‘He seems fine,’ whispered Mike as we stood on the doorstep and waved the car off.
‘I know,’ I whispered back. ‘He’s just so cute. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘You even need to ask me?’
So we didn’t make Annie wait. We called John back the same afternoon. We’d happily take him off her hands the following Monday.
Spencer’s suitcase was bulging.
Which was something that immediately struck me as symbolic. The last kids we’d fostered had arrived with barely anything; just a tatty old bin bag containing clothes that looked like rags. Yet the battered, broken doll that had also been buried in there was as precious to little Olivia as would be any other cherished toy. The luggage a child came with, as I was fast learning, spoke volumes – the things a child dragged from placement to placement meant everything to them. Be it a favourite photograph, a special toy, or a crumpled letter from a loved one, these belongings were often the only attachment a child had, and gave them a sense that they were still a part of something wider than the place where they had currently ended up.
‘Good grief, Spencer!’ Glenn exclaimed, as he dragged the case over the doorstep. ‘Come on, own up. You’ve smuggled the kitchen sink into here, haven’t you?’
Spencer glanced up at me as if expecting to be reprimanded. ‘I got lots of stuff,’ he explained. ‘But it’s mostly just my trainers and all my games for the DS that’s making it heavy.’
I didn’t know what a DS was, and said so. Spencer obligingly got the portable game console out of his backpack to show me, while Glenn commented that of all the things in Spencer’s life this was the one thing he couldn’t live without.
I smiled and nodded while he shyly showed me all the things it could do, but it was an indicator that I’d been at this job for a while now that my immediate thought was a cynical one: this would be my bargaining tool. Sad though it was, to be able to modify the behaviour of challenging children, such a tool was your most potent weapon. It was the things they loved most that they would be most motivated to stay in line for, so the DS would soon have a subtle change in status. Spencer would have to see it as a privilege and not a right.
But that was for writing into Spencer’s behaviour plan, not for today. Today was all about welcoming him to our family, and trying to quell his understandable anxiety.
And he did look terribly anxious today. Because my kitchen and dining room were separated only by an archway and an island of worktops, I could keep an eye on things while everybody settled at the dining table, and I rustled up the drinks and biscuits. It had become something of a ritual, this, I realised, since I’d begun fostering. The dining-table meetings and the round of refreshments, the wide-eyed child, the various official adults, the slight edge of formality. I watched Spencer take his seat beside Glenn, his social worker, and how he pulled it close enough so that the two of them were almost touching. I also noticed he had something in his hand that I’d not seen at first. Perhaps he’d pulled it out of his pocket.
‘Who’s this, then?’ I asked him, as I brought the tray of coffees in, plus the usual array of biscuits, which he eyed but didn’t touch. Close up I could see it was a glove puppet.
‘Fluffy Cow,’ he said. Which seemed apt. That’s what it was.
‘Fluffy Cow is Spencer’s favourite toy, isn’t it, mate?’ Glenn explained. ‘He likes to take it to bed with him, don’t you?’
I could see Spencer stiffen slightly. ‘I don’t play with it or owt,’ he said. ‘It just stays on my bed.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Here, love. Help yourself to a biscuit. And I tell you what, we’ve got to do a whole load of boring paperwork. So how about you take Fluffy Cow up to see your new bedroom? There’s some new toys up there for you, so you might like to have a little play. But only if you want to,’ I finished. ‘It’s entirely up to you.’
Spencer looked at Glenn. ‘You won’t go or anything, will you?’
‘Course not, son,’ he said. ‘And I’ll give you a shout if we need you.’
‘Okay, then,’ said Spencer, sliding back down off his chair and, clutching his beloved puppet, slipping noiselessly from the room.
Bless him, I thought. Poor little lad. I really, really couldn’t fathom this.
* * *
The file Glenn handed out was a small one. Small but to the point. It made for grim reading. Spencer, as we’d known, was the middle of five children. He had a brother, Lewis, who was ten, a sister, Sammy Lee, nine, then two younger siblings, five-year-old Coral and a three-year-old called Harvey. Their parents, Kerry and Danny, were both in their thirties and apparently had no misgivings about Spencer coming into care. In fact, they’d been clear on this when they’d been interviewed by social services. As things stood they had decided to wash their hands of him. They said he was out of control, wild and ‘feral’ – that damning word again – and that they considered him to be a risk to both himself and others, and that they felt they’d reached the end of the road.
As was usual, a risk assessment had also been completed, and the finding was that as Spencer was a persistent petty offender priority had to be given to minimising his chances of re-offending and heading towards a life of teenage crime.
Once again, I was struck by the disparity between what I was reading and what I was seeing. I also wondered, as I read on, what kind of parents would feel able to hand over one of their five children to what could only be described as complete strangers, whether sanctioned by the council or otherwise. Why this ‘one bad apple’ attitude, that seemed to permeate through the paperwork? Were they worried that if he stayed he might ‘infect’ his brothers and sisters? How could you make such a chilling judgement about your own flesh and blood?
I glanced around the table as I finished reading, and John caught my eye. His expression was sad, and I could see he felt the same as me.
He shook his head slightly and slowly took off his reading glasses. These were new, and I made a mental note to compare notes with him about them later. I had just started needing to use them myself. ‘Well, there’s not an awful lot here, is there?’ he said, pointing to the file. ‘But what we do have makes it clear that Mr and Mrs Herrington, here, seem to think we can wave some sort of magic wand, sort their kid out and hand back some new, improved version, don’t they?’
Glenn nodded. ‘I got that impression too. Though I think – well, I hope – they now realise it’s really not that simple. That said, the plan is still to do that, pretty much. A few weeks or months with Mike and Casey on the behavioural programme, and lots of visits home so they can actually see progress. Then overnights, then weekends, then – well, all being well, we’ll have the family reunited at the end of it.’
I glanced at John again. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘So he’s to do the full programme then, is he? You do realise that could take up to a year.’
‘Well, not exactly,’ John said. ‘The intention is obviously to get him back home as soon as possible. I was thinking he could do a more scaled-down version of the programme, focusing mainly on his behaviour, and leaving out all the day-to-day mundane stuff, because it seems clear there’s not much point in a child like him earning points from brushing his teeth and putting his dirty laundry in the right place.’
‘Ahem?’ I said pointedly.
John rolled his eyes at me. He knew full well he was being wound up. ‘I mean obviously he’ll still be expected to do all those things. Just not