The Boy No One Loved Page 17

  ‘Bacon and egg sarnie, love?’ I called up the stairs, brightly. He was hurting a great deal and Mike and I were both worried about further attempts at self-harming; we had been all night and had checked on him constantly.

  Pecker up, Casey, I told myself firmly. It was likely to be a long weekend.

  The more I thought about the anger-management idea, the better I liked it. I knew it was more about addressing the symptoms than the root of the problem, but, as one of the tools in our armoury, it felt like a positive one. Of course it would be hard for Justin to come to terms with all the terrible things that had destroyed his self-worth and self-esteem – perhaps many, many years of support and regular therapy – but while there was nothing much anyone could do about his mother’s rejection, learning to control his emotions in the here and now was a wholly positive thing to do. It would benefit his self-esteem enormously if he could learn to take better control of himself and so stop having even more opprobrium heaped on his young head, such as had happened at school during the last week of the summer term.

  Despite my positive feelings, however, it was exactly the long – and tough – old weekend I’d predicted. We both felt we were only just keeping Justin together. That he was teetering on the brink of complete abject despair. He looked, almost physically, like a scared, wounded animal, who wanted nothing more than to run away from the world for all time; to go to sleep and never wake up again.

  Riley came over later that day, anxious, as was ever her caring way, bless her, to hear how the second visit to his mother had gone. When I told her, she was horrified, almost speechless with shock.

  ‘God, how could she?’ she said, her hand moving in big, gentle arcs over her swollen tummy. I wasn’t even sure it was a conscious thing she did, but to me it spoke volumes, as it echoed my own feelings. We were both mothers now, I realised, and the feeling was universal. To see another mother going against that most fundamental of instincts was stunning her just as much as it had me.

  ‘I’d like to kill her,’ she decided. ‘Well, not kill her, Mum, obviously. But for two pins I’d be up there giving her a piece of my mind about exactly what she’s doing to her own child. That poor kid. Makes you wonder how he gets through each day. It really does. Poor, poor Justin.’

  But it was to be a couple more days before Justin himself wanted to talk about what had happened with his mother.

  It was a midweek afternoon and we were sitting together on the sofa, watching some silly slapstick movie. I had loads of chores to do, but I knew better than to do them. The dust and mess could wait for once, even for a stickler like me. He might not want to talk but he needed to know I was close to him.

  Justin loved those kinds of movies in particular and would normally sit beside me laughing hysterically and fairly constantly. But today he was quiet and still.

  ‘You okay, babes?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m alright,’ he replied. ‘I was just thinking about this Simon bloke. What’ll happen?’

  We’d fixed up the first of Justin’s anger-management sessions a couple of days before. Simon was due to be collecting him in the morning, and though, when I’d explained about it, he’d seemed quite receptive, it must obviously have been playing on his mind.

  Must be difficult, I thought, to be just twelve years old, and to have complete strangers sit and ask you personal questions all the time. I thought back to Kieron when he was a young boy. He’d go scarlet if a stranger said anything to him, even something as innocuous as ‘Good morning’.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,’ I reassured Justin now. ‘I don’t think you’ll have to do anything complicated. He’ll probably just want to start to get to know you.’

  ‘Yeah, but why?’ He had obviously been thinking things through. ‘I don’t see how he can help me. What can he do?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said truthfully. ‘I don’t know that much about it. But it could be really useful, you chatting to him about stuff. You just don’t know unless you try, do you? I think it’s all about trying to look at which things make you angry, and then finding ways to deal with the anger when it comes. You know, like when people get cross about something and say they are going to count to ten instead of shouting. You heard of that?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So it’s sort of like that. Like counting to ten only in more detail. Better than shouting and ranting …’

  ‘I suppose …’

  ‘And better,’ I said, ‘much better than hurting yourself. People do that too, don’t they? Like you did on Friday. You get mad and then end up doing damage to yourself. Which is no good, now, is it?’

  Justin shook his head. ‘No.’ Then he turned round to face me, the film now forgotten. ‘She’s chosen a name for this new kid, you know. It’s gonna be called Princess.’ He pulled a disgusted face. ‘How stupid is that, Casey? What idiot would call a kid Princess?’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said, pulling a bit of a face myself, in solidarity. ‘Mind you, look at pop stars. Some of them have really daft names for their kids.’

  He harrumphed. ‘An’ you know why she’s calling it that? Because she’s going to be treated just like a princess, she told me. And have everything she wants, and all that. She was being really mean about my brothers, an’ all, too, saying they were ending up like me and how she wished they were never born.’

  ‘That’s awful, love,’ I said. ‘She shouldn’t say things like that. No wonder you got mad …’

  ‘I told her, though,’ he said, his voice suddenly animated. ‘I told her and I spat at her, because she’s wicked. She’s a bitch, Casey, and I’m never going to speak to her again. Let her and her spoiled brat princess just carry on. I don’t care. I’m not bothered any more.’

  He slumped back in his seat and returned his attention to the movie, obviously having said all he needed to about it.

  In contrast, I could feel my own anger bubbling up again, fighting to keep my voice even as I tried to console him by saying the very thing that was professional and proper in the circumstances, but at the same time I went against everything I felt.

