Casey Watson
The Boy No One Loved

Copyright

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s experiences. In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed.

HarperElement

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and HarperElement are trademarks of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

First published by HarperElement 2011

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THE BOY NO ONE LOVED. © Casey Watson 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Casey Watson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007436569

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007436576

Version 2016-10-18

Dedication

To my wonderful and supportive family

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Funny the little details that tend to stick in your…

Chapter 2

I followed Kieron up the stairs, Riley close behind me,…

Chapter 3

I’m mad about Christmas – always have been and always will…

Chapter 4

I woke on Christmas morning in my usual good spirits,…

Chapter 5

One of the main things Mike and I had to…

Chapter 6

‘I just can’t help it,’ Justin said. ‘I know I…

Chapter 7

We’d been sitting there together for an hour by now.

Chapter 8

It was the following Saturday morning and I was on…

Chapter 9

It was a freezing cold day at the end of…

Chapter 10

The end of the week saw another email arrive from…

Chapter 11

April had arrived and with it some slightly warmer weather…

Chapter 12

Sunshine, I thought happily, as I yanked open the bedroom…

Chapter 13

‘Aw, Mum. Pleeeeaaase!!!’

Chapter 14

‘Mrs Watson? It’s Richard Firth, Head of Year Seven at…

Chapter 15

After the whole issue of the exclusion and Justin’s further…

Chapter 16

I woke up the next morning with a really thick…

Chapter 17

It was late August and, now that Justin was making…

Chapter 18

‘Spaghetti bolognaise!’ Justin announced with an excited flourish. ‘I’m gonna…

Chapter 19

Though we didn’t know for sure (and, as it turned…

Chapter 20

It was now late September and I was beginning to…

Chapter 21

‘Aw, it’s not fair. I soooo want to come!’ Riley…

Chapter 22

It was a Friday morning, just a week after Justin’s…

Chapter 23

‘What shall it be then, Casey, do you think? Shall…

Chapter 24

Deep breath, I said to myself slowly. Deep breath. It…

Epilogue

Exclusive sample chapter

Casey Watson

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Prologue

His little brothers, the boy saw, were both covered in shit. They’d removed their full nappies and smeared each other in it, while their mother’s dog – a spiteful brown terrier – was busy licking what remained from the bars of their shared cot.

He shooed the dog away and, gagging now, lifted both boys out, and then went to fetch a quilt from his mother’s bedroom. Where had she gone this time? Why was she never there?

He took the boys downstairs, used the quilt to wrap them up warmly on the couch, and tuned the TV to a channel that was showing cartoons. ‘We’re hungry,’ the older one kept repeating plaintively. ‘We’re hungry, Justin. Please Justin. Find us some food.’

There was nothing. There never was. Though he looked for some anyway. In all the cupboards. In the drawers. In the big dirty fridge. He felt tears spring in his eyes. And he also felt anger. He looked at his little brothers, at their hopeful, expectant faces. What was he supposed to feed them with? What was he supposed to do?

Then, suddenly, in that instant of despair, there came clarity. He didn’t have to think. He knew exactly what to do. As if on autopilot now, he took his brothers out into the front garden, sat them down on the grass – still wrapped in the grubby quilt – and told them to stay where they were.

He then returned to the house and looked around the living room for the lighter. Picking it up, he calmly flicked it at the couch. He continued to do this till the couch began burning and then he went and set fire to the curtains.

The dog came downstairs then, its face all smeared with the contents of the brothers’ nappies. The boy ran to the kitchen, to the cupboard under the sink, where there was a container of fluid which he knew was for the lighter. Grabbing this, he returned to the living room again, and squirted the fuel all over the animal’s filthy face.

Taking one last look around, he walked out of the front door, closing it carefully behind him. He then joined his brothers under the quilt, on the grass, and calmly watched while both home and dog perished.

His mother was located, by the police, three hours later. She’d apparently spent the day at a friend’s house. The little boy was just five and a half years old.

Chapter 1

Funny the little details that tend to stick in your mind, isn’t it? The day Justin, the first foster child to ever be placed with us, was due to arrive – a bright but chilly day on the last Saturday before Christmas – all I kept going back to were the same old two things. One of them was just how desperate the social worker seemed to be that we should agree to have him, and the other was the fact that I had black hair.

And it wasn’t just me either. My daughter Riley, now 21 and so supportive of the whole project from day one, had the same head of black hair that I did. We’d both of us inherited our raven locks from my mother and one thing I knew – and I really knew so little about Justin – was that he had a very powerful aversion to women with black hair.

I straightened his England football-team-themed duvet cover for the umpteenth time that morning, and tried to put the negative thoughts right out of my mind. I was trained to do this job, I told myself. So was my husband, Mike. Plus I already had several years of experience looking after difficult children. And this was the new career I’d chosen for myself, wasn’t it?

But along with the anxiety, I also felt proud. I looked around me and found myself smiling with satisfaction at what I saw. I certainly couldn’t have thought harder about the way to do his new bedroom. Because one of the few things we did know was that Justin liked football, we quickly settled on that as a theme. So we’d done out the spare room in black and white and splashed out on some special wallpaper that made one of the walls look like it was a crowd at a stadium. We’d laid a green carpet, for a pitch, added a football-themed frieze, and I’d trawled charity shops endlessly for the books, games and jigsaws that I knew my own kids had enjoyed at his age. We also knew he liked movies, especially Disney films, apparently, so we’d bought him a starter pack of those too. I had agonised over every detail, every decision, every tiny item, because it meant so much to me to do everything I could to help him feel at home. The one thing I didn’t know was what team he supported, so, till I did know, I’d pinched my son Kieron’s old duvet cover for him. I reasoned that England was a pretty safe bet for any football-mad eleven-year-old boy.

I checked the time on the big blue clock Mike had fixed on the wall. Almost eleven. They would be here any minute, I realised. And, as if by magic, I heard Mike call my name from downstairs.

‘They’re coming up the path, love,’ he said.

I had met Justin already, of course, just the previous Tuesday. In fact, it had only been a week since we’d been asked to consider our first placement at that point, and only eight days since I’d left my old job at the local comprehensive school. It had been an intense week, too, with everything seeming to move so quickly, and even though the way all these things were done was still new to us, Mike and I had both felt there was a real sense of desperation in the air. John Fulshaw, our link worker from the fostering agency we worked for, had been clear: this was not something we should undertake lightly. How little did we understand then just how true his words would be.

We’d been assigned John as our link worker when we’d first applied to be foster carers and we’d struck up a good relationship with him right away. By now we also felt we knew him quite well, so if John was anxious it naturally made me anxious too. Not that we weren’t anticipating challenges. What Mike and I had signed up for wasn’t mainstream fostering. It was an intense kind of fostering, intended to be short term in nature, which involved a new and complex programme of behaviour management. It had been trialled and was proving very successful in America, and had recently started to be funded by a number of councils in the UK. It was geared to the sort of kids who were considered unfosterable – the ones who had already been through the system and for whom the only other realistic future option was moving permanently into residential care. And not just ordinary residential care either – they’d usually already tried that – but, tragically, in secure units, many of these kids having already offended.

‘The problem,’ John had told me, during our first chat about Justin, ‘is that we know so little about him and his past. And what we do know doesn’t make for great reading, either. He’s been in the care system since he was five and has already been through twenty failed placements. He’s been through a number of foster families and children’s homes, and now it’s pretty much last chance saloon time. So what I’d like to do is to come round and discuss him with you both personally. Tomorrow, if it’s not too short notice.’

As a family, we’d talked about that phone call all evening, trying to read anything and everything into John’s few scraps of information about the child he wanted us to take on. What could the boy have done to end up having had twenty failed placements in just six short years? It seemed unfathomable. Just how damaged and unfosterable could he be? But since we knew almost nothing, it was pointless to speculate. We’d know all that soon enough, wouldn’t we?

Not that, come morning, there was much more to know. John had arrived and, as soon as I’d made us all coffee, he got straight down to the business of telling us.

‘It was a neighbour who alerted social services initially,’ he explained. ‘He’d been to their house several times, it seems, begging for food.’

We remained silent, while John sat and read from his notes. ‘Family Support followed it up, by all accounts, but it seems the mother managed to convince them that she was coping okay – that she had just been through a bad patch at the time. Justin himself, it seems, corroborated this – certainly managing to convince them that the right course of action was to let things ride for a while. And then two months later, emergency services were called out to the family home by a neighbour. Seemed he’d been playing with some matches and burned the house down. Apparently the mother had left him and his two younger brothers –’

‘Younger brothers? How old were they?’ I asked him.

John checked his notes again. ‘Let me see … two and three when it happened. And they’d all apparently been left alone in the house while she went off to visit a boyfriend. Seems the family dog died in the fire as well.’

Mike and I exchanged glances, but neither of us spoke. We could both see there was more for him to tell us.

