The Visitor

Outside was a young girl trembling by the front door with a rucksack on her back.
With question marks buzzing like flies around my head I opened the door to let in a healthy blast from the north sea, a quantity of blown snow and one small girl.
"I've run away from home" she announced as she put down her rucksack and started to take off her coat.
"Hang on you can't...." I started, but realised there was no way I could turn her out again into that weather.
"What nice dogs you have" she announced as she tucked into some sugar encrusted high calorie cereal (designed to rot teeth and promote ill health).
"And you have a cat too..."
Then clutching a mug of hot chocolate she started to tell her story.
Her name was Amy. She was twelve years old and was in the care of foster parents. She had moved to our end of Norfolk in the summer to live with a couple who were fostering other children. She had been in care most of her life. Her previous foster mother ran away with her to a northern town, and the boyfriend of the one before that had "done naughty things" to her. Two days ago she had been accused of spilling paint on her sweater.
There had been a row; when she had said she wanted to leave, her foster mother had told her to find somewhere else to go.
Her "independent visitor" lived in the nearby town, six miles away from where she lived. She did not have her telephone number or address but decided to try to find her.
At first light she crept from her room, slid out of the door and set off. Two miles down the road, and already freezing cold, she decided to seek help - and chose us.
Norfolk does not have a good reputation for spotting mistreatment of children in the care of others. Only last month the step father of a little girl in a village not far from us was gaoled for her murder, and last year a child minder was found guilty of killing a child in her care. Was a tragedy waiting to happen here?
Exquisitely polite she sat and talked, thanking us for our every gesture. She nervously fingered her thick lenses as she spoke.
She told us about the family and the other foster children; about how no speaking was allowed at meals and they were not even allowed a drink, and how lonely she felt.
We found that it was all too easy to suggest answers to our questions. Was it just an altercation over a sweater or was there more? It was not our business, but somehow by choosing our front door (instead of the dozen or more she passed on the way) she had made it our business.
Our gentle probing yielded nothing else, but still we felt uneasy about bundling her in the car and taking her home. It was time to bring in the professionals, but where do you find them on a Sunday morning? She did not know enough about her independent visitor to enable us to contact her. Social services just yielded an answering machine and no promise of any action until Monday morning unless it was an emergency.
The local police station was closed, and the call was relayed to the central control room which was doing little controlling: it took a long age to reply.
"Is she safe with you?" asked the officer on duty, explaining that it may take some time before anyone came.
The children started to drift downstairs. If they were surprised to see Amy eating their favourite cereal they did not show it. Soon they were playing like lifelong friends.
"Can we keep her?" suggested Thomas, and he looked crestfallen when he was told she had not come to live with us.
The snow was thick. A snowball fight was followed by the construction of a snowman. His scarf was just being wrapped round his neck when (nearly 3 hours after the original call) a policeman arrived.
He sprang out of his car clutching Amy's sweater with a surprisingly small stain on it. He had already been down to the foster parents. "Come on now love, let's take you home".
"Not so fast" we said. "Let's talk this through". Back in the kitchen the policeman did not help himself to cereal, though he did seem to eye the packet longingly.
He explained that the foster mother had agreed she had been hasty over the sweater, wanted Amy home and all would be well.
Amy was not so sure, but agreed to go, casting a long sad look at the smiling snowman as she left.
An hour later she was back, this time with her foster mother, a cheerful plump lady full of smiles and apologies.
The story will (we hope) have a happy ending: an end to Amy's isolation (she is to come again next weekend - officially and not so early in the day) and the restoration of a sense of proportion over small stains on school clothes.
The experience gave us a peep into the dilemmas facing family lawyers. Just how do you find the truth in delicate situations like this? Where do you intervene, and where do you let well alone? Early morning encounters aside, I am glad to return to the more straightforward world of personal injury law: here there is never any doubt. The defendant is always the villain, and the plaintiff ever the wounded hero.

This article first appeared in Solicitors Journal in February 1999