Work Text:
August 2015
“Papa?” Lucie asks as she snuggles down under her covers, holding the Maximus stuffie we just brought back from Disneyland Paris close to her chest.
“Yes, baby?”
“Tell me the story of how you and Daddy chose me again, pleeease.”
Her big green eyes peer up at me, and I'm powerless to resist. I perch on the edge of the narrow bed and tuck the duvet tighter around her little body.
“Okay, mon petit chou. But then it's sleepy-time, okay?”
Lucie nods her little blonde head. “Okay, Papa.”
I reach out and stroke her hair off her forehead, tucking it gently behind her ear. I’m overwhelmed by a sudden rush of love for her; I still can't believe she's mine sometimes, even though she's lived with us for over two years now and officially, legally been my daughter for well over one.
“Well…” I start. “It all began with a phone call…”
💖💖💖
January 2013
“Bzz, bzz, bzz, bzz!”
I startled awake, heart racing, at the sound of my phone vibrating on the bedside table. I shot my hand out to grab it, feeling Charlie stir next to me.
“Hello?” I answered, voice thick with sleep.
“Mr Nelson-Spring?”
“Speaking.”
“Good evening. I'm sorry for calling at this hour,” said a soft, deep voice. “My name is Saahil Ahmed; I'm a social worker for the Medway Children's Social Care team. I'm calling to see if you and your partner would be able to take an emergency foster placement tonight, please?”
As soon as the social worker began their introduction, I sat up as quickly as my groggy head would allow. Charlie raised his head from his pillow, and I could see his eyes were open, glinting in the darkness of our room.
“Social worker? ” he whispered. I nodded.
“Er, hi, erm, yes of course. That's fine,” I told the social worker. “What do we need to know?”
Saahil quickly told me the main information: we were to receive a little girl, six years old, who had just been removed from her family home due to a serious incident of domestic abuse, which had left her father in the hospital and her mother in a police cell.
“Her name is Lucie.”
My heart fluttered.
Lucie.
Our first foster child.
And, as it turned out, our last.
Before I'd even hung up the phone to the social worker, Charlie and I were out of bed, throwing on joggers and hoodies and pulling on socks.
Just one hour later, Saahil, the social worker, stood on our doorstep next to a police officer. And curled around Saahil's legs was a tiny, blonde-haired little girl in a pair of too-short Rapunzel pyjamas with a scruffy purple coat thrown over the top, peering up at Charlie and me with the biggest green eyes I'd ever seen.
I'm pretty sure I loved her immediately.
Charlie took charge, ushering the two adults and Lucie into the house and out of the cold January night air. We settled in the living room, Lucie tucking into Saahil's side, mute.
My teacher training kicked in, and I knelt on the rug in front of Lucie, ensuring I wasn't too close.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said softly. “My name is Nick, and this is Charlie.” I gestured to my partner to indicate to Lucie who I meant. “We're going to look after you for a little bit. You're safe here.”
Lucie stared at me with big, glassy eyes.
“I like your pyjamas,” I told her. “Rapunzel is my favourite princess.”
Lucie's chin tipped up just slightly – in interest, maybe? I thought.
“Maximus is my favourite, though,” I told her. “He's grumpy at the beginning, but he's a big softie really. Just like Charlie,” I added in a stage-whisper, raising an eyebrow and inclining my head towards him as though I was sharing a funny secret.
Lucie's little lips twitched into the faintest hint of a smile.
“Do you like Maximus, too?” I asked her.
She nodded.
“He's brave,” she said, her little voice not much more than a whisper, but making my heart leap all the same.
“He is brave,” I told her. “I think you're very brave too, Lucie. Tonight must have been very scary for you.”
Lucie's little blonde head dipped in another tiny nod.
“You must be very tired, sweetheart; are you tired?”
Another nod.
“Would you like some milk, maybe? And then Charlie and I can show you to your room?”
Another nod. “I like milk.”
I smiled, relieved, and looked across at Charlie, who was already getting up to get the bedtime drink for our little guest.
We can do this, I thought, giving Charlie a hopeful smile. He nodded almost imperceptibly and smiled hopefully back.
Once Lucie was settled into bed – the exhaustion obviously overcoming her as she fell asleep almost immediately – Saahil explained a little more about the situation to us. Lucie's mother was abusive to both Lucie and her dad, as well as struggling with alcohol and drug misuse. This abuse had resulted in Lucie having an intense fear of women, which was why Nick and Charlie had been chosen as Lucie's emergency carers. The plan was to assess her father's capacity to care for her alone, Saahil told us, but that would take several weeks, and they weren't hopeful he would be suitable. He was kind and gentle with Lucie, Saahil said, but had never called the police on his wife, protecting her rather than doing the right thing by his daughter. A neighbour had called them tonight, as well as on several other occasions.
It was highly unlikely Lucie would ever return to her family home.
Over the next few days, Charlie and I got to know Lucie a little. She was very, very quiet, and flinched at loud noises or sudden movements. My heart hurt every time that happened, running over and over scenarios in my head of the kinds of things the poor little girl must have witnessed. When Saahil called on day four to say they were struggling to find a suitable longer-term placement, I told him to stop looking with no hesitation whatsoever. It was only after I'd hung up the phone that I realised I probably ought to have run that by Charlie. He was the one doing the majority of Lucie's care during the day while I was on my teacher training placement, and then we would switch in the evenings when I got home, and he would go teach his dance classes.
I shuffled sheepishly into the living room, where Charlie and Lucie were curled up together on the sofa, looking at a book. He looked up at me as soon as I walked in, a question in his beautiful blue eyes. I inclined my head, asking him without words, to come and speak to me in the kitchen. He promised Lucie he would be right back and followed me into the other room.
