by Casey Watson
Mike frowned. ‘But we’ve also seen the other side of him, don’t forget – the violence, the cruelty, the pleasure in causing pain. Except, if what you say is true, it’s not even about pleasure, is it? Just that he doesn’t even register that other people feel pain. So,’ he said, reaching to switch off his bedside light, ‘what’s the plan, then?’
‘That’s just it,’ I said. ‘There isn’t one. Not really. I mean, they’ll presumably keep up the support work and so on, and, budget permitting, I suppose they might book him for some of this behavioural therapy. But, no, that’s the last thing I asked the psychologist about. How to make him better.’
‘And?’
‘And as I said, that’s it. They can’t make him better. We can’t make him better, Mike. He apparently is what he is. A sociopath. There isn’t any cure.’
Chapter 17
It was a damning diagnosis for anyone to receive, obviously, but for a shunned eight-year-old boy with the world on his shoulders it felt the cruellest of fates I could imagine. What would happen to him now, if there was no hope of a cure? As Spencer’s wasn’t a court-ordered placement, i.e. one in which the court could act autonomously, this would all need to be discussed with his parents. Was there any chance, having already labelled him so unmanageable, that they would have him back when they read the report?
I didn’t think so, but during the days following the call from the psychologist it was as if Spencer knew all about how he’d been labelled and was determined to prove it wasn’t true. Nonsense, I knew – he had no idea about any of it – but at every turn, it seemed, he’d provide a new example to prove he wasn’t the unfeeling automaton he’d been described as.
‘Look at him,’ I whispered to Mike, as we stood and watched the local Guy Fawkes Night fireworks a couple of days later. They were being held at Kieron’s football club and the whole family had come to watch. Mike followed my gaze, to where Spencer, just in front of us, was crouched by Jackson’s buggy, one hand holding tight onto Levi’s as they watched, and whispering calming words to his slightly frightened baby brother. ‘Don’t be scared,’ he was saying, ‘it’s only the bangs the pretty lights make. They won’t hurt you.’
Mike and I exchanged glances. How, we agreed sadly, could something like that be manufactured? If Spencer was a sociopath, how could he spontaneously display such loving behaviour towards the little ones? It didn’t make any kind of sense to either of us.
And if I’d been knocked a bit sideways by the latest shift in Spencer’s fortunes, the next home visit – which I suspected wouldn’t help things – was another thing looming uncomfortably. Though Spencer, once again, was all excited anticipation. ‘It won’t be long now, I bet,’ he said, as we discussed it one evening. ‘Till I’m fixed and can go home. I seen that brain doctor for lots of times now, haven’t I? An’ he’s good at his job. Penny said so.’
He was sitting beside me on the sofa. Close enough to touch, but not touching. I reached out to squeeze his hand, and he immediately snuggled up to me. ‘Fixed, love?’ I asked, keen to probe gently. ‘So what’s he fixing?’
I felt him shrug. ‘I dunno, really. It’s just what my mum said. She said I can’t come home till I’m fixed. That’s what he’s doing, isn’t it?’ He tipped his head to look up at me. ‘That’s what she means, isn’t it? That he needs to get me fixed. So I can be like the others, and go home for good.’
I felt a lump swell in my throat as I tousled his hair. If only life could be that simple. If only children didn’t see things in such damning black and white. He was broken, and his mum didn’t want him till he was mended. No! It went against every natural law of parental love. No wonder he had problems with empathy. I pulled him closer still and cuddled him tightly. ‘You know, babes,’ I said, ‘it’s a little difficult to explain, but you know, I am sure your mum loves you, “fixed” or otherwise. She’s a mum and that’s what mums mostly do. Her putting you into care’ – I noticed he didn’t pull me up on that fact now – ‘was, well, her reaching out for help, because she couldn’t cope.’
I felt Spencer slowly shake his head against my chest. ‘She sometimes loves me, Casey. Sometimes she does. But not all the time. Sometimes she hates me. An’ when she hates me she really hates me. She calls me the devil’s prawn.’
