The Boy No One Loved Page 12

  Riley laughed. ‘That’s because there is a reason, mum. See you about five-thirty, okay? Byeee!’

  But there was no time to dwell on what the reason might be because almost as soon as I’d put down the phone, I heard the front door bang and a spirited ‘Hi, Casey!’ being bellowed from the hallway, closely followed by the sound of a herd of wildebeest thundering up the stairs. It was Justin, home from school and, as had become his routine now, dashing upstairs to get out of his school uniform.

  I let go my breath and simultaneously realised that Justin wasn’t the only one who’d got into a routine. Holding my breath on his arrival was mine – at least till I was sure of the mood he was in; sure he wasn’t going to kick off and spoil everyone’s day. It was ridiculous, and I mentally chastised myself for it. He was an eleven-year-old child, not a monster.

  But glancing at the clock I realised there was no time to dwell on that either; if Riley and David were coming to eat with us I needed to think about what it was we would eat, and that meant a thorough rummage in the fridge and freezer. I also needed to press on and get Kieron and Justin fed. Whatever impromptu arrangements I fixed up with my daughter, my son wanted feeding when he got in from college and it was also important I stuck to Justin’s meal chart; both the timing and the menu were non-negotiable.

  Justin himself joined me in the kitchen just as I was taking the pizza out of the oven. It was almost as if he had some sort of sixth sense for knowing exactly when food was going to arrive.

  ‘Just in time!’ I quipped. ‘Hey, that’s what we should call you, shouldn’t we? Justin Time!’ I was in a buoyant mood knowing Riley and David would soon be over. Justin, too, it seemed. He found this hilarious.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Kieron, arriving in the doorway. ‘Ah, pizza!’ he said, seeing it and emitting a small cheer. ‘That’s good. So I won’t die of starvation after all.’

  They went through to the dining room with their tea and I could hear them laughing and chatting. This was shaping up to be a good day all round, I decided. I then grabbed a coffee and cleared the desks and set about round two – preparing a nice tea for the rest of us. As it was so summery, I’d settled on cold roast chicken and salad. Mike would probably moan – he was more of a pie and chips man – but oh, well. Didn’t matter. It was all food.

  Five-thirty arrived and, with it, David and Riley. ‘Thank God for that,’ Mike said, letting them in and mock-frowning. ‘It’s bad enough that I’m forced to eat rabbit food after a hard day at work, but even worse to have to wait half an hour for the pleasure!’

  ‘No, no – we can’t eat yet!’ Riley said, seeing me emerge from the kitchen with the salad bowl. ‘You need to get everyone gathered together first, so we can tell you our news. Where’s Kieron? And Justin. Dad, can you get them?’

  ‘They’re back upstairs,’ I said. ‘Playing on the computer in Kieron’s bedroom. But –’

  ‘Mum, Dad!’ Riley chided, while David stood there grinning goofily. ‘Stop staring and go get them, will you!’

  I took the salad bowl and plonked it back on the kitchen table, while Mike bellowed to the boys to come down. ‘Quick, you two!’ he added – probably for the benefit of his stomach, while I, meanwhile, had a sudden bolt of inspiration. I looked at Riley, then at David – the pair of them like a couple of grinning idiots. It couldn’t be, could it? Or maybe it could be …

  The boys both thundered down then, Kieron volubly complaining. ‘This had better be good, Riley. We were in the middle of an important game!’

  But his big sister was having none of it. ‘Shut up and sit down, you two,’ she ordered, and it was only once they’d done so and she had all our full attention that she deigned to impart their ‘big news’. Which was big. At least, would before too long become so. ‘Everyone,’ she announced. ‘David and me want you to be the first to know. I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby!’

  Now my heart really did leap. So my hunch had been right. This was a shock, but such a great one. Such a fabulous thing. Mike and me were going to become grandparents!

  I glanced at Mike to see him looking stunned, his eyes filling up with tears. Then he leapt up from the sofa and the room all but exploded – into a big noisy round of hugs and congratulations, with everyone kissing everyone else, just like it was New Year. But then, minutes later, I noticed Justin, in the corner.

