‘Mum, he’s weird,’ had been Kieron’s considered view after spending a little time with him, echoing Tyler’s thoughts. ‘His face when he’s killing things is plain creepy.’
And it was an impression that hadn’t changed for Tyler either. He seemed happiest skirting around Miller wherever possible, and as he was knee-deep in revision for his coming exams, I wasn’t about to try and coax him to do more. Not least because I could feel the tension crackle between them whenever they were in the room together; I had this strong sense that Ty, though he’d never actually said so, would much rather his home hadn’t been invaded by Miller – our Ty, who, because of his own difficult background, had a huge amount of sympathy for difficult kids as his default. And I really didn’t want him to have to deal with any stress; not with his exams coming up.
Ditto Mike, despite him similarly being happy to do his bit. We were supposed to be a team, after all. But of all the kids I’d ever fostered – and this struck me as weird myself – Miller felt very much my responsibility. My personal cross to bear.
And my self-inflicted personal bête noire as well? It was becoming to seem so. ‘Love, just make him go out with you,’ Mike had said, more than once. But no tool in my toolbox seemed up to the job. Short of lassoing him and dragging him bodily to the car, kicking and screaming, I had no means of doing so, did I? Not with a child who knew exactly the way things worked; that physically dragging him anywhere could so easily be ‘spun’ into an official allegation of assault.
And that was the confounding crux of it all. Most kids, in my experience, at least have some fear of consequences. The bar might be set high with damaged, vulnerable children, but there would usually be some point, even if way beyond normal boundaries, when they’d pull back, frightened about what might happen to them if they tried to go further. Miller, however, displayed no fear at all. Indeed, it often felt as though he pushed us because he welcomed the consequences, because they fitted with his world view. Certainly, when he got them – almost exclusively to lose the right to play computer games – he would smile, almost knowingly, as if his hunch had been right: that adults couldn’t be trusted; that all they wanted was to make his life difficult.
Still, today was Saturday, which at least meant I had a little company.
Though right now, not of the pleasant kind, it seemed.
I was just easing into another day, sitting sipping my second coffee in the kitchen, when I heard a furious yelling coming from the top of the stairs. Not Miller, but Tyler, who was decidedly unhappy.
‘Mum! What the hell is going on with this internet?’
I pushed my chair back and pulled my dressing-gown cord a little tighter, then went out into the hall to see what was going on. Though things ‘going on’ when it came to anything internet-related were about as far from my area of expertise as it was possible to be. I was still at the same ‘bash the telly to see if the picture improves’ stage I’d been at since about 1973.
He was standing at the top of the stairs, fuming. ‘What’s up, love?’ I asked. ‘Has it gone off again?’
Tyler’s face was a picture of barely contained anger. ‘Yes it has. And if I’ve lost my assignment I’m going to go so mad,’ he said. ‘It’s the third time this morning and it’s driving me nuts. I was halfway through some coursework, which I haven’t even saved yet, and all the bits of research I had opened have gone!’
‘Well you can still save the work you’ve done, love,’ I said, trying to be helpful. ‘And Dad’ll be home from work before too long, won’t he? I’m sure he’ll know what to do. But if he doesn’t, we’ll get on to the internet company and find out what’s happening, okay?’
Tyler sighed theatrically, and slapped his hands against his sides. Then glared pointedly towards Miller’s closed bedroom door, before stomping off into his own room. I saw his point. It had gone off suddenly a couple of times one night in the week, and we’d already visited the idea that it might been something to do with Miller. But Mike had interrogated, investigated, and run all kinds of checks, and declared it to have been ‘just one of those things’, reassuring me that while Miller could control lots of things, our entire domestic internet wasn’t one of them. Not without us realising, anyway.
Even so, it now occurred to me that if the internet was off again, then Miller couldn’t be playing on the PlayStation, could he? So why wasn’t he kicking off as well? He had ants in his pants if he had to wait five minutes to eat a sandwich, if it meant losing some precious game time.
So what was he up to instead? I headed upstairs to find out.
I was surprised to see him sitting quietly on his bed, writing something on a large unlined notepad. It wasn’t one I recognised. Perhaps something from his case? I wondered if the little train I’d read about was somewhere in there too. Though now obviously wasn’t the time to ask him.
The TV screen was also blank. ‘First time I’ve see that thing off,’ I remarked mildly. ‘You not playing on your game this morning?’
Miller didn’t look up from his writing. He simply shrugged. ‘I was. I can’t play it right now, though. It’s off.’
Again, a completely uncharacteristic lack of concern.
‘Because of the internet going off again?’ I asked. ‘I’m going to try unplugging it and reconnecting it. See if that works. It often does.’
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Miller said. ‘It’ll be back on again in ten minutes.’
It would be wrong to say alarm bells rang in my head. They didn’t need to.
‘And how exactly would you know that?’ I asked him, perching on the bed.
Silence. ‘Miller, answer me, please. How do you know that?’
The pen left his hand and whistled across the bedroom. ‘Oh my God,’ he said, as it clattered against the opposite wall and fell to the floor. ‘You moan when I’m on my game and now you’re moaning when I’m not! It’s fine. Everything is fine. We’ve just been hacked, that’s all.’ Hacked? ‘But it’s only for half an hour and then he’ll put us back on. So there’s no need to go off on one. It’s fine.’
‘Hacked?’ I spluttered. ‘What on earth do you mean, “We’ve been hacked”? Miller, what on earth have you done?’
‘God. There you go. Straight away blaming me. I told you. It wasn’t me. It was a hacker!’
There were so many levels on which this whole exchange was wrong – in fact, on every level – that I hardly knew where to begin. With the pen that had narrowly missed me? With the cheek and disrespect? Or with the fact that he’d just told me our home computer network had been hacked? Probably that one, for starters, though there was one important point. I didn’t really have the first clue what he was talking about. ‘Hacked’ was one of those terms that just pushed all the buttons. Like ‘scammer’, or ‘identity theft’, or ‘virus’.
‘So you just said,’ I went on. ‘But what I don’t understand is why a hacker would suddenly want to interrupt our internet service.’ I paused. ‘But something tells me you do, Miller.’
Miller threw the pad down as well now, and I could see what he’d been writing. Or, rather, couldn’t. It just looked like rows of weird hieroglyphics. Then he sighed and scratched his head, then rolled his eyes, as if despairing. Of the situation, or of my ability to understand anything he might say?
‘Look, I just chucked the wrong guys out of a game and stole their money. And because the moderator of the game knew my IP address, he hacked into our system and got us chucked off to pay me back. But he’s putting us back on again. It’s no biggie.’
I still didn’t have a proper