When I returned to the kitchen, Mike and Riley, thank goodness, were both laughing.
‘Sounds like you’ve got a proper little madam on your hands!’ Riley said, echoing my own thoughts.
‘Dad’s filled you in, then?’ I asked her.
‘Yes, he has,’ she confirmed. ‘Though don’t worry, Mum. You’ll soon have her learning our ways. No airs and graces in this house!’
I nodded. ‘But I am worried about Kieron,’ I confessed. My son has a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome, which makes him vulnerable in lots of little ways. He doesn’t see bad in anyone, much less any kind of guile, and I suspected, with him being young, not to mention tall and good looking, that he might be a target for Sophia’s attentions. ‘I think he’s going to find her a bit overwhelming,’ I said. ‘She seems a bit over the top in the touchy-feely department – you saw the way she was with that Jack, didn’t you, Mike? She’s definitely a bit flirty around men.’
‘A bit?! And he was mortified,’ Mike agreed. ‘So we’ll just have to prepare Kieron. You know, make it clear that he’ll need to keep his distance.’
‘And put some rules in place, for definite. Even if she’s not going on the programme. She needs some guidelines more suitable for a girl of her age.’
Which was what we did, over the course of the next twenty-four hours, as well as filling Kieron in on how unlike most 12-year-old girls she was, and how running around in boxers might be a very bad idea. I also contacted my old school – the one I’d worked in before the career change into fostering – and secured Sophia a place there to start the following Monday. Finally, I spent a little while on the internet, trying to find out what I could about Addison’s disease. It seemed to be as described – something life-long and incurable – but which, with tablets, seemed straightforward to manage. The only alarming thing I read was that people with the disorder could have ‘crises’, when the levels of hormones fell so low they could die, if not treated immediately by injection. That sounded worrying, and I made a mental note to ask the doctor a bit more. Then I called John Fulshaw, to fill him in too, and was taken aback by his response.
‘Oh, Casey, I can’t tell you, I’m so grateful to you and Mike. After yesterday morning I really thought you’d be calling me to say you’d changed your minds.’
‘Not at all, John,’ I told him. ‘We’re giving this a go. It’ll be different, for sure, but we’ll find a way through it.’
All that done, and with Mike at work and Kieron at college – he was there doing a course in music and media, which he was loving – I trotted off to the conservatory for a sneaky cigarette. I must try to stop, I chided myself, as I did every time, but I couldn’t seem to. I smoked very little, but that emergency packet of twenty that I kept above the fridge-freezer was an absolute lifeline in times of great stress. And I was stressed, I thought, as I opened the patio doors and lit one.
But if I’d known just how much more stressful my life was soon going to become, I think I would have booked myself in for an asbestos lung replacement, ready.
Chapter 3
I was feeling pretty confident when I woke up on the Wednesday morning. I didn’t know why, exactly, but I was certainly glad of it. I glanced at the alarm clock – it was just before seven – and decided I would quickly nip downstairs, grab the morning paper and a coffee, and come back up to bed for half an hour. Mike had already gone to work; he had to go in for about an hour. Then he’d be back by nine, ready to welcome Sophia and her entourage, before our long trip to see the Addison’s doctor.
You deserve this, I told myself, as I slipped back under the cosy, still-warm duvet. So enjoy it. Got one heck of a lot of challenges ahead …
I was downstairs, showered and dressed, by eight thirty, with my hair, which is black and curly, tied in a ponytail. Some days there was nothing else I could do with it. This was one of them. Typical, I thought, as I put the kettle back on. But no matter. I looked calm and casual, I knew, in leggings and a warm baggy jumper, but, sadly, my rush of confidence had gone the way of the shower gel – down the plughole – as thoughts of the day ahead began claiming my attention. A long drive, a lecture on Addison’s, another long drive, then the reality of welcoming Sophia into our home and lives.
I glanced at my watch. Just time to sneak a cigarette and coffee in the conservatory before Mike returned home and the cavalry arrived. I shivered in the cold as I stood there and smoked it, and wished I’d put the heating on an hour earlier. I also wondered who’d turn up with her this time. Surely not all that lot who came on Monday? I put out the cigarette and wandered back into the living room to see.
Yup. It was all that lot, it seemed. By the time I got to the window I could see that three cars had already pulled up in the road outside. But, looking closer, I could see that this time there were fewer people in them. Or rather, getting out of them: John Fulshaw from one car, Linda Sampson from the second and Sam Davies from the third. Sophia herself was already standing by my open gate, seemingly directing operations.
She was dressed to the nines – fur coat, matching hat, her face caked in make-up – and holding the gate open for her retinue to pass through. I stood, open-mouthed, as I watched the tableau before me. I simply couldn’t get my head around the quantity of luggage that seemed to be spewing from the various car boots. I counted them out: four huge suitcases, at least six cardboard boxes and what seemed to be a stack of canvas paintings. I was gobsmacked. Where the hell was all this stuff going to go? And more to the point, why had she brought all this with her, when it was going to be such a short placement?
Equally unbelievably, and I could hear it all clearly from the window, was that this 12-year-old seemed to be barking orders at the adults – and, more incredibly, they seemed to be listening.
‘Careful with that artwork!’ I heard her bark at John, as he passed her. ‘Any tears in those and you’re going to have to pay for it!’ She then clapped her hands together – this was beginning to feel like some bizarre slapstick movie – and said, ‘Chop chop! I don’t have all day!’
Sophia turned then and saw me gaping out of the window. She smiled and waved at me, and then, if my eyes weren’t deceiving me, actually clicked her fingers to beckon me to the front door. Upon which I, on some mad autopilot, and in keeping with her other minions, almost fell over my own coffee table in my rush to get to the hall.
‘Hi, love,’ I said, emerging from the door just as she’d sauntered down the front path. ‘Good grief, you have a lot of luggage, don’t you? Can I help? Do you need a hand with anything?’
‘Hi,’ she responded, marching straight past me. ‘No thanks. You can just tell them to take everything up to my room. I don’t do carrying,’ she then finished, sweetly.
Them? Now I recovered at least some of my senses. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said, speaking also to the adults who were now assembling, partly obscured by the procession of belongings. ‘We’ll just leave it all in the hall for the moment, I think. We can take it –’ and by which, I made a mental note, I meant we ‘– all up to your room later on.’
Nothing terrible happened. No explosion. No strop. She just shrugged and wandered off into the living room, leaving me, mouth slightly agape again, standing in her wake, while she muttered something to herself about ‘the incompetency of idiots’. It honestly beggared belief.
But it was also so absurd as to be hilarious with it, especially as I watched John wrestling with two pink suitcases, which he half hauled, half threw into my hallway. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing, and his withering expression only made it worse. He gave me an old-fashioned look. ‘Don’t,’ he said under his breath. ‘Okay? Just don’t.’
We all congregated, eventually, in the living room, where I invited everyone to take a seat while I made some hot drinks. The hilarious expression on John’s face had really lightened my mood, and I was chuckling