Читать книгу Runaway Girl: A beautiful girl. Trafficked for sex. Is there nowhere to hide? - Casey Watson, Casey Watson - Страница 11

Thankfully, over the weekend Adrianna’s temperature went down and by Sunday she had ventured downstairs to join the family, clad in a hoodie and old trackie bottoms of Riley’s. She’d also asked – with much gesturing and helpful bits of mime – if she could borrow some washing powder so she could launder her clothes.

‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘Let me have them and I’ll put them through the machine for you.’ But several visits to Google Translate and gentle argument later, I had to concede that she was not going to let me do that under any circumstances – that we had already done enough for her and she did not wish to be a burden. I didn’t push it. Perhaps, I decided, thinking back to when I was 14, I would have baulked at a complete stranger washing my clothes as well.

There was also the business of her being independent. Having travelled so far, and taken care of herself for so long, she probably had a great deal of adjusting to do before she could truly settle into family life. I’d seen similar scenarios in children as young as seven or eight, particularly if they’d spent time in the care system. To strip them of their independence and privacy was to disable them even further – at least in the short term, when everything in their lives felt so out of their control. These were things that at least they could control.

Softly, softly then. I relinquished the washing gel and fabric conditioner. She did her clothes washing on Sunday morning, in the bath.

Happily, Adrianna’s reticence didn’t seem to extend to food, extreme hunger being a very powerful human state. And, boy, once she felt better and had a bit of colour in her cheeks, did she have an appetite. She sat down to Sunday lunch with an expression for which ‘ravenous’ was the only description.

‘More potatoes?’ I asked, grinning, having watching her devour all of hers within seconds.

She nodded, smiling at Tyler, who seemed mesmerised by the transformation. ‘This good,’ she said, accepting another scoopful. ‘Your mammy make good food.’

Tyler blushed. And I knew it wasn’t just because he was at the sharp end of her smile. He’d started calling us mum and dad a long time ago now, but there were still these little moments, when someone else referred to us as ‘his mum and dad’ when I knew it still had the power to bring him up short. Hard to explain, but entirely in a good way. It was almost as if he’d have to check with us – he glanced at me now – to be sure we didn’t feel the need to explain that, actually, we weren’t his real mum and dad. It was almost, though I didn’t think it was even a conscious thing, as if he was testing us. That in all situations and with all people from here on in, mum and dad was what we were going to be. No qualifications. It truly mattered – it was a way of reconfirming his sense of security. It mattered to him – and in a whole host of different situations now – that we’d never felt the need to point it out. I could have hugged him.

‘Well, I’m glad someone appreciates my cooking,’ I said, laughing as I followed up with the dish of other vegetables. ‘Thank you, Adrianna, I’m happy you like it.’

‘I like it,’ Adrianna repeated, nodding. ‘Dziekuje di bardzo.’

‘That means thank you very much,’ Tyler added, beaming.

Amazing how the small things so often are the big things, isn’t it? A quiet family Sunday. Clean clothes. A good meal. Conversation. Laughter. All the basic needs met. And the change in Adrianna was profound.

I’d called Riley – still on a clothes mission, because my own stuff wouldn’t fit our new visitor’s slim frame – and wondered, when she said she’d pop round with all the grandkids that afternoon, if it might just be a little too much, too soon, for Adrianna. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Though she was naturally a little shy with my extrovert daughter, she seemed to surf the wave of mayhem well. Almost painfully polite, and unfailingly well-mannered, she seemed perfectly at ease in a living room full of talkative people, where many 14-year-olds – it’s such a gauche, self-conscious age – would have immediately scuttled to their rooms. What an enigma she was proving to be.

Particularly for Marley Mae, who, at almost three and, on home turf, was in her element. And wasted no time in monopolising Adrianna, either. Within 20 minutes of their arrival, she was already on her lap, completely mesmerised by her ‘pretty princess’ hair.

‘She has a lot of Disney Princess dolls,’ Riley told Adrianna, immediately taking my unspoken lead, and speaking in normal English, albeit slowly. ‘Not sure which one she thinks you look like, but you have clearly struck a chord with her …’

‘Disney,’ said Adrianna, nodding. ‘I know Disney.’

‘Princess!’ Marley Mae cooed. ‘Pretty, pretty princess!’

Adrianna, in response, touched Marley Mae’s hair – which was the usual muddle of dark, unkempt curls. She took to having her hair brushed and combed like a cat does to a dunking, i.e. not at all well.

‘Princess too,’ she told my granddaughter, laughing and kissing her head. ‘You too. Disney Princess, named Mar-lee.’