  It was his face; it had taken on that strange inhuman quality. He looked like thunder. I could see he was seething.

  ‘You okay, babes?’ I asked him quietly, but he seemed unable to answer. In fact, I could see he was struggling hard to try and maintain control. He was shaking, and he looked like he wanted to punch something. Luckily, it didn’t seem as if anyone else had noticed, and with me now standing between him and everyone else, hopefully they wouldn’t notice, either. I really didn’t want this wonderful occasion spoiling.

  I discreetly manoeuvred him – and thankfully he didn’t try to resist – out into the hallway, and then looked right into his eyes, maintaining contact as I spoke to him. ‘Look,’ I said gently, but also quite firmly. ‘I know something about all this has upset you, Justin, but we don’t want to hurt Riley’s feelings, do we? You’re obviously too angry to talk to me about it right now, I can see that, so why don’t you go on back upstairs for a bit, eh? Kieron will be up in a minute and you can get back to your game. Okay, love?’

  For a moment he looked like he was about to speak, but then changed his mind and clamped his mouth shut again. Then he turned and plodded off back up to his bedroom and as I watched him go up, I slowly exhaled. Once again, I’d been holding my breath.

  We didn’t see Justin downstairs again until Riley and David had finally left for home, and when he did come down, he had Kieron close behind him. And for a reason; when I asked him about it, sensing he was calmer, and would want to talk about it, right away, Kieron, who was standing behind him, was busy making a face at me and shaking his head.

  Taking my cue, I dropped it, and instead just ruffled Justin’s hair. ‘I know it’s a lot of fuss, kiddo,’ I said lightly. ‘But don’t worry. It’ll calm down soon enough.’

  It was only once he’d gone to bed that Kieron told me what had happened. He’d been aware from the off what had happened to Justin, bless him – had actually seen him metamorphose into that other, scary Justin, and though I hadn’t been aware of it, specifically popped upstairs to check all was okay.

  Once up there, he’d asked Justin if he was okay and, getting little back, then observed, ‘Bloody women, eh! Getting all over-excited about babies! So. Back to our game, then? Prepare yourself, mind. Welcome to defeat, little brother!’

  Justin had apparently laughed out loud at this, his parting comment on the subject being an equally spirited, ‘Hah! She won’t be so happy when she’s round and fat like my mum!’

  I could have kissed Kieron for that. I really could. Trust him to have the wisdom to say exactly the thing Justin needed to hear. I really felt proud of him that day.

  ‘It’s not really surprising he’s found it difficult to swallow,’ said Mike, once we were tucked up in bed, him with his book and reading glasses and me with my magazine and coffee, like the grandparents-in-waiting we couldn’t believe we now were. ‘Hard for him to separate it from what’s happened with his mum, is it? You know, another woman having a baby, all the fuss and attention and everything. Must remind him of how wretched his own family life is.’ Mike put the word ‘family’ in quote marks with his fingers, and he was right to – what sort of family life was Justin ever going to have? His mother was about as reliable as the British summer. What were the chances of her every really wanting to reconcile with Justin once her ‘princess’, her precious baby daughter, came along? My guess was that she wouldn’t want him within a mile of her.

  But all we could do for Justin was what we were doing already – trying to give him stability and boundaries and affection and, as far as possible, help him to deal with the scars he already h
ad. And I couldn’t dwell on it all – not that night – as I was way too excited. ‘Grandparents’. It made me giggle just to say it out loud. In my head I was way, way too young to be a ‘nanna’, and I laughed when I realised I was actually rehearsing in my head how I was going to break the news to my parents. How mad was that?

  But there was a serious aspect to this incredible new situation; the effect this would have on our fostering. Way in the future, though we’d yet to have so much of an inkling of it, our fostering would turn out to be such a great positive that it would end up having a direct effect on Riley’s own choice of career, but for the moment, as Mike commented, we must proceed with caution. We must make sure we had a much fuller background on future children, especially older ones, to be sure they didn’t have a history of hurting little ones.

