The Boy No One Loved Read online

  ‘You’re up early, love,’ I said. ‘Mike make you breakfast, then, did he?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nah. He went to work ages ago. I made it myself.’

  He seemed proud of having down that. Good, I thought. Good. That would give him some much needed points for his chart. And so much for his ideas about women’s work …

  I ruffled his mop of blond curls and he seemed happy to let me do so. ‘What you reading?’ I asked him.

  ‘The magazine out of Mike’s paper,’ he said brightly. ‘The one with all the telly stuff in it.’

  As he would be, I guessed. He was mad about TV – the soaps, in particular. He was always flicking through the TV mags, or checking on the internet to see what his favourite characters were getting up to. He liked to know in advance what was going to happen and, if he was feeling particularly mischievous, he would often try to spoil the plot if an episode ended on a cliff-hanger, by telling us what would happen next.

  I made myself a coffee and went upstairs to get showered, conscious of the positive mood I could sense. Perhaps today would see some positive developments between us, too. Perhaps he’d finally feel able to talk through what had happened. Cry, even. Let it all come out.

  When I came back down though, he wasn’t there any more – he’d gone into the living room to watch the telly. I picked up his plate and mug and got the cloth to wipe the kitchen table. It was then, as I picked up the magazine to wipe beneath it, that I noticed two holes in the page it was open at. Looking more closely, I realised that the holes weren’t random, either – they’d been punched out through the eyes of a female celebrity.

  I sat down, then, and went through the rest of the magazine, to find that exactly the same had been done on lots of pages; indeed, every dark-haired female celeb in the magazine had had her eyes carefully and precisely removed. I shuddered. It was creepy. It was also a worry. I must call John and tell him about this. It must be, I felt certain, part of a bigger picture, and would need adding to my log right away.

  And that evening saw yet more disturbing behaviour. After cleaning away our dinner plates and checking tomorrow’s menu, so that I could answer Justin’s inevitable question about it, I flicked off the kitchen light and prepared to relax in the living room for the evening, beginning with watching EastEnders, as we habitually did.

  It was only a short way into the programme, when Mike and I became aware that Justin was muttering to himself. He was sitting opposite the pair of us, on the other sofa, on his own, and seemed completely unaware that he was speaking out loud.

  ‘Fucking slag,’ he was muttering. ‘Fucking dirty whore. You’re gonna get what’s coming. Die, you fucking bitch!’

  We stared in shock at this, though he didn’t even see us doing so. He seemed to be doing it to every female dark-haired character he saw. And as the main storyline at that time featured the black-haired Slater sisters, there were lots of dark-haired women on the screen throughout the show. He really didn’t seem to know that he was doing it, either. It was if he was in some sort of trance.

  Mike and I continued to watch him, both of us completely baffled, as he carried on throughout the whole episode. I was positive by now that he was unaware of his actions, and I wondered too, how this was going to pan out.

  It was confirmed when it ended and the credits started rolling. The now familiar dark-eyed and menacing-looking grimace disappeared, almost in an instant. It was as if he mentally shook himself out of a trance, and came back into the room. He turned to me and grinned. ‘I love EastEnders!’ he said cheerfully. We could only nod and smile as he trotted out.

  ‘What the hell?’ Mike asked when he was sure the coast was clear.

  ‘Love,’ I said, shaking my head in disbelief, ‘I can’t even begin to give you a logical answer.’

  ‘How many points has Justin got at the moment?’ Riley asked me. She was on the phone a few days later, with a plan. ‘It’s David’s last day off,’ she explained. ‘So we thought we’d go to the pictures. See a matinee. And we thought Justin might like to come along too.’

  Bless her; I loved how she was so supportive of what we were doing. Especially since Justin often made it so hard for her to like him. I felt so proud of her. And David, as well.

