Part 18 (1/2)

'Tell me about it,' I agreed, giving him the same edited version about the morning as I'd given his sister.

'Humph,' he said decidedly. 'I know I shouldn't say this, but you know, Mum, I am going to be so glad when she goes.'

Which I knew Sophia couldn't have heard, as it was a full five minutes later when she got home. But when she came in it was almost as if she had heard straight away I could see she had a face like thunder. 'There you go!' she spat at me as she came into the kitchen, plucking her lunch box from her bag and flinging it across the worktop. 'I didn't eat any of your s.h.i.+t!'

Nothing surprised me these days, so I didn't even gape. Not even when she glared towards the chips I was cutting and said, 'And I won't be eating any of that s.h.i.+t, either!'

'Sophia, just knock it off,' I said instead, more in sorrow than in anger. 'You know, I am really getting tired of all this.'

'Get used to it,' she snapped. 'Because from today I'm on hunger strike.'

I felt my heart sink. Was there no end to her manipulation? 'Don't be silly,' I said, pulling off the lid from her lunchbox, to see that she had indeed failed to eat a single thing. I removed the contents methodically, and placed them in the bin. Hunger strike. Brilliant. That was all I needed. And what was I supposed to do about it exactly? Tie her up and force-feed her?

'Sophia,' I said again. 'Don't be ridiculous. You know you have to eat, or you'll mess up your medication ...'

But she had already stomped out of the kitchen.

I took a long, slow, deep breath then, and finished doing the chips. At least Mike would be happy, I thought wryly, as I rinsed them. Pie, chips and mushy peas with lots of gravy, his favourite dinner. Just the small matter of a 13-year-old hunger striker to deal with, and we could all enjoy a jolly family evening.

I would have to ring the GP again, I decided. Get some advice on what best to do. And though it was hardly rocket science leave some tempting salty snacks in her bedroom, trust to hunger kicking in and taking over I felt better for having spoken to Dr Shackleton. He'd also rea.s.sured me that he'd be happy to come out if needed, so at least I felt I had some professional support.

'But what about her pills?' Kieron wanted to know, after I'd hung up. 'How are you going to make her take them if she refuses?'

'I have no idea,' I told him truthfully. 'Just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.'

'Or,' he said, 'you could just ring the fostering agency. Just tell them you've had enough. Make them come and get her.'

I smiled wanly at Kieron's oh-so-simple solution. He had a point. It really could be as simple as that, couldn't it? And, heaven knew, not a soul could berate me. Fostering was supposed to be a job of work, wasn't it? Not a penance.

But every fibre of my being railed against giving up. Giving up on Sophia went against everything I'd signed up for. No matter how hateful, how hurtful, how horrible she was to me, I had to keep on keeping on with her. She couldn't help it. I had to keep that in mind at all times. She was sick. She was crying for help. She couldn't help it. And I also knew that I along with Mike, and my own poor beleaguered kids was all that stood between her and a secure adolescent unit. There'd be no putting her in a children's home, not with her history, and her illness. No, it would be straight to a place of incarceration. Which I knew would be the beginning of the end for her. You only had to take a quick look at the statistics to know how terrible the likely long-term outcome would be if that happened. Kids in those places almost never made it back to a normal life.

Since Sophia had taken herself off to the living room after her p.r.o.nouncement and I'd left her there when I dished up I decided to take her plate in to her. It went against all my rules about sitting at the table, but perhaps the smell of the gravy would sway her just a little, and with the rest of us out of sight and out of mind in the dining room, maybe she'd be unable to resist. I'd already briefed Mike, who had sighed and rolled his eyes, as if, like Kieron, pleading, 'Why are we still doing this?'

Sophia looked up as I entered. Once again her expression was brutally hostile and I had to say it again, in my head: She can't help this. She needs you.

'You don't get it, do you?' she snapped. 'I'm not eating. End of.'

I had a bit of a brainwave, then, standing there, clutching her steaming dinner. 'Okay,' I said, placing it on the coffee table, along with cutlery. 'Don't eat, then. I'll leave the plate, but it's up to you. You should know, though, that I've already told the GP, and he's said that if you don't eat, and then refuse to take your steroids, you will definitely go into a full-blown crisis. And when that happens I have to follow the emergency procedure, so I will immediately call an ambulance, which will take you to hospital, where you will be fed and medicated, via drips, for as long as it takes. So this is pointless, all this. Just so you know.'

But she wasn't interested. 'Fine,' she said calmly. 'Do whatever you like. Makes no difference. I'll just do it again. A body without stress hormones can only take so much, you know. Eventually it'll work and eventually I'll die.' She turned back to the television. 'End of.'

For a second or two I just stood there and stared. How did you respond to that? What did you say? Nothing in the handbook seemed appropriate for the occasion. Did I rush to her, fling my arms around her and plead with her? Don't talk like this! Don't think like this! What are you saying? You are loved! You are cared for! It will all be all right!

