Doctor Cutler nodded as he took a seat. ‘Yes, they’d tried two rounds of IVF which had failed. Helen was distraught at not having a child. They were the perfect couple for adoption, and they chose a seven-year-old boy named Daniel.’
Seven years old. Just like Jonathan.
‘He’d been with them for about six months and was a bit of a handful, but they decided to have one last go at IVF and were successful. It wasn’t an easy pregnancy.’
Kim already knew where this was going. ‘She gave him back.’
Doctor Cutler shook his head sadly. ‘You make it sound like a simple decision. It wasn’t.’
‘I didn’t say it was, but ultimately that’s what she chose to do.’
‘It was a difficult pregnancy,’ he repeated. ‘She was fragile. She needed lots of bed rest, and Daniel’s behaviour deteriorated. She couldn’t cope. To continue was putting everyone at risk.’
‘It doesn’t alter that she chose to give him back.’
‘It was painful. He was like her own child.’
‘But he wasn’t, was he?’ Kim snapped, feeling her stomach react to his defensiveness of Helen’s actions. ‘She had to choose between children that were naturally hers or the one that was hers on paper. What would she have done if Daniel had been naturally hers? Would she have still given him up? How would she have chosen then? That’s what adoption is supposed to mean, that the child is yours. He’s not some filler until something better comes along.’
‘Guv,’ Bryant warned.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Doctor Cutler offered.
Kim knew her composure was slipping, but her heart was hurting for the seven-year-old boy who had been dumped back in the system. How many times had he been told what adoption meant? How many times had social services, William and Helen assured him that he belonged to them? That he was their child now, that he had a family who were going to love him and take care of him, unconditionally. Had he lowered his guard and let them into his safe, private world? Had he believed them?
She had been that close herself once. Her foster parents had been trying to adopt her when they’d been killed in a car crash. She understood what it was like to allow the feeling of safety, of permanence, to work its way in, even when you weren’t looking.
She also understood being sent back to the place where you meant nothing to no one except people who were paid to take care of you, all made worse because you’d dared to hope and, more importantly, dared to trust. How exactly had it all been explained to him?
‘She never forgave herself.’
‘Which helps no one,’ Kim offered cuttingly. Her sympathy lay with the little boy.
‘And this is the reason she kept it a secret,’ Cutler explained, holding up his hands.
‘I’m sure she tortured herself for years,’ Bryant said, trying to bring a little objectivity back to the conversation.
‘She never stopped torturing herself. It’s the single reason for her mental-health problems. She tried to get him back. She agonised over the decision, and once it was made, she instantly regretted it.’
‘Was she trying to replace him with Jonathan?’ Bryant asked, taking over the questions, having decided she couldn’t be trusted to speak.
‘If you want the truth, I think every child thereafter was an attempt to replace Daniel. Of course, it almost killed her when she lost a child all those years ago. It brought it all back.’
‘Social services wouldn’t allow her to take him back?’ Bryant asked.
‘Absolutely not. They couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t do it again. So they closed the case file and sealed it.’
‘And yet they were willing to let her foster Jonathan?’ Kim queried.
‘The UK has around ninety-seven thousand children in care and approximately fifty-six thousand foster families. Both figures increase every year but at totally different rates. Kids needing foster homes increases by around ten per cent and foster families by maybe three or four per cent. You do the maths.’
‘But her history with Daniel had to be considered surely?’ she pushed.
‘I’m sure it was, but given the figures I’ve just quoted, would you have turned Helen and William Daynes down?’
Kim could see his point.
He continued. ‘They would never have been allowed to adopt Jonathan, but social services will take all the help it can get.’