Whereas I’d been beyond open-mouthed in shock at Mike not so much voluntarily offering to go skiing but going away for a week with a coachload of over-excited teenagers. But apparently it was all go-go-go. He had a week’s leave to use up before Easter, and though the 30-hour coach trip held a measure of concern for him he was looking forward to the trip itself almost as much as Tyler. ‘Like riding a bike, it is, you’ll see’ – he’d said that a dozen times, if not more. Trouble was, I wouldn’t. I’d have to wait for the videos.
I gave myself a mental shake and started making breakfast for them both. Least I could do. Goodness only knew when they’d get their next proper meal. So bacon and eggs as a special treat, I thought. And I decided as I stood and watched the bacon begin sizzling that it was time to pull on my big-girl pants and stop being a baby.
Well, only up to a point. Since I was charged with taking the two of them down to the school gates at the allotted time of ten, there was no way I was going to turn straight around and drive home again.
‘Oh, gawd, you’re not going hang around and show me up, are you?’ Tyler groaned as he added his rucksack to the growing pile by the side of the coach and, while Mike went off to bond with all the accompanying teachers, submitted to a kiss and a hug.
‘You really need me to even answer that?’ I said. ‘Now go on, get on the coach before all the window seats have gone, or you won’t be able to see me running down the road alongside with tears streaming down my face, will you?’
Tyler groaned again and made a face at his friend Denver, who’d just arrived. ‘Honest,’ he told him. ‘My mum is just the most embarrassing parent, ever.’
Tyler had been with us long enough now that it often occurred to me that him calling me ‘mum’ to his friends should feel normal. It didn’t. I still got a lump in my throat every time. And it took a huge effort of will, once the coach was ready to leave, not to do exactly what I’d threatened. As it was, after issuing threats about what I’d do to them if they didn’t phone me every single night, I let them go with just a stoic and queenly wave.
Then headed home, thinking what a weird week it would be. Quiet-weird. Not weird-weird. Well, in theory …
By half past eleven I was back in the zone at home – the radio blaring, the doors wide open and my cleaning materials spread out on the kitchen worktops, my headache spirited away on the breeze. Spring was here, the sun was shining, and I had decided to stop moping and instead make the most of my unexpected free time.
I was two hours in, singing as I wiped down the cooker, when my plans were wiped out at a stroke.
Or, rather at the ringing of my mobile. John Fulshaw. My fostering agency link worker. ‘Hi, Casey,’ he said chattily, ‘can you talk?’
He sounded fine. Which was unusual. Normally, if I wasn’t expecting him, his voice would sound urgent, because, normally, it meant an emergency. ‘I can,’ I said, peeling off a rubber glove with my teeth. ‘What’s up?’
‘I was just phoning on the off chance,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t normally ask you, and I know you probably have lots of plans, but I was just wondering if you were free for a couple of days. We need someone to take an 11-year-old boy, as an emergency. We’re really stuck. It seems like everyone’s going away.’
‘Not me,’ I said, then explained about it only being Mike and Tyler. Which was important, because it meant I was at home by myself and that precluded me from taking certain children. There would be no point in John telling me all about this boy if he was the type that had historically attacked single female carers, or who had a background of abuse from a female.
But John was quick to reassure me that Adam – for that was the little boy’s name – wasn’t going to present challenges of that kind. Of any kind, apparently.
‘Oh, no worries there, Casey,’ John reassured me. ‘It’s a pretty straightforward one, this. Adam’s only ever lived with his mum – no father ever in the picture – so he’s used to being with just one carer anyway. He’s not in the system at all, as it happens. This is simply a case of his mother being rushed into hospital for an emergency appendectomy, and he has no family to look after him. Simple as. In fact, he’s at school as we speak, and as yet has no idea that he can’t go home this afternoon, so you can see how we’re fixed.’
‘That’s it?’ I asked, because I had long, long experience of John’s relationship with the words ‘straightforward’ and ‘a couple of days’. Not his fault, obviously – sometimes the most straightforward-looking placements in the world turned out to be the most complicated once you scratched beneath the surface. And sobering too was the fact that you could be living a perfectly straightforward-seeming life, but with no family to provide support in the event of a crisis you really could have your life turned upside down.
‘That’s it,’ John confirmed.
‘Just till his mum is on the mend?’ I asked, it occurring to me that it must be a pretty lonely life if you didn’t even have a friend who could help you out at such a time. But then, all lives were different, and some very lonely.
‘Just till she’s able to be discharged,’ John said. ‘Couple of days or so. Probably just till the beginning of next week. And before you ask, no, there are no other problems.’
I could hear John chuckle. ‘None that we are aware of, at least,’ he added, ‘and no, it’s definitely not one of those calls where I promise it’s only for the weekend when in reality I have nowhere else to place him on Monday. This really is a genuine emergency, and just for a few days, I can assure you.’
‘Right then,’ I said, as I pulled off the second glove with my free hand, ‘I’ll take him. I have nothing else to do this week – the whole tribe are away. Not just Mike and Tyler. So what’s the plan?’
John explained that the school Adam attended was only a couple of miles away and that someone from social services would be going there at lunchtime. There, with the help of Adam’s teacher, they would explain what had happened to his mother. I would meet them all at the school, we’d do the usual introductions, and then it was just a case of me bringing Adam home with me. It was as simple as that. We’d go to visit his mum in hospital as soon as she came out of surgery (she, of course, bless her, already knew the plan), and the moment she was fit enough, and home again, I would hand him back to her. A pretty everyday crisis placement all round.
And, at first sight, there was nothing about Adam to cause me to think he’d be anything other than straightforward. He was a sweet-looking lad, and tiny as well – seeming a good couple of years younger than his 11 years. The kind of lad you couldn’t quite imagine going into high school in a few months, for sure. He was also pale and, while it might partly have been to do with shock, it was a more sallow kind of pale; as though he hadn’t had enough sunlight in a very long time. He looked nervously at me through glasses that were too big for him and kept slipping off his nose, and he also seemed markedly underweight.
On the flip side, however, his school uniform was impeccable. I wondered if he must have a fresh one for every day, because it was remarkably clean and neat-looking for the last day of the school week. His hair, which was thick and the colour of milk chocolate, was clean, shiny and well cut as well. This made me happy. Little things, perhaps, but they added up to a big mental tick; his mum clearly took good care of him.
I introduced myself and sat beside him on the small chair in the head’s office. ‘I’m so sorry about your mum, sweetie,’ I