Angels in Our Hearts

by Rosie Lewis

  ‘Or coke down a shirt front!’ Mike corrected, which meant I learned something else: my husband’s jokes really don’t get any better.

  We got a lovely thank-you card from Cameron a couple of weeks after he left us, and I shall treasure it always. Inside it was a quote from that most famous of blind people, Helen Keller, and a lovely one for anyone to bear in mind: The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

  A lesson for us all. And as Mike predicted, an eye-opening two days.

  Chapter 1

  Friday

  It wasn’t like me to have a headache. Headaches had a very specific place in my life. They came via school holidays, chocolate and/or an excess of grandchildren, none of which currently applied. Still, the thumping going on above my head – Tyler packing upstairs, in his usual Tyler fashion – was accompanied by a definite thumping in my head, so I reached into the medicine cabinet that I kept in the kitchen cupboard and popped two paracetamol from their foil sheet.

  ‘Feeling sorry for yourself?’ Mike asked as he joined me in the kitchen.

  ‘No,’ I replied tartly. ‘I just have a headache. Must be the change in the season or something.’

  He stopped pouring coffee and gave me a hug. ‘Aww – worried about being all on your lonesome, love? Is that it? But you’ll find something to occupy yourself,’ he pointed out, reasonably. ‘So stop looking so miserable. It’s only just over a week. Besides, Kieron and Lauren will no doubt be around with Dee Dee, so –’

  ‘I am not feeling sorry for myself,’ I said again, firmly. Though, actually, truth be known, I sort of was.

  ‘Yes you are. But it’s your own fault. You could have come with us.’

  I made a ‘tsk’ sound, somewhat irritably, because that was true as well. Except, really? Me on a school skiing trip? In the cold?

  There was no getting away from it, of course. That Mike was right – there had been nothing stopping me. It was the last week of the spring term, Easter just on the horizon, and, as Tyler, our permanent foster child, was going on the trip, it wasn’t as if I had anyone to stay home for. And with my daughter-in-law Lauren, David and their kids already en route to Cornwall as we spoke – for ten days, no less – that was doubly true. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t like snow. I loved snow. Just in the right place and time, that was all. At Christmas, and mostly on the outside.

  No, it was the time of year when my thoughts turned to beaches and sunshine, and though Tyler assured me his teacher had promised plenty of the latter, the thought of donning ski gear and hefty snow boots, and generally slipping and sliding around the place, held about as much appeal for me as bungee jumping – i.e. none at all.

  I still couldn’t quite believe Mike had been so keen on it. That he’d actually agreed to go along to be a helper. After all, who could he actually help? He’d skied precisely once in his life. When he was seven. Perhaps that was why my head hurt – because of the sheer incredulity of it all.

  I swallowed my tablets with the glass of orange juice Mike had thoughtfully poured for me, just as the upstairs thumps and bangs resolved themselves into a resounding thud out in the hall.

  ‘Don’t worry!’ Tyler shouted down the stairs, getting in before I could berate him. ‘That was just my rucksack! I threw it down so I can carry my other stuff,’ he added helpfully.

  I poked my head out into the hall, seeing the rucksack and feeling a little pang of something I didn’t quite like. Tyler had never been away for eight whole days before. And never so far away. ‘Not like you couldn’t have made two trips!’ I shouted back.

  ‘Well, that’s going to do your head a lot of good,’ Mike observed, grinning.

  For all that I was a bit ‘fomo’ – that was the term Tyler had used, wasn’t it? – my ‘fear of missing out’, which had turned out to be more acute than I’d expected, still wasn’t a match for the excitement I felt on Tyler’s behalf. He’d been on about the school ski trip since it had first been mooted the previous summer, and though we’d provided the money for most of it as part of his Christmas present, he had been saving hard and earning extra pocket money for it ever since. He couldn’t have been more excited if he’d tried, bless him. And when one of the parent-helpers had to pull out, having broken their ankle (which felt ironic), he’d been beyond thrilled when Mike said he’d – ahem – ‘step in’ instead.