  ‘Great!’ I said, mentally cheering at the prospect of a couple of hours to myself as much as anything. I had a call to make that needed Justin not to be around. ‘It’s also his last day before school starts, so your timing is absolutely perfect,’ I told her. ‘And, yes, I’m sure he has enough points on his chart to do something like that.’ He had, too. Despite my continuing – and growing – concerns about his emotional state since the home visit, he was doing well in all practical respects. He was helping in the kitchen, fretting less volubly about mealtimes, helping tidy the garden, showering without having to be nagged and, I was pleased to note, even getting out a few of the things he’d so pointedly stashed away in his room. A trip out with Riley and David would be just the thing for him. ‘He’ll be thrilled,’ I told her. ‘I’ll go and tell him the good news right away.’

  Justin wasn’t in his room when I went up to tell him, however, and I then realised I could hear the sound of the shower going. What was in residence, however, was a very strange smell. A sort of mixture of body odour and wet dog. And as soon as I smelt it, I was reminded that Kieron had already mentioned this to me. Kieron had said, just a couple of days ago, actually, that Justin’s room smelt a bit like a hamster cage. At the time I hadn’t given it much thought, but now I knew exactly what he meant. I wrinkled my nose as I poked my head in a bit further.

  One of Justin’s rules – and one of the ways he earned points – was that he was responsible for keeping his own room tidy. Not such a big deal, since he still had so little in it. I only went in there myself to collect things like empty mugs and laundry, and since he’d arrived with us, had only spent any time in there to strip and change his bedding for him. Even so, I decided, as I went to call to him in the bathroom, I’d say he’d been with us for coming up to four weeks, so his room could probably do with a bit of dusting and polishing – not to mention de-fumigating now, apparently. So once they’d gone out I decided I’d go in and give it a proper once-over, with the help of some elbow grease and bleach.

  But that could wait till after I’d spoken to John, which I did straight after Riley and David had come to pick Justin up. There was such a lot to tell him that I spent a good ten minutes updating him on the events of the previous few days. ‘I need information,’ I told him, once I’d filled him in on what had happened between Justin and his mum. ‘Surely you can find some files on him somewhere. His behaviour is really giving us cause for concern, and, now we’ve seen how bad things are with his mother, we know there’s so much we aren’t privy to. There must be. He has huge emotional issues.’ I filled John in on the hole-punching business. ‘And my instinct is that they are pretty long-standing. But what’s the root of it all? What specifically? We feel we’re stumbling around completely in the dark here, John. We can’t help him without knowing properly about his background.’

  I knew I must have sounded desperate, but the truth of it was that we were. If others didn’t help us, by giving us some solid information on which to base how we dealt with him, then we couldn’t really help Justin, could we? Only contain his behaviour, which, unless the underlying reasons for that behaviour were established and dealt with, was a pretty pointless thing to be doing. In my opinion we wouldn’t have been doing our job properly, if these crucial questions continued to remain unanswered.

  The good news, however, was that John hadn’t been idle. Indeed, he’d been one step ahead of us already and had tracked down two of Justin’s former social workers.

  ‘One’s retired,’ he said, ‘and one’s now at a different authority. But both have agreed to meet me and discuss more of his background. I am on the case, Casey,’ – he laughed as he said this – ‘I really am. I’ll be back to you as soon as I can, promise.’


  Feeling cheered by John’s news I then trotted upstairs, armed with my collection of germ-busting sprays. There was no smell, however odd, that I, cleaner extraordinaire, couldn’t get to the bottom of and completely expunge, and this one would be no exception.

  My investigations bore fruit pretty quickly. The smell seemed to be coming from the big built-in cupboard in the corner; when I opened it, the stench increased tenfold. I began rootling around among the various shelves and boxes, and eventually came upon a supermarket carrier bag, full of something soft and squashy, and tightly tied at the top. When I finally managed to wrestle it open, my suspicions were confirmed. The stench was so strong, it literally exploded in my face. Gagging now, I peered in and looked at the contents: around ten pairs of dirty, smelly socks. But these were dirty, smelly socks way beyond any usual definition of such articles – and I thought that as someone who’s been a mum to a teenage boy and no stranger to nasty, noxious niffs. They were stiff, too, so had obviously been there a while; they almost crackled as I pulled them from the carrier.

