by Casey Watson
‘If he agrees to go there,’ I said.
‘Well, he went to school this morning, didn’t he? And, you know, if you look at the bigger picture, Miller does seem to love a challenge. I imagine that his curiosity will get him into the car, if nothing else.’
It was a good point. I hoped she was right. But the best bit was that they’d already identified such a person to work with us and Miller – a retired police officer who was childless, and had entered into fostering quite late in life, having been widowed very young. She had now decided she wanted to do more focused, behavioural-type work, one-on-one, and in short, regular bursts. She was called Mavis, which gave me confidence immediately. Surely no one would dare mess with a Mavis? She was in her mid-sixties, apparently, and lived out in the countryside with her three ex-police German shepherd dogs. Crucially, she had already offered to take Miller (and sight unseen, which also impressed me) every other weekend for as long as we needed it.
‘And you do need it,’ Christine had finished. ‘As do we. Because there’s clearly no way you’re even going to survive the summer with him – let alone in the longer term, even if school pans out well. I know how intense it is at home with him. I also understand how much you need things put on a more even keel, so your son returns home. How are things there, by the way?’
Now it was my turn to feel tearful. Tyler had been great. Sending me funny texts, keeping me in the picture, sending silly pictures, too, of him and Dee Dee. Having fun. One thing was for sure. He was definitely singing for his supper on that front. But, much as he kept reassuring me that he’d be home again, and soon, every communication, however light-hearted, felt like a punch in the gut – because it just highlighted how isolated from my family I was feeling. And how beyond difficult it was becoming not to feel resentful about missing out, about not being there for them. And for me. How difficult it was to stop myself from thinking ‘I don’t need to do this.’
‘It is what it is,’ I said, trying to sound matter of fact. Then stopped, fearing the floodgates flying open. Fortunately, Christine had the wisdom not to pat me or try and soothe me, or I’d have been off to get the box of extra tissues myself.
‘But it needs sorting,’ she said crisply. ‘You’ve been badly let down. Which is why I’ve fought so hard for you and Mike to be allocated this support.’
I smiled a wobbly smile. ‘It’s that obvious?’
She tapped her open laptop. ‘You forget, Casey, I’m the one that reads your emails!’
So perhaps we’d both done a little bit more soul-bearing than we’d intended. And perhaps we were both all the better for it. And here was hope. No – more than that, here was tangible change for the better. No matter how bad things got at home, we would know that it would only be a matter of time before we got a break. There was light at last, at the end of the never-ending-seeming tunnel. And it was in touching distance. Finally.
***
I don’t know if it was the thought of Mavis, of the perspective shift, having heard all about Christine’s problems, or the fact that I was determined to get things on an even keel so that Tyler would come home pronto – probably a combination of all three – but following our meeting I seemed to get into gear and, with Mike’s support, managed the next two weeks quite well.
And that despite Miller being in all-out campaign mode – both to keep upping the ante with our personal non-relationship, and on a mission to get himself expelled. But from a school that was never going to expel him. What an incredible difference that made. I was very used to looking after children who’d repeatedly found themselves excluded from education, of course – and part and parcel of that would be giving it everything I could to avoid getting that dreaded phone call from a head teacher. But, thanks to Mr Hammond, with Miller I was Mrs Chillout personified. A walking incarnation of the word ‘whatever’. Miller wanted control and, at last, I was happy to let him run with it. As long as he got in that car every morning – which, unbelievably, for the first two days he seemed more than happy to do – I had discharged my responsibility till the evening. Terrible to admit, but still true. That he was a problem I was happy to pass on.
Of course, key was that Miller didn’t know he wouldn’t be expelled. Or that Mr Hammond would be reporting to us daily on his progress initially, usually via a chat on the phone when he was travelling home. Indeed, Miller claimed on a daily basis that not only did he hate the school, but that that the school hated him too – and that he’d definitely be excluded before the end of term – now less than two weeks away. ‘I’ll make sure it happens today,’ he would say every morning, before launching into all the details of his cunning plan to get chucked out.
On the third morning he declared he would set the fire alarms off. And he did. But rather than be excluded from school, he simply had to sit and study in the library while everyone else went out kayaking.
The next day he said he had found a code online that would allow him to hack into the school’s servers and disrupt their intranet. Amazingly, he also managed to do this, and though no one had any idea how, and Miller naturally refused to say, to his frustration he didn’t get excluded for that either. He merely missed an end-of-term trip to a theme park, remaining in school to do three hours of lines and maths tests.
Needless to say, by the time Miller returned home each night, he had a lot of pent-up anger about his inability to bend the school to his will, and though he only spent an hour downstairs with us before it was his bedtime, boy did we get to suffer for it. It was as if he realised that he was fighting a losing battle at school, so he had to cause a fight that he thought he could win at home.
And credit where credit’s due – he took the task very seriously, getting all his emotional troops lined up meticulously for the war he would start the minute he walked in the door.
‘You two hate me, I know you do,’ he said on the first Thursday evening, before he’d even taken his shoes off. ‘You shouldn’t even be foster carers, sending me to school without making sure I brush my hair and my teeth, knowing that I’ll get picked on by everyone!’
