She remembered the second couple better. The plan was that they would adopt her. Recently she had returned to this memory over an dover again. It was like poking a sore tooth with her tongue.
Chapter Twenty.
She had been in this house for a long time, months certainly, perhaps a year. She had started school. School was a modern brick building, with large windows and grey carpet tiles on the floor. Because of the carpet they had to be very careful wiping their feet before going in.
Each morning Lesley walked with her to the white wooden gates which had been pushed open to let the teachers’ cars through. Lesley would go with her into the cloakroom and hang up her coat. There she would try to kiss her goodbye. In the classroom there were two boxes one for reading books and another for packed lunches. Grace’s packed lunch box was made of pink plastic and had a picture of Barbie on the side. Each day she returned a reading book. She had already moved on to the ones with orange stickers on the spines; most of the children in the class were still reading the blues.
If it rained Dave gave them a lift to school in the car and then she wore Wellingtons pink to match the lunch box which had to be changed in the cloakroom. Lesley and Dave were her foster parents’ names but she already called them mum and dad. She wanted to be the same as the other children in her class. She could be on the books with the green stickers but had slowed down so she wasn’t too different.
They lived in a new house on a new estate. This too was made of brick with large windows. There was a garage which held Grace’s tricycle and her doll’s pram, a small patch of lawn and a rockery at the front, and a garden at the back. In the summer, Lesley said, there would be a swing. The road was still being built, and there were muddy puddles everywhere. Lesley hated the mud and so did Grace. They were both tidy individuals and so appeared perfectly matched.
That was what the social worker said when Dave and Lesley told her that they didn’t want Grace to live with them any more.
“But I thought you were perfectly suited.”
Grace knew that was what she said because she was listening at the door. It was slightly open, but nobody noticed her. She must have heard Lesley explaining apologetically that they didn’t think the placement was working out, but later she didn’t remember that bit. She just heard the social worker say, “She’s such a sweet little thing.
What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her.” Lesley and Dave looked at each other hoping the other would explain. They might just as well have said everything was wrong with her.
“You didn’t phone to say there’d been any problems.” By now the social worker was getting desperate. If the placement broke down it would be considered her fault. She was a messy woman with flyaway hair. The hem of her skirt had become un stitched and her long cardigan was wrongly buttoned. Grace disapproved of this lack of order. She took great care of her clothes, especially her blue and white school dress.
The woman continued: “I mean we might have been able to help. Has she been wetting the bed again?”
“That was never a problem.” This was David. He was chief mechanic in a big garage on the main road out of town. Grace had seen him there.
He wore blue overalls with his name embroidered on the chest and sometimes a blazer with gold buttons. He had come home early for this meeting. He had scrubbed his nails and put on a jacket and tie.
Awkwardness had made him aggressive.
“We weren’t bothered about that. Of course not. What do you think we are? Ogres? And at least it proved she was human.”
“What do you mean?” The social worker’s voice rose as if she was about to cry. Even at the age of five Grace realized that, in this situation, this wasn’t the right way for a responsible adult to behave.
“Look.” Dave leant forward. From her hiding place Grace could see the curve of his back. He was a very big man and from this angle he looked deformed like one of the illustrations in Jack and the Beanstalk, her latest reading book. Perhaps, as he had just said, he was an ogre.
“Look, we don’t want to muck you about, but we’ve got to be straight, haven’t we? I mean, better now than when all the forms have been filled out. Save you some work, eh?”
He gave a quick barking laugh. Grace understood that this was supposed to be a joke but the social worker didn’t find it funny. Nor really did Dave because he continued seriously. “We can’t love her,” he said.
“We wish we could but we can’t. She’s so cold.
She stares at us with those eyes. She won’t let us touch her. You’ve got to love your own kid, haven’t you?” He paused. “Perhaps it’s where she comes from.”
“What do you mean? Where she comes from?” The social worker’s voice was shrill, almost hysterical.
“Well, they’re different to us, those people, aren’t they?”
“She’s a child,” the social worker said. “She needs a family.” She didn’t deny the difference. She turned towards Lesley. Dave moved and Grace saw that he wasn’t an ogre at all. He too looked close to tears.
“Do you feel the same way?” the social worker asked.
“We’ve tried,” Lesley said. “When you first told us about Grace we thought she’d be perfect for us, we really did. Despite the differences. And when you told us what she’d been through we expected her to be upset. We wouldn’t have minded. We could have coped with bad behaviour, nightmares, tears. We thought we’d be able to help. But we can’t get through to her. That’s what’s so dreadful. She doesn’t need us.”
“You’re wrong,” the woman cried. “Don’t you see she needs you just because she’s so withdrawn. So self-controlled.” She paused then went on stiffly, “But I won’t try to persuade you. You must be fully committed if you want to be adoptive parents. I’m sure that was explained when you applied… “
The sentence was allowed to hang like a threat. Grace sensed the menace though she didn’t understand exactly what the words meant.
“You’re saying if we turn Grace down we won’t get another one!” Dave was about to jump to his feet when Lesley put her hand on his elbow to restrain him.
“Of course not,” the social worker said, but her voice was smug. She had got her point across. “Look,” she continued, ”t make any hasty decisions. Give it another month. See how you feel then.”
They gave it another month. During that time Grace tried very hard.
She let Dave kiss her goodnight. She let Lesley cuddle her on the sofa when they were reading their bedtime story, although the feel of the woman’s soft body through her Pooh Bear nightdress almost made her gag.
But all the time she was puzzling about what could make her different.
She looked the same as the other children at school. Slightly skinnier, slightly browner, she supposed. Would that prevent Dave and Lesley from wanting her? In the end she came to no conclusions. And her efforts did no good. After a month she was moved to live with Aunty Carol and Uncle Jim. She didn’t call them mum and dad. She knew there was no point.
Chapter Twenty-One.
The next vivid memory was of going for a walk with Nan. For a while through the upheaval of changing foster parents two people stayed with her. She didn’t see them often but they were a constant thread linking the various aunties and uncles. One was Miss. Thorne, the social worker whom Grace had come to see now almost as a friend. Or if not a friend at least an ally. She did at least try to persuade Lesley and Dave to keep her. The other was an old woman called Nan. Grace assumed that the woman was her grandmother, though she couldn’t remember being told that explicitly. But then she was told very little explicitly. The scrapbook, which was supposed to help, only confused her.
The day which specially stuck in her memory was the one when Miss. Thorne took her to see Nan for the first time. There was a drive in the car. The foster parents all lived in town and this trip into the country was an adventure for Grace. She sat in the passenger seat directly behind the driver and through her window she could occasionally glimpse the sea. The town where she lived was on the coast, but there the sea was hidden behind power-station chimneys and cranes.