The school handovers were not just designed to ensure Jodie’s safety; they also allowed the teaching and me to keep each other fully updated with Jodie’s progress. Each morning I gave Mrs Rice a brief summary of how Jodie had been the night before: how she’d slept, what her mood was like, any problems to look out for and so on. In the afternoon Mrs Rice would do the same for me, which was useful, especially when Jodie was upset or angry at school.
As Jodie settled into her class she seemed to get on reasonably well with the other children, largely because most of them were bright enough to stay on polite terms with her while keeping their distance. However, there was one other pupil in the orange group who had behavioural problems, a boy called Robert, and he was Mrs Rice’s other main charge. She sat between Jodie and Robert in class, and spent most of her day working with the pair of them on a one-to-two basis, keeping their work loosely related to what was going on in the broader lesson. This kind of teaching is known as ‘differentiating work’.
One afternoon, as Jodie trudged unhappily down the steps, Mrs Rice explained to me what had happened. The class had been drawing with pastels, and Robert and Jodie had both reached for the red pastel at the same time. Robert got there first, so Jodie sat back in a huff. She glared at her picture, glared at Robert, then got up out of her chair, walked behind Mrs Rice and grabbed the pastel out of Robert’s hand. Robert started crying, and Mrs Rice naturally told Jodie off and made her hand it back. Jodie was furious, and shouted that it was Robert’s fault, and called him ‘four eyes’. This upset Robert even more, as he’d only recently started wearing glasses, and Jodie was eventually persuaded to apologize. When the lesson finished, the children went out for playtime. In the playground Jodie spent some minutes standing in silence, while staring at Robert. Then she walked over and punched him, and the pair of them had to be separated.
On the way home she was still furious, thumping and kicking the back of the passenger seat. ‘He’s bullying me, Cathy! I hate him, I hate him!’ Jodie often had tantrums in the car, as she knew there was little I could do to stop her.
‘Jodie, calm down and sit still. I won’t tell you again.’
‘No! Shut up!’
‘Jodie, there’ll be no television tonight, I’m warning you. You haven’t had the best of days. Enough!’
She pouted in silence and I tried to explain the rationale behind her being told off. ‘You grabbed the red pastel from Robert, then called him a very hurtful name. That’s why Mrs Rice was annoyed.’
‘Yes, but I needed it. Why won’t anyone believe me?’
Over the following weeks, Jodie’s complaints about Robert became a regular feature of our drives home, and often our evenings too. Jodie was adamant that Robert was bullying her, no matter how many times it was explained to her that she in fact was bullying him. I did feel sorry for Robert. He was a quiet, anxious boy, with more than enough problems of his own, and Jodie brought out the absolute worst in him.
Jodie’s relationship with Robert was just one of numerous problems at the school, and I quickly came to dread the sound of the secretary’s voice, as it usually meant we were in trouble. However, the next worry I was faced with regarding school was unrelated to Jodie’s behaviour. One evening at dinner she was telling me about her classmate Freya, and my attention had wandered. Jodie’s stories tended to ramble, and rarely had a point or resolution. However, when Jodie mentioned Freya had visited her at her old house I quickly paid attention.
‘Did you say Freya came to your house when you lived at home?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The house you grew up in, with your mummy and daddy?’
‘Yes,’ she sighed.
‘And she’s in your class now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So were you and Freya friends from your last school?’
‘No, she didn’t go to my school.’
‘So how did you know her?’
‘Because she came round, and we played Barbie.’
‘So did your mummy and daddy know hers?’
‘Yeah, from the pub.’
‘I see. And do they still see each other, do you know?’
‘S’ppose so.’
Oh shit, I thought.
The next day at school I went in to see the Head. If Freya’s parents were still friendly with Jodie’s parents, it was almost certain the news of which school Jodie now attended would filter back. This raised the possibility that her parents might come to the school and confront us, or even try to snatch her. Jodie would be terrified at the sight of her father in what she thought was a safe place, let alone if he approached her. The school run is fraught with anxiety when you’re fostering, as you’re an exposed target. Parents do occasionally try to grab their children at the school gates, and the advice we’re given is that we have to let the child go, and call the police.
