Or I would be if the bloody bus came along and ever managed to get me to the meeting.
16
I wasn’t late for the meeting, but I was the last to arrive. And the second I walked into the crowded room with the social workers lined up at the front ready to start, I saw someone I knew: Mrs. Bateson, one of our clients at Dalston Vets—the one with Nugget, the corgi.
Oh God. I hadn’t expected to see anybody I knew here. Maybe I could go across the room to sit in one of the spare seats by the window before she spotted me?
But before I could make my move, one of the social workers came over with her clipboard, and while I was giving my name, Mrs. Bateson looked over and saw me. The next minute she was waving enthusiastically and gesturing towards the free seat next to her, giving me no choice but to go and take it.
“Hi, Beth. Fancy seeing you here! I had no idea you were planning to adopt. This is my husband, Karl. Karl, this is Beth, one of the nurses at the vet. She was so good with Nugget after he had that tooth out.”
Karl held his hand out for me to shake, but there was no time for further conversation because the session started.
By coffee break we had dealt with the adoption process and learned how our applications would proceed. We’d also watched a couple of videos with adopters speaking about their experience of the adoption process. After the break we were going to learn more about why children end up in care and look at some case studies. I knew this would make me feel emotional, because I already felt emotional from watching the videos we’d seen. People just like me, desperate to have children, baring their deepest feelings and frustrations to the camera. I wasn’t sure I’d have been brave enough to agree to be filmed.
Already there was so much to take in. I’d have liked to have sat quietly with my coffee and biscuit to sift through it all. But Mrs. Bateson—Tina, I’d discovered—wanted to chat.
“If I were single like you, I’d just shag a stranger to get pregnant rather than going down this whole adoption route. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Karl and I are totally committed to adopting, but this whole application process is a complete chore, isn’t it?”
God, I hoped my application wouldn’t become an open topic of conversation whenever Tina came in for Nugget’s worming tablets. And I certainly hoped she wouldn’t dish her shag-a-stranger advice out to me in reception.
“Well,” I said, “they have to be thorough, I suppose, don’t they? These children have already been through such a lot.”
“I know, and like I said, I’m not complaining. We’ll jump through any flippin’ hoop they want to throw at us to get our family. I was just surprised to see you here, to be honest. I said to Karl, ‘An attractive girl like Beth, she ought to be married with a couple of kids by now.’”
“Ah, well,” I said, longing for Karl to return from the toilet, “life doesn’t always turn out the way we expect it to, does it? Excuse me, I just want to take a look at the book table before coffee break’s over.”
I smiled and got to my feet, hoping against hope she wouldn’t join me. Fortunately, Karl returned just then, so the moment of danger passed. Though I supposed I’d better get used to being the focus of talk, hadn’t I? If my application was successful, everyone would have to know about it. Otherwise, if I mysteriously acquired a baby or a toddler overnight, they might assume I was a child snatcher.
I picked a book up from the table, pretending to browse but really using it as an excuse to check out my fellow applicants. With London being as multicultural as it was, it was no surprise the participants reflected this—an Asian couple, a Black couple, two white couples, and a same-sex, mixed-race couple. And me, a single white woman. I’d expected to be the only single applicant, but I hadn’t expected to feel so awkward about it. Or for anyone to blatantly tell me that sleeping around with strangers was a better option for me to become a mother. Perhaps I should have said what I was thinking instead of being polite. What about STDs? What about morals?
But really, Tina and her opinions were mind clutter compared to the important message of this evening, weren’t they? The message had already come across loud and clear, and we were only halfway through. Adoption was going to be hard. Very hard. But for those of us who could stick it out through the application and matching processes, it might also be extremely rewarding.
“If you could make your way back to your seats, please, everyone?”
The three social workers running the session were at the front again. The one on the left—Jenny—was tiny, with long dreadlocks and glasses. Sallyanne, standing in the middle, was young and eager looking with her apple-cheeked smile. And then there was Clare, on the right. Older than the other two, she was very neat looking with her precisely cut dark bob. Like Sallyanne, she was smiling but in a very different way. Clare’s smile was . . . assessing—if a smile can be called assessing. There was confidence about the way she held herself, her weight evenly distributed on both feet, her hands clasped in front of her. I guessed she’d probably done about a hundred of these sessions before, but I also guessed she hadn’t become blasé about it. Her gaze—with that relentless smile—passed over each of us in turn as she spoke. Registering us. Sorting us, maybe. Into definites, maybes, and impossibles.
I shuddered.
“Someone walk over your grave?” whispered Tina, but I just smiled.
“Okay,” said Clare. “In the first part of tonight’s session, you found out all about the adoption process. In this second part, we’re going to look at some case studies as a first step towards familiarising you with the types of children waiting to be adopted. So if you can work with the couple nearest to you? There should be two groups of four and one group of three. We’ll hand out the case studies for you to read, and then one of us will join you to help you discuss it.”
People shuffled about, moving chairs into semicircles, exchanging pleasantries as they waited for the social workers to hand out the case studies. And then it went quiet as heads bowed and everyone began to read.
Our case study was about a two-year-old boy with alcohol-dependent parents. His half sister lived with him, and his grandfather tried to see him as much as possible but had health issues that often made that difficult.
I was soon totally absorbed, the little boy gaining my sympathy and empathy even before I’d reached the part about the domestic abuse and his mother ending up in hospital. How his half sister’s father took her away to live with him, leaving the little boy alone.
“It’s awful, isn’t it?” said Tina when I let out a sound of distress.
But I just nodded, reading on about how the little boy had spent some time in foster care before being returned to his mother when she split up with his father.
“Don’t tell me they got back together,” said Tina, and sure enough, in the next paragraph, I discovered it was true.
The little boy’s parents had recontinued their destructive relationship. Then, one night, the boy was injured during a fight. A neighbour rang the police, and the boy was placed in emergency foster care, only to be moved to another foster family a week later. Not surprisingly, with all the upheaval and all he had witnessed, the little boy was withdrawn and unresponsive at first.