But, yes, Mike was right, the house was perfect. It had been perfect when we’d viewed it, and was even more perfect now. I could barely believe our luck, really. We’d been eighteen years in our last house, and it had been something of a wrench leaving our children’s childhood home. There were just so many happy memories wrapped up in it.
And it had been a stressful situation that had prompted it, as well. The move had actually been brought about because of problems with Spencer. He’d been a particularly challenging child to foster, to put it mildly, and his antics (at just eight he’d already been like a one-boy walking crime spree) had caused a lot of upset in the neighbourhood. We weren’t exactly forced out, but a great deal of bad feeling had developed, and it had hit home that bringing children such as this into our lives could (and in this case did) have an impact on others, too.
It had certainly forced us to think about the future. And as soon as we’d sat down and considered our options, we realised the timing was right anyway. Not that we’d downsized. Though our own children had flown the nest (Kieron was settled with his girlfriend Lauren, and Riley and her partner David even had two little ones of their own) we’d moved house with children very much still in mind. Our new place was that little bit further out of town, that bit more open and leafy, that bit more suited to serving our fostering needs.
And now, I thought, as I looked around my two freshly painted bedrooms, the house itself was, as well. Now all I needed was a child to put in one of them.
‘So is there anything in the pipeline?’ Riley asked me, having admired both the makeovers. It was Tuesday lunchtime, and Levi, my eldest grandson, was back in nursery full time now, so she’d brought baby Jackson over for a sandwich and a natter before going to pick him up. It seemed impossible to me – almost like the blink of an eye – that my first grandson was three now, and that Jackson would be one year old next month.
Impossible but true. Where had all the time gone? I shook my head. ‘Not as yet,’ I told Riley. ‘Though when I spoke to John last week he seemed to think there might be another little boy coming up. With mainstream carers at the moment, but they’re apparently struggling to cope with him. Multiple issues,’ I went on. ‘And some really entrenched disturbing behaviours, by all accounts. John’s kind of put us on standby while they decide what to do.’
Riley laughed. ‘I bet your ears pricked up straight away,’ she commented. ‘Multiple issues … disturbed behaviours … Sounds right up your street, Mum.’
Which was true; it was exactly why I’d come into fostering. I’d already been thinking about it when I first saw the advertisement for the agency – back when I’d been working as a behaviour manager in a large comprehensive school. An ad seeking people who actively wanted to take on challenging children, the children the system was failing to cope with. ‘Fostering the unfosterable’ had been the slogan. And it had gripped me straight away. It was what I did at school. It was what I felt I was best at. Oh, yes, I thought, challenging was right up my street.
I nodded. ‘But that was last week,’ I said, as we headed back downstairs. ‘I thought I might have heard back by now. I might call him later, as it happens. See what the score is …’
Riley rolled her eyes. ‘You just can’t do it, Mum, can you?’
‘Do what?’ I asked her.
She burst out laughing. ‘Do nothing!’
I didn’t call John in the end. After all, if he had a child for us he’d have called me about them, wouldn’t he? But there was no denying I leapt for my mobile when I heard it buzzing at me the following afternoon. Riley was spot on. I was no good at doing nothing. And since I couldn’t take a job – that was a stipulation for our kind of intense fostering – without a child in, I’d soon be climbing all those freshly painted walls. There was only so much cushion plumping a woman can do and stay sane – even a clean freak like me.
And it wasn’t just through lack of an occupation that I was bored. Now we’d moved house, Mike, who was a warehouse manager, had a slightly longer journey to work and back every day, and with us new to the area, filling the day was itself a challenge. I needed to get out and about, make new friends and get to know the neighbours. But all of these things would take time.
It was also still winter, the days short and mostly murky, not really conducive yet to ambling round the neighbourhood, striking up conversations with strangers. And though our new garden was delighting me almost daily with tantalisingly unidentifiable green shoots, I’d never been much of a one for sitting around. I might be a grandma, but I was still only forty-four. A new challenge was exactly what I wanted.
I was in luck. I picked up my mobile to find John’s name on the display. ‘John,’ I said. ‘How very nice to hear from you. Are we on?’
‘Yes and no,’ he said, piquing my interest immediately. ‘Though, if you’re up for it, it’s going to be something of a change of plan.’
‘Oh?’ I asked, intrigued, pulling out a kitchen chair to sit down. He sounded a little tired and I wondered what he might have been up to. His wasn’t an everyday sort of job, for sure.
‘Well, if you and Mike are amenable, that is.’
‘You already said that,’ I said. ‘Which sounds ominous in itself.’
‘Not at all,’ he was quick to correct me. ‘Not in the way you probably mean, anyway. I mean as in we’re no longer planning on lining you up with that lad we talked about. Got something of an emergency situation on our hands. It’s a girl. Nine years old. Rather unusual scenario for us. I’ve spent most of the day at the General as it happens.’
‘The hospital?’
‘Yup. Got a call from social services first thing. The mother’s quite ill. She has multiple sclerosis –’
‘Oh, the poor thing.’
‘Yes, the whole situation’s pretty grim, frankly. Collapsed this morning, by all accounts, while out trying to buy her daughter a birthday present – she’s going to be ten soon. The little girl’s called Abigail, by the way – Abby – and she’s obviously terribly distraught. Looks like Mum’s going to have to be hospitalised for a period. And there is no other family, which means they have no choice but to …’
‘… take her into care?’ My heart went out to her. The poor child. Not to mention the poor mother. Having their lives ripped apart so suddenly like this. ‘No family at all?’ I asked.
‘Two second cousins, that’s all, both of whom live hundreds of miles away. And they’re not remotely close. Never even met the daughter, let alone know her. So it’s not workable. The last thing anyone wants is for little Abby to be dragged off somewhere, when Mum’s here in hospital, as you can imagine. So she’s had a social worker appointed – Bridget Conley. Have you come across her?’
The name was familiar, but I didn’t think our paths had yet crossed. But I was more interested in how Mike and I fitted into this. From what John was telling me this was a pretty straightforward scenario. A routine foster placement while a care package was presumably put in place for the mother so that they could both go home. Short term. Crisis management. Not the sort of thing Mike and I were needed for. Our speciality involved long-term placements and a defined behaviour-management programme, and was usually for kids who’d been in the care system a long time already and/or had come from profoundly damaging backgrounds. I said as much to John.
‘Ah, well, that’s where this isn’t quite what you might expect, Casey. The mum’s had MS for years. Periods of remission here and there, thankfully, but her condition is quite advanced. The fact that she made it into town at all was something of a miracle, apparently. She’s pretty much housebound and quite profoundly disabled …’
‘So how’s she been managing to look after her little girl, then? You say there’s no family …’
‘Not much of anything or anyone, really, it seems to me. Certainly no care