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The timing of the call about Phoebe, when it came, couldn’t have been more perfect. I had just completed my course evaluation sheet, giving Ellie top marks in all ten categories, and was wandering out of the training centre into the misty gloom when my mobile phone coughed itself awake.
‘Hi, Desmond.’ My heart was already beginning to race in anticipation as I climbed into my car with the handset clamped to my ear, wondering whether my supervising social worker had news of an emergency or was simply calling for a chat. We had built up a close friendship since I was first assigned to him when I registered with Bright Heights Fostering Agency seven years earlier and he often popped in to check how our family was, even though he was only strictly obliged to visit once every four weeks.
As I listened to his voice, intermittently thick with a Scottish accent despite having left the Highlands as a teenager, I found myself holding my breath and hoping for a newborn, recklessly forgetting my vow never to take on another baby after my most recent, difficult separation. Reaching to grab a notebook and pen from the dashboard, I jotted down notes as Desmond spoke.
‘She’s been taken straight from school into police protection. They should be with you in the next half an hour or so. Will you be home by then?’
Slipping the key into the ignition, I switched the Nokia to loudspeaker mode then dropped it into my lap. ‘Yes, should be. I’ll just have enough time to let Emily and Jamie know what’s going on.’
My own children were keen to welcome new little ones into our home but I preferred to seek their approval before someone new arrived on the doorstep, to make sure they felt consulted.
‘I won’t be able to make it, I’m afraid – sorry, Rosie, I’m up to my neck in it over here. I’ll come and see you some time in the next few days, though.’
Saying goodbye to Des, I stopped at the next set of traffic lights, holding my notebook up at eye level. The page was still blank but for my scribbled notes: girl, age eight; warm and friendly. Without noticing the lights as they turned to amber, I sat staring at the words on the page. Overstretched social workers were sometimes so keen to place a child that they stretched the facts, I mused, moulding them into a mishmash of half-truths and downright fabrications. Experience had taught me to treat the initial information they provided on a child with as much caution as estate agents’ patter. Just as a house located at the side of a busy motorway could be listed as ‘close to all transport links’, social workers might describe a difficult, confrontational teenager with a penchant for injecting heroin as ‘lively and inquisitive’.