The Cast-Off Kids (30 page)

‘Come on, love,’ she said, with the conviction of an amoeba, but the intentions of a crafty fox, luring her prey. If I hadn’t already taken a dim view of her, I would have done
then. She was what my grandmother used to call ‘a piece of work’.

‘Look, Daisy,’ I intervened. ‘I know you don’t want to leave, but your mother is waiting to take you to start your new life. You’re going to be living with your
real mother at last. Go with her, sweetheart. You and Paul will have each other for company.’

‘But . . .’ her bottom lip quivered as her eyes gazed into mine.

‘Much as I would love to, we’re not allowed to keep you here. So off you go, both of you. Your mother is your family now.’ I hugged and kissed them both, one last, lingering
time, as they took in what I had said.

Despite Daisy’s misgivings, she put on a brave face and reluctantly agreed. ‘Come on, Paul,’ she said, with unexpected maturity. ‘Let’s do this together. We have to
do it. Let’s give it a go.’

‘OK,’ sniffed Paul. They crossed the gravel together, with tears still running down their faces, and climbed into the little car. As it pulled away, they looked back and waved out of
the rear window. They were crying, most of our other kids standing with us were crying and so were we. It was horrendous.

I knew that would probably be the last time I would ever see either of them.

It didn’t matter how many times I had said goodbye to foster children, it never became any easier. My own tears flowed as we waved them off, until they disappeared from our sight at the
end of the road.

As I turned to go back into the house, I caught sight of Paul’s bike, propped up against the hedge, next to where their car had been parked.

‘Oh no . . .’ I said.

‘What?’ asked Mike.

‘Paul said he wouldn’t go unless he could take his bike . . . and they’ve left it behind!’

E
very day I wondered how Daisy and Paul were getting on in their new home and all I could do was hope it was all going well for them.

One morning, seven years later, there was a knock at our front door. I opened it wide to find a tall young man in army uniform, standing on the doorstep. He took his cap off and I noticed the
ginger hair. Did I know him? He looked familiar, but for some reason, I couldn’t immediately place him. As our eyes met, he gave me a wide grin.

‘Hello, Mum!’

For half a second, confusion; but then something clicked in my brain. Of course . . . I stepped forward and we had a great hug, right there on the doorstep.

‘Hello, Pauly.’

‘Can I come in?’

‘Yes, of course. How wonderful to see you. Come and tell me where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing . . . everything.’

‘I’m glad I’ve found you at last. I feel as if I’ve been looking for you ever since we left. Do you remember that day?’

‘Remember it? I’ll never forget it. We were all in tears for most of the day after you and Daisy had gone. We’ve missed you ever since. Come into the kitchen and I’ll
make us a mug of coffee.’

As we went through the house, he was looking around at everything, as if breathing it all in. ‘It’s great to be back here again. And virtually nothing has changed.’

‘Well, it has had all new paint and a few other bits and pieces,’ I pointed out with a laugh. ‘But yes, most of it looks just the same.’

He looked out of the window, down the garden. ‘You’ve still got the tyres! Do you remember that time when I got stuck inside one of them? I think that’s my earliest
memory.’

‘Yes, we searched for you everywhere, until I saw that tyre moving about, as you struggled inside it.’ I laughed. ‘That was so funny!’

We sat down in the sitting room with our coffee mugs and biscuits.

‘Are any of the kids still here?’

‘No, they’ve all moved on now, apart from Mandy who has gone to live with her disabled father, but still comes to see us at weekends, and we often talk about the old days, when you
and Daisy were part of the family. We laugh a lot about some of the escapades you got up to, Pauly!’

‘Yes, I was a bit of a daredevil in those days, wasn’t I?’ He paused and seemed to almost choke up, then controlled it. ‘Those were my happy, carefree years, those years
I was with you and Mike. You were always kind and loving, no matter what. But you could be quite strict with me sometimes.’

‘Well, you needed it!’

‘Yes, but you were always fair with it. I can see that now.’ He paused. ‘And Mike was always the fun person – who took us on all those great outings and made sure we had
all the sweets and things you wouldn’t let us have at home!’

