At Risk: An innocent boy. A sinister secret. Is there no one to save him from danger?. Casey Watson

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СКАЧАТЬ time at all. ‘I know,’ I said, after he’d beaten me a second time (and I reflected that this was unlike any fostering situation I’d ever known), ‘how about I get my craft box out instead?’

      Dressing-gowned-up now, and satisfied that Adam was sleeping soundly, I padded down to the kitchen and picked up the resultant work of art, which we’d left on the kitchen table to dry out. It stuck me anew that it was a bit of an odd choice.

      Adam had decided to paint a picture of what I assumed was his mum, laid out in a hospital bed with various wires and tubes attached, and with some kind of machine at her side. He’d even attached a drip to her arm, complete with bag and stand.

      It was actually rather good. There was no denying his talent. And in terms of technical details, it was spot on. But still an odd choice, given my suggestion that he paint something specifically to take to his mother – I’d assumed he’d do some flowers, or a landscape, or self-portrait, with the usual accompanying ‘get well soon’ message.

      Still, I thought, as I put it down and went to fill the kettle, who was I to suggest what he should or shouldn’t draw? Perhaps he had a future as a technical artist, or perhaps as a designer of some miraculous new scanner. He was certainly a bright enough boy.

      Not to mention a hungry one. On that front he’d really surprised me, and while I had no idea what he most liked for breakfast, the evidence of the previous night’s tea seemed to suggest that the answer was probably ‘anything and everything’. He’d sat down to eat – tiny, underweight thing that he was – and proceeded to act like a small human vacuum cleaner, sucking up whatever appeared in front of him. Fish and chips, in this case, with lashings of curry sauce, along with several slices of bread and butter, then biscuits and milk, then some toast and a bar of chocolate while he painted his creation, then a drinking chocolate and yet another biscuit before bed. His family must have some seriously good genes, I remembered thinking, for him to have an appetite like that and still stay so thin. If that was his diet, then I wanted to be on it!

      But, being Saturday, it was too early to think about breakfast anyway so, coffee made, I headed out into our sunny conservatory to give Mike and Tyler a quick call. According to the handout I’d been left with, which detailed their itinerary, they should by now have arrived in the resort. Plus they were an hour ahead, so I was keen to fill Mike in on my news before they headed off up the slopes.

      ‘You’ve what?’ Mike asked after I got through to his mobile and told him that I’d taken in a child only hours after he had left.

      The anxiety in his voice was perfectly reasonable. The sorts of children we normally specialised in fostering weren’t the kind of kids you contemplated lightly. ‘He’s a sweetheart,’ I reassured him, ‘and it’s only for a few days while his mum’s in hospital.’ I then went on to reassure him that, no, Adam didn’t put her there, and that all being well he’d be gone before they were home again. ‘Besides,’ I said, ‘it’ll keep me occupied, won’t it? While you and Ty are having your alpine adventure.’

      ‘Adventure?’ Mike groaned. ‘The only adventure I’ve had so far is in trying to unbend myself out of that flipping coach seat. I’m as stiff as a board and – sod’s law – no sooner do I finally get comfortable enough to nod off than we pull up outside the blinking lodge! Gawd knows where I’m going to find the energy to ski, even after the measly hours’ kip we’ve been granted.’

      Tyler, predictably, was bouncing off the ceiling. No, I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it in his voice. Though once he’d told me about the coach journey, the Channel Tunnel, the mountains and the snow, he did express regret that I had another child in and he wasn’t around to join in.

      Which both tickled and moved me. You’d expect – well, I think I would – that a child with Tyler’s background would suffer pangs of, if not full-blown jealousy, at least of insecurity whenever a new child came into our lives. And we had always been braced for it, too. Yet it never happened. I don’t know why, and I’d certainly not claim any credit, but there was something about Tyler and how secure he obviously felt with us that let him welcome any new child wholeheartedly.

      I wasn’t sure why, but my hunch was that it made him feel even more one of us. Part of the fostering ‘team’. He was certainly anxious to know all about Adam, and quick to suggest things I might do with him after I’d taken him to see his mum, from the climbing wall at our local leisure centre to a turn on the dry ski slope he’d been on with school.

      ‘Or swimming,’ he suggested. ‘That’s on the way to the hospital.’ Which seemed the perfect idea. So I ran with it. Except the next call, to the hospital, brought the dispiriting news that Adam’s mum still wasn’t able to see him.

      ‘It’s the medication we had to give her,’ the ward sister explained. ‘It’s an opiate – she’s had a lot of pain overnight unfortunately – and it’s making her too drowsy to be intelligible.’

      ‘She’s all right, though, is she?’ I asked, anxious that there might have been some sort of complication.

      ‘Nothing to worry about,’ the nurse was quick to reassure me. ‘Her vital signs are all fine. She’s just in a lot of pain, and we’re dealing with it. She’ll be right as rain by tomorrow, you’ll see. And in a much better place in terms of seeing her little boy. And, truth be told, he’ll be much more reassured when he does see her than he would be today.’

      Which was a fair point. No child likes to see their parent as vulnerable, and if Adam’s mum was all over the place (as, with experience of strong painkillers, I knew she probably would be) it made no sense to alarm him unduly. So that was that. When Adam walked sleepily into the kitchen half an hour later it was to hear that yet again he wouldn’t be seeing his beloved mother.

      He looked distraught, and I could see he was trying to stop himself from crying. ‘Mum will be so upset if she doesn’t see me soon,’ he said, as I hurried to put an arm around him. ‘I don’t know how she’ll cope, I really don’t.’

      That struck me as a strange thing to say. He reached out as I hugged him and grabbed his painting off the kitchen table, tracing a finger along the arm of the figure on the bed. ‘She’s going to worry about me,’ he added.

      ‘Of course she is, sweetie,’ I agreed. ‘But she knows you’re being looked after …’

      ‘But does she know I’m okay? You know. Not ill or anything?’

      ‘Of course she does,’ I lied. There’d been no such conversation. But, then again, why ever would there have been? ‘She knows you’re fine, that you beat me at chess – two whole times! – and that you’re eating me out of house and home. On which note, what d’you fancy for breakfast?’

      Quite a lot, as it turned out, once Adam had been reassured. Eggs and bacon, some toast and a bowl of cereal. And it struck me that perhaps Adam was a teeny pint-sized athlete, and though I certainly wouldn’t be climbing any indoor walls, or falling down any ski slopes, he might relish doing all of the activities Tyler had suggested.

      Swimming, however, seemed to win the day.

      ‘I love swimming,’ he told me. ‘We’re going with school next term, too. So I need to practise for my 600 metres.’

      ‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘Swimming it shall be, then.’

      Adam frowned. ‘But what am I going to do about swimming shorts? The social lady didn’t pack any СКАЧАТЬ