by Casey Watson
But when she wasn’t hyper, she often seemed to be miles away, and I knew she was still being regularly ambushed by feelings of homesickness – particularly for her granddad. And for the rest of her family. And perhaps the reality of that permanent separation was sinking in. Necessary, I knew, but so sad.
But of the two of them, it was Ashton who concerned me the most. He was definitely becoming more aggressive. Since the incident at the party – perhaps something had come to a head? – he had become more irritable, and seemed to like taking it out on his little sister, pushing her around and pulling her hair till she cried. And no matter how much I tried to talk to him about it, he seemed to have this default setting called ‘angry and defiant’, which was showing no signs of going away.
I had no real idea why this was. Did their medication need changing or was this simply the real deal? Was it actually indicative that the children were now so settled that they no longer felt they had to be on ‘best’ behaviour? As any parent knows, the most sorted kids generally have an emotionally healthy system; they know how to behave and generally do behave in company, and save their worst behaviours for the place where they feel most secure, which, in most ‘normal’ families, is home and mother. If that was so, then perhaps I should embrace it as a positive. But I wasn’t sure. I just hoped Dr Shackleton would come through and we could start to get to the root of who these children really were and, more importantly, what they could become. I also recalled that Justin, who’d come to us just before Christmas three years ago, found the whole thing a terrible strain. Coming from a home where he was not only lacking food and care, but also love – his mother didn’t have an ounce of love for him inside her – Christmas, I thought, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, just underlined that tragic fact tenfold.
But these kids had each other, and also perceived themselves as loved (even if it was the sort of love that should see some of the adults concerned behind bars), so I felt certain, and determined, that their Christmas at our house would be a wonderful time for them all.
Within a fortnight, and with the end of the winter term fast approaching, I’d pretty much done everything bar the tree itself. And on the Friday I’d spent much of the day tackling the living room – the room which I always left decorating till last, as it was the focal point of the whole house. I was so engrossed that I was almost late picking up the kids from school, deciding at the last minute that I’d switch off all the house lights, plunging the place into darkness – well, by the time we came home from school, it would be dark – so that I could usher them all in and do the big ‘reveal’, switching all the fairy lights on, and creating magic.
Accordingly, I had them troop in, still in their coats, and made them stand in the doorway while I went to the socket that powered my biggest multi-plug adaptor.
‘Ta-da!’ I said, as the room was suddenly alive with coloured twinkles. Even without the tree, it still looked pretty gorgeous.
Olivia spoke first. ‘It’s really pretty,’ she said, sounding not so much excited as bewildered. ‘It’s really lovely. What’s it for?’
‘Because soon it will be Christmas, sweetie, and I really like to make it look pretty for Christmas. And over there’ – I pointed to the space I’d prepared in the corner – ‘is where we’re going to put the Christmas tree.’
At the mention of the tree, Olivia did at least seem to register the coming occasion.
‘D’you want to help me with that after tea?’ I asked Ashton. ‘Did you used to help Mummy with her tree?’
‘Yeah, an’ it was better than your tree,’ said Ashton, shocking me. He stuck out his lower lip and glared at me. What I’d said had clearly hit a nerve.
Feeling deflated now, I almost said, ‘How would you know? You haven’t seen my tree yet!’, but managed to bite it back just in time. This would be the first Christmas these kids had spent anywhere but home. Their emotions about it would be complex.
‘Oh, don’t be such a meany pants,’ Olivia interrupted on my behalf. ‘It’ll be lovely. Can I help as well, Casey?’
‘You can both help,’ I told them. ‘That’s what I want. For you both to help me. Right after tea, yes? Now come on. Sausage and mash and mushy peas coming up.’
About which they seemed much more excited. As with beaches, I reflected, so with Christmas. It was as if they couldn’t quite see the point.
As it turned out, Olivia did help me decorate the tree – Ashton mostly sat on the sidelines, looking scornful – but it was a half-hearted effort. So much so that it occurred to me that far from worrying about them getting too over-excited, I’d struggle to get them excited at all. And it was a theme that was set to continue.
As the days ticked by, I began planning my present-buying sorties, and was concerned I didn’t know what to get them both. I tried asking them what they’d like, but neither of them seemed to have a clue. They just didn’t seem to understand the concept. They understood getting birthday presents, clearly – we’d seen that with them, at least – but when I tried to put myself into the shoes of the wretched young girl who was their mother, I wondered if it was simply a case of, if you couldn’t do it properly, why do it at all? So much easier to forget the whole business.
But completely? Not even so much as a tangerine and a few nuts and chocolate coins in an old sock? I did mention it to Anna when she called, to see if she had any thoughts on it, because, much as I tried to understand it, their total lack of engagement with something as normal as getting and giving presents for loved ones at Christmas was completely outside my experience. Not that she could really shed any light on it. She just told me that as far as she knew they’d just never really ‘done’ Christmas. There was no money, and with so many kids in the family it just hadn’t ever really happened.
