I remember feeling utterly humiliated as they peered at my tiny, bony frame. With only a pair of knickers to protect me, I hadn’t felt so exposed and so awkward.

Minutes later, finally allowed to get dressed, I waited. I was still expecting my mother to appear. She didn’t.

Instead, the same woman who had picked me up from school told me I was going to stay with a lovely set of foster parents for the weekend — a little holiday, she said. That sounded alright. But first, we needed to stop at my house to get some clothes.

My mother wasn’t there either. Just my sister Mia, who scrambled to gather up clothes that weren’t covered in cat hair or smelling of cat pee. She emptied a bin bag, filled it with what she could, and handed it over. And just like that, I was gone.

I don’t remember arriving at the foster home, but I remember the smell. It wasn’t bad — just… strange. Like when you visit your grandparents and the air just feels like it belongs to someone else’s life.

They gave me my own room with a bunk bed, a wardrobe, and drawers. I remember thinking, this’ll do for the weekend. Just the weekend. I’d be back home with my brothers and sister soon enough.

No.

The weekend became a week. Then another. Nobody spoke about time anymore. I was enrolled at the local school. And I tried — really, tried — to be a “good girl.” Trouble is, I had no idea what that actually meant.

I watched the other girls: neat, well-behaved, always praised. I was desperate to fit in. But I was “the foster kid.” My foster parents were seen as saints for taking me in, but I knew the truth: I didn’t belong there.

One day, I was painting at the kitchen table. The younger of their sons joined me, and before long we were flicking paint at each other, giggling. Just kids being kids. But then she came in.

She screamed at me, slapped me, forced me into pyjamas, and locked me in my room.

I’d never been locked in a room before. I panicked. What if there was a fire? What if I died and nobody knew I was even here?

Lying on the bed, I sobbed myself to sleep. Nothing I ever did seemed right. But everything I did seemed wrong.

The next morning, I was allowed out. The paint fight was blamed solely on me. Their son smiled smugly from behind his mother, knowing he was protected. I wasn’t.

Eventually, I got to see my mum. She arrived with some second-hand gifts and clothes, but before I knew it, it was over. She was leaving without me.

Then I was told: one hour a month.

That was the agreement.

One. Hour. A. Month.

I was being punished again and again for a crime I still didn’t understand.

I tried to adjust. I really did. But the harder I tried to be good, the more the “bad” in me leaked out. I was blamed for everything. “Foster kid” might as well have been written on my forehead in permanent ink.

The only thing that brought me any peace was being outside. The village was tiny — just a pub, post office, church, hall, and school — but I loved exploring. It was the first time I felt free in months.

The food? A lottery.

My foster mum was part culinary genius, part food assassin.

She made this amazing fridge cake — actual heaven. But then she’d serve jelly-soaked cold meat things that looked like they belonged in a tin for the dog. Once I was forced to eat one. I retched. Hard. But I didn’t throw up — throwing up meant staying home with her, and I wasn’t doing that.

But then came the stew.

The stew deserves its own paragraph. Because it haunts me to this day.

Winter hit, and suddenly it was stew every night. Slimy hunks of fatty meat, greyish veg, and gravy that looked like it had been wrung from an old dishcloth.

I tried to chew. I tried to swallow. I gagged. I vomited — right there on the plate.

She was furious.

She told me I wasn’t leaving the table until it was gone.

Yes — that meant the stew and the vomit.

I sat there, sobbing for two hours. Eventually, I was sent to bed. Exhausted. Hungry. Defeated.

Stew became a nightly torture. I gagged every time. Even now, at 43, the smell of stew can trigger a gag reflex that takes me right back to that table, that plate, and that feeling of being completely unwanted.

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