by Casey Watson
And I could tell by his expression when I arrived to collect him that missing sports day was on his mind as well. He scowled as I approached, but I could see he’d been crying, and when the school secretary opened the door for us to leave he didn’t thank her.
‘Jenson!’ I chided. ‘What do you say to Mrs Mason?’
But he was already marching off across the playground, seemingly deaf, leaving me frowning apologetically in his wake.
And he began with the usual ‘it wasn’t my fault’ prattle immediately he got into the car.
‘It never is!’ I barked crossly, as I pushed the key into the ignition. ‘It’s always someone else’s fault with you, isn’t it, Jenson?’
‘But it was!’ he said, yanking the seatbelt across him. ‘I told Miss Cappleman an’ all, but did she listen? Did she hellus like!’
‘So, tell me then,’ I asked him. ‘What happened? And no lies please.’
He stared resolutely out of the window as I pulled away from the kerb. ‘Well?’ I said. ‘Are you going to tell me? Because it seems to me that all you’ve achieved so far today is to completely ruin your afternoon. Not to mention mine. None of which strikes me as very clever!’
He met my eyes through the rear-view mirror and his expression was one of fury. ‘What’s the fucking point?’ he said. ‘You’re just like my fucking mum – you all are! Just take me home. I wanna go to bed!’
Chapter 15
While Jenson was upstairs in his room – sleeping or otherwise, I was happy to leave him up there to cool down for a bit – I called Riley to let her know about the change of plan.
‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll collect Levi from nursery and bring our picnic to yours. The boys won’t care whether we’re there or on the playing field. In fact, they’ll probably prefer to be at yours – especially if you get the paddling pool out. No improvement on the Georgie–Jenson front, then?’
‘Not on the Jenson front, to be sure,’ I confirmed, and there must have been something extra-meaningful in my sigh, because Riley picked up on it immediately.
‘Not like you to sound so negative, Mum,’ she observed. ‘God, I’d have thought that after Ashton and Olivia you could handle anything. Why’s this kid getting to you so much?’
I sighed again. Ashton and Olivia seemed so long ago now, and in my current state – memory probably clouded – I didn’t remember them being half so bad.
‘I don’t know. It’s having the both of them together, I think, mainly. Georgie’s complex, but actually he’s no sort of bother, but having the two of them … I don’t know. I just don’t seem to be developing any sort of workable relationship with Jenson … We seem perpetually at loggerheads …’
‘You mean that, basically, you don’t like him.’
‘God, no!’
‘Mum, you know, you’re not an angel or anything. It is within the bounds of possibility – albeit rarely – that you’ll have a child in who you find hard to bond with. In fact, that’s one of the things that got brought up at mine and David’s last interview. They said it would be unrealistic to expect that you’d love every child that came into your care.’ Riley paused to let this bit of wisdom sink in. ‘Anyway,’ she said finally, ‘I’ll let you go. I have a few errands to run before I come to you. Anything you need while I’m at the shops? Crate of valium? Case of gin?’
I laughed, of course, but Riley’s words had cut me to the quick. She was right, yes, but me? Actively dislike a child I fostered? It had never happened. It couldn’t happen. I refused to accept it. I’d dealt – both as a foster mum and as a school behaviour manager – with kids way more difficult to bond with than Jenson. No, it seemed more that he didn’t bond with me. And thinking that made me feel pretty guilty as well, and reminded me that there must be a reason for Jenson’s angry carapace. And I had yet to find it. With Georgie joining us, I hadn’t so far even tried that hard. And that made me feel bad as well.
But you can never feel bad for long when you have a brace of lovely grandchildren, and spending an hour in the company of mine worked its magic. By the time I had to go back to school to collect Georgie my sense of optimism had seeped back into my psyche as surely as the water from the paddling pool had seeped into my clothes.
And Georgie, too, seemed happy when he was returned to me. He’d spent the afternoon, with his teaching assistant, in a far-flung quiet classroom, building a small colourful citadel out of Lego. I’d recently learned that he really enjoyed both Lego and jigsaw puzzles, which was a bonus – something else to occupy him with while I dealt with Jenson.
