Broken: Part 1 of 3: A traumatised girl. Her troubled brother. Their shocking secret.

by Rosie Lewis

Nine-year-old Archie and his five-year-old sister, Bobbi, are taken into emergency police protective custody after an incident of domestic violence at their family home.

Rosie collects the children from their out-of-hours foster carer on New Year’s Day and instantly recognises Archie from a domestic violence workshop she helped with. Rosie remembers that when asked what he enjoyed most about the course, Archie ‘the biscuits’.

Social workers are concerned that Archie and Bobbi have been neglected. As Rosie gets to know the children, she begins to suspect that something far more disturbing lies in their past.

Archie, jovial and polite, bats away Rosie’s attempts to talk to him about anything serious with witty one-liners and sophisticated distractions. Bobbi reacts violently, lashing out and throwing herself around. Rosie has never seen a child as young a Bobbi behaving so viciously, but it is Archie she is most concerned about as the weeks go by.

After a worrying incident at school, Archie tearfully discloses the truth – a shocking secret that has left him and his sister traumatised. Horrified at what she learns, Rosie is determined to help the young siblings find a forever-home that will provide them with the love and care they deserve.

100 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 14, 2017

About the author

Rosie Lewis has been a short-term foster carer for over seven years and in that time has shared her home with over twenty children. Since childhood, Rosie has had an obsession with books and is now delighted to combine fostering with her other passion, writing, by recording some of her experiences in a series of memoirs. Based in northern England, Rosie writes under a pseudonym to protect the identities of the children she looks after.

She lives in the North of England with her own two children.