by Casey Watson
But it was as if Spencer was on autopilot. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘It’s not mine.’ He then turned away and sank his head further into his lap, like a toddler trying to make himself ‘invisible’.
‘I said no lies,’ Mike responded, both evenly and calmly. Despite that, I knew he wasn’t far off losing his temper. I decided to try and help.
‘Look, love, we know this stuff was put up there by you, so you might as well own up. Spencer, think about it. It’ll be so much better for you to be honest, because if you own up you’re not going to lose even more points for telling lies and being disrespectful, are you? So the consequences won’t be as severe.’ I didn’t dare glance at Mike because I knew exactly what his expression would be; I didn’t need to see, I could feel his eyes rolling. He always hated that the kids might misinterpret my reasoning as me being a bit of a soft touch.
But Spencer at least answered. ‘Why d’you always think it’s me, eh? That kid next door had been nicking all sorts. It’s prob’ly him. The police have been after him and everything.’ He unclasped his arms now, warming to his story. ‘It’s prob’ly him,’ he said again. ‘I did see all that stuff on the roof. But I never said owt, because I’m not a grass.’
He was really getting into his stride now. Having hit upon what he obviously felt was a plausible explanation, he looked almost animated now. His tone implied that this was a matter of some pride, which we should appreciate. His hands were tied. It was as if he was some old prison-hardened lag.
The kid next door, though? Really? The kid next door – there was only one; on the other side of us there was an older couple – couldn’t have been more than seven or so. And a normal seven-year-old. Nothing at all like Spencer.
Mike wasn’t fazed in the least, however. ‘Next door, you say?’ he asked Spencer, beginning to gather the bags into his hands again. ‘Okay, lad, come with me then. We’ll go and settle this right now.’
Spencer looked stricken. ‘But I’m in my jamas!’
‘No matter,’ said Mike, almost cheerfully. ‘It’s only next door. Come on. Up you get, son.’
After a sorrowful glance in my direction, which I pretended not to notice, Spencer followed Mike out into the hall. He had his head hung to his chest and looked a pitiful sight as he trudged behind Mike to the front door. It being Sunday, I too was still in my pyjamas – Mike was the only one dressed. I grabbed my housecoat from the back of a dining chair and pushed my arms into the sleeves as I followed to watch what happened from our own doorstep; we were in semis that were configured so the front doors were only a few feet apart.
Our next-door neighbours on the left had only lived there for a couple of weeks. And though I’d said the usual hellos when the family had moved in, I’d since seen almost nothing of any of them. The door was opened by the father, a large man who looked to be in his early thirties, and who looked understandably puzzled to see his new next-door neighbour on his doorstep bearing supermarket carrier bags. He looked no less confused when Mike explained why he and Spencer were there. It was only when Mike began showing him the bags’ contents that the penny dropped. Now confusion was replaced by growing anger.
‘What’s going on, mate?’ he asked Mike as yet another bag seemed to contain items he recognised. ‘They’re my trainers!’ he gasped. ‘And that’s my bloody baccy!’
‘Well,’ said Mike, ‘we don’t actually know where these things have come from, only that they were in the gutter outside Spencer here’s bedroom.’
The man now looked hard at Spencer, who seemed to visibly shrink. ‘You done this, then?’ he snapped. ‘You been in my bloody house again? How many times do you need telling?’
‘Again?’ asked Mike, before Spencer could reply.
‘Yeah, again,’ the man said. ‘Seems so. Despite me telling you’ – he thrust a finger in Spencer’s direction – ‘to clear off and keep away from my son.’
‘Again?’ asked Mike again. Like me, he was clearly confused. As far as we knew, Spencer had yet to make the little boy’s acquaintance. We’d certainly not seen him or heard him mentioned.
‘Oh, I suppose you didn’t know. Caught the little blighter and my lad nicking tools out my shed. Another place I told you to keep your thieving mitts out of!’
‘I didn’t take that stuff!’ Spencer interrupted. Both men looked hard at him. ‘I didn’t! How could I have when I’m not even allowed in your house?’
