The Boy No One Loved Page 16

  ‘I’ve got my mobile,’ I whispered, as I gave Justin a quick kiss and hug goodbye. ‘We’ll just be in town, so … well. You know … when you’re ready for us to come back and get you …’

  He nodded once, his eyes bright, and trotted meekly down the path. Watching him go, I felt he suddenly looked so young.

  We got back into the car just as the front door closed behind him.

  ‘Ding ding, round two,’ Mike said, softening his words with a grin. ‘So, while they’re at it, love, where shall we go, then?’ I grinned too, but it didn’t matter how much we tried to make light of it; we were both braced, like coiled springs, for the next meltdown.

  Shopping. That was the best thing. Take my mind off it all. ‘Driver,’ I said, in my best upper-class voice, ‘to a baby shop, please. And make it snappy!’

  The call came from Justin about an hour and a half later. We’d been mooching round the shops, our minds not really on booties and buggies and baby paraphernalia, but on him, and I heard my phone straight away because I’d been walking around with it in my jacket pocket. I’d popped it in there because I never heard it in my handbag – voicemail always beat me to it – and this was one call I didn’t want to miss.

  But even so, it was a call no normal caring person would have wanted to take either. Justin was crying, crying hard, really howling down the phone.

  ‘Come and get me, Casey, please,’ he sobbed, amid all sorts of other noise. It sounded like there was some sort of struggle going on. And I could hear his mother shouting at him as clearly as I could hear him. So she must, I thought, really be giving it some welly. And she was. ‘Yeah, that’s right, grass, you just do what you do best! Fucking little grass, you are – as if I don’t have enough on my fucking plate! Go on then –’ there were more sounds, all too difficult to identify. ‘Go on, hit me if you think you’re fucking hard enough!’

  Her voice cut through the other sounds like fingers down a blackboard. I wondered briefly what the two little ones must be thinking about all this. What a thing to witness. It was shocking.

  I started shouting too, then, in order to be heard.’ Justin! Justin!’ I said. ‘It’s okay, love. Keep calm. We’re just in town, okay. We’ll be there in five or ten minutes, no more. Just try to keep calm. We’re on our way.’

  ‘Okay,’ I heard him say. ‘But hurry, Casey, please! She’s a psycho! She’s punching me …’

  Once again, Janice’s voice cut through his sobbing, even as I kept trying to reassure him. By now, the two of us were jogging back through the shopping mall to the exit. ‘You’re the fucking nut-job!’ she screeched at him. ‘Making all that shit up to the social workers! Spit at me again an’ I swear I’ll knock you out, you little bastard! No fucker wants you, you hear? So they’d better fucking hurry …’

  I only hung up once we reached the underground car park. My hand was shaking violently. Five or ten minutes. Could we honestly get there in five or ten minutes? And, anyway, what might have happened by then? I filled Mike in on what I’d heard Janice say, fighting to keep my voice level as he pulled out into the beginnings of the early rush-hour traffic and we sped off. His face was white with anger, and he was driving far too fast. ‘Calm down,’ I kept saying. ‘Watch your speed. Watch your speed, Mike!’

  ‘Why?’ he spat. But I knew he wasn’t talking about his speed. ‘Why do we have to do this, eh, Case? Why are we being made to keep putting this kid through this? Eh? God, isn’t he already damaged enough?’

  When we reached the house I could see Justin peering out of a front window. He disappeared from view almost as soon as I saw him, and reappeared soon after, running out of the front door. He came straight up the path and started tugging at the passenger door even before I’d had a chance to unlock it for him. I clambered out, and immediately saw his dirty, tear-stained face. He was clearly desperate to be gone so I flipped the back of my seat down and helped him into the back, aware, as I looked back, that Janice was once again in her doorway, but now she wasn’t smiling. She was shouting, really loudly.

  ‘Go on, fuck off!’ she railed at us all, waving her hand in wide arcs. ‘Go on, fuck off the lot of you, you fucking snobs! Poking your fucking noses in my business! How dare you! It’s all your fucking fault, is all this!’

