The Boy No One Loved (3 page)

It was Kieron, more than anything, that gave us pause for thought when we seriously started thinking about training for fostering. At 19 he was an adult, but still a vulnerable adult, and as he lived at home we both had to think really hard about the impact our plans might have on him because our plans were not just to foster children. While researching ‘working with difficult children’ on the internet, as I’d started doing when I’d become restless about the growing problems of my job, I followed a link through to this new and quite specific kind of fostering, which had been successful in trials in America, where it had first been developed. It used a behaviour-modification model, based on accruing points for good behaviour, in which we’d both be fully trained, and which was specifically geared to help the most difficult children, the ones unsuited to mainstream foster placements. These were the sort of children for whom life was pretty bleak – the sort of children I was well used to dealing with in school, and whom I knew I was in a position to best help.
This
was the type of fostering that really excited me, and once I’d found out all about it, I was hooked.

I lay in bed that night, my ears straining for signs of activity in Justin’s bedroom, feeling sleepless and weighed down by worry. For all the training we’d received – six intense months of it, and so much preparation and expectation – I don’t think either Mike or I had really been prepared for the massive impact of having this child enter our lives. He wasn’t only hostile, he was also a completely unknown quantity, and here he was, feet away, sleeping under our roof, having turned my whole family upside down in less than twenty-four hours. Only one thing felt certain as I finally drifted off. We were now committed. There was no going back.

I’m mad about Christmas – always have been and always will be – and usually start my Christmas planning way ahead. By December, of course, it’s generally all falling into place – so since at least two weeks before Justin’s arrival in the family, I’d already started my usual Run Up To The Big Day.

We lived in a comfy four-bed semi, with a large back garden, in a small village on the outskirts of a big town. It was the sort of tight-knit community where everyone knew everyone else and it’s probably fair to say that the Watson household was something of a landmark at this time of year. I was never much of a one for gardening – bar a few pots of flowers I kept clustered around my back door – but come Christmas I was like a woman possessed. I loved this time of year and I didn’t care who knew it. My Christmas tree was already up and twinkling gaily – Riley had wittily remarked that it looked like a fairy had thrown up on it (she’s such a wag, my daughter) – and I had festooned fairy lights and decorations pretty much everywhere else. Outside, I’d continued to indulge my obsession by putting up an inflatable Santa, another tree with flashing lights, plus a neon reindeer complete with a present-laden sleigh. I’d also found some more fairy lights to drape over the front hedge, and the net result was that, entirely as usual, my house looked the tackiest on the street.

What Justin thought of all this, I didn’t know. It was naive of me, perhaps, given the wealth of my experience with troubled kids, but I think I just got carried away with making everything super special for him – to try and show him how family life
could
be. One of the things that was uppermost in my mind was that on Boxing Day Justin had an important visit to make. Mike was to drive him for a few hours to where his mother and young brothers now lived. It was to be an overnight visit – his first, we’d been told, since around three months before we’d met him; around the time she’d apparently got herself a new boyfriend.

We knew so little about it all, but what we did know was that such visits were sporadic, at best, and appeared to always coincide with new boyfriends. She tended to want to see him whenever she hooked up with a new one, only to drop him again as soon as he’d served his purpose; to show her as being sufficiently ‘motherly’. It was heartbreaking stuff, even in the telling. How could she do that to her own child? How could any mother treat her flesh and blood in that way? I knew the pressure of it must have been hanging over Justin. After my small outburst on the night of his arrival, I had got my head back together and was beginning to feel more positive about Justin again. Though schools were now closed for the holidays, I’d been able to get in touch with the local education authority and had secured a place for him in our local secondary, so he could start straight away in the new year. It was handy that I’d previously worked there, of course, as I already had a good relationship with the head and the support staff; something I had an inkling might come in very useful now we were fostering the kind of children that would probably need them. Also, because the papers showed that his educational level had fallen so far behind the norm, he’d been given an ELAC (Education for Looked After Children) worker, who was called Helen King, and who seemed really nice. She’d also allocated a school budget for an extra learning support worker for him so he could get the help he needed to catch up – something I could have done with back in my unit, for sure.

So it was all shaping up well, and though Justin’s food anxieties needed addressing in the short term (I’d now, at his request, put up a chart in the kitchen, detailing exactly what food we were having each day, and at what time) he seemed to be slowly settling in. Though he seemed to oscillate between being over-excited about Christmas one minute and negative and scowling about the whole thing the next, I felt overall that we were making progress. So much so that, at the end of the week, I felt confident enough to take him out on a Christmas shopping trip, with me and Riley.

