by Casey Watson
John’s car pulled up outside at precisely nine thirty, disgorging both him and a rangy-looking guy in T-shirt and jeans. This would be Will Fisher – Tyler’s new social worker. He looked young – perhaps late twenties or early thirties, I guessed – with shoulder-length hair that my mum would have said needed someone to drag a comb through it. It was dark blond and wavy and looked faintly messianic and I decided he’d have looked equally at home with a guitar slung over his shoulder, fronting an indie band and crooning love songs to screaming teenage fans. I grinned to myself as I watched the pair shut the car doors. They were laughing at some shared joke over the roof as they did so, and knew I’d been right in thinking I hadn’t previously met Will – I very much doubted that I would have forgotten him.
I was also glad he was young and male, because I felt there was a chance that Tyler would respond well to him. And that mattered a lot, as one of the first things John had promised was that Will would be taking Tyler out on a regular basis, both to get to know him (and hopefully foster another crucial positive adult relationship which would continue beyond his spell with us) and to give us what I already knew would be a much-needed break. And my hunch was that Tyler responded well to males. No, he’d not got off to the best start with my poor son, admittedly, but Kieron had since been back again – he and his girlfriend Lauren had stopped by for tea on the Tuesday, and I had felt a positive change in the dynamic. Was I being whimsical in sensing that Tyler wasn’t just looking up at him; that he was wondering if he should look up to him too?
I mentally crossed my fingers that he might look up to Will as well. Not that you could second-guess that sort of thing about social workers really. They came in as many different varieties as did foster families, after all. There was no ‘one size fits all’ when it came to these kinds of careers. People went into them from all sorts of backgrounds, and with all sorts of motivations, and over the years I’d come across all sorts of different people, who brought all kinds of different things to the task at hand. One thing we all shared, however, was a common goal: to make the best of what, more often than not, was a pretty grim situation for whichever child was in our hands.
I went to the front door and opened it just as John was lifting his hand to press the bell, and as soon as I saw Will close up I decided I liked him. A snap judgement, yes, but I’d have been surprised if I’d have to revise it. And based on nothing more substantial than the slogan on his T-shirt – ‘Imagine Whirled Peas!’ – and the strength and immediacy of his handshake.
‘So,’ John said, after the usual introductions, ‘Casey, how are you?’ The emphasis was, I noted, very much on the ‘are’. As it would be – he’d called for an update at the beginning of the week, and had certainly got one. ‘And how’s your dad doing?’ he added, as I ushered them both in.
‘Better than anyone expected, actually,’ I told him as we went into the kitchen. As it was going to be just the three of us, there was more than enough space around the table, and the kitchen was the one room I always managed to keep on top of. ‘Which is just as well, really,’ I added, gesturing that they both sit down. ‘Given that in just a fortnight we’ve had a broken door pane, a broken clock and the makings of the third world war.’
‘Clock? Should I ask about the clock,’ he ventured, ‘or is this – ahem – a bad time?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, nudging him playfully. ‘What is the time anyway? I have no means of telling any more, do I?’
‘Er, I’ll take that as a no, then,’ John said, groaning, as I made coffee and Will began extracting paperwork from a big battered messenger bag. ‘So will Mike be joining us?’
I shook my head. ‘He would have done,’ I said, ‘but work’s a bit manic at the moment. And given that the baptism of fire’s already happened, there didn’t seem much point in him taking time off.’ I smiled at them both. ‘And it’s not as if he needs preparing for the worst, after all, is it? No, I’ll update him on everything tonight.’
In fact, the broken clock was just a casualty of the third world war. Just on the wrong wall at the wrong time – i.e. in the vicinity of a door that Tyler had decided needed slamming – and, being a veteran anyway, had had its period of active service abruptly curtailed.
As opposed to Mike and I, who had by now discussed Tyler at length, and had decided we weren’t quite ready to be put out to grass. No, by now we were back in the groove of having a pint-sized person dominating our lives, and finding out some facts would be grist to the mill.