John glanced at us both, then continued. ‘It was after that that the mother agreed to have him taken into care. Under a voluntary care order – seems no fight was put up there about holding on to him; she was happy to let him go and accept a support package for the younger two – and he was placed in a children’s home in Scotland, with contact twice monthly agreed. But it broke down after a year. It seems the people at the home felt they could do nothing for him. He was apparently’ – he lowered his eyes to check on the exact wording – ‘deemed angry, aggressive, something of a bully, and unable to make and keep friends. They felt he needed to be placed in a family situation for him to make any sort of progress.’

He leaned back in his chair then, while we took things in. The language used could have been describing an older child, certainly – an angry teenager, most definitely – but a five-year-old child? That seemed shocking to me. He was still just a baby.

‘But he didn’t,’ I said finally.

John shook his head. ‘No, sadly, he didn’t. Because of his behaviour, he’s been nowhere for more than a few months – no more than a few weeks, in some cases – since then. He’s physically attacked several of his previous carers and has simply worn the rest of them out. So there we are,’ he said, closing his file and straightening the papers within it. ‘Twenty placements and we’re all out of options.’ He looked at both of us in turn now. ‘So. What do you think?’

And now here I was, just a few days before Christmas, and this child, this ‘unfosterable’ eleven-year-old child who’d burned down his home at the tender age of just five, was about to become our responsibility.

I walked down the stairs just as I could see a shadow approaching in the glass of the front door. I noticed how smoothly my hand slid down the banister, and smiled. I’d been cleaning and polishing like a mad woman all morning, flicking my duster manically here, there and everywhere, and moving all sorts of stuff around the place. Mike, bless him, had been getting on my nerves since we’d got up, assuming, with his man-wisdom, that since I was obviously so stressed, that he’d be doing me a favour by anticipating my every next move, and being one step behind me at all times.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I’d snapped at him, not half an hour earlier. ‘How can I get anything done in this place with you on my tail all the time?’

He’d shot off then, probably grateful to get out from under my feet. But he’d been right. I was so nervous that I actually felt physically sick. I’d never been so nervous about a new job, ever. Probably because this was going to be like no other new job. Because it wasn’t just a job, it was a whole lifestyle. This was not nine till five, this was twenty-four-seven. Gone would be our cosy evenings in, cuddled on the sofa, just me and Mike together, and gone would be the lazy weekends we’d begun to start enjoying since Riley had moved out and Kieron had turned nineteen. There was no turning back, though. I’d said yes. I was committed. He’s only eleven, I kept telling myself sternly. He’s been through some bad times. It was just the lack of knowing what that was so worrying.

I reached the bottom of the staircase just as Mike reached the door. I took a deep breath. This was it, then.

‘Hi Justin!’ I said brightly as the door opened to reveal him, accompanied by Harrison Green, Justin’s social worker, who’d brought him along for our initial meeting the previous Tuesday. I hadn’t been sure about Harrison when I first met him; he seemed a scruffy sort of character to be a social worker, to my mind. In his mid-fifties, he had a mop of unruly, greying hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a comb in a long while, and a generally unkempt air about him. But perhaps that was what long-term social work could do to you. I’d got little sense of what Justin himself was like on that occasion, other than that he was surly, a little awkward around us and a little lacking in all the normal social graces. Offered a biscuit, for example, and he’d immediately pounced on the plate, taking as many in one hand as he could get his fingers round, and immediately stashing half in his trouser pockets. But his lack of etiquette was hardly surprising given his situation, was it? So I wasn’t concerned about such small, trifling details. Not at all. Those sorts of things could all be learned. It was the deeper stuff, the psychological damage, that most concerned me. Could the manifestations of that damage be unlearned? That was what was key.

One thing that had happened was that we’d been given more background to chew over. While Mike had been showing Justin around our home that day, Harrison had taken the opportunity to fill me in on more of the details of his own.

‘The truth is that he’s attacked a number of his carers,’ he’d told me gravely. ‘With both fists and with kitchen knives, apparently.’ He’d paused then. ‘He’s also threatened to take his life on a number of occasions, and did once actually try to hang himself. From some goalposts on the school playing fields.’

I’d listened in shock, mentally storing everything up so I could recount it all back to Mike later. It was then, too, that Harrison had passed on the news that Justin seemed to have a particular aversion to women with black hair. But he’d also been positive about the potential for his future progress. Justin’s current situation had been as much to do with the carers as him, it seemed. According to Harrison, at any rate, they were too inexperienced to deal with Justin’s refusal to accept boundaries. And boundaries were what he needed more than anything.

I’d not been convinced, at the time, that Harrison had really thought we’d be any better. He had a world-weary air about him that seemed to suggest otherwise. John’s words about last-chance saloon came flooding back. Were Mike and I considered to be Justin’s? Might our first placement be already doomed to failure?

I tried to dismiss the idea, telling myself I was being silly. We were last-chance-saloon fosterers – that was the whole point of the programme we were there to implement. But looking at Harrison now I sensed little had changed. That Harrison wasn’t holding out a lot of hope, deep down. Just needed somewhere to place the child, and fast.

‘Come on in,’ Mike said warmly, standing aside to let them all enter. Justin did so with a fair degree of confidence compared with his last visit, I noticed, pulling Harrison along behind him into the living room.

‘Is that all he’s got?’ I asked Harrison, following them, and gesturing to Justin’s single battered suitcase. Yes it was big, but it still seemed very little in the scheme of things. Could it really contain all he had in the whole world?

‘Um … er, yes,’ Harrison replied, looking slightly flustered by my question. He seemed preoccupied with an agenda of his own.

And he was. ‘I don’t have much time, I’m afraid,’ he told us. ‘We’re going to have to get the paperwork sorted out quickly, as I have to be somewhere else pretty soon … but you’re alright,’ he said, turning to Justin, who’d now sat down on the sofa. ‘Looking forward to it, son, aren’t you?’

Justin nodded, and managed to come up with a wonky half-smile. ‘Is it okay if I put the telly on?’ he asked me.

‘Course,’ I said, happy to see he really did seem okay, and so much more relaxed than he’d been with me last time. I smiled, feeling the tension drain away from me a little too. ‘Just not too loud, though, okay?’

Harrison, on the other hand, was making me cross. ‘Shall we go into the kitchen to complete the forms?’ he asked me, visibly anxious to be making a move out through the door. It was as if he really couldn’t wait to leave.

‘Only one suitcase,’ I persisted, as I led him through to the kitchen, while Mike went to show Justin how to work the TV remotes. ‘I’d have thought a child who’d been in care as long as he has would have amassed loads and loads of stuff.’ I did, too. This wasn’t just whimsical thinking on my part. One of the things we’d covered during training was about kids in care and their various possessions. Kids coming straight from a bad home environment often have very little. Neglected and abused they often have owned very few things, and, in many cases, what little they do have tends to be hung on to by their families. Children already in care, on the other hand, do have possessions, often lots of them, because carers are given funds with which to buy them.

Harrison seemed irritated at being sidetracked from his paperwork. ‘Yes, well,’ he said, shuffling them. ‘Justin doesn’t really do “looking after things”. Hence he travels light. So, then. Here are the care plans …’

We went through them, and it was almost as if we were purchasing a car and he was the harried salesman handing us the log book, the deal done. I offered drinks but, no, he really did have to get away, and to be honest I was happy to see the back of him. His attitude towards the whole business of handing over Justin was getting up my nose every bit as much as his crumpled-up suit and musty smell.

Justin came into the kitchen immediately Harrison had left, his expression looking relaxed for the first time since we’d met. He was quite a stocky boy. Tall for his age, too. I’m five feet tall and he was only half a head shorter. He had thick, coarse blond hair, which seemed to grow upwards from his scalp, rather like a character in a cartoon who’s just been electrocuted. And he was smiling now, which immediately softened his stony features. He wasn’t an unattractive boy when he wasn’t on his guard. One job, I mused, would be to work on that smile of his. And, hopefully, soon see much more of it.

‘I’m glad he’s gone,’ he said to me, matter of factly. ‘Is it nearly dinner time yet?’

I looked at the kitchen clock. It was only just coming up to eleven-thirty in the morning. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I suppose we could always have an early dinner, if you’re hungry …’

He shook his head ‘Oh, I’m not. I just want to know what time we’re having it,’ he answered, in the same straightforward tone. ‘Oh, and what we’re having.’

‘What we’re having?’

Now he nodded at me. ‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you can hang on just for a little bit longer, I was going to phone my daughter Riley and my son Kieron – they’re both really looking forward to meeting you, Justin. And we’ll just be having a pasta bake, or something.’

‘Twelve, then?’ Now Justin did begin to look a bit flustered. ‘And will it be pasta bake? Or might it be something else?’

‘What was all that about?’ asked Mike, once I’d reassured Justin that, yes, it would be twelve and it would definitely be pasta bake, and, satisfied now, he’d gone back to the living room. Mike chuckled. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t offer him a menu!’

