Nowhere to Go by Casey Watson
Dedication
Dedicated to all those in a position to help our children lead productive and fulfilling lives, and to those children who have lived through dark days and find the strength to make it.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my agent, the lovely Andrew Lownie, for continuing to believe in me; Carolyn and the wonderful team at HarperCollins for their dedicated and hard work; and as ever my very talented friend and mentor, Lynne, for always being there. A special mention this time to Vicky at HarperCollins, who is taking some special time out for a while. I wish her all the very best and look forward to hearing from her soon.
Chapter 1
It’s so easy to take your parents for granted, isn’t it? Not consciously, maybe, and not in the sense that you don’t value them. Just in that perhaps it goes with the territory that you try not to spend too much time thinking ahead to a time when they won’t be there, do you? But not today. Today I had no choice in the matter. So I was doing exactly that, and it was scary.
I was scared because I had just taken my father into hospital to have major surgery on his bowel. It would be straightforward, they told us, and we should try not to worry, but how can you not in that situation? Mum was terrified he might die under the anaesthetic – i.e. before they even started – and for all my reassurances and positivity, she had so many ‘what if?’ scenarios (all of them negative, obviously) that it had been a real job to try and keep her calm.
As it was, I’d left her there with her knitting – she was busy making a cot blanket for her newest great-grandchild – and the promise that I’d be back as soon as Dad was out of theatre, after which, assuming all was well, I’d bring her home.
And it had been fine. Well, at least until I walked back out through the double doors, when it was all I could do not to burst into tears, run back inside for a cuddle and have them both do what they always did whenever life got tough: say ‘Don’t worry love, it will all be okay.’
It had been seeing Dad in the hospital bed that had been the worst. Never a big man – it’s from him that I get my five-foot-nothing stature – now he looked painfully small. Not frail, exactly, but definitely diminished. Weakened, as you’d expect in a man in his seventies who’s been struggling with an illness for a long time.
Stop it, I told myself sternly, blowing my nose. Get into the car, take yourself home, go and see your daughter, drink coffee, but most of all stop it. He’ll be fine.
And I had very nearly talked myself into believing he would too, except perhaps not as completely as I’d kidded myself I had, because when my mobile phone rang, just as I was coming off the dual carriageway, my first thought was Oh, God, what’s happened?
Nothing, you stupid mare, I told myself as I took the first left turn and found a safe place to pull in. He’d barely even have had his bloods taken yet, would he? So perhaps it was Mum, with some last-minute anxiety-reducing request or other – like spare hankies or Dad’s second best set of pyjamas or the current week’s copy of The People’s Friend.
But it wasn’t Mum, and I found myself smiling as I read the display; it was a missed call from my fostering link worker, John Fulshaw. We’d not spoken for a while, as I’d been having a bit of downtime from fostering; we’d come out of a long placement, which had finished the previous summer, and with my daughter Riley pregnant, and Dad having been so poorly, we’d made a decision as a family to take a bit of a break. We’d only done a little respite care since.
But now it was late May – almost a year since our last child, Emma, had left us, and with Riley’s daughter Marley Mae having arrived safely in April, and Dad finally getting his date for surgery, I’d already spoken to my husband Mike about suggesting to John that, come summer, we’d be back in the game.
I touched the call button, thinking how mad it was he should call at that moment. What was he, psychic or something?
Possibly. ‘Ah, Casey!’ he greeted me, as if I’d just returned from Mars. ‘Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly. I was worried you were on holiday –’
I laughed. ‘Chance would be a fine thing, John.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good. Well, not in that sense, of course, but good that you’re around. Are you free?’
‘Well, Mike and I were only recently saying …’
‘No, no. Now. I meant “now” as in are you free right this minute? Only we have a bit of a situation.’
‘Well, I was just heading home, actually.’ I explained about Dad.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Casey – this really isn’t a good time for you, is it? No, look, sorry – I’ll have to see if I can rustle up someone else.’
He sounded crestfallen. ‘No, no, John, go on. Tell me. What is the situation?’
‘Really, Casey? You really want to know?’
‘Really,’ I confirmed, conscious of the new tone in his voice, which, after our many years of association, I had already analysed as the verbal equivalent of him crossing both his fingers and his toes. ‘John, if I can help at all, I will. You know that. And to be honest, this is a good time because it’ll take my mind off things – I’d only be pacing up and down, fretting about Dad, wouldn’t I? So, go on – what is the situation?’
‘I’m at the police station,’ he told me.
‘The police station? So that’s what it is, is it? You want me to come and pay your bail?’
‘A get out of jail free card might be helpful,’ he mused. ‘But not for me. For a boy who’s here with me, name of Tyler. Eleven. Stabbed his stepmother. Nowhere to go.’
‘Oh, dear,’ I said, my brain already cranking into action. ‘That doesn’t sound too good.’