Call me soppy – and you’d be right – but watching this small exchange, I felt a rush of emotion. It might be daft and unscientific, but my instinct has always been that anyone who displays such natural affection for a young, unrelated child must have a core of goodness in them. Easy to mock – and, of course, tragically, there are unhealthy variants of this scenario – but whatever else was true, I trusted my instinct in this. Our young Polish visitor was being fleshed out as a person before our eyes, and I was increasingly confounded by what I was seeing; this lovely young girl, seemingly all alone in the world, and interacting with Marley Mae with such natural affection. It made me feel sad to think that she must be craving attention of her own and had no one familiar around to give it to her. Or perhaps I was wrong – perhaps attention was exactly what Adrianna didn’t need. Perhaps she was escaping something very bad and being with us was a means of avoiding whatever that something was.

‘But you know what?’ I said to John Fulshaw, when I called him first thing Monday morning. ‘I don’t think there’s much point in the interpreter coming back just yet. Unless there’s some protocol that requires you to get chapter and verse as a matter of urgency, I think we’re better off letting her settle in a little more first.’

This wasn’t just because my instinct was to first build on the success of our initial weekend together, and give Adrianna a chance to regain some equilibrium. It was also because she already had a keen interpreter in Tyler. And a much more amiable and pleasant one than had been provided by the council, for sure. Yes, this did mean she had learned his version of a number of words usually defined slightly differently, such as ‘bad’ and ‘wicked’, not to mention a couple of non-words, such as ‘reem’. But that was fine – as a teenager, she’d need to familiarise herself with ‘yoof’ speak, even if it did mean she pronounced her Sunday-night toasted sandwich ‘standard’, requiring our in-house interpreter to intervene.

‘I was thinking much the same,’ John said. ‘I’m not sure Adrianna and Mr Kanski really hit it off, did they?’

‘I’m not surprised,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t the most likeable of men, was he? I got a strong sense that he was doing us some massive favour just by turning up. I don’t know … I just didn’t warm to him. Or his comment as he left, come to that. Of course she isn’t telling us the truth! She’s terrified of something, clearly, and grumpy old sods like him won’t help tease her story out, will they?’

John laughed. ‘Really? I’d never have guessed,’ he said drolly. ‘But that’s fine. And actually, Casey, I’m inclined to agree with you about him. Oh, and I’m also going to hold off getting her a social worker for the moment, if it’s all the same to you. It seems pointless to allocate her someone who can’t understand a word she’s saying, and I’ve a hunch I can put some feelers out and see if I can “buy” someone in from another area. Someone who speaks Polish, of course. In the meantime, can you manage? It doesn’t sound like she’s proving too challenging, and you never know – by this time next week, we might be moving her along anyway, mightn’t we?’

I told him that was fine. ‘Though, John, as I said, we’re really in no rush. I think she will open up once she feels more settled.’

‘You’re a star,’ he said. ‘You all are. And – hey – learning a new language! Don’t they reckon that’s one of the best ways to stave off dementia? Anyway,’ he added, ‘while she’s with you the service have also offered to do any translating you might need electronically. So if Adrianna is really struggling to get something across – or you are, for that matter – then they’re happy for either of you to drop them an email and they’ll translate it for you. It would be an improvement on what you’ll manage online, for sure.’

That seemed a great idea – and definitely something I would try to encourage Adrianna to think about. But, in the meantime, I was more concerned that she get her health and strength back, and continue to make strides in terms of her learning to trust us, and to begin living a more normal life.

To which end, I decided, once I’d finished the call to John, that I’d take her out somewhere. She’d been stuck in the house for the best part of a week now, after all, and, with Tyler back in school, and just the two of us rattling around, I thought I’d take her out on a bit of a girly jolly, to buy some clothes for her, which were very badly needed, then perhaps pop in to Truly Scrumptious for some lunch. I knew Donna would be happy to see us and perhaps Chloe might be there too. And I was sure they’d hit it off.

And it seemed my idea would be a good one, because when Adrianna came down for her breakfast, her first utterance was ‘Quiet, yes?’ and her second a question: ‘I go school, maybe? With Tyler? Sometime?’

It took me aback. After so long on the move – well, at least allegedly – I’d have imagined education might be the last thing currently on her mind. But, no, it seemed not. Quite the contrary.

‘I’m not sure when, yet,’ I said, as I prepared her a bowl of porridge. ‘We need to wait till social services decide what’s going to be best for you. Where you should stay. If you’re determined that you’re not going back home to Poland, that is.’

She shook her head, at least apparently understanding that last bit. ‘No home,’ she said. ‘No Polska. I stay here in UK now.’

I nodded. ‘Okay. And I am sure we’ll find out soon. You must have missed so much school. Lots to catch up!’

I was all too aware how much I was modifying my language. How I was speaking so slowly, in clipped, simple sentences, enunciating so clearly, like something out of a comedy sketch about Brits abroad. But it seemed logical, because it at least gave her a chance to pick words out. Get the gist of it. Which I thought she probably did. She certainly seemed deep in thought as she sat and ate her breakfast.

