was the end of March and although we’d had a few mild days the nights were very cold, with a ground frost. I sincerely hoped Alice and her mother were indoors, having been given a bed for the night by a friend or relative who perhaps didn’t know about the court case or that the police were looking for them. Or perhaps, I speculated, Alice had been found and was being brought to me at this very moment. At 11.00 I switched off the radio and dozed, but I was listening out for the phone and doorbell, every so often raising my head to glance at the luminous hands on my bedside clock.

Acutely aware of every street noise, shortly after 2.00 a.m. I heard a car pull up outside. My bedroom is at the front of the house, overlooking the road, and immediately I got out of bed and peered through the window, ever hopeful. A taxi was outside with its engine running and as I looked I saw my neighbour, Sue, and her family get out, with their suitcases, having returned from the airport after a week in Turkey. Sue looked up and, seeing me, gave a little wave. Aware that I fostered, she saw nothing too unusual in my peering out of my bedroom window at two in the morning, possibly waiting for a teenager to return, or for the police to bring a child under an emergency protection order.

I returned to bed and dozed fitfully until 6.00 a.m. Then I declared the night over and, slipping on my dressing-gown and slippers, went downstairs to make coffee. On the work surface in the kitchen, almost as a testament to Alice’s disappearance, was the dinner I’d plated and covered the night before. If Alice had arrived hungry, as children often do, I could have easily reheated her dinner in the microwave, whatever time of night. Now I removed the cover from the plate and, scraping the congealed casserole into the bin, put the plate in the dishwasher. Dear Alice, wherever could she be? She had been missing for twelve hours now, which is a long time for a child of four. She and her mother – who I knew from the referral was called Leah and was twenty-three – had vanished into thin air. Where could they have gone? Then I wondered if they had been found and Alice had been returned to her grandparents, in which case Leah would now be in police custody, for I knew that despite any sympathy I had for Leah’s desperate bid to keep her daughter, snatching a child, especially a child protected by a court order, is a very serious offence and Leah would be prosecuted and very likely sent to prison. It was all so very sad.

At 7.00 a.m. my speculation and worries had to be put on hold as I swung into action at the start of the school day. It was Friday, thank goodness, and I was looking forward to the weekend. Apart from getting out of the routine of school for two days we were all going to a birthday party on Sunday afternoon – a friend of mine was forty and was having an open house to celebrate. Fuelled by a large mug of coffee and the prospect of the weekend, I went upstairs and woke everyone with a cheery ‘Good morning’. As I went into each of the children’s bedrooms I was met with a question or statement about Alice.

‘Is Alice here?’ Paula asked.

‘I didn’t hear you in the night,’ Lucy said.

‘She must have been very quiet,’ Adrian commented.

I had to tell each of them that Alice hadn’t arrived and I hadn’t heard anything further.

The routine of school took over for the next hour, culminating in my waving Adrian, Lucy and Paula goodbye at the front door with ‘Have a good day’. Adrian had a ten-minute walk to school, Lucy had a twenty-minute bus ride and Paula, in her last year of primary school, had recently persuaded me to let her walk to school by herself. It was only ten minutes, with one road to cross, and I knew I had to give her this responsibility in preparation for her going to secondary school in September when she, like most of her class, would be catching the bus to school without their mothers. And Paula wasn’t actually walking to school alone but was knocking on the door for a friend who lived halfway down our street.

Having seen everyone off I cleaned up and, checking on the whereabouts of our cat, Toscha, left the house to do a supermarket shop. I couldn’t wait in all day on the off chance that Alice might arrive. I’d left the answerphone on and the social services had my mobile number. Also, I was pretty certain that if Alice was coming to me during the day the social worker would phone me first before bringing her, as opposed to during the night, when it wasn’t unusual for the police to take a child straight to the carer.

As it was, Friday passed and the only person who phoned was Jill, asking if I’d heard anything from the social services, which I hadn’t. Apparently she’d tried to contact Martha but had been told by a colleague she had back-to-back case conferences and was therefore unavailable for most of the day. ‘It’s not very good practice,’ Jill said. ‘Someone from the department should have phoned you or me with an update, even if it was to say there was no news. We’ll keep the foster placement with you open over the weekend and hope that Alice is found, but we can’t hold it open indefinitely.’ Jill wasn’t being heartless but practical: if Alice wasn’t coming to me then another child would. It’s a sad fact that so many children need fostering that in most areas in the UK the demand for foster placements outstrips the number of available foster carers.

‘I was wondering if Alice had possibly been found and allowed to stay with her grandparents?’ I suggested to Jill. ‘They were looking after her before Leah snatched her.’

‘I’m sure someone from the social services would have told us,’ Jill said. ‘Although I agree it wouldn’t be the first time arrangements had changed and no one had thought to notify us. If Martha doesn’t get back to me today I’ll phone her first thing on Monday.’

‘OK. Thanks, Jill,’ I said. Then I asked the question that had been troubling me since I’d first read Alice’s details on the referral. ‘Jill, why wasn’t Alice allowed to stay with her grandparents instead of being brought into care? According to the referral she’d been there for six months and was very happy.’