I stared at John in disbelief. In fact, I think my mouth hung open for a good twenty seconds. Too big an ask? None of us were getting any younger? Take on a child without quite so many challenges? Cheeky mare!
A part of me accepted that she was just covering the bases. If she sensed any hesitation, it was right that she did, too. It would be insane to place a child with carers any less than 100 per cent willing. Placement breakdowns were damaging. And it seemed this kid had already suffered quite a few.
But, whether she was aware of it or otherwise, her words had hit a nerve. Needless to say, if there was one thing I always rose to, it was a challenge. In this case, the challenge of correcting Ms Bolton in the matter of the impression she had obviously already formed about me. So it was that I opened my mouth before engaging my brain. ‘We’ll do it,’ I said firmly. ‘He sounds right up my street.’
They’d said they’d be with us at 6.30 p.m., and it was now almost seven. So my initial reservations about Christine Bolton had now been replaced with the familiar feeling of nervous anticipation I always had before a new child arrived.
Though she had indeed ruffled my feathers earlier in the day, even if not in the way I had expected. It was only after she and John had left us that it occurred to me that I might have been ‘played’ – as Tyler might put it. That her gestures of concern about whether Mike and I felt up to such a challenge might have been expressly designed to ensure that I couldn’t help but rise to it. A laying down of a gauntlet that I couldn’t resist picking up. If so, she already knew me better than she realised.
So I’d put myself here, in short. Just as I had convinced myself that I could easily walk away from fostering and find something else to keep me occupied, a huge spanner had consequently been thrown in the works – one which would certainly force me to put any thoughts of leaving on the back burner. And for me, that wasn’t an ideal situation to be in at all. I hated having a ‘should I, shouldn’t I’ scenario playing out somewhere in the back of my mind. It would gnaw away at me during any quiet moments, I just knew it.
The truth was, of course, that I could, and perhaps should, have said no. I could have explained that I’d been having doubts about our future as foster carers, and that at this point – at least till I’d worked my concerns through in my head – I wasn’t ready to take on another child, particularly one flagged as particularly difficult to manage. They would have understood. I knew that. They would have offered to support me. There was no point in less than 100 per cent commitment, after all. That was true for them as much as me.
But even knowing little about this child they were so desperate to place, the fact that he was real now – no longer a potential child, but an actual one – was already messing with my head. It would no longer be a case of turning down a hypothetical child. I’d be turning down a specific one, which felt very different. My decision to do so wouldn’t just be removing us from the agency register. It would mean refusing to take a real child, with very real, possibly grave, consequences for him. No, he wouldn’t know that, but I would.
Which was my right. And, given my ambivalence, perhaps the right thing to do anyway, but I couldn’t help my mind from returning to Justin, the very first child we’d agreed to foster, over a decade back and, in some ways, one of the most challenging, because of that. We had helped turn his life around, and back when we were still very inexperienced. Now we had all that experience under our belts, wouldn’t we be even better placed to offer the support and guidance this child clearly needed? The similarities between the boys resonated too. Here was another lad knocking on the door of that ‘last chance saloon’, with another string of failed placements making him increasingly hard to place. Abandoned, both by his parents, and – at least as good as – by the system. Did I want my name to be added to the growing list of people who’d turned away? Could I? I wasn’t sure I could. Perhaps I just needed to meet him. Perhaps my gut would tell me. I hoped so.
‘A case of que sera, I suppose,’ I said aloud, even if more to myself than anyone else. But it caused both Mike and Tyler to grin in mild amusement. ‘What?’ I said, going to peep out of the window for the umpteenth time. ‘Don’t the pair of you ever talk to yourselves these days?’
We’d bought Tyler a guitar for his sixteenth birthday, the better to further his dream of becoming a famous singer-songwriter (well, in his free time from being a famous footballer, obviously), and in the few months he’d had it, he’d already become quite good. He was also having lessons, and had impressed us with his diligence in practising; we’d often hear the sound of repetitive twanging coming from his bedroom, accessorised by the odd curse when he played a wrong chord. He was strumming it now, swaying on a dining chair as he played, channelling Ed Sheeran, as was his current habit. ‘And we all watched … as she slowly went insane, yeah, yeah …’
Mike roared with laughter. ‘Is that the new song you’re writing, son?’ he asked, quickly taking refuge in the dining area, where he’d be safely out of my reach.
‘Oh, very funny,’ I said, shaking my head at the two of them. I glanced at the clock again. ‘It’s now gone seven,’ I pointed out. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Maybe the kid’s run off,’ Tyler suggested. ‘Didn’t you say that was one of his things, running away? Maybe he’s decided he doesn’t want another move and has run away to join a circus.’
As opposed to this circus, I thought. Then caught myself half hoping it might be true, so that it was a decision that wouldn’t be mine to make. I silently berated myself. I had to do this wholeheartedly, or not at all.
And Tyler was right. Since the morning’s meeting I had been receiving bits of information all day. Christine had been busy; I’d had several phone calls and emails, and the bigger picture was now becoming clear. Absconding appeared to be one of Miller’s favourite activities. And he didn’t do things by halves either. He’d run from classrooms, meetings, various foster homes and cars. At one point, it was recorded, he’d even leapt from a moving car. It seemed clear that if he wasn’t in a secure area, and constantly watched, it was odds-on that he’d try to escape.
But he always came back. And, to me, that seemed key. Just as a half-hearted suicide attempt was often a cry for help, so this lad seemed not to really want to disappear – which he could do, should he want to – but simply to cause maximum inconvenience and stress for all concerned.
Which, of course, was a cry for help too. I left my vigil at the dining-room window, and went into the kitchen, where I slapped the switch down on the kettle for about the sixth or seventh time. Ridiculous, really, because I could boil it when they arrived. It was just a nervous tic I couldn’t shake. ‘I imagine he probably has,’ I said to Tyler. ‘But you’d have thought they’d have at least phoned me! John knows what I’m like,’ I harrumphed. ‘He should have phoned.’
‘But it’s not John who’s bringing him, love,’ Mike reminded me. ‘It’s the boy’s social worker, isn’t it? John probably doesn’t even know what’s going on, truth be known. It will be Christine taking the lead on this one, won’t it?’
I was just about to say ‘Whatever’ when, as if on cue, my mobile phone rang, showing an unknown number in the display. I snatched it up, mouthing ‘Finally’ at Mike.
‘It’s Libby Moran,’ a female voice said. ‘I’m Miller Green’s social worker?’
She sounded bright enough, but I could tell that the brightness was forced, as if her tone was for the benefit of someone else. ‘I’m just, um, calling to let you know that we should be with you in