Little Girl Lost

Sally’s childhood trauma still haunts her, but deep down she knows there is hope for the future

Ididn’t mean to take my eye off her. Honestly. But it’s too upsetting to say what really happened. “Why don’t you write it down?” says the policeman lady. She has a kind, soft face with twinkly blue eyes. I’d like to please her but my hand is shaking so much that I can’t even hold a pencil.

“We could play a game,” she says when I explain this.

I love games! My little sister Kirsty and I were always doing them. Snap, Snakes and Ladders, I Spy… I did it to keep her quiet. If we made any noise, Dad and my

stepmum would get angry.

“I spy with my little eye,” I say, “something beginning with B.”

“Beach?” suggests the nice police lady.

Yes! Maybe she’s guessed because there’s a picture of a beach on the desk in front of us. I love the beach. My real mother used to take me there. We would sit on the sand and make castles with buckets and spades. Often we took a picnic. Every time I see a boiled egg, I think of those days and that taste of sand and yolk in our mouths. Nothing, or so it seemed, could ever go wrong. But then mum got ill…

“That must have been hard,” says the police lady. “I’m sorry. Now I’m going to think of a letter now. I spy with my little eye, something beginning with S.” “Sand?” I say. “No.” She pushes another picture towards to me. It’s Kirsty with red hair tied up u in pigtails which I used to do for her every e day. “Sister,” I say, with a pang in my heart. h “That’s right. You were with your si ister on the beach that day, weren’t you?” y she says. I nod. When Kirsty was born, I was si ix. I should have been jealous of her be ecause she wasn’t really my sister, only my half-sister. My dad had got together with her mum after mine had gone to heaven. But I loved Kirsty from the minute I saw her.

My stepmother was always tired. Dad said I had to be a good girl and help out. I learned to change Kirsty’s nappies and even make her bottles. When she got older, I’d walk her to school with me. My “big” school was next to hers.

After classes finished, we often went into town or down to the beach because my stepmother told us to “get out of my hair”.

“I see,” says the policewoman when I explain all this. “Didn’t anyone ever realise that your stepmother wasn’t looking after you properly?”

For a minute I’m right BACK on that BEACH where it all went WRONG

There’s a lot I could tell – especially the bit about my stepmother only being tired after she’d opened a bottle of wine – but my stepmother said that if I ever told tales, I’d be “for it”. But this game doesn’t count, does it? Because I’m not actually telling tales, I’m helping this nice police lady to guess.

“I spy with my little eye,” I say, looking at the other pictures on her desk, “something beginning with D.” “Dad?” says the police lady. “You’re good at this!” I tell her. But her face has gone rather serious. “Tell me about your father, Sally.”

I love my dad. I just wish he believed me when I told him that my stepmother hit me.

“She’s lying,” my stepmother would yell. “She got those bruises from falling over in the garden. That daughter of yours has never liked me.”

“That’s not true!” I’d shout back. “It’s the other way round.”

Dad took her side, saying I was “letting my imagination get the better” of me.

“If you go running to your father any more,” she said, “I’ll send you away. Then you’ll never see Kirsty again.”

No! Life was only bearable because of my sister. She adored me! No one loved me like she did. Not even Dad who was hardly ever home.

“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with L,” I say now. Then I draw a heart on the blank piece of paper which the police lady had given me. I colour it in carefully with the red crayon.

“That’s lovely,” she says. But then her voice gets harder. “Did you ever want to hurt your sister?”

“NO!”

I say this so loudly that we both jump. For a minute, I’m right back there on that bright summer day on the beach when it had all gone wrong.

“Does this picture remind you of something, Sally?” asks the police lady, pointing to another photo on her desk. I nod. “Can you tell me what?” I swallow the big lump in my throat. “I spy with my little eye,” I mumble, “something beginning with P.” “Park?” says the police lady. We are both looking at the picture now. There are swings and one of those round things like a big flying saucer where you sit on it and push it from side to side. Kirsty loved that.

There was also a zip wire but I wouldn’t let her go on it. “Not until you’re a big girl,” I would tell her. I was scared of her getting hurt, you see.

“After we played on the beach,” I said, “I suggested we went to the park. I thought we ought to let my stepmother carry on sleeping at home because maybe she’d be nicer when we came back.”

The police lady is nodding. There’s a machine next to her which is taking all my words down. How clever is that! “And what happened in the park?” This is the difficult bit. My mind has this way of blanking things out when they’re too painful. It did that when my real mum died and then it just carried on. “I’m not sure,” I say. She’s putting a new photograph in front of me now. It’s a man with a tie round his neck. He looks a bit like Dad when he’s all dressed up to go to work, but it’s not. This one’s got a beard. “Do you remember him?” she asks. I spy with my little eye, something beginning with I.