‘Don’t be daft, Miller,’ Mike said. ‘Casey tells you to do that several times every morning. And these are things you should do for yourself every day, anyway. As you often say yourself, you’re not five, after all. Surely you shouldn’t have to be told.’
He was only back-footed momentarily. ‘Don’t you think Casey sometimes lies to you, Mike? You know – to make her life easier?’ He raised questioning eyebrows. ‘She’s lied to you before, you know. Like, I know for a fact that she doesn’t tell you half of the things that I do and say. I’ve heard her tell you stuff. She skips out loads of things.’
I knew of course, that he was itching for an argument, but I couldn’t help myself, and fell right into his trap.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Miller,’ I scolded. ‘I’ve told you before that divide and conquer doesn’t work in this house, so just knock it off and get your drink and supper and take your pills please.’
‘There you go again,’ Miller shot back. ‘Trying to get rid of me. Trying to make me mad so I’ll go off to my room. Out of sight, out of mind. Because you hate me so much. God! Why do you even foster kids at all? I told the taxi man that you both hate me, you know. And he agrees. He knows you only do it for the money.’
I felt an all-too-familiar irritation well inside me, even though I knew what his game was. He still seemed to crave making us dislike him more than anything. So I knew I mustn’t rise to it, even as I felt it. It was becoming as knee-jerk as his need to be disliked. This isn’t me, I kept thinking. This isn’t me.
Thankfully Mike saw that too, and stepped in to save the day. ‘You putting the kettle on, Case?’ he asked. ‘I’ll have a coffee if you are. Oh, and some of that lemon drizzle cake that your mum sent up too?’
He then turned to Miller. ‘You had a rough day, mate? Only school rang and said you’d got all your points today and got to go out on the motor bikes this afternoon.’
But why? I pleaded silently. But Mike merely grinned. ‘Got it all planned then, kiddo, eh? Well, that’s fine. It’s your choice. Yours and yours only. No one else gets to control if you get good things or bad things at the end of every day, do they? So yes, I imagine a few hours of maths or French or comprehension would be much better than splashing around in a lame pool.’ He tapped Miller on the shoulder. ‘Good thinking, kid.’
The confusion on Miller’s face was priceless. But, yet again, I could see his mind whirring as he regrouped. ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘I don’t care anyway. Because tomorrow you have to give me back my laptop. It’s the law,’ he added, as he picked up his milk and cookies, that vital last point having apparently been scored.
But as he left the kitchen, after us both agreeing that yes, of course we would, he had a distinct look of confusion on his face, as it he wasn’t sure if he’d achieved anything much at all.
So. Miller – what now? Casey – what now? How was the score sheet panning out? Was he still keeping score, even? Or was it proving too complicated? After all, with the school in the mix things had definitely changed. It must feel that his control was being chipped away at every day. In fact it was. Because between us, we had at last found the means to make progress towards taking away his burning need to control absolutely everything. Towards helping him understand what he could and couldn’t control, and working from there on what to do about it. In getting him to understand that precious link between actions and consequences.
It wasn’t lost on me that, at other times, in other circumstances, with other children, I had been perfectly able to achieve such increments of progress on my own. But not with this child. And not just because we’d as yet failed to get our own rewards and consequences system up and running. It was because we’d yet failed to form even the slenderest of bonds. In that respect it was still very much Miller leading the league table. He did everything he could to actively make me dislike him. To find his presence irritating. To deal with him a burden. So I was grateful for any help the school could give me. And, at last, particularly seeing him now, I knew it was working. Even if it was painfully slow.
My only concern was that there was only a week of the summer term left now and I still hadn’t told Miller what was to happen during the summer holidays. The little bit of extra help that Christine Bolton had promised me.
***
‘I’m not going!’ Miller screamed at Libby as she tried her very best to coerce him. ‘I won’t get in your stupid fucking car!’
It was the Sunday before the start of the long summer holidays – the day Libby was to collect him for an hour’s visit with Mavis. After which, assuming no apocalypse happened during it, Mavis would start her fortnightly respite periods the following weekend. Well, if we could get him to her, that was.
It had seemed only sensible not to burden Miller with this development while he was still wrestling with his new school regime. I was just happy enough that he was still going every day without putting up too much resistance. Which, now he had his laptop, he wasn’t. And even though I worried what he might be doing on his laptop, I reasoned that he had already long since opened most internet-based cans of worms. And that, because as smooth a transition into a school routine as could be achieved needed to be achieved, the end surely justified the means.
So it had only been on the Saturday that Mike and I had sat him down and told him that we had a little outing arranged for him, with a view to him having some regular weekends away over the summer. We’d taken care, too, to couch it in very specific terms – as something suggested by social services, that we’d been asked to agree to, in order to give him a break – from us.
‘Because everyone needs a holiday, lad,’ Mike pointed out. ‘You included. After all, you must get fed up with rattling around with us two all the time – as you frequently tell us.’ Pregnant pause. ‘And Mavis’ – who he’d painted rather colourfully, as a sort of cross between Mary Poppins and Bear Grylls – ‘is so looking forward to meeting you, and has all sorts of fun things planned for you to do together.’