How could I? When none of that was true? I wished I could say that my heart had gone out to her then. That in that instant I did feel her pain. But it was impossible. Her manner was so ice-cool, so measured. Don't think for a minute, she was saying, that you can stop me. Don't think that I think, for one minute, that you do care.

I went back to the dining room and ate my own dinner well, a bit of it. My appet.i.te, unsurprisingly, had disappeared. And when I finished, at Mike's urging, I did call the doctor, who promised to get to us within the next two hours. Which rea.s.sured me. Even if I couldn't get any food into her, at least I knew he'd see to it that she took her medication administering it by force, if that was necessary. She sauntered into the kitchen just as I was finis.h.i.+ng the call, and went straight across to sc.r.a.pe her untouched plate into the bin. 'You really think anyone can stop me?' was her only comment, before she sashayed out and went up to her bedroom.

The three of us plus Bob then regrouped in the living room. It felt like we were in the middle of a siege. And Kieron was growing more adamant about things by the moment. 'Dad,' he said, 'I told Mum: you have to give this up. Not fostering, but this one.' He nodded towards the stairs. 'It's crazy. She's crazy.'

Mike nodded. 'I know, son. And you know what I honestly think, Case? I think the longer she's with us, the worse she's getting. Don't you? That can't be right, can it, love?'

I shook my head. 'No. Maybe we need to sit down and talk to Dr Shackleton. You're both right. We can't go on like this, can we?'

'No,' Mike said firmly. 'We can't.'

But it seemed that we weren't going to have to. Because five minutes later Sophia returned to the living room, and in doing so took all decisions about her out of our hands. Perhaps she had listened to my little homily earlier, after all. Perhaps the futility of refusing to eat anything had sunk in. Or perhaps she'd just realised she was as fed up with things as I was, and had decided to speed the whole process up a bit.

In any event, there she was, standing in the living-room doorway, ashen faced, her arms hanging limply by her side. And I was so mesmerised by the expression on her face that for some moments I completely failed to register what was happening. Indeed, it was Mike who alerted me, by leaping from the sofa, yelling, 'Jesus Christ, Case! Jesus! Oh, G.o.d! Call an ambulance! Kieron, find some bandages! Anything! Just find something!'

It was then that I noticed all the blood. There was just so much blood. Pouring from both her wrists, dripping from her fingers, forming two dark spreading pools on the carpet.

She caught my eye then, as I leapt up myself, stunned. 'I'm sorry, Mummy,' she whispered. 'I'm so sorry.'

Chapter 25.

Mike was incredible. While I stood there horrified, stunned into inactivity, he'd already scooped a drooping Sophia up into his arms and laid her down gently on the sofa.

'Ambulance, Case,' he said again. 'Go and call an ambulance.' The words sunk in and I finally juddered into action as, with incredible calm and instinct, he gently raised her arms to stem the bleeding. She was deathly pale, grey, and seemed to be losing consciousness. G.o.d only knew how much blood she'd already lost.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed the phone from its rest in the hall and dialled 999, conscious of Kieron das.h.i.+ng past me, back into the living room, his own face looking green. I really thought that at any moment he might throw up. I thought I might.

Though it felt like it was happening in super-slow motion, it was probably only a couple of minutes before I'd given the emergency services our address and gone back into the living room, gaping anew at the grisly pools of blood darkening on the floor.

Sophia, droopy lidded, looked in my direction as I entered, and, seeing me, her body started jerking, racked by sobs. 'I'm so sorry, Mummy,' she said again. 'I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.'

Mike was now kneeling at the head end of the sofa, trying to carefully wrap strips of bandage round her flayed wrists it was a pathetically thin roll of the stuff that Kieron had found from somewhere, and the blood was just seeping straight through it.

I sank to my own knees by Sophia's head and started stroking her hair, saying, 'Shhh, Sophia, shhh, sweetie. You'll be all right, don't worry.'

'I'm sorry, Mummy,' she said again. 'I'm so sorry.'

I looked to Mike, who shrugged helplessly. She was clearly delirious.

'It's all right, Sophia,' I kept saying. 'Shhh, it's all right.'

'Call me Sophie,' she said. 'Why don't you call me Sophie any more, Mummy? Like when I was little. Please call me Sophie. I'm so tired. I'm so tired ...'

The tears were pouring down my cheeks now. My heart was breaking for her. How had she done this to herself? What the h.e.l.l had she used? I felt the weight of Kieron's arm around my shoulder. He squeezed it.

'Don't cry, Mum,' he said. 'Please don't. Don't be upset. This isn't your fault.'

Kieron's words just made me cry harder.

When the ambulance came, sirens blaring, a scant ten minutes later, it seemed everything in contrast to the slow-motion reel earlier sped up to an incredible rate. Before I'd even really got my wits together Sophia was examined, attached to a drip, stretchered out and into the ambulance, and Mike was herding me to the door, pressing my handbag into my shaking hands.

'Go on,' he was saying. 'She wants you in the ambulance with her. Go on, they're waiting. Kieron and I will follow in the car.'