  She was pointing straight at me as she said this and I found myself wavering. Between getting back into the car and marching up to her to give her a piece of my mind. She might think she was scary but she didn’t frighten me.

  But Mike, I suspect, must have noticed my body language. ‘Casey!’ he snapped. ‘Just get in the car. Now!’

  Fuming, I jumped in and clamped my lips tight together. He was right. A ranting tirade from me would help nothing. Would probably make things even worse. It was probably the last thing Justin needed to witness. He’d suffered more than enough adults who preferred to behave like children, and there was no way on earth that I wanted to join their sorry ranks. It was hard though. Hard to leave her there shouting the odds, unchallenged. This was so wrong. It took many, many miles for me to calm down.

  Justin was silent, completely silent, all the way home. We didn’t press him. He’d talk when he felt able to talk. Best for now that we didn’t attempt to process what had happened. Best thing would be for him to sleep. Which he did.

  It felt like a very long journey back. No-one spoke, Justin because he’d clearly withdrawn into himself, and me because I didn’t dare open my mouth; I was too terrified of what would come out of it. Mike just drove, his eyes resolutely fixed on the road ahead. The time for post-mortems would be later.

  Once in the house, Justin went straight up to his bedroom, refusing all offers of something to eat or drink.

  ‘That’s fine, love,’ I reassured him, plonking my bag down and stretching. I felt stiff and drained, both inside and out. ‘No wonder you’re not hungry,’ I added, squeezing his shoulder. ‘You can have something later. I’ve got crumpets in …’

  But he didn’t want to know. He was too locked into his misery to even acknowledge me properly. He was off up the stairs, barely registering my words.

  ‘Let him be, love,’ Mike counselled. ‘Come on, let’s get ourselves a drink, eh?’ He shook his head. ‘What a day, eh? What a day.’

  And a day, it turned out, that wasn’t yet over.

  Barely a minute had passed – I was still boiling the kettle – when we became aware of a racket going on above our heads. We exchanged a look, and moved as one out of the kitchen and up the stairs, Mike, ahead of me, taking the treads three at a time.

  ‘He’s barricaded the door,’ he said, trying and failing to enter Justin’s bedroom. The sounds, this close up, were much more obvious, as well as louder. He was smashing things up. Precisely what, we didn’t know. But there was stuff being thrown, being broken, being stamped on. And we couldn’t get in to calm him down.

  ‘Oh, God,’ I said. ‘Justin! Justin!’

  Mike put a hand on my arm. ‘Let’s give it a second or two,’ he whispered, with his usual calm wisdom. ‘Let him get it out of his system. It’s only things, after all. Stuff. All replaceable. Let’s just give him a moment and let him get it out.’

  I reflected miserably that maybe the next thing we bought him should be a punchbag. But, sure enough, within a minute, the noise completely ceased. But it was the briefest of respites, for less than another thirty seconds later. It was replaced by another, even more sickening sound.

  It was immediately obviously what it was. ‘He’s banging his head against the wall, Mike,’ I whispered. Mike nodded. His face set in a grimace. ‘So now we must go in,’ he said. ‘Stand back a moment, love.’ Upon which he promptly shoulder barged the door.

  Mike’s a big guy, and the door didn’t offer much resistance, the pile of stuff Justin had wedged against it tumbling away.

  Justin himself seemed oblivious to us. He was crouched in the corner, and, as we’d guessed, was banging his head, really thumping it against the wall. Mike strode across the room
and sat straight down beside him, but Justin immediately turned, his face streaked with dirty tears, and started pummelling Mike instead, going for it, really punching him.

  Mike took a few blows, all the time trying to soothe him, whispering, ‘Okay, lad, it’s okay. Shhh. I know … it’s okay …’ but eventually he had to use his size and strength as well, pulling Justin close into him and pinning his arms, till the rage inside him began to lose intensity.

  I could hardly bear watch – my own rage was too great. I had to leave this one to Mike, and go downstairs. I needed to calm myself down if I was going to be of any use.