  Whereas I’d been beyond open-mouthed in shock at Mike not so much voluntarily offering to go skiing but going away for a week with a coachload of over-excited teenagers. But apparently it was all go-go-go. He had a week’s leave to use up before Easter, and though the 30-hour coach trip held a measure of concern for him he was looking forward to the trip itself almost as much as Tyler. ‘Like riding a bike, it is, you’ll see’ – he’d said that a dozen times, if not more. Trouble was, I wouldn’t. I’d have to wait for the videos.

  I gave myself a mental shake and started making breakfast for them both. Least I could do. Goodness only knew when they’d get their next proper meal. So bacon and eggs as a special treat, I thought. And I decided as I stood and watched the bacon begin sizzling that it was time to pull on my big-girl pants and stop being a baby.

  Well, only up to a point. Since I was charged with taking the two of them down to the school gates at the allotted time of ten, there was no way I was going to turn straight around and drive home again.

  ‘Oh, gawd, you’re not going hang around and show me up, are you?’ Tyler groaned as he added his rucksack to the growing pile by the side of the coach and, while Mike went off to bond with all the accompanying teachers, submitted to a kiss and a hug.

  ‘You really need me to even answer that?’ I said. ‘Now go on, get on the coach before all the window seats have gone, or you won’t be able to see me running down the road alongside with tears streaming down my face, will you?’

  Tyler groaned again and made a face at his friend Denver, who’d just arrived. ‘Honest,’ he told him. ‘My mum is just the most embarrassing parent, ever.’

  Tyler had been with us long enough now that it often occurred to me that him calling me ‘mum’ to his friends should feel normal. It didn’t. I still got a lump in my throat every time. And it took a huge effort of will, once the coach was ready to leave, not to do exactly what I’d threatened. As it was, after issuing threats about what I’d do to them if they didn’t phone me every single night, I let them go with just a stoic and queenly wave.

  Then headed home, thinking what a weird week it would be. Quiet-weird. Not weird-weird. Well, in theory …

  By half past eleven I was back in the zone at home – the radio blaring, the doors wide open and my cleaning materials spread out on the kitchen worktops, my headache spirited away on the breeze. Spring was here, the sun was shining, and I had decided to stop moping and instead make the most of my unexpected free time.

  I was two hours in, singing as I wiped down the cooker, when my plans were wiped out at a stroke.

  Or, rather at the ringing of my mobile. John Fulshaw. My fostering agency link worker. ‘Hi, Casey,’ he said chattily, ‘can you talk?’

  He sounded fine. Which was unusual. Normally, if I wasn’t expecting him, his voice would sound urgent, because, normally, it meant an emergency. ‘I can,’ I said, peeling off a rubber glove with my teeth. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I was just phoning on the off chance,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t normally ask you, and I know you probably have lots of plans, but I was just wondering if you were free for a couple of days. We need someone to take an 11-year-old boy, as an emergency. We’re really stuck. It seems like everyone’s going away.’

  ‘Not me,’ I said, then explained about it only being Mike and Tyler. Which was important, because it meant I was at home by myself and that precluded me from taking certain children. There would be no point in John telling me all about this boy if he was the type that had historically attacked single female carers, or who had a background of abuse from a female.

  But John was q
uick to reassure me that Adam – for that was the little boy’s name – wasn’t going to present challenges of that kind. Of any kind, apparently.

  ‘Oh, no worries there, Casey,’ John reassured me. ‘It’s a pretty straightforward one, this. Adam’s only ever lived with his mum – no father ever in the picture – so he’s used to being with just one carer anyway. He’s not in the system at all, as it happens. This is simply a case of his mother being rushed into hospital for an emergency appendectomy, and he has no family to look after him. Simple as. In fact, he’s at school as we speak, and as yet has no idea that he can’t go home this afternoon, so you can see how we’re fixed.’

