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up to green level for my reading,’ he mumbled, tomato sauce dripping from the side of his mouth. I resisted the urge to say anything about it; they had only arrived twenty-four hours earlier and there was so much for them to take in. Table manners were lower down my list of priorities than making them feel comfortable and I didn’t want to be constantly nagging them.

      ‘Well done, Reece. That sounds good,’ I said, clueless as to what green level meant. Emily and Jamie had worked their way up a numbered reading scheme at their school.

      ‘It ain’t good,’ he said, shovelling an overburdened forkful in his mouth. ‘Still way too easy for me. The stories are boring.’

      ‘Oh, well, perhaps we could have a word with your teacher about that.’

      He nodded, looking pleased.

      ‘Bethany’s still on those green books,’ Taylor piped up, suddenly emerging from her sulk.

      ‘Who’s Bethany?’ I asked, keen to encourage a continuing thaw.

      ‘Oh, just some lame girl in my class.’

      ‘What’s lame about her?’

      ‘Everything, basically.’

      I lowered my fork to the tray. ‘Everyone has something special about them, Taylor. Perhaps you should give this Bethany a break.’

      She sighed heavily, eyes skyward. ‘God, I don’t think so. For a start she wears glasses, no offence, Reece.’

      Reece narrowed his eyes and looked at me as if undecided whether he should feel insulted or not. ‘So does Harry Potter,’ I said, winking at him. That was all it took. His face lit up and he carried on eating.

      ‘Yeah, well, Bethany’s fat as well. Oh, the other day it was hilarious, yeah? You shoulda been there. Basically, we was in the hall for games, right? Cos the field’s blocked off at the moment with all scaffolding and stuff. And she goes and falls over and literally skids all the way across the floor on her arse.’ I looked up from my plate but she carried on, oblivious. ‘Oh my God, it was so fucking funny. And she always has these marks on her arms where her uniform clings to her. We call her Lardface.’

      ‘Please don’t use bad language in front of the others, Taylor. If you must say something, say, “Oh my giddy aunt” or how about, “Oh my goodness”?’

      Her jaw dropped. ‘You have got to be kidding? What bad language anyway?’

      I pressed my lips together and gave her a hard stare. She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh what’s the big deal? Everyone swears.’

      I gave her another warning glare but she seemed guileless. Second nature to her, I don’t think she even realised she was doing it. ‘Poor Bethany, it must be so horrible for her, being called names,’ I said. ‘I bet she dreads going to school.’

      A faint shadow of embarrassment crossed Taylor’s features, quickly followed by a ‘Who cares?’ shrug. ‘It ain’t just me. Literally everyone hates her.’

      I winced. ‘Hate is a very strong word, love.’

      ‘I’m a strong person,’ she said with a sour smile. She always seemed to have an answer for everything.

      We lapsed into silence, none of us quite sure how to restart the conversation. And then Emily, who had been quiet until that point, said: ‘I hope Bethany discovers a cure for cancer or something when she’s older, don’t you, Mum?’

      I was about to agree when Taylor scoffed. ‘It’d be just like her to do something lame.’

      Jamie dropped his fork. It clattered on the tray and made Emily jump again. Her plate rolled against her tummy, tomato sauce creeping over her top. ‘How can finding a cure for cancer be lame?’ Jamie demanded, looking at me with wide eyes. Emily glanced between us, gave her top a little shake and then discreetly shuffled her bottom further along the sofa, away from Taylor. Her ability to accept the bad in people without too much effort always amazed me, whereas Jamie was the opposite. Even at the age of seven he couldn’t tolerate flippant, senseless remarks.

      ‘Because I say it is, numbskull.’ Taylor flicked her hair over her shoulder. ‘Basically I’m gonna be a top model or something when I’m fourteen. I could of been one already if it weren’t for school and everything.’

      Jamie spluttered on his food, his eyes scrunched in disbelief. Sensing that he was about to make a comment that wouldn’t go down too well I jumped in quickly. ‘Some of the most famous people in the world were picked on at school, did you know that?’

      ‘Yeah, like who?’ Taylor asked, her lip curled into a grimace. I knew it didn’t matter what I said, but I pushed ahead anyway, if only to distract Jamie.

      ‘Er, well, off the top of my head, there’s Madonna. She had a hard time at school.’

      Taylor rolled her eyes. ‘Lame,’ she decreed.

      ‘Lame? You’re calling Madonna lame?’

      ‘Yep,’ she said, rolling her lips and making a loud smacking sound. I ran through a host of other celebrities, reaching a point where I had no idea whether they were bullied or not. Taylor wrote them all off as boring losers, or useless twats. Riled, Jamie shouted ‘Richer than you’ll ever be’ after each of her insults.

      It saddened me that a child of her age should be so disillusioned with the world that every word she uttered seemed to be either a put-down or a complaint. I knew that most children had a tendency to polarise, dividing experiences or people into the best or the worst ever, but Taylor categorised almost everything in existence as abominable. The only person she ever spoke well of was her mother, who was, in Taylor’s words, ‘beautiful and kind’.

      It puzzled me, her adoration of her mother, considering that she seemed to be the prime aggressor towards the children.

Chapter Five

      Two days later, on the last day of term, the doorbell rang barely ten minutes after I’d arrived home from the school run. It had been a difficult forty-eight hours and so, even though there wasn’t a single line through any of the chores on my ‘to-do’ list and it was my last chance to get everything done without all the children at home, I could have hugged the weighty woman standing on the doorstep when I noticed the official-looking identity card hanging around her neck.

      ‘Karron, Bright Heights,’ she said in a heavy American accent. ‘You weren’t expecting me, right?’

      Since Taylor and Reece’s arrival I hadn’t heard anything from social services and there were so many questions I wanted to ask, so much I felt I needed to get off my chest. As Karron was from my fostering agency she wouldn’t have direct information on the children; that would come from Maisie. Even so, it was a relief to see someone official.

      ‘Er, no I wasn’t but I – it’s very good to see you,’ I said, pulling off a pair of pink rubber gloves. ‘Please, come in.’ My usual supervising social worker from the fostering agency was on a sabbatical from social work and Bright Heights hadn’t told me who was filling in for him. A TV and film extra in his younger days, Des had left two months earlier for California, where he’d managed to secure a bit part in a hospital drama for a cable network. We had developed quite a close friendship since meeting two years earlier and besides being sorry to see him go, I was anxious about who might replace him. The backbone of fostering, early on in a placement, is often a daily grind of stress – an effective supervising social worker can transform the way a foster carer deals with those early problems, often just by offering unswerving support.

      ‘We’ll record this as one of your unannounced then,’ said Karron as she shrugged off her denim jacket and draped it over the side table in the hall. Social workers are required to make a minimum of two unannounced visits to the foster home each year to check that standards of care are being maintained and all is as it should be. So far I’d been lucky

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