‘Did he now?’ I asked with a quizzical grin.

‘You knew. I’m sure you knew all along,’ he said with a smile.

‘Well . . . maybe.’

Paul looked at some of the photos I had up on the notice board in our kitchen – photos of most of the foster children we’d had.

‘There’s Mandy,’ he said, pointing at her photo. ‘Do you remember when we lost her on holiday in Bournemouth, and Gilroy said she had fallen off the cliff?’

‘Yes, he tried to convince me she had drowned. I almost believed him!’ We laughed together. ‘Well, that little girl is fifteen now, doing her GCSEs and almost certainly staying
on till the sixth form.’

‘She was always the clever one, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes, she wants to go to Cambridge University – I reckon she could do it too.’

‘Daisy was quite good at things at school when we were with you, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes. She was always the studious type, and worked hard at everything.’

‘It’s a shame she didn’t have the chance to continue.’

I was about to ask what he meant, but Paul swiftly changed the subject.

‘What happened to that funny family?’

‘Who do you mean?’

‘Lulu I remember – she was the youngest. Then, just before we left, you took in her brother and sister. What were their names?’

‘Duane and Sindy.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘Well, their parents were sent to prison for what they did to those children.’

Paul looked curious, but I didn’t stop to let him ask.

‘Their father is still in prison, but their mother came out last year, and she now has all her family back with her, in the house the council provided for the children to be looked after
in. So she has a lot of support and supervision. It’s all going quite well.’

I made us some coffee and we went to sit outside on the patio, next to the hole in the hedge. ‘Edie and Frank are still next door,’ I said. ‘But Frank recently had a heart
attack and Edie is becoming quite frail now.’

‘I remember them too.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been looking for you for a long time, but I’ve moved around so much I didn’t remember your address. I only knew the
town and the park. So I thought, if I get here on the train and find the right park, maybe I’ll remember the way home.’

‘And did you?’

‘Yes, well, I described the park to a porter on the platform and he told me which way to go, so that was the easy bit. But I stood there, hoping it would all come back to me, and it
didn’t. Well, not exactly. Then I just had a feeling that took me across the street and down a turning. I didn’t know if it was the right road or not. I could see it was a long road,
and I thought it looked right, so then the only clue I had was this picture I’ve held in my head of your green front door, with the black lion knocker and the black studs.’

‘Oh Paul . . . it’s seven years since you left – did you ever think that we might have repainted the door in another colour, or maybe replaced it, or even moved away
altogether?’ I laughed.

‘No.’ He laughed with me. ‘I know it sounds daft, but I never thought about that. I suppose I so much wanted you to be still here, and everything the same, that I just assumed
it would be. I kept looking at both sides as I walked along, just looking at the front doors . . . until I came to yours, and I knew.’

‘I’m so glad you did, Pauly. It’s great to see you, all grown up, tall, handsome and in uniform. I bet you have all the girls after you!’

‘Well, not all of them.’ He grinned. ‘But I guess the uniform helps. I had to wear it today because I have to catch the train back to barracks in Wiltshire, to be posted abroad
for a couple of years.’

‘Oh no, where are you going?’

‘Germany. I’ll have to catch the one o’clock train. I’ll be in a lot of trouble if I don’t!’

‘That soon? And you’ve only just found us, after all these years!’

‘Is Mike here?’

‘No, I’m afraid not. He’ll be very disappointed to have missed you.’

‘Tell him I miss our Sunday morning outings and the ice creams he was always buying us. Perhaps next time I come home, we can get together for a pint . . . and maybe an ice cream
too?’

‘Yes. I’m sure he’d love that. He often talks about the old days, when you and Daisy were here. How is Daisy? Is she still living with your mother? I bet she grew her hair as
soon as she could!’

His face clouded over. ‘I’ve heard she’s OK, living in Reading I think. But I’m not really in contact with Daisy these days. We were separated you know, just a couple of
weeks after we left you. And things went badly wrong for both of us.’

‘No!’ I was appalled. It sounded like my worst fears . . . ‘What happened?’

‘Well, it’s a long story, moving about so much, but I’ll tell you the main points and hopefully we can meet up again when I come home on leave and talk some more.’

