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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 …’

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