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  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

  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 m
eant 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

  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 severa
l 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.