by Rosie Lewis
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 for me.’
‘Not a problem,’ I reassured him. ‘I have quite a selection. We had a boy stay with us for a while a few years back. His name was Spencer. And he was a bit of a water baby too.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Though which football team do you support? Can’t have you swimming with the enemy.’
It was the work of moments to establish that Adam had not the least interest in football. Never played it – except sometimes, at school, when he was made to – and had no allegiance to any team. He seemed more interested in Spencer and the whys and wherefores of his stay with us.
‘Do you have lots of boys come to stay here?’ he asked, once I’d sketched a few details for him.
‘I do,’ I said, ‘and girls. Some for short stays, like you, and some, like my Tyler, who stay with us for a long time.’
‘Why?’ he asked. Which seemed a reasonable enough question.
> ‘Because not everyone is lucky enough to have a mum who loves them like yours does,’ I told him. ‘And sometimes, because some mums and dads, for all sorts of reasons, can’t look after their children themselves.’
‘So is this in care? Me being here?’ He looked suddenly anxious.
‘Yes, officially, I suppose,’ I said. ‘But not the way you might have heard of it. I’m simply taking care of you till your mum’s better and she can look after you again herself.’
‘Does she know about you?’ he asked me, as we climbed the stairs to go rummage in my clothes cupboard. ‘You know – that you’re a proper carer person and I’m safe and that?’
‘Of course.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘She won’t worry so much about me then, will she?’
By then the all-important business of choosing swim shorts was underway, or perhaps I would have pondered that a little more fully.
We spent a lovely morning swimming, and despite my earlier assumption, Adam turned out not to be the athlete I had suspected. In fact, he struggled in the water. It was clear he loved it, however, and was keen to improve, not to mention revelling in the opportunity to go a little wild and splash and scream down the water slides – the ones at the shallow end, normally enjoyed by kids half his age.
I wondered about that as I took a breather on the tiled steps at the pool’s edge. About what his head teacher had said about him being a sickly boy. How he had so much time away from school. It didn’t quite fit; his low weight and pale features aside, Adam seemed a picture of health. Good appetite, plenty of energy and perfectly sociable, if not apparently generally social. Right now, for instance, he was chatting away with a group of boys whom I suspected he’d never met.
So why the issues, when, by and large, he couldn’t have seemed more normal? Was he just the son of a massively overprotective mother, and being social and educationally stifled as a result? It wasn’t unheard of, after all, and if she was truly on her own – no partner, no family – perhaps being overprotective of her child was understandable. Perhaps I’d ask him, I thought, as I stood up to go and rejoin him. Or perhaps not, I chastised myself as soon as I’d thought it. Nothing to do with me. Not my brief. Not my business.
Still, me being me – someone who rarely listened to chastising voices, my own included – we had barely fastened our seatbelts in the car to set off home when my gentle prying started. I couldn’t seem to help myself: the disconnect between the now ruddy-cheeked boy with me and the boy described to me by his head teacher was just too great. ‘Do you go swimming with your mum?’ I asked, smiling through the rear-view mirror.
He shook his head. I’d bought him a carton of juice and he was busy stabbing at the hole with the straw, and once he’d succeeded and taken a slug he elaborated. ‘Mum doesn’t really like me going swimming,’ he said. ‘She worries I might get hurt, or drown or something. Plus there’s germs in the changing rooms.’
‘There are indeed,’ I said, not wishing to appear to disagree with him. ‘What about school, though? You’re going with school next term, aren’t you? Mum okay with that?’
He inclined his head, as if thinking about that. ‘Sort of. She has to let me do that because it’s in the rules for year six. But if she worries too much she’ll just keep me home from school.’
His tone was matter of fact rather than resentful. Accepting rather than questioning. Again, I wondered at his seeming quiet compliance. My senses were enjoying no such pragmatism, however. This surely wasn’t right. This was evidence that she was keeping him off school not for his own good but to manage her own anxiety about his safety. In my line of work, the word ‘neglect’ was very often the key one when it came to parenting, but I had also come across parents who were mildly overprotective, not letting their children play in playgrounds and so on. This seemed a step further on, however.
But not my business. I changed both subject and tack. ‘So what about other members of your family,’ I asked him chattily. ‘D’you have cousins? Uncles and aunties? Any living nearby?’
He shook his head again, but then he smiled. ‘I had a granddad,’ he explained. ‘He was clever, he was. He left me his train set. He built it all himself – buildings and everything. But he died just before I was born, so I never actually met him. And Nanny Pat died when I was six. She had cancer.’
I imagined this little lad, custodian of a train set whose maker he’d never known, but in whose love he clearly basked even so. ‘Oh, that’s sad,’ I said. ‘You must miss your nan.’
‘Not specially,’ Adam told me. ‘I never saw her much. I miss Uncle Steve though. He lives in Torremolinos.’ The word rolled effortlessly off his tongue.
‘Oh, Spain, then,’ I said.