It was good to hear my husband’s familiar and reassuring words – the sound of sanity, the sound of normality. Probably just what this child needed in his life. But, just to be on the safe side I set to work on our unexpectedly early lunch anyway, while Mike went to call Kieron and Riley and tell them the coast was clear. We’d arranged for them to come only once Justin was safely with us, in order that we didn’t overwhelm him.

As I chopped onions, I could hear Mike in the hall chuckling some more. ‘Just make sure you ask for pasta!’ he was telling them.

You’d be a fool as a foster carer, particularly our kind of foster carer, to let yourself be lulled into a false sense of security, but for a minute or two after Mike had finished talking to the kids, I felt hopeful that this would all work out well. Okay, so Justin seemed to have some anxieties about food, but then, after all those years in care and going from place to place, it would be strange if he hadn’t picked up a few foibles along the way. I could see why food would have been something he’d possibly have to fight over in the different hierarchies of children and pubescents that existed in every new children’s home he was billeted in.

But it wasn’t the only foible he had, of course. I’d forgotten about the one we had already been warned about.

She’s gorgeous, my daughter, and I love her to bits. She’s welcoming and friendly, with a really bright personality, and had been so enthusiastic about the whole idea of us fostering. So when she and Kieron arrived she seemed as anxious as we were to make Justin feel like he belonged. When we were seated, the promised pasta bake steaming in the centre of the table, she sat down beside him and leaned towards him conspiratorially. ‘Welcome to the mad house,’ she said, grinning.

She then made a move, as if she was about to ruffle his hair, but even before she could lift up her hand to do so, Justin had slammed himself against his chair back and given her a really stony stare.

‘Sorry, mate,’ she said, shocked. ‘I was just being friendly’, but Justin ignored her, leaned forwards again and helped himself to a large portion of the pasta. I made a mental note that in future perhaps I’d need to serve the portions myself, in the kitchen.

We ate in an uncomfortable silence for some minutes, and I watched my daughter’s face begin to redden. She was clearly so embarrassed and my heart really went out to her, and Mike, noticing too, tried to lighten the atmosphere by engaging the boys in conversation about football.

Justin wasn’t interested, though, and continued to eat in silence, a silence becoming more noisy and intrusive by the minute as we all digested what had happened.

‘Is David coming round?’ I asked Riley eventually.

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Not till tomorrow. He’s working today …’ She tailed off because Justin was staring at her once again. ‘David’s my boyfriend,’ she explained to him. ‘We live just round the corner. He’s looking forward to meeting you, too, Justin.’

But once again it seemed Riley was the devil incarnate. ‘What time is tea, Casey?’ he asked me, ignoring her. ‘And what are we having to eat?’

I could feel Mike begin to bristle beside me. ‘Justin, Riley was speaking to you, mate,’ he said quietly. ‘And we don’t know about tea yet. We’re only just having dinner.’

‘It’s okay, Dad,’ Riley said. ‘It’s fine. It really is. I’m always quiet around people I don’t know too.’

Justin scowled at her and once again turned to face me. ‘Is it okay if I take my stuff to my room now?’

‘Go ahead,’ said Mike. ‘I’ll come up and check on you in a bit.’

‘Oh, my God! How rude is that kid?’ Kieron observed, once we’d heard Justin’s tread on the stairs. My lovely Kieron, who finds it impossible to see bad in anybody. He looked at his elder sister. ‘He sure doesn’t seem to like you, Riley!’

Riley frowned. ‘It’s probably just because of my black hair.’

‘Your black hair? Why?’

She glanced in my direction. ‘Mum told me. He’s got this thing, apparently. Has this thing about hating women with black hair.’

Kieron glanced at me too, looking shocked. The word ‘hate’ didn’t really exist for him. ‘I know,’ I said, having completely forgotten all about that. Of course! ‘But we’ve also got to remember this is probably a bit too much for him. We have to be patient and give him a chance to settle in.’

Mike got up and began clearing the plates. He was shaking his head as he went out to the kitchen.

While Mike manfully tackled the washing up, I went outside with Riley for a cigarette. I’d been trying to cut down, in preparation for giving up, but right now I really needed a quick nicotine boost. I reassured my daughter that things could only improve; that it would take time, but that once we got to know Justin a little better it would all become easier and less stressful for us all.

She didn’t look convinced – Riley was someone who liked to be liked and I could see that, even though she understood about the black-hair thing, she was still shocked and confused by Justin’s very obvious rejection of her – so I just hoped what I was saying would turn out to be true.

I could still hear plenty of banging and clattering in the kitchen, so I accepted a sneaky second cigarette, feeling the strain of the morning start to ebb away. Justin’s food issues, at least, were something we could definitely address, and as for his thing about black hair – well, I was sure once he got to know us as real people, that would lessen too.

I was just stubbing out the cigarette when Kieron came to the back door to find me.

‘Mum!’ he said, looking shocked. ‘You have to come!’

I started. ‘Come where? What’s the matter?’

‘Dad’s just been up to check on Justin and …’ He seemed completely stuck for words. ‘And his room is … well …’ He frowned at me, looking anxious. ‘Come on. Just come up and see for yourself.’

Chapter 2

I followed Kieron up the stairs, Riley close behind me, wondering what on earth could have happened. We turned the corner of the landing to see Mike standing speechless in the doorway to Justin’s bedroom. He moved out of the way so Riley and I could look into the room.

It was almost unrecognisable, and I really couldn’t take it in. The lovely room I’d so carefully prepared for Justin’s arrival over several days – the place I’d planned so minutely so it would feel welcoming and homely and a safe place of refuge – now looked exactly like a prison cell. There was a long, low cupboard, with some drawers in, under the window, which I had covered with a set of books, a few football figurines, some jigsaw puzzles and a craft box I’d found for him, which contained glue, felt and fabric, sticky paper and gummed stars. Now every one of these items had been hidden out of sight – I couldn’t even work out where he’d put them. The bookcase had been similarly dealt with. I was so shocked, for this had been in some ways the room’s centrepiece; we’d painted it ourselves, in a pattern of red and white blocks, and glued on lots of black and white paper footballs. We’d then filled it with yet more things we thought he’d like – more books, some soft toys, pens and pencils and so on. But it too had now disappeared. He’d covered the whole thing by draping it completely with the blue fleece throw I had bought for the bed. The round football rug had been removed and, I presumed, hidden – I certainly couldn’t see it – and the array of fluffy cushions had disappeared from the bed. He’d also closed the curtains so the room was in darkness, making it feel really gloomy and depressing.

In the middle of all this sat Justin, on the bed. He had his knees pulled up close to his chest, and was playing on a hand-held computer game he had resting against them; one that he’d obviously brought with him. Most compelling about the scene though was that he seemed completely indifferent to us all crowded there, open mouthed, in the doorway, and just carried on playing the game, his face partly obscured by the controller, his fingers flying over the controls.

‘Justin,’ I gasped at him. ‘What have you done to your room, love?’ I waited, but he didn’t answer. Didn’t even look up. ‘Hey, love,’ I persisted. ‘Where’s everything gone?’

Now he calmly moved the console enough so that I could see his whole face. ‘It’s my room, innit?’ he answered coldly. ‘And this is how I like it.’

It was then that I properly noticed that not everything had gone. He might have stripped the room, but there were two notable exceptions. The TV and DVD player hadn’t been banished. So it wasn’t a case of total, self-imposed deprivation, then.

It was that – that one very specific omission from what he’d done – that made me cross. In fact, all at once, it made me really upset. I’d spent hours agonising over that bloody room and days and days shopping for it and decorating it and everything. And for what? Just to have it trashed by this smug-faced, overweight and downright rude eleven-year-old. It made me see red. I wasn’t happy at all.

Mike, perhaps sensing this, placed a hand lightly on my shoulder and ushered me gently back out to the landing, signalling at the same time for Kieron and Riley to go back downstairs. ‘Right, Justin,’ he said mildly, ‘you just come down when you’re ready, okay? Or if you need anything …’

I was even more furious, hearing Mike say that. I marched back down the stairs and stomped into the kitchen, rounding on Mike as he followed me in there. ‘“If he needs anything!”’ I jabbed a finger towards the ceiling. ‘Have you seen that bloody room up there?’ I just couldn’t take it in. I spread my palms in exasperation. ‘Why would he do that?’

I could see the kids braced a little, in readiness for the rant they could see I was building up to. ‘I can’t believe it, Mike!’ I fumed. ‘I really can’t! The ungrateful little …’

‘Casey!’ Mike had raised his voice to my level now. ‘Let’s not forget what we’re dealing with here!’ He looked hard at me. ‘And let’s try to remember where’s he’s come from, okay? For God’s sake, love, If he were Little Lord Fauntleroy, he wouldn’t be in bleeding care, now, would he?’