‘No, it doesn’t, does it? And it isn’t, hence the social worker getting me down here. He’s already been charged and processed and now they want shot. Only trouble is, to where?’
‘So you need respite?’
‘No. Well, I mean, yes, if needs be – someone’s on to that currently – but we mostly need you and Mike to take him on, because this is right up your street. I don’t think he’s the sort of lad we can just place, ahem, anywhere. But … look, you know, you really can say no to this, Casey, if you have a lot going on in your life right now …’
‘He’s that bad, is he?’
‘I’m not going to dress it up for you. He’s likely to be challenging, so …’
So that was precisely why he had called me. As opposed to someone else. ‘So shall I come down there?’ I said.
‘You sure?’
I laughed. ‘I’m not sure about anything right now, John. And even if I was, I’d obviously have to speak to Mike first. And there’s no way I could take him now this very minute because I obviously need to know my dad’s safely out of surgery first.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ John said. ‘Not a problem at all. I completely understand.’
‘But in principle … Well, there’s no harm in me meeting the lad, is there?’
Well, yes, actually, there was, I thought to myself as I started the engine and pulled out into the road again, police station-bound. I knew how my mind worked and it was already working overtime. An 11-year-old boy, a stepmother, nowhere to go. I was drawn like a moth to a flame.
By the time I’d got to the police station, parked and made myself known to the desk sergeant, my mood had lifted considerably. Yes, Dad was still under the knife and it was major surgery, but he was also fit as a flea and it was a straightforward operation. And I trusted what we’d been told – that he’d be fine.
I plonked myself down on one of the two scuffed chairs in the reception area and pulled out my phone to text Riley and let her know I’d been held up. And by what? I wondered. What sort of kid was John going to introduce me to? A challenging one, definitely, because John had already spelled that out. A kid who’d be difficult to handle. As, of course, he would be, since that was the sort of child Mike and I had been trained to foster. Oh, we’d had the odd sweet, biddable child here and there – and one or two who, notably, had been absolute angels – but that wasn’t our real remit. We were specialist foster carers, and our job was to take on kids who’d run out of their nine lives – certainly those who were deemed too difficult for there to be much hope of a long-term foster home as things stood, usually because of the emotional damage they had suffered in their short lives and the nightmare behaviours they displayed as a consequence. Our job was therefore to put them on an intense behaviour management programme, so they could face up to their demons, learn to control their emotions better and, hopefully, build self-esteem. It was through this, ultimately, that they would become more ‘fosterable’ and, in the long term, better able to cope with life.
We’d been doing it for a few years now – ‘fostering the unfosterable’ as our fostering agency’s strapline had it – and though we’d seen a lot in that time, much of it saddening and deeply shocking, I was always prepared to be surprised anew. So, what sort of child would this boy be, I wondered?
A very angry one, it turned out. ‘Brace yourself,’ John warned, once he’d come out to find me and take me through to the interview room where they were still keeping him. ‘To paraphrase that advert, he’s a bit of an animal.’
He also fleshed out a little of the background for me before we went in. Tyler had apparently brandished the knife – a regular carving one – during a heated argument with his stepmother and proceeded to threaten to kill her. She’d tried to get it from him, apparently telling him she’d batter him with it just as soon as she had disarmed him, which made him thrash about all the more and, according to him anyway, that was how he accidentally stabbed her in the arm.
‘Though her story is different, of course,’ John said. ‘According to her, he most definitely didn’t do it accidentally, and she’s definitely going to be pressing charges.’
‘And is she badly hurt?’ I asked.
‘No,’ John said. ‘Thank goodness. Just a flesh wound, which the paramedics cleaned up before taking her to hospital. Just a couple of butterfly stitches in it now, or so I’m told.’
‘So she went off to hospital and he was brought here by the police?’
John nodded. ‘And she’s saying that’s it, basically. She won’t have him in the house again. No way, no how.’
‘Is there a dad?’
‘Yes there is, and he’s apparently of the same mind. There’s also a half-brother. Bit younger. The stepmother’s boy.’
So there was a situation right there, I thought. We exchanged a look. Obviously John had had the same one.
Deciding to take on a new child should be a carefully thought out business. As a foster carer, you are opening not just yourself but your family and your home up to a stranger. A diminutive stranger, obviously – not a serial killer, or anything – but still a stranger about whom you start off knowing almost nothing, and what little you do know is often subjective. In this case, was the stabbing accidental or not? Without a witness, who were we supposed to believe?
So the normal course of events would usually be a multi-stage affair: an initial meeting, and, if that went okay, a formal pre-placement meeting, which would be attended by the potential foster parents, the link worker, the child in question’s social worker and, of course, the child themselves. Only then, assuming all parties felt comfortable with the arrangements, would the child move in and the relationship become official.
In practice, in my case, it rarely worked that way. Yes, in most cases, the steps happened, but rarely in the right order, and the truth was that, though I didn’t generally say so, I usually made up my mind about a child within minutes, not to say seconds, of making their acquaintance. And, so far, even when every warning bell had been clanging in my ears, I’d come up with the same decision. Yes.