‘How big is big?’ he asked me, as our train to the shopping mall sped through the snowy countryside. He’d been chatty and in good spirits and had been animated throughout the journey. He told us he’d never been to a big city-centre shopping mall before.

‘Big,’ I said. ‘Lots and lots of shops. Around fifty of them, most probably.’

This news seemed to enthral him. ‘And will they have a Christmas tree?’ he asked.

‘Definitely,’ I said, grinning. ‘Several of them. Really big ones, I expect, with loads of lights and baubles.’

He seemed pleased at this, too, even though I recalled that his last comment about our one had been that my ‘stupid fucking fairy lights’ gave him a migraine. Today, though, was definitely an ‘up’ day. So far, so good.

‘I want DVDs for Christmas,’ he went on, at Riley’s cheerful prompting about what Santa might be bringing him. ‘I’d like lots of DVDs to watch, and a new games console and lots of games. And some plastic toy soldiers that I can play with in the bath.’ Riley raised her eyebrows slightly, her meaning immediately obvious. Wasn’t he just a little old to be playing with toy soldiers in the bath?

I nodded anyway. He might have had to grow up way, way too fast in some respects, but in others, understandably, given his life experiences, he’d probably still be very immature. ‘And what else, besides soldiers?’ I asked him.

‘Toy guns,’ he said. ‘Toy guns and a Swiss army knife.’

From one end of the spectrum to the other. ‘I think you’re still a little bit too young for one of those,’ I told him gently. ‘Perhaps when you’re a little older …’

But the change in Justin as I said this was both immediate and dramatic. Thwarted, his mouth narrowed straight away into a thin angry line, his eyes darkened and his whole face was now set in a scowl. He refused to engage with either of us for the remainder of the journey. And there was absolutely nothing either of us could do about it.

Once we arrived, however, it seemed Justin was once again too excited to be angry with us any more, and looked up in wonder at the decorations, the shop fronts and the huge crowds of people. He seemed particularly ecstatic about the food court on the top floor, and the fact that there were so many different fast-food places you could choose to eat from. Paradoxically, however – and it felt I was learning all this far too slowly – he got really upset again when I suggested he might like to be the one who chose where we’d have lunch.

‘It’s not fair, Casey!’ he railed at me. He was unnervingly articulate and seemed palpably distressed again. ‘You know I love
all
these places! You shouldn’t have brought us here if you can’t make your mind up about it. I feel sick now, and it’s
all your fault
!’

I quickly chose one, and we diffused things, and lunch happened fairly peaceably but a similar thing happened when we started going round the shops. We were given a specific allowance for Justin by our fostering agency, which we could give to him as pocket money, and I’d brought along thirty pounds for him to buy presents for his mother and two little brothers.

Not wishing to smother him or seem prescriptive over what would be personal choices, I then sent him into a shop alone, while Riley and I waited outside. He was gone a long time, and when he did finally emerge, empty handed, I could see that the dark expression had overtaken him again.

‘It’s shit in there!’ he shouted, as he stormed across the concourse to where we were sitting. ‘There’s too much in there. I don’t know what to buy!’ He then turned to Riley, and I could see he was close to tears now. ‘Please,’ he said to her, ‘can you choose for me?’

‘Of course,’ she said, leaping up, and leading him straight back inside again. They returned minutes later and his face was much brighter. They’d got a necklace for his mum and two superhero models for his brothers, and he seemed genuinely pleased to have had her help him. And as we left the mall, it occurred to me that his see-saw behaviour was, in fact, very understandable. Was there anything more difficult for children who had nothing – and more than that, no-one to love them or to care for them – than seeing a world full of families and so much festive cheer and joy? It was particularly hard, given his desperate and lonely situation, and the fact that he was going to be ‘allowed’ to see his mother for just a few hours in as many long months.

But there was also a big positive in all this, I reflected. He seemed to have at least got over his animosity towards Riley. So, on balance, a very productive day.

As Christmas Day itself – the Big One – loomed ever nearer, Justin also found an unlikely ally in Kieron. Though Justin was still intermittently excited about everything, the strain on all of us was showing because for the most part his mood, with the endless waves of friends and relatives stopping by, and all the attendant disruption and chatter, was becoming more volatile and darker with every passing hour.

And we did have an awful lot of visitors. My brother and his family stayed over, and we had lots dropping in, from neighbours to friends to some of my old colleagues from school. The house was constantly full of noise – good noise, in the main; lots of fun and lots of laughter – but Justin increasingly sought to avoid it or, if he did stick around, seemed intent on embarrassing me, telling my niece and nephew that there was no such thing as Santa, swearing, slamming doors and drowning out any conversation by pointedly turning the volume on the TV to max. But it was me, as it turned out, that needed teaching a lesson, and it was through Kieron, my own son, that I got one.