But as he looked around now, he seemed slightly baffled.
‘Good day,’ he said, in response to my enquiry. ‘But where is Jenson? Why is Jenson not here?’
‘At home,’ I explained. ‘Nothing for you to worry about, sweetie. I’m afraid he’s been naughty so Mrs Cappleman had to send him home.’
We were walking towards the car, but Georgie stopped dead on the pavement. ‘Jenson naughty?’ he said. Then shook his head. ‘No. Jenson good. Jenson is good boy today.’ He then looked down and began frowning, and I realised that as we’d approached the kerbside I had automatically held out my hand to him to cross.
I smiled bemusedly. How strange the rest of the world must seem to him. People trying to touch you and grab you and generally invade your space. I lowered my hand again, but then he surprised me. ‘Not today,’ he said. ‘Maybe tomorrow I will hold it.’ Then he glared. ‘Jordan Gates is a motherfucker.’
‘Georgie!’ I gasped. ‘That’s a bad word to say. Where did you hear that? You mustn’t say that word again, okay?’
‘Jordan Gates is a motherfucker,’ he said once again anyway. ‘The opening episode of Doctor Who was called “An Unearthly Child”. Susan had superior intelligence.’
Hmm, I thought. And in some ways, so do you …
Though, in some ways, he was as blank a mental slate as a baby. I wondered who’d thought it clever to teach him that word. Someone fairly close to home, I didn’t doubt.
The number one candidate had come down when we returned home from school, and while Georgie went upstairs to change out of his uniform I watched the tableau in the garden through the kitchen window. It was actually fascinating to see how natural and happy Jenson was with the little ones, playing with them happily and attentively and carefully. Like a different child, in fact. He really was a puzzle. So much so that when he came inside to refill the jug of squash he even asked politely if Levi and Jackson could stay for tea.
‘Of course they can,’ I told him. ‘If that suits Riley, that is. And as long as you all play nicely. Though, Jenson,’ I added, as he went to get the squash bottle, ‘no more teaching Georgie swear words, okay?’
I was pleased that the expected denial wasn’t forthcoming on this occasion. In fact, he even had the grace to look sheepish. ‘Oh, and Jenson,’ I added, ‘do you know who Jordan Gates is?’
He looked even more sheepish. ‘He’s a big bully. One of them boys I was fighting.’ And after he’d fought them, also described them using his usual colourful language, no doubt. Which Georgie had obviously picked up on. But there was nothing to be gained by going over the same ground as earlier. Better to enjoy what remained of the afternoon with the little ones. Perhaps Jenson would open up to me about the incident in school this evening. Or perhaps not. Either way, it was best left right now. It would doubtless all come out in the wash.
In the event, it didn’t. When I took Jenson to school the following morning I was none the wiser about the cause of the fight, because he flatly refused to discuss it, and I wondered if he was being bullied, perhaps about the situation at home. He had, after all, made reference to at least one of those involved being a bully himself. Perhaps his deputy head teacher would enlighten me.
But Andrea Cappleman, apparently, was also none the wiser, both the other boys having remained tight lipped about it, saying only that Jenson had wound them up.
‘I’ll keep an eye on
things,’ she told me. ‘Though I don’t doubt it’ll blow over; these things usually do. Plus we are mindful that Jenson’s in a bad place at the moment – which will of course make him extra wind-uppable.’
Though not, it seemed, so distressed that he didn’t still find time to cause mischief of his own. That same afternoon, crossing the playground with Georgie, having picked him up, I was accosted by a lady I recognised. She was a dinner lady, and also the gran of one of the pupils, and was obviously here again to pick her up.
‘Hello, Georgie,’ she said, as we met in the middle of the playground. Then, looking at me pointedly, she continued. ‘I’m glad to have bumped into you, because Georgie and I chatted at lunchtime, didn’t we, Georgie? And Georgie asked me why I had whiskers on my chin.’ If that didn’t make we squirm – which it did: the poor woman – what she said next certainly did.