I could still see the kids, out of the corner of my eye, now stifling giggles at their father’s analogy. And suddenly, I felt all my anger drain away – almost as quickly and completely as it had come. I started laughing, and the kids did as well, laughing harder and harder, till the tears began streaming down all of our cheeks. It was one of those surreal situations where you really think you’re going to cry and the next you find you’re laughing hysterically. There would be many more laugh-or-you’ll-cry situations down the line, but right now I didn’t know that. All I knew was that we’d crossed some sort of threshold; that, as a family, we were in completely new territory.

Mike wasn’t laughing. In fact, quite the opposite. He was looking at the three of us as if we’d all gone completely mad. ‘Sorry, love,’ I spluttered at him. ‘It’s so not funny, I know that. But I can’t help it. Really, I can’t.’

His face softened a bit then. ‘I know,’ he said, nodding towards upstairs. ‘But maybe pipe down just a little, eh? We don’t want him to hear us and think we’re all laughing at his expense, do we? I don’t think that would help the situation any. Do you?’

‘You’re right,’ I said, pulling myself together with an effort. ‘Come on, kids, pipe down, like Dad says.’ And, bless them, they duly did.

‘You know what I think?’ suggested Riley, crossing the kitchen and reaching for the kettle. ‘I wonder if he’s determined not to enjoy his time with us, and him doing what he did to his bedroom is his way of sort of making the point.’

Mike nodded. ‘I think you might have hit the nail on the head there,’ he agreed. ‘And I also wonder – given what we do know about him – if he’s so used to having his possessions taken away from him for bad behaviour that he prefers not to get attached to any in the first place?’

I walked across to join Riley and get some mugs down from the cupboard. ‘Well, whatever the reason,’ I said. ‘It’s strange. And so sad.’ I shook my head and glanced across at Mike. ‘And I think this is going to be a lot harder than we expected.’

My family’s temporary silence spoke volumes. I’d been right. We all knew it. This was going to be hard. Not necessarily the day-to-day looking after the child – I could do all that with my eyes shut. It was just the impact of having this small stranger living with us, among us. One who we didn’t understand. That was hard.

I of all people should really have known what we’d gotten into. It had been barely two weeks since I’d left my last job, even though it suddenly felt a lifetime ago. And prior to that job I had worked in a huge organisation, running self-development courses for disadvantaged teens. Young people who teetered on the edge of society for various reasons, helping them to take some control over their lives and to make positive changes to empower them. I had spent the last three years of my working life as a behaviour manager at our huge local secondary school, running the unit for children with behavioural difficulties. These were the sort of children that almost every school has, sadly. The ones that just don’t fit in well, for a whole host of reasons. The ones that disrupt classes, taunt teachers, cause problems for themselves and everyone else. The sort of children, in consequence, that everybody wants to pass on to someone else. And I’d loved it, loved pretty much every minute of it, actually. I loved that I could do something positive for the sort of kids whose home lives were so tough that school was often their only safe haven, which made it doubly important that they could be helped to stay there. Because the bottom line was that if it weren’t for units such as the one I’d worked in, these were the children who were most likely to end up excluded altogether – which would be the worst outcome of all for them.

But it was doing that – connecting with these sorts of children – that had, by chance, led me to this whole new career choice. When I’d started at the school, my job had been reasonably straightforward: I’d be responsible for two or three children at a time, whom I’d supervise from my own office. With only a small number of children, I could really get through to them. And more often than not, I found, it was this close relationship – this one-on-one attention – that really made the difference in their behaviour. Away from their peers and the demands and anxieties of the classroom, they would often open up with me about their problems. My favourite thing of all was to take them to McDonald’s. There was something about sitting in a fast-food restaurant, over a burger, that seemed to help make them slow down, take stock and, most of all, trust me – enough to let me really try to help them.

But life being what it is, and budgets being budgets, my job had started growing at an incredible rate. By the time of my leaving, I had fifty children on my list, and had had to take over a classroom in which to house them – one that was swiftly re-christened ‘The Unit’. Here, the children would be divided into three distinct groups: the ones who were generally disruptive and uncooperative; the ones who tended to be bullied and friendless; and then the third group – the ones I classed as being the ‘unknown quantities’. These were the really sad, quiet kids. The ones who wouldn’t or couldn’t participate or interact. These were the obvious victims of poverty or neglect, and it really impacted on their learning.

It was a big job, and I had the use of teaching assistants when they were available, but, as is the case in most schools, they very seldom were, being in chronically short supply. Instead, I would often have to ask volunteer sixth-form students if they’d come along and give me a hand. Then, together with whatever willing helpers I could get, I’d work with each group separately throughout the day.

The day itself could throw up all sorts of challenges. I might start by seeing a group of kids that were targets for bullies, sitting with them and discussing ways in which they could build up their self-esteem; we’d also look at what action they should take if they found themselves in a vulnerable situation. These kids seemed to thrive best when we did team-building activities or they were given responsibilities around the school.

Next, I might have a group of kids that were known to be bullies; these, in contrast, I would talk to about the results of their actions and the impact they had on the kids they bullied. I did a lot of empathy work with these kinds of students, and tried to get them to really understand the emotional damage they caused. Usually, I found that the bullies had unresolved problems of their own, and when this was the case we were very proactive, with both extra support and interventions being put in place.

As time went on, I’d also begun spending more and more time working with some of the parents, as well, in a kind of unofficial ‘super-nanny’ capacity. This increasingly meant doing home visits, sometimes well into the evening, which was well outside my contracted professional responsibilities – not to mention time-consuming – and so was becoming a bit draining in itself.

All in all, my ‘unit’ had fast become the victim of its own success. The school community is like any other – if something’s happening, good or bad, word quickly spreads. And, in this case, it was a regular topic of conversation in the staff room, with all the teachers agreeing how much more pleasant life had become since this disruptive child or that disruptive child was regularly removed from their lessons. As a consequence, new teachers were regularly accosting me and, me being a softie, I could never say no.

It became increasingly difficult, therefore, to help any of the kids in the way I really wanted to help them, and little by little it began to become obvious to me that helping lots of children, just a little, here and there, wasn’t the best use of my time or experience. Wouldn’t it be better to concentrate on making a real difference by helping one child at a time, but in a big way?

And it wasn’t just this that had led Mike and I to fostering. We had already had hands-on experience of the realities of challenging parenting because Kieron had a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome, which meant he was just a little different from other kids.

Kieron was gorgeous on the outside (a slim six-foot blond Adonis – and he knew it!) but, more importantly, he was gorgeous on the inside as well. He really didn’t seem to have a bad bone in his body, and had never had an enemy in his life. It may have been a part of his condition – we both felt so – but Kieron really didn’t understand unpleasantness or malice, and could only see the good in every single person he ever met. He also had a great love for animals.

But his condition also meant he had to live life a certain way. He had to have a plan worked out for everything – still does – and really hated it if anything was changed at the eleventh hour. If we were going to do something, or had planned some sort of outing, woe betide us if we tried to change things at the last minute because sudden change really upset him and made him anxious. As a young child, this distress was very obvious to witness. He’d grow jumpy and panicky and be obviously unhappy. He’d also chew away all the skin around his fingers, leaving his hands really painful and raw. As a teenager, and still now, as a young adult, if he was upset he would simply stop speaking and begin to withdraw. Even now, though, if things got really on top of him, he’d still exhibit obvious signs of discomfort and distress, which, being his mum, I was always tuned into.

He was also, like many kids with Asperger’s syndrome, a passionate cataloguer and collector. His bedroom was always a sight to behold as he had collections of anything and everything. Football figurines and programmes, photographs of celebrities, classic cars, autographs, personal memorabilia … All the birthday cards he’d ever been given in his life, for instance, were all catalogued in a neat and perfect order. His DVDs were all ordered by favourite actors, and so on, his cars by colour, his music CDs by artist. And, naturally, you messed with any of it at your peril.

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.

Chapter 3

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.

‘This is what I think of your stupid fucking tea!’ he screamed at me. ‘And this is what I think of your stupid fucking presents! They’re for kids!’ he yelled, as shards of DVD flew across the kitchen. ‘So why don’t you give them to your ugly fucking niece! I don’t want them, okay? And I couldn’t play them anyway! Because I’ve smashed up my DVD player, too!’

‘Justin –’ I began.

But Justin was unseeing, and not listening to me at all. He grabbed my mobile from the kitchen table and hurled it against the wall. The back flew off immediately and the battery fell out, the bits joining the mass of DVD shards. It was so sudden that it took me completely by surprise, and I just stood there and gaped for a moment, speechless.

‘Get to your room! NOW!’ Kieron suddenly barked at him. ‘And don’t even think about coming down until you’re ready to apologise! You’re a selfish little brat, and if it were up to me, you’d be having no tea at all, you understand?’

Justin’s eyes were now as full of unshed tears as my own were, and as he fled the room, mine spilled out over my cheeks, despite all my good intentions about not crying.

I pulled out a chair and sat on it and put my head in my hands, mortified both that I’d handled things so badly, and that I’d upset Kieron. Upset everything. Ruined Christmas.