  It was then when I saw something that immediately swept away all my previously light-hearted thoughts about boys and their attention to personal hygiene. No, these socks weren’t just dirty, they were, all of them, bloody. The toe parts of all of them were liberally covered in the stuff, dried on and almost black in colour.

  I got up from the floor and sat down on the bed, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. It was clear now just what the source of the foul smell was, clearer also why he’d so carefully squirrelled them away. Presumably till he could find some secret moment at some point, when he could wash them himself, away from my eyes.

  I put the bag down, and started to search the room further. Which wasn’t something I’d ever dream of doing with my own kids. Not something I’d do, period, in normal circumstances, with anyone. But this was serious. This was necessary, because some instinct drove me on. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew there would be something hidden somewhere. I just knew there was something else to find.

  I was on autopilot now and went methodically through his room, inch by inch, searching carefully in every nook and cranny. And after the best part of an hour spent pretty much ransacking Justin’s bedroom, I finally made my first find. I’d lifted up the mattress by now, to get a better look at the bed base, when I noticed a tiny tear in the mattress itself. It was very small, but also straight and clean and precise – it was clear it hadn’t happened accidently. Very gingerly, I pushed a finger inside.

  My fingertip found it – somewhat suddenly and painfully. I had caught it on the end of something sharp. Not wishing to slice off the top of my finger, I very carefully winkled it out. It was the blade from a craft knife. One that had come out of the set we had bought for him, I imagined.

  Once again, instinct kicked in and drove me on. Brushing aside my initial feelings of dread at what I might find next, I began my second search with renewed vigour. My attention to detail wasn’t disappointed. Within half an hour I had a decidedly grim haul, all laid out on the bedroom floor around me: a variety of knives and blades of all kinds, with which he’d obviously been cutting himself. There were some scissors, which I recognised, that I thought I’d mislaid – I’d even enlisted Justin’s help in trying to find them, I remembered – and two or three disposable razor blades, with the plastic blade holders melted off, which meant he must also have found a lighter or matches. Plus there was a small vegetable knife, which I hadn’t ever seen before, and a Stanley knife, which I guessed he might have taken from our tool box.

  It was a gruesome display, and I sat there and surveyed it with both horror and a great sense of sadness. What would drive any boy to do such a thing?

  This couldn’t have been new. Someone, surely, must have known this. This was how much Justin was hurting.

  Chapter 6

  ‘I just can’t help it,’ Justin said. ‘I know I shouldn’t do it, but I can’t help it.’

  It was the following morning, and Justin and I were sitting in his bedroom, where, after much soul searching, I’d finally confronted him.

  ‘I know, sweetheart, I know,’ I said. ‘But we can’t have you hurting yourself like this, can we? It must really hurt you, and not only that, if I don’t know about it, I can’t help you to keep those cuts clean. They might have got infected, and could have turned really nasty, and then where would we be, my love, eh?’

  I’d been feeling wretched since I’d made my grim discovery. I’d lain awake and tossed and turned all night, berating myself that I’d not been aware of his self-harming before. Surely, or so my mind went, with my long experience of damaged children, I should have noticed something that would have given him away? How had alarm bells not rung when I’d lost the scissors, for example?

  I’d told Mike about how I’d even had Justin helping me to look for them, and how angry I was at myself that it hadn’t occurred to me then. And how had I completely failed to see anything? Notice his feet? Now I’d found what I had, it was clear that they must have been in shreds. And this child wasn’t just a visitor – he lived with us. I felt so guilty and angry at myself. How did he manage to keep something like that hidden from us so well?