  ‘That’s it?’ I asked, because I had long, long experience of John’s relationship with the words ‘straightforward’ and ‘a couple of days’. Not his fault, obviously – sometimes the most straightforward-looking placements in the world turned out to be the most complicated once you scratched beneath the surface. And sobering too was the fact that you could be living a perfectly straightforward-seeming life, but with no family to provide support in the event of a crisis you really could have your life turned upside down.

  ‘That’s it,’ John confirmed.

  ‘Just till his mum is on the mend?’ I asked, it occurring to me that it must be a pretty lonely life if you didn’t even have a friend who could help you out at such a time. But then, all lives were different, and some very lonely.

  ‘Just till she’s able to be discharged,’ John said. ‘Couple of days or so. Probably just till the beginning of next week. And before you ask, no, there are no other problems.’

  I could hear John chuckle. ‘None that we are aware of, at least,’ he added, ‘and no, it’s definitely not one of those calls where I promise it’s only for the weekend when in reality I have nowhere else to place him on Monday. This really is a genuine emergency, and just for a few days, I can assure you.’

  ‘Right then,’ I said, as I pulled off the second glove with my free hand, ‘I’ll take him. I have nothing else to do this week – the whole tribe are away. Not just Mike and Tyler. So what’s the plan?’

  John explained that the school Adam attended was only a couple of miles away and that someone from social services would be going there at lunchtime. There, with the help of Adam’s teacher, they would explain what had happened to his mother. I would meet them all at the school, we’d do the usual introductions, and then it was just a case of me bringing Adam home with me. It was as simple as that. We’d go to visit his mum in hospital as soon as she came out of surgery (she, of course, bless her, already knew the plan), and the moment she was fit enough, and home again, I would hand him back to her. A pretty everyday crisis placement all round.

  And, at first sight, there was nothing about Adam to cause me to think he’d be anything other than straightforward. He was a sweet-looking lad, and tiny as well – seeming a good couple of years younger than his 11 years. The kind of lad you couldn’t quite imagine going into high school in a few months, for sure. He was also pale and, while it might partly have been to do with shock, it was a more sallow kind of pale; as though he hadn’t had enough sunlight in a very long time. He looked nervously at me through glasses that were too big for him and kept slipping off his nose, and he also seemed markedly underweight.

  On the flip side, however, his school uniform was impeccable. I wondered if he must have a fresh one for every day, because it was remarkably clean and neat-looking for the last day of the school week. His hair, which was thick and the colour of milk chocolate, was clean, shiny and well cut as well. This made me happy. Little things, perhaps, but they added up to a big mental tick; his mum clearly took good care of him.

  I introduced myself and sat beside him on the small chair in the head’s office. ‘I’m so sorry about your mum, sweetie,’ I told him, ‘but I will phone the hospital as soon as we get to mine, and arrange for us to go and visit her. Is that okay?’

  I watched Adam assess me, in much the same way as I’d assessed him. Then he nodded, offering a polite smile, which was impressive under the circumstances. ‘Thank you, miss,’ he said quietly.

  ‘It’s Casey,’ I corrected. ‘And this is yours, I take it?’ I gestured towards the small blue cabin-bag-sized case, which I presumed the social worker had obtained, and filled, in consultation with mum.

  Adam nodded. As did the head, Mr Morris. ‘Indeed it is,’ he said briskly. ‘Now, Adam, I wonder if you’d like to take yourself and your things outside for a moment, yes? Just while I deal with the paperwork with Mrs Watson.’

  Adam meekly filed out, flanked by both his teacher and the social worker – his social worker for the short duration of his time in the system. Though nothing in his demeanour betrayed it, I didn’t doubt he was in a state of some distress.

  ‘I just thought you might have a few questions,’ Mr Morris said. ‘Bit of background and so on. Didn’t want to talk over the lad, obviously.’

  I thanked him. ‘So is there anything to tell? Anything you think I should know?’

  ‘Actually, no, not a lot,’ Mr Morris said. ‘He’s a quiet lad, is Adam. Doesn’t have too many friends, keeps himself to himself. But good as gold when he’s here.’

  I picked up on that. Adam didn’t quite seem to fit the mould of a persistent truant. ‘When he’s here?’