So perhaps my initial feeling had been right. And if there was an illustration of how far things had come in our civilised society, that was it, I thought. That in the absence of money, Christmas couldn’t be ‘done’. As if Christmas was even about that! It was certainly a sobering thought. And one I should take on board too, I thought, rapidly re-adjusting my perspective. I’d worked in school with a child whose parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses. She hadn’t ‘done’ Christmas either. And what you’d never had you didn’t miss, did you? And perhaps that was no bad thing.
Even so, to quote Jo from Little Women on the subject, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without any presents, so, even with the true meaning of Christmas still very much in mind, I wanted to get some for my little charges. And, crucially, things they’d really like. And handily, with Lauren having now broken up from college, she and Kieron were happy to help out.
They were around for the afternoon and, at Kieron’s suggestion, suggested they while away an hour with the kids, going through a couple of copies of the Argos catalogue to get some ideas for what to ask Father Christmas for.
‘Here we go,’ said Kieron, patting the chair beside him. ‘Ash, come on. Come sit beside me – and we can have a go-through and check out all these brilliant boys’ toys, while Lauren and Olivia’ – and here he pulled a comedy face at Olivia – ‘look at all the silly soppy girly stuff.’
Lauren returned the compliment as I handed out pens and paper. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s make a nice long list for Santa of all the things you’d like him to bring on Christmas Day.’
‘Erm,’ I said, before leaving them. ‘Not too long a list! Santa’s only got so much space in his sleigh!’
Though actually I needn’t have worried. Even with Kieron and Lauren to guide them, the kids didn’t seem to have the first idea about coveting a really special toy. They ticked things off politely, but without any great enthusiasm. They just didn’t seem to want anything.
‘It’s funny,’ I said to Riley, who was over a few days later. ‘Such a shocking and tragic upbringing and almost every way, and yet, to some people, these kids would seem like a dream. How many kids in the western world these days are as genuinely non-mater
ialistic as these two, do you think?
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I can’t get my head round it, really. You’d think, what with school, talking to their peers and all that stuff, that they’d have at least some idea of what they’ve missed out on. But they really don’t, do they?’
I shook my head. ‘I know. And it’s not that I want them to become materialistic, either. It just feels so sad. They must have grown up so isolated, mustn’t they?’
Riley shot me a knowing glance. ‘I don’t doubt it. If you want to abuse your kids on the sort of scale that family clearly have, I’d say it probably goes with the territory, doesn’t it? Anyway,’ she added, ‘since we’re speaking of Christmas, there’s something I meant to ask you. Well, tell you, more accurately.’
‘What?’ Riley was only eight or so weeks from her due date, and my thoughts, seeing as she looked so serious all of a sudden, went immediately to her unborn baby.
‘Don’t look so anxious!’ she laughed. ‘It’s nothing terrible. Though it will be a shock …’
‘What, for God’s sake?!’
‘I’m doing Christmas lunch, okay? Over at mine. You’ll have enough on your plate with those two to run around after, and you’ll be grateful to have someone else cook for you, trust me.’
‘Riley, you’re thirty-two weeks pregnant!’
‘Yes, pregnant. Not ill. And I’ve made up my mind.’
‘Absolutely not!’ I said firmly.
Naturally, my daughter being even feistier than I was, Christmas Day at hers was duly arranged. It felt weird, waking up and not having to think about the turkey, but she’d been right. Once I thought about it, it was the right thing. After all, little Levi was two now. Probably time they started making their own family Christmas memories for him. And Riley had been spot-on about my little foster duo, too. It would be good to spend some quality time with them without having an enormous roast dinner to prepare.
But there was another big difference to that Christmas morning. When I woke – I’d set my alarm for 5 a.m. – the house was as silent as a grave. And as I crept downstairs in my dressing gown and lit the gas fire in the living room I thought back to all the years when my own children had been young, and a 5 a.m. alarm call would have been a luxury. One year Kieron was by our bed trying to shake us awake only about an hour after we’d dropped off to sleep!
I put the television on, and found a channel playing Christmas songs, and flicked all the fairy lights on too. And as I placed the two bulging sacks at either end of the sofa, I decided that if there was one thing I could do for them it would be to give them a magical family Christmas to remember, because memories like those really mattered.
The scene set, and a surprised Bob put out into the garden to do his business bright and early, I padded back upstairs in the darkness and gently shook Olivia awake. ‘He’s been!’ I whispered to her, picking her up. ‘Santa’s been and left you presents!’
‘But I peed,’ she whispered sleepily. ‘Will Santa be cross with me?’
I stood her on the bed and peeled off her wet pyjamas. ‘No, of course not,’ I reassured her. ‘Santa’s never cross. He’s Santa! He knows accidents happen,’ I added, pulling a clean set of pyjamas from her drawer. ‘Quick, let’s pop these on. We can give you a bath later. Let’s go and wake Ashton now so we can all go downstairs.’
Once woken, Ashton stumbled blearily into his dressing gown, and as the two children followed me down the stairs, I could already tell that I was probably more excited than they were; in fact, they must have been wondering what on earth I was doing, dragging them out of bed at such a crazy hour.
