Crying for Help: The Shocking True Story of a Damaged Girl With a Dark Past by Casey Watson

Author:Casey Watson [Watson, Casey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Child Abuse, General, Family & Relationships, Personal Memoirs, Abuse, Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780007436590
Google: cFaqK9m0YjIC
Amazon: 0007436580
Publisher: Harper Element
Published: 2012-02-01T14:00:00+00:00

And the meal did actually go without a hitch. I called Sophia down, and she smiled sweetly, and helped me dish up, was polite and cheerful, and couldn’t have been more different. It really was as if she was just an everyday 12-year-old girl – having a flounce and a tantrum one minute, sweetness and light the next. It also seemed that, just as I’d said to Mike earlier, by the miracle of just ignoring bad behaviour – as a psychologist would tell you to do with a toddler – it really could be spirited away.

Like magic. But that was precisely what we didn’t have. And however appealing it was to think that simple behaviour modification would work, putting her on the points system that was central to our fostering programme would be, I was becoming increasingly sure, just a plaster on a big gaping wound.

But I did want to talk to her. Talk was what was needed; it was the only way to try and understand her better. So I suggested as we cleared the tea things that, while the men watched their football, she and I watch a DVD in the conservatory together, which she agreed to both readily and meekly. She even ran in and tidied it, plumped up the sofa cushions and got a throw from her bedroom for us to snuggle in.

‘Mama Mia,’ she said. ‘Can you stand that again, Casey?’

I nodded. I could recite the script in my sleep. She’d already had it on three or four times since she’d been with us, and I’d already seen it a couple of times myself. But that didn’t matter. I was more concerned with getting her out here, just the two of us, in the hopes she’d open up to me some more.

We watched for about forty minutes, when I suggested we take a ‘commercial break’ so I could rustle up two hot chocolates and nibbles. In her case they were a bag of crisps – like most people with her condition, she craved and needed salt – and in mine, a couple of my favourite chocolate biscuits. ‘And a quick chin-wag, I thought,’ I added, as I passed her her drink.

She frowned. ‘Is this about earlier in the garden? Because I’m so sorry, Casey, I really am. I just lost my temper. I promise I won’t do it again.’

‘No, it’s not about that,’ I said. ‘Though that was immature of you, and you know that. We just don’t speak to one another like that in this house, and while you’re with us you mustn’t either.’ She looked chastened. ‘No,’ I went on. ‘It’s about what happened when you were bowling. Kieron and Lauren told me, and they have no reason to tell me anything but the truth. And I just need to know, lovey, what were you thinking?’

‘It was just a joke, all that, Casey. I swear it was. I just thought – well, that Kieron would find it funny.’

‘Sophia,’ I said gently. ‘You have to understand.

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