1

As I sat in the car I heard the noise of the keys in the lock of the front door a few feet away from where I was sitting. In my mind I leapt back six months to the last time I had been sitting out here and was terrified by this big building and the noise of the rattling keys.

But this time it’s different.

Last time I was on the way in, feeling nervous, lonely and very angry. I was struggling to keep the fear out of my face and trying to force the ‘don’t give a stuff sneer’ I had been working on for the last few weeks into place.

This time I am on the way out, and I’m still feeling nervous about what’s going to happen to me. I still feel lonely and I’m still struggling with my face. But this time I’m trying to smile and not cry as I wave goodbye. This time I’m waving with my whole hand, not just with the two fingers I was thinking of using last time.

‘My’ social worker is still too busy to be collecting me - needless to say. I can’t be bothered to try to remember whether it’s a course, leave, or off sick yet again, which is more important than me. You get used to that. I just wish they would send somebody who didn’t look like a drop-out or a bag lady. Where do they get these woolly jackets? Don’t social services pay enough to get a hair cut, or even buy a comb and is a shampoo too much to ask for?

I take a quick peek. Mercifully this one isn’t wearing thick knitted rainbow striped tights with her sandals. But it is hard to find somewhere to stick my feet without putting them on some files on the floor on the passenger’s side of the car. I wonder who the files are about? Are they old ladies who need home helps and have died waiting to get a home help, like my Nan? Or are they more kids like me, needing to be moved on from one place to the next?

I wonder if the black bin bags full of things ever get mixed up. Does a big spunk get new wardrobe full of skinny boob tubes and tiny skirts, or some Bob the Builder pyjamas and a cuddly toy? I expect if the clothes from some poor old lady got mixed up with this social worker’s stuff in the boot of her car, she wouldn’t notice the difference. The old dear might complain, though, unless she was like my other Gran and didn’t know who she was, or what she was wearing.

That Gran got sent away after she had been out in the street in her nightie and without her shoes or slippers a few times and in the rain. I remember because it was the first time I was sent away as well.

I think it was something to do with my Mum as well, because she had smashed stuff up and hit me about a bit. Then when the social lot came to talk about Gran, Mum lost it and ended up being what somebody called sectioned.

I went to some snobby family miles from where we lived. I got some smart clothes out of that lot due to the fact that they didn’t like anything I had got with me. Although, since some woman just shovelled up stuff from all over into – yes you’ve guessed it a black bin bag – it’s not surprising the Masons didn’t like it. Some of it had been on the kitchen floor for weeks and some of it I’d outgrown last year. After being at High Trees for a few months I can see Mum wasn’t ‘coping’ as the staff would say. I wonder if she ever did.

Until I went to the Masons I thought everybody lived like us. I certainly gave it some to Mrs Mason when she wanted to stop me watching TV and go to bed. I knew what Mum did when somebody upset her, or she thought they had. So I stormed and shouted, used the ‘f word’ a few times and threw some books and things about.

After this had happened a few times over different things there was one bad day when I threw a cup and by mistake hit little Bobby, the Masons’ son, who was three. He was a lovely little boy and I tried to make friends with him when none of the others were around. He used to give me little smiles and cuddle up for a story, or give me toys he wanted to play with, with me. Those were the best times I ever remember about being away, until I got to High Trees.

Of course, when that cup hit Bobby, that was it for me with the Masons. I flew to Bobby, sobbing, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry” and tried to cuddle him, but Mrs Mason pushed me away. She said something like, “Oh, you will be, my girl. Believe me”. She was right.

They made me sit in my bedroom on my own while they called the social workers. One came about 7 o’clock at night. Off we went in her crummy car, with my black bin bag. I wondered if anyone would remember I had missed tea. I had kicked off while Mrs Mason was getting it ready. She had told me to move my stuff off the table and set it ready to eat. She treated me like a bloody servant if you want to know. But nobody did.

I didn’t have my own social worker yet, so it’s no surprise that the one they sent didn’t know me. After Mrs Mason had spent some time talking to her about my violent behaviour she was too scared to be in the car with me on her own and we had to wait for somebody else to come. The two of them talked to each other in the front. I tried to work out where we were, but until I had gone to the Masons I hadn’t gone far from home.

When they stopped I asked where we were. “The Grange Children’s Home”, they said.

more next month....