But I didn’t sit on it for long. What was I thinking? I stood up again, and went to put my arm around Kieron, as he stooped to gather up the parts of my dismembered phone. He was white as a sheet and I could feel he was shaking.

‘It’s okay, love,’ I soothed him. He hated seeing me upset. ‘He probably just needed to get that out of his system. I think we all did. I’m okay, Kieron, honest.’

‘Oh, God, mum. I know. But, God, I almost slapped him!’ This thought clearly horrified him, as I knew it would. That wasn’t Kieron. He looked hard at me. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

I squeezed his shoulder. ‘I’m fine now. Really fine. I swear.’

I took a step back from him now, gently shaking his shoulders. ‘But look at you! Coming over all Bruce Lee for your mum!’

He tutted at this. ‘Bruce Lee? He’s ancient! Bruce Willis, more like.’

Whatever. I let go a big sigh of relief. Situation diffused. At least for now.

By the time Mike returned with the shopping, I had calmed down sufficiently to see clearly. This was just an outburst – a symptom – not the end of the world. Kieron, understandably, was still very angry and insistent that Justin come and apologize to me, but after he’d explained to Mike what had happened, I felt it was really important that we calm the whole temperature down. I neither wanted nor needed an apology, I told them. It was just the build-up, the anticipation; it had all clearly been too much for him. I should have thought, I went on, about how it must be for him. How different it must have all been from what he was used to. And despite us telling him that Santa was bringing him lots of presents, why should he believe us? He hadn’t seen them, because we’d hidden them. And why, with his past, should he trust any of us? Trust anyone?

Despite that, Mike still felt he must go up and speak to him. Not to rant at him – that, we both agreed, would be pointless; even counter-productive. He was probably well used to people tearing strips off him all the time – but just to make it clear that his behaviour was unacceptable. He already knew that, of course – he’d know he’d lose points on his behaviour chart – but Mike felt strongly that he needed not to gloss over it, but to spell it out.

They both came back down, half an hour later, and Justin’s head was hanging. His eyes were red and swollen. You could see he’d been crying a lot.

‘I’m sorry Casey,’ he said solemnly. ‘I’m sorry, Kieron. I’ll pay you back for everything with my pocket money, I promise. I’ve got £16 in my drawer too, so that’ll be a start.’

He looked so sorry and so ashamed that my heart melted instantly. Poor kid. Poor, poor kid. Born to such terrible circumstances, and none of it his fault.

‘Just forget it,’ I said to him. But Mike shook his head.

‘No, Casey,’ he said. ‘We’ve already sorted it, haven’t we, Justin? That we’ll get him a new DVD player once he’s saved up enough to pay half. Agreed, Justin?’

Justin nodded. ‘Agreed.’

I crossed the kitchen and ruffled Justin’s hair. And he let me. It was only a small thing, but at least we’d made some contact.

Once again, I felt the tension drain out of my body, and my sense of optimism about Christmas returning. It would be fine now. Outburst over, we could now all enjoy Christmas and New Year.

But it would be less than forty-eight hours before I was proved wrong.

Chapter 4

I woke on Christmas morning in my usual good spirits, and was once again up early, and straight down in the living room, flicking through the TV channels to find something festive to put on. After a few clicks of the remote I found The Wizard of Oz – one of my favourites – so I left that playing while I headed into the kitchen to prepare breakfast, where I added my Christmas CD to the cacophony, turning it up just that little bit too much.

‘For God’s sake, love!’ said Mike, following me in there in his dressing gown.

I pulled him towards me and tried to get him to do a twirl with me, but he was having none of it. ‘Get off me, you nutter!’ he said, grinning. ‘You’ll have the whole bloody street up with the racket you’re making! Go get some breakfast on, woman!’

He then kissed me on the nose and gave me a bear hug. ‘I’ll go and get these kids up, then, shall I?’

I smiled to myself as I went to the fridge and started pulling out bacon and orange juice. I had the best husband ever. I truly believed that. Never in a million years would I have considered becoming a foster parent if I hadn’t had a great man like Mike by my side.

By the time we took on Justin, Mike and I had been married for twelve years, though we had been together as a couple for much longer. We’d known each other since childhood, and had always been friends. It was only after my first marriage had broken down and I had turned to friends for support, that Mike and I had realised just how much we meant to each other. The rest, as they say, is history, and we remain just as much in love today as we always were.

He was also my rock and my foil – we fitted perfectly. Where I was impetuous and excitable, he was so calm and wise, and he also made me feel safe, both emotionally and physically – he was well over six foot to my diminutive five foot nothing, and I knew I could rely on him totally.

I glanced at the many reminders and post-it notes stuck on the fridge door as I closed it, and which I’d had to prune out and squash up to make way for some big new ones. Beside the meal chart – on which I’d remembered to record both our turkey dinner and our bacon buttie breakfast – was the points chart we’d had in place for Justin from day one, as part of our strategy to get him to modify his behaviour and so – hopefully – be in a position to return to mainstream foster care once he’d completed the programme with us. That was all that we were hoping for (though the word ‘all’ is obviously a pretty big one) – to get him successfully placed with a long-term foster family and thereby have a chance of a happy and useful adult life.

The way we worked the points chart was simple. When he had amassed sufficient he was allowed a choice of treats as a reward; things like choosing the family dinner, say, or having an outing of some sort, the hope being that he’d be motivated to try and earn them. Because no points, of course, meant no treats. If he was good, and did all the day-to-day things we required of him, like cleaning his teeth, making his bed, being polite and so on, he got points awarded. But if he did something bad, he would lose them again. Last night’s episode, sadly, had seen him lose a lot. But, largely thanks to Mike’s input, he’d apologised now, which was no small thing for a child in his situation to do. I was so glad we were now starting Christmas Day on a positive note. The only fly in the ointment was an obvious one. We’d bought him some DVDs for Christmas, as had Riley, and a few others, and now he had nothing on which to play them.

But there was no point in me worrying about that now. We’d just have to deal with it when we got to it, I supposed. At the moment all was calm and that was good enough for me.

And also Kieron, who was down in the kitchen moments later, clearly back to his old self after the scene he had witnessed last night, and as excited about Christmas at 19 years of age as he’d been throughout the whole of his childhood. Where the run-up meant stress and anxiety and disruption, the big day itself was completely predictable, being one of those days in the calendar where our family routine hardly varied, which meant it was perfect for someone like my son. Mostly, of course, it meant lots of presents, which we still – at his request – put into a great big Christmas sack.

We’d done one for Justin, too, who thundered down close behind Kieron, looking so much calmer and happier now the day itself was finally here. In some respects, they had quite a lot in common.

I tried keeping some order on proceedings in the living room, but it was pointless. Since we’d had children big enough to create chaos, it always had been. ‘Check the tags, love,’ I urged Justin, as he ripped hell for leather into all the wrapping paper, ‘or you won’t have any idea who bought you what!’

My words were falling on deaf ears, though; he was just way too excited to take heed of what I was saying, and I decided that since this was probably a really big deal for him, I wouldn’t spoil the moment by nagging. ‘Tell you what,’ I said, as I stooped to gather up all the discarded wrapping paper, ‘you’ll just have to say “thank you for my present” to everyone. That way you won’t go far wrong.’

I was so touched by what an impressive haul he had, too. Everyone in my extended family had got him something, which they really didn’t have to do, bless them. I was particularly touched to see how much care Riley had taken. This was a child she’d not laid eyes on till half-way through December, not to mention the fact that she and David didn’t exactly have fortunes to splash around, yet she’d bought him such a lovely collection of toy soldiers, together with all the guns and grenades and other bits and bobs to go with them. I found myself smiling at this, too – we’d be having a job getting him out of the bath now.

The floor of the lounge was by now a sea of presents and torn paper, and it was the rustling of this that made me turn to see Mike sloping out. I’d assumed he’d just gone out to turn over the bacon, but he returned with a present I’d not seen before. He handed it to a surprised-looking Justin.

‘You might need this,’ he said, grinning, and before I could even wonder, Justin had opened the package to find a DVD player inside. He whispered a shocked but clearly delighted ‘thank you’ to Mike, and the expression on his face – now rather red – was a picture. As, I’m sure, was the expression on mine.

‘Where on earth did that come from?’ I asked Mike once we were back alone in the kitchen, getting breakfast dished up.

‘I called our Angela last night, after you’d gone up to bed,’ he explained. Angela was his sister. ‘I just kept thinking we couldn’t have the lad with nothing to play his new DVDs on, could we? I mean, I know it’s important that he learns that actions have consequences, and I still think he should save up half the money for a new one. But, well, it’s Christmas Day, isn’t it? No harm in letting him have that one for the time being, is there?’

‘But how did it get here?’

‘She drove round with it. While you were spark out in bed.’

I threw my arms around him. ‘Love, you are just wonderful,’ I said. ‘That’s such a thoughtful thing to have done.’

‘I was thinking about the rest of us as much as anything,’ he said ruefully. ‘He’s bound to be on edge, you know. Thinking about tomorrow and seeing his mum and brothers and everything. Be good for all of us if he has something to take his mind off it, I thought.’