“It’s the man who asked if Kirsty and I would like an ice cream.”

Dad had always told us not to speak to strangers, but Kirsty had got angry when I tried to pull her away.

“I want one!” she said, wriggling out of my arms. My sister might only be five but she is very determined.

“The ice cream van is just over there,” said the man. “Here’s some money. Why don’t you go and get one each?”

He pushed a whole £5 note into my hand. I hesitated. It had been so long

since we’d had a treat! Besides, like I said, he looked a bit like Dad. Not scary at all like bad strangers were meant to be.

“OK,” I said. “Thanks.” Then I took Kirsty’s hand and we walked towards the van. But as we walked, I heard a… I stop. “Go on,” says the police lady. I spy with my little eye, something beginning with W.

“I heard a whistle,” I say. “We turned back. He was whistling to Kirsty, saying he needed to tell her something. My sister ran towards him. I raced after her, crying, ‘Stop!’, but she didn’t. There were lots of people in the park, but she just disappeared…” I begin to sob violently. She pats my hand. “Well done, Sally. You’ve been brilliant.”

“But I haven’t been,” I sob. “I took my eye off my sister when I should have been watching her.”

“You mustn’t blame yourself for that,” she says kindly. “You did your best. Now would you like to see her?”

She stands up and takes me out of the door and through another. Kirsty is sitting in the corner of a room, playing with some toys.

When she sees me, she flies into my arms. “I missed you!” she cries. “I missed you too,” I say, hugging her. Then I look at the police lady. “Are we going home now?”

“Not exactly,” she says with that light tone in her voice which adults use when they pretend everything is all right.

“We’re going to find you somewhere safe to stay instead.”

Mr and Mrs Brown lived in a pretty house with twigs growing out of the roof. They called it a “thatched cottage”.

“Our own family is grown-up now,” Mrs Brown tells us over some lemonade and crunchy shortbread biscuits.

“So you and your sister are going to have the bedrooms that belonged to our daughters.”

“No,” I say firmly. “Kirsty is going to sleep next to me. Then I’ll know where she is.”

Mrs Brown nods as though she understands. But no one could really know how it had felt when I couldn’t find my sister for those first few terrible moments until someone spotted her and called the police.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she says kindly. “But thanks to you, that man won’t bother anyone again.”

“What about my stepmother and my father?” I ask. “Are they going to come and get us soon?” Part of me wanted to see Dad but I’m scared stiff about my stepmother.

“We’ll have to wait and see,” she says. “Don’t worry. You’re safe now.”

“Why don’t we play I Spy?” suggests my sister. She’s sitting by the cooker that the Browns called an Aga, stroking the dog. “Sally always plays that with me when she’s worried about something.”

“Really?” asked Mr Brown. “It’s one of my favourite games, too.”

Ispy with my little eye,” says the eleven-year-old girl sitting on the chair opposite me. She reminds me of myself all those years ago. Sometimes I look back over the years and can’t believe we have come so far. The Browns fostered

us at first and then they adopted us.

Kirsty has children of her own now. I love being an aunt! But I’ve been too worried to have kids of my own. What if I took my eyes off them and something awful happened? Instead, I’ve become a trauma therapist. This little girl lost her mother in a car crash and she’s been a patient of mine for nearly three years. Her father says she’s come on in leaps and bounds. “You have a magic touch,” he says.

I Spy is one of Laura’s favourite exercises. We use the words she chooses to explore her feelings.

“…Something beginning with H,” she says.

As she speaks, I see her father through the window. Brian has been sitting there as he always does, waiting for our sessions to finish. We’ve agreed that it’s best if we do these sessions in private so Laura can speak freely. “Hill?” I suggest, looking at the picture on the wall. It’s to show that you can climb all kinds of obstacles with the right help. “Try again!” “Hand?” I ask. “No!” “I give up!” She grins. “It’s hope.” A little flutter starts up in my chest. That’s wonderful. “Really?” “It’s what Dad says you’ve given us.” I flush. I’m just doing my job. “He also says he’d like you to come to dinner at our house so we can say thank you properly.”

I feel the heat in my cheeks rising. “How would you feel about that?”

She gives me that sweet smile again. “I’d like to show you my new cat! Dad says Blackie was a good idea of yours.”

In fact, Brian has already asked me out but we agreed it wouldn’t be professional until I’ve finished treating Laura.

Meanwhile I’m hanging onto the word hope. I’ve learned that some of the best things in life can’t actually be seen like I Spy objects. But they’re still there.

All you have to do is look.

No one could really KNOW how it FELT when I couldn’t find my SISTER