“What’s going on?” he whispered.
“They can't find a suitable long-term placement.”
Charlie's eyebrows raised, just a smidge, and then I saw the resolve settle in his features.
“We just keep her then, yeah?”
I beamed, and I swear my internal organs melted into mush.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“I love you, Charles Nelson-Spring.”
He smiled a bemused little smile. “I love you too?”
I launched myself at him, wrapping him in my embrace, squeezing my eyes tightly shut and letting the feelings – relief, happiness, awe – wash over me.
“Nick? What's going on?” he asked again, his voice muffled by my shoulder.
I released him, stepping back to hold his gaze.
“I kind of already told Saahil we'd keep her.”
Charlie smiled fondly and shook his head. “I should have known. You're such a bloody golden retriever, Nelson.”
“Hey!” I objected. “That's Nelson-Spring!”
Charlie huffed a little laugh through his nose and nodded, then placed his hands on my chest, aligning our bodies.
“Yes, it is, baby,” he said, and tilted his face up to press a sweet, chaste kiss to my lips.
“I love you,” I told him, as we separated.
“Love you too.”
The next six weeks passed in a bit of a blur. Lucie went back to school, Charlie settling into the routine of school runs, phonics and putting his years of helping other dancers to style their hair to good use with Lucie's long, blonde locks. We would take her to contact sessions with her dad every Monday and Friday after school, Charlie and I anxiously nursing cups of tea in the reception of the Children's Centre while Saahil supervised the contact. I would bake with her when Charlie was teaching his Saturday classes, and then we'd all go out for a walk around the park with Mum and the dogs on Sundays.
It was hard – Lucie struggled with nightmares and big feelings and would sometimes shut down completely – but in its own way, it was perfect.
It already felt like we were a family. And the hard parts felt so worth it every time she would open up to us or seemed to trust us a little bit more.
The news that Lucie's father had failed the parenting assessment didn't exactly come as a surprise. The first question out of Lucie's mouth when Saahil broke the news, however, did.
“Can I stay with Nick and Charlie?”
And that was what did it.
That was the moment that she became my baby girl.
💖💖💖
“It all began with a phone call," I tell Lucie. “A very nice man called Saahil introduced himself and asked if we could take a little girl - that's you, by the way - on an emergency placement. Obviously, we said yes and jumped up to get dressed.”
“And then, there I was,” Lucie says, repeating the now-familiar phrase I've told her so many times before.
“And then, there you were,” I concur with a nod and a half-smile. “You were this tiny little thing, in Rapunzel pyjamas, with these big green eyes looking up at us –”
“And you loved me immediately!”
I chuckle and nod. “Yes, I did, sweetheart. I just knew you were meant to be my baby.”
“Papa!” Lucie scolds. “I am not a baby!”
“No, you're not,” I agree. “But you're my baby, and you always will be.”
Lucie's resulting smile warms me from the inside out. We have this conversation regularly, and I know that she loves it. She loves hearing how much Charlie and I adore her, and always will. She loves knowing she's safe.
As she should.
“So, anyway,” I continue, “you were so quiet that first night, but I got you talking a tiny bit about Rapunzel –”
“And you were really proud of yourself!”
“Yes, I was. It meant so much to me that I was able to put you at ease that night. And then we got to know you a little bit, and I fell more in love with you, and so when the social worker said they couldn't find a long-term placement for you, I just told him we'd keep you –”
“Without telling Daddy!”
I laugh. “Without telling Daddy, you're quite right. Luckily, Daddy already loved you too and also wanted you to stay with us. And then, a few weeks later, when Saahil told us you wouldn't be able to go back and live with your dad, you asked a question in your little voice that melted my heart and made it yours forever. Do you remember what it was?”
“‘Can I stay with Nick and Charlie?’” Lucie says, and her face lights up with a grin.
“That's the one. As soon as I knew you wanted to stay with us, that was it. I knew then, that if I had the chance, I'd never let you go. And we did it. We managed to keep you. We love you so much, baby girl.”
Lucie sits up and throws her arms around my shoulders, clinging tight. “Love you too, Papa. I'm so glad you kept me.”
“Me too, mon petit chou, me too.”
I sit holding my daughter for another minute, just reflecting on the last year and a half. Then I take a deep breath and stroke Lucie's hair.
“Bedtime now, poppet,” I tell her.
“Past bedtime, I'd say,” Charlie says from the doorway.
“Daddy!” Lucie cries. “You're home!”
He pads across her room and inserts himself next to her, knee-to-knee with me on the edge of the bed.
“I am,” he tells her, dropping a light kiss to the top of her head. “You should be asleep.”
“Papa was telling me the story again,” she tells Charlie excitedly.
Charlie's smile at me is fond, his eyes glittering in the lamplight.
“Was he now?”
“Yes, he was telling me about how you chose to keep me because you loved me.”
Charlie's eyes find Lucie's, and he reaches out to stroke her cheek. “That's right, darling. We did. And we do. A lot. But now, it's sleepy-time.”
Lucie snuggles back down under the covers, grabbing her Maximus plushie tight to her chest again.
“Okay, Daddy,” she says, sleepily. “Goodnight, love you.”
Charlie and I lean down in turn to kiss her forehead and murmur our love and goodnight wishes into her ear.
As we stand on the threshold of her bedroom a minute or two later, we both look back at the snuggly little lump of duvet that hides our daughter, and I know that my expression perfectly matches the one I see on my husband’s face.
She's ours.
Forever.
And we'll never let her go.