Much as he loved Christmas, Kieron found it stressful too, as it obviously meant major changes to his routine, and lots of unscheduled comings and goings, which always made him nervous. He would often, therefore, take off to his bedroom the minute he heard the sound of the doorbell.

On the day of my brother’s visit, my little niece, Brooke, wanted to give Kieron his present herself, but when I looked for him I realized couldn’t find him. When I’d last seen him he’d been in the conservatory, putting up some last-minute decorations for me, but when I called him I got no response. I ran upstairs, planning to pop my head round his bedroom door, but as I approached I could hear male voices and laughter coming from Justin’s room. I stopped outside then, and heard Kieron’s voice. ‘I know how you feel, mate. Mum’s always like this,’ he was saying. I realized immediately that he must be talking to Justin. ‘She’s always been like it,’ he mused. ‘She just loves all the noise and having loads of people round.’ I heard him laugh then. ‘Trouble is, she thinks everyone else does as well!’

Then Justin spoke. ‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘You can stay here with me, if you like. Stay in my room till everyone’s gone, if you want to. We can play footie manager – as long as I can be Germany. Okay? You can be England, and we’ll kick your butt.’

‘Set it up, then,’ Kieron replied, laughing. ‘Let’s see how good you
really
are.’

I crept away then, the idea of calling Kieron down now off the agenda, and cursing myself for being so lacking in perspective that I couldn’t see that not everyone was as Christmas crazy as I was. God, it was
my
butt that needed kicking.

And, of course, I did get my comeuppance, because it duly got kicked. By Christmas Eve, despite my determination to be mindful of how hyper I could get at this time of year, I was in overdrive. Christmas Eve was always a busy day for me anyway but this one was even busier than usual. Not least because I was up so early – before Justin got up – ringing round all my friends and family to explain that we’d decided to cancel our planned Christmas Eve party. Mike and I had discussed it at length and decided it was the only sensible thing to do; we just didn’t think Justin would be able to cope with it.

Kieron was pleased, but poor Riley was not. ‘God, Mum!’ she launched at me, in an uncharacteristic outburst. ‘That kid is beginning to ruin everything already! David and I were both really looking forward to tonight. And now it’s going to be crap. Thanks a lot.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I began, ‘but –’

‘And why does he have to be here anyway?’ she interrupted. ‘Surely there’s
someone
who wants to see him over Christmas? Why can’t you just sort it so he can go somewhere else tonight?’

I tried to explain gently to her that, really, there was no-one, and to suggest that perhaps she was being just a little selfish; that the whole point of us fostering was to help this unhappy child. We’d hardly be doing that if we packed him off at any time, but to do so at Christmas – how could we?

To my great relief (tinged with guilt; this was her mum and dad’s choice, after all, not hers) she accepted this and came over to help me wrap some presents, while Kieron and Justin played yet more Football Manager upstairs. I’d dispatched Mike, meanwhile (and not at all to his liking) to head to town with my last-minute shopping list.

Perhaps, I thought, just perhaps, all would be well. I took a deep breath. So far, at least.

But the calm in the Watson household wasn’t destined to last. It was around four in the afternoon and by now I was busy in the kitchen, preparing the veg for our Christmas dinner the next day. Justin had been downstairs a couple of times, moaning about how I hadn’t written what we were having for tea on the chart yet, and when he made a third appearance, I was short with him.

‘Look, love,’ I said to him, conscious even then that I was irritable. ‘I am trying to get the food ready for tomorrow. I do have other things on my mind besides what you’re having for your tea!’

Almost as soon as I’d said this, I wished I could have swallowed the words, because Justin’s reaction was instantaneous. His eyes darkened, in that rather scary way we’d come to witness – a sure sign that he’d lost it, and big time.

‘You can stick your tea and your Christmas up your arse!’ he roared at me, before flying from the room and slamming the kitchen door so hard I was sure it made the walls rattle.

Kieron appeared in the kitchen moments later, presumably having heard this and passed Justin on the stairs. I tried to bite back the tears that were springing from my eyes. I don’t think until that moment I’d really accepted quite how stressed out I really was, and the last thing I wanted was for Kieron to see it now. But within seconds, things were about to get worse. Before I had even started telling Kieron what had just occurred, Justin burst back in through the door, his eyes now blazing, his cheeks florid, brandishing all the Disney DVDs that we’d bought for him, screaming manically as he snapped them, one by one, in half.