  ‘Give it time, babes, ‘I said softly, ‘after all, she is your mum. She was probably just lashing out at you because she’s pregnant. When you’re pregnant, you know, your hormones go all over the place. You know about hormones?’ He nodded. ‘And you know what we’ve been saying about Riley, and being all loopy? It does happen. So give it time. Your mum wouldn’t have meant it. Not really.’

  I could have cried when I saw the flicker of hope in his young eyes.

  I felt awful. Felt like a traitor.

  Chapter 17

  It was late August and, now that Justin was making such great progress with his new counsellor, we decided we could take the plunge and plan a short family holiday. Heaven knew, we all felt that we needed one.

  For all my anxieties about Justin’s progress having been so patchy, it seemed the anger-management sessions were doing a great deal of good. Simon Cole himself certainly thought so. He told us he was making great strides in getting Justin to understand his anger – where it came from, both in terms of its history and what triggered it, and also in making him realise that his anger towards his mother was something he’d turned, over the years of his short, distressing life, into a generalised anger against all women.

  Justin was also now keeping a journal, and writing in it regularly, setting down what he was getting from each session. He’d also show this to me and want to talk about the sessions, which was good news all round. Solid progress.

  We decided on Magaluf, in Mallorca, because we hadn’t been there before, and managed to bag ourselves a last-minute bargain. This was going to be quite a big adventure for Justin, as holidays were a luxury he didn’t generally enjoy. He’d only once been abroad, during a previous foster placement, when the couple had taken him to a villa they owned in Greece, which had been okay, he explained to me, but had got a bit boring after a while. It wa
s situated in the middle of nowhere, up a mountain, apparently, and there was absolutely no-one else around. So, left to his own devices much of the time, while they sat and read (improving books, I didn’t doubt), he’d struggled to find things to do.

  I rolled my eyes, wondering at the wisdom of taking a child like Justin into the middle of nowhere, with no telly, no entertainment and no distractions. Still, foster carers came in all sorts of guises, I supposed, so I shouldn’t and wouldn’t judge them, and I didn’t doubt that, for another child, it would have been perfect, just as a busy corner of sunny Spain would be perfect for this one. Come to think of it, I didn’t doubt – and here I smiled to myself – that for a different kind of child joining our extended family and our madhouse might be every bit as much of a challenge. ‘Well, brace yourself,’ I said, grinning, as I showed him some pictures and reviews on the internet. ‘Because this holiday will be nothing like that one. We’re staying in a big holiday complex, on a beach, on the edge of a big resort, and there are lots of swimming pools and slides and entertainment and shops and restaurants … So one thing I can promise is that you definitely won’t be bored!’

  I’d already thought of that, in any case, since Justin still found it hard to make friends – I’d asked my sister if we could also take along my niece and nephew, Chloe and Daniel, who were now 13 and 12 respectively. By now they knew Justin well, and they were all rubbing along fine in the main, so I thought it would be a shrewd move to have them there too.

  Naturally, everyone was quite happy with this arrangement; my niece and nephew got an extra holiday, my sister and brother-in-law got an unexpected and unscheduled week off, and Riley, who at 29 weeks was now almost too pregnant to travel, knew she would only be on standby for Auntie Riley-type duties, and could make the most of one of her last weeks of peace, quiet and sleep in the balmy surroundings of the sunny Balearics, mostly from the comfort of a big sunbed.

  David, unfortunately, couldn’t come, because he’d just won a big work contract, and was keen anyway to cram in as many hours now as possible, so he had time and money in hand for those all important, and precious, first weeks after the birth. The only other person who wasn’t going to come with us was Kieron. Kieron, being the way he was, really didn’t like going on holiday, which in itself was proof positive that parenting is something you really do learn on the job, as it was something we’d only discovered recently.

  He’d always come on holiday with us when he was growing up, of course, and his quietness when away we’d put down to the fact that he was a quiet boy in a very noisy family. But a year or so back he’d admitted that holidays, generally speaking, were all a bit much for him. He found it difficult to deal with the change in both his surroundings and his routine. So he was more than happy to stay home, look after Bob, and have his grandparents for company. They’d come to stay and help him house sit while the rest of us were away.

  And in what seemed like just a handful of days, we all were.

  ‘It’s amazing!’ Justin said, as we clambered down off the coach at the complex. He’d been in a state of excitement ever since we’d left the house back in England, and sat glued to the window for the duration of the flight, commenting in awed tones about everything he could see. He was like a shaken bottle of pop, about to blow at any moment. After the long drag of travelling, Mike and I were both glad our timings were such that there’d still be time for the kids to go in the pool for a bit of a splash about. It was very hot, and they all really needed to cool down while we got settled in and had a drink.

  But the cooling down, it seemed, didn’t actually have the desired effect. Not in Justin’s case it didn’t, for sure.

  We’d decided on Chinese for our first meal of the holiday. There was a big place only a short walk from the hotel complex, that we’d seen on our way in and which a poster in our hotel’s lobby had recommended. It was also good value, being an all-you-can-eat buffet: the ideal place to take three hungry kids.

