by Rosie Lewis
‘Calm down,’ I said, placing the ticket on the dashboard. ‘Such ants in your pants! It’s not even one o’clock yet! And it’s not like your mum’s going anywhere, is it?’
‘But we’ll be late,’ Adam persisted, refusing to be mollified. ‘And if we’re late, Mum’ll be worried. She’ll think something’s happened to me.’
‘I’m sure she won’t,’ I told him as he took my hand again, mostly to drag me all the quicker across the car park. ‘I’m sure they won’t even let us on to the ward yet.’
But he looked genuinely worried, and what he said next confirmed it. ‘You don’t understand, Casey. She’s going to be either really annoyed or really upset.’
I was about to reassure him that she would most likely just be thrilled to see him, but he got in first. ‘Casey, I haven’t been ill since I’ve been with you, have I?’
Another odd question. But I was becoming used to Adam’s odd questions. I smiled and squeezed his hand. ‘No, darling, you’ve been perfectly fine. You know that. Now come on, let’s go find that ward.’
Though I knew the hospital, I’d never been on Adam’s mum’s ward before, so it was via the miracle of those coloured routes they paint on hospital floors that we found our way. In this case, it was purple and, as the ward in question was on the ground floor, simply a case of following the line to the open double doors.
‘Mandy Conley?’’ said a young, smiling nurse. ‘You’ll find her over in that corner bay of beds at the far end of the ward. See?’ She pointed. ‘And she’s much better today, I’m glad to say.’ She beamed down at Adam. ‘Even ate some lunch.’
The ward did indeed smell of roast dinner and, unusually, it made my tummy rumble. Hospital food must be on the up, I decided.
I thanked the nurse and hurried off, trying to catch up with Adam, who, having let go of my hand, was already hotfooting it off to the far end of the ward. I caught up with him just as he reached the end bay and was running towards her outstretched arms.
Adam’s mum had the same angular features as Adam, and her hair, which was long and pulled back into a scrunchie, was the same colour and texture as his. Unlike Adam, however, she was quite an ample woman, which only heightened the intensity of the mother–son union. He threw himself at her, and she quickly engulfed him.
It was a tender scene, the pair of them hugging each other tightly, and I could immediately see how much they had missed each other. In fact, so immersed were they in one another that I felt a little out of place, and uncomfortably as though I were intruding.
Adam’s mum caught my eye over him, and she smiled a wan smile. She was very pale – almost grey – and I could see that, despite her obvious pleasure at seeing her son, his tight embrace was making her wince.
She whispered something to him and he let her go, upon which she stuck a hand out. I stepped forward and took it. ‘I’m Casey,’ I said. ‘Casey Watson. Nice to meet you. How are you feeling, Mrs Conley?’
‘It’s Mandy,’ she corrected, much as I’d corrected Adam. ‘And I’ll live, I imagine. I still feel like I’ve gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, but’ – she smiled – ‘good old Mr Morphine helps a lot.’ She ruffled her son’s hair. ‘How has Adam been? Has he suffered with his stomach? He’s such a little soldier.’ She looked at him as if analysing his expression for unexpected turbulence. ‘Such a little trouper. He’s probably tried to hide it.’
I was a little taken aback, and looked at Adam to try to establish what I might have missed. Yes, I knew what the school had told me – and had at no point forgotten it – but, for all that it had been a fact that had been impressed upon me, it simply hadn’t come up. Not once. At no time had Adam so much as gestured towards his stomach – except during the business of filling it.
But had I been wrong? Had my instinct betrayed me? Had Adam been suffering in silence all this time? I looked at him again and I saw him anew. He actually did look a little peaky – and his demeanour had changed too. Hard to say how, but something definitely had altered.
But I stated the facts. ‘No, he hasn’t been unwell,’ I told his mother. ‘Not as far as I am aware, anyway. You’ve been fine, haven’t you, love?’ I said, turning to Adam again.
Adam nodded, his expression grave, as if this were a matter of great importance.
‘He really has been fine,’ I reassured his mum. ‘His appetite had been good. Actually, that’s something of an understatement. And we’ve been out and about, we’ve gone swimming, and though he’s obviously missed you a lot, he’s been in good spirits.’