‘The what?’ I asked, unsure I’d correctly heard what he’d said.
‘The devil’s prawn,’ he repeated. ‘An’ that’s not good, is it?’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, trying to swallow the lump away as I did so. ‘No, sweetheart. You’re right. That’s not so good.’
But for all Spencer’s quiet unhappiness about his mother, he was a child, and like all children he kept trying to adapt to his circumstances, building himself up, as the days passed and the next home visit drew nearer, with increasingly unrealistic expectations. It was as if the previous visits had never even happened – or, if they had, that they’d morphed into completely different animals; all fun and frolics with his family, where happiness reigned supreme. No running off, no altercations, no being brought back by the police.
‘I wonder if Dad’ll take me fishing?’ he mused, the evening before the visit, when we’d all sat down to plates of stew and dumplings. ‘He did once, you know. When I was little. I loved it.’ He chewed thoughtfully on his tea for a moment. ‘But he had to stop taking me.’
‘Why’s that?’ Mike asked.
‘Because I’m his favourite,’ Spencer answered. ‘But that’s not fair on the others, really, is it?’
‘Having a favourite child isn’t, no,’ I agreed, curious to know what he was driving at. ‘But why did that mean he had to stop taking you fishing?’
Spencer swallowed another mouthful before he answered.
‘Because he had to act bad,’ he said, seeming to think carefully about his words. ‘You know, act bad to me so’s the others didn’t get jealous. Cos that wouldn’t be fair, would it?’ He looked at us in turn, seeming anxious that we understood, that we agreed.
‘Act bad?’ I prompted. What did he mean by those words?
‘You know, make like I wasn’t his favourite,’ he continued. ‘Pretend he didn’t like me.’
‘Did he say that?’
Spencer nodded. ‘Yeah, kind of. Like he has to do with Mum.’
Curiouser and curiouser. ‘With Mum?’
He nodded. ‘Like, he has to pretend I’m not his favourite, so that she doesn’t get jealous as well.’
He rolled his eyes, as if world weary but accepting of this oddity, and continued to scoop up his stew. But the only things I could digest now were his words – well, try to; they were making no kind of sense to me.
‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean, love,’ I ventured. ‘Is that what you think? That your mum doesn’t like your dad loving you?’
Spencer stopped eating and shrugged. ‘Prob’ly. But I don’t care if she hates me sometimes, because I hate her too. But, you know?’ He paused. ‘You know, I wish sometimes she did love me, cos then it would teach her a lesson. Cos she’d be upset, wouldn’t she? If she knew I didn’t like her. Or did something bad, an’ that, wouldn’t she?’
‘Sweetheart,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you’re wrong about your mum. I think she does love you. I think she loves you a lot. She just doesn’t know how to show it. Not properly, that’s all.’ I put my cutlery down. ‘Hey, you know when we were talking the other day, and you were telling me how she said you needed to be fixed?’
Spencer nodded, his mouth full of dumpling. ‘Hmm-mm.’
‘Well, you know, sometimes it’s not the kids who need fixing. It’s the grown-ups. Sometimes it’s the mums and dads who are the ones who need fixing and when children go into care – like you have, to stay with us – that’s why they have social workers go to visit them. They go there to help them work out all the grown-up things that need fixing. They need help, just like you do. Okay?’
‘So that’s what’s happening, then, is it? My mum and dad are being f
ixed, too?’
‘I really hope so,’ I said. ‘We both do, don’t we, Mike?’
God, I thought. If only I believed that.
Spencer’s comments about his family, muddled and complicated as they were, actually helped crystallise my own thinking. Neither Mike nor I could really make sense of what he’d said about his dad – I doubted Spencer himself could really make sense of that relationship – as, given what we’d seen of the man, it seemed odd. Was Spencer intimating that he was mean to him too? It all felt really weird. But one thing was a constant I knew to be true. Long experience with damaged kids had shown me time and time again that if a child is told enough times that they are bad, or that they’re evil, they will – almost inevitably – come to believe it. If ‘devil’s spawn’ was Spencer’s mother’s expression of choice – God, I thought, how could she? – then I could only be thankful that he didn’t have an adult sense of what it meant.