Which I hoped we were about to get. Facts we could work with. ‘So,’ Will said, once we were seated and in possession of mugs of coffee, ‘where shall I start?’
‘At the beginning would be good,’ I quipped, nudging the plate of biscuits in his direction. ‘Because right now I feel we know almost nothing.’
Will made straight for a custard cream and popped the whole thing in his mouth, washing it down with a swig of coffee while he used his other hand to open the laptop that had emerged from his bag and now sprung into life.
‘Well, he has told me bits and bats,’ I clarified, as I marvelled at how relaxed and laid back this new social worker appeared to be. ‘I know his real mum was called Fiona, and that all he’s got to remind him of his early life now is a baby photo. And though he’s not said as such, I get the impression that he does remember some of the harsher parts of his early years, I’m afraid. I mean, you do tend to hope that when things happen to them as mere tots they might forget about it as they grow older …’
‘You do,’ John said as I drifted off with my sugar-coated thoughts. ‘Unfortunately, when their life continues to be harsh – as in this case – however, the nasty things never get put to rest, do they? It’s never too late though, is it? To give them a whole new set of memories and experiences. That’s what we’re hoping for with Tyler.’
‘Assuming he can be kept out of trouble in the interim,’ Will concluded, giving us both a wry smile. ‘Which, from what I’ve read and heard, sounds like it’ll be no mean feat, frankly.’
Which kind of burst the bubble. What exactly was in his files? ‘Well, if anyone can keep him on the straight and narrow the Watsons can,’ John told him loyally. ‘So he’s in a safe pair of hands, at least. Finally.’
I looked at John and smiled, acknowledging the compliment, but we both knew there was no such animal as a ‘safe pair of hands’ in our line of work. The only way to achieve that would be to put children like Tyler in secure units and lock the door behind them. And as we weren’t in the business of incarceration that wasn’t an option.
Not that I would ever want it to be, in any case. No, we were much more in the business of cause and effect and finding workable strategies to make progress, which meant I was much more interested in hearing about how a lad like Tyler came to be a lad like Tyler in the first place. Once we knew that, I knew we had a substantially better chance of helping him. There was so much locked inside him that needed to come out.
‘Safe as we can make them,’ I corrected. ‘Though not fail-safe, by any means. So,’ I added, turning to Will, ‘how did Tyler’s story begin, then?’
‘Grimly,’ came the unequivocal reply.
I knew all about grim, of course. We’d heard plenty of grim stories in our time, and I didn’t expect this one to be any different. Kids from all sorts of backgrounds came into care, obviously – the abandoned, the tragically orphaned, the temporarily without a loving family able to take care of them – but there were constants; the stories that came up again and again and again – the stories and the words that made everyone sigh, not least because of their depressing ubiquity. Violence. Sexual abuse. Paedophilia. Drug addiction. Heroin.
And this was Tyler’s word, apparently. Heroin. Heroin had been the loaded gun, circumstances the trigger. As Will explained, Tyler (who had been born some 30 miles away, and whose notes had followed him to us) had been born to a heroin-addicted mother. She had been around 21 when she’d had him, and because she had already bee
n known to social services (she’d been in trouble with the police for possession since her mid-teens apparently), she’d been put on a methadone treatment programme during the pregnancy, in an effort both to wean her off the drug and its evils and to give her unborn baby the best chance.
Giving opiate-addicted mothers methadone was (and is) obviously a good thing, in that it was both an opportunity to take care of them and a step on the road to getting them off heroin permanently, but it still meant that their babies were born addicts as well. This was the case with Tyler, who was born with a condition called neonatal abstinence syndrome (or NAS), which meant that his first days were spent in hospital, while they slowly and carefully weaned him from the drug.
There were apparently no lasting side-effects to NAS – not physically. But how about emotionally? How did starting life with a recovering addict affect a baby? It was a sad but all too familiar story. There probably wasn’t a foster family around who hadn’t at some point come across the horrendous consequences of addiction to hard drugs, either directly or indirectly; the ripples of addiction always spread very wide.
