Mummy Told Me Not to Tell by Cathy Glass

accommodated Reece’s needs in the first few days. As it was, apart from knowing about his love of burgers and Chicken Dippers, I was working in the dark. I showed him how to lather the soap on to the sponge and then encouraged him to run it over his body. Although I was happy to wash his back and neck it was important to teach him to take care of most of his washing, particularly his private parts. This is another example of giving a child responsibility for his or her own body and nurturing self-respect.
    ‘Wash your feet and knees,’ I encouraged, ‘and between your legs. Do you have a name for your private parts?’
    ‘Willy,’ he responded with a laugh. ‘Sharks have willies but no legs.’
    ‘Well, wash your willy and your legs.’
    I waited while he squashed the sponge on various parts of his body, which would be sufficient for now. Then I ran the sponge over his shaved head — there wasn’t enough hair to shampoo. Letting out the water, I wrapped him in the bath towel.
    A mixture of more cajoling and repetition saw Reece into his pyjamas, and after another bedtime story, for which he sat on the beanbag with me squatted beside him, I eased him into bed.
    ‘I want Henry,’ he said, snuggling down and obviously finding comfort in being cocooned beneath the duvet. I guessed Henry was a soft toy he took with him to bed and that he would be in either the rucksacks or the toy boxes, which I hadn’t had a chance to unpack yet.
    ‘What does Henry look like?’ I asked, as I undid the first rucksack.
    ‘A hippo,’ Reece said.
    I smiled. ‘Henry Hippo, that’s a good name. Did you call him that?’
    ‘Don’t know.’ So I thought that Henry Hippo was probably an old favourite and had come with all the other ‘Don’t knows’ from home.
    I began rummaging through the first rucksack, which contained an entire school uniform, hardly worn, and presumably from one of the schools Reece had beenexcluded from. At the bottom of the bag my fingers alighted on something soft and furry, and I pulled it out.
    ‘That’s not it!’ Reece yelled.
    ‘No.’ It was a soft toy but in the shape of a shark.
    I began on the second rucksack, which contained some new books. As I took them out and placed them on the bookshelves in the recess of his bedroom, I saw that they were all about sharks, or ocean creatures including sharks. ‘Who bought you all these?’ I asked.
    ‘Carers,’ Reece said.
    I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to indulge Reece’s love of sharks, given his biting, but doubtless the carers had acted with the best of intentions by giving Reece something he liked. Further down this bag were some large-piece jigsaws, the pictures on the front of the boxes showing underwater scenes with fish and sharks. The boxes were new, so I guessed a well-meaning carer had bought these too. I pulled out a couple of short-sleeved T-shirts emblazoned with pictures of sharks, but there was no sign of Henry Hippo.
    ‘Do you know where Henry is?’ I asked, dearly hoping that Henry had been packed. I took the lid off the first toy box.
    Reece didn’t answer. He was lying in bed, watching me intently. Although the toy box was new, it contained lots of old small toys, many broken, so that I guessed the contents had come from home. As I rummaged through I saw that the theme of sharks dominated here too. There were models and toys of sharks in plastic, rubber and cardboard, in various poses of swimming, all with their mouths open, displaying rows of barbedwhite teeth. They had clearly been well used, for many had been chewed and had bits missing. One particularly nasty creature, which was a model of a shark’s head about ten inches across, had half its teeth missing but the grin on its face said that it was still capable of doing real damage and enjoying it. When social workers take a child into care they always try to bring as many of the child’s clothes and favourite toys as possible so that the child feels comfortable with