  In the meantime, I agreed, thinking about Justin’s reaction earlier, we must take care. If he was still with us when the baby was born – it was due in November – we mustn’t be blind to how that might affect him.

  The days passed, and I never really did get Justin to articulate his difficulty about Riley and her pregnancy. Even though, intuitively, it was so obvious why it affected him, it still would have been so helpful for him to be able to talk his feelings through with me, yet as a subject for discussion, no matter how hard I tried to set things up for him to attempt it, it seemed it was a definite no-go area. I heard second-hand from Kieron that his only other comment to him on the matter was that all girls were ‘slags’ and that he knew ‘all the stuff they do to get pregnant’. He also warned Kieron that he should never get a girlfriend, because they were ‘trouble’.

  Despite him not opening up about it to me, his distaste was still palpable and obvious, even if it wasn’t aggressive. He would simply get up and leave any room Riley entered. Riley herself, blooming and beaming, was philosophic, however. ‘He’ll get over it, Mum,’ she said. ‘I know he will. And I’m not taking it personally. So don’t worry about it.’

  Bless her too, I thought. And she was spot on, of course. If we ignored it, he’d probably get past it all the quicker. In the meantime, we’d just ride it out.

  But his reaction to Riley’s pregnancy aside, I was beginning to feel Justin and I were making progress again. Relations between the two of us were just beginning to feel so much warmer; I could sense a return of the closeness we’d begun to develop before the massive blow-up following his last disclosures. And by the last day of term, as I prepared the crumpets and the chocolate, I realised our weekly ‘points’ meetings were something I had begun to look forward to.

  They were, however, always bitter sweet. Since he was doing well on level two now, he had quite a lot to spend, and a big part of our ‘meeting’ was to sit down together so he could decide what he’d like to spend them on.

  He didn’t tend to deviate a great deal. A third of his points would be used up on the ‘basics’: an 8 p.m. bedtime, TV and DVD player in his bedroom, time to spend on the computer. He was then meant to use the rest of his points up on various things on the pre-arranged programme manager’s list, which included extra peer time or having a pal round for tea. It also, rather poignantly, included ‘sleepovers with friends’ – something that, since the incident with Gregory and the candle wax, would be out of the question for the foreseeable future. Sadly, if predictably, he’d never do all of them anyway, and instead – without commenting in any way about them – he’d just quickly skip the page altogether. He’d then quickly move on to the things that he could do, like ordering a special take-away, choosing a DVD or game rental, or going somewhere special with either one of us or one of his carers. That he had no friends his own age must have been constantly on his mind – how could it not be? – but he’d always come to the last section as if the things he was choosing were the most exciting imaginable, so it didn’t even occur to him to want to have friends.

  It was heartbreaking, yes, but there was a positive to it too. He would confide in me again. And today he did.

  I couldn’t quite pin down what it was that prompted it, but out of the blue, while we were just finalising his treats, he said, ‘You know, when I was eight, I went to hospital.’

  I put my pen down. ‘Really? What for?’

  ‘My mum’s boyfriend beat me up,’ he said, almost casually. ‘He was drunk and he beat me up and I was bleeding an’ that, and it was pretty bad, and in the end Mum said I had to go to hospital. But I had to tell them different. I had to tell the doctors and nurses that I’d been riding my bike and I’d, like, crashed into a wall, and I’d gone over the handlebars and that’s how I got all the bruises. I had to tell them that I landed in a ditch, and that the ditch was full of stones. Rocks, actually. Yeah, it was rocks they said I had to say.’

  I could feel myself blanching at this chilling recall. The little details he’d obviously been carefully schooled to include. Could this be ‘fanciful’? As if. I didn’t think so for a single instant. Once again, given that this would have been recorded somewhere, I found myself doubly shocked that, periodically, he was allowed to go back and live at home. Surely there was a point when enough was enough? When going ‘home’ was making everything much worse? I commented on all this to-ing and fro-ing and Justin seemed genuinely shocked I didn’t know.