But, as expected, he’d dug in his heels. ‘Not going,’ he said. ‘End of. She sounds like a witch. And you can’t make me anyway. I do what I want. Not going. End of.’
And the conversation had been ongoing ever since. Because, of course it didn’t take him long to see through our little ruse. ‘You’re just sick of me,’ he insisted when I’d woken him up on Sunday morning. ‘And sending me away just like everyone else does. I’m not five,’ he pointed out. ‘I’m not stupid.’
And as at least the sending away part was true – albeit for respite, not forever – I’d sat down on his bed and spelled it out.
‘Okay, love,’ I’d said. ‘You’re quite right, you’re twelve now. Which means you’re old enough to understand that I’m human, okay? Which means I’m not perfect. Which means I have feelings, just like you do. Which is why I think it’s important for both of us that we have these little breaks. You, because it’ll be good for you to make friends with someone else too. And have you heard the expression that absence makes the heart grow fonder? Well, perhaps spending some time away from us will work like that for you – make you feel less like fighting us all the time over everything. And that’s true for me too, Miller – can you understand that? That’s also why this is happening. So I don’t get to the end of my tether, either, with all the arguments. So that I’m happier. So that I feel I can hold on to you.’
‘So you are sick of me,’ he’d retorted. ‘I knew you were. Hah. And you just said it.’ He crossed his arms over his chest. He sounded pleased with himself.
‘No, I’m not,’ I corrected. ‘But I tell you what I am, Miller. I am at a loss. To understand why you want to make me sick of you. Why you keep wanting to stop people trying to help you.’
‘I don’t need help. I just want to be left alone!’
And, at that moment, it was the hardest thing not to grant him that very wish.
***
‘I’m sure Casey will give you a little treat,’ Libby was saying now, as she held the car door open. ‘If you just do as you’re told. And, you know, Mavis is so lovely, and she’s really looking forward to meeting you.’
I wasn’t sure I was that happy to hear Libby playing fast and loose with offers of ‘treats’ on my behalf. And Miller wasn’t either. ‘I don’t want a fucking “treat”!’ he retorted, putting the word in finger quote marks. ‘She’s probably an old bag! She’s probably never had kids and won’t even know where McDonald’s is or something, and, as well, she probably locks kids in cages with her dogs or something.’
‘Miller!’ Mike was now walking up the front path towards us. ‘Enough. Get in that car, right now. No more nonsense.’ He walked towards Miller and put his hand on his shoulder. ‘If I have to escort you into the car, I will do, lad. You know Libby, and you know she will stay with you. That’s a promise. The truth is, kiddo, that we all need a little break every now and then – you included. This is just a little break for you to get to know Mavis before you start going to stay with her. You’ll be right back.’
‘You get in the car,’ I whispered to Libby. ‘Start the engine.’
She did this without saying anything and I walked over to Mike, and placed one of my hands on Miller’s other shoulder. For any neighbours watching, as we escorted him all the way into the back seat, it must have looked like the two of us were officially detaining him.
‘Listen love,’ I said, poking my head in as I buckled his seat belt. ‘I promise you’ll be back here by teatime, so just try to be open minded and allow yourself to have some fun. This is not a punishment. It’s going to be like a little holiday
every couple of weeks, that’s all, so do try to understand that and enjoy it.’
‘I won’t enjoy it,’ he spat back at me. ‘And you’ll pay for this!’
I closed the car door and Libby drove off immediately. No further drama, thank goodness, and, thanks to the child lock, no leaping out of the fast-accelerating vehicle. Just his face scowling out, his eyes boring into me. Eyes which, despite the bile in his parting shot, held all the loneliness and unhappiness in the world.
‘He’ll be fine, love,’ Mike said as he saw my crestfallen face. ‘Tell you what, let’s go grab Tyler – you badly need some Ty-time – and the rest of the crew too if they like, and we’ll go out for lunch. Might as well make the most of it, hey?’
But it shouldn’t be like this, was all I could keep thinking. We’d had Miller for over three months now. Surely by this time we should all be going out for lunch. Not having to pack him off out of the way. Not either/or when it came to having quality time with family. It felt like a failure. Because that’s exactly what it was.
***
We did just that, though. Riley and the kids joined us, too, along with Kieron and Lauren and Dee Dee. We had a lovely Sunday roast at the local pub beer garden and forgot all our worries for a couple of hours. At least everybody else did. I couldn’t get Miller off my mind; how frightened he had looked. How beaten. As if he’d known he’d reached the brink and toppled over.
I needn’t have worried at all, however – at least not about the things I was concerned about. Indeed, when he arrived home, I realised that what I should probably be worrying about more were my many failings as a foster carer, because Mavis, it seemed, was the new superwoman. At the very least, according to Miller, the one that all foster carers should aspire to emulate.
‘And, as well, she has chickens and ducks and a pond in her garden – which is miles bigger than yours,’ he said. ‘Miles bigger. And she has three dogs, but not house dogs – they wander the land and keep everybody safe. And, as well, they’re like a wolf pack. Did you know about wolves? They’re –’