  Right away though, it was clear – both Mike and I noticed it – that Justin was out of his comfort zone. Thinking about it later, I suppose it was something we should have planned for, but it had been a while now since there had been any food issues at home, because Justin had adjusted to our routine. Well, actually, it was more a case of us adjusting to Justin’s routine, in that routine mealtimes had now become the norm for us. I’d even convinced myself, I think, that the regime of set mealtimes, with menus planned in advance, was the better option as it took away the stress of having to constantly think what to cook. We did take him to restaurants, but we were organised about that too – always telling him in advance and sticking to the usual schedule.

  I’d still made a point of explaining how things would be on holiday, that we’d be eating out a lot and that the timings might vary, but at the same time I reassured him that, whatever the changes, he’d still have three meals and a snack every day.

  Justin had seemed to take all this on board, and assured me that he would be fine. Straight away, however, he gave us cause for concern, and I immediately wondered if we’d been over-confident; it was one thing to accept something as a concept in the future, but quite another to have to deal with the reality.

  The food was laid out, buffet-style, on a big communal serving area, and, once given his plate and told to help himself, Justin wellied in and did just that. While the rest of us just picked the usual modest quantity of items – knowing, of course, that we could come back for more if we were still hungry – Justin was filling his own plate as if his very survival depended upon it. I was pretty sure he didn’t even know what half the items were, but he was piling them on nevertheless, in an ever increasing, and somewhat teetering tower, till bits of food were actually hanging off the rim of his plate.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ asked my niece Chloe, incredulously, as we sat back down at the table. Mike had lingered at the buffet, waiting for Justin to finish choosing, but I could tell that he’d decided not to tackle him about it. I could see him gesturing to him to finish loading up and come back.

  My nephew, now alerted to the Desperate Dan-sized meal Justin was now heading back with, giggled as he watched bits fall from the plate as he walked, and the fronds of dangling noodle swinging as he walked.

  ‘Shh, Daniel,’ said Riley, who was, like me, clearly clocking a potential scene building as she saw the determined and slightly strange expression on Justin’s face. ‘You just concentrate on not getting soya sauce down your T-shirt, okay?’

  Justin was back then, and once seated, started tucking into his huge plateful. Which, to all our astonishment, he very quickly polished off. Then, before I could even so much as open my mouth to speak to him, he pushed his chair back and headed off to the buffet again.

  Once again, Mike and I exchanged nervous glances. What had possessed me to come to a place like this? I thought. This was like a red rag to a bull. All that food, all that choice, all those issues he was struggling with. How could he not feel this compulsion to cram in as much as he could?

  He returned with a second plate, just as overflowing as the first one, and began immediately tucking into that one as well. By now I was feeling nauseous just watching him! He was a good half-way through before he floundered and slowed down, but the look of complete focus had not left his face.

  ‘Getting full, mate?’ Mike asked lightly, though in truth we were all feeling tense now. I was already aware of a couple of people whispering and nudging each other as Justin had walked by with the second plate, not least because several bits had dropped on the carpet and a waitress had rushed across to gather them up.

  ‘No,’ he said shortly, speaking through a mouth full of noodles.

  ‘Come on, love,’ I said. ‘Don’t be silly now. You can’t possibly still be hungry.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ he replied defiantly. ‘An’ it says “All You Can Eat”, doesn’t it? So that’s what I’m going to do.’

  His voice had become loud enough so that heads had begun turning.
‘I know it does, love,’ I tried again. ‘But that doesn’t mean you have to eat enough for three people. At least try and leave room for some dessert!’

  Chloe and Daniel were both cringing by now, their giggles at the spectacle of Justin’s super-sized food mountain being replaced by those of embarrassment, as, glowering, he doggedly kept shovelling in food. He was looking ill by now, his face pale and shiny with perspiration, but he seemed determined to cram in every last mouthful. And it seemed he had every intention of finding room for dessert, too, because he now stood up again, with the rest of us still eating, and made a beeline for the trolley at the end of the buffet table, which was piled with a selection of child-friendly things.

  This time, however, he didn’t even get himself a plate to fill up. He just stood there, to both our and other diners’ consternation, grabbing items of fruit, carton jellies and pots of crème fraiche and yoghurt, and cramming as many as he could into his pockets, while stuffing cream cakes in his mouth with his free hand.

  Mike was up on his feet and over there just as the staff had started looking anxious; being typically Chinese, they were too polite to say anything outright. But Mike did.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘Now put some of that stuff back, please, there’s a good lad. You’ve taken far too much food for one person to eat.’

  Justin’s reaction was as loud as it was shocking. ‘Leave me alone!’ he said. ‘Just fuck off and leave me alone!’ At which point Mike had to take him by the arm and frog-march him back to the table, to a whispered chorus of ‘tut!’s and ‘ooh er!’s. ‘I think it’s time,’ he said tightly, as they got back to the table, ‘for us to pay up for what we’ve had and call it a night.’

  To my immense relief, it seemed Justin had had his fill of Mike’s very evident disapproval, and as I hurried over to settle up and apologise to the waitress, Justin headed back out into the street with Mike meekly enough, while Riley, Chloe and Daniel could only look on, aghast.