A Dark Secret

by Casey Watson

  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

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperElement 2019

  FIRST EDITION

  © Casey Watson 2019

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

  Cover image © Clive Nolan/Trigger Image (posed by model)

  Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

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

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable 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 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.

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  www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

  Source ISBN: 9780008298616

  Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008298654

  Version: 2019-03-28

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Also by Casey Watson

  Moving Memoirs eNewsletter

  About the Publisher

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the army of passionate foster carers out there, each doing their bit to ensure that our children are kept as safe as possible in such a changing and often scary world. As technology is reinvented and becomes ever more complicated for those of us who were not brought up amid such advances, we can only try to keep up, in the hope that we continue to learn alongside our young people.

  Acknowledgements

  I remain endlessly grateful to my team at HarperCollins for their continuing support, and I’m especially excited to see the return of my editor, the very lovely Vicky Eribo, and look forward to sharing my new stories with her. As always, nothing would be possible without my wonderful agent, Andrew Lownie, the very best agent in the world in my opinion, and my grateful thanks also to the lovely Lynne, my friend and mentor forever.

  Chapter 1

  Aqua aerobics in February. In February. Had I completely lost my marbles? I couldn’t remember which of my so-called friends had suggested it, but by now I was sorely regretting having agreed to it. Not only was it absolutely Baltic outside, but I had just suffered the most embarrassing incident ever, and as we huddled in our respective changing cubicles in the leisure centre (which were only marginally less Baltic) the same so-called friends – not to mention my sister Donna – were still teasing me about it relentlessly.

  ‘Oh, Casey,’ Donna said, laughing, ‘such a priceless Barbara Windsor moment!’

  ‘I must, I must, improve my bust!’ my friend Kate added, gleefully.

  And all I could do was take the teasing, and grin and bear it. Or should that have been ‘bare’ it? Definitely. It was such a basic error, after all.

  Having not gone swimming in any form for a good couple of years now, I no longer had a suitable swimsuit, and given that this wasn’t the time of year for ‘summer holiday essentials’, the stores didn’t have a great deal of choice. Luckily I had spotted a sale rail and found a front-fastening, gold (of all colours) bikini. And were that not enough to mark me out as a rookie, during a rather robust arms-out-to-the side-and-do-a-windmill thrust, my all-singing, all-dancing, shimmering gold bikini had unclasped with a ping, giving me no choice but to do a duck dive, and leaving me scrabbling around under the water, trying to regain both the shreds of my bikini top and my dignity. But not before the whole class, including the instructor, had witnessed it. I was going to have to seriously rethink how I approached this whole ‘me time’ malarkey.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I called out from my own changing booth. ‘I’m so happy I’ve brightened up your morning. And I’m so happy that mobile phones aren’t allowed in the frigging pool, either, because I can only imagine the pleasure you’d have all taken in capturing it for all time.’

  Amid the ensuing laughter, as if I’d summoned it, my own phone started to ring. Delving into my changing bag – one that would put Mary Poppins to shame, obviously – I found it and saw it was a call from Christine Bolton, my still relatively new fostering link worker.

  Had she called to tease me too? If so, news travelled fast. Quickly drying one side of my face, I put the phone to my ear, first explaining where I was, so she’d understand all the cackles, bumps and bangs.

  ‘I’m surprised to hear from you again so quickly,’ I added, as I parked my damp bottom on a towel slung on the wooden-slatted bench. I’d only spoken to her the day before and I knew there was nothing on the horizon. Though there had been – up until a few days ago, we’d been earmarked for a particularly difficult teenager badly in need of a calm, stable home. But as often happens in fostering, there was a game-changer. Just a day before all concerned were due in court, a grandparent had kindly stepped forward to offer to take the child in and so the case had been dropped. And to the great relief of all concerned. So we were expecting a lull now – hence all the ‘me-time’. Till another long-term placement came up we were only really doing respite, and that mostly for our most recent child, Miller, who was now in a residential school and with a new primary carer, Mavis.

  ‘I know,’ Christine replied, ‘and I’m so sorry to bother you in the middle of your swimming, but that mini-break you said you and Mike were hoping to jet off on – have you booked anything yet?’

  I immediately wished we had, because I had a hunch I knew what was coming. A lull in the world of fostering was never guaranteed to be anything more than twenty-four hours, and more often than not it wasn’t. I suspected this was the situation here – that an urgent case had presented itself. I wasn’t wrong.

  ‘No, not as yet,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Possibly not. At least, if you’re up for taking a child on. D’you know Kelly and Steve Blackwell? Live out in the sticks and have two small children?’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ I said. ‘And pretty well. I was Kelly’s mentor for a year.’