How I’d have loved to have a real conversation with her. To know her concerns, what had happened to her, how I could help. How we could help. And not just us as a family. How we could help as a society. Or even if we could help – or should. I was so painfully ignorant of such political matters.

But I wasn’t ignorant generally. I had never been that. This was a vulnerable child in need of support, and, as far as I was concerned, she could have come down from the moon. It made absolutely no difference to our duty of care to her.

Though I wasn’t naïve, either. I knew not everyone would feel as I did. I didn’t, however, expect to have that spelled out to me quite so starkly and so soon.

Adrianna proved easy to buy clothes for. Well, once we’d got past the business that I was determined to do just that – no arguments – and, via another series of comic hand gestures before we set off, making the point that she could not spend the foreseeable future with just one very elderly set of clothes.

We were soon, therefore, sorted. And Adrianna was kitted out with a small but decent wardrobe. Two distressed-looking T-shirts, bearing slogans – I had a suspicion she was a bit of a rock chick – plus a couple of hoodies and a nice pair of black skinny jeans. The very height of fashion, Riley had assured me. And once our haul was complete, including a selection of lingerie, socks and tights, we set off for our visit to my sister’s café.

I’d hoped my niece Chloe might be working and was pleased to see she was. Though I doubted she had any more Polish than I did, there was a natural affinity between girls of similar ages, wherever they came from – one of the plus points of a global social media being that, culturally, they probably had more in common than they didn’t.

And sure enough, once the complicated introductions were done with – and it is definitely tricky trying to establish ‘sister’ and ‘niece’ via the medium of flapping hands – Adrianna was coaxed into shyly showing Chloe our various purchases, while I went down the back with Donna to get some drinks for us.

We were late, in terms of the lunch crowd, so there was no problem getting a table; apart from a couple in the window and a young mum who was busy feeding her baby, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. The only other customers were a group of what I recognised as Donna’s regulars: a trio of local ladies, all in their late sixties, who used the place weekly for a gossip and a catch-up. The kind of women you see everywhere. Cheerful. Innocuous.

Or so I’d thought. ‘Hello, Casey, love,’ the nearest of them said as I passed them. ‘Long time no see.’

I agreed that it was.

‘What you up to these days?’ she continued. ‘Still doing your fostering stuff? Donna told us you hung on to that boy.’

Leaving aside my irritation at the way she’d said ‘that boy’, I must have had some sort of instinct about her, because my first response – unspoken, obviously – was ‘none of your bloody business’. Which was unlike me. So I smiled. ‘Tyler,’ I said instead. ‘Indeed we did.’

I carried on past, but the woman half-turned her head. ‘She one of yours too, then,’ she said, nodding towards Adrianna, who was no more than a table away, with Chloe.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Adrianna is staying with us for a while.’

It wasn’t strictly necessary, but I slightly emphasised the word ‘Adrianna’, which was at least one step better than going ‘Who’s she? The cat’s mother?’, which was what it had been my impulse to say. I can’t stand nosey parkers at the best of times, and she was a rude one, to boot.

Again, I carried on, plucking a menu card from the holder on the counter and scanning it, while Donna took the helm of her Italian whizz-bang coffee machine.

‘Any good specials on today?’ I asked her.

She began to reply – still with her back to me while she tapped and frothed and twiddled – but my attention was soon diverted by the word ‘Polish’.

‘Or Romanian or Lithuanian … There’s so many of them now, aren’t there? Can’t bloody keep up with them. Basically the whole top half of the Eurovision Song Contest leader board,’ one of the other women chortled.

I stopped scanning the menu. ‘Makes no difference,’ my earlier interrogator commented. ‘They’re all the same, aren’t they? All come over here intent on stealing our bloody jobs. Do you know, Jean,’ she told the woman sitting opposite her, ‘my Simon got laid off from the crisp factory two months ago. Bloody eight years he’d worked there. Eight years! Then just like that,’ she snapped her fingers to demonstrate, ‘he was gone. Him and a fair few others, mind. Next thing we hear, only three weeks later they set a load of them bloody Eastern Europeans – that’s what’s they call them, or so our Simon says. I call them a bloody disgrace!’

They were talking to each other – not to me, not to Adrianna, but to each other. Which, ours being a free country, they had every right to do. But they were doing it sotto voce, clearly keen to be overheard.

So I decided to ignore them, even though I was seething inside.

Chloe, however, seemed to have other ideas. ‘Er, excuse me?’ she said. ‘Hello? We’re, like, just here?’

Donna and I both turned around. This was a turn-up. But the women appeared to ignore Chloe. ‘And not content with stealing jobs and taking benefits,’ the other one muttered, ‘they start dumping their kids on social services now as well.’