In fact, they didn’t really ‘get’ anything about it. ‘Go on, get stuck in!’ I urged, as they knelt by their sacks and I perched on the sofa with a steaming mug of coffee, and turning up the volume of the TV a notch or two, tried to inject a little extra festive atmosphere.
But it was pointless. They’d each open a present, as directed, inspect it, then look at me blankly. It was as if they were being asked to do a task in the classroom, with a beady-eyed teacher looking on. There was no frantic tearing off of wrapping paper, no excited oohs and ahhs, no shouts of glee as a much wanted toy was revealed. It was, in fact, one of the saddest things I’d witnessed, as I realised that this wasn’t any sort of thrill for them at all. They were just trying to do what I wanted, to make me happy. Ashton, in particular, upset me. He’d been so gruff and so grumpy and so closed in since Levi’s party, but I could tell he was aware how much Christmas seemed to mean to me, and his attempts to please me by thanking me so politely for each new gift actually made tears spring in my eyes.
It was with pretty dampened spirits, then, that we set off for Riley’s mid-morning. Mike had got up and joined us, and we’d tucked into breakfast, and I’d told him that the children had been ever so excited and thrilled with all the lovely things Santa had brought them, because there was no point in infecting him with my own gloomy mood. I’d cheer up, I knew, once I clapped eyes on Levi. And Olivia, at least, had become attached to one of her presents. A new dolly, which she dressed up and brought along with her and, entirely predictably, called ‘Polly’.
‘Another Polly?’ asked Mike as she pulled the doll’s hood up.
Olivia looked at him as if he’d recently beamed down from space. ‘All dollies are called Polly, Mike,’ she explained patiently. ‘Polly wolly doodle doll a day.’
Since this made no sort of sense to Mike (or, in fact, me) he simply nodded.
‘There,’ she said, tucking the doll beneath the blanket in her little buggy. ‘All done. Now she and Liccle Levi can play babies, all ready.’
‘All ready for what?’ Mike wanted to know, as we tramped down the front path, and along the frosty pavements so that Bob could inspect every lamppost. At least the weather had played ball and made everything sparkly.
Olivia tutted. ‘All ready for the real baby, silly! Don’t you know Wiley’s gonna have a babba, Mike?’
But if that put a smile on my face that Christmas morning, I would soon see it replaced by a bigger one. Riley’s front door was opened not by Riley, but by Santa. A six-foot four Santa, pink cheeked and jolly, yelling ‘ho ho ho!’ from behind a luxurious white beard. This, at least, did seem to galvanise the kids into excitement. Olivia, dolly now entirely forgotten, shrieked delightedly and wrapped herself straight around Santa’s leg.
And it galvanised me too, because I could see it wasn’t David. And it wasn’t Kieron either, so who was it? The beard was whipped off then, and it was me who was screaming. It was Justin, our first ever foster child! I was so thrilled to see him that I practically leapt on him. But didn’t need to. He carefully extricated Olivia, then picked me up and spun me right around. ‘Steady on, Casey!’ he quipped, putting me down again gently. ‘Size of you, you nearly knocked me clean over!’
I couldn’t have been happier if it had been Santa himself. Actually, that was wrong. I just couldn’t have been happier. And Justin, that poor, desperate boy who had become so dear to us, was the catalyst that turned the day around. Now 14, he immediately mesmerised the children, particularly Ashton, who seemed to hang on his every word. Not that there was much time for sitting down and chatting; right away he had the three of them – little Levi wasn’t missing out on anything – playing games and having fun, chasing them around the house as if he was still 10 years old himself.
And our own children, unbeknown to us, had arranged everything. They’d squared it with social services, spoken directly to Justin’s foster carers, and David and Kieron had gone and picked him up that morning.
The children couldn’t have got me a nicer present.
Chapter 18
It had been such a delight to see Justin. He made the day in every sense, for all of us. He had us in stitches, telling us tales of his various exploits at school, and also surprised us by helping Riley cook Christmas dinner. Not that I should have been surprised, as he’d been quite the budding Jamie Oliver when he’d been with us,
always wanting to help me in the kitchen, and his interest in food and cooking clearly hadn’t gone away. I really hoped that he was as happy as he seemed and that he’d remain settled in his permanent placement.
It was the thing I most wanted for Justin; that he’d be happy. It was the thing I most wanted for every child who came into our lives, and in the immediate aftermath of Christmas I felt particularly buoyed up; it might not seem much, all the little things we could do for these kids, but it felt more and more to me that it was the little things that mattered, things which weren’t always obvious while the child or children were with us. A word of encouragement, taking the time to sit and listen to them, a random cuddle, a special cake made, a fear soothed, an anxiety understood: these were the things kids who were loved and nurtured took for granted, and their importance should never be underestimated.
And they did make a difference; Justin was evidence of that. A timely reminder that progress with a child wasn’t always evident when being made – you were often too close to it – but down the line, even if Mike and I wouldn’t be there to see it, I felt a strong sense that the results of our efforts would at least be there for the kids’ permanent carers to witness.
Assuming they found any; progress on that front was painfully slow. But strangely, I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I started the year with a real zest to keep on doing what we were doing with our two. Just as well, for there was still a great deal to be done.