‘And when I told him that was a rude thing to say,’ the woman continued, ‘Georgie’s response was to say “Fuck off, whiskers!”’
Mortified and apologetic as I was to hear this, I did have a sneaking sympathy for Georgie, hearing this. After all, both he and the dinner lady had been at the school long enough for her to know Georgie was simply parroting something he’d heard, and I didn’t doubt where he would have heard it either.
But when we got to the car, where Jenson was already waiting, my sympathy diminished somewhat when I realised Jenson had seen the exchange with the woman and that both boys were now giggling about it. I proffered the usual admonishments, of course. Ticked them both off for laughing and Georgie, in particular, for saying a rude word to the dinner lady. But even as I did so I realised that this was something of a breakthrough. Because I had never heard Georgie laugh before, not once.
Georgie’s unexpected giggles stayed with me for the rest of the day. Though it was clearly a bad thing that Jenson was using Georgie for his own entertainment in that way, I couldn’t get over the shock of the emotional connection they had, for that moment, at least, seemed to make. It was a flimsy one, admittedly, and I still doubted Jenson’s motivations, but when he asked me if they could go on a ‘stone-hunting adventure’ in the garden that Sunday morning I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was starting to accept Georgie after all.
‘Of course you can,’ I told him. ‘What a brilliant idea. I might even come out and join in too, once I’ve peeled all this veg.’
‘Can you believe that?’ I said to Mike, as we watched them from out of the window. ‘The two of them playing nicely together?’
‘It was only a matter of time, love,’ Mike said. ‘They’re kids, after all. It was probably as much about fighting for territory as anything. Although I wouldn’t start counting your chickens just yet. They’re just as likely to revert to fighting again.’
I smiled as I watched Jenson pick up a stone and polish it on his jeans before handing it to Georgie for inspection. Georgie did so, shook his head and Jenson took it back, shrugging, before tossing it back and looking for another. As simple pleasures went, it was pretty hard to knock.
And Mike was probably right. Jenson, forcibly removed from his home, had come to us and within a matter of a couple of weeks had been usurped by another child, and had to fight to keep his place in the pecking order. But maybe that had passed now – maybe they’d made enough of a connection that things between them would now begin to settle. And as for reverting, well, I could handle a little fall-out between them every now and again. That was to be expected with any kids.
The veg done, I rustled up some bacon and eggs for Mike. He’d had his one lie-in of the week, while I’d eaten breakfast with the boys, and it would be a good four or five hours before our roast. It was only once I’d done so and was washing my hands at the sink that I realised that, though Jenson was busy digging holes with a trowel still, there was no longer any sign of Georgie.
I called through the window. Perhaps he’d gone around the side path and I couldn’t see him, or had come in to use the toilet while my back was turned.
‘Where’s Georgie, love?’ I asked Jenson. He looked up and then around him. ‘I dunno,’ he said, shrugging. ‘He was there a minute ago.’ He got up off his knees and walked across to the side of the garden, where I joined him. It was then that I noticed that the gate, though shut, wasn’t bolted. I felt a wave of panic wash over me. Georgie was not a child who had the skills to be out on the street alone. And he wouldn’t be able to reach the bolt on his own, either. Probably wouldn’t even think of trying, for that matter, unless …
‘Did you unlock this?’ I asked Jenson sharply.
‘No!’ he said. ‘I never! I told you – I never saw him go out there!’
‘He’s not inside,’ Mike said, joining us. ‘I’ve been and checked upstairs.’
‘So he’s gone out into the street,’ I said, pulling the gate open and dashing through it. It wasn’t the busiest of locations where we lived now, plus it was Sunday, of course – but I couldn’t help but think of the main road just a couple of streets away, and how easily Georgie might be panicked by the unfamiliarity of everything if he started wandering the streets alone.
Georgie, however, was nowhere to be seen. ‘Right, young man,’ I told Jenson, ‘you stay right there in the garden, while Mike and I run to either end of the road.’
‘I never done anything!’ he bleated again. ‘He just disappeared when I weren’t looking!’