‘Yes, of course. So what happened after you left us?’

‘Oh Mum, it was awful. Pamela – I’m not going to call her our mother. She could never be that to me . . .’ He paused. ‘Pamela and her husband drove us quite a long
way to their house. I don’t even remember where it was now. We had to be quiet all the way in the car and then we had to take our shoes off to go in. She told her husband to leave everything
in the back of the car, so that’s where it all stayed. She told us to leave our memory boxes and backpacks in the car too, and locked it so that we couldn’t get at them.’

‘What was it like in the house?’

‘Awful. Oh, it was a nice enough house. But we couldn’t do anything right. Everything was neat and tidy, and as clean as new. She told us not to touch anything and to sit still.
Well, as you can probably remember, I never was any good at sitting still! So I was in trouble from the start.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘She gave us a little lecture about it being her house and we had to obey her rules. I can’t remember any of them now, apart from silence unless she spoke to us.’

‘Really?’ I almost burst with the effort of containing my indignation.

‘It wasn’t so bad for Daisy, because she asked if she could just get a book out of the car to read, and Pamela agreed. Daisy brought in a colouring book and some crayons for me too,
so I did that for a bit. But you know what I’m like . . .’

‘Yes, I certainly do!’ I laughed.

‘Well, I was in deep trouble from about half an hour after we arrived. In trouble for fidgeting, for making noises, for creasing the cushion, for leaving a fingerprint on the coffee table,
for eating my tiny sandwich too greedily, although we’d had nothing to eat for hours. You name it and I was in trouble for it.’

‘I remember you were a real stoic, putting up with things and not complaining. But that must have been very hard for you.’

‘Too hard,’ he said, sadly. ‘Much too hard . . . What time is it?’ he asked suddenly.

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’s half past ten, and it only takes about twelve minutes to walk to the station from here. Or I could even drive you down there.’

‘Oh good. Well, that night, Pamela refused to get any of our things out of the car except our suitcases. So we could put on our clean pyjamas that you had ironed in the kitchen. I remember
picking mine up and sniffing them. They smelt of home.’

‘So you couldn’t even have your Ted?’

‘No. He had to stay in the car overnight, along with everything else. I don’t know about Daisy, because we were in separate bedrooms, but it took me ages to get to sleep.

‘The next morning it was Christmas Day, but nobody wished us Happy Christmas. We had to have one piece of toast each for breakfast with a glass of milk. No cereals and no seconds. After
breakfast . . .’ He stopped and seemed to gasp for breath. ‘Oh, Mum, it was terrible.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘She told her husband to put all our things from the car out in the yard at the side of their house. Then she made us go out and watch, while she put a metal dustbin in the middle, then
started throwing all our belongings into it, one at a time. First went our new backpacks. Do you remember the one I made you buy for me?’

‘Yes, I do,’ I made a face. ‘It was baby-blue plastic – the cheapest-looking one on the stall, and you insisted on having that one.’

‘Yes,’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I remember you pointing out all these other, much better ones. But I was feeling obstinate that day. I don’t know why I stuck to that one. I
wouldn’t have chosen it if I’d been staying on with you. But for some reason . . . it was like a voice inside me, telling me to choose a horrid, cheap backpack to take to
Pamela’s.’ He paused again. ‘Do you think there’s something psychological in that?’

‘Yes, it probably was. I always wondered about that!’

‘Well, Pamela picked up my backpack by one corner, as if she was holding a dead rat’s tail, then held it over the dustbin and let it drop to the bottom with a thump. Then she did the
same to Daisy’s backpack, which she loved. I remember poor Daisy’s face. I knew what she was thinking, because I was thinking the same.’

‘Didn’t Pamela empty all your lovely things out first?’

‘No, they all went into the bin. Then the sack with our Christmas presents in it, from you and Dad and Gramps – I think that was your father, wasn’t it? All
unopened.’

‘Oh no!’

‘Then she took our memory boxes that had all our photos and special things in them, and tossed them, one after the other, onto the top of the pile in the bin.’

‘Couldn’t you go back later and get out your most precious things?’

‘No, because of what happened next.’