The Boy No One Loved and Crying for Help 2-in-1 Collection. Casey Watson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ what I missed when I get back.’

      Two minutes later, however, I was far from reassured to hear Mike’s voice from upstairs too – I could tell he was shouting. I leapt up to go and join him and really give the boys what for. I should have known they’d play up at some point.

      But what greeted me was not ‘playing up’ in any normal sense. I entered the bedroom to find Justin standing at the side of his bed, with a very strange look on his face. It took me a few moments to process what was happening. Mike was kneeling on the floor close by, glaring at him, and it was then that I noticed that Gregory was huddled beneath a duvet on the floor between them. I could hear Gregory sobbing and groaning from inside it, clearly reluctant to give it up, while Mike was trying to prise it from around him.

      ‘What the hell is going on?’ I said, looking from Mike to Justin. Justin simply stared at me, his features hardening. ‘Mike?’ I persisted.

      ‘I don’t know exactly,’ he said, turning to me. ‘But I think he’s hurt Greg in some way.’ He pointed his finger at Justin as he spoke. ‘That’s all I know, because neither of them will tell me. All I’ve managed to get out of Greg is that Justin’s really hurt him and that he wants to go home to his auntie. ‘C’mon mate,’ he said, giving another gentle tug on the duvet. ‘Let’s get you out of there and see how you’re doing.’

      I got down on my knees and put my arms around Greg through the duvet. ‘It’s okay sweetheart,’ I said gently as Mike moved aside to make room. Perhaps he’d respond better to a female voice. ‘Let’s just have a look at you, eh? Then we can phone your Auntie Jennie.’

      Greg slowly peeked out now, sobbing loudly. ‘J … J … Justin b … b … burned me, Casey. He’s a big meanie and he should have a smack. I want Auntie Jennie to come.’ His sobs began to grow even louder. ‘I want her to come and make me better!’

      He was clearly very traumatised and I was devastated. I’d been so full of hope, and felt badly let down. What on earth had Justin done to the poor kid? ‘Justin!’ I snapped, ‘Tell me what you’ve done to Greg, you hear me!’

      I don’t know what it was about the tone of my voice, but it seemed to finally shock him into talking. ‘I just wanted to see what would happen,’ he said plaintively. ‘That was all, Casey, honest. I just thought it would be interesting to see!’

      ‘What would be interesting?’ I barked at him.

      ‘What the wax did.’

      I felt alarm bells ringing. ‘Wax? What wax?’

      ‘In the tea-light,’ he said. ‘The wax in the tea-light!’

      It turned out, then, through a series of halting half-sentences, that what Justin had decided would be ‘interesting’ would be to witness what would happen if he melted a candle – he’d taken both some matches and a tea-light from the kitchen, he admitted – and poured the hot molten wax onto Gregory’s skin.

      ‘I didn’t think it would hurt him,’ he protested. ‘I only wanted to peel it back off when it set.’

      I was both speechless and furious with him, and Mike was livid. He could barely look at, let alone speak to, Justin, as he picked Gregory up to carry him downstairs.

      ‘Get to bed, young man,’ I told him as I followed Mike out. ‘Not a peep – we’ll be dealing with you in the morning!’

      I then had the unenviable task of phoning Jennie and explaining to her what had happened. It was almost midnight by now, and I felt awful that she had to rush around at this hour. She wouldn’t hear of us driving Gregory home ourselves, since we didn’t know the way, so she had to come out herself – probably the last thing she expected – to collect her frightened and traumatised nephew.

      Worst of all was that, seeing how upset we both were, she made it clear that we mustn’t feel in any way responsible. She knew, she said, that Gregory was a vulnerable child, and blamed herself for allowing him to sleep out.

      The next day we went through the usual sanctions with Justin. No privileges, no TV and no PlayStation. Not much of a punishment for most kids, I imagine, but to Justin, such losses were torture.

      But about the motivation behind his own form of ‘torture’ I was ambivalent. It had really seemed that he had no notion of the pain he’d inflicted, and I wondered if he was so used to extreme pain himself, via his bouts of self-harming, that he genuinely didn’t think he’d hurt Gregory that much. It was either that, or that he did know, which made for an equally depressing picture.

      Either way, it was a wake-up call for both of us. Not to mention being a stark reminder of Mona’s chilling prophecy.

      But incidents such as this, I mused, once my initial shock had died down, were exactly what our kind of fostering was about. It may have been shocking to see what had previously been just a set of notes actually happening in our midst, but this was why I’d wanted to do it so badly in the first place. This – this whole tapestry of tragedy heaped on tragedy, and all the far-reaching ramifications – was exactly what drove Mike and I. I just hoped we could unpick all the bad threads that were making a muddle of the rest, and so succeed where so many others had failed. But I knew now, more than ever, that this would be a tall order. A real challenge. Justin seemed more complex by the minute.

      ‘Curry or pizza or Chinese – what’s your preference?’

      It was the following Saturday morning and Mike and Kieron were off to football as per usual. It had been a quiet sort of week since all the revelations and rearrangements, but, even so, I felt shattered and not at all like cooking a big family dinner. Tonight I had a date with a take-away and the telly and someone else would definitely be doing the washing up.

      ‘Curry!’ Mike, Kieron and Justin all said together, though Justin’s contribution came from the behind the PlayStation controller that he was, as ever, feverishly playing on. Indeed, today, having only just got his privileges back, he was even more obsessed with it than usual. One day, perhaps, we’d get him off to football with the boys, but today wasn’t the day, I thought, to push it.

      It had been much colder than usual, with a bitingly chilly wind, and I was actually happy to spend the day indoors myself, my scheduled mooch around the shops with Riley having been cancelled a little while back because she’d been feeling a bit off-colour. I did miss my daughter, though, and felt a little redundant as I dragged the mop and bucket out from the cleaning cupboard.

      She’d said she might pop round later and, if not, I might stroll down to hers, but it was probably a good thing for me to catch up with a bit of housework and cleaning in the meantime; I’d forgotten, and had been forcibly reminded by having Justin, that having an extra person in the house created a lot of extra dust. And I definitely couldn’t be having that.

      ‘That’s a shame,’ I said, grinning. ‘Because I fancy Chinese …’ I pushed my sleeves up. ‘Only kidding. Now get out from under my feet. And you, Justin,’ – I paused here, to look at my watch – ‘have only forty-seven minutes of TV time left before I stage a takeover of the sofa and remote!’

      I’d planned, as is my slightly obsessive way with housework, on making a circuit of the upstairs bedrooms, stripping beds as I went, before embarking on a big upstairs dustathon. And since Justin’s was the first door on the left once up the stairs, it seemed logical to tackle that room first.

      It was, as it had been for a СКАЧАТЬ