‘You’ve what?’ Mike asked after I got through to his mobile and told him that I’d taken in a child only hours after he had left.
The anxiety in his voice was perfectly reasonable. The sorts of children we normally specialised in fostering weren’t the kind of kids you contemplated lightly. ‘He’s a sweetheart,’ I reassured him, ‘and it’s only for a few days while his mum’s in hospital.’ I then went on to reassure him that, no, Adam didn’t put her there, and that all being well he’d be gone before they were home again. ‘Besides,’ I said, ‘it’ll keep me occupied, won’t it? While you and Ty are having your alpine adventure.’
‘Adventure?’ Mike groaned. ‘The only adventure I’ve had so far is in trying to unbend myself out of that flipping coach seat. I’m as stiff as a board and – sod’s law – no sooner do I finally get comfortable enough to nod off than we pull up outside the blinking lodge! Gawd knows where I’m going to find the energy to ski, even after the measly hours’ kip we’ve been granted.’
Tyler, predictably, was bouncing off the ceiling. No, I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it in his voice. Though once he’d told me about the coach journey, the Channel Tunnel, the mountains and the snow, he did express regret that I had another child in and he wasn’t around to join in.
Which both tickled and moved me. You’d expect – well, I think I would – that a child with Tyler’s background would suffer pangs of, if not full-blown jealousy, at least of insecurity whenever a new child came into our lives. And we had always been braced for it, too. Yet it never happened. I don’t know why, and I’d certainly not claim any credit, but there was something about Tyler and how secure he obviously felt with us that let him welcome any new child wholeheartedly.
I wasn’t sure why, but my hunch was that it made him feel even more one of us. Part of the fostering ‘team’. He was certainly anxious to know all about Adam, and quick to suggest things I might do with him after I’d taken him to see his mum, from the climbing wall at our local leisure centre to a turn on the dry ski slope he’d been on with school.
‘Or swimming,’ he suggested. ‘That’s on the way to the hospital.’ Which seemed the perfect idea. So I ran with it. Except the next call, to the hospital, brought the dispiriting news that Adam’s mum still wasn’t able to see him.
‘It’s the medication we had to give her,’ the ward sister explained. ‘It’s an opiate – she’s had a lot of pain overnight unfortunately – and it’s making her too drowsy to be intelligible.’
‘She’s all right, though, is she?’ I asked, anxious that there might have been some sort of complication.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ the nurse was quick to reassure me. ‘Her vital signs are all fine. She’s just in a lot of pain, and we’re dealing with it. She’ll be right as rain by tomorrow, you’ll see. And in a much better place in terms of seeing her little boy. And, truth be told, he’ll be much more reassured when he does see her than he would be today.’
Which was a fair point. No child likes to see their parent as vulnerable, and if Adam’s mum was all over the place (as, with experience of strong painkillers, I knew she probably would be) it made no sense to alarm him unduly. So that was that. When Adam walked sleepily into the kitchen half an hour later it was to hear that yet again he wouldn’t be seeing his beloved mother.
He looked distraught, and I could see he was trying to stop himself from crying. ‘Mum will be so upset if she doesn’t see me soon,’ he said, as I hurried to put an arm around him. ‘I don’t know how she’ll cope, I really don’t.’
That struck me as a strange thing to say. He reached out as I hugged him and grabbed his painting off the kitchen table, tracing a finger along the arm of the figure on the bed. ‘She’s going to worry about me,’ he added.
‘Of course she is, sweetie,’ I agreed. ‘But she knows you’re being looked after …’
‘But does she know I’m okay? You know. Not ill or anything?’
‘Of course she does,’ I lied. There’d been no such conversation. But, then again, why ever would there have been? ‘She knows you’re fine, that you beat me at chess – two whole times! – and that you’re eating me out of house and home. On which note, what d’you fancy for breakfast?’
Quite a lot, as it turned out, once Adam had been reassured. Eggs and bacon, some toast and a bowl of cereal. And it struck me that perhaps Adam was a teeny pint-sized athlete, and though I certainly wouldn’t be climbing any indoor walls, or falling down any ski slopes, he might relish doing all of the activities Tyler had suggested.
Swimming, however, seemed to win the day.
‘I love swimming,’ he told me. ‘We’re going with school next term, too. So I need to practise for my 600 metres.’
‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘Swimming it shall be, then.’
Adam frowned. ‘But what am I going to do about swimming shorts? The social lady didn’t pack any for me.’
‘Not a problem,’ I reassured him. ‘I have quite a selection. We had a boy stay with us for a while a few years back. His name was Spencer. And he was a bit of a water baby too.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Though which football team do you support? Can’t have you swimming with the enemy.’
It was the work of moments to establish that Adam had not the least interest in football. Never played it – except sometimes, at school, when he was made to – and had no allegiance to any team. He seemed more interested in Spencer and the whys and wherefores of his stay with us.
‘Do you have lots of boys come to stay here?’ he asked, once I’d sketched a few details for him.
‘I do,’ I said, ‘and girls. Some for short stays, like you, and some, like my Tyler, who stay with us for a long time.’
‘Why?’ he asked. Which seemed a reasonable enough question.
‘Because not everyone is lucky enough to have a mum who loves them like yours does,’ I told him. ‘And sometimes, because some mums and dads, for all sorts of reasons, can’t look after their children themselves.’
‘So is this in care? Me being here?’ He looked suddenly anxious.
‘Yes, officially, I suppose,’ I said. ‘But not the way you might have heard of it. I’m simply taking care of you till your mum’s better and she can look after you again herself.’
‘Does she know about you?’ he asked me, as we climbed the stairs to go rummage in my clothes cupboard. ‘You know – that you’re a proper carer person and I’m safe and that?’
‘Of course.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘She won’t worry so much about me then, will she?’
By then the all-important business of choosing swim shorts was underway, or perhaps I would have pondered that a little more fully.
We spent a lovely morning swimming, and despite my earlier assumption, Adam turned out not to be the athlete I had suspected. In fact, he struggled in the water. It was clear he loved it, however, and was keen to improve, not to mention revelling in the opportunity to go a little wild and splash and scream down the water slides – the ones at the shallow end, normally enjoyed by kids half his age.
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