I also thought back to what the psychologist has said, in his report, about Spencer seeming to lack a ‘moral centre’. Was that such a surprise, really? Given the dysfunctional parenting he’d experienced? Children developed a sense of morality from whoever was raising them. But how were you supposed to develop morality when you were being parented so poorly? So haphazardly? With a dad who ‘acts bad’ to you to create the idea that you are anything but his favourite, and a mother who apparently both loved and hated you and told you that you were the spawn of the devil?
It was clearly an incredibly complex situation but, unprofessional though it might have been, my feelings were simple. I felt like screaming at the pair of them, shaking some sense into them – particularly Kerry. YOU’VE DONE THIS! Can’t you see? Done SO much damage!
And it was an impression that was only endorsed the following morning, when we arrived at the Herringtons’ at 9.30, as planned, to find Spencer’s mother staring at us, stony faced, on the doorstep, her arms folded across her chest, her expression petulant.
Not that this was entirely unexpected. John Fulshaw had called the previous evening, after Spencer was in bed, to let us know that social services had been to visit the family and given the Herringtons something of a dressing down.
This wasn’t the whimsical, gentle ‘fixing’ I’d alluded to with Spencer. Far from it. It had been made clear that when he was with them he would be their responsibility, that it was unacceptable for him to be allowed out to roam the streets, and that, accordingly, they must make an effort to occupy him. It sounded crazy, put like that – they were the parents, not naughty children – and also pointless, since they seemed in no rush to have him back, so perhaps they weren’t that motivated anyway. But the key thing, as ever, was that they were now in the system. And Spencer was not their only vulnerable child.
Kerry’s expression seemed clear. She wasn’t happy.
‘As if I don’t have enough to contend with,’ she moaned, as soon as we were within shouting distance. ‘Without having this little bastard under my feet all day! I presume, as he can’t go out, you’ll be picking him up earlier?’
I was open-mouthed. Spencer could hear every word. As could her husband, who was standing just behind her. As well he might be. It was obvious to all of us that she was slurring her words and, as we got level, you could smell the drink easily. She was seriously drunk. It was obvious.
‘Spencer, I –’ he began, but Spencer didn’t allow him to finish. His face first crumpling, and then hardening into a scowl, he pushed through the open doorway past his parents.
‘Shut your gob!’ he yelled at her. ‘You’re just a bitch!’ He was crying hard as he disappeared inside.
‘I am so sorry,’ Spencer’s dad said, obviously embarrassed. ‘You two go. It’ll be okay. Spencer will be fine when he calms down.’ Kerry had by now turned and lurched off herself, but he still checked behind him before leaning out and whispering conspiratorially, ‘I’ll have a word with her. I’m so sorry you had to hear all that.’
Sorry we had to? What about Spencer?
Mike gave Danny a tight grin. ‘Don’t worry about it, mate. I’m sure you’ll handle things okay. See you at four …’
‘And maybe your son as well, this time,’ he finished, out of Danny’s earshot, as we climbed back into the car.
And, unprecedented as it was, this time we did see him at four. We’d had another day wandering around the shops in the nearby village, and this time, with so much on our minds about the future, it had felt a pretty long time, as well. With the psychologist’s opinion about Spencer’s future chances looming large, we couldn’t help but think the worst: were his parents really likely to have him back? And looking at the state of his mother that morning, were social services even likely to let them? And could we just let this go, for that matter? Spencer’s mother wasn’t fit to look after herself, let alone her children. Shouldn’t something be done?
It was in a negative frame of mind, then, that we duly turned up again in Spencer’s street, and we were therefore surprised to see him on the doorstep, with his mum’s hand on his shoulder, and looking – dare we even think it? – calm and happy.
