Nowhere to Go: The heartbreaking true story of a boy desperate to be loved

Nowhere to Go: The heartbreaking true story of a boy desperate to be loved Casey Watson Bestselling author and foster carer Casey Watson shares the shocking true story of Tyler, an abused eleven-year-old who, after stabbing his step-mother, had nowhere else to go.Knowing a little of Tyler’s past – his biological mother, a heroin addict, died of an overdose when he was three – Casey feels bound to do her best for him. It isn’t easy; Tyler continuously lashes out, even trying to attack Casey herself. Investigation into his earlier childhood reveals why: forced to watch his mother die he was found emaciated and traumatised two days later, then delivered to a father who didn’t want him and a step-mother who beat him.With the horrific events of his past now vividly affecting the course of his present, Casey and her husband Mike are determined to veer him away from the violence and drugs they fear he will come to depend on.Heartbreaking and profoundly moving, Nowhere to Go tells the story of a child forsaken by his family but fought for by his foster carers. (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9) Copyright (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9) This book is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s experiences. In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed. HarperElement An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) and HarperElement are trademarks of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd First published by HarperElement 2014 FIRST EDITION © Casey Watson 2014 Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014 Cover photograph © Mohamad Itani/Trevillion Images Casey Watson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. 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Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/green) Source ISBN: 9780007543083 Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780008113100 Version 2014-10-06 Contents Cover (#u74b2e762-12e3-5093-963a-0dfc1902f5a8) Title Page (#u2b89818f-61d3-5065-9020-93ef6dce10a0) Copyright (#ulink_9ffcaf9c-d78b-5673-bd10-0fdbd3aeaaaf) Dedication (#ulink_1916a282-74f8-5b1e-a5ce-fda22b542e29) Acknowledgements (#ulink_8f105f3b-d065-5991-b984-7fb2e3f78de6) Chapter 1 (#ulink_b63ea5d2-435d-5ad6-bf95-b5c9d0952727) Chapter 2 (#ulink_1362a04a-a6c8-5bc7-8a1e-3061f9c5e4a8) Chapter 3 (#ulink_840d7a7c-e3bb-50d1-90ee-f44b91d764b1) Chapter 4 (#ulink_2e0ee322-1cdb-553e-9159-cc6efd143824) Chapter 5 (#ulink_94ecf85f-e995-5ecf-b0cc-544782b9c873) Chapter 6 (#ulink_887dd396-bb7e-5f50-9526-67d82a40d538) Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo) A Note to the Reader (#litres_trial_promo) Exclusive sample chapter (#litres_trial_promo) Casey Watson (#litres_trial_promo) Moving Memoirs eNewsletter (#litres_trial_promo) Write for Us (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Dedication (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9) Dedicated to all those in a position to help our children lead productive and fulfilling lives, and to those children who have lived through dark days and find the strength to make it. Acknowledgements (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9) I would like to thank my agent, the lovely Andrew Lownie, for continuing to believe in me; Carolyn and the wonderful team at HarperCollins for their dedicated and hard work; and as ever my very talented friend and mentor, Lynne, for always being there. A special mention this time to Vicky at HarperCollins, who is taking some special time out for a while. I wish her all the very best and look forward to hearing from her soon. Chapter 1 (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9) It’s so easy to take your parents for granted, isn’t it? Not consciously, maybe, and not in the sense that you don’t value them. Just in that perhaps it goes with the territory that you try not to spend too much time thinking ahead to a time when they won’t be there, do you? But not today. Today I had no choice in the matter. So I was doing exactly that, and it was scary. I was scared because I had just taken my father into hospital to have major surgery on his bowel. It would be straightforward, they told us, and we should try not to worry, but how can you not in that situation? Mum was terrified he might die under the anaesthetic – i.e. before they even started – and for all my reassurances and positivity, she had so many ‘what if?’ scenarios (all of them negative, obviously) that it had been a real job to try and keep her calm. As it was, I’d left her there with her knitting – she was busy making a cot blanket for her newest great-grandchild – and the promise that I’d be back as soon as Dad was out of theatre, after which, assuming all was well, I’d bring her home. And it had been fine. Well, at least until I walked back out through the double doors, when it was all I could do not to burst into tears, run back inside for a cuddle and have them both do what they always did whenever life got tough: say ‘Don’t worry love, it will all be okay.’ It had been seeing Dad in the hospital bed that had been the worst. Never a big man – it’s from him that I get my five-foot-nothing stature – now he looked painfully small. Not frail, exactly, but definitely diminished. Weakened, as you’d expect in a man in his seventies who’s been struggling with an illness for a long time. Stop it, I told myself sternly, blowing my nose. Get into the car, take yourself home, go and see your daughter, drink coffee, but most of all stop it. He’ll be fine. And I had very nearly talked myself into believing he would too, except perhaps not as completely as I’d kidded myself I had, because when my mobile phone rang, just as I was coming off the dual carriageway, my first thought was Oh, God, what’s happened? Nothing, you stupid mare, I told myself as I took the first left turn and found a safe place to pull in. He’d barely even have had his bloods taken yet, would he? So perhaps it was Mum, with some last-minute anxiety-reducing request or other – like spare hankies or Dad’s second best set of pyjamas or the current week’s copy of The People’s Friend. But it wasn’t Mum, and I found myself smiling as I read the display; it was a missed call from my fostering link worker, John Fulshaw. We’d not spoken for a while, as I’d been having a bit of downtime from fostering; we’d come out of a long placement, which had finished the previous summer, and with my daughter Riley pregnant, and Dad having been so poorly, we’d made a decision as a family to take a bit of a break. We’d only done a little respite care since. But now it was late May – almost a year since our last child, Emma, had left us, and with Riley’s daughter Marley Mae having arrived safely in April, and Dad finally getting his date for surgery, I’d already spoken to my husband Mike about suggesting to John that, come summer, we’d be back in the game. I touched the call button, thinking how mad it was he should call at that moment. What was he, psychic or something? Possibly. ‘Ah, Casey!’ he greeted me, as if I’d just returned from Mars. ‘Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly. I was worried you were on holiday –’ I laughed. ‘Chance would be a fine thing, John.’ ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good. Well, not in that sense, of course, but good that you’re around. Are you free?’ ‘Well, Mike and I were only recently saying …’ ‘No, no. Now. I meant “now” as in are you free right this minute? Only we have a bit of a situation.’ ‘Well, I was just heading home, actually.’ I explained about Dad. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Casey – this really isn’t a good time for you, is it? No, look, sorry – I’ll have to see if I can rustle up someone else.’ He sounded crestfallen. ‘No, no, John, go on. Tell me. What is the situation?’ ‘Really, Casey? You really want to know?’ ‘Really,’ I confirmed, conscious of the new tone in his voice, which, after our many years of association, I had already analysed as the verbal equivalent of him crossing both his fingers and his toes. ‘John, if I can help at all, I will. You know that. And to be honest, this is a good time because it’ll take my mind off things – I’d only be pacing up and down, fretting about Dad, wouldn’t I? So, go on – what is the situation?’ ‘I’m at the police station,’ he told me. ‘The police station? So that’s what it is, is it? You want me to come and pay your bail?’ ‘A get out of jail free card might be helpful,’ he mused. ‘But not for me. For a boy who’s here with me, name of Tyler. Eleven. Stabbed his stepmother. Nowhere to go.’ ‘Oh, dear,’ I said, my brain already cranking into action. ‘That doesn’t sound too good.’ ‘No, it doesn’t, does it? And it isn’t, hence the social worker getting me down here. He’s already been charged and processed and now they want shot. Only trouble is, to where?’ ‘So you need respite?’ ‘No. Well, I mean, yes, if needs be – someone’s on to that currently – but we mostly need you and Mike to take him on, because this is right up your street. I don’t think he’s the sort of lad we can just place, ahem, anywhere. But … look, you know, you really can say no to this, Casey, if you have a lot going on in your life right now …’ ‘He’s that bad, is he?’ ‘I’m not going to dress it up for you. He’s likely to be challenging, so …’ So that was precisely why he had called me. As opposed to someone else. ‘So shall I come down there?’ I said. ‘You sure?’ I laughed. ‘I’m not sure about anything right now, John. And even if I was, I’d obviously have to speak to Mike first. And there’s no way I could take him now this very minute because I obviously need to know my dad’s safely out of surgery first.’ ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ John said. ‘Not a problem at all. I completely understand.’ ‘But in principle … Well, there’s no harm in me meeting the lad, is there?’ Well, yes, actually, there was, I thought to myself as I started the engine and pulled out into the road again, police station-bound. I knew how my mind worked and it was already working overtime. An 11-year-old boy, a stepmother, nowhere to go. I was drawn like a moth to a flame. By the time I’d got to the police station, parked and made myself known to the desk sergeant, my mood had lifted considerably. Yes, Dad was still under the knife and it was major surgery, but he was also fit as a flea and it was a straightforward operation. And I trusted what we’d been told – that he’d be fine. I plonked myself down on one of the two scuffed chairs in the reception area and pulled out my phone to text Riley and let her know I’d been held up. And by what? I wondered. What sort of kid was John going to introduce me to? A challenging one, definitely, because John had already spelled that out. A kid who’d be difficult to handle. As, of course, he would be, since that was the sort of child Mike and I had been trained to foster. Oh, we’d had the odd sweet, biddable child here and there – and one or two who, notably, had been absolute angels – but that wasn’t our real remit. We were specialist foster carers, and our job was to take on kids who’d run out of their nine lives – certainly those who were deemed too difficult for there to be much hope of a long-term foster home as things stood, usually because of the emotional damage they had suffered in their short lives and the nightmare behaviours they displayed as a consequence. Our job was therefore to put them on an intense behaviour management programme, so they could face up to their demons, learn to control their emotions better and, hopefully, build self-esteem. It was through this, ultimately, that they would become more ‘fosterable’ and, in the long term, better able to cope with life. We’d been doing it for a few years now – ‘fostering the unfosterable’ as our fostering agency’s strapline had it – and though we’d seen a lot in that time, much of it saddening and deeply shocking, I was always prepared to be surprised anew. So, what sort of child would this boy be, I wondered? A very angry one, it turned out. ‘Brace yourself,’ John warned, once he’d come out to find me and take me through to the interview room where they were still keeping him. ‘To paraphrase that advert, he’s a bit of an animal.’ He also fleshed out a little of the background for me before we went in. Tyler had apparently brandished the knife – a regular carving one – during a heated argument with his stepmother and proceeded to threaten to kill her. She’d tried to get it from him, apparently telling him she’d batter him with it just as soon as she had disarmed him, which made him thrash about all the more and, according to him anyway, that was how he accidentally stabbed her in the arm. ‘Though her story is different, of course,’ John said. ‘According to her, he most definitely didn’t do it accidentally, and she’s definitely going to be pressing charges.’ ‘And is she badly hurt?’ I asked. ‘No,’ John said. ‘Thank goodness. Just a flesh wound, which the paramedics cleaned up before taking her to hospital. Just a couple of butterfly stitches in it now, or so I’m told.’ ‘So she went off to hospital and he was brought here by the police?’ John nodded. ‘And she’s saying that’s it, basically. She won’t have him in the house again. No way, no how.’ ‘Is there a dad?’ ‘Yes there is, and he’s apparently of the same mind. There’s also a half-brother. Bit younger. The stepmother’s boy.’ So there was a situation right there, I thought. We exchanged a look. Obviously John had had the same one. Deciding to take on a new child should be a carefully thought out business. As a foster carer, you are opening not just yourself but your family and your home up to a stranger. A diminutive stranger, obviously – not a serial killer, or anything – but still a stranger about whom you start off knowing almost nothing, and what little you do know is often subjective. In this case, was the stabbing accidental or not? Without a witness, who were we supposed to believe? So the normal course of events would usually be a multi-stage affair: an initial meeting, and, if that went okay, a formal pre-placement meeting, which would be attended by the potential foster parents, the link worker, the child in question’s social worker and, of course, the child themselves. Only then, assuming all parties felt comfortable with the arrangements, would the child move in and the relationship become official. In practice, in my case, it rarely worked that way. Yes, in most cases, the steps happened, but rarely in the right order, and the truth was that, though I didn’t generally say so, I usually made up my mind about a child within minutes, not to say seconds, of making their acquaintance. And, so far, even when every warning bell had been clanging in my ears, I’d come up with the same decision. Yes. Tyler was a beautiful boy. Inky hair flopping over deep brown and densely lashed eyes, clear olive skin, lean, sinewy build. Romany blood, I wondered? Greek? Perhaps Italian? Whatever his bloodline, he would be a heartbreaker when he was older, I decided. Might even be breaking hearts already. He was wearing a crumpled black T-shirt, low-slung combat trousers (ripped) and a pair of no doubt fashionable but very elderly trainers, all of which should have made him look like any other scruff-bag 11-year-old, but seemed to hang on his wiry frame almost stylishly. Though there was nothing remotely stylish or, indeed, romantic about what was coming out of his mouth. ‘Get your fucking hands off me!’ he was railing, as John and I entered the interview room. ‘I don’t wanna fucking sit down, okay?!’ ‘Sit down!’ the policeman closest to him barked, pressing him bodily back into the wooden chair on which he’d previously been sitting for his interview. He was one of three in the room, two of whom were obviously policemen – though only one was in uniform – with the third being the social worker, whose face I vaguely recognised, probably from a training session or social service gathering of some sort. He was middle-aged, slightly sweaty and looking harried. ‘Ah, John,’ said the nearer officer, who identified himself as PC Matlock and ushered us into the room. He closed the door firmly behind him. ‘And you’ll be Mrs Watson?’ I nodded. ‘Casey,’ I said, shaking the hand he extended. I was about to add ‘Pleased to meet you,’ but the boy at the epicentre of this small earthquake beat me to it. ‘An’ who the fuck is she?’ he yelled, springing up from the chair again, causing it to crash back onto the floor. ‘Show some respect, lad!’ the same policeman snapped, as Tyler glared at me and John. ‘And pick that bloody chair up, as well!’ But this only seemed to inflame their young charge even further; instead of picking it up he decided to use it as a football, kicking it hard enough to send it skittering across the floor. The social worker flinched. ‘Tyler, stop it!’ he entreated. ‘Behave yourself! You are just making things worse for yourself, now, aren’t you?’ To which accurate observation Tyler duly responded – by kicking the chair a second time. And then, as if pleased with the effect he was having, he drew his leg back and kicked it a third time for good measure. The as yet unnamed policeman – this was clearly no time for introductions, much less an exchange of pleasantries – snatched the chair up. Then in one reckless action, narrowly missing the social worker, he swung it round and righted it back beside the interview table. ‘That is enough!’ he bellowed, grabbing the boy’s arm and yanking him towards him, but for an 11-year-old Tyler seemed blessed with an impressive amount of strength, and had soon twisted out of his grasp. He was also still kicking out – though aiming for shins now, rather than chair legs – and with a quick ‘Excuse me’ PC Matlock went round both me and the table, in order to help his colleague restrain their captive raging bull sufficiently that he could be guided back into place. ‘Fuck you!’ Tyler yelled to the first one, as he was pressed back yet again onto the chair. ‘And fuck you an’ all,’ he added to the other policeman. Then, as even John stepped in to try and help the social worker contain him, he used a string of words I’d not heard in a child that age in a long time, finishing with a spit, which again only narrowly missed the social worker, and a heartfelt ‘And fuck you, Mr Burns!’ My response to all this was, to be fair, a bit eccentric. Yes, I was well aware that it was a very serious matter, but there was something so ‘Keystone Cops’ about it all, too – what with the two police officers darting back and forth trying to chase him round the table, while the social worker flapped his hands so ineffectually – that, without consciously realising it, much less wanting to do it, I found myself laughing out loud. If I was surprised by what had come out of my mouth (where on earth had that come from?) the effect on Tyler was little short of electrifying. I didn’t know what had made me suddenly feel the urge to giggle – perhaps the release of all that stress with Dad’s op? I didn’t know – but it certainly seemed to do the trick. Because so transfixed was Tyler by this deranged woman they’d brought in to meet him that he stopped thrashing around and let them put him back on his chair. ‘Who the fuck is she?’ he said again. Robert De Niro, I thought. Yes, he was like a very young Robert De Niro. That was why he’d put me in mind of a raging bull. Though right now this child put me in mind of another character too. A fictional one. I just couldn’t seem to help it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying not to grin too much, and make him cross again. ‘I’m Casey, by the way. But you know, you just reminded me so much of Bart Simpson for a minute there. You know, when you said “Fuck you, Mr Burns!” Sorry,’ I said again. ‘It just made me laugh.’ I glanced at the two policemen then, who, along with the hapless social worker, were looking at me with expressions of incredulity. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled a third time, ‘I don’t know why I did that.’ Tyler by this time was staring up at me intently. ‘Yeah, that’s because he’s a knobhead,’ he observed, matter of factly. ‘So!’ said John. ‘Where shall we start?’ Chapter 2 (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9) In the end we started, as one usually does (and we hadn’t been able to as yet), with a round of introductions. I learned that the colleague of PC Matlock’s was a rather stressed-looking PC Harper, and that the social worker with the unfortunate name of Mr Burns was actually a duty social worker, called in to manage the emergency as best he could because Tyler’s regular social worker had gone on maternity leave. And, finally, they learned who I was and what I was there for, which was not really news to the adults in the room, obviously, but caused some consternation in Tyler. While the rest of us arranged chairs in a crude semi-circle around the table, he donned the parka-style jacket that had been attached to a wall hook and pulled the hood forwards to try and hide his face. He also pushed his chair back so he wasn’t part of the group. But he was watching me intently, even so. ‘So, moving on. The situation with Jenny,’ John said, referring to his tatty notepad, ‘is that she’s been involved with the family for just over a year now.’ He turned to me. ‘And I’ll let you have a copy of her notes in due course, Casey,’ he added, ‘but in the meantime Will Fisher is going to take over the case.’ I nodded. Another social worker whose name was familiar, though I wasn’t actually sure I’d ever met him. ‘Okay,’ I said, looking at Tyler and smiling. But as soon as we made eye contact, he put his head down. ‘So it’s really just a matter of finding a home for young master Broughton here,’ PC Matlock added, again, mostly to me. ‘As things stand at the moment, the parents can’t take him back.’ I noticed his diplomatic use of the word ‘can’t’, rather than ‘won’t’, which, from what John had already told me, was obviously the truth of it. ‘She’s not my fucking parent!’ Tyler yelled from his seat in the back row. ‘Never was and never will be! She’s a fucking witch who’s always hated me!’ Mr Burns swivelled in his seat. ‘All right, son. Calm down while we talk, please,’ he said. Oops, I immediately thought, given Tyler’s previous comment. Don’t think I would have said that. And I was right. ‘An’ I’m not your fucking son, neither, dick brain!’ he snapped. And off we went again. Ding, ding. Round two. Fortunately, by this time Tyler seemed to have run out of energy for physically railing against his captors, but over the next 20 minutes or so, while we continued to talk details, he peppered every contentious comment with his pithy take on things. So though I learned little more about the background (understandably, because there was only so much that could be discussed in front of him) one thing I did learn – and mostly via observation – was that this was a very angry, intensely troubled boy. Mostly we were waiting, though – for a phone call to come through confirming that they had indeed found respite care for the next few days. And a knock on the door finally confirmed that perhaps it had. ‘All sorted,’ said the receptionist who’d been on the desk when I’d arrived. ‘Couple called Smith. Very nice. Said they’re happy to have Tyler – though only for a couple of days,’ she added, frowning slightly, ‘because they’re off on their summer holiday next week. I told them to come straight down. That okay?’ ‘Yes, indeed,’ John said, nodding. ‘Perfect. Thanks very much. Good, so at least we have that bit sorted out.’ He turned to me, then. ‘So, Casey,’ he added, looking at me with a familiar ‘Well?’ sort of expression, ‘any chance I can put you on the spot?’ I looked over at Tyler, who, like John, had been watching my reaction, and, again, lowered his head when he caught my eye. ‘Hey, Bart Simpson,’ I said, forcing him to respond and meet my gaze again, ‘how do you fancy coming to stay with me for a while? I’ll have to speak to my husband – he’s called Mike, by the way – but I’m sure he’d love to have another boy around the house. So. How about it?’ Tyler had shrunk so far into his hood by this time that he looked like he was peeping out from behind a shrubbery. ‘Don’t care if I do, don’t care if I don’t,’ he said, seeming suddenly far less cocky than he had been up to now. My heart went out to him. He was 11 and he was sitting in an interview room in a police station, he was being discussed by strangers and, most of all, he wasn’t going home. Didn’t matter how much of a witch he had his stepmother pegged as, he wasn’t going home. And now the adrenalin had gone, it looked like that fact was beginning to sink in. No wonder he looked like he’d had the stuffing knocked out of him. I smiled at him again, and smiled at John. ‘I’ll take that as a yes, then,’ I said. ‘Give me a call later then, John, yes? I’m sure we can sort something out.’ ‘Thanks, Casey,’ John said, running his hand through his hair. He patted my arm then – a familiar unspoken gesture. I knew it meant he’d been all out of options and was grateful. ‘Right, then,’ I said, rising from my chair. ‘I’ll be off, then. See you soon, Tyler, yeah?’ I added, moving towards the door again. There was no response but as I turned before going through the doorway the movement of his hood told me he was watching me go. And what was he thinking? I wondered. About his ‘witch’ of a stepmother? And about me? Something about frying pans and fires? I would certainly figure. I did have long black hair, after all. ‘Erm, so what happened to the “Oh, it’s great having all this time to spend with the grandkids” malarkey?’ Mike wanted to know four short hours later, after I’d recounted the details of my strange day. Strange, but also curiously uplifting, all things considered. Because by now, it had to be said, I was buzzing. Dad had come round and was doing great, apparently, Mum had stopped worrying and was looking after him (well, getting under the nurses’ feet, more likely, bless her) and the prospect of taking on the lad I’d met earlier had gone from being a possibility to a probability to a cast iron certainty – well, in my head, at least. I still had to convince Mike. Who was still on the same track. ‘And what happened to the “Let’s take a few months out from fostering” for that matter? You have a very short memory, my dear …’ It was true. I had said all of that. And when I’d said it, I’d truly meant it. But the very fact that Mike was teasing me about it was a Very Good Sign Indeed. If he’d been set against it, he wouldn’t be teasing. He’d be frowning. As it was I knew I wouldn’t have to work too hard to convince him. ‘Oh, shut up!’ I said, throwing a cushion in his general direction for good measure. ‘And, anyway, it’s been almost a year now. If we leave it much longer we’ll probably have to do retraining. And we don’t want to have to go through the faff of all that, do we?’ I didn’t actually know if we would have to retrain – but it seemed a fair bet we would in some way, shape or form. At the very least in some aspect of health and safety. You couldn’t turn around for new health and safety initiatives, after all, could you? So it was less ‘little white lie’ and more ‘overemphasising the negative’ because I knew it was something that would get him. And I’d been right – a look of horror began spreading across his face. Big and assertive and managerial as he was, my husband was cringingly shy when it came to things involving group participation. And that was something the fostering training process had had in spade loads: lots of role play with fellow trainees and lots of speaking in public. It would be his worst nightmare to have to do it all again. He dried his hands – he’d been just finishing off the last of the drying up – and now came to join me on the sofa. ‘Okay, so what’s this kid like, then?’ he asked. ‘The real, unvarnished truth, mind. And when were you thinking of him moving in?’ I took a moment to try and think how best to convey my first impressions, and though I could think of lots of ways to couch ‘stabbed his stepmum’ in such a manner that it would sugar the pill slightly, I realised it was probably best to prepare for the worst and then work upwards. ‘I’m not going to lie to you, love,’ I said. ‘He looks like he might be a proper little handful, to be honest. He swears like a trooper and had a bit of a temper on him, too. One that …’ To say or not to say? Yes, say, Casey. ‘Well, remember when Justin first came to us?’ Mike nodded. Slowly. ‘Oh dear.’ ‘Well, yes, you say that,’ I countered, turning to face him on the sofa and swinging my legs up beneath me. ‘I mean, he turned out to be such a lovely kid, didn’t he? And look at him now! Imagine if we hadn’t given him that chance? And, well, was it so difficult, really, looking back?’ Mike gave me what my mum would call an old-fashioned look, and perhaps not without very good reason. Justin had been our first ever foster child and his horrendous background (and, boy, it had been a grim one) had caused him to not only build a wall right around him but also the mental equivalent of a roll of barbed wire – he had a tendency to lash out at anyone who tried to help him. His behaviour had been so bad that one previous carer had been moved to point out that he was ‘a newspaper headline just waiting to happen’ – and not one about the Queen’s Jubilee. For almost a year Justin had turned our lives upside down – and not just Mike and my lives either; the whole family had been involved, particularly our youngest, Kieron, then still in his teens. But it had worked out okay. We eventually got to the root of everything. And Justin had turned out to be like any other kid; hurting and sad and abandoned and alone, and, once he had some love and stability, he responded positively. He blossomed before our eyes, and he grew. And Justin, fully grown now, was still in our lives, testament to the fact that love and stability had a lot to be said for it. Love and stability, in most cases, worked. And we could offer that to this lad, though I sensed I didn’t need to bang on about it. ‘You’re right, I suppose,’ Mike agreed – though he might still have had half a mind on ‘Pretend you’re the foster dad and that Mrs Potter is this young girl who is coming on to you …’ Either way, I could tell we were on. ‘And if it turns out to get a bit lively, well, I suppose it keeps us on our toes, doesn’t it?’ he added. ‘Keeps us young.’ I laughed at that, though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. ‘Young’ was one thing we weren’t. I was 47 now and Mike was a year older. And though that didn’t make us old, it did make me rational. There were lots of ways of defining the word ‘lively’, after all. And given the sort of kids we had tended to foster so far, I reckoned our definition probably wasn’t the same as most … Chapter 3 (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9) Because the respite carers were off on holiday within a couple of days of Tyler joining them, we didn’t have much time to get organised. Which was nothing new – we were used to taking in children at short notice – but, given the length of time since our last stint of fostering, ‘getting organised’ this time wasn’t just a case of making a bed up; it involved making a bed visible in the first place. It didn’t matter how many times I pointed out the meaning of the term ‘spare’ room, we were all guilty (even our grown-up kids who No Longer Lived With Us) of using the ones we had – three of them now, all told – as a free branch of Safestore. But I was happy enough to roll my sleeves up and get stuck in, not only because it gave me something physical to do – always a great stress-buster – but also because I felt the familiar buzz of excitement that always accompanied saying yes to a new child. It was the thrill of the challenge; the anticipation of finding out what made them tick. That this one needed a temporary loving home was obviously a given, but apart from that we knew very little else, due to Tyler’s social worker being away on maternity leave. Not that John hadn’t tried. He’d at least managed to establish a couple of facts. ‘Or, rather, problems,’ he’d corrected, when he’d popped round the day before and I’d asked him what facts he did know – over and above the parents’ names, anyway, which were apparently Gareth and Alicia. ‘He’s been with them since he was three and there’ve apparently been problems pretty much since the start.’ ‘And before that?’ ‘Before that he was with his birth mother, now deceased. Died of a drug overdose. He’s been with dad and stepmum ever since.’ I frowned, taking this in. So sad. So familiar. ‘Overdose,’ I parroted. ‘Yes,’ John confirmed. ‘Though whether accidental or intentional, I don’t as yet know. Though I will, of course, just as soon as –’ ‘Don’t tell me. The paperwork comes through?’ He grinned wryly. ‘You know the drill, Casey. But it shouldn’t be too long. His new social worker’s been assigned so it’s just a case of him familiarising himself with the notes. We know there’s an element of urgency here, too, what with the charges …’ But I was now with that three-year-old whose mum had taken an overdose. ‘Oh, the poor kid. Though I guess, being three when it happened, one blessing is that he won’t much remember his mum …’ ‘I imagine not,’ John agreed. ‘But I don’t think that’s the main issue. From what I’ve gleaned, it’s the relationship with the stepmum that’s key here. And it sounds like it’s not without precedent. She had her own baby, didn’t she? And it’s a pound to a penny that she wasn’t too happy to have another woman’s toddler dumped on her, don’t you think?’ ‘Certainly sounds that way,’ I said, feeling saddened by the inevitability of it all. It didn’t have to be that way but, in this case, it apparently was – the unwanted toddler having turned into an unloved pre-pubescent boy, who had responded in kind. And with a knife. ‘Anyway, Thursday at 2 p.m. – is that going to work for you?’ asked John. ‘Oh, and do you think you can work some magic? You know, with school? Almost forgot to tell you – he’s been excluded from his.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Now you tell me!’ He raised his palms in supplication. ‘Sorry, Casey – I only found that out myself this morning. A case of too many incidents of fighting, and too many last chances, I’m afraid.’ As it was, I knew I probably wouldn’t have too much trouble persuading the head of the local comprehensive to have Tyler, not least because before going into fostering I’d worked there myself for several years. I’d been a behaviour manager, running a unit for the most challenging and challenged kids – the bullied and the bullies, the dispossessed and the disruptive; it was the job that ultimately led to me and Mike making the decision that becoming specialist foster carers was the thing we wanted to do. As I’d thought, it had only taken a phone call. Of course, that wasn’t to say Mr Moore wouldn’t regret his largesse once Tyler went there – but taking on a child that had been excluded from another school didn’t tend to be something you agreed to if you didn’t at least have an inkling of what you might be taking on. But that had been yesterday and school wasn’t an issue till next week. Right now, I had just over a day and a half to prepare our home – not to mention our lives – for the new member of the family which, in my case, because I’m pathologically obsessed with cleaning, meant a spring clean (my second) and a bit of a clear-out. Which, as Mike was at work, and Riley was much too busy with her own little addition, meant enlisting my son Kieron to give me a hand. Kieron was working too – he had recently completed an NVQ and was now a part-time teaching assistant at the local primary school, as well as coaching a youth football team in his spare time – but, as his hours were flexible, I knew he wouldn’t mind coming round to give me a hand, not least because ‘organisation’ was his middle name. Kieron has what used to be called Asperger’s. These days they’d tend to say he has a mild ASD, or autism spectrum disorder, but back then (he was diagnosed while still in primary school) it was known as Asperger’s syndrome, and manifested itself as an array of behaviours, such as having some difficulty relating to peers, disliking change (it did and still does make him anxious) and liking all his belongings to be just so – or woe betide whoever messed them up. He was also a bit of a fact-fiend: the archetypal child who could always tell you which actor was in which movie and who kept his CDs ad DVDs in perfect alphabetical order. And just as Kieron’s Asperger’s taught me and Mike so much that we were able to use once we started fostering, so I was able to teach Kieron all sorts of things about cleaning houses, not to mention recruit him to help me willingly at times such as these. We were now surveying the bedrooms we’d just cleared out between us, deciding which would be the best for Tyler to go in. I had three spare rooms since no one was currently living with us: the pink and blue ones, which I’d had the foresight to decorate thus, to cover both fostering bases, plus one that we’d decorated neutrally with a plan to keep it for visiting relatives. Though, as it had worked out, it had been pressed into service for a foster child or two as well; most notably when we looked after a more profoundly autistic boy, Georgie, who couldn’t cope with being in either a pink or a blue room. As with everything to do with fostering, we lived and learned. But the furniture in there was old and fusty – including the family heirloom wardrobe. Had I been 11 it wasn’t the room I’d have chosen, to be sure. ‘So the blue room makes sense,’ I said to Kieron, ‘because that’s half the job done already. But how do I dress it up? What do 11-year-old boys currently like?’ It wasn’t as much of a no-brainer question as it might have seemed. Fashions changed so quickly where kids were concerned, and though I could give you chapter and verse on my little grandsons I had no idea what was currently ‘in’ with older boys. ‘How should I know?’ said Kieron, shrugging. ‘I’m not the oracle, Mum! Probably football, but then again, possibly not. Some of the kids on my team like playing it but are less into watching it – some are much more into computer games …’ ‘But which computer games?’ ‘How should I know?’ he said, laughing. ‘Actually, I do know. Super Mario – he’ll probably like Super Mario anything – Rayman, Minecraft … pretty much anything like that … But, really, you won’t know till you get to know him, will you?’ ‘So how am I supposed to sort the bloody room out for him, then?’ Kieron gave me an old-fashioned look. ‘Mum, he’s not been beamed down from Mars, has he? Won’t he already have stuff? You said he was coming from a family home, didn’t you? Not some poorhouse out of Dickens.’ ‘I know … oh, I just should have asked him what he liked, shouldn’t I?’ ‘Mother,’ said my son firmly, ‘the room is just fine. There’s a TV, a DVD player – what more’s he going to need? And I’m sure he’ll tell you if there’s anything he needs desperately. You’re so funny. You know what this is, don’t you? Just anxiety.’ He pulled his sweatshirt sleeves back down in an unambiguous gesture. It said ‘We’re done, so stop your flapping,’ so I did. Even so, I couldn’t resist popping down to a couple of nearby charity shops the following morning, just to make the room look a little more lived in. A couple of football annuals, some superhero books, a brace of boyish-looking jigsaws and a construction set, even if I did chastise myself mentally as I did so. How many bloody times had I done this already? In an ideal world, it would only have been once or twice, with each new child only requiring a bit of a top-up. That was always the plan – to keep a stock of toys and so on (we could ill afford to keep buying new stuff, after all) so that I would have things that would suit any child. It never happened like that, though. Whenever a child left us, I’d always pile everything up and give it to them to ensure they always had stuff they could call their own wherever they were moving on to next. And it wasn’t just me being wet, either. Once you’ve had children show up on your doorstep with nothing but the clothes on their back – literally, not a single thing to call their own – it’s not an image you can easily forget. I threw in a new duvet set as well – well, they were on special offer in the supermarket – and by the time 2 p.m. Thursday rolled around, I was happy. All that remained was my ceremonial flick-around with the duster – such an ingrained tradition that Mike was considering getting me a special gold ceremonial pinny in which to do it. He’d taken a few hours off work in order that we could both welcome Tyler and was hovering as per usual, either waiting for me to give him the next ‘essential’ job to do, or challenging me to dare to – I was never quite sure which. ‘Mike, go to the window,’ I told him. ‘Keep an eye out and yell as soon as you see the car, okay? I want to have the kettle boiled ready.’ I glanced at the dining-room table. ‘Do you think I’ve put out enough biscuits?’ He guffawed. He actually guffawed. ‘Calm down, woman!’ he said, same as he said every time. ‘You’re acting as if we’ve never done this before. Everything is perfect. The house is completely spotless … Ah – well, apart from those five biscuit crumbs I dropped on the table when I pinched one, of course.’ I glared at him, half-knowing he was winding me up but unable to resist looking at the table even so. ‘Pig!’ I said. ‘It’s not funny, and besides, Mr Clever Clogs, it’s a long time since we’ve done this – nearly two years!’ But he wasn’t listening, he was looking, and now he flapped a hand. ‘Uh, oh,’ he said, letting the curtain go. ‘Time for kettle duty I think, Case. Looks like they’re here.’ Tyler looked no different than he had the first time I’d met him. Sullen and grumpy and reluctant to engage. What was going through his mind, I wondered, as Mike held out a hand for him to shake. This was a massive upheaval in his young life, having to move in with us. How did he feel about it? Was it a relief to be away from his apparently hated stepmother? Was he anxious? Was he bewildered? Was he scared? Probably all of the above, I thought, even if the expression on his face was a visual depiction of ‘Yeah, whatever’. ‘Hi, Tyler!’ I said brightly, extending an arm so I could usher him in. ‘Nice to see you again. D’you want to choose a seat at the table? And help yourself to juice and biscuits, of course. I didn’t know which ones you liked so I put out the ones I like. That way,’ I quipped, ‘if you don’t like them, there’ll be all the more for me.’ He plonked himself down and looked at me as if I was mad. ‘There you go, lad,’ Mike said, having pulled out the seat Tyler had just sat on. He then sat down beside him. ‘Casey’ll be lucky. Jammie Dodgers and Jaffa Cakes are my favourites too –’ he took one to illustrate – ‘Go on, help yourself,’ he urged, ‘or I’ll scoff down the lot.’ Tyler took the glass of juice John had by now poured for him, but refused Mike’s offer with a head shake. ‘I only like chocolate-chip ones,’ he said pointedly. I leapt up again, having only just parked my backside. This was fine. If he was testing our mettle then so be it. If not, then so be it, too. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it just so happens that I have some of those as well. They’re our son Kieron’s favourite. Shall I go and get some?’ Tyler shook his head. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’m not hungry.’ Okay, I thought. If that’s how he wants to play it, that’s fine. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘not to worry. It’ll be teatime soon anyway. Perhaps you’ll have worked up an appetite by then.’ Or, indeed, a sentence, because as the meeting got under way I had the same sense as I had had in the police station that Tyler was happy zoning out and letting people talk about him, rather than to him. It was perhaps a typical response for a boy of his age, particularly when in the company of strangers, but I wondered if it was also something he was used to doing at home anyway. Though he was listening intently (that was obvious) he showed no inclination to have an input – and even when invited to contribute directly, it was like pulling teeth. So we went through all the usual details, the care plan and the various items of paperwork (we had to be given ‘parental’ responsibility for things like GP and dental appointments) while Tyler just sat there, jacket on, hood down only grudgingly (following John’s directive about hoods at the table), present yet absent, being talked over. So I was glad when John – presumably thinking the same thought that I was – asked Mike if he’d mind giving Tyler the usual tour. ‘Would you mind showing him his new room and so on, Mike,’ he asked him, ‘while Casey and I go through the last of the signatures? Then we’ll get Tyler’s stuff out of the car so we can get him installed properly.’ Mike looked relieved to be doing something. He sprang into action, rising from his seat and giving Tyler a gentle nudge. ‘Come on then, mate,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and take a look at where you’ll be laying your head down for a bit, shall we?’ To which Tyler responded by flicking his hood back up, getting up, shoving his hands into his tracksuit bottom pockets and following Mike, without a word, out of the room. ‘And if I know Casey,’ I heard Mike say as they headed up the stairs, ‘you might have to move some clutter to make some room for all your bits and bobs.’ I didn’t hear Tyler’s reply. ‘Well,’ said John, taking off his reading glasses and running a hand though his hair, ‘as meetings go, that one felt a little pointless, didn’t it? Though if it’s any consolation, he’s been giving the respite carers a pretty tough time of it, so it’s nothing personal.’ He grinned. ‘In fact, the last thing they said to me was that if they hadn’t already planned their holiday, they would have done so by now.’ I smiled. ‘That bad, eh?’ I helped myself to one of the Jaffa Cakes. ‘Anyway, I didn’t think that – it’s hardly surprising he’s off with us, is it? What with the court case and everything. Assuming that’s still happening. Is it?’ ‘I’m afraid it looks like it,’ John said. ‘It’s the knife. If there hadn’t been the knife involved, he might have got away with a stern telling off, particularly given his age, but as it stands, and with the way the stepmother seems so determined to make him pay, then, yes, court seems inevitable. You’ll probably be asked to speak up for him, too, as no doubt you already know. Well, if that proves possible.’ He gave me a wry smile. ‘Optimism, John, okay? That’s the thing here. And, well, there you go,’ I added. ‘He’s probably bricking it, wondering what the hell is going to become of him. Don’t worry, John. We’ll get him on track. Warm him up. Make him see we’re on his side. One day at a time, eh? More coffee?’ John accepted a second cup and while Mike took his time upstairs (he knew the drill) caught me up on a couple of things that he hadn’t mentioned in front of Tyler, including some more specific details surrounding his exclusion; Tyler’s aggressive streak was, it seemed, a thick one. And that wasn’t the only reason John was pleased to hear I’d persuaded the head of the local comp to take him in. He’d also managed to glean that because the family had recently moved house the younger brother, Grant, was now in the comp’s catchment area – he was currently in year six of one of their feeder primaries, which meant, in theory, that come September, assuming Tyler was still with us, the boys would at least be reunited in school. ‘It’s definitely looking that serious, then?’ I asked him. ‘No family reconciliation looking likely?’ ‘You can never say never,’ John said, ‘but we’re working on the worst case scenario. From what they’re saying at the moment, this is very much a last straw situation – who knows what the dad would do if left to his own devices, but as of now their position’s clear – they are washing their hands of him. This isn’t his first violent outburst at home, apparently – far from it. And, given what we know of his behaviour in school, we have to believe the family are telling the truth. They clearly don’t have a clue what to do with him any more.’ At the age of just 11. It was heartbreaking. How had it come to that? It wasn’t even as if he was a particularly big, strong boy, either. How had he come to be an object of such fear? ‘So he’s going on the programme with us?’ I asked, mentally rolling my sleeves up. ‘Doing all the usual points and levels?’ ‘Definitely,’ John said. ‘Starting asap.’ The ‘programme’ was what our kind of fostering was mostly based on. When a child first arrived they would be on a regime of very basic privileges, including TV time, computer time and time playing out with friends. In order to do any of those things, a child would have to ‘buy’ the time they needed, using the points that they accumulated each day. To earn those points, they would be expected to do a number of set tasks, each of which carried a points value, and with which they could ‘buy’ things for the following day. The programme was tailored to each individual child and the tasks would differ according to their needs. We had siblings once, for example, who’d come from an extremely neglectful background and had no idea about personal hygiene. They would therefore go to the toilet almost anywhere in the house, then, after wiping themselves with their bare hands, smear excrement on the walls. Their programme therefore reflected this, being loaded with items such as ‘Do not poo or wee anywhere other than the toilet – 30 points’ and ‘Wash hands and face and brush teeth every morning and before bed – 30 points’, and so on. In Tyler’s case these basic life-skills were givens (we hoped) so his points would be geared mostly to good behaviour. ‘Okay,’ I said to John now, hearing Mike and Tyler coming back downstairs. ‘But I think “asap” should mean Monday. Let’s let the dust settle. See what the next couple of days throw up first. Give us a chance to get to know him a little better first, at least.’ ‘Okay,’ said John, beginning to gather his papers up. ‘Sounds good. And I think it’s time I got out of your hair. Short and sweet, but I think our little chap has had enough of authority, don’t you?’ He smiled. ‘Don’t they all? Anyway, email me your proposed programme as soon as you have it and I’ll pass it on to the powers that be for the official sanction. Oh, and fix something up with Will Fisher – have him come round and meet you, fill you in a bit more, just as soon as he’s on top of things in the office, not to mention the case. He’s taken over several from Jenny, so it might be a week or so yet, unless you feel a pressing need to have him round here sooner?’ I shook my head. Mike and I were well used to going in blind. Yes, I was keen to hear more about Tyler’s background – that could only be helpful. But, unless there was some major crisis that required the social worker’s input, there was no desperate rush. ‘Well,’ Mike said, coming back in. ‘Tyler likes his room, don’t you, Tyler? And we’ve more or less worked out where all his stuff is going to go.’ He smiled across at Tyler, who was standing in the doorway, hood still up, chewing his nails. Mike grinned at him. ‘Cat got your tongue again, lad?’ And for his cheerfulness and patience he was amply rewarded – by an even more spectacular scowl than his previous ones. Ouch, I thought, mirroring John’s raised eyebrows. Sleeves definitely up, then. This was going to be fun. Chapter 4 (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9) The next couple of days were spent establishing ground rules. Though we weren’t planning on starting Tyler on the behaviour management programme till the following Monday, we still needed to put some basic boundaries in place about what was and what wasn’t acceptable. After all, we knew virtually nothing about him – and what we did know didn’t put him in the best light, all told, since it mostly involved a knife and a school exclusion. And the need for boundaries became clear before John had even left us; while he was still being kind, and helping bring his young charge’s things in, in fact. ‘Careful, you dickhead!’ he’d yelled at John, when the football annual he’d had wedged under his arm had accidentally fallen on the grass. He’d followed that gem up with an equally friendly explanation that ‘My mate Cameron nicked that for me!’ While John had chastised Tyler for his language – not to mention his ingratitude – I made a mental note of the name Cameron, for future reference. I would soon learn who Cameron was, in any case, as Tyler’s response was to whine that it was the only thing he had to remind him of his best friend, upon which John (who obviously already knew) pointed out that, as Cameron only lived five minutes away from where we did, it was hardly as if they were at opposite ends of the world. I took all this in as well, filing it in my brain automatically. And I was soon to learn more. Cameron, it seemed, was both Tyler’s friend and his hero – he talked about him so much that it soon became obvious that he was perhaps the most important role-model in his life. Though not necessarily of the positive kind – he was a 15-year-old boy Tyler had known since he’d moved in with his dad. And, from what I could glean, he was a bit of a neglected, latchkey kid – the only child of a single mum who was out all the time (for what reason Tyler knew not, but apparently not work), leaving her son to roam the estate where they lived. From what Tyler told me – of how he sofa-surfed, cadged rides and went to friends’ houses for food – I was surprised to learn that, as far as Tyler knew, anyway, he’d never been taken into care himself. But it was the child in our care who preoccupied me most, not least because, despite Kieron’s confidence, given Tyler’s home background, he’d come with so little to call his own. He didn’t even have a case or holdall – just a green recycling bag filled with clothing, and a cardboard box full of old games and toys. There was the precious annual (separate only because he’d apparently been reading it on the journey), some tatty Marvel comics and figurines, a well-worn football and a torn photograph – of him as a baby, he said – that had been taped back together, plus, of course, the ubiquitous mobile phone. Needless to say, it didn’t take much time to find a place for everything, so it wasn’t long – after a longer tour around the house and garden – before we got our second taste of Tyler’s short temper. We’d finally got him to remove his hoodie, at least, and I think that was only because it was such a warm day, and he had wandered into the front room to watch some TV, while I got started cooking our tea. I was making sausages and mash – a family favourite – and had just finished peeling the potatoes when I heard the commotion from the living room. Taking off my apron and drying my hands, I walked through to see what was going on. Tyler was standing by the window, clutching the remote control, his face angry and contorted. Mike was on his feet too, and was holding out his hand. ‘Just pass it back to me, Tyler,’ he was saying. ‘It’s a simple enough request. We don’t speak to each other like that in this house.’ ‘And I said fuck off!’ Tyler yelled, glaring at poor Mike. ‘All I wanted to do was see if my cartoons were on. And that’s a simple enough ’quest an’ all!’ ‘Tyler, you didn’t make a request,’ Mike answered levelly. ‘You just took the remote from beside me and changed the channel, without saying anything. I was watching something – which you could see – but I would have happily turned it over if you’d asked me.’ I went to join Mike. ‘Tyler, give Mike the remote back, please,’ I asked him nicely. ‘It’s almost tea time so there’s no time for cartoons just yet anyway, and, like Mike said, we won’t have that kind of language in this house.’ Tyler switched his glare to me then, and threw the remote onto the sofa, just missing Mike as it landed. ‘I knew this place would be shit!’ he said with a harsh and scornful laugh. ‘I won’t stay,’ he said. ‘I told that John. I’m not going to stay in this shit-hole!’ He then marched across the room, swerving past us. I’d have probably let him go, but Mike stepped out to stop him. ‘Not so fast, young man,’ he said. ‘We’re not done here.’ ‘Could you move, please?’ Tyler asked him. ‘In a moment,’ Mike replied. ‘But first of all you need to know this, Tyler. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what it is you are accustomed to, but we are the adults here, okay? We are entrusted to show you the ropes and look after you properly. And that includes teaching you about good manners and how to treat others. I’m going to let this go just now because it’s your first day here and it’s bound to be strange for you. But I’m telling you now that we don’t tolerate this kind of behaviour. Now go on, either go up to your room or go and play in the garden. Tea will be ready when Casey calls you, okay? It’s up to you if you’re hungry or not.’ I watched, open-mouthed, as Mike then stepped aside to let Tyler pass. Which he did, keeping it zipped as he stomped up the stairs. Mike stared after him, his expression one of intense irritation, as if he’d just hit the point when it all came flooding back – just what fostering a kid like this was actually going to entail. ‘Wow,’ I said, once I knew Tyler was safely out of earshot. ‘That was impressive. Like riding a bike, eh? Or did you have that rehearsed?’ He shook his head, and sat back down on the sofa. ‘Didn’t need to,’ he said, picking up the remote from where Tyler had flung it. ‘You know, I actually even had my hand on this when he took it. Just marched up, pulled it from under my hand, and turned the telly over without so much as a bloody word! If he’d said anything at all – anything – I’d have given him the bloody thing without a second thought. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to be spoken to like that for nothing!’ Mike was talking as if he felt he needed to justify giving Tyler a dressing down, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. He’d dealt with him brilliantly, without raising his voice, or showing anger – just using quiet but firm authority. Yet I could see he was rattled about it, and that rattled me. It had been a long time since we’d had a child in, and an even longer time since we’d had a boy – well, if you didn’t count the babies – because our last had been a teenage girl. It had been an even longer time since we’d had a boy of Tyler’s age and level of anger, and I wondered if it wasn’t hitting home to Mike, even as he sat there, just how much of the boundary-maintenance would naturally fall to him. ‘Come help me sort the tea out?’ I asked him, even though I didn’t actually need any. ‘Fingers crossed the message has hit home, and he’ll be down for his tea, and we can start again on a more positive note. It’ll sink in,’ I added, as he rose to join me, his expression still very much one that said, What have we got ourselves into here? ‘You know how it goes, love,’ I reassured him. ‘Sooner or later it will.’ Mike sighed heavily as he followed me through to the kitchen. ‘Let’s hope it’s sooner then, eh?’ he said, as he began gathering up the potato peelings. ‘At least I can escape to work, love. You don’t have that luxury.’ He picked up the vegetable knife, and I knew exactly what he was thinking as he studied it. ‘You might have to be braced for this sort of thing every day.’ That little incident, minor though it was, set a tone that lasted into the weekend. Tyler, perhaps understandably, didn’t want to be with us. Which was not to say he wanted to be home – not with the ‘witch’ living there, anyway – but it didn’t make him any keener on making friends with us. He’d come down to tea and seemed to enjoy it – albeit in a dogged silence – but he seemed entirely resistant to the idea of my hastily penned ‘house rules’. I’d run them up that Thursday evening, as a taster of what was coming on the Monday, including such staples as no swearing, respect others in the house, bed at 8.00 p.m., lights out at 9.00 p.m. All of them were broken within a day. And were broken several times over by the end of the following week, so by the time the next Saturday rolled around it was less a question of what rules he’d broken than casting about to find one he hadn’t. Worse than that, on that Saturday – after I’d had to tell Tyler off about his bad language for what felt like the tenth time that day – Kieron called in to see us after his morning football session. He couldn’t have chosen a more inopportune time. ‘Afternoon!’ I heard him call through the house. I was sorting the washing out in the back porch and hurried back inside. Tyler was in the living room, and this would be the first time they encountered one another. And it was a relationship I was hoping to nurture. ‘Oh hi, love,’ I said as I saw Tyler, who was sprawled across the sofa, eyeing up Kieron with curiosity. ‘Good game? This is Tyler,’ I added. ‘He’s into football, too, aren’t you, Tyler?’ ‘Nice one,’ said Kieron. ‘Good to meet you at last, mate. What team do you support?’ Tyler looked like he might answer, but then his face changed and he shrugged. He then turned his attention back to the TV in what was unquestionably a deliberate snub. I bridled. Kieron might be 25, and he might not give a damn about the opinion of this arsey 11-year-old stranger, but I felt affronted and angry on his behalf. I knew it wouldn’t bother him that much, but I also knew the way my son’s mind worked – he found rudeness of any kind particularly difficult to process. Yes, he was better than he’d been as a child – the world of work had toughened him up a bit in that regard – but that was work and this was home (his family home, even if he no longer lived with us) and he shouldn’t have to put up with some little tyke being rude to him within it. ‘Tyler,’ I said pointedly, ‘Kieron was asking you a question, love. He asked you which team you supported.’ I waited, hoping to force him into continuing the conversation. I soon wished I hadn’t. ‘And I heard him!’ he snapped back, quick as you like. ‘And I told him I don’t know!’ He launched himself off the sofa, then, and for a moment I thought he was going to run at me and rugby tackle me, but instead he headed straight for Kieron and the open door. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘Can’t you people just leave me alone?’ ‘Hey!’ Kieron barked. ‘Less of the lip. You don’t talk to my mum like that, Tyler, do you hear?’ Tyler ignored him, barging past him and stomping out of the living room, slamming the door behind him for good measure. ‘What the hell?’ Kieron said, shaking his head. ‘Was it something I said?’ I squeezed his arm. ‘No, love,’ I said. ‘He’s been like this since he got here. Take no notice. He’s on his last gasp, in any case. Me and your dad are giving him the weekend to settle down a bit and then we’ll start to work on that God-awful behaviour of his. You know what it’s like,’ I added, picking up the remote and silencing the din from the TV. ‘He’s come from a really bad place, love. And he’s currently “adjusting”.’ Kieron grinned. ‘Mum, all the kids you have come from a bad place. He’s just – did you hear that? Was that the front door I just heard go?’ I sighed heavily. He wasn’t planning on doing a runner, was he? Now, that would be a great start. I ran to the front window. ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ I said. ‘He’s just taken his football out into the front garden. Maybe he’s going to have a kick-about to calm himself down.’ ‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ Kieron answered wryly. ‘Let’s hope he hasn’t decided to try take it out on the house.’ No sooner had Kieron said that than I was reminded of one of my mum’s famous sayings: Many a true word is spoken in jest. The sudden thud was almighty. ‘Jesus! He bloody is!’ I said in amazement, watching his antics. ‘He’s purposely kicking the ball at the front door!’ And hard, too. Kieron joined me at the window just as the second ‘hit’ landed. This time, however, it wasn’t the door we heard rattle. It was the unmistakable sound of breaking glass. ‘What the …?’ Kieron spluttered, before rushing out into the hall. I followed him, desperately hoping that it had been an unfortunate accident, but knowing, without a doubt, that it was not. ‘Kieron!’ I said, as he yanked the front door open, ‘just stay calm, love. Let’s see what he has to say for himself first.’ Too late. ‘I saw that!’ Kieron shouted at Tyler, as I surveyed the puddle of broken glass shards that had rained down from the side panel of my front door. ‘You kicked that ball at that pane of glass on purpose!’ ‘Did I fuck!’ Tyler responded. ‘You want your eyes testing! God,’ he added, stabbing a tightly balled fist into each hip, ‘see what I mean? I get the blame for everything in this shit-hole!’ Kieron skewered him on the end of a premier-league scowl and hoicked a thumb behind him. ‘Get inside right now!’ he said. ‘And don’t think I won’t pick you up and bring you in,’ he added. At which point I decided to intervene. I didn’t want the neighbours’ curtains twitching at my latest drama, but nor did I want Tyler antagonising my son. ‘There’ll be no need to do that, love,’ I said quietly to Kieron. ‘Tyler, get in here, now! I mean it.’ But if I thought my own brand of hard talking would do the trick, I was wrong. ‘Fuck off, you fat bitch!’ he yelled back, leaving me stunned. Fat? I knew I’d put on a few pounds in the last year or so (sympathy eating for two and spending too much time with hungry grandsons), but at just under ten stone I preferred to think I was pleasantly plump – at the very worst. Cheeky little sod! But I barely had time to reply when my son barged past me and made a grab for him. ‘In here! Now!’ he said, gripping Tyler firmly by his right shoulder, clearly offended by the weight-slur on my behalf. And if that surprised me, I was totally gobsmacked by what happened next. The 11-year-old whirlwind whirled and, despite the difference in their heights, managed to land a punch that hit Kieron firmly on the chin. Clearly taken aback, Kieron nevertheless held on while Tyler tried to capitalise on his advantage by kicking him in the shins. If it wasn’t so horrifying it would have been comical. Kieron, my six foot three beanpole of a son, was skipping around, trying to fend off kicks, punches and bites, while this little scrap of a kid gave it everything he had. And not just physically – he was giving his all vocally as well, turning the air blue with his colourful language. ‘Get off me, you shitty bastard!’ he screamed as Kieron held on. ‘Get your fucking hands off me, you cunt!’ I was mesmerised, I think, but thoughts of the neighbours again roused me, and I plunged in to try and separate them without delay. ‘Tyler!’ I yelled as I grabbed him by the hoodie. ‘Stop that right now and get inside, you hear me?’ It took some tugging but I eventually managed to get him away and pin both his arms to his sides. I leaned in then, and spoke quietly, close to his face. ‘I swear, Tyler,’ I hissed. ‘I won’t be telling you this again. Get in that house and go to your room. This is your last chance.’ I meant it too. Right then, I did, anyway. We’d had him a scant week and a bit, and, though it was entirely out of character, I could easily see myself calling John and telling him we’d changed our minds. It was so unlike me, but, when I considered it (coolly, as Tyler stood there and scowled at me) I realised that he hadn’t done a single tiny thing that would let me warm to him. Not that I expected him to do that consciously, of course I didn’t. But with almost every kid I’d ever dealt with, I could see past that. See the tiniest chink of something through their spiky, gnarly armour, sense the pain and the need for love in their bruised souls. And it was then – at that very moment – that finally I thought I glimpsed it. It was only fleeting; so swift that I could easily have missed it. But as he struggled from my grasp, it crossed his face. It was so subtle; just the tiniest jut of his chin, but I could read it. It said, Go on, then. Hate me.I’ve given you enough ammo now, haven’t I? It was enough – just – to remind me that he was like this for a reason. I let him go then, and he thundered up the stairs. I was shaking a little as I followed him back inside – I was clearly unused to the adrenalin rush. ‘Oh, Kieron,’ I said, as he bent down to start picking up the larger glass shards, ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through all that. I just can’t believe it,’ I called back, running into the kitchen to get the dustpan. ‘I really can’t, honestly. Are you okay, love?’ Kieron surprised me then, by shrugging it off, and even smiling at me. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Mum, you forget. I deal with little tykes like that every flipping day.’ Which couldn’t be true – either that, or his school had serious discipline issues – but it was still a reminder that my little boy wasn’t a little boy any more and no longer quite as vulnerable. ‘I know you do,’ I said anyway, ‘but you don’t need that sort of thing when you’re here, do you?’ He took the dustpan. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Probably did him good. I think he at least has my measure now, don’t you?’ I looked at the broken window pane. How much was that going to cost to replace? One thing was for sure – this boy needed some swift and serious input. So come Monday, I thought grimly as we cleared the last of the glass, he’s going to have my bloody measure, too. Chapter 5 (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9) With our ‘pre’-placement meeting scheduled for nine thirty (what had possessed me?) it was a mad dash just getting back from dropping Tyler off at high school, let alone making anything like the sort of domestic effort I’d have wanted to before John and Tyler’s new social worker descended on me. It was another Thursday – I could hardly believe it had been a full fortnight we’d had Tyler now – and the house felt not so much messy as ‘invaded’. And not just by the enormous chart – already filling up with ticks and numbers – that now spanned the entire top door of the fridge-freezer. No, we were experiencing an advanced case of ‘child-creep’. I’ve always been a bit OCD about cleaning – something I probably inherited from my mother – and one thing our extended period without a child staying had done was to furnish me with some pretty big rose-tinted glasses. Forget the wall-to-wall tension, the shouting and the equally noisy stony silences – how had it slipped my mind what a huge a difference in the domestic workload one 11-year-old boy could make? Particularly one who was so volatile. And life had already felt something of a whirlwind, in any case, even without the one-child tornado now residing with us. Dad was well on the mend, but I still needed to help Mum with a lot of the day-to-day domestics, and I was very conscious that Riley also had a lot on her plate, so I was trying to juggle hurricane Tyler with the twin mini-typhoons that were my grandsons. Another thing I’d forgotten was quite how many ‘runs’ were involved in Levi and Jackson’s school, nursery and social commitments, and it was all I could do to draw breath. I took a deep one now as I turned the car into the drive and found my eye inescapably drawn to the still taped-up glass panel at the side of my front door. And in doing so, I yet again asked myself the same question – had I been just a bit too impulsive in rushing to take Tyler on? Was this really the best time in our lives to be behaviour-managing a boy who had such extreme anger? Had I been selfish in even considering it? And not just in terms of my own commitments, either. Was it really fair on the rest of the family? This was my absolute last chance to pull out, and I knew it. I climbed out of the car and headed indoors to at least tidy up the kitchen and dining room. I still had the best part of an hour, so could probably make the place reasonably respectable, and while I did so I knew I’d run through the same loop of self-interrogation. Which was pointless. I always felt a bit like this, didn’t I? At this