Archie opens his eyes and blinks. For a second he wonders where he is, then he realises and his tummy flips over. Something hard is digging in his side. It feels cold and pointy, like one of his Transformers. There’s something wrong with his back as well. Not an ache exactly, but it feels funny and wrong.

Cold, that’s what it is. He tries rolling over but a pain shoots down his shoulder and his head begins to hurt. It feels as if his skin is stuck to the wooden floor. Where’s his top? He can’t remember taking it off but his brain is fuzzy. He shakes his head and tries to think. If he can just get back to his room, maybe he can work it out. There’s a clinking noise as he tries to roll again. He freezes and holds his breath. As his eyes adjust to the half-light he realises there’s a pile of empty glass bottles wedged between his body and the bed.

He begins to ease himself away but stops suddenly and cocks his head. Someone is snoring, someone close by, and there are other sounds as well. Softer sounds. Like people breathing in and out. How many, he can’t tell. He tries to keep track but all the sounds keep tripping over each other and mixing him up.

If there are just two or three of them he might risk creeping back to his room – he wants to check that Bobbi’s okay – but if there are more and one of them wakes up … no, he can’t chance it. Not after what happened before.

If only he could decide what to do.

And then it starts. A stirring. A swishing noise, then a thud. A wire of fear flashes through his tummy. Strange scary shadows rise above him and he holds his breath, shrinking back into the cold floor.

The shapes move over one another, two, then three, then more. All making a tangled, groaning mess. There’s a strange smell as well. Sweat and booze and something musty that makes his throat burn. Then he hears a woman’s voice. She sounds sad, frightened. His stomach lurches and there’s a vile taste in his mouth. All he wants to do is run back to his room and to Bobbi. With a stab of shame, he realises that he’s too frightened to move.

The shadows and the noises, they make him feel sick, make his tummy roll. Somehow, though, he can’t tear his eyes away. Biting down on his lower lip, silent tears roll down his cheeks.

Chapter One

‘You can’t miss it, love,’ the elderly gentleman assured me, pointing towards the complicated one-way system I’d just escaped from. It was New Year’s Day 2015 and I was on my way to meet a nine-year-old boy named Archie Brady and his five-year-old sister, Bobbi. The siblings had been temporarily accommodated by Joan Oakley, a foster carer who had accepted the referral four days earlier. ‘Follow the road round as far as the greengrocer’s then take an immediate left. Straight over the next roundabout, under the railway bridge and Bob’s your uncle.’

I thanked him distractedly, trying to get my bearings. I performed a U-turn on the icy road, hoping that this time I wouldn’t get tangled up in the endless maze of side streets around the town centre. It was already 10 a.m. and I wanted to have a quick handover chat with Joan and make it back home before lunchtime. One thing I’ve learned over the last twelve years of fostering is that car journeys and fretful children are a toxic mix. Adding hunger to the equation would be a bit like tossing a stick of dynamite into the interior of my Fiat and hoping for the best.

The children were bound to feel uncertain about another move so quickly after the last and I wanted to do everything I could to lessen their anxiety. It’s generally acknowledged that any change in carer should take place as early in the day as possible. That way the child has a chance to acclimatise to their new surroundings before climbing into an unfamiliar bed.

Joan was keen to bring an end to the unexpected placement as well, by all accounts. ‘She’s tearing her hair out’ were the actual words the social worker from the placements team used when I spoke to her the day before. Apparently Joan already had her hands full caring for a baby with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). She had agreed to take the siblings as a favour after the out-of-hours team had been unable to get hold of the foster carer on their emergency rota.

Like me, Joan was a short-term or task-based foster carer. Our ‘job’ is a temporary one but placements can last anything from one night to four years. Short-term foster carers support the child from the moment they’re removed from home and through the uncertain stage when their birth family is being assessed by the local authority. Once a final judgment has been made by the courts, foster carers help to manage the child’s transition either back to their birth family or onto permanency with long-term foster or kinship carers or an adoptive family.

At least, being a bank holiday, the roads were free of the usual weekday traffic, and I arrived at Joan’s house a little over ten minutes later. As I walked across her driveway, where a Ford Focus full of child car seats was parked, my eye was drawn by the flicker of a curtain at one of the windows on the second floor. I looked up as I rang the doorbell and caught a glimpse of blonde hair.

‘Rosie, you’re just how I pictured you,’ Joan said warmly, holding the door open with one hand, the other cradled around the small bump strapped to her chest. Around sixty or so, Joan wore a cheery expression, despite the dark circles under her eyes. We had never met before, but knew of each other through a social worker who worked at Bright Heights, the fostering agency I was registered with. I had heard that Joan was a well-respected carer and rarely had a vacancy.

‘Sounds ominous,’ I joked as I wiped my feet on the doormat. Joan smiled and bobbed her way along the hall to the sitting room. It was a routine I’d been through several times before with newborns who were withdrawing from drugs. Babies with substance addiction – known as neonatal abstinence syndrome – often need the constant comfort of a cuddle during their first few weeks of life because the pain of withdrawal, the jitters, stomach cramps and fever can be intense.

The sitting room was cosy, СКАЧАТЬ

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Prologue

Chapter One

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