LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Six

      A week after Megan’s arrival, something happened that arrested our long summer days and, for a while at least, turned them upside down. After an early-morning self-harming incident and a high-speed trip to Accident and Emergency in an ambulance, I was astounded to discover that Zadie was several months pregnant.

      Deep down I had known that something was wrong – the feeling had dogged me for weeks – but the news still came as a huge shock, particularly as Zadie was the last teenager I would ever have suspected of engaging in risky behaviour. Devout and introverted, she had struggled to maintain eye contact when she first arrived, and, until recently, had barely spoken above a whisper.

      The shock was marginally cushioned by the confirmation that Zadie had been several months pregnant when she arrived (the part of me concerned with holding on to a job I loved relieved that it hadn’t happened while she was in my care), but she was so young and vulnerable that it was difficult to imagine her sneaking off to meet someone against her father’s wishes. The hideous alternative possibility, that she hadn’t had any choice, lurked, unacknowledged, somewhere in the back of my mind.

      Driving away from hospital the next morning, guilt washed over me. Zadie had spent ten weeks in my care but hadn’t felt able to confide in me – a failing that no foster carer would be keen to admit to. Not only that, but I had overlooked signs that now seemed so obvious, such as her unexplained nausea, frantic exercising, no evidence of monthly periods – I felt such a fool.

      My mother had held the fort at home and it was a relief to share some of my fears for Zadie over a cup of tea when I got back. It was only after she’d left that the wider implications of Zadie’s pregnancy began to sink in.

      Soft mutterings from Megan’s carrycot interrupted my thoughts and drew me to the dining room, and as I lifted her up the first thing I realised was that she had slept for a whole hour without crying out in pain. Thrilled at this first sign of progress, I kissed her forehead, her soft skin warm against my lips. Her small splayed fingers moved purposely through the air as I carried her along the hall, her lips moving with such deliberation as she stared up at me that it really felt like she was miming. ‘Yes, I know what you’re trying to tell me, my love, I know,’ I said, smiling down at her. ‘Your first comfortable sleep. I’m very happy about that too.’

      The living room looked like the storeroom in the basement of a shockingly disorganised branch of a baby-merchandising retailer. Apart from all the usual baby equipment, there were baby gifts dotted all around the room; a pink and white blanket crocheted by my mother, a pile of assorted furry and velour soft toys and fluffy blankets from our neighbours all along the street, and a small pink kitten from Peggy.

      I was just contemplating the arrival of a second baby in the house and all the associated regalia that might entail, when another thought struck me – what if Peggy decided, when she heard the news, that two babies and a teenager was too much for one foster carer to cope with? Might she worry that my attention would be too thinly stretched? If that was the case, there was a chance that, on the basis of ‘last-in, first-out’, Megan might be moved on to another foster carer.

      A fair number of the foster carers at Bright Heights Fostering Agency operated a strict ‘no babies’ policy, but there were plenty of others who loved caring for newborns.

      I lowered Megan onto her padded mat and gently removed her wet nappy. Her legs were still so thin and scrawny that I couldn’t wait to tuck them back into her sleep suit, for fear they might break. As I dabbed her bottom with damp cotton wool, my eyes fixed on the stump of an umbilical cord clinging stubbornly to her tummy. It was sad to think of any baby being parted from their mother so soon after birth. I felt a pang in my chest at the prospect of Megan going through yet another separation so early on in her life.