Crying for Help: The Shocking True Story of a Damaged Girl with a Dark Past

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Bless her, my daughter is an absolute sweetheart, and I knew seeing her and my lovely grandson would make the prospect so much less bleak. I set about making lunch for the three of us – Riley, Mike and me – before Mike had to rush off back to work.

‘So was she awful?’ Riley asked, as soon as she arrived. ‘You sounded pretty down on the phone.’

I’d certainly felt it. As I’d said to Mike before she’d arrived, I now felt pretty silly, having gone so bloody overboard on the bedroom. And I had – well, me and Riley had – to a ridiculous degree. There were pink fluttery butterflies hanging in the window, two layers of contrasting pink curtains, with silver sequins dotted over them, matching bed linen and fluffy pink cushions. The bed had also been transformed by a glittery pink canopy, which hung from the ceiling and flowed over the pillows. The walls sported an array of butterflies and fairies, and the offending football-adorned bookcase was now gleaming white, and sat among mushrooms (Riley’s idea – garden ornaments), upon which sat more fairies … It really was a room fit for a princess. Trouble was, what we seemed to have was less a princess than a little madam.

But as Mike had pointed out, aiding that transition was our job. But he’d looked at me gloomily, as if reading my thoughts. ‘Screw the room, Casey,’ he’d said. ‘That’s the least of our worries.’

It was good to have Riley here to break the tension. ‘Tell you what,’ I said now, ‘I’ll go and dig some toys out for Levi. Mike, why don’t you tell Riley all about it, love?’

I went off to the blanket box under the stairs, knowing Mike would be able to stick to the facts and not get over-emotional, like I would. I didn’t want to seem overemotional about it, as I knew the kids would just fret even more about whether we’d done the right thing.

Funny, I thought, pulling out the box and lifting the lid, how you have expectations in life, without any evidence to back them up at all. I’d collected a lot of these toys when we’d first discussed fostering, mistakenly thinking we’d have lots of little children around. Naïve, really – it was the older kids who needed our kind of specialist help. The ones a way down the line; the really damaged ones. Still, I thought, pulling out a singing pig for Levi, maybe the toy fairy knew I’d soon have my first grandchild. It was a nice thought after a troubling kind of morning.

When I returned to the kitchen, Mike and Riley, thank goodness, were both laughing.

‘Sounds like you’ve got a proper little madam on your hands!’ Riley said, echoing my own thoughts.

‘Dad’s filled you in, then?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, he has,’ she confirmed. ‘Though don’t worry, Mum. You’ll soon have her learning our ways. No airs and graces in this house!’

I nodded. ‘But I am worried about Kieron,’ I confessed. My son has a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome, which makes him vulnerable in lots of little ways. He doesn’t see bad in anyone, much less any kind of guile, and I suspected, with him being young, not to mention tall and good looking, that he might be a target for Sophia’s attentions. ‘I think he’s going to find her a bit overwhelming,’ I said. ‘She seems a bit over the top in the touchy-feely department – you saw the way she was with that Jack, didn’t you, Mike? She’s definitely a bit flirty around men.’

‘A bit?! And he was mortified,’ Mike agreed. ‘So we’ll just have to prepare Kieron. You know, make it clear that he’ll need to keep his distance.’

‘And put some rules in place, for definite. Even if she’s not going on the programme. She needs some guidelines more suitable for a girl of her age.’

Which was what we did, over the course of the next twenty-four hours, as well as filling Kieron in on how unlike most 12-year-old girls she was, and how running around in boxers might be a very bad idea. I also contacted my old school – the one I’d worked in before the career change into fostering – and secured Sophia a place there to start the following Monday. Finally, I spent a little while on the internet, trying to find out what I could about Addison’s disease. It seemed to be as described – something life-long and incurable – but which, with tablets, seemed straightforward to manage. The only alarming thing I read was that people with the disorder could have ‘crises’, when the levels of hormones fell so low they could die, if not treated immediately by injection. That sounded worrying, and I made a mental note to ask the doctor a bit more. Then I called John Fulshaw, to fill him in too, and was taken aback by his response.

‘Oh, Casey, I can’t tell you, I’m so grateful to you and Mike. After yesterday morning I really thought you’d be calling me to say you’d changed your minds.’

‘Not at all, John,’ I told him. ‘We’re giving this a go. It’ll be different, for sure, but we’ll find a way through it.’

All that done, and with Mike at work and Kieron at college – he was there doing a course in music and media, which he was loving – I trotted off to the conservatory for a sneaky cigarette. I must try to stop, I chided myself, as I did every time, but I couldn’t seem to. I smoked very little, but that emergency packet of twenty that I kept above the fridge-freezer was an absolute lifeline in times of great stress. And I was stressed, I thought, as I opened the patio doors and lit one.

But if I’d known just how much more stressful my life was soon going to become, I think I would have booked myself in for an asbestos lung replacement, ready.