Little Prisoners

They were up seconds later, and I gestured to Mike to take a look. He clapped his hand over his mouth and I could see that, like me, he was struggling not to gag. Olivia stood, quaking, in the doorway.

‘Why?’ I asked her gently. ‘Why did you do this, sweetie?’ I was genuinely struggling to make sense of it, particularly after the toileting lesson we’d so recently shared.

‘I not done it. Me never done it. I didn’t, Casey, honest.’ She looked terrified.

I crossed the room and put my arm around her. She immediately flung her arms around my waist. ‘I think you did, love,’ I said. ‘But don’t worry. We can sort it all out. Don’t be scared. We just want to know why. It’s made your pretty room all smelly, and you don’t want that, do you?’

She started crying. ‘It’s just my poo,’ she sobbed. ‘That’s all. I just wanted to keep it. But I won’t do it no more if you don’t like it.’

‘Sweetheart, poo must be done in the toilet, like I showed you. Always. Every time you need to go. You must do it in the toilet from now on. Nowhere else, okay? It has germs in, and it could make you sick. Make you very sick. And we don’t want that, now, do we?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘So from now on, when you need to have a poo, where do you go?’

‘To the toilet,’ she said meekly. ‘I promise.’

‘I was thinking,’ said Mike, half an hour later, the little cache of horrors now disposed of. ‘What was that slogan the agency used?’

Olivia, by now, was back playing with her brother. I just hoped what I’d said to her had sunk in. ‘You mean the one in the ad?’ I said. ‘The one on the leaflet I brought home?’ I did remember it. And well. I was unlikely to forget it. ‘Yes,’ I went on. ‘“Fostering the unfosterable.” Why?’

Mike grinned ruefully. ‘I think I’m beginning to get what they were on about.’

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