But as it turned out, Justin was anything but anxious on Boxing Day morning. Superficially, at least, he seemed really happy and excited. Perhaps I should have taken that in itself as an omen. Get over-excited about something in life and it’s odds on that you’ll be disappointed. And right now he was as bouncy as a rubber ball.

‘Mum wasn’t having her Christmas dinner yesterday,’ he told me brightly, as we fed him an early breakfast of cereal, toast and orange juice. It was only just gone seven, and I was feeling the hour. We’d all really gone to bed much too late. ‘She was saving it to have once I get there,’ he went on. ‘Bet my brothers were mad as hell about that!’

Despite my being pleased to see him animated – he’d become more withdrawn and uncommunicative as Christmas Day had worn on, which I’d put down to the twin evils of anti-climax after the presents and anxiety about seeing his mum – I offered up a silent prayer that fate would be on his side and that he wouldn’t be disappointed. But the little I did know of his mother hardly filled me with optimism. He’d been in care since he was five. That spoke volumes in itself, let alone the fact that it had been a voluntary care order – she hadn’t fought to keep him. Had given him up willingly. And why only Justin in care? Why not the other two as well?

‘My social worker says she’s got loads and loads of stuff for me,’ he went on. ‘I bet I have an even better Christmas today, don’t you, Casey? I bet I will.’

Justin had spoken with Harrison Green on the phone a couple of days back – a mandatory phone call made when a child is first fostered just to check the child is okay and that things are going well. It’s done in private, so the child can be honest if they’re not happy. I hoped that wasn’t the case with Justin, but who knew?

I told him that, yes, he most probably would have a wonderful second Christmas Day, while at the same time cursing Harrison for passing on such unnecessary details and over-exciting him. Why do that? Why get his hopes up about things he didn’t actually know to be true? Especially when the history with Janice – that was his mother’s name, apparently – had clearly shown they might well be dashed.

I waved them off, finally – it would be a long, boring six-hour drive there and back for Mike, bless him – and decided I should put it all out of my mind. Maybe his mother wasn’t as bad as we suspected. And there was no getting away from it: I needed a break. Had it really only been a week since Justin had moved in with us – less than two since we’d all first clapped eyes on him? In some ways it felt like a lifetime. He’d certainly turned all our lives upside down. But I knew it would be easier once the new school term started. That was when we’d settle into some sort of routine. In the meantime, I’d better shower and dress and get going, I realised. Me and Kieron were going to spend the day round at Riley and David’s. Mike would come there when he was back after dropping off Justin, and take me home a bit later for the blissful evening of relaxation we’d planned, just the two of us, in front of the TV. I couldn’t have looked forward to anything more keenly, I decided, as I happily skipped back upstairs to get ready.

‘Chinese or Indian?’ Mike wanted to know. ‘They’re both open. I’m feeling curry, myself – you?’

‘Don’t care,’ I called back to him as I plumped the sofa cushions, so we could sit down and watch yet another movie.

It was coming up to seven now, and the two of us were downing tools for the evening. Mike had returned around 2.30 and come straight round to Riley’s, and we’d spent an enjoyable couple of hours there, just chatting about nothing; something which, like tonight, felt like a very distant luxury; one which I aimed to enjoy to the full.

Kieron was now out – some sort of lads’ night on the tiles with a group of his college friends, and wouldn’t be back again tonight. He was loving college and we were so happy to see him fitting in so well there. He was really interested in becoming a professional DJ on the club circuits, so had decided to enrol on a media studies course. He was into his second term now and his tutor had said that he was making great progress. He’d also settled in socially and had made some solid friendships – he’d be sleeping over with one of his mates tonight, probably so we wouldn’t see what sort of state he’d be in.

Mike filled me in on his first impressions of Justin’s mother when we got home. Justin himself had apparently continued to be excited for the whole journey, babbling on about his little brothers and reminiscing about other Christmases and how exciting they had been. But when Mike asked anything specific, he tended to skirt around it; it was as if, Mike felt, he had this idealised perfect Christmas tableau in his mind, and that anything that reminded him of the reality had to be ignored, or the picture would be ruined.

Janice, Mike also told me, to my surprise, looked a bit like me. She was only a couple of inches taller than me and had the same dark eyes and black hair. He said she seemed very friendly and had invited him in. He’d felt reluctant but Justin was apparently insistent that he go in and meet his little brothers.

‘Oh, I wish I’d been there with you,’ I told him. ‘I’d have loved to have met the little ones. What were they like? Did they look anything like Justin?’

Mike looked at me with that characteristically blank male expression. ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘I didn’t really notice.’

Typical male, I thought. Completely failed to get the facts. I shook my head. ‘So what did the house look like, anyway? Were the kids well dressed? Were there books around? What sort of toys?’

‘Hang on,’ he said, pretending to rummage in his pocket. ‘I think I have the full list right here. Complete with photographs …’

But I did wheedle some facts out of him eventually.

The family lived in a council house in the middle of a run-down estate, and the garden, Mike said, was full of rubbish. An old sofa, a load of broken kids’ toys, and so on, were strewn around, while inside it was old fashioned, with an old fabric suite, seventies-style brown curtains and an ashtray that was overflowing with cigarette ends. The one incongruous thing was an enormous flat-screen telly and home-entertainment system, which apparently took up almost one whole wall of the living room.

He was satisfied, however, that Janice’s welcome was authentic, and that she and Justin were genuinely pleased to see each other.

Mike looked tired now, and he’d have another early start tomorrow, as he was due to collect Justin from his mum’s at around noon. So, satisfied that all was okay, I could finally relax – I intended to make the most of some ‘us’ time before then.

‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is on – perfect!’ I said as he returned with the take-away menus. ‘And it’s only just started, too. Come on, snuggle up. You can put the order in when they have the next bunch of adverts.’ I had held off from eating for most of the day, and was definitely looking forward to my Indian-style butter chicken and pilau rice, but I could hold off for another twenty minutes.

But whatever was going on in Jimmy Stewart’s life, someone up there definitely didn’t seem to like us. From the hall we could suddenly hear ringing – it was the phone. ‘Who on earth could that be?’ I said, as we both went to get up from the sofa at the same moment. ‘Don’t worry, love,’ I told Mike, nudging him back down again. ‘Stay put there. I’ll go and see.’

I walked out into the hallway and picked up the receiver, by now half-expecting to hear either my mum or dad’s voice – the rest of the family, like us, all used their mobiles these days. But before I could so much as get half a word out, I was greeted by the sound of an angry woman’s voice.

‘Can you come and get this little bastard?’ she snarled at me. ‘I fucking mean it. Come and get him now!’

I was absolutely gobsmacked and at first had no idea what was happening. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I said. ‘Who is this?’

‘It’s me!’ the woman snapped. ‘Janice. Is that Casey?’

This was the first time I’d ever spoken to Justin’s mother and I was mortified. ‘Janice!’ I said. ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’

I could hear her shouting, then, away from the phone, to someone else. ‘You go near those kids, I’ll kill you, you evil little bastard! You there, Casey?’ She was back shouting at me again now. ‘Can you hear what’s going on here? Can you?’

‘Please Janice,’ I said, trying to keep my own voice calm and level. Mike had appeared in the hall now and was looking at me quizzically. ‘Just tell me what’s going on there. Is Justin alright?’

She laughed sarcastically, but I could tell she was finding none of this any funnier than I was. ‘Justin? Is fucking Justin alright? No he’s not! He’s not fucking right in the head!’ She burst into tears then and now I could hear Justin in the background. He was shouting now: ‘Casey! You’d better come and get me, Casey! I’m going to kill this fucking bitch in a minute!’

I tried hard to keep composed in the face of the reality that Mike would have to get him, and right away. ‘Right, Janice,’ I told her. ‘Janice? Listen. Mike’s going to set off now, okay. Just try to calm down … he’ll get to you as soon as he can … tell you what, can you put Justin on the phone for me?’

I cupped my hand over the mouthpiece. ‘I’m so sorry, love,’ I mouthed at Mike, making faces to let him know that there’d been some sort of crisis. ‘But you’re going to have to go back and get him. Sounds like all hell’s broken out up there. She’s hysterical and crying and he’s threatening to kill her. God … Can you just get ready while I try to calm things down?’

Mike, now resigned to the fact that our ‘peaceful’ night was not to be after all, left me trying to get to the bottom of things while he went to get himself ready for another long drive. In the meantime, I heard the phone being picked up again. ‘Justin? Is that you, love? What’s been happening? What’s going on?’

He was crying too. Big snuffling sobs were pouring out of him in waves. ‘Just get me, please, Casey. I’m going to kill the slag, I swear it!’

‘Justin, love, it’s okay. It’ll all be okay. Mike’s already left …’ which was only half a lie since he was doing so even as I said it, bless him ‘– and he’ll get there as soon as he can, okay?’

