Skin Deep: All She Wanted Was a Mummy, But Was She Too Ugly to Be Loved?. Casey Watson

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      To me, all children are beautiful. I often liken us parents and carers to gardeners. We work with what we are blessed with, and so long as we nurture and tend to our seedlings, and as long as we sort out what lies beneath – the tangled roots and weeds that threaten to prevent growth – then we can produce strong, healthy plants; some beautiful flowers, others not so aesthetic, but each with a purpose, and set to flourish and go on to create other life. This is all we can do, and all we need to do.

Acknowledgements

      As ever, I’d like to thank the team I’m so privileged to work with. Huge thanks to everyone at HarperCollins, my agent Andrew Lownie and, of course, my lovely friend Lynne.

Chapter 1

      The long school summer holidays. Who’d have them? We were only three weeks into them, so not even quite at the halfway point, but already that thought was uppermost on my mind several times a day. It was certainly the number one thing on my mind as I attacked the washing up and surveyed the scene of devastation that was supposed to be my garden.

      More to the point, why had I always been such a staunch advocate for them? Silly me, I thought ruefully – that one was pretty obvious. It was because I used to work in a school, and those six precious weeks were like a gift from the gods. A vital pause between stints under the tyranny of the school bell. Fickle, fickle, fickle, that was me.

      I raised a soapy Marigold and rapped hard on the open kitchen window. ‘Tyler!’ I barked. ‘Denver! Please! Not so rough! And watch my flowers!’ I added hopefully, though without much optimism that either boy would. Though they smiled and waved back at me, they also completely ignored me, chasing each other round the garden with their water blasters just as manically as they had been for the past half hour. My poor windows were going to get it next. I just knew it.

      Not that in normal circumstances I’d have much minded the devastation. Tyler had only been with us for a little over a year, but since we’d asked if we could keep him permanently – well, till he was ready to fly the nest – it almost felt like he’d been with us for half his life. And, in truth, I could never be cross with him for long. Well, except when I had to be, obviously. It had been a huge decision and we’d not yet had cause to regret it; now he was in a loving, happy home, he was blossoming.

      Which was more than my flowers were being allowed to, however. This was probably par for the course when they were constantly being attacked by an almost 13-year-old boy and his boisterous sidekick. That’s not to say that my flesh and blood family weren’t partly to blame. Riley and Kieron, my own two, had both passed their quarter centuries, but Levi and Jackson – Riley’s boys – were already following enthusiastically in the footsteps of their uncle Kieron, in that, if they saw grass, they immediately thought ‘football’.

      Now eight and six, perhaps it was a blessing that they weren’t around to play today, as they were equally skilled at kicking a ball into a rose bush and creating a mud slick out of a previously lush patch of grass. Still, at least Riley and David’s third child had been a daughter, and though my little grand-daughter Marley-Mae was only 16 months old I could already tell she was going to be a proper little lady.

      But it was another little lady that was causing me to fuss and flap this morning. I’d had a phone call first thing from my fostering link worker, John Fulshaw, to inform me that he had something of an emergency on his hands – so could I possibly take on a young girl? In typical John style, he was fairly light on facts, operating according to his usual ‘I’ll tell you more when I get there’ routine. So all I knew currently was that she’d been taken into care following a house fire, and that her mother was still in hospital being treated. Oh, and that, like Riley’s Levi, she was just eight years old, and that though her name was Philippa she apparently only answered to ‘Flip’. Oh, and one more thing. That they (as in John, the little girl and the social worker allocated to her) would be arriving at my house in – hell’s bells – less than an hour.

      As timings went, it couldn’t have been much worse. I’d already agreed that Tyler’s friend Denver could spend the day with us, which meant I’d had two boisterous almost-teens running wild both in and out of the house all morning, wearing nothing but swimming shorts, splashing around in Marley-Mae’s little paddling pool and generally running amok in that way adolescent boys do, while my house, already messy after a Sunday spent with the very same grandkids, looked like a bomb had hit it.

      For a clean-freak like me, this was naturally torture. Or would be, if I’d allowed it to remain in that state, but such was my horror of admitting visitors if it was anything other than pristine, it would be a cold day in hell before I allowed that to happen.

      Which meant I needed to crack on fast. I popped the last plate into the drainer and peeled off my washing-up gloves. I’d need my heavy guns to come out for the rest of the chores that I’d be doing, so I went across to my cleaning cupboard to get tooled up: vacuum, duster, disinfectant and mop were my weapons of choice, and every speck of dust, or splash of dirty water, my enemy. The Blitz had nothing on me when I declared war on dirt and mess, and I was just preparing for battle when Tyler splattered into the kitchen, barefoot and grinning, not to mention dripping twin streams of water from the legs of his board shorts to the floor.

      ‘Any chance of an ice lolly, Casey?’ he wanted to know, accessorising his request with a smile that I knew one day was going to break some hearts in the same way he’d comprehensively stolen mine. ‘Only with all that running about, we’re Hank Marvin!’

      I had to smile at that. It had been a term coined by a previous boy we’d fostered, Jenson, who’d learned it, if memory served, from his mother’s latest boyfriend. It had since wormed its way into the family lexicon. It had probably been Kieron who’d passed it on to Tyler, who’d picked it up and run with it ever since.

      He shook his dark hair like a shaggy dog would in order to shake off the water, further messing up my already messy floor. ‘For goodness’ sake, Tyler. Stop that!’ I ordered. ‘And an ice lolly is going to stop you feeling hungry, is it? No way, mister. It’s almost lunchtime and I’m going to make a picnic for the pair of you. I’m sure you won’t pass out from malnutrition before then. Now, hop it,’ I added, swivelling him by the shoulders and frog-marching him back outside again. ‘John and the others will be here soon, and I still have lots to do, so how about you and Denver start clearing a space to sit and eat your picnic on, while I do so.’

      ‘Not even an ice-pop?’ he tried hopefully.

      I shook my head. ‘No. Oh, hang on, though,’ I added, reaching across and grabbing the sun spray from the kitchen windowsill. ‘Give each other another good going over with this before you do. You’ve probably washed off half the last lot with those flipping blasters of yours, and I don’t want the pair of you burning. Go on,’ I said, giving it to him. ‘Ice lollies after lunch, promise.’

      ‘Oh, Casey!’ Tyler grumbled as he took the bottle spray from me. ‘You’re such a fusspot. Look at the label. Look, here – where it says “once”, see? That means we only need it once. That’s why it says it! You’ve already covered us in it about a hundred times!’

      ‘Covered you with it twice, actually,’ I corrected. ‘And twice never hurt anyone. It says “once” on the paint tins as well, and we all know how well they work, don’t we? Go on, out with you! And put some more on!’ I added, to his departing back.

      I was mad, I decided as I СКАЧАТЬ