  Mentoring had always been the unofficial practice in fostering, but over the last couple of years it had become an even more important part of the process. One in which longer-term, more experienced carers were expected to take on the role of mentor to new carers just coming into the field. In my case, this meant Kelly, who I’d met u
p with fairly regularly, to discuss any problems she might be having and exchange ideas on the best strategies to deal with them. We’d also swapped numbers and email addresses so that we could be on hand in an emergency. It was yet another item on our ever-expanding job descriptions, but I didn’t mind. It built relationships, and up to now it had worked well.

  ‘Ah yes, of course you were,’ Christine went on. ‘I remember seeing it on your file, now I come to think about it. Even better then. Because it’ll give you some context. The problem is the young lad they have in at the moment. The top and bottom of it is that they can no longer hold on to him, and we were wondering if you might be able to help out. Either for the short term until we find another long-term carer, obviously, or longer term, if that’s something you’d want to think about.’

  But I was thinking more about calm, capable Kelly. Both she and her husband seemed pretty good carers to me. ‘Kelly can’t take care of him?’ I asked, surprised. She wasn’t usually fazed by much. ‘Why? And how old is he? What’s his story?’

  Christine laughed. ‘You remember telling me about how your son can ask twenty questions in the same sentence? Well, now I know where he gets it from, don’t I? Okay, well first of all you should know that had we not been thinking about you for that teenager that didn’t materialise, we would have asked you to take on this one in the first place. He’s a little lad called Sam Gough – he’s nine, and has an unofficial diagnosis of autism. He was only removed from his mother just over a week ago – a single mum, mental health issues – along with his two siblings, who –’

  ‘Just over a week ago? So Kelly’s only had them for a matter of days?’

  ‘Not them. Only Sam. His siblings have been fostered separately.’

  This was highly unusual. ‘Because?’

  ‘Because they’re very frightened of him, apparently. And yes, just the week. He has a number of issues. It could just be the shock of being taken from his family. Could be something completely different. But either way, he’s been bullying Kelly and Steve’s young children, and it’s really impacting on the family.’

  So, bad. Bad enough to be separated from his siblings, and bad enough that Kelly wanted him removed after only a week. Which was pretty bad. Pretty challenging. I eyed my sopping bikini. Reflected that aqua aerobics really wasn’t for me. Not least because I already knew what my answer would be. However, protocol dictated that I think about it, and discuss it with my husband before agreeing, so I said what was expected of me and added, as an afterthought, ‘as well as speaking to Mike, I’ll finish dressing and nip into the canteen to give Kelly a quick call. It’s always worth getting things from the horse’s mouth, isn’t it? Plus she’ll be able to enlighten me on the day-to-day business of taking care of him.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Christine said. And I could tell by her jaunty tone that she knew she’d get her ‘yes’. ‘Oh, and one other thing,’ she said. ‘I know this will probably make you roll your eyes, but from the little I’ve heard about him, he does seem a perfect candidate for the type of programme you used to run – the behaviour modification thing that everyone was raving about a couple of years ago? Anyway, just a thought.’

  A thought, or an extra inducement to be sure I didn’t change my mind? If that was the case, then perhaps this little lad was even more challenging than I suspected. Because it was no secret that Christine, having hailed from Liverpool, where our particular programme hadn’t been rolled out, had made it clear at the start of our working relationship that what she thought about the programme I thought so much of was that it was yet another new-fangled bit of nonsense that wouldn’t bear fruit.

  And she hadn’t been the only one. In fact, the funding had been pulled after only four years. This was mostly due to tightening of government purse strings, but also – in my humble view – due to a lack of commitment to a philosophy the benefits of which might take a number of years to assess. So while it was true that fostering services were no longer training new carers in how to deliver the programme (and, as a consequence, children were no longer being hand-picked to receive it), those of us who had seen first-hand how effective it had been still used the model, and the principles, whenever we were fortunate enough to foster a child who looked like they might benefit. And here was Christine, the unbeliever, suggesting that Sam might be one such. She obviously needed to find a place for him, and fast.

  Half an hour later, finally presentable, and having waved off my still-chuckling tormentors, I was sitting in a booth in the leisure-centre coffee shop, latte in one hand and mobile phone in the other, the not-so-sweet tang of chlorine still clinging to my hair.