I could still hear Janice, close by. ‘Little bastard!’ she was shouting, and I presumed it was for my benefit. ‘I’ve a good mind to call the fucking cops! Hit your fucking mother would you, you little bastard?’

‘Casey,’ Justin said then. ‘I’ve gotta go now. Okay? I’ll tell you later.’ God, I thought miserably. Tell me what? ‘Just tell Mike to hurry up, okay?’

And with that, he hung up. All we could now hear was the twang of James Stewart coming from the TV.

Yup, I thought grimly. Such a wonderful life.

It was in the small hours before Mike returned home with Justin. A very tense time since, in his rush to go and get him, Mike had not only left his mobile behind, he’d also left his wallet, and had been really concerned that he’d run out of petrol on the way home.

Justin looked shattered and in terrible pain and immediately went up to his bedroom. I wanted to reach out to him – if only just to hug him – but he seemed shut down and I sensibly didn’t try to stop him. There was nothing to be achieved at this hour of the night. Let him sleep. That was the best thing. Time enough to deal with the whole sorry debacle in the morning.

Still, I felt desperately sorry for him; I was physically aching with the kind of pain any mother feels when one of her children is hurt or so deeply upset. Mike, too, looked tired – as he had every right to. I flicked the switch on the kettle and waited for him to speak.

‘It was a bloody mess,’ he said, once he’d sat down and got his freezing hands around a hot mug of coffee. ‘She was already out and down the front path in her dressing gown before I’d so much as killed the engine and climbed out of the car. She was dragging the little ones with her, too. Couldn’t shut her up – went off like a rocket – all about how she’d thought she’d surprise him by telling him she was pregnant – can you credit it? – and how he’d immediately lunged at her – by all accounts – and called her “fucking slut” and a “dirty whore”.’

I shook my head, listening to all this. ‘Pregnant?’

‘So she said. Anyway, she told me she hit him back when he said that, and he apparently hit her right back again, threatening to punch her in the stomach.’

I couldn’t take it in, even though it was perhaps exactly what we should have expected, given the history. ‘Oh, God,’ I said, with feeling. ‘What a mess.’

‘Oh, but there’s worse. He then “purposefully” – though how you can do that I don’t know – threw up all over his unopened Christmas presents and then told her she could stick them all up her arse. The little ones were apparently crying and begging him to be nice to her, but his response, or so she tells me, was to start on them too – telling them that their mother was a slut and both their dads were junkies. And so on and so forth till we got the call.’

‘Where was Justin while she was telling you all this? Did he have his own version?’

‘No. Not with us. He was already by the car. He had run out ahead of her when I first pulled up. He was just sat in the road, against the wheel, on the far side, crying his bloody eyes out.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it, Case. Really, I can’t. How could the woman be so bloody insensitive that she had no idea – and she didn’t, you could see that pretty clearly – how much she’d hurt him by what she’d said to him. Tell you what, I could have happily smacked her myself.’

‘So did Justin tell you much when you set off?’

Mike shook his head. ‘He was wretched, Case, really wretched. He said the first thing she told him was that they’d already done Christmas the day before, and that the second was that she had a surprise for him. And, I mean, if you say that to a kid …’. He shook his head again, and I could see the whole thing had really got to him. ‘But the surprise, of course, was that she was going to have a little girl. He said she really seemed to think the idea was funny – I think it’s bloody criminal – and that she told him this girl of hers was going to be a princess and be spoiled and have everything. And be special. Not a “lunatic like him”, those were his exact words’. He sipped his coffee and sighed as he set the mug down. ‘And then he slept. All the rest of the way home.’

We went to bed heavy of heart, around three. How could any mother in the world say such wicked things to her own child? One thing was sure: if we had even the smallest chance of helping Justin, there was so, so much more that we needed to know.

Chapter 5

One of the main things Mike and I had to do as foster carers was to keep a log of anything and everything that happened during each placement: a comprehensive record of progress and pertinent information that could be placed on record in a child’s file. In Justin’s case, his file being something of a black hole up to now, I felt it was doubly important that I get everything down while it was fresh in our minds. I was also anxious to press John Fulshaw for more facts about Justin’s mum and what exactly had been happening between them these past years. Twenty failed placements. I kept returning to that stark fact. If we wanted to help him we needed answers to so much. What had happened with this child? What had gone so badly wrong in so many placements? And we needed to know not just what had happened to him but why.

One thing was crystal clear. That Justin was struggling to hold it together. He was hurting a lot and, from what Mike had witnessed at his mother’s house, with very good reason. And there was something else, too. Since returning from there, he seemed to have decided, consciously or unconsciously, that he needed to take what his mum did out on me. Me and all women, perhaps.

Since Mike had pointed out the similarities between Janice and myself, I started to wonder if Justin sometimes found it difficult to separate his mother and me. It wasn’t too far fetched an idea, I thought, not with all the trauma he had suffered in his short life.

‘What you doing the cooking for?’ he asked Mike, when he was in the kitchen preparing lunch the next day. ‘You don’t have a dog and bark yourself.’ Surprised by that sort of comment coming from a child of eleven, Mike explained that not only didn’t we talk like that in our house, we didn’t believe it to be true, either. There was no hierarchy in our house, he explained. No order of importance. We were equals and in all things we worked as a team. If a meal needed preparing, then someone would prepare it. There was no law that said that someone had to be me. But Justin was adamant. ‘That’s women’s work,’ he said. And though Mike then explained that there was no such thing as ‘women’s work’, he wouldn’t have it. ‘You won’t ever catch me doing women’s work,’ he said firmly.

Later that day, he came down from where he’d been playing on his computer in his bedroom to find me, Riley, David and Kieron playing Scrabble.

‘D’you want to join us?’ Riley asked him. Justin looked shocked that she’d even spoken to him. ‘Now, why would I want to do that?’ he said. He then, very pointedly, turned to Kieron and David. ‘Do you two want to play footie outside?’ he asked them. ‘We could set my new net up if you like.’

Riley set her Scrabble tiles down, her face fixed in a grimace. ‘I was only trying to be friendly!’ she snapped at him. ‘And you can see perfectly well that they can’t play “footie”. We’re in the middle of a game, if you hadn’t noticed, so –’

‘It’s okay, Riley,’ I interrupted, conscious of the sudden tension. ‘I’m sure Justin didn’t mean to be rude. How about you stay and watch who wins this round, eh, Justin? Then maybe the boys will have a kick about with you after.’

‘Yeah,’ added David, grinning. ‘Stay and watch us annihilate these girls, yeah? Then we’ll play footie.’

I loved David. He was such a great partner to Riley. Cheerful and funny, and also a rarity: a match for our very strong-willed daughter. Mike and I had both known him for longer than she had, as he was the son of a good friend of ours. I still didn’t think Riley realised quite how big a hand her mum and dad had had in having them ‘bump into’ each other so often.

But like many men, he didn’t see the signals the way us girls did, and got a scowl from his girlfriend for his well-meaning comment, made, I didn’t doubt, to try and lighten up the situation. Justin sniggered, too, which annoyed Riley further. ‘You don’t think much of women, do you, Justin?’ she observed sharply.

‘You don’t think much of women, do you, Justin?’ he parroted. ‘Nag nag bloody nag.’ Upon which he turned on his heel and left the room.

The boys still seemed largely oblivious to what was going on here, but Riley and I weren’t. Quite the opposite. We were seeing a pattern. And also a symptom, I thought – of a child trying hard to provoke a reaction.

‘I definitely think he’s trying to make you pay for what his mum said to him,’ Mike suggested, confirming my own thoughts, when we had a few moments alone together later.

‘Me and Riley,’ I said, nodding. ‘It’s that whole black-haired woman thing, I’m guessing.’ I sighed. ‘I wish he’d actually sit down and talk to me, instead.’

But that wasn’t happening. And there was more to come, too. It was obvious that we were really only scratching the surface of how much pain Justin was really suffering. The following morning I came down to find him sitting at the table, his empty breakfast dishes beside him, reading a magazine.

‘You’re up early, love,’ I said. ‘Mike make you breakfast, then, did he?’

He shook his head. ‘Nah. He went to work ages ago. I made it myself.’

He seemed proud of having done that. Good, I thought. Good. That would give him some much needed points for his chart. And so much for his ideas about women’s work …

I ruffled his mop of blond curls and he seemed happy to let me do so. ‘What you reading?’ I asked him.

‘The magazine out of Mike’s paper,’ he said brightly. ‘The one with all the telly stuff in it.’

As he would be, I guessed. He was mad about TV – the soaps, in particular. He was always flicking through the TV mags, or checking on the internet to see what his favourite characters were getting up to. He liked to know in advance what was going to happen and, if he was feeling particularly mischievous, he would often try to spoil the plot if an episode ended on a cliff-hanger, by telling us what would happen next.

I made myself a coffee and went upstairs to get showered, conscious of the positive mood I could sense. Perhaps today would see some positive developments between us, too. Perhaps he’d finally feel able to talk through what had happened. Cry, even. Let it all come out.