  ‘Always been a bit of a sickly child,’ Mr Morris explained. ‘Has a lot of time off ill with this and that. You know how it goes. Though according to his mother, he’s undergoing some investigations or other …’

  ‘What kind?’ I asked.

  ‘To see what’s wrong with him, essentially. Some sort of digestive problem has been mooted – he’s apparently sick a lot. As in sick-sick. So, of course, if he has an episode she likes to keep him at home.’

  I nodded. Adam’s weight certainly seemed to bear that out. And some kids – well, they just weren’t terribly robust. So this was apparently one such.

  I smiled and thanked him. Nothing there to be concerned about, clearly. A straightforward lad and a straightforward placement – though, me being me, I couldn’t resist doing what’s a part of my very DNA – already thinking about fattening him up. Just a little. Just to put a bit of colour in his cheeks.

  ‘All set, then?’ I asked him as I joined him and the social worker back out in the school vestibule.

  Adam nodded, and as I went to take the case handle from him I was surprised when he slipped his hand into mine instead. Reflexive mainly, I imagined – an adult extended a hand and a child of a certain age would often take it. But this was a lad of 11, which made it quite unusual. It also made me warm to him. He was prepared to put his trust in me, which touched me. ‘So, almost Easter,’ I remarked as we crossed the school car park. ‘Which means it’s like the law that I buy you some chocolate eggs this week, don’t you think?’

  It’s a cliché to say a child’s eyes light up, admittedly, but in Adam’s case they really did seem to. Seemed I was going to have a pleasant week after all.

  Chapter 2

  Saturday

  I woke early, because of birdsong rather than the tyranny of the alarm clock, and for a moment I forgot that I had a houseguest across the landing; I was too preoccupied with the unusual business of no Mike snoring beside me in the bed.

  Then it hit me, and I wondered about the little lad I’d taken on. How had he slept? Had he slept, even? It must all seem so strange. We took in all sorts of children from all sorts of backgrounds and, usually, the urgent need for those children to be rescued – and more often than not, rehabilitated – was both the guiding light and the driving force. But Adam was different. He wanted nothing more than to be reunited with his loving mother, and when my phone call to the hospital the previous evening established that he couldn’t (his mum wasn’t apparently well enough to see him, being still so groggy from the anaesthetic) he was understandably anxious and upset.

  So I turned to my trusty games box for support, and, to my surprise, as we rummaged through the va
rious board games and puzzles, Adam professed a great keenness to play chess – a game that mostly sat unloved and gathering dust, mostly down to my inability to play it with anything remotely approaching competence.

  Which I quickly pointed out. ‘Then I’ll teach you, miss,’ Adam told me, sounding altogether brighter as he carried the battered box to the dining room table.

  ‘It’s Casey,’ I reminded him – for about the fifth time since we’d got home. ‘And, believe me,’ I added, in my Winston Churchill voice, ‘many have tried, and few have succeeded.’

  This pronouncement managed to elicit a giggle from Adam, which pleased me greatly, even if it did reinforce the feeling that Adam saw himself as having been billeted with a funny little mad lady for the duration.

  Well, so be it, I thought, as I watched him place all the pieces. Bookish, I decided. Shy yet self-possessed. Not one for a great deal of socialising. And a boy, I decided, who would take any game he was playing very seriously.

  I mentally smiled. He’d have no trouble beating me at this one. The intricacies of the game had always baffled me since back in childhood, and I had never really quite got the hang of it. I suspected I knew why, as well. A psychologist might correctly diagnose that I was mostly prevented from learning how to play such games by my inability to want to beat an opponent. Much as I loved the strategy of figuring out moves – and could even see how I could make counter-moves to avoid defeat – I simply couldn’t find it in me to muster the required ruthlessness; it was so much my nature to allow the underdog to win, at all costs.

  Happily, in this case, it was me who was the underdog and Adam proved deft in destroying me. Despite his many moments of explaining exactly how he was winning, he had me checkmated in no 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?’