The other women – definitely not ladies – muttered their agreement, one even prodding a finger at the open tabloid in front of her. ‘Flipping disgrace, that’s what it is …’ An utterance that was followed by the evergreen, predictable ‘and on tax-payers’ money’. Donna and I exchanged looks.

‘Jen, would you mind?’ Donna said mildly, coming out from behind her counter. ‘You know – entitled to your opinions and that, but … well …’ She nodded towards the girls and made a small, almost apologetic, gesture.

‘Mum!’ Chloe said, anger flashing in her eyes.

I had some sympathy with my sister. After all, these were her regulars. Chloe, however, did not.

‘Mum, they are being outrageous!’ She glared at the three women. ‘How can you be so rude!’

‘We’re only stating facts, love. To each other. Not you.’

‘No you’re not!’ Chloe retorted. ‘You’re talking in stage whispers. On purpose! Fortunately, Adrianna doesn’t speak much English, but I do, and those are completely outrageous things to say!’

Go my niece!, I thought. One of the A levels she was doing was Law. She’d make a cracking lawyer, I decided.

‘Well, if the cap fits,’ said the first woman. ‘See, that’s half the problem. Why doesn’t she speak English? If these people refuse to integrate …’

‘Yet!’ Chloe snapped at her. ‘Yet being the operative word. And, frankly, I can hardly believe such utter rudeness. Racist rudeness. Makes me ashamed to be British.’

Whatever Adrianna thought of all this – whether she had managed to get the gist of it – she was keeping her counsel, standing impassively at Chloe’s side. For me, it was a blast. Go that niece of mine!, I thought again. Because the three women – who must have a combined age of pushing two hundred – were being seriously taken to task by an 18-year-old girl. I saw humiliation creeping into their expressions, even as they affected a look of indignant surprise.

‘Well, I think we’re about finished here, aren’t we, Jen?’ said the one who’d so far been the quietest. ‘Soup was cold anyway …’ she huffed, rising and scraping back her chair.

‘Good!’ Chloe said, glancing quickly at her mother as she said so. ‘So you’ll probably want to eat elsewhere in future, won’t you?’

If I’d been surprised before, I was open-mouthed at this. I glanced at Donna too – these customers were her livelihood, after all. But her expression was supportive and she made no move to intervene, even when the raised eyebrows on the woman called Jen seemed to suggest she might.

In the face of that, the three woman had no real choice but to bustle out, glaring at the other customers, whose expressions, hilariously, said it all. Indeed, as the bell on the door ding-a-linged to signal their departure, there was a necessarily small but heartfelt round of applause.

‘Oh, God, I’m sorry, Mum,’ Chloe said, immediately contrite and apologetic. ‘I just – grrr – I couldn’t help it. What racist old bags!’

‘Lord, don’t be,’ Donna said, raising her hand and doing a thumbs-up to the other, now grinning customers.

‘No, but I shouldn’t have kicked off like that. They do have a right to their opinions. And I know some people do feel very strongly about immigration, because they are at the sharp end of things, aren’t they? And there’s so little education. People just don’t know enough about the real facts. And this awful rag –’ She stabbed an angry finger towards the now abandoned tabloid. ‘But, God, they were just so rude!’ She turned back to Adrianna. ‘I mean, God, how would they like to be spoken about like that? Just bold as you like – with you standing right there in front of them!’ Her face then broke into a smile. ‘Sorry. Rant over. But I am sorry, Mum. I should have kept my cool a bit more.’

‘I told you, don’t be, love!’ Donna said again. ‘It’s no loss to me, really. Yes, they come in every week, but it’s only three bowls of soup, one pot of tea, no tip. So it’s no loss. I was tired of their constant bitching anyway. Frees up a table for a better class of customer.’

I had no idea how much Adrianna understood, but she clearly appreciated her feisty new champion. ‘Dzieki,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much. You are so kind.’

‘And I’m hungry,’ I said. ‘So, speaking of cold soup, can you heat some up? Proper, mind. Or I’m straight off to TripAdvisor.’

We eventually sat down to (hot, delicious) soup and cheese toasties with salad, and spent a pleasurable hour putting the world to rights. ‘That’s why this bloody country is in the state it’s in,’ Donna ranted, warming to the theme, ‘through the ignorance and intolerance of bloody fools like them.’

Chloe grinned. Like mother, it now seemed, like daughter. She really would make an extremely good lawyer. As for Adrianna, perhaps more of a diplomat’s role. ‘But there are not so many like this,’ she said, in her soft, halting English. ‘Great Britain. Great people.’ She smiled at us all. ‘This is true.’

I squeezed her arm. I sincerely hoped it would prove to be.