The Girl and the Ghosts by Angela Hart

Author:Angela Hart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

22

‘Dead people talk to her’

We used to go off somewhere most weekends with the children we fostered. Sometimes, we’d go walking in a national park or along a coastal path, or we’d put the bikes on the car and head off to find a cycle route we hadn’t explored before, around a lake or along a disused railway line, for example. Maria loved scouting ahead for the arrows that marked the trails, and as time went on she became a very enthusiastic participant in whatever we did.

The activities we do are the sort of things Jonathan and I did when we were children and usually took for granted. However, many of our foster children have never had experiences of exploring, going to the beach and cycling, for example, so we put a lot of effort into making sure they get as many opportunities as possible to enjoy themselves. Not that it really seems like effort: when they’re happy, we’re happy, and even the most difficult of the children we’ve fostered over the years have enjoyed doing the activities we’ve done with them.

We’d had a touring caravan for a few years by the time Maria came to stay with us. A friend of ours who was a foster carer regularly took children camping, until she had a placement whose social worker refused to give permission for the child to go with them because they would all be sleeping in what was, in effect, one open-plan room. That was something Jonathan and I were aware of when we bought our touring van. Its layout was perfect for a foster family that needed separate sleeping compartments. It slept six, when the awning was attached. There were two bunk bed areas at the back of the caravan, with each bunk having its own lighting and a sliding door that could be bolted from the inside – but easily forced open in an emergency.

All the children we took on camping holidays in that caravan loved having their own private space – which soon became christened Tardis One and Tardis Two – not least because it enabled them to read or play Nintendo games into the early hours of the morning without Jonathan and me being aware of what they were doing. In fact, we did know sometimes but we didn’t say anything, because that’s what holidays are all about: doing things you can’t normally do when you have to get up the next morning to go to work or school.

The awning we added on contained two zip-up compartments and a space where we could set up a folding table and chairs, which incidentally we spent several hours clinging on to when a terrific wind threatened to snatch it away one time! The caravan itself had every mod con you could think of – a bathroom, cooker, fridge, television, radio, wardrobe and plenty of storage space. At night, the seating area became a double bed, where Jonathan and I slept behind a fitted curtain I’d made

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