  ‘Oh, Casey, I feel soooo bad,’ Kelly said, after I’d explained what the call was about. ‘I had no idea it would be you they’d ring. You must think I’m such a wuss!’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I reassured her. ‘Honestly, we’ve all been through it. Sometimes you get a child in who just doesn’t work in your particular environment. It happens. It’s obviously not meant to be, so don’t feel bad. I’m just ringing so that you can paint a clearer picture about what’s been going on.’

  ‘Just about everything,’ Kelly said, before reeling off all of the problems she and Steve had faced in the last week. ‘He’s just such a live wire. I’ve never seen anything like it!’

  Which seemed fair enough, because Kelly hadn’t been fostering for very long. If she stuck at it – and I hoped she would – she would doubtless see worse. But it did sound pretty grim; in fact, to call Sam a ‘live wire’ seemed too benign a term, because as well as rampaging around her house, breaking and smashing things indiscriminately, he would apparently hurt her own children at every opportunity.

  ‘Which I completely understand is all part of him expressing his rage,’ Kelly said. ‘But I can’t take my eyes off him for a minute. And if I try to reason with him, or chastise him, he turns his anger on me instead. I know he’s only small, but it’s like being attacked by a whirling dervish. He really has no self-control, or self-soothing mechanism, at all. Well, perhaps one,’ she added. ‘This peculiar habit of barking and howling, which he does for prolonged periods at a time. And at any time he’s confronted, he snarls. Really snarls. Poor Harvey said yesterday that it was like we had the big bad wolf living in the house.’

  Harvey was Kelly’s oldest. Around seven, as I remembered. And I wondered how it must feel to return home from school every day thinking there was a wolf living in your house. I wondered too how they’d come to ask Kelly, who was relatively inexperienced, to take on such a boy, knowing there were two younger children in the house. Not to mention that they already knew his own siblings were so afraid of him that it had been agreed to have them fostered somewhere else.

  But that was a question for another day. And I probably already knew the answer: because there wasn’t anyone else. Which Kelly must know too, so I imagined she’d feel pretty bad about passing the buck.

  ‘So, how does the autism affect him?’ I asked her instead. I’d looked after quite a few children who were on the spectrum and, in my experience, one size certainly didn’t fit all. Each one of mine – and that included my own son, Kieron, who had Asperger’s – had been very different, with different challenges to face.

  ‘To be honest,’ Kelly admitted, ‘I haven’t even really had the chance to notice. Everything else is so full-on, I just … Oh, Jesus, hang on. Sam! Stop that right now!’

  I waited on the line, listening to a symphony of different sounds – shouting and swearing and, at one point, high-pitched screaming. The jolly hold music of a call centre it definitely was not. No wonder her nerves were torn to shreds. Plus, it was Saturday now, of course, so both her kids would be home. And perhaps this had been the straw that had broken the camel’s back.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Casey,’ she said as she came back to the phone, ‘Sam’s just bitten Harvey and now he’s attacking Sienna. I honestly do not know what to do with him.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Steve was home but he’s had to go into work this morning. And I’d take them out, but I – Sam! Right now! I mean it! – God, Casey. I am tearing my hair out here.’

  I could tell she was, too, because she sounded on the verge of tears. ‘Look, I can see it’s a bad time,’ I said. ‘You obviously need to step in and get your own two to a place of safety. Shall I give you a call back later, perhaps when the kids are in bed?’

  ‘Call me?’ Kelly asked, her voice now even more desperate. ‘I was rather hoping you’d come round and take him off me. As in today. Seriously. I know it’s not the best endorsement you ever heard, but I can’t take any more of this. I really can’t.’

  Knowing Kelly as I did, I knew she was telling me the truth. She was at breaking point, overwrought, and couldn’t see a way out. It tended to be hard to with all your senses on high alert. No, it didn’t sound so much, just having to oversee a naughty nine-year-old, but I knew there was ‘naughty’ and there was ‘downright demolition-mode’; if she was dealing with the latter in isolation it would be a hard enough job – just in terms of trying to keep the child safe from himself. But with two little ones in the mix – her own little ones – it could be a Herculean task. And there was a world of difference between the odd flaring of temper and what sounded like twenty-four seven all-out warfare.

  I knew the drill. I really shouldn’t be making any promises. I should tell Kelly I’d speak to Mike and Christine and get back to her. But how could I? Besides, I was getting fired up now. No, I wouldn’t be diving into any phone boxes, doing a spin and donning tights. But unlike my bikini top, I knew I had the strength for a challenge. And this lad sounded as if he was the word ‘challenge’ personified.

  Plus, truth be told, I still had a few demons of my own to exorcise.

  ‘Don’t worry, love,’ I told Kelly. ‘I’ll take him.’