When I came back down though, he wasn’t there any more – he’d gone into the living room to watch the telly. I picked up his plate and mug and got the cloth to wipe the kitchen table. It was then, as I picked up the magazine to wipe beneath it, that I noticed two holes in the page it was open at. Looking more closely, I realised that the holes weren’t random, either – they’d been punched out through the eyes of a female celebrity.

I sat down, then, and went through the rest of the magazine, to find that exactly the same had been done on lots of pages; indeed, every dark-haired female celeb in the magazine had had her eyes carefully and precisely removed. I shuddered. It was creepy. It was also a worry. I must call John and tell him about this. It must be, I felt certain, part of a bigger picture, and would need adding to my log right away.

And that evening saw yet more disturbing behaviour. After cleaning away our dinner plates and checking tomorrow’s menu, so that I could answer Justin’s inevitable question about it, I flicked off the kitchen light and prepared to relax in the living room for the evening, beginning with watching EastEnders, as we habitually did.

It was only a short way into the programme, when Mike and I became aware that Justin was muttering to himself. He was sitting opposite the pair of us, on the other sofa, on his own, and seemed completely unaware that he was speaking out loud.

‘Fucking slag,’ he was muttering. ‘Fucking dirty whore. You’re gonna get what’s coming. Die, you fucking bitch!’

We stared in shock at this, though he didn’t even see us doing so. He seemed to be doing it to every female dark-haired character he saw. And as the main storyline at that time featured the black-haired Slater sisters, there were lots of dark-haired women on the screen throughout the show. He really didn’t seem to know that he was doing it, either. It was if he was in some sort of trance.

Mike and I continued to watch him, both of us completely baffled, as he carried on throughout the whole episode. I was positive by now that he was unaware of his actions, and I wondered too, how this was going to pan out.

It was confirmed when it ended and the credits started rolling. The now familiar dark-eyed and menacing-looking grimace disappeared, almost in an instant. It was as if he mentally shook himself out of a trance, and came back into the room. He turned to me and grinned. ‘I love EastEnders!’ he said cheerfully. We could only nod and smile as he trotted out.

‘What the hell?’ Mike asked when he was sure the coast was clear.

‘Love,’ I said, shaking my head in disbelief, ‘I can’t even begin to give you a logical answer.’

‘How many points has Justin got at the moment?’ Riley asked me. She was on the phone a few days later, with a plan. ‘It’s David’s last day off,’ she explained. ‘So we thought we’d go to the pictures. See a matinee. And we thought Justin might like to come along too.’

Bless her; I loved how she was so supportive of what we were doing. Especially since Justin often made it so hard for her to like him. I felt so proud of her. And David, as well.

‘Great!’ I said, mentally cheering at the prospect of a couple of hours to myself as much as anything. I had a call to make that needed Justin not to be around. ‘It’s also his last day before school starts, so your timing is absolutely perfect,’ I told her. ‘And, yes, I’m sure he has enough points on his chart to do something like that.’ He had, too. Despite my continuing – and growing – concerns about his emotional state since the home visit, he was doing well in all practical respects. He was helping in the kitchen, fretting less volubly about mealtimes, helping tidy the garden, showering without having to be nagged and, I was pleased to note, even getting out a few of the things he’d so pointedly stashed away in his room. A trip out with Riley and David would be just the thing for him. ‘He’ll be thrilled,’ I told her. ‘I’ll go and tell him the good news right away.’

Justin wasn’t in his room when I went up to tell him, however, and I then realised I could hear the sound of the shower going. What was in residence, however, was a very strange smell. A sort of mixture of body odour and wet dog. And as soon as I smelt it, I was reminded that Kieron had already mentioned this to me. Kieron had said, just a couple of days ago, actually, that Justin’s room smelt a bit like a hamster cage. At the time I hadn’t given it much thought, but now I knew exactly what he meant. I wrinkled my nose as I poked my head in a bit further.

One of Justin’s rules – and one of the ways he earned points – was that he was responsible for keeping his own room tidy. Not such a big deal, since he still had so little in it. I only went in there myself to collect things like empty mugs and laundry, and since he’d arrived with us, had only spent any time in there to strip and change his bedding for him. Even so, I decided, as I went to call to him in the bathroom, I’d say he’d been with us for coming up to four weeks, so his room could probably do with a bit of dusting and polishing – not to mention de-fumigating now, apparently. So once they’d gone out I decided I’d go in and give it a proper once-over, with the help of some elbow grease and bleach.

But that could wait till after I’d spoken to John, which I did straight after Riley and David had come to pick Justin up. There was such a lot to tell him that I spent a good ten minutes updating him on the events of the previous few days. ‘I need information,’ I told him, once I’d filled him in on what had happened between Justin and his mum. ‘Surely you can find some files on him somewhere. His behaviour is really giving us cause for concern, and, now we’ve seen how bad things are with his mother, we know there’s so much we aren’t privy to. There must be. He has huge emotional issues.’ I filled John in on the hole-punching business. ‘And my instinct is that they are pretty long-standing. But what’s the root of it all? What specifically? We feel we’re stumbling around completely in the dark here, John. We can’t help him without knowing properly about his background.’

I knew I must have sounded desperate, but the truth of it was that we were. If others didn’t help us, by giving us some solid information on which to base how we dealt with him, then we couldn’t really help Justin, could we? Only contain his behaviour, which, unless the underlying reasons for that behaviour were established and dealt with, was a pretty pointless thing to be doing. In my opinion we wouldn’t have been doing our job properly, if these crucial questions continued to remain unanswered.

The good news, however, was that John hadn’t been idle. Indeed, he’d been one step ahead of us already and had tracked down two of Justin’s former social workers.

‘One’s retired,’ he said, ‘and one’s now at a different authority. But both have agreed to meet me and discuss more of his background. I am on the case, Casey,’ – he laughed as he said this – ‘I really am. I’ll be back to you as soon as I can, promise.’

Feeling cheered by John’s news I then trotted upstairs, armed with my collection of germ-busting sprays. There was no smell, however odd, that I, cleaner extraordinaire, couldn’t get to the bottom of and completely expunge, and this one would be no exception.

My investigations bore fruit pretty quickly. The smell seemed to be coming from the big built-in cupboard in the corner; when I opened it, the stench increased tenfold. I began rootling around among the various shelves and boxes, and eventually came upon a supermarket carrier bag, full of something soft and squashy, and tightly tied at the top. When I finally managed to wrestle it open, my suspicions were confirmed. The stench was so strong, it literally exploded in my face. Gagging now, I peered in and looked at the contents: around ten pairs of dirty, smelly socks. But these were dirty, smelly socks way beyond any usual definition of such articles – and I thought that as someone who’s been a mum to a teenage boy and no stranger to nasty, noxious niffs. They were stiff, too, so had obviously been there a while; they almost crackled as I pulled them from the carrier.

It was then when I saw something that immediately swept away all my previously light-hearted thoughts about boys and their attention to personal hygiene. No, these socks weren’t just dirty, they were, all of them, bloody. The toe parts of all of them were liberally covered in the stuff, dried on and almost black in colour.

I got up from the floor and sat down on the bed, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. It was clear now just what the source of the foul smell was, clearer also why he’d so carefully squirrelled them away. Presumably till he could find some secret moment at some point, when he could wash them himself, away from my eyes.

I put the bag down, and started to search the room further. Which wasn’t something I’d ever dream of doing with my own kids. Not something I’d do, period, in normal circumstances, with anyone. But this was serious. This was necessary, because some instinct drove me on. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew there would be something hidden somewhere. I just knew there was something else to find.

I was on autopilot now and went methodically through his room, inch by inch, searching carefully in every nook and cranny. And after the best part of an hour spent pretty much ransacking Justin’s bedroom, I finally made my first find. I’d lifted up the mattress by now, to get a better look at the bed base, when I noticed a tiny tear in the mattress itself. It was very small, but also straight and clean and precise – it was clear it hadn’t happened accidently. Very gingerly, I pushed a finger inside.

My fingertip found it – somewhat suddenly and painfully. I had caught it on the end of something sharp. Not wishing to slice off the top of my finger, I very carefully winkled it out. It was the blade from a craft knife. One that had come out of the set we had bought for him, I imagined.

Once again, instinct kicked in and drove me on. Brushing aside my initial feelings of dread at what I might find next, I began my second search with renewed vigour. My attention to detail wasn’t disappointed. Within half an hour I had a decidedly grim haul, all laid out on the bedroom floor around me: a variety of knives and blades of all kinds, with which he’d obviously been cutting himself. There were some scissors, which I recognised, that I thought I’d mislaid – I’d even enlisted Justin’s help in trying to find them, I remembered – and two or three disposable razor blades, with the plastic blade holders melted off, which meant he must also have found a lighter or matches. Plus there was a small vegetable knife, which I hadn’t ever seen before, and a Stanley knife, which I guessed he might have taken from our tool box.

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