Back on my own doorstep I had a heart-sinking thought. That he might not need the sort of access most kids did – i.e. through a door. That he’d been galloping over the roofs again. It seemed obvious.
‘Well, it’s got into your grubby little hands somehow, hasn’t it?’ the man demanded.
‘I tell you I never touched that stuff!’ Spencer persisted. He was crying now. ‘Go get your Chrissy. Ask him. He’ll tell you it wasn’t me.’
Chrissy, the man’s son, was duly summoned to the doorstep. He was a waif of a child, compared to Spencer. Barely looked seven. Might have been as young as six, even. He looked terrified, as well he might. I watched as Spencer, clearly pleased to see him, placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t be scared, mate,’ he said gently. ‘This is important, though. Just tell your dad how you took this stuff and threw it all down the roof. They all think I did it, and I’m already in trouble with the cops. So if you don’t tell the truth I’m gonna get arrested. Go on. It’ll be all right. Just tell the truth, okay?’
I looked on with a mounting unease. He looked every inch the experienced social worker or a skilfully persuasive police officer, perhaps, trying to coax a confession out of an errant child. We all stood and waited for the response, which came quickly. I don’t know what I expected. I don’t know what any of us expected. For the boy to burst out crying? Shriek a denial? Refuse to speak?
He did none of those. He calmly turned to his father and did as instructed. ‘It was me, Dad. I did it,’ he said.
‘Chrissy,’ his father said, grabbing the bags up from where Mike had placed them on the doorstep. ‘There is NO WAY you did this. What are you scared of?’ he pointed at Spencer, who was retreating back now, towards our doorway. ‘You scared of this little runt? Is that it? Well, don’t be. You don’t have to listen to anything he has to say, lad, I can assure you.’
The boy shook his head. ‘I did it, Dad, honest. Just for a joke. I was going to give it all back, honest I was.’
‘Get in the fucking house!’ his dad shouted, clearly exasperated by this turn of events. ‘And as for you,’ he snarled at Spencer. ‘You stay away from us, you hear? I catch you round here again, catch you anywhere near my kid again, I’ll be sorting you out myself – got that?’ He then turned to Mike. ‘You got that, too, mate?’
But there was no time for Mike to answer. Before he could open his mouth to speak, the man had gone back inside and slammed the door.
‘Great,’ said Mike, as he followed us both back in. ‘Always nice to make friends with new neighbours, eh, Spencer?’
Spencer turned to him, looking utterly guileless and innocent. ‘See?’ he said. ‘I told you it wasn’t me.’ He then actually put his hands on his hips, shook his head and rolled his eyes. And, nodding in the direction of next door, he sighed. ‘Phew. What a carry-on, though, eh?’
Neither of us really knew where to start. Much as both of us knew he was lying through his teeth, without any evidence, and with a clear admission of guilt from the other child, there was really very little we could do. Yes, we could lecture him about acting as a handler of stolen goods for his ‘mate’ Chrissy, and we could make it clear that we thought he was a liar. But to what end? He could continue to deny it till literally the very day John came and took him – to whatever grim institution he was able to line up for him. Which made it all feel as hollow as the points system did now – completely pointless. A waste of time. How was it going to help anything?
No, what I needed to do, if there was anything I could do, was find my way past the wrongdoings to the heart of t
he problem. And that was the problem. We’d been here since day one. And since his circumstances had changed so much – and so much for the worse – what of use could we hope to achieve? That when he got to wherever he was going, in the midst of his abandonment, he’d learned not to tell fibs and nick from neighbours? I thought not.
We did eat our breakfast, because, for one, we were all hungry, and as we did so Mike spelled out to Spencer that for as long as it took he would stay in his bedroom where, supervised by me, he’d restore it to exactly how it had been before he’d trashed it. He would also, we made clear, be expected to pay for the things he’d broken, by doing extra chores, to earn extra pocket money, which we’d deduct on a weekly basis. The same also applied to his school uniform.