Adam’s mum, however, appeared not to hear me. Well, bar a brief raise of her eyebrows at the word ‘swimming’. It was as if she wasn’t listening, so intent was she on carefully looking her child over, smoothing his hair back, feeling his forehead, stroking his cheek. As if suspicious that anyone could possibly look after him properly.
I filed the thought away, beginning to feel almost as if I was intruding on the pair of them. ‘Have you got everything you need?’ I asked Mrs Conley, gesturing with a hand back up the ward. ‘Only I could get you a few bits from the shop in the main reception if you need anything. Toiletries? Snacks? Something to read?’
Mrs Conley – Mandy – turned and smiled at me. ‘That’s kind of you, but I’m fine, thanks. I had a bag prepared at home, so I’ve already got everything I need. And a trolley comes around every morning, of course. And I’m hoping’ – she squeezed Adam’s upper arm as she spoke – ‘that I’ll be home with my little soldier in a day or so. No, no, please’ – she gestured – ‘grab a seat. I want to hear everything about what my little man has been up to.’
Still I dithered about popping out, wondering if I should leave them for a bit anyway, but Adam seemed anxious that we tell her all about my chess lessons and our swimming trip. But in the end, as the bay opposite was currently empty, I still went and sat on the chair beside it and took out my phone so the two of them could chat more privately. My son Kieron had recently taught me all about Facebook and installed it on my phone, so I now had a whole new virtual world to entertain me.
And distract me from earwigging – nobody is perfect.
And the visit passed quickly enough. Only thing was – and perhaps this was going to be inevitable – that Adam’s mood, as we left, dropped like a stone. And in the resultant silence (down and withdrawn, he would not be engaged in conversation) a strange thought popped into my head. What had Mandy said? I already had a bag prepared. That was it. But how on earth could she have? I was sure John Fulshaw had told me she had been rushed into hospital with appendicitis, as an emergency. Sure as sure. Her appendix had actually burst, hadn’t it?
Okay, I thought – so maybe she was just a very private person and didn’t want me to go and buy her personal things. But if so, why not just say ‘No, thank you’? Why mention a bag – a prepared bag – at all? Was the appendicitis story not the real one? Was that it? Was there something I wasn’t being told?
Stop it, I told myself. Stop being a conspiracy theorist. Who knew? She might have bags packed for all sorts of contingencies. Perhaps her appendix had been grumbling for a while. Perhaps it was all part of the scenario of being an over-anxious person.
That was probably it. Some people stockpiled tins ready for nuclear war, didn’t they? And there was nothing I’d seen between her and Adam to concern me. Even were it my business to be concerned.
Which it wasn’t. And I was at least partially satisfied that I was reading things into things that weren’t actually there.
I glanced at Adam. ‘You okay, love?’ I asked him. ‘How’s your tummy?’
And there it was. Just the tiniest moment of hesitation. Not as if he wasn’t sure how his tummy felt – not at all. No, more that he was deciding how best to answer me.
So I wasn’t wrong. Something definitely wasn’t right.
Chapter 4
Monday
Though he’d perked up at the sight of a roast dinner the previous afternoon, Adam had gone to bed on
Sunday night markedly more subdued than he’d been previously – even giving me another chess lesson had failed to enthuse him – and with the prospect of a day at school on the horizon, I wondered how he’d be this morning. Seeing his mum had obviously knocked him for six.
‘She’s going to be absolutely fine, you know,’ I said, as I passed him a bowl of cocoa-dusted cereal. ‘In fact, I bet they say she can come home any day now, just you wait and see.’
Adam picked up his spoon and began shovelling the cereal into his mouth. ‘I know,’ he said, sighing once he’d swallowed a couple of mouthfuls. ‘It’s just that I worry about her. She’s not used to being without me.’