  ‘I went home lots,’ he said. ‘You know, when she was okay. When she had a boyfriend. But it never worked out. She never kept me. I ran away one time –’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yeah. When she was with that bloke who beat me up. I ran away and I didn’t know where to go or nothing, so I ended up sleeping in a skip for two nights.’

  ‘In a skip?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah. An’ it was horrible. You know, really scary and that. And I kept thinking someone would be out looking for me, you know – police cars. Social services. Someone. But no-one came and in the end I went home again.’ He scratched his head. I mentally noted that his mop of curls really needed cutting. ‘And you know what? When I came home, an’ that, you know what she did?’

  ‘No I don’t,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. She just looked up from the TV and she said, “Oh, there you are”. And that was it. Then she just said, “Go and see to your brothers”, like I never went missing at all.’

  I kept my voice and expression light, to match Justin’s – he was so matter of fact – as he went on to describe how he used to scavenge in dustbins, to find food for his brothers, and how one time he had to get up very early in the morning so he could go to the woods with one of his mum’s boyfriends to help him pick magic mushrooms for all the grown-ups.

  Listening to him recount this grim collection of childhood memories, I couldn’t help but wonder at how a child could ever hope to come to terms with so much. But when he told me, almost proudly, how he’d been taught how to build a special kind of pipe, for smoking drugs through, describing how you could use a glass milk bottle and a length of hose, it was a real effort of will to stop a red mist from clouding everything.

  But I managed. We finished the crumpets and he seemed so happy that we’d chatted. Instead I noted everything down in my journal that evening. My journal that had become something of a friend to me. It had started pristine and empty, a sea of inviting blank pages, but now it was really filling up. It had been supplied to Mike and I by our fostering agency, and had proved to be a really important piece of kit. Leather bound, with our initials and surname embossed in gold in the bottom corner, it looked far too sophisticated for my scrawly notes. But scrawl I did. Even more so on that night. In fact, the longer Justin was with us, the more detailed and elongated my entries had become.

  And, very soon, there’d be more.

  Chapter 12

  Sunshine, I thought happily, as I yanked open the bedroom curtains. I loved sunshine. I loved sunshine almost as much as I loved snow. You could keep all the dull drizzly stuff in between, but give me sun or give me snow, and I’m in overdrive. Which was something I definitely needed to be today.
‘Mike! It’s sunny!’ I said out loud. ‘Thank God for that!’

  ‘Yes, thanks for the weather report, Case,’ he grunted, squinting. ‘I think I can tell that for myself.’

  Yes, I needed sun today like I’d never needed it before – so much so that I’d even considered doing whatever the opposite of a rain dance is because in our part of the country, sun – even in early May – wasn’t something you could ever rely on. And I needed sun today, particularly, because it was the day of Justin’s party. He would be twelve and we were all of us united in the cause of making it a birthday he would never forget.

  ‘Pleeease get up Mike,’ I begged. ‘Stop snuggling back under that duvet, you old grump – it’s party day!’

  Mike conceded with a groan and threw back the duvet. ‘Okay,’ he said, yawning. ‘I give in. I know I won’t get any peace trying to have a lie in, will I?’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ I replied, tutting, as I practically skipped out of the bedroom. Honestly, I thought, men have no idea!

  In my case, this was no kind of hardship. As with Christmas, my affection for parties was a constant in my life, and my own children’s lives had been punctuated annually with the sort of over-the-top festivities I loved to put on. For Riley, I’d peaked with my ‘Grease’ extravaganza, building a ‘shake shack’ in the garden, making everyone dress in 50s clothes, and having a Frankie Valli lookalike open the party by singing ‘Beauty School Dropout’ just as Riley walked in.

  Kieron, too, had some spectacular birthday bashes over the years, in his case, almost invariably, since he loved comic-book superheroes, involving a giant blow-up Superman or Spiderman scaling the house walls. And now it was Justin’s turn to get the full Casey treatment. I couldn’t wait to get my teeth into this one.