both gasped when a triangle of something plopped into his supporting hand. We both looked at it, horrified. It was dirt! A big grey plug of dirt! A further inspection, which I found difficult to make without gagging, revealed all his toes similarly glued together by solid filth. Mike had to use a toothbrush to remove the disgusting deposits in their entirety, revealing skin between the toes that was completely raw and livid.
Next up was to clear the filth from the bath sides and plug hole, and do Olivia, who was in no better state than her brother. Only then could we properly dry them both – being as gentle as we could – and, finally, put them both in clean clothes. As Riley wouldn’t be arriving for at least another hour, I had Kieron achieve this by rummaging in his wardrobe, and finding two of his big T-shirts to put them in.
And so it was, half an hour later, that they were arranged with him at the dining-room table – looking tiny and pink, in their band-name emblazoned T-shirt ‘dresses’, their hair doused in nit lotion, their bodies in left-over calamine (Levi had recently had chickenpox) – nibbling shyly on toast. I’d made a pile of it and plonked it in the centre of the table. I didn’t want to give them more so late, for fear of spoiling their tea.
Kieron, by now, had got over his shock, and seemed keen to entertain them – he’d brought down a big sketch pad and some felt pens – so I took the opportunity to pop into the garden for a cigarette.
Mike was already out there, sitting at the garden table, in the sunshine, with his back to me, his head resting in his hands.
I went over to him and rubbed his shoulder. ‘You okay, love?’
He straightened. ‘No, not really. God, love, it’s appalling. I have never seen anything like that in my life. Well, except perhaps on telly, but – sheesh! I just can’t believe the state of them! Can you?’ I shook my head. ‘I can’t believe,’ he went on, ‘that any mother or father – particularly a mother – could allow her own children to get into such a state.’
I sat down and lit my cigarette. ‘I know, but, love, it happens. And if she’s got learning difficulties, too … But I do know what you mean. It’s one thing to see it in the papers or on the news, but, this – having to clean up those kids – I agree. It is shocking. It really brings it home.’
In truth, it wasn’t perhaps quite as shocking for me as it was for Mike and Kieron. My years in school had given me plenty of insights into the state of kids from some impoverished families. But not like this; this was neglect on a completely different scale.
But at least we’d got them clean, I thought, which was a start. Now it was just a case of doing what we could for them, before passing them all on to their long-term carers. And we could do so much, I thought, putting out my cigarette, and going back inside. And the feeling was endorsed when I went back into the dining room to find them huddled up on either side of Kieron, who was playing a game with them, starting to draw cartoons and having them try to be the first one to guess which characters they were.
It was a fascinating tableau and I watched from the doorway for a while. Ashton – being the eldest – was trying to look cool and disinterested, whereas Olivia, in complete contrast, was rocking back and forth in her excitement, making squealing sounds and chewing on her hand. I watched Kieron gently remove her fist from her mouth and encourage her to try and have a guess.
‘It’s G … G …’ Olivia trilled excitedly. ‘Ash, it’s G … G …’ She reached across and grabbed Ashton’s damp hair and tugged on it. Now it was clean, I could see just how long it was. I made a mental note: cherubic though he looked with his now soft and curly locks, I must get it cut as a matter of priority. ‘Get off, Livs!’ Ashton snapped, clipping his little sister around the head. ‘I know who it is, okay? I’m not thick!’
‘Hey,’ Kieron chided. ‘Less of the hitting, okay? That’s naughty, Ashton. And well done Olivia! It is Garfield. You clever girl, you!’
I was amazed. I couldn’t believe my son had understood what on earth she was on about, because I certainly hadn’t. I was just about to go in and congratulate Olivia myself, when I heard a key in the lock and saw a shadow through the glass in the front door. It was Riley and Levi, bearing clothing.
Riley smiled at the children, who were studying her warily. ‘And who do we have here, then?’ she asked the two of them. ‘Hey, Levi,’ she added. ‘Some new friends for you!’
At the mention of the baby, the children’s wariness disappeared instantly, and they both got down from the table and clustered round the buggy. Levi, on form, did his new party trick. He was twenty months old now, a proper toddler, and his most fun thing to do was to flap his arms frantically and go ‘Hiyah! Hiyah! Hiyah!’
Olivia, particularly, was enchanted, and I was reminded that these kids were probably very used to babies, having lived cheek by jowl, probably, with three of them. ‘Hiyah,’ she mimicked at him. ‘Hiyah, liccle baby! Oh, you’re so sweet! Like my dolly! Who’s called Polly! Hang on, babes, I’ll jus’ go get her!’
Olivia sped off upstairs, and Riley laughed as she began pulling carrier bags off the handles of the buggy, so I could inspect the new things she’d got for them both. ‘Got some live wires, then, I see!’
And the upbeat tone continued for what remained of the afternoon, the children clearly responding well to both Kieron and Riley. If anything, they seemed more relaxed around our kids than they had been so far with the perhaps more authoritarian figures of me and Mike. Which was no bad thing, I mused, as I left them to it and went into the kitchen to clear the decks for tea, because it meant – if I was lucky – that both my kids would be happy to help out a bit with the pair of them. Which was no small thing. Sophia, who’d been twelve, had had multiple issues, and there had been multiple occasions when she’d clashed with one or more of us. We’d had as many traumatic, stressful times with her as good ones.
This, on the other hand, seemed far less complicated a business. We’d enjoy our short time with these little ones, all of us, as a family. And as Riley had plans to become a foster carer herself, once hers were older, I knew she saw the hands-on experience as useful training.
In the meantime, I needed to feed my new charges, and managed to establish, once I’d worked out that offering them choices was an alien concept, that sausages and beans would be a sensible thing to cook.
‘But we can’t use these,’ Olivia told me, as I handed out their cutlery, just before I dished up. ‘We’re too liccle for them things. We need spoons.’
And some basic training, I thought silently, as I swapped knives and forks for dessert spoons for today. As of tomorrow, I’d start teaching them some everyday skills. And, boy, was I glad I’d opted not to dress them in their shorts and T-shirts, because even with the cutlery they professed to be used to, I’d never seen children – not those over six months of age, anyway – make such a comprehensive amount of mess in such a short space of time. By the time they had finished eating, half their tea was splattered over them – both their freshly washed hair and their newly scrubbed faces and their T-shirts one horrible sticky mess. The only plus side was that they still needed to have the nit lotion rinsed off, so at least they’d be in the bath again anyway.
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