point in the process, with the full extent of a child’s difficulties and attendant behaviour problems laid bare, invariably came a rush of regretful hindsight. They always say you never know someone till you live with them, don’t they? And though I think it’s an expression which is normally applied to marriage, the same very much applied to foster children. Perhaps more so, because it kind of went with the territory of getting to know them. They learned to build such high walls around themselves – that was so often their way of coping – and it was only the breaking down of them that brought the grim reality into view. But I also knew, as far as Mike and I were concerned anyway, that Tyler wasn’t going anywhere. I had known it that Saturday, because it would take much more than what he’d done to make me quit. Had had it confirmed an hour ago when I saw him sneak a peek into his lunchbox and do a little fist-pump on seeing the chocolate brownie I’d put in there – the same brownies he’d made such a show of not being ‘bothered’ about when I’d given him one fresh from the oven the day before. Little things, I thought, as I switched off the engine. Little increments. John’s car pulled up outside at precisely nine thirty, disgorging both him and a rangy-looking guy in T-shirt and jeans. This would be Will Fisher – Tyler’s new social worker. He looked young – perhaps late twenties or early thirties, I guessed – with shoulder-length hair that my mum would have said needed someone to drag a comb through it. It was dark blond and wavy and looked faintly messianic and I decided he’d have looked equally at home with a guitar slung over his shoulder, fronting an indie band and crooning love songs to screaming teenage fans. I grinned to myself as I watched the pair shut the car doors. They were laughing at some shared joke over the roof as they did so, and knew I’d been right in thinking I hadn’t previously met Will – I very much doubted that I would have forgotten him. I was also glad he was young and male, because I felt there was a chance that Tyler would respond well to him. And that mattered a lot, as one of the first things John had promised was that Will would be taking Tyler out on a regular basis, both to get to know him (and hopefully foster another crucial positive adult relationship which would continue beyond his spell with us) and to give us what I already knew would be a much-needed break. And my hunch was that Tyler responded well to males. No, he’d not got off to the best start with my poor son, admittedly, but Kieron had since been back again – he and his girlfriend Lauren had stopped by for tea on the Tuesday, and I had felt a positive change in the dynamic. Was I being whimsical in sensing that Tyler wasn’t just looking up at him; that he was wondering if he should look up to him too? I mentally crossed my fingers that he might look up to Will as well. Not that you could second-guess that sort of thing about social workers really. They came in as many different varieties as did foster families, after all. There was no ‘one size fits all’ when it came to these kinds of careers. People went into them from all sorts of backgrounds, and with all sorts of motivations, and over the years I’d come across all sorts of different people, who brought all kinds of different things to the task at hand. One thing we all shared, however, was a common goal: to make the best of what, more often than not, was a pretty grim situation for whichever child was in our hands. I went to the front door and opened it just as John was lifting his hand to press the bell, and as soon as I saw Will close up I decided I liked him. A snap judgement, yes, but I’d have been surprised if I’d have to revise it. And based on nothing more substantial than the slogan on his T-shirt – ‘Imagine Whirled Peas!’ – and the strength and immediacy of his handshake. ‘So,’ John said, after the usual introductions, ‘Casey, how are you?’ The emphasis was, I noted, very much on the ‘are’. As it would be – he’d called for an update at the beginning of the week, and had certainly got one. ‘And how’s your dad doing?’ he added, as I ushered them both in. ‘Better than anyone expected, actually,’ I told him as we went into the kitchen. As it was going to be just the three of us, there was more than enough space around the table, and the kitchen was the one room I always managed to keep on top of. ‘Which is just as well, really,’ I added, gesturing that they both sit down. ‘Given that in just a fortnight we’ve had a broken door pane, a broken clock and the makings of the third world war.’ ‘Clock? Should I ask about the clock,’ he ventured, ‘or is this – ahem – a bad time?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said, nudging him playfully. ‘What is the time anyway? I have no means of telling any more, do I?’ ‘Er, I’ll take that as a no, then,’ John said, groaning, as I made coffee and Will began extracting paperwork from a big battered messenger bag. ‘So will Mike be joining us?’ I shook my head. ‘He would have done,’ I said, ‘but work’s a bit manic at the moment. And given that the baptism of fire’s already happened, there didn’t seem much point in him taking time off.’ I smiled at them both. ‘And it’s not as if he needs preparing for the worst, after all, is it? No, I’ll update him on everything tonight.’ In fact, the broken clock was just a casualty of the third world war. Just on the wrong wall at the wrong time – i.e. in the vicinity of a door that Tyler had decided needed slamming – and, being a veteran anyway, had had its period of active service abruptly curtailed. As opposed to Mike and I, who had by now discussed Tyler at length, and had decided we weren’t quite ready to be put out to grass. No, by now we were back in the groove of having a pint-sized person dominating our lives, and finding out some facts would be grist to the mill. Which I hoped we were about to get. Facts we could work with. ‘So,’ Will said, once we were seated and in possession of mugs of coffee, ‘where shall I start?’ ‘At the beginning would be good,’ I quipped, nudging the plate of biscuits in his direction. ‘Because right now I feel we know almost nothing.’ Will made straight for a custard cream and popped the whole thing in his mouth, washing it down with a swig of coffee while he used his other hand to open the laptop that had emerged from his bag and now sprung into life. ‘Well, he has told me bits and bats,’ I clarified, as I marvelled at how relaxed and laid back this new social worker appeared to be. ‘I know his real mum was called Fiona, and that all he’s got to remind him of his early life now is a baby photo. And though he’s not said as such, I get the impression that he does remember some of the harsher parts of his early years, I’m afraid. I mean, you do tend to hope that when things happen to them as mere tots they might forget about it as they grow older …’ ‘You do,’ John said as I drifted off with my sugar-coated thoughts. ‘Unfortunately, when their life continues to be harsh – as in this case – however, the nasty things never get put to rest, do they? It’s never too late though, is it? To give them a whole new set of memories and experiences. That’s what we’re hoping for with Tyler.’ ‘Assuming he can be kept out of trouble in the interim,’ Will concluded, giving us both a wry smile. ‘Which, from what I’ve read and heard, sounds like it’ll be no mean feat, frankly.’ Which kind of burst the bubble. What exactly was in his files? ‘Well, if anyone can keep him on the straight and narrow the Watsons can,’ John told him loyally. ‘So he’s in a safe pair of hands, at least. Finally.’ I looked at John and smiled, acknowledging the compliment, but we both knew there was no such animal as a ‘safe pair of hands’ in our line of work. The only way to achieve that would be to put children like Tyler in secure units and lock the door behind them. And as we weren’t in the business of incarceration that wasn’t an option. Not that I would ever want it to be, in any case. No, we were much more in the business of cause and effect and finding workable strategies to make progress, which meant I was much more interested in hearing about how a lad like Tyler came to be a lad like Tyler in the first place. Once we knew that, I knew we had a substantially better chance of helping him. There was so much locked inside him that needed to come out. ‘Safe as we can make them,’ I corrected. ‘Though not fail-safe, by any means. So,’ I added, turning to Will, ‘how did Tyler’s story begin, then?’ ‘Grimly,’ came the unequivocal reply. I knew all about grim, of course. We’d heard plenty of grim stories in our time, and I didn’t expect this one to be any different. Kids from all sorts of backgrounds came into care, obviously – the abandoned, the tragically orphaned, the temporarily without a loving family able to take care of them – but there were constants; the stories that came up again and again and again – the stories and the words that made everyone sigh, not least because of their depressing ubiquity. Violence. Sexual abuse. Paedophilia. Drug addiction. Heroin. And this was Tyler’s word, apparently. Heroin. Heroin had been the loaded gun, circumstances the trigger. As Will explained, Tyler (who had been born some 30 miles away, and whose notes had followed him to us) had been born to a heroin-addicted mother. She had been around 21 when she’d had him, and because she had already been known to social services (she’d been in trouble with the police for possession since her mid-teens apparently), she’d been put on a methadone treatment programme during the pregnancy, in an effort both to wean her off the drug and its evils and to give her unborn baby the best chance. Giving opiate-addicted mothers methadone was (and is) obviously a good thing, in that it was both an opportunity to take care of them and a step on the road to getting them off heroin permanently, but it still meant that their babies were born addicts as well. This was the case with Tyler, who was born with a condition called neonatal abstinence syndrome (or NAS), which meant that his first days were spent in hospital, while they slowly and carefully weaned him from the drug. There were apparently no lasting side-effects to NAS – not physically. But how about emotionally? How did starting life with a recovering addict affect a baby? It was a sad but all too familiar story. There probably wasn’t a foster family around who hadn’t at some point come across the horrendous consequences of addiction to hard drugs, either directly or indirectly; the ripples of addiction always spread very wide. ‘Though both mother and baby were apparently doing okay,’ Will added, ‘for a while there, it seems, at any rate. Mum – Fiona, as you say – wanted to turn her life around, get clean, do her best for the baby, and it seems that, with support, she did make a go of it at first.’ She must have done, I knew, because in that sort of situation the newborn child would almost always be taken straight into care. A new baby was upheaval enough for a mother who was well and supported, let alone one so young, so alone and so chronic a drug user. That she managed to cope for any length of time was remarkable in itself – a testament to both her and the professionals looking after her. I knew that from personal experience with my last foster child, Emma. Thinking of Emma was what prompted me to ask my next question. ‘So was Tyler’s father around at this time?’ I asked. ‘Was he involved in all this?’ Will shook his head. ‘No. Dad – Gareth – was most definitely out of the picture. At this point, no one even knew who he was, apparently. They’d split up early on – he maintained that he didn’t even know about the pregnancy – and she apparently wanted nothing from him, in any case. No, such records as I’ve dug out seem to suggest she was managing adequately on her own at first.’ ‘What about other family?’ ‘None have been recorded. I’ve looked back through all the notes and it seems she was on her own. Living in a council property. Either no family, or estranged from them. No siblings or half-siblings, as far as anyone was aware.’ ‘So what went wrong? Was there some specific trigger?’ ‘Not that I can see,’ Will said. ‘The social worker’s notes mention some concerns here and there, but on the whole she was doing okay. They seem to have concluded that it must have been a combination of aggravating factors. She got re-housed when the block she was living in was up for demolition, which could have been key, obviously – you know how it goes. Then a new man apparently came into her life … started her on the heroin again …’ ‘And surprise, surprise – it all went back downhill from there?’ John asked. It was phrased as a question, but we all knew it wasn’t. She’d have been on benefits at that point, not to mention having her own flat. Which would have made her vulnerable. She’d have been a prime target for all sorts of parasites and predators. ‘So Tyler was taken into care at that point?’ I asked. Will shook his head. ‘No. Would that he had been, eh? No, it’s worse than that. She was always just a hop and a skip away from that, of course – the previous social worker’s made several notes about having concerns – but events seem to have overtaken that. She took a fatal overdose – at home, and probably unintentionally, the social worker thinks; possibly purer stuff than she was used to. And the first anyone knew of it was two days later, when she didn’t turn up for a rehab appointment with her counsellor.’ ‘Oh, my God,’ I said, shaking my own head now. ‘That’s so sad.’ ‘And it’s lucky she had the appointment scheduled when she did,’ he added, ‘or it could have been even longer before they were found, couldn’t it? As it was, the counsellor had the nous to go round there, thank goodness, and hearing crying from upstairs called the police.’ ‘Who then found Tyler …’ I said. Will nodded. ‘And that’s incredible as well, don’t you think? Given his age. I mean, two whole days. It’s incredible he didn’t come to any harm in that time, isn’t it? When you think about the environment he was in.’ Incredible, but at the same time the word ‘harm’ struck a chord. Yes, he’d survived that ordeal, but, God, he had come to so much harm since. ‘So he was unhurt?’ I asked. ‘I mean, physically?’ Will nodded a second time. ‘Emaciated, starving and traumatised, obviously – it’s all in here; you can read it for yourself later – but otherwise, yes. And he was obviously put with emergency carers while they decided what best to do with him, and that’s where the father comes in. With the help of some clues in a phone book and some donkey work, they managed to track him down – which was impressive in itself, because he’d by now moved to this area – and he agreed (I believe reluctantly) that he and his partner would take Tyler on rather than him being placed with a foster family.’ ‘Which is interesting in itself, isn’t it?’ John said. ‘I mean, given that he said he didn’t even know about the existence of a baby. Does it say anything in there about him wanting the paternity proven?’ ‘There was certainly a test done,’ Will said, ‘though I think we instigated it, for the usual reasons. They wouldn’t have just handed Tyler over, even if they’d welcomed him with open arms. And they kept tabs on the family for the usual span of time. And from what I’ve read in here,’ he said, patting the file, ‘it seems he stepped up to the plate readily enough. That he was the father wasn’t apparently in doubt anyway, looking at the other child. Apparently they were the spit of each other.’ He sat back in his chair, then leaned in again and grabbed another biscuit. ‘So that was that, in theory. Taken off the “at risk” register, and settled back with blood relatives. The only trouble is that it’s obviously not worked out all that brilliantly, has it?’ Hmm, I thought. You can say that again. Chapter 6 (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9) Meeting Will, and hearing first hand about Tyler’s early childhood, was just the kick up the backside I think we needed. Yes, we’d already committed to him and, heaven knew, we’d had enough training, hadn’t we? Enough training to have ‘It’s the behaviour that’s bad, not the child’ mentally tattooed on our foreheads. But the image of that traumatised three-year-old, all alone with the body of his dead mother, was one that stuck firmly to the forefront of my brain. ‘And you know what always strikes me?’ I told Riley one afternoon the following week. ‘It’s that he doesn’t even seem to realise that he’s been handed such a bad hand.’ Tyler being out for his first trip with Will – they were off to the local bowling alley – we were round at Mum and Dad’s, enjoying a bit of family time with the baby, which only served to remind me how random a child’s birth circumstances were. Some babies were born into loving, stable homes. And some weren’t. Some had everything stacked against them from the outset. ‘Life’s been so tough for him,’ I went on. ‘I don’t think he really appreciates just how tough. Or that it’s the adults in his life that are responsible for how he now feels. He just doesn’t seem to have processed that. Turns everything on himself. Seems to feel it’s perfectly appropriate for people not to like him. It’s like he just accepts that he’s angry and wants everybody else to as well.’ I sighed. ‘I just wish I could find a way to get him to talk to me about it. But it really is like trying to get blood out of a stone. I only have to look at him in a certain way and I can see him squirming. I swear he has some sixth sense that tells him when I’m about to corner him and try and talk to him. Perhaps he’s like a dog – he can smell a heart-to-heart on the horizon like they can smell fear.’ Riley clapped her hands together. ‘Love it, Mum!’ she laughed. But she then moved on to her serious face, clearly thinking about the problem. At 27, she was the polar opposite of Kieron, though. Where my son would see everything on the surface and immediately have a practical solution or suggestion, Riley was a deep, thoughtful thinker. Like me, she always tried to look beyond what you could see. She was good at it, too, and until taking a bit of a break after having had Marley Mae she and her partner David had been fostering as well – providing respite care for the same agency that we worked for. Passing the baby across to my mum for a cuddle, she smiled at me. ‘Well, you know what to do about that, Mum, don’t you?’ I raised my eyebrows as she continued to fuss over my youngest grandchild. ‘I do?’ ‘Course you do,’ she said. ‘Do what you used to do with me and Kieron. Trap him in the car. Take him off for a drive somewhere and drone on at him while he can’t escape.’ ‘God, you make it sound like a form of torture,’ I said, shaking my head at my amused mother. Riley laughed. ‘It was! Felt like that sometimes, at any rate. I swear, sometimes me and Kieron used to sweat at the jangle of your car keys.’ ‘Oh you do exaggerate, Riley,’ I admonished. She was right, though. I did remember doing just that. And she was spot on; sometimes it probably did feel like a kind of torture – especially if the subject matter was at all sensitive: affairs of the heart, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, sex … And it worked. Even if you didn’t always see the evidence at the time, there was a lot to be said for putting kids in a position where they didn’t have to make eye contact with you. It made it easier for them to talk. And it made it harder for them not to listen. I still did it, too, with foster kids – albeit almost unconsciously these days. And Riley was right. I’d not yet thought about it, but it was exactly what I should do with Tyler. Because if I was to help him, I really needed to understand better where all that rage and hurt and self-loathing had come from. And it didn’t take a brain surgeon to reach the conclusion that the relationship with his stepmother was probably key. Though I had nothing to go on bar the rather vague detail on Tyler’s file that ‘relations had broken down’ with his father’s partner, I was itching to get an inkling of what form this breakdown had taken. More to the point, when had it started? Had something specific prompted it? Something Tyler had done? I was particularly intrigued by what sort of conversations must have happened early on, between the father who’d been told he had a son who he’d never known existed, and the partner with which he’d had another son in the meantime, and who might have had her own ideas about the situation in which – through no fault of her own – she now found herself. I tried to relate it to me. How would I have felt if Mike had come home from work one evening and announced that he had another child I hadn’t known about? What would my reaction have been if he then told me I would have to welcome it into our family and raise it? I didn’t know. That was the honest answer. I didn’t have a clue how I’d have reacted. First, I’d have to accept that he really didn’t know anything about it, and then … well, and then I’d have to do a great deal of soul-searching, wouldn’t I? About my capacity to not only accept this sudden cuckoo-in-the-nest into my home but to commit to loving it and cherishing it to the best of my ability; to bringing it up as if it were my own. Of course, I wanted to think that, yes, I would be able to do that. After all, falling in love with the kids we fostered was both my blessing and my curse. It was emotionally draining every time, quite apart from anything else. So, yes, on balance, had it been Mike, and had the circumstances been the same ones, I wanted to think that I would embrace the child – because it would have been his child, and a half-sibling to his other children too, which would have meant I would have no hesitation. It would be the right thing to do. But this wasn’t me, was it? And life was rarely that simple and rosy. With her own child just a toddler, was this Alicia coping okay anyway? Could it be that, actually, she was managing, but that she really didn’t want to take on any more? Was she pressured by Tyler’s father to take him in? Pressured by social services? Pressured by knowing that if she didn’t agree to have him, she would feel like a bad person for the rest of her life? Not the best reason to take on another woman’s child. What with dashing around to help my mum, and life being so busy generally, it was to be another week before the ideal opportunity presented itself. It was almost the end of term now – the long summer holidays looming provocatively, close on the horizon – and as I watched Tyler mooching out of school one afternoon, deep in conversation with another lad, I was idly wondering how it must feel to be him. He’d been with us a few weeks now, and we were managing – just – to keep a lid on his behaviour, but, as for getting close to him, progress was proving slow. There had been so many times when I automatically reached out to connect with him physically, but he’d always shrink back, stiffen slightly, send out unambiguous signals. Had this kid ever been hugged in his young life? Perhaps yes, by his real mother, but since then? I decided probably not. And Will had reported much the same. Not that he was offering to cuddle him, but though Tyler had pronounced him ‘cool’ and better than the previous ‘bossy old bag’, Will himself still felt that sense of distance, of careful guardedness in Tyler; that he was only chipping, bit by tiny bit, away. Time, we’d both agreed – that would be the key. Time and patience. He’d surely let us in eventually. I watched him now and wondered, though. What went on behind those big brown eyes? Under that mop of inky hair? I wondered something else, too. I wondered what it must feel like to be his stepmother. That, I felt, was key to understanding how we’d got to where we’d got – to her taking what by any yardstick was extremely drastic action – taking her own son’s half-brother to court. I would probably never know that, I realised. It wasn’t my business to know that, anyway. But it seemed that I was about to get an inkling. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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