‘He has a bar there,’ Adam told me. ‘And a girlfriend – she’s called Selina – but we don’t see them much. They don’t have any kids yet, or else I’d have some cousins.’
‘You would indeed,’ I agreed. ‘So, have you been there? To Torremolinos?’
Adam nodded. ‘Only once, when Uncle Steve got engaged. I was nine,’ he added helpfully. ‘They had this huge outside party. In the bar, with a barbecue. But we only stayed two days. There was a boy who’d got kidnapped – did you know about that?’ I nodded. ‘In Greece, that was. It happened when mum was younger, and it was all over the papers. She said we couldn’t stay, because she kept getting frightened.’
Adam slurped up the rest of his juice and I did a re-jig. Not so much an overprotective mother as an extremely overprotective mother. I wondered what might have happened in her earlier life to make her feel that way. It must be so disabling to be crippled by such chronic anxiety. And the poor woman – she really did seem alone in the world, too. Just one brother. And him so far away. No wonder she came across as a worrier to the school. I was anxious to meet her now, and learn a bit more.
But that was all. Academic interest. No more.
Chapter 3
Sunday
‘I’ve been relegated.’ Mike’s voice was a picture of perfect misery. No, I couldn’t see it, but I could imagine the expression on his face.
It was once again early, and, as Adam was still asleep, I’d called my beloved for an update. ‘Relegated?’ I asked him, genuinely stumped. ‘Relegated from what?’
‘From Tyler’s ski school class,’ he huffed. ‘They’ve moved me down to the bloody debutantes.’
‘Debutantes?’ I couldn’t help but guffaw at this, even as I felt a tinge of pride that Tyler’s dry-slope endeavours had paid off. He’d be made up about that, I knew.
‘As in beginners,’ Mike translated. ‘Because I’m too slow, apparently. Holding the group up. Bloody cheek of it! I mean, I know I’m not as slick as some of the others, but honestly, when I am upright I am as fast as the next person. Possibly faster, even. I am deeply offended!’
He wasn’t really, of course. This was all for Tyler’s benefit. I felt certain Mike didn’t give a monkey’s cuss about it, but he was still going to milk it for all that it was worth.
‘Oh, but you should have seen me, Case,’ he told me, once Tyler had headed off to breakfast with his group. ‘You know that thing they say about skiing being like riding a bike? Well, it’s not. I’ve not only forgotten everything I ever learned. I’ve even forgotten how to make my legs move backwards and forwards, honest! Oh, you will be so glad you didn’t come on this. You’d hate it. Well, actually, you’d have enjoyed seeing me yesterday – I looked like a prize wally, tumbling head over backside on my first attempt. And my second. And then my third … Still, at least it gave Ty and his mates a good laugh.’
I tried to picture my six-foot-plus husband trying to control a pair of six-foot-plus – or thereabout – planks of slippery wood. And failing. Because I just couldn’t visualise it. I could only hope some enterprising soul had got some footage. And said so, which didn’t go down well at all.
‘Typical. Not a single shred of sympathy,’ Mike blustered. ‘Anyway, how are things with t
he little lad you’re looking after?’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Calm,’ I said. ‘Uneventful,’ I elaborated. I didn’t need a lecture from Mike, after all.
But there was no doubt that I was as intrigued to meet Mrs Conley – for that was her name – as I knew Adam would be excited. Not that I planned on waking him up and dragging him from his bed just yet. So, after calling my sister Donna to let her know I’d be bringing Adam down to her café for a late Sunday lunch, I was straight on to the hospital again to see how the patient was doing.
‘Much better,’ the ward sister assured me. ‘Her pain’s under control and she’s altogether brighter. So, yes, please do bring her son up to see her this afternoon. It’ll be a tonic for both of them, I’m sure.’
It was certainly a tonic for Adam, who grinned from ear to ear when I told him, then wolfed down his breakfast, almost as if in celebration – or more likely, to be done with it, and help the minutes tick faster till he and his mum could finally be reunited.
And who was I to worry that she seemed to be stifling him? I saw the opposite of that all the time, didn’t I? So much better to have a surfeit of love and care than too little, surely? And so what if she smothered him a little, or worried too much? He was a bright, polite boy with the world at his feet. Not everyone was destined to be a roughty-toughty gad-about. The world needed all sorts of people, after all.
You could have fried an egg on my quiet, bookish, sickly house-guest, he was that fired up about the impending hospital visit, growing more and more restless as the clock hands moved slowly round to past twelve. Though he’d been happy enough to watch telly for a bit and then help me with a bit of housework – ‘me and Mum do it together, always’ – he was becoming increasingly distracted as the morning wore on.
‘Come on!’ he said as the time came and he jumped into the car ahead of me. He said it again as we were slowed down by Sunday shopping traffic, then again as I rummaged in my bag to find sufficient coins to feed the hospital car park meter, and a fourth time as I waited for my ticket to be dispensed.