Free Blood Family by Anne Fine Page B

myself on how I work with tools, and Eddie was standing watching. So I reached out for three more nails, shoved two between my lips, and had another go at hammering one in.
    To this day I’m not sure exactly what I said. Clearly I said it from between clenched lips. (Who wants to swallow a nail?) I think it was probably something as simple as, ‘Now you’re beginning to annoy me.’
    I was talking to the nail !
    But he had vanished from my side. Melted away. I didn’t think much of it – simply tapped the nail’s head into the wood slowly and carefully. And when I turned to see what he was up to, there he was, crouched in the corner. He had practically turned into a hedgehog ball, his head buried between his knees. You wouldn’t think that even the smallest child could curl up so tightly.
    ‘Eddie?’
    I wasn’t sure whether or not to touch him. Even a gentle hand can trigger such bad memories with some of these kids that they can go berserk. The place was full of dangerously sharp tools.
    ‘Eddie?’
    I would have gone to fetch Linda, except I was worried he would do a runner. And so I gradually talked him down. You know: ‘Eddie, you’re not back there. And I’m not Harris. No one in this house is angry with you. I was getting cross with the nail .’ I just kept at it – verymuch like soothing a horse. (Not that I’ve ever done that.) And finally I must have got through to his frozen brain, because I sensed a relaxation in the tiny ball of him.
    ‘Eddie, I’m going to touch you now. I’m going to put my hand on your shoulder and I want you to try to unfold. You don’t have to look at me, but I do want you to stick out your legs and try to straighten your back.’
    It took a bit of time, but finally he managed it. I led him in the house. He looked like death. Linda came back from next door, where she’d been fixing up to borrow wee Marie for the next swimming session. In front of Eddie I explained to her what had just happened. (He probably needed to hear a sensible account of it as much as she did.) She nodded and then led him off. I saw them sitting close together on the sofa. Her arm was round his shoulders. But it was only later, when she peeled off his shirt before his bath, that she saw all those splinters he had driven in his back when, trying to make himself invisible, he had slid down that rough, unsanded joist.
Linda Radlett, Foster Parent
    After he wrote that postcard to his mother, one of the treasures I bought him was a tiny feathered owl. There was a shelf of them in Tanner’s toy shop – spin-offs from something on telly. Each of them had a name on its pottery base. The one I chose was called Olly. (Oh,surprise me!) Eddie was thrilled with it. We had been having quite a time persuading him there was no need to hide the things he valued at the back of cupboards. So it was rotten luck that, just a few days later, Dolores came.
    Dolores. I ask you. And anyone who looked less like a fancy Spanish dancer would be hard to find. The phone rang in the middle of the night. Less than ten minutes later she was on the doorstep, sturdy and scowling, with a nervous-looking female officer. Oh, she was angry. She had been lifted from her home at two in the morning, trying to intercede in a scrap between her mum and stepdad. It was the neighbours who had called the police as the fight ratcheted up. Both of the adults were, as the police officer put it, ‘royally rat-arsed’ and so Dolores had to be removed. (Guidelines.)
    She was dead angry with the officer. And she was angry with us.
    We had no choice but to stay up the rest of the night. I didn’t fancy leaving Alan alone with her – she was the sort who’d make up stuff just to cause trouble. And he was worried about leaving me because Dolores looked as if she could pack a smart punch. She wouldn’t go to bed. ‘I’m not going to sleep in your stupid, smelly house! Forget it!’ She turned a chair round and slumped down in it with her back to