  ‘Because he’s a very private person, Case,’ Mike had pointed out to me. ‘You know that. Keeps himself to himself. When exactly do you think you might have seen something? He’s either fully dressed, or in pyjamas, and he’s never without his slippers –’

  ‘And now we know why!’

  ‘Come on, Case. Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s not as if he’s a tot that you’d have to help to wash and dress, is it?’

  Mike had been right, of course, but I still felt this huge sense of guilt. From now on I must be so much more vigilant. I looked at Justin’s anguished face now, and wondered if I should put my arms around him. It was difficult to judge whether to risk it or not. I didn’t want him to clam up now he looked like he was talking to me at last, and the physical contact might just make him do that.

  He was in his pyjamas now – and the ubiquitous slippers – lying on his bed, watching cartoons. Or at least he had been, before I’d come in to confront him with my findings.

  ‘Come on, love. Let me take a look at those feet of yours,’ I coaxed instead. ‘Let me get them cleaned up for you, at least.’

  I kept my expression neutral as Justin slowly pulled off his slippers, though it was as hard a thing to do as I’d had to in a long time. His feet were, as I’d expected, in a terrible mess. You could see this was something he’d been doing for a long time. The nail beds looked infected and the skin around them looked horrible. He obviously dug into them regularly, causing copious bleeding. There were scabs and livid patches all over them. It pained me to think about how much this must have hurt, and again I mentally kicked myself for not realising.

  I could have gone to the bathroom at that point, gathered some supplies and got the job done, but something told me that if I did so I might miss my moment. I got a very strong feeling that he wanted to talk. Just didn’t know how to start. He was staring at his feet now, as if seeing them with new eyes.

  ‘You know what I think, love?’ I said, sitting down beside him on the bed. ‘I think you must have been hurting a very great deal on the inside to want to hurt yourself so much on the outside.’ I paused for a moment to let this sink in, then continued. ‘I also know you’ve had a lot of bad stuff happen in your life. When you were little?’ He nodded. ‘And something else I know is that when young kids go through bad stuff – when kids are too young to really understand what’s happened to them and why, well, sometimes it makes them really angry when they’re older, and then they do things like you’ve been doing to your feet. It’s not your fault, Justin. I’m not cross with you. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  He was silent for a long, long moment, head hanging, then he lifted it and turned to me, his eyes meeting mine. And suddenly came this whole rush of words. ‘What’s to understand, Casey? M
y life’s been fucking shit! She’s a bitch, that’s all. A bitch. She got rid of me, told me all this stuff about how I was trouble and everything. But she kept Alfie and Mikey, didn’t she? Didn’t she? I understand alright. I understand all of it.’ He was crying now, I could see, except so softly and so silently. Leaking tears, almost. It wasn’t anger. It was if he had no fight left in him. Now instinct told me that it would be okay to touch him, so I moved closer and put my arm around his shoulders. I waited for him to stiffen, but he didn’t. Quite the contrary. He leaned into me, burying his head into my chest, and now he started sobbing much harder.

  ‘It was shit,’ he said again. ‘Shit. I mean, I knew she was on drugs. Couldn’t not know. All the kids used to take the piss all the time. But I never knew it was heroin. I never knew that. I mean I knew the name of it, and everything, but not what heroin was, what it does. All I knew was that she never got any food for us. Never fed us. An’ Alfie only needed fucking baby milk, that’s all. An’ she never got it …’

  I squeezed his shoulder. ‘I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to live like that.’

  He lifted his head away a little to look at me again. ‘Casey, can I tell you something?’

  ‘Course you can, love,’ I answered. ‘Though there’s something I need to tell you first, okay?’

  I hated having to do it, but I really needed to say it. It was an essential, integral part of my job that I say it. ‘It’s just that you have to know, Justin, that if it’s something really, really bad that you’re going to tell me, that I have to share it. You understand? So that we can all try to help you. Okay?’

  He nodded, though I wasn’t completely sure it went in. He seemed more focussed on continuing now than listening. And I needed to let him.