As we pulled up, he waved and started down the path to the car. No point in us getting out then, I thought as we watched him, a thought confirmed when, with a small wave, Kerry turned and went inside. She too looked less agitated, from what we could see at this distance. Clearly keen to be shot of him – how long had they been standing there, waiting? – but then Rome, I thought grimly, wasn’t built in a day.
But no sooner had Spencer got to the car than he signalled to Mike to wind his window down.
‘I’ve just remembered,’ he said, ‘I forgot my present. Won’t be a sec.’
He ran back up the front path and then around the side of the house, and for a moment I panicked, thinking it had been too good to be true, and that what he was actually doing was running away again. But no sooner had I started to open my car door than he was back again, carrying a box under his arm.
‘It’s my dinosaur books. All of them,’ he announced proudly as he clambered in. ‘An’ I’m going to put them away somewhere very, very safe, so Levi and Jackson can’t get at them with all their crayons an’ stuff.’
We both laughed at this, Mike letting out an audible sigh – relieved as I was that the day had worked out. I laughed again as Spencer then leaned forward between us and cheekily ordered that we listen to the Chipmunks on the journey home. ‘An’ I expect both of you,’ he commanded, ‘to sing along.’
We duly obliged and the trip seemed to pass in a flash, and when we got indoors I think all of our moods were much lighter than they’d been in a very long time. And it was a mood that continued right up till Spencer’s bedtime – one that was earlier than usual for a Saturday evening, because the day had clearly tired him right out.
But in a good way. ‘Hey, love,’ I said, as I tucked him in and kissed him. ‘Mike and I are really proud of you for today.’
He smiled sleepily. ‘It was a good day,’ he said decisively, his arms round my neck. ‘See, I’m not the devil’s prawn, am I, Casey?’
I hugged him tight, squeezing the breath out of him, almost. ‘Not even the devil’s chipmunk,’ I said.
Back downstairs, curled on the sofa with the latest instalment of American Idol, I allowed my mind to drift to the strange nature of what we did. How Mike and I, as foster carers, routinely brushed up against lives and families so much more complex than our own, but without any real sense of how they functioned. What went on in Spencer’s family, we’d probably never really know. It wasn’t our place to. As with all the kids who came to us – from other foster homes, children’s homes or, in this unusual case, the family home – our job was just to care for Spencer while the authorities made decisions about how best to manage his future. Was there a slim chance he might be returned home eventually? Or, if not quite home, then at least to some semblance of a happy life? Was there any hope that whatever demons were responsible for this desperate situation might be laid to
rest sufficiently for that to happen?
Yes, the odds were long, and I was too much the realist to believe in miracles, but maybe they’d just got a little shorter.
Chapter 18
My positive mood carried right on through the rest of the weekend, bobbing along in the wake of Spencer’s continued good behaviour and the sense that at last there’d been a positive home visit. Not perfect – I still had so many misgivings about Spencer’s mother and the state we had seen her in that morning – but at least evidence that progress could be made. If nothing else, it seemed clear Spencer’s dad wanted to hold things together, however hard a job that might be.
We spent almost all of Sunday round at Riley and David’s, following up a long, long winter walk with a fabulous roast dinner, made all the better by the fact that I hadn’t had to cook it. A perfect family day in every way.
And it was clear I wasn’t the only one with a spring in my step going into the next week. When I dropped Spencer off at school on the following frosty Monday morning, he flung his arms around me, completely out of the blue, and told me he had some big, big news for me. That tickled me in itself, as it was an expression we used a lot as a family. Was it proof that he was finally melting into the fabric of ours? I hoped so.
‘So what is it, then, this big, big news of yours, Spencer?’ I asked laughing, as he finished giving me his knock-you-down hug.
‘That I really like living with you an’ Mike now,’ he told me. ‘I hated it at first, but not any more.’ And with that he skipped happily into school.
Just as well, really, because all I could get out was ‘and we love having you’ before my throat became jammed with an unexpected lump. Not a cool state to be in at the school gates.
It was the first thing I wanted to tell John an hour later, when he called to see how the home visit had gone.