Spencer didn’t argue about any of this. He seemed satisfied he’d achieved the result he needed – that poor Chrissy had owned up and let him off the hook. And who knew? Did he have a lucrative sideline on the go? What was the plan for all the rooftop contraband, anyway? We’d probably never know; until Spencer decided to own up to nicking it, all we could expect to hear would be fabrications. We took up black bags and green bags and the vacuum and various sprays and cloths, and he set to work happily enough, as instructed, while I sorted washing and stripped our bed and generally pottered on the landing, keeping half an eye on what was happening in his bedroom.
God, I thought, the police visit felt like ages ago now. Would that be the way now – that we just tripped from misdemeanour to misdemeanour, docking pocket money as required, till the day came when this tragic child left us? I looked in on him. He had his back to me, kneeling on the floor, collecting up the pieces of a jigsaw, a space scene from Star Wars, a puzzle I’d got, like so many toys we’d bought for our foster kids, from my favourite local charity shop. I wasn’t sure if he’d actually completed it. Wasn’t sure if he’d started it, even. Perhaps he never would now.
‘D’you think you’ll find all the bits?’ I asked him.
He swivelled. He hadn’t heard me. His eyes I noticed, with shock, belied his earlier demeanour. They were red raw. He’d obviously been crying silently, but hard. Real tears. Not crocodile, switch-on, switch-off ones. Did sociopaths cry like this? When they thought no one could see? It was a fleeting thought, but I was glad it had occurred to me.
‘Oh, love,’ I began, putting down the sheet I’d been folding. ‘Love, come on …’
He got to his feet and brushed the tears away with the heel of his hand. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, ignoring the arms I was holding out to him. ‘I don’t need you fussing. I’m fine on my own.’
‘Okay,’ I said, lowering them. I placed them on my hips instead. ‘Okay. You want to talk?’
He stared at me. ‘About what?’
I waved my arm in an arc. ‘About what you were thinking when you did all this, maybe?’
‘I wasn’t thinking anything.’
‘Because I think I know what I’d have been thinking. I’d have been thinking I hate the policemen, I hate Mike and I hate Casey. I hate Glenn. I hate John. I hate getting found out. I hate the world …’
He was inspecting a piece of puzzle, turning it over and over in his hand. I realised I had no idea what was going on in his head. Maybe he wasn’t thinking anything of the sort.
‘I don’t care,’ he said, his voice small. ‘I don’t care about nothing, no more. No one cares about me, an’ I don’t care about nothing.’
‘Love, you know …’ I faltered. Love, you know what exactly? ‘I care …’ I started. ‘I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t, would I? Nobody makes me take care of you, you know. I do it because I want to.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t do,’ he said quietly. ‘Cos I’m a wrecker.’
‘A what?’
‘That’s what I’m good at.’ He almost seemed to mentally regroup. To puff himself up now. He aimed the puzzle piece at the open box. ‘I’m good at wrecking homes. My mum said. So you shouldn’t.’
The jigsaw piece spun and hit its target.
Despite trying, I got nothing further from Spencer that day, and I opted not to keep teasing away at him. It was as if he’d flicked some sort of internal switch which created a force field around him, and meant that, though we could still communicate, it was only on a superficial level. He cleared his bedroom, he tidied, he vacuumed and he dusted. He was polite and contrite and all the things he’d always been so good at. And, sad though I was to admit that I felt that way about it, Monday and school couldn’t come fast enough.
Besides, I had my own family to think about. It was Levi’s third birthday and, having been so preoccupied with Spencer, I’d failed to do the thing I loved doing most in the world: to help Riley give him a Casey-style over-the-top party, just as I’d done for his mum and uncle Kieron for all their childhoods. I thought back to last year, when Levi had been two. We’d had two siblings with us then, Ashton and Olivia, both deeply damaged, and very demanding. But I’d still helped Riley organise a spectacular party: a full-on Teletubbies-themed event, complete with costumes and scenery. It hardly seemed possible that I’d let an opportunity to do it all again slip by. It also felt terribly sad. You didn’t get those special moments twice, after all, did you? It was a sure sign that I was letting things with Spencer get on top of me, because going to town with family celebrations was my ‘thing’, and I was famed for it.