My sense of an unhealthy maternal dependence only deepened. In an ideal world, no child should have to stress in that way about a parent. But we weren’t living in an ideal world. He was stressed, and I could only try to help him. ‘Well, tonight,’ I said briskly, ‘we’ll be back to see her, okay? We’ll come home, have a bit of tea, and then go straight back for another visit. That way, she won’t worry so much, will she?’ I had another thought. ‘And tonight I’m going to take my puzzle book with me, too, so I can sit in the waiting room, and give you and your mum a bit of proper catch-up time. How does that sound?’
Good enough to cheer him up, apparently. He wolfed down the rest of his breakfast, plus the banana I offered him, and even asked what he was getting for his lunch. He’d already told me the previous evening that he didn’t ‘do’ school dinners (wrinkling his nose in the time-honoured fashion, too), so I’d filled a plastic box with the things he said he liked most – a cheese sandwich, some crisps and another banana – while he went back upstairs to clean his teeth and get his bag.
So far, so largely unremarkable. And as I watched him go into school, I made a mental note to put aside all the concerns that had been niggling at me; he was just a little lad, cast adrift, feeling anxious, who was missing both his routine and his mum.
As I was missing all the absentee members of my own family I was feeling more than a little adrift myself. So I wasn’t altogether unhappy to hear, when I called John Fulshaw, that, assuming I was okay with it, I’d have Adam with me for a few more days yet.
‘They’re keeping her in for a bit – just a couple more days, to be on the safe side,’ he explained. ‘Nothing to worry about – just so they can get her pain under control. Which makes sense, since she’s Adam’s sole carer.’
I agreed that it did, remembering how grey and weak Adam’s mum had looked. No point sending her home if she wasn’t going to be able to cope.
‘That’s absolutely fine,’ I said. ‘Like I told you, I’d have been at a very loose end this week had it not been for this, so yes, I’m happy. Bless him – he’s the sweetest boy. No trouble at all. And bright, too – he’s teaching me how to play chess.’
John diplomatically didn’t express any surprise at this, but once I’d rung off it did occur to me that it would be an odd sort of week – just Adam and me, bent studiously over various board games.
Generally speaking, I’m not a solitary person. Oh, I enjoy the odd five minutes’ peace as much as any frazzled parent, but that was only because it was such a treat. I was used to the proverbial houseful – kids and grandkids and foster kids all coming and going; being in the centre of a whirlwind was much more my modus operandi than feeling like a lone tumbleweed rolling across a plain. Which made my thoughts turn again to Adam and his mum’s apparent isolation; what different lives they must live to my own. And it had been a contrast that was brought to the fore even more when I called Mike and, because the mobile-phone signal was in and out like a swing door, he seemed such a very long way away.
The day therefore dragged, despite my attacking all the housework, and I found myself a full ten minutes early for pick-up time at Adam’s school.
It was a big school – unfamiliar, too, as none of my tribe had gone there – and as I watched the first kids, the infants, spilling out onto their adjacent playground, my thoughts turned automatically to Adam’s friends. He’d presumably been here for almost the full eight years now – time enough, surely, for him to have made some close friends, and, perhaps, for his mother to have too.
And, as if on cue, as I scanned the sea of unfamiliar young faces, I spotted him, coming out with another boy, their heads bent and close, in conversation. And as they got nearer, a new thought appeared in my head. I was all too conscious that I was going to have to break the news to Adam that he was unlikely to be able to go home for a few days yet, so how about – in the interests of maintaining some normality – this friend of his could come round to play?
I raised a hand and waved manically till Adam looked up and spotted me, then trotted across to the gate where they’d emerge. And as I did so, I noticed a young woman heading the same way. Could this be the other lad’s mother? She had a toddler on her hip, and was also picking up one of the infants and was pointing out the boys as she approached.
My hunch confirmed when the boy Adam was with waved back at her, I decided to take the bull by the horns. ‘Hi,’ I said, as she hefted the little one on to her other hip. ‘I’m Casey. I’m a foster carer.’ I gestured towards the approaching boys. ‘I’m looking after Adam for a few days till his mum comes out of hospital.’
‘Oh, I see,’ she said, nodding. ‘Verity. Pleased to meet you. Is Adam’s mum okay? Harry told me all about it on Friday.’
