‘Right, then,’ he said, one afternoon towards the end of the second week, while he was sitting in the kitchen with me, eating his lunch. ‘So all I need is a hundred points a day, and then I get to watch TV, go on the PlayStation for half an hour and play on my DS.’
‘Or,’ I said. ‘Not “and”. It’s “or”. But, yes, that’s right. And any points you get over the hundred can go towards extra things, like ordering a takeaway meal one night, or renting a movie. Things like that.’
He nodded, and continued to study the lists. There was one detailing how many points each given task was worth, and another detailing what they could ‘buy’. I watched how intently he was studying them, his eyes darting back and forth, when he suddenly clapped a hand down on the kitchen table. ‘Aha,’ he said, a grin spreading across his innocent, cherubic face. ‘So, hang on a minute … there’s nothing here about losing points, is there? Is that right, Casey? I don’t lose points for being naughty or anything? I just get to win points for the good stuff I do?’
He clearly wasn’t interested in having a philosophical discussion about carrots versus sticks and their various merits. He’d spotted something. His expression made that clear. I didn’t like the way this conversation seemed to be going. I thought about my answer before replying. ‘Well, I suppose so,’ I said, finally. ‘But then again, if you were doing bad things, you wouldn’t be earning any points, would you?’
‘I could!’ he said, pointing emphatically at the piece of paper. ‘If I clean my room, get ready for school – when I go back to school, anyway – then do two jobs around the house, and go to bed on time without moaning, that’s almost my hundred points, there.’ He grinned. ‘So then all I’d have to do is to be polite and respectful to some adults and that’s it! Even if I did do something bad, I would still have got my hundred points, wouldn’t I? I mean I’m not going to be bad. I’m just saying.’
I stared at Spencer, who was looking as sweet and innocent as the day is long, and then I looked at the points sheet and pondered. Here he was, an eight-year-old, trying to work out how he could turn things – this entirely new situation – to his advantage, and at first glance he appeared to be right. Surely there must be some mistake. I picked up the points sheet and went through it in my mind. Incredible to think that this had never come up before. Incredible to think I’d never even thought it. And then I saw it. ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said. ‘Slow down a bit, Spencer. You are right, in that you wouldn’t lose the points you’d earned that day. But if you had misbehaved on this example day you talk about, then you wouldn’t get the extra points, would you?’
‘Yeah, I would,’ he said. I shook my head. He studied the sheet too. ‘Why not?’
I pointed to the item I’d identified on the sheet. ‘Because if you did something naughty, who would decide it was naughty? An adult. Which means you wouldn’t get the showing respect points, would you? Because it isn’t respectful of an adult’s feelings if you misbehave, is it?’
Spencer took – in fact, almost snatched – the sheet from my hand, so determined was he to prove me wrong. He spent quite a while very obviously searching for a loophole, before slapping it down again and picking up his sandwich, thoroughly cross. ‘Humph,’ he said irritably, before he bit into it. ‘Well, it’s not very clear, that chart, is it?’
I could have ticked him off for his cheek. In fact, it almost made me laugh. Perhaps this was our first glimpse of the real Spencer.
But on the whole he was the picture of perfection, and when Riley and the kids came to visit on the Saturday he even melted my heart a little at the way he was with Levi, who at almost three apparently reminded him of his little brother.
‘Ooh,’ he said, once introduced, ‘you’re just like my little Harvey. Do you wanna come and play with my dinosaurs with me? My Harvey loves dinosaurs.’ He held out his hand and Levi wasted no time in taking it, seeming delighted at having someone new to play with.
Riley pulled out the toy box with the dinosaurs in it, to which Spencer had already added his own stash. Watching, I was taken by his willingness to share. And also his willingness to play with little Levi. Not every child, in my experience, was quite so friendly. It was so obvious he’d come from a home and not a ‘home’ – as in an institution-type home such as the one in which our first foster child had lived.
‘That’s really nice of you,’ I said, as they hauled the box into the middle of the living room. ‘Kind of you to play with Levi. Thanks, love.’
He smiled broadly. ‘It’s fine. I’ll come and let you know when I get bored.’
‘He seems lovely, Mum,’ Riley commented as we went into the kitchen with the baby, leaving the living-room door open so we could still keep an eye on things. There seemed nothing to fear here, but our fingers had been burned; the sort of kids I fostered didn’t always have the usual boundaries, as we’d found out more than once. ‘Really sweet kid,’ she continued, while I cooed over the baby. ‘Shall I sort out some drinks and biscuits for them?’
‘I’ll get the milk,’ I said, hoisting Jackson up onto my hip. ‘You should find some Jaffa Cakes in the treats cupboard.’
She rummaged in my wall cupboard. ‘Nope. There’s half a packet of Jammie Dodgers though. They’ll do.’
‘You sure?’ I asked, joining her. ‘I definitely bought some. You know, I think I’m going mad. That’s about the third time this week that I’ve gone to get something only to find it’s not there.’
Riley laughed. ‘That’s just your age!’
I laughed as well, as she took the snacks in to the children, but it wasn’t. It had happened the day before, too, when I’d brought home a new DVD. I’d looked everywhere – even double-checked the receipt, just to convince myself I’d actually bought it – but having put it down I’d not been able to find it anywhere. I’d asked Mike and I’d asked Spencer, but neither had seen it. And it had been the same with a pair of earrings I’d left by the bathroom basin. And now this. An unpalatable thought began taking shape in my mind.
Riley had now returned and we both sat down at the kitchen table. ‘You know what?’ I said, as I settled Jackson on my lap with his favourite squeaky duck. ‘This isn’t the first time something’s gone missing this week.’ I lowered my voice a little. ‘Now I’m wondering if it’s Spencer.’
‘What, like stealing from you?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe “borrowing”. Or maybe as some sort of game. Who knows? Or maybe it is just my age. It’s just … hmm, well, I think I’ll have to keep my eye out, won’t I? It won’t be the first time. These things do happen. Occupational hazard!’
We moved on then, changed the subject, and got on with catching up on gossip. And when Spencer finally tired of playing dinosaurs with Levi, as he’d predicted, we relocated to the living room so Levi could instead play with Jackson, who’d just started crawling. Well, a kind of crawling, anyway. It was actually more rolling and pulling himself about using his elbows, but it got him from A to B efficiently enough.
Spencer, at that point, went back up to his room, and the rest of the afternoon sped by. So much so that our loose plan to pop to the shops at some point had disappeared along with the Jaffa Cakes. That was often the way things worked out at the moment. One toddler was fine, one little baby was a breeze, but sometimes the business of getting kitted out, and then trailing both of them round town – with an eight-year-old boy in tow now too, for that matter – involved more effort than the pair of us felt like making, especially on what was turning out to be a typically wet late-August day. Spencer had also come back down to join us, and I’d put a Disney film on for them to watch.
We were still in the living room when Mike got home from watching Kieron playing football, and, shocked to find us there, he even commented on