‘Though both mother and baby were apparently doing okay,’ Will added, ‘for a while there, it seems, at any rate. Mum – Fiona, as you say – wanted to turn her life around, get clean, do her best for the baby, and it seems that, with support, she did make a go of it at first.’
She must have done, I knew, because in that sort of situation the newborn child would almost always be taken straight into care. A new baby was upheaval enough for a mother who was well and supported, let alone one so young, so alone and so chronic a drug user. That she managed to cope for any length of time was remarkable in itself – a testament to both her and the professionals looking after her. I knew that from personal experience with my last foster child, Emma.
Thinking of Emma was what prompted me to ask my next question. ‘So was Tyler’s father around at this time?’ I asked. ‘Was he involved in all this?’
Will shook his head. ‘No. Dad – Gareth – was most definitely out of the picture. At this point, no one even knew who he was, apparently. They’d split up early on – he maintained that he didn’t even know about the pregnancy – and she apparently wanted nothing from him, in any case. No, such records as I’ve dug out seem to suggest she was managing adequately on her own at first.’
‘What about other family?’
‘None have been recorded. I’ve looked back through all the notes and it seems she was on her own. Living in a council property. Either no family, or estranged from them. No siblings or half-siblings, as far as anyone was aware.’
‘So what went wrong? Was there some specific trigger?’
‘Not that I can see,’ Will said. ‘The social worker’s notes mention some concerns here and there, but on the whole she was doing okay. They seem to have concluded that it must have been a combination of aggravating factors. She got re-housed when the block she was living in was up for demolition, which could have been key, obviously – you know how it goes. Then a new man apparently came into her life … started her on the heroin again …’
‘And surprise, surprise – it all went back downhill from there?’ John asked.
It was phrased as a question, but we all knew it wasn’t. She’d have been on benefits at that point, not to mention having her own flat. Which would have made her vulnerable. She’d have been a prime target for all sorts of parasites and predators.
‘So Tyler was taken into care at that point?’ I asked.
Will shook his head. ‘No. Would that he had been, eh? No, it’s worse than that. She was always just a hop and a skip away from that, of course – the previous social worker’s made several notes about having concerns – but events seem to have overtaken that. She took a fatal overdose – at home, and probably unintentionally, the social worker thinks; possibly purer stuff than she was used to. And the first anyone knew of it was two days later, when she didn’t turn up for a rehab appointment with her counsellor.’
‘Oh, my God,’ I said, shaking my own head now. ‘That’s so sad.’
‘And it’s lucky she had the appointment scheduled when she did,’ he added, ‘or it could have been even longer before they were found, couldn’t it? As it was, the counsellor had the nous to go round there, thank goodness, and hearing crying from upstairs called the police.’
‘Who then found Tyler …’ I said.
Will nodded. ‘And that’s incredible as well, don’t you think? Given his age. I mean, two whole days. It’s incredible he didn’t come to any harm in that time, isn’t it? When you think about the environment he was in.’
Incredible, but at the same time the word ‘harm’ struck a chord. Yes, he’d survived that ordeal, but, God, he had come to so much harm since. ‘So he was unhurt?’ I asked. ‘I mean, physically?’
Will nodded a second time. ‘Emaciated, starving and traumatised, obviously – it’s all in here; you can read it for yourself later – but otherwise, yes. And he was obviously put with emergency carers while they decided what best to do with him, and that’s where the father comes in. With the help of some clues in a phone book and some donkey work, they managed to track him down – which was impressive in itself, because he’d by now moved to this area – and he agreed (I believe reluctantly) that he and his partner would take Tyler on rather than him being placed with a foster family.’
‘Which is interesting in itself, isn’t it?’ John said. ‘I mean, given that he said he didn’t even know about the existence of a baby. Does it say anything in there about him wanting the paternity proven?’