‘I know, mate,’ said Mike. ‘You just hold the fort for thirty seconds. Casey, love,’ he said, turning to me, ‘I’ll just head down to the junction, while you go that way. He’ll not be far away, I’m sure.’
But our search on foot revealed no sign of him, and as we reconvened a minute later I felt a familiar sense of foreboding. We’d been here before – we’d had one child, Spencer, who could abscond for Great Britain, even via climbing out of a bedroom skylight and shimmying along roofs. But this was Georgie. Could he even cross a road unassisted? He was accompanied everywhere – into school, out of school, around school … And now we had absolutely no idea where he was.
‘I’ll go and get the car keys,’ Mike said, squeezing my arm. ‘And, love, stop panicking. We’ll find him. It’s only been minutes. He won’t have got far.’
‘What about the woods?’ I said. ‘Should Jenson and I go down to the woods, do you think?’
‘Let me have a drive round first –’ Mike stopped and glanced over my shoulder. ‘Look, there’s the Stanleys. Let’s ask if they might have seen him.’
The Stanleys were our next-door neighbours and were coming down the road, presumably returning home from church. But they’d seen no sign of Georgie, and as they went into their house and Mike jumped in the car to go and look for him I felt surer than ever that he might have wandered down to the woods. We’d talked about them, after all, and how he might well find some stones there.
‘Think,’ I said to Jenson, wondering if he’d suggested that very thing. ‘What might you have said that would make him go off like that?’
‘Nothing!’ he said. ‘Honest, Casey. I didn’t say nothing to him. Not a word!’
I was just scrabbling for my door keys, having decided to head across the park anyway, when an ear-splitting scream rent the still Sunday air. A Georgie-scream, and clearly close at hand. Relief coursed through me. But where was he then? Somewhere to the left. I went back down the side path to the front, where, looking down the alleyway that separated our two houses, I saw Mr Stanley tugging a panicked Georgie along by his hand.
‘Oh, let him go!’ I cried, much to Mr Stanley’s confusion. ‘That’s why he’s screaming. You mustn’t touch him. He doesn’t like it …’
Mr Stanley seemed only too happy to oblige. Georgie stopped dead then, shook his fringe from his eyes, and did his cupped-hands thing; staring down at what looked like an ordinary bunch of pebbles, but clearly one that meant a great deal to him, because as Mr Stanley leaned down to see what Georgie was holding he clasped his hands together around them
and promptly began screaming again.
‘Georgie, come on,’ I said, thinking on my feet now. His collection tin was sitting on our patio table, wasn’t it? ‘Come on. That’s obviously a very important stone for your collection so you need to go back into our garden and put it safely in your tin.’
This seemed to do the trick. Clutching his hands straight out in front of him, he marched straight past me and Jenson, and inside the garden gate with his all-important new treasure.
‘I didn’t hurt him, my love,’ Mr Stanley said, looking bewildered. ‘I’m sure I didn’t. I was just worried he might make a dash for it, that’s all.’
It was only the work of moments to put our poor next-door neighbour in the picture. And it seemed that Georgie had been in their garden all along. They’d come home and gone inside and nearly jumped out of their skins to see a small boy in their garden, kneeling down in front of their ornamental rockery, having excavated a sizeable hole.
‘Which is no bother at all,’ Mr Stanley assured me, when I explained about Georgie’s collection of ‘precious’ stones and what they meant to him. ‘So don’t you worry. I’m just glad to know the lad is safely found.’
And he wasn’t the only one. It was a good quarter of an hour before Mike returned. Stupidly, neither of us had thought that it might be an idea for him to take a mobile.
‘But no harm done,’ we agreed, as he joined us in the garden, where Georgie was reconfiguring a new row of stones. Seeing Mike, he glanced up, and then picked one of the new stones up. Then he pointed to Jenson. ‘Rock-er-y. Grey-green. For you,’ he said.
Both Mike and my eyes moved to Jenson.
‘Grey-green for Jenson,’ Georgie said again. ‘Cream-white for Georgie. Georgie is a clever boy,’ he finished.
Jenson’s mouth fell open. ‘I never!’ he said. ‘I never said for him to go there!’