a challenge. I knew at once that I was going to enjoy having
her to stay and watching her blossom. It’s the psychology of children that fascinates me – the way they learn and the way they think. Mandy was going to be one to watch.
I always patrolled round the children’s rooms at night before going to bed myself. On the night Mandy came, everywhere was quiet, but I looked into each room, paying
particular attention to the little ones, Alfie, Laurel and Mandy. They were all fast asleep, so next I went into the older girls’ room, where all was fine, then last the boys. AJ and Ronnie
were sleeping soundly too, though I had to tuck AJ’s legs back under the straightened duvet before going next door to Paul and Gilroy’s room. They were in bunk beds, with Gilroy at the
top, so I had to stand on the end of Paul’s bed to check Gilroy . . . and I was shocked at what I saw. One hand was sticking out and in his fist was the missing knitting needle. I’d
forgotten all about it. Although he was soundly asleep, he clutched it so tight that I had a job to extricate it from his hand. Fortunately he didn’t stir, but even in sleep he had a
malicious look on his face. I wondered what he was intending to do with it.
There was a clue a couple of mornings later, when Paul had a very lucky escape. Gilroy took the safety rails off the bunk-beds, then started bouncing up and down, harder and harder, until his
top bunk gave away. Gilroy and his bed came crashing down on Paul’s . . . and missed him by seconds. Paul had a very lucky break that day, having got out of bed to go to the toilet, unnoticed
by Gilroy. When I heard the rumpus, I rushed up to their room, arriving only a second after the crash, just in time to see the triumphant look on Gilroy’s face when he thought he had killed
Paul, then his disappointment when Paul sauntered back into the room, very much alive and well.
Having not experienced the danger, Paul was quite amused. But the whole incident had unnerved me so much that I had to go out and buy two single beds for immediate delivery, so that we could
split the boys up straight away.
The time had come to consider a move. We loved our house in Sonnington, loved the garden, loved the orchard . . . but we didn’t love the neighbours. We didn’t like
the cliquey people who lived around us, and murmured to each other whenever I walked past them pushing the pram. They never took to us, with our rag-bag of children, and could never bring
themselves to see how lovable they were.
Then there was the school. Sometimes when I was called to go and sort out one of the children’s misdemeanours – mostly Gilroy’s, but quite often AJ’s or Paul’s as
well – it might be break-time and I would have to take the little ones with me to cross the playground. I was sad to see that my kids were usually playing in one corner, apart from the other
children. I spoke to the headmistress about it.
‘Whenever I come to the school,’ I explained to her, ‘I see all the other children keeping away from mine. Did someone tell them to do that?’
‘Certainly not, Mrs Merry,’ she said in her snooty voice. ‘We believe in inclusion here. We treat everyone as equal.’
‘Well, somebody needs to make sure,’ I said. ‘Because some children seem to be more equal than others . . . and there’s no inclusion here for my foster-children, as far
as I can see.’
We decided it was time to sell the house and move somewhere we might be more welcome and where there were more activities and clubs for the older children to join.
We didn’t have to look for long before we found a huge Victorian semi in just the right place, a few miles away, on the edge of town, near a park. A semi probably wasn’t ideal and I
dreaded what these neighbours would be like; especially what they would think of having all of us moving in, with just a party wall between us. But it was a good house, well built, and it went back
a long way. It
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