‘She’s fine,’ I confirmed, nodding. ‘We’re off to visit her in a bit. It’s obviously tough for Adam –’
‘I’ll bet,’ she said. ‘Bless him. The poor love. Can you imagine that? Just having to be packed off to strangers? Not that you’re strange, of course –’ She laughed. ‘Sorry. That came out all wrong, didn’t it? But I was saying to my husband, we’d have had him if we’d known. Well, if there was any way … hey, there, lovely!’ She turned to her son. ‘How was your day? And how about you, love?’ she added to Adam. ‘I hear your mum’s on the mend. That’s good, isn’t it?’
Adam nodded and shyly agreed that it was. Then, in one of those moments of synchronised school-gate thinking, Harry’s mum beat me to it. ‘Tell you what,’ she said, even as I was forming the same words, ‘why don’t you come to tea with us tomorrow? I know you’re going to see your mum today.’ She glanced at me. ‘But how about tomorrow? You and Harry can have a game of football or something in the park afterwards, can’t you? Might take your mind off your mum for a bit.’
There was no other word for it – Adam looked mortified. ‘I can’t,’ he said immediately, looking up at me, as if for corroboration. ‘I’m not allowed …’
‘Course you are, love,’ I reassured him. ‘Well, as long as your mum says it’s okay. And I can’t imagine she wouldn’t … and we can ask her tonight, can’t we?’
He looked stricken. And another thought occurred to me. ‘We can still visit her tomorrow,’ I told him. ‘Visiting’s till eight, so there’s no problem doing both, love. We could go when I pick you up from Harry’s.’
‘I can’t,’ he said again, and I could see he was close to tears now. And it was that, together with the look on Harry’s mum’s face – which, interestingly, displayed none of my consternation – that made me realise there was nothing to be gained in pushing it. What did I know, after all, about these two boys’ relationship? If he didn’t want to go, he didn’t want to go, end of.
He’d already turned away and begun marching off – in entirely the wrong direction – so I mouthed a ‘sorry’ to Harry’s mum and hurried after him.
‘I thought Harry was your friend?’ I said lightly, once I’d caught up with him, walked with him to my car and got in.
‘He is my friend,’ Adam said, his voice tight with anger. ‘He’s my best friend.’
‘So how come you didn’t want to go to tea with him, love?’
‘Because I’m not allowed.’
I watched his face in the rear-view mirror. He was staring miserably out of the window. ‘Because you’re with me?’
‘Because I’m not allowed to go to tea.’
‘What, not at all?’ I asked, dampening the surprise in my voice.
He shook his head. ‘No. I have to have my tea at home. With my mum.’
I thought back to the expression on Harry’s mother’s face. Unsurprised. So she must presumably be aware of this house rule. And she’d made that comment. That they’d have had Adam. And then that unfinished qualification that had not gone unnoticed. If there was any way … Was that what she’d meant? If there was any way the apron strings could be loosened a fraction?
So I couldn’t help but wonder. And worry. There was close and there was close.
I wondered if his mum realised that – in her loneliness, presumably – she might actually be preventing him from having a normal childhood.
I was all too aware that it wasn’t my role to try to probe into Adam’s home life but I made another attempt on the journey to the hospital. We’d been talking about his mum and how happy she’d be to see him, and it seemed it couldn’t hurt, specially as she was now going to be staying in a few more days. Surely she’d see that it would be good for him to see a school friend in her absence. ‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘How about I have a chat with your mum, eh? You know, about you going to tea at Harry’s tomorrow?’
But the response was, if anything, even more pronounced. ‘No!’ he snapped. It was the first time he’d raised his voice with me. ‘I don’t want to! Please don’t ask Mum about it, Casey. Please.’
And that was that. Duly noted. End of conversation. Much as I wanted to, I didn’t ask him why.
Adam’s mum wasn’t where we’d left her. We arrived on the ward to be told she’d been moved into a side room. ‘More comfortable for her,’ the nurse said. Then, to me, once Adam had skipped off to find her, ‘She’s not been sleeping well. A bit of pain. She’s doing absolutely fine,’ she added, ‘but she’s been struggling a bit, so it made the most sense.’