  How could any mother, however feckless, hurt her baby so?

  Chapter 16

  I woke up the next morning with a really thick head – not because I’d spent the night before drowning my sorrows, but because I’d hardly been able to sleep a wink. Funny, I thought ruefully, snuggling up against Mike’s comfortable bulk – boy, was I glad it was Saturday – I’d never really thought about sleep deprivation in all this. That was for foster parents who looked after little babies, wasn’t it? Not strapping twelve-year-old boys.

  I closed my eyes and tried hard to let sleep reclaim me for a bit – I had no plans for the day, bar, perhaps, catching up with Riley; though I saw plenty of her I was acutely aware that, in my head, at least, Justin seemed to be taking all my attention, when what I really craved was enough space and mental energy to enjoy the latter stages of my little girl’s first pregnancy; I wanted to be there for her, support her, not be so preoccupied and worried all the time.

  Which brought me back, full circle, to the events of the previous day. How could a mother treat her own child with such breathtaking cruelty? It didn’t seem to matter how much I or anyone made excuses, it simply went against every maternal instinct in the world for Janice to behave as she had done.

  I wasn’t naive. Wishing for some whimsical utopia was just silly. The fact was that this woman was unable, for whatever reason, to give her child a single iota of love. She obviously saw him as an adversary now as well; her words to him yesterday, screamed out as we were leaving, made it clear that there were only two reasons she’d asked to make contact: one was as a sop to social services about the adequacy of her ‘mothering’ and the other – entirely related to the first one – was to make it clear to him that potentially he’d made things precarious for her, by prompting them to investigate her and her other children further.

  But my anxieties went deeper than my fury at Janice. I couldn’t help wondering what good we were doing. Whether, in the last stressful eight months of his life, we’d actually helped Justin much at all. Sure we’d given him a home and security and boundaries. And we’d certainly given him a healthy amount of good old-fashioned love. But I was full of self-doubt. Really – were we actually helping him? Was anything we did going to help him in the long run to become someone able to find peace within himself and in the world?

  Or was it (as, in my exhausted state, seemed to be more the case) that in reality we were conducting not much more than a holding exercise? Providing a roof over his head, and little more? It certainly felt that way to me at the moment. That we were unearthing a whole Pandora’s box full of issues, none of which I felt we had the power to help resolve.

  ‘Absolute nonsense! Not true!’ said John Fulshaw, with feeling, when I finally got hold of him a couple of hours later. I smiled at that; he was echoing what Mike had remarked earlier, when, whey-faced and gloomy, I’d taken him up a cup of tea. I’d also looked in on Justin, who’d been sleeping like a baby. He’d looked exhausted, and would probably sleep till noon, if we let him. Just looking down at his sleeping form made my blood really boil. For all that had happened, I knew he would forgive his mother anything, if she would just make some small gesture towards allowing him to believe that somewhere deep down she loved him and wanted him.

  ‘I really appreciate your confidence,’ I told John now, having run through the sickening events of the previous day and evening. ‘But that’s really not how it feels to me. But the main thing is Janice. I feel really strongly about this, John. Seeing her is not helping him at all. It really isn’t. Whatever she tells Harrison Green, I have seen the results. And trust me, if he had, he’d desist from this whole idea that the contact, in the current situation, is useful. Trust me, if he’d been there watching Justin banging his head against the wall last night, he’d think twice. The only reason she really had Justin there was to warn him off and punish him, whatever soft-soaping clap-trap she told social services. Honestly, John, if you saw her you’d see what I mean. It was like she was a twelve-year-old herself – not a mother. Just some hysterical pubescent girl ranting at him. All visiting her is doing is reinforcing his feelings of being a bad person, unloved because he’s unlovable, full stop. Can you imagine what it’s like to be constantly told by your own mother that you’re evil and that nobody wants you? I’d have thought he’d already learned that message enough. Twenty times too many, in fact.’

  John sighed. ‘I’m so sorry, Casey. It’s not right to put you and Mike through all this either. We’re going to have to rethink the whole contact situation, aren’t we? That blasted woman just can’t keep on doing this.’