The Head suggested that Jodie and I should use the staff entrance from now on, and he gave me the security code. Although this was a sensible precaution, it meant that in yet another small way Jodie had been made different from her classmates, and her past was once again hampering her future.
The following Sunday, Jodie, Paula and I went for a walk in the park. We were walking up the hill through the centre of the park, when an elderly lady coming towards us slipped and fell. It was dreadful to witness; her wrists failed to break her fall, and she cracked her nose on the tarmac. Paula and I ran up to her, and I gave her first aid, while Paula phoned for an ambulance on her mobile. I used a wad of clean tissues from my bag to stem the bleeding, all the while talking to her, making sure she didn’t go into shock. Her name was Maureen and she was clearly badly shaken; her frail body was trembling. Her face was grazed, her nose appeared to be broken and one of her wrists had swollen up. We waited until the paramedics arrived, and explained to them what had happened. The ambulance took her off to hospital, and we returned home. Throughout all of this, Jodie had stood by quietly watching.
That evening at dinner it was still on our minds.
‘I hope that poor woman’s all right,’ Paula said. ‘I could have cried.’
‘What do you want to cry for?’ Jodie asked.
‘That poor lady, who fell over in the park.’
‘Why? She didn’t hurt you.’
‘No, I know that,’ Paula said patiently. ‘But she was badly hurt and she was old. When you see something like that it makes you sad, doesn’t it?’
Jodie stared back at her, clearly not understanding the emotion she was trying to describe.
I decided to try and help. ‘We don’t like to see other people get hurt, Jodie, because we know how bad it feels ourselves. If you’d fallen over, you’d be hurt, wouldn’t you?’
Jodie thought for a second. ‘Yes. That poor lady.’ She then repeated the phrase throughout the rest of the evening. I was glad to hear her making the right noises, but it sounded hollow and I wasn’t actually convinced she felt it. It wasn’t that Jodie was being wilfully callous, she just didn’t seem to have any sense of empathy. I wondered if this was why she could be so cruel to animals, and so rude and violent to other people. In all the time she’d been with us, I’d never once seen her cry out of sadness; her tears had only ever come from rage and frustration. However, although she hadn’t yet learned to empathize, she had learned that people expected her to sound sympathetic, so she would mimic the reactions of others, to appear normal and fit in. Looking back, she’d done the same thing at Christmas, when she’d copied the others’ reactions when opening her presents. Likewise, when I pointed out a beautiful sunset, she might repeat the phrase, ‘What a beautiful sunset!’, but again it sounded hollow, as though she couldn’t actually see or appreciate its beauty.
Some weeks later I arrived at the school to collect Jodie at the end of the day. As she came down the corridor, I saw she was being escorted by the Head, rather than Mrs Rice. I took a deep breath and braced myself. What had she done now? We exchanged hellos, then he took me to one side, out of Jodie’s earshot.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘she hasn’t done anything. I just wanted a quick word. Mrs Rice has decided to take some time off, so we have a new teaching assistant starting tomorrow.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said, taken aback. ‘It’s rather sudden. She didn’t mention it. I hope she’s OK.’
He nodded. ‘I think she just needs to take some time out. You know what it’s like working with children, and TAs tend to be on the front line. Like you foster carers.’
I nodded in agreement.
‘Sometimes you just need a break, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I know the feeling.’ I smiled weakly, wondering if I would ever get the break I’d been promised at the beginning of the year.
As I left, I felt sad for Mrs Rice. I’d seen her upset often enough to realize that Jodie was partly responsible for wearing her out. She wasn’t used to hearing about the awful things that Jodie had been through, and she’d never dealt with a child this difficult and disturbed before. Jodie was constantly on edge, and alert for danger: fight or flight. If she heard the slightest noise, she’d spin round, ready for action. When you spend long enough in the company of a child like Jodie, you can soon find yourself on a heightened state of alert, and it becomes very difficult to switch off and relax.
I certainly felt myself becoming increasingly overwhelmed by Jodie’s life, and all the pain, fear and distress she had suffered.