But not this year. And I was touched by how adamant Riley seemed to be that, actually, she wasn’t too disappointed, saying that now Levi was that bit bigger and, with a baby to look after, a big party would have been more than a little stressful. In fact she confided that she was actually a tiny bit relieved by my suggestion that we hold something lower-key, bless her; a small gathering in my conservatory, just for close family and a few friends from Levi’s nursery, plus a couple of local lads I knew that Spencer had befriended. Though we didn’t invite Chrissy, for obvious reasons.
We held it the following week, one day after school, and while Kieron’s Lauren did the school run, and went and picked up Spencer, Riley and I enjoyed partying up my conservatory. And Kieron himself – who’d put himself in charge of the catering, bless him – did his last-minute creative tweaks to Levi’s dinosaur cake.
And, small though it was, it all went like a dream. Spencer behaved impeccably, entertaining the little ones with his word-perfect Chipmunks karaoke, and for a while it was as if all was well in my world.
Which was perhaps what should have set alarm bells ringing. By six, my conservatory was liberally smeared and sprinkled with cake and crisp shards, and almost all of my guests had gone home. In fact I was just seeing the last out – a lovely little girl from Levi’s nursery, plus her mum – when I saw a shape I recognised heading up our front path. It was our landlord, and straight away I could sense his embarrassment as he stepped aside to let the mum and her little one pass him.
‘Is it all right if I come in, Casey?’ he asked me. ‘I could call back, if you like. You seem a little busy just now.’
‘No, no,’ I said, ‘come in. You’ll have to excuse all the mess, though. I’ve just held a party for little Levi – my grandson. There’s only my brood left now. It’s fine.’
But he still looked uncomfortable. ‘Actually, I could do with speaking to you privately. If you don’t mind, Casey. You know’ – he nodded towards the conservatory – ‘without the kids?’
By ‘kids’ he clearly meant mine – the grown-up ones. But why? What on earth was wrong? I couldn’t imagine. But he was clearly anxious, which made me anxious, and the kids were leaving soon anyway. I popped my head round the door and explained I had some boring business with the landlord, and, thankfully, neither Riley nor Kieron seemed concerned. I think they were actually quite happy to have a reason not to stick around and do any more of the clearing up.
Within minutes I’d seen both my children and grandchildren off, and Spencer, whose friends had left now and who looked as tired as I felt, seemed happy enough to slope off to the lounge and watch TV. A
nd then my landlord, Mr Harris, dropped his bombshell.
‘It’s a petition,’ he said, his voice faltering slightly as he gave it to me. I stared at it, trying to get my head around what he’d passed me. ‘From all your neighbours,’ he explained. ‘About this latest kid you’ve been fostering. They’ve had enough is the bottom line,’ he said. He cleared his throat, the way John did when he was the bearer of bad news. I felt for him suddenly. We’d known him for years, both as our current landlord – we’d lived in this house for a few years now – and before that as a neighbour, almost a friend. He knew all about our fostering, and had always spoken well of us. He obviously hated having to come here today. ‘Well, as you can see. It’s not been done lightly, this,’ he added, echoing my thoughts, and seeming acutely uncomfortable in his role as messenger.
‘But what does this mean?’ I said, still unable to really take it in. Such a long list of signatures, next to carefully written addresses, some of which leapt out at me straight away.
‘That they’ve had enough of him. That they no longer feel safe in their own houses. That they feel they can’t let their kids play out any more. Things like that. Look,’ he said, as the two of us stood there in the kitchen, the detritus of my happy afternoon piled all around us, ‘it’s just step one in a process, that’s all.’
‘Process? What process?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean?’
He gave me the sort of sympathetic look that actually does the opposite of its intention. This was serious, I suddenly realised. This wasn’t just a list of disgruntled neighbours, complaining. These neighbours meant business. All the while Spencer was with us, they wanted us gone.
‘Just step one,’ Mr Harris said again, slowly. ‘Of the process. Just a warning. We – or, rather the housing association, to be exact – can’t, and don’t want to, put you out of your home. Not at this stage. But you do need to know that this petition –’