With our ‘pre’-placement meeting scheduled for nine thirty (what had possessed me?) it was a mad dash just getting back from dropping Tyler off at high school, let alone making anything like the sort of domestic effort I’d have wanted to before John and Tyler’s new social worker descended on me.
It was another Thursday – I could hardly believe it had been a full fortnight we’d had Tyler now – and the house felt not so much messy as ‘invaded’. And not just by the enormous chart – already filling up with ticks and numbers – that now spanned the entire top door of the fridge-freezer. No, we were experiencing an advanced case of ‘child-creep’. I’ve always been a bit OCD about cleaning – something I probably inherited from my mother – and one thing our extended period without a child staying had done was to furnish me with some pretty big rose-tinted glasses. Forget the wall-to-wall tension, the shouting and the equally noisy stony silences – how had it slipped my mind what a huge a difference in the domestic workload one 11-year-old boy could make? Particularly one who was so volatile. And life had already felt something of a whirlwind, in any case, even without the one-child tornado now residing with us. Dad was well on the mend, but I still needed to help Mum with a lot of the day-to-day domestics, and I was very conscious that Riley also had a lot on her plate, so I was trying to juggle hurricane Tyler with the twin mini-typhoons that were my grandsons. Another thing I’d forgotten was quite how many ‘runs’ were involved in Levi and Jackson’s school, nursery and social commitments, and it was all I could do to draw breath.
I took a deep one now as I turned the car into the drive and found my eye inescapably drawn to the still taped-up glass panel at the side of my front door. And in doing so, I yet again asked myself the same question – had I been just a bit too impulsive in rushing to take Tyler on? Was this really the best time in our lives to be behaviour-managing a boy who had such extreme anger? Had I been selfish in even considering it? And not just in terms of my own commitments, either. Was it really fair on the rest of the family? This was my absolute last chance to pull out, and I knew it.
I climbed out of the car and headed indoors to at least tidy up the kitchen and dining room. I still had the best part of an hour, so could probably make the place reasonably respectable, and while I did so I knew I’d run through the same loop of self-interrogation. Which was pointless. I always felt a bit like this, didn’t I? At this point in the process, with the full extent of a child’s difficulties and attendant behaviour problems laid bare, invariably came a rush of regretful hindsight. They always say you never know someone till you live with them, don’t they? And though I think it’s an expression which is normally applied to marriage, the same very much applied to foster children. Perhaps more so, because it kind of went with the territory of getting to know them. They learned to build such high walls around themselves – that was so often their way of coping – and it was only the breaking down of them that brought the grim reality into view.
But I also knew, as far as Mike and I were concerned anyway, that Tyler wasn’t going anywhere. I had known it that Saturday, because it would take much more than what he’d done to make me quit. Had had it confirmed an hour ago when I saw him sneak a peek into his lunchbox and do a little fist-pump on seeing the chocolate brownie I’d put in there – the same brownies he’d made such a show of not being ‘bothered’ about when I’d given him one fresh from the oven the day before. Little things, I thought, as I switched off the engine. Little increments.
John’s car pulled up outside at precisely nine thirty, disgorging both him and a rangy-looking guy in T-shirt and jeans. This would be Will Fisher – Tyler’s new social worker. He looked young – perhaps late twenties or early thirties, I guessed – with shoulder-length hair that my mum would have said needed someone to drag a comb through it. It was dark blond and wavy and looked faintly messianic and I decided he’d have looked equally at home with a guitar slung over his shoulder, fronting an indie band and crooning love songs to screaming teenage fans. I grinned to myself as I watched the pair shut the car doors. They were laughing at some shared joke over the roof as they did so, and knew I’d been right in thinking I hadn’t previously met Will – I very much doubted that I would have forgotten him.
I was also glad he was young and male, because I felt there was a chance that Tyler would respond well to him. And that mattered a lot, as one of the first things John had promised was that Will would be taking Tyler out on a regular basis, both to get to know him (and hopefully foster another crucial positive adult relationship which would continue beyond his spell with us) and to give us what I already knew would be a much-needed break. And my hunch was that Tyler responded well to males. No, he’d not got off to the best start with my poor son, admittedly, but Kieron had since been back again – he and his girlfriend Lauren had stopped by for tea on the Tuesday, and I had felt a positive change in the dynamic. Was I being whimsical in sensing that Tyler wasn’t just looking up at him; that he was wondering if he should look up to him too?
I mentally crossed my fingers that he might look up to Will as well. Not that you could second-guess that sort of thing about social workers really. They came in as many different varieties as did foster families, after all. There was no ‘one size fits all’ when it came to these kinds of careers. People went into them from all sorts of backgrounds, and with all sorts of motivations, and over the years I’d come across all sorts of different people, who brought all kinds of different things to the task at hand. One thing we all shared, however, was a common goal: to make the best of what, more often than not, was a pretty grim situation for whichever child was in our hands.
I went to the front door and opened it just as John was lifting his hand to press the bell, and as soon as I saw Will close up I decided I liked him. A snap judgement, yes, but I’d have been surprised if I’d have to revise it. And based on nothing more substantial than the slogan on his T-shirt – ‘Imagine Whirled Peas!’ – and the strength and immediacy of his handshake.
‘So,’ John said, after the usual introductions, ‘Casey, how are you?’ The emphasis was, I noted, very much on the ‘are’. As it would be – he’d called for an update at the beginning of the week, and had certainly got one. ‘And how’s your dad doing?’ he added, as I ushered them both in.
‘Better than anyone expected, actually,’ I told him as we went into the kitchen. As it was going to be just the three of us, there was more than enough space around the table, and the kitchen was the one room I always managed to keep on top of. ‘Which is just as well, really,’ I added, gesturing that they both sit down. ‘Given that in just a fortnight we’ve had a broken door pane, a broken clock and the makings of the third world war.’
‘Clock? Should I ask about the clock,’ he ventured, ‘or is this – ahem – a bad time?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, nudging him playfully. ‘What is the time anyway? I have no means of telling any more, do I?’
‘Er, I’ll take that as a no, then,’ John said, groaning, as I made coffee and Will began extracting paperwork from a big battered messenger bag. ‘So will Mike be joining us?’
I shook my head. ‘He would have done,’ I said, ‘but work’s a bit manic at the moment. And given that the baptism of fire’s already happened, there didn’t seem much point in him taking time off.’ I smiled at them both. ‘And it’s not as if he needs preparing for the worst, after all, is it? No, I’ll update him on everything tonight.’
In fact, the broken clock was just a casualty of the third world war. Just on the wrong wall at the wrong time – i.e. in the vicinity of a door that Tyler had decided needed slamming – and, being a veteran anyway, had had its period of active service abruptly curtailed.
As opposed to Mike and I, who had by now