  I smiled wryly to myself again at his polite choice of words for Janice. I could think of lots of them, right now, and, non-PC though it might be, the word ‘blasted’ didn’t feature on my list.

  ‘Tell you what I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘I’m going to call Harrison Green right now and suggest – no, insist – that our own team’s birth-family therapist gets involved with the case.’

  ‘And you’ll suspend contact for the time being?’

  ‘Yes, I think that’s the way forward, depressing an option though that is, for all concerned. But the right decision, I think. Linda – that’s her – can go and do some home visits with her. Make a thorough assessment, maybe even insist Janice goes to parenting classes –’

  ‘She’d do that, you think?’

  ‘She’s not really in a position to argue, is she? So let’s let Linda assess things and then give us feedback on what she feels is the best way forward. That work for you?’

  ‘Yes, it does. It’s definitely better that way, I think. Though, of course, Justin will want to see his mother again eventually – not right now, perhaps; he’s much too angry with her, obviously – but how do we play it if and when he starts asking if he can?’

  ‘We tell him straight,’ said John. ‘She’s lied to him enough. So we won’t. We’ll just have to make it clear that she’s got some emotional issues that we feel are best sorted before they have contact again. But let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’

  ‘Agreed. And if it becomes an issue, I guess we can rethink as and when. But …’

  ‘Yup?’

  ‘In the meantime, I think we need more support here. I know you’re pushed, but I’ve been thinking lots about it lately, and I feel the lines just keep blurring too much. We’re supposed to be in loco parentis, Mike and I, but I feel I’m increasingly playing the role of counsellor with him, which makes it difficult for all of us to provide a stable, relaxed home. It’s one thing him and I having our chats over hot chocolate – that’s good and normal and reassuring for him, obviously – but once I’m trying to ‘counsel’ him I feel it’s in danger of becoming counter-productive. It’s not right for him to start coming home feeling he might be due a ‘therapy session before tea’ – you know? – whether he feels like it or not. Home should feel a place where he doesn’t have those pressures, shouldn’t it?’

  It was funny; we’d learned all about this in training, all the different roles various professionals needed to play in the life of a child stuck in the care system. It had felt complex – most of it like gobbledegook, really, and Mike and I had often raised our eyebrows at all the jargon that was contained in the many handouts we got given to take home.

  But, suddenly, once you’re doing it in real life, all that changes. You start dealin
g with real children, and it starts making sense. So we just sort of picked it up, along the way, as we went. Fostering is many things, but it’s never, ever boring. It’s always a work in progress, there’s always something new to learn.

  ‘Absolutely, Casey,’ John agreed now. ‘You’re spot on. And I’ve been thinking about that anyway, as it happens, in preparation for him going back to school next month. We have an excellent anger-management counsellor on the programme – name of Simon Cole – and I was thinking that, if we – well, ahem, you, I guess! – could persuade Justin to go for it, that we might fix up some sessions with him. Does that sound okay?’ It sounded to me more like the title of that American film, with Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler, but if John thought it would work, I was that last person who’d disagree. ‘And look,’ he added, ‘I know I’ve said it already, but it really bears repeating. You and Mike are doing a fantastic job, you really are. I know it’s difficult for you to see yourselves, because you’re with him 24/7, but all of us have noticed massive changes in Justin. I’m not just saying that, either. We all have. You know, you should feel really proud of the way you’ve been handling all these challenges. You were born to do this, both of you, and we feel really lucky to have you on the programme.’

  ‘Okay, okay, enough!’ I felt compelled to say, blushing. ‘And thanks. It doesn’t feel that way to me right at this moment, but I really do appreciate what you’re saying.’

  ‘As you should,’ John replied. ‘As I keep saying, and will keep saying –’

  But I had to call a halt to all the praises he was singing, reassuring though they were. I could hear Justin coming out of his bedroom. Time to end the call and go and create some of that all-important ‘normality’. If there was nothing else I could do, at least I could do that.