‘There was certainly a test done,’ Will said, ‘though I think we instigated it, for the usual reasons. They wouldn’t have just handed Tyler over, even if they’d welcomed him with open arms. And they kept tabs on the family for the usual span of time. And from what I’ve read in here,’ he said, patting the file, ‘it seems he stepped up to the plate readily enough. That he was the father wasn’t apparently in doubt anyway, looking at the other child. Apparently they were the spit of each other.’ He sat back in his chair, then leaned in again and grabbed another biscuit. ‘So that was that, in theory. Taken off the “at risk” register, and settled back with blood relatives. The only trouble is that it’s obviously not worked out all that brilliantly, has it?’
Hmm, I thought. You can say that again.
Chapter 6
Meeting Will, and hearing first hand about Tyler’s early childhood, was just the kick up the backside I think we needed. Yes, we’d already committed to him and, heaven knew, we’d had enough training, hadn’t we? Enough training to have ‘It’s the behaviour that’s bad, not the child’ mentally tattooed on our foreheads. But the image of that traumatised three-year-old, all alone with the body of his dead mother, was one that stuck firmly to the forefront of my brain.
‘And you know what always strikes me?’ I told Riley one afternoon the following week. ‘It’s that he doesn’t even seem to realise that he’s been handed such a bad hand.’
Tyler being out for his first trip with Will – they were off to the local bowling alley – we were round at Mum and Dad’s, enjoying a bit of family time with the baby, which only served to remind me how random a child’s birth circumstances were. Some babies were born into loving, stable homes. And some weren’t. Some had everything stacked against them from the outset.
‘Life’s been so tough for him,’ I went on. ‘I don’t think he really appreciates just how tough. Or that it’s the adults in his life that are responsible for how he now feels. He just doesn’t seem to have processed that. Turns everything on himself. Seems to feel it’s perfectly appropriate for people not to like him. It’s like he just accepts that he’s angry and wants everybody else to as well.’ I sighed. ‘I just wish I could find a way to get him to talk to me about it. But it really is like trying to get blood out of a stone. I only have to look at him in a certain way and I can see him squirming. I swear he has some sixth sense that tells him when I’m about
to corner him and try and talk to him. Perhaps he’s like a dog – he can smell a heart-to-heart on the horizon like they can smell fear.’
Riley clapped her hands together. ‘Love it, Mum!’ she laughed. But she then moved on to her serious face, clearly thinking about the problem. At 27, she was the polar opposite of Kieron, though. Where my son would see everything on the surface and immediately have a practical solution or suggestion, Riley was a deep, thoughtful thinker. Like me, she always tried to look beyond what you could see. She was good at it, too, and until taking a bit of a break after having had Marley Mae she and her partner David had been fostering as well – providing respite care for the same agency that we worked for.
Passing the baby across to my mum for a cuddle, she smiled at me. ‘Well, you know what to do about that, Mum, don’t you?’
I raised my eyebrows as she continued to fuss over my youngest grandchild. ‘I do?’
‘Course you do,’ she said. ‘Do what you used to do with me and Kieron. Trap him in the car. Take him off for a drive somewhere and drone on at him while he can’t escape.’
‘God, you make it sound like a form of torture,’ I said, shaking my head at my amused mother.
Riley laughed. ‘It was! Felt like that sometimes, at any rate. I swear, sometimes me and Kieron used to sweat at the jangle of your car keys.’
‘Oh you do exaggerate, Riley,’ I admonished. She was right, though. I did remember doing just that. And she was spot on; sometimes it probably did feel like a kind of torture – especially if the subject matter was at all sensitive: affairs of the heart, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, sex …
And it worked. Even if you didn’t always see the evidence at the time, there was a lot to be said for putting kids in a position where they didn’t have to make eye contact with you. It made it easier for them to talk. And it made it harder for them not to listen.
I still did it, too, with foster kids – albeit almost unconsciously these days. And Riley was right. I’d not yet thought about it, but it was exactly what I should do with Tyler. Because if I was to help him, I really needed to understand better where all that rage and hurt and self-loathing had come from.