and showed no signs of malaise afterwards, in the way viral tummy bugs tended to reveal themselves. We’d all eaten the same, too, and there’d been nothing in dinner that would make it likely that she’d succumbed to a bout of food poisoning.
No, instinct said she’d either been sick due to extreme distress and upset, or – a grimmer thought – that she had made herself so. Either way, given my responsibility to this distressed, highly anxious child, I needed both to log it and to consult our GP.
I was just wondering what sort of cover they’d have in the surgery, when I was stunned into stopping scrubbing by something entirely unexpected. A tiny but nevertheless clear voice.
‘I’m so sorry, Casey.’
I swivelled around, on my knees, to find Bella standing in the doorway. She was dressed in the clothes I’d laid out on the bed for her, and in her arms was a bundle comprising not only her pyjamas, but also her duvet cover and sheet.
I stared long enough that Bella, tears once again streaming down her cheeks, came into the bathroom and stuffed the lot in the laundry basket.
‘I wet the bed,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, Casey. I’ll try not to do it again.’ Her cheeks were crimson. She turned around and walked back out.
I sat back onto my heels for a moment and stared after her. It was really strange hearing her speak to me normally. Speaking clearly, her head up, making eye contact, as opposed to her previous head-down, eyes-down, mumbling norm. And for some silly reason I fixated on the timbre of it – that it wasn’t the high-pitched, tinkling little-girl voice I’d ascribed to her, given her muteness and her cherubic, baby-doll looks.
I got to my feet. She had communicated properly with me, finally. Not the biggest breakthrough ever – particularly given the icky circumstances – but a breakthrough nonetheless. Wetting the bed had driven her to speak to me properly at long last – which hadn’t been that long, a matter of days, but, when a distressed child closes down, a matter of days feels a long time indeed. I clicked into gear, quickly wrung the cloth out and emptied the basin. The bathroom could wait. She was twelve years old, and she had wet the bed. And in a stranger’s house. She must be feeling mortified.
I’d already heard her feet heading down the stairs, so I rattled down after her, finding her in the living room, curled up in her usual place on the sofa, and screwing the second bud of her new iPod into her ears, her eyes still damp but her tears having stopped now.
Oh no, missy, I thought, determined that we were not going to leave it there. I signalled for her to take the earbuds out again.
I sat down beside her. ‘Bella, love, listen, please don’t worry about the bed, okay? These things can happen, specially when you have been under a great deal of stress, and it’s no bother at all to sort out. But listen, Bella, more important is that you’ve spoken properly to me finally. And now you need to do so again. Sweetheart, do you have any idea why you might have been sick? I really need to call the doctor, you see …’
‘No!’ She shook her head emphatically, making me worry once again that she might have made herself sick. ‘Please no. I don’t want to go to the doctor’s. I’m fine. I don’t feel sick any more, honestly.’
I shook my own head. ‘Bella, you’re not fine. How can you be? How could anyone in your circumstances?’ I placed my palm against her forehead again, and she didn’t pull away. She felt warm, but not hot. Stress and anxiety, I felt sure of it. ‘Sweetheart, I have to register you with the doctor anyway, so he knows you’re staying with us for a bit – that’s the law. And I will just ask him if there are any nasty sickness bugs going around, okay? And I think we’ll shelve the shopping plans today, give you a chance to rest and get your strength back.’
I stood up. I could see she was becoming anxious to retreat again, holding the earbuds in each hand, ready for reinsertion. ‘And, you know, Bella, if you want to talk … you must be keeping so much locked inside of you … it might help. It probably would help – a problem shared and all that, you know? Anyway, I’m here, okay? Ready to listen.’
She didn’t respond to that, so I thought I’d stick my neck out. What the hell. ‘You must be missing your mum so much, Bella,’ I continued. ‘Not to mention worrying about your dad …’
‘Stepdad,’ she immediately corrected.
‘Sorry, sweetheart. Stepdad,’ I said. ‘Either way, you must be at sixes and sevens worrying about everything … so, I’m here, okay? Any time you need to get stuff off your chest.’
Again she shook her head. Again the action was emphatic. But then she surprised me by putting down both the earbuds and the iPod, uncrossing her legs and standing up as well.
‘I should wash the bedding myself,’ she said. ‘Do you have a washing machine? I know how to work them.’
‘Love, there’s no need –’ I began.
‘I really want to,’ she insisted, tears gathering in her eyes again. ‘I’ve caused you so much trouble.’
I told her she’d done no such thing, but that it was fine if she wanted to, to go and fetch the washing, that I’d show her what to do. Genuine guilt, I wondered, or just a clever ruse to halt the whole ‘talking’ thing in its tracks?
As I watched her hurry back upstairs, I suspected both held equal sway. The time for talking was clearly not yet.
I always feel a bit ‘in limbo’ between Christmas and New Year. I’m sure most people do to a certain extent. If you’re in work, it often feels as if you’re working in a ghost town, and if you’re not, they are strange days, those short, end-of-the-year ones – all the Christmas bit – the whole gathering-of-the-clans bit – and then a lull before the next bit when the gathering happens again, which, like most people, I filled with shopping and re-stocking, scurrying round the house, catching up with missed chores and getting ready for the next round of visitors.
Bella threw herself into it too. While Tyler grabbed any opportunity to slip away and ‘hang’ with Denver, Bella, with nowhere to go and no one she could visit, seemed to have decided to keep herself occupied by doing housework as a competitive sport.
I wondered again about her home life and its apparently chaotic nature. About the alcoholic father and the impact it would have had on her. About how natural it was (and was so often witnessed) for a child who grew up with unpredictability the only constant to want to impose order and structure wherever they could. I wondered, given what I’d already heard about her parents, if she was something of a Snow White or Cinderella figure at home.
Not that her sudden interest in dusting meant a great deal more progress. Yes, she spoke a little more now, but only superficially about practical matters: ‘Shall I put these in the airing cupboard?’ ‘Shall I do the drying up?’ But never entering into territory that would involve talking about her. If I asked her anything personal she would immediately clam up. So I soon learned the best thing was not to try.
It was all a bit frustrating, this increasing attachment to the ‘Christmas shutdown’. I felt reasonably happy that if there was any change in Bella’s stepdad’s condition – good or bad – I’d have been told. But I was anxious to get Bella help too. But though I’d been promised they’d seek a counsellor for Bella as a matter of urgency, I heard nothing till after New Year.
A quiet New Year, as it turned out, because though Bella hadn’t succumbed to any further sickness Mike went down with whatever it was that had been rife at the warehouse – not badly, just a twenty-four-hour bout of gastric gymnastics – but enough to scupper our planned family party.
I was philosophical. It was almost as if it was meant to be. And though I dropped Tyler round to Riley’s, where they were holding it instead now, I was actually perfectly happy in front of the