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 …
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 several 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