Loe raamatut: «Broken: Part 3 of 3: A traumatised girl. Her troubled brother. Their shocking secret.»

Chapter Twenty-One

Archie looked a fright the next morning; his eyes puffy, cheeks flushed. In manic tidying mode from the minute he came downstairs, he began piling up the breakfast bowls and sweeping the spoons away before any of us had even eaten. ‘Archie, love,’ I said, laughing, ‘give us a chance. I’ve only just put those there.’

He grinned and set them out again, but there was a distant quality to his smile. Physically, he was with us, but it seemed that his mind was somewhere else. Hearing about the children’s disappointment, Emily and Jamie had agreed to come with us to the splash park the previous day. Archie had been cheered by the news and seemed to enjoy charging down the slides after Jamie, but even that failed to erase the dull sadness in his eyes. I got the sense that he was struggling to contain himself as he walked around the table. He straightened the placemats and centralised the bowls with the studied caution of someone who was about ready to explode.

It was Sunday 15 February and though the children had only been living with us for just over six weeks, I felt I already had Bobbi sussed. Her favourite game was animal hospital, although as a rule of thumb, any game that incorporated bandages and plasters tickled her interest, as well as those Megan closely guarded as her own. She loved painting and colouring but refused to have anything to do with mouldable dough, which she described as ‘disgusting’. I was also getting to know some of her triggers. I could tell when she was tired – her manic spins fading to drunken, endearing lollops – and when she was upping the ante for no other reason than because she needed a hug.

Archie, though, was still a mystery. I knew the image he liked to project well enough, and conversing with him was easy, but part of him was still more or less closed off. ‘Who’s going to be there today, Rosie?’ he asked as he rearranged the cutlery so that it was perpendicular to the mats.

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked and I could hear the reluctance in his voice. My friend Naomi had called the previous night and tearfully invited us to meet her at a stately home owned by the National Trust. I had first met Naomi on an Understanding Attachment course a year earlier, soon after she had adopted a sibling group of three. Overwhelmed and exhausted by the sudden change in her life, she had opened up to me over lunch one day and told me all about her struggles to build a family – her miscarriages and failed attempts at IVF.

When she and her husband had finally decided to adopt, social workers told her that they needed to mourn the losses they’d experienced before they could progress to being assessed, and it was another two years before they were finally matched with the siblings. The couple fell in love with the children on sight but the eldest child, who had been four at the time of placement, struggled to accept the loss of his old family and the imposition of a new one.

Aiden, now five, still insisted on using wet wipes whenever Naomi touched him, a daily rejection that broke her heart, and seemed intent on doing all he could to disrupt the growing bond between his new parents and younger siblings. Naomi and her husband understood that his behaviour was rooted in fear, but sometimes it was difficult for them not to take it personally.

I think being out of the house alleviated some of the pressure on the family, and Naomi often asked us to meet up, whatever the weather.

I had shown Archie, Bobbi and Megan pictures of the maze and natural play area we were planning to visit and they had all been excited, but as soon as I mentioned that we were meeting others there, Archie’s face fell. He tried his hardest to project a confident image to the world but his fingers trembled at the prospect of being introduced to new people and I suspected that, on the inside, he was spinning as rapidly as his sister.

‘Only my friend Naomi and her children,’ I said lightly. ‘Don’t worry, honey, I’ll make sure you have fun.’

‘I’m not worried,’ he said in an equally light, if slightly strained tone. He nudged a stray chair in line with the table and moved one of the bowls an inch to the right.

It was unseasonably mild for February and when we arrived it was so sunny that we left our coats in the car. Naomi was waiting for us near the gatekeeper’s house at the entrance to the grounds, her children running around on the neatly manicured grass nearby.

Toby, Aiden’s four-year-old brother, ran through the gates as soon as he saw us. I leaned down to talk to him. ‘Hello, Toby, how are you?’

He turned his wide blue eyes up to look at me. ‘Aiden says she not our real mummy,’ he blurted out loudly, pointing at Naomi with the unapologetic, unflinching honesty that only young children are capable of.

‘That’s cos she’s not,’ Aiden said when he caught up with his brother. He was a thin boy with short brown hair, pale skin and downturned, slightly sunken eyes.

‘She looks real enough to me,’ I said lightly, glancing at Naomi. She was walking towards us with a slow, defeated air.

Toby looked thoughtful. ‘Aiden says the other mummy is our real mummy, not this one, cos we didn’t grow in her tummy. We grew in old mummy’s tummy but Mummy says we’re not allowed to see old mummy any more cos she’s dangerous.’

‘I didn’t say that!’ Naomi said defensively. She strode over, knelt down in front of Toby and held one of his hands. She reached out her other hand towards Aiden but he screwed his face up in disgust and looked away. Naomi turned back to Toby, her expression tense. ‘I said that Tummy Mummy can’t keep you safe, honey. I didn’t say she was dangerous.’

Toby frowned, looking uncertain. Beside me, Archie and Bobbi were both paying close attention to the conversation. A strange expression flitted across Archie’s face, one I couldn’t quite decipher. A few feet away, Aiden was staring at his adoptive mother with a look of longing that tugged at my heart.