Broken: A traumatised girl. Her troubled brother. Their shocking secret.. Rosie Lewis

look of disgust from my face as I got a nappy bag out of the cupboard and lifted her into the bath. Despite the low soothing noises I was making, she reeled away when I reached for her nappy, her fingers clasping the waistband so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. I felt a slow rolling sensation in my stomach.

      I thought back to one of the courses I’d recently attended, when our tutor told us to interpret any difficult behaviour as an expression of fear. I knew that bedwetting and soiling wasn’t unusual in victims of sexual abuse – the smell of urine and faeces an unconscious attempt to make themselves less appealing to their abuser – but the fact was, lots of children Bobbi’s age still wet the bed. Soiling was more unusual, but perhaps she had been frightened to venture out to an unfamiliar toilet on her own.

      ‘Do you like bubbles, Bobbi?’ I asked gently, reaching for Megan’s pot of bubbles on the windowsill. I blew a few bubbles into the air above her head. The effect was instantaneous. Her face lit up and then she reached out and took the pot from me. Engrossed in her efforts to blow more bubbles, she was distracted enough for me to remove her nappy and shower her down.

      Megan was waiting outside the door when I opened it. I felt a surge of guilt but she looked up at me with an expectant smile and I realised that she probably hadn’t heard a thing. Most of the time I felt sad about Megan’s hearing difficulties and would gladly have shared my own with her if I possibly could have, but, I have to admit, on that morning it was more of a blessing than a curse.

      ‘Here we are, guys,’ I said twenty minutes later, after washing and changing into a clean pair of jeans. I placed a sand timer on the table. ‘I have a challenge for you. We’re going to see if we can chew every mouthful of our cereal for thirty seconds. The time starts when I turn the timer over, okay?’

      Archie, who had been reading, looked up from his book. ‘Yay!’ Megan exclaimed, grinning at the others. ‘I can. I can do it!’ I wasn’t sure whether Bobbi had even heard me. She started on her Weetabix without even looking at the timer, scooping another huge spoonful into her mouth a few seconds later. My heart sank. I had introduced the ‘game’ to all of them, but Bobbi was the one most in need of it.

      From the wrappings over their bedroom floor, I suspected that both Archie and Bobbi had already eaten something. I hadn’t noticed anything missing from my own cupboards so assumed that they must still be working their way through food that had been hoarded at Joan’s. I planned to tackle them about it in a day or two – I didn’t want them to keep food in their rooms – but I wanted them to feel a bit more secure before I removed that particular safety blanket.

      ‘Bobbi,’ I said, ‘you can turn the timer over first.’ She stopped chewing and looked at me, her cheeks pouched with food. Archie dug into his cereal and held the spoon in front of his mouth, staring at the timer with focussed intensity.

      ‘What?’ Bobbi asked thickly, dropping her spoon into the bowl.

      ‘The sand timer. Turn it over and chew your next mouthful until the sand runs out.’ Her eyes flickered with interest as she reached out, turned the timer over and plonked it down again. All three of them scooped up their cereal and began chewing.

      Bobbi’s mouth worked, her eyes flicking competitively between her brother and Megan. ‘Done it, Mummy!’ Megan shrieked, as the last grains of sand filtered through the timer. Archie grinned then flipped the timer over again. Watching the timer intently, they tucked in again.

      I sat with them and joined in, trying and failing to make each mouthful of my porridge last the full thirty seconds.

      ‘That was a really nice breakfast, Rosie. You’re the best cook.’

      I smiled. ‘Thank you, Archie.’

      ‘I want more!’ Bobbi shouted, adding ‘please’ when I gave her a look. Another helping and two glasses of milk later, she was still ‘starving’. I told her she’d had enough, repeating my mantra about there always being enough food for her at Rosie’s house. A flurry of protests followed but I shook my head, turned the television on and started clearing the table. Megan and Archie went and sat on the rug and watched cartoons, Mungo rolling around on his back between them. Ecstatic with all the attention, his tail thumped noisily on the floor as they tickled his middle.

      Bobbi grabbed my wrist and shook it. ‘Rosie, I need more, I do, Rosie, I do!’

      ‘You can have some fruit soon, and they’ll be lots more food for lunch and dinner. They’ll be plenty of food today, tomorrow, the next day and every day that you’re here, I promise.’

      Her mouth drooped at the edges as if she didn’t believe a word of it but she sloped off her chair and stamped across the room. Mungo sprang to his feet before she reached the rug and trotted off to hide under the coffee table.

      After clearing away the breakfast things I decided to try and tackle Bobbi’s knotted hair. She hadn’t allowed me to wash it in the bath the previous night and it was matted at the ends where she’d slept on it slightly damp. Without saying a word, I planted two doll’s styling heads on the rug, one in front of each of the girls, along with a hairbrush for each of them and some styling accessories.

      Bobbi swooped, scooping everything up for herself. ‘There are some for you and some for Megan,’ I said, returning half to Megan, who was watching Bobbi peevishly.

      ‘My dolly doesn’t want these anyway,’ Bobbi said sulkily, sweeping her half back to Megan. ‘She has a bad headache.’

      ‘Does she now?’ I went to the first-aid cupboard and pulled out some old, out-of-date bandages and plasters. ‘Perhaps she needs some of these.’

      Bobbi looked thrilled. While Megan covered her doll’s head in hair clips and lipstick, Bobbi covered hers from top to bottom in bandages.

      Absorbed by the cartoons and the doll, she didn’t protest when I got to work on her hair. She kept shuffling forward on her bottom though, only stopping when she was about a foot from the television. I hauled her back each time, wondering whether her eyesight was all that it should be. I made a mental note to book an appointment for her at the opticians.

      I used a wide-toothed comb on her hair, trying my best not to pull on the tangled ends. It was as I worked my way back towards the nape of her neck that I noticed something unusual – the back of her head was almost entirely flat. My heart lurched. I knew that since the ‘back to sleep’ campaign had been launched to reduce the number of sudden infant deaths, more babies had developed flattened spots on their skull as a result of laying in the same position in their cots or car seats, but Bobbi’s was an extreme example, her scalp devoid of even the merest hint of a curve. I felt a swell of sympathy for the baby she had been, probably left alone for hours, perhaps even days at a time.

      When I’d finished I sat at the table on the opposite side of the room and added a note in my daily diary about Bobbi’s flattened scalp to the growing list of worries accumulating beneath her name. The opposite page, the one for her brother, was blank. I wrote ‘Archie’ at the top and drew a line underneath it. There hadn’t been a single incident of difficult or even mildly challenging behaviour from him since he’d arrived.

      Even so, I was hoping to speak to Danny Brookes, the children’s social worker soon. I had missed a call from him earlier that day. He’d left a message on my mobile to give his name as my point of contact, but when I’d called back, his own answerphone had kicked in. I fired off a quick email to the fostering team listing my concerns and asked them to forward it onto Danny. What I wanted to say about Archie, I couldn’t exactly put my finger on. My eyes drifted across the room and settled on the children, all sitting cross-legged on the rug. Beneath his thick crop of hair it was difficult to tell whether Archie’s scalp was flat like his sister’s. In fact, beneath his smooth facade it was tricky to work out anything about him. I picked up my notebook and pen again and, beneath Archie’s name, I filled the space with a large question mark.

       Chapter Six

      I