Tyler was a beautiful boy. Inky hair flopping over deep brown and densely lashed eyes, clear olive skin, lean, sinewy build. Romany blood, I wondered? Greek? Perhaps Italian? Whatever his bloodline, he would be a heartbreaker when he was older, I decided. Might even be breaking hearts already. He was wearing a crumpled black T-shirt, low-slung combat trousers (ripped) and a pair of no doubt fashionable but very elderly trainers, all of which should have made him look like any other scruff-bag 11-year-old, but seemed to hang on his wiry frame almost stylishly.
Though there was nothing remotely stylish or, indeed, romantic about what was coming out of his mouth. ‘Get your fucking hands off me!’ he was railing, as John and I entered the interview room. ‘I don’t wanna fucking sit down, okay?!’
‘Sit down!’ the policeman closest to him barked, pressing him bodily back into the wooden chair on which he’d previously been sitting for his interview. He was one of three in the room, two of whom were obviously policemen – though only one was in uniform – with the third being the social worker, whose face I vaguely recognised, probably from a training session or social service gathering of some sort. He was middle-aged, slightly sweaty and looking harried.
‘Ah, John,’ said the nearer officer, who identified himself as PC Matlock and ushered us into the room. He closed the door firmly behind him. ‘And you’ll be Mrs Watson?’
I nodded. ‘Casey,’ I said, shaking the hand he extended.
I was about to add ‘Pleased to meet you,’ but the boy at the epicentre of this small earthquake beat me to it. ‘An’ who the fuck is she?’ he yelled, springing up from the chair again, causing it to crash back onto the floor.
‘Show some respect, lad!’ the same policeman snapped, as Tyler glared at me and John. ‘And pick that bloody chair up, as well!’ But this only seemed to inflame their young charge even further; instead of picking it up he decided to use it as a football, kicking it hard enough to send it skittering across the floor.
The social worker flinched. ‘Tyler, stop it!’ he entreated. ‘Behave yourself! You are just making things worse for yourself, now, aren’t you?’
To which accurate observation Tyler duly responded – by kicking the chair a second time. And then, as if pleased with the effect he was having, he drew his leg back and kicked it a third time for good measure.
The as yet unnamed policeman – this was clearly no time for introductions, much less an exchange of pleasantries – snatched the chair up. Then in one reckless action, narrowly missing the social worker, he swung it round and righted it back beside the interview table.
‘That is enough!’ he bellowed, grabbing the boy’s arm and yanking him towards him, but for an 11-year-old Tyler seemed blessed with an impressive amount of strength, and had soon twisted out of his grasp. He was also still kicking out – though aiming for shins now, rather than chair legs – and with a quick ‘Excuse me’ PC Matlock went round both me and the table, in order to help his colleague restrain their captive raging bull sufficiently that he could be guided back into place.
‘Fuck you!’ Tyler yelled to the first one, as he was pressed back yet again onto the chair. ‘And fuck you an’ all,’ he added to the other policeman. Then, as even John stepped in to try and help the social worker contain him, he used a string of words I’d not heard in a child that age in a long time, finishing with a spit, which again only narrowly missed the social worker, and a heartfelt ‘And fuck you, Mr Burns!’
My response to all this was, to be fair, a bit eccentric. Yes, I was well aware that it was a very serious matter, but there was something so ‘Keystone Cops’ about it all, too – what with the two police officers darting back and forth trying to chase him round the table, while the social worker flapped his hands so ineffectually – that, without consciously realising it, much less wanting to do it, I found myself laughing out loud.
If I was surprised by what had come out of my mouth (where on earth had that come from?) the effect on Tyler was little short of electrifying. I didn’t know what had made me suddenly feel the urge to giggle – perhaps the release of all that stress with Dad’s op? I didn’t know – but it certainly seemed to do the trick.
Because so transfixed was Tyler by this deranged woman they’d brought in to meet him that he stopped thrashing around and let them put him back on his chair. ‘Who the fuck is she?’ he said again.
Robert De Niro, I thought. Yes, he was like a very young Robert De Niro. That was why he’d put me in mind of a raging bull. Though right now this child put me in mind of another character too. A fictional one. I just couldn’t seem to help it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying not to grin too much, and make him cross again. ‘I’m Casey, by the way. But you know, you just reminded me so much of Bart Simpson for a minute there. You know, when you said “Fuck you, Mr Burns!” Sorry,’ I said again. ‘It just made me laugh.’
I glanced at the two policemen then, who, along with the hapless social worker, were looking at me with expressions of incredulity. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled a third time, ‘I don’t know why I did that.’
Tyler by this time was staring up at me intently. ‘Yeah, that’s because he’s a knobhead,’ he observed